Good morning, and welcome to the Essential California newsletter. It’s Tuesday, Oct. 3, and here’s what’s happening across California: TOP STORIES A massacre in Las Vegas Police said Monday that a search of the home and computer of 64-year-old...

Tom Petty rode to the pinnacle of pop music stardom with his beloved and long-running rock band the Heartbreakers, born out of the ashes of a group that flopped when he brought them from Gainesville, Fla., to California in the mid-1970s. He emerged as...

If you sing karaoke, you’ve probably performed “American Girl.” If you play guitar, you’ve likely strummed “Learning to Fly.” And if you’ve driven a car while celebrating some personal achievement or another, you’ve almost certainly belted out “Free...

Call it a boomer twofer, or maybe a classic rock bloc. Tom Petty and Eric Clapton, two of the most durable veterans of that long-ago era when guitars ruled the radio, took the No. 1 and No. 2 slots on this week's Billboard 200 album chart. "Hypnotic...

Eric Clapton calls his new album of J.J. Cale songs an appreciation rather than a tribute, and that word choice gets at the appealingly modest vibe of this record. In spite of cameos by heavy-hitting guitar guys like Tom Petty, Mark Knopfler and John...

“Rick Springfield, you have a song that people recognize after three frigging notes. Congratulations, Rick frigging Springfield,” Dave Grohl said on Thursday to his colleague in a new band celebrating the former Van Nuys recording studio Sound City. ...

On Monday, we brought you news that Dave Grohl's filmmaking debut, "Sound City," would premiere next month at Sundance. Now, the Foo Fighters frontman has unveiled the trailer for the upcoming documentary, which is named after the film's subject: a grungy...

Eleven years ago today, George Harrison died at the age of 58 in Los Angeles. And exactly one year after that some of the late Beatle's closest friends -- including Eric Clapton, Jeff Lynne, Tom Petty and Harrison's surviving bandmates -- gathered for an...

As the bass player on dozens of the most soulful hits in the history of pop music, Donald "Duck" Dunn often found himself out on the road playing to fans who had assumed he was black like the stars he supported, notably Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett and...

When singer Roy Orbison was touring England in 1968, it had been four years since he last appeared at the top of the charts with "Oh, Pretty Woman," even though he continued playing live and recording long after the pulse of rock music shifted away from...

Lady Antebellum's desperate late-night call for companionship, "Need You Now," was named record and song of the year among five awards the country trio collected during the 53rd Grammy Awards ceremony Sunday from Staples Center in Los Angeles. But the...

Singer-songwriter Tom Petty has died at age 66. In advance of the Heartbreakers’ 2002 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Petty commented on then-Times pop music critic Robert Hilburn's 10 favorite Petty songs. This article was originally...