Rock's Backpages: Search Results

Interview by Push, Melody Maker, 20 March 1993

Jamiroquai are Jay Kay, basically, a serious 22-year-old west Londoner with serious political ideas, a serious love of funk and a seriously funky voice. PUSH ...

If It Don't Go, It Ain't Go-Go!

Report by Simon Witter, NME, 2 February 1985

IT'S RARE FOR AN excellent musical style to remain unknown for long, yet Washington's Go-Go scene has done just that despite us running Richard Grabel's ...

Aaliyah, Singer/Actress

Obituary by Sheryl Garratt, The Observer, 2 September 2001

AALIYAH DANA HAUGHTON was just 22 when she died last Saturday in a plane crash in The Bahamas, but she'd already been famous for seven ...

Tammi Terrell: Tammi Terell: From Medicine To Music

Profile and Interview by uncredited writer, KRLA Beat, 19 March 1966

SOME PEOPLE fade into a crowd and some just naturally stand out. Tammi Terell is one of those who stand out. ...

Stevie Wonder, Bags Of Chips And Clapton

Report and Interview by Fred Dellar, NME, 17 February 1972

NME calls in at all-night recording session ...

The Supremes: Mary Wilson on The Supremes

Retrospective by Johnny Black, MOJO, April 1997

"ONE DAY IN mid-April we were all summoned to berry’s home on Outer Drive," remembers Mary Wilson of The Supremes. "As I drove there, I ...

Anita Ward: Emergency Ward

Interview by Paul Sexton, Record Mirror, 30 June 1979

Anita Ward rings PAUL SEXTON'S bells ...

Janet Jackson: Discipline

Review by Carol Cooper, Village Voice, 26 February 2008

SURE, MADONNA repeatedly toyed with BDSM in her videos, but she never publicly admitted to breast and genital piercings like Miss Jackson did. So, in ...

Aretha Franklin: Return Of Soul Sister Number One

Comment by Carol Cooper, Pulse!, June 1996

ARETHA – a name so singularly musical that it rolls off the tongue like an incantation. Almost four decades after 1967’s ‘I Never Loved ...

Hot Chocolate: Chocolate Brown

Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, NME, 25 August 1973

THERE IS absolutely no getting away from the fact that it was an excessively hot and sticky afternoon. Sweaterama incarnate. Clothing stuck unpleasantly to the ...

George McCrae's Last Chance – A Smash

Profile and Interview by Chris Charlesworth, Melody Maker, 20 July 1974

STRANGE how chance plays its part in the record business. If George McCrae hadn't decided to have one last try at making a hit record ...

Gladys Knight & the Pips: Gladys Knight and the Pips (DJM)

Review by Simon Frith, Street Life, 6 March 1976

SHE'S JUST GONNA have to get used to it. When you're the greatest pop singer in the world (and she is) and have been together ...

Chuck Brown & the Soul Searchers: Chuck Brown: Take The Money And Go-Go

Interview by Sean O'Hagan, NME, 4 April 1987

CHUCK BROWN'S in Britain to stick up the go-go scene with his pioneering blast of bum-pin'. But as SEAN O'HAGAN finds out, he didn't get ...

Marvin Gaye: For Once In A Lifetime

Interview by Paolo Hewitt, Melody Maker, 21 February 1981

AFTER NEARLY two hours in that bedroom, Lydia finally gave up. By any standards she'd waited long enough for her Marvin Gaye interview – a ...

Charles & Eddie, En Vogue: Harmony Singing: You Have A Lovely Singing Voice

Report and Interview by Lloyd Bradley, Q, July 1993

Three years ago it had all but disappeared beneath the deluge of hard rap and technological beats. Now, from the choreographed trouser arousal of En ...

Usher: Rise of the House of Usher

Report and Interview by Ben Thompson, Telegraph Magazine, July 2001

APPEARING ON Channel 4's Richard Blackwood Show during his last visit to Britain, clean-cut US R&B star Usher Raymond IV startled the crowd with the ...

Nelly: Country Grammarian: Nelly

Interview by Geoffrey Himes, Baltimore City Paper, 6 September 2000

THIS IS WHAT pop music is all about. A radio single with a sing-along hook so catchy and so danceable you can't resist it. A ...

Rick James: Blowing Out Tinsel Town

Interview by Lloyd Bradley, NME, 10 April 1982

Not So Long Ago:THERE WAS a time when nearly everybody in the world owned a Motown record. Motown was like a baby's security blanket, warm, ...

Joe Tex: The Soul Of An Underdog

Profile and Interview by Joe McEwen, Boston Phoenix, 31 May 1977

THE SHOW was held at South Philadelphia's Spectrum, still a brand-new facility in 1969, but it could well have been the fare at North Philly's ...

Dan Penn: Muscle Shoals: Soul of the South

Retrospective and Interview by Chris Campion, unpublished, September 2004

Muscle Shoals and Fame Studios are synonymous with the golden era of soul music. But the musicians who wrote and played on the songs that ...