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Kiss, Queen: Queen: Live Killers (EMI)/KISS: Dynasty (Casablanca)

Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 30 June 1979

PROFESSIONAL ENTERTAINMENT! It's the best, it never quits, there's nothing like it. It's the real thing! It's sound and light and colour and spectacle to ...

Rock Bottom: The Music Industry In Trouble

Comment by Charles Shaar Murray, The Independent, 9 April 2002

WHEN ROLLING STONES manager Andrew Loog Oldham founded his own company, Immediate Records, in the 1960s, the paper sleeve of each and every single bore ...

The Who, The Yardbirds: The Who, Yardbirds books

Book Review by Charles Shaar Murray, NME, 7 January 1984

Before I Get Old: The Story Of The Who by Dave Marsh Yardbirds by John Platt, Chris Dreja and Jim McCarty ...

Ray Charles: Brother Ray in Vision

Comment by Charles Shaar Murray, Observer Music Monthly, 14 November 2004

AT A RECENT MOVIE screening, I bumped into a publisher friend who specialises in music biographies. Every so often, he told me, some film production ...

Frank Zappa: The Mother Of All Reinventions

Comment by Charles Shaar Murray, The Independent, 21 November 2003

IF CIGARETTES AND COFFEE are available in the afterlife, the shade of Frank Zappa is probably allowing himself a wry smile from beneath his formidable ...

Satanic Majesties' Bequest

Book Review by Charles Shaar Murray, The Independent, 1 July 2000

I'm a Man: Sex, Gods And Rock'n'roll by Ruth Padel (Faber & Faber, £12.99, 409pp) ...

B.B. King, Howlin' Wolf: Various Artists Sun Records: The Blues Years 1950 — 1956

Review by Charles Shaar Murray, NME, 15 February 1986

"The blues is a chair, not a design for a chair, or a better chair… it is the first chair. It is a chair for ...

Oasis: Be Here Now

Review by Charles Shaar Murray, MOJO, September 1997

WHAT ARE Oasis for? They were Built To Be Big. Their Long-Awaited-All-Important-Third-Album, Be Here Now, is about as big as a rock record can get. ...

The Who: The Kids Are Alright (Polydor)

Review by Charles Shaar Murray, NME, 9 June 1979

"The whole thing about rock and roll dynamism, in many ways, is the fact that if it does slow down, if it does start to ...

Joy Division: Closer (Factory)

Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 19 July 1980

Closer to the edge ...

Terence Trent D'Arby: Yeau!

Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, September 1987

"I'M VERY, VERY self-critical. I'm very critical of others, but I'm also very critical of my own work and there's no-one that could possibly put ...

John Lee Hooker: The Voodoo Guru

Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, February 1990

ON 74TH & BROADWAY, the Gotham fog freezes your lungs with every breath, but inside the Beacon Theatre, Van Morrison has just spent something under ...

ZZ Top: Welcome To Weirdsville…

Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, November 1990

ROBERT CRAY'S favourite ZZ Top story: the last time the Robert Cray Band played San Antonio, Billy Gibbons called up and requested tickets. Come show-time, ...

David Bowie: Tin Machine: Versus

Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, October 1991

PICTURE THIS: you are in a sex shop in Sydney (for whatever twisted reasons people have for patronising such institutions), and this scholarly-looking gent with ...

Rory Gallagher: Blues for the Muse

Retrospective by Charles Shaar Murray, The Word, July 2011

A lost studio album is out – by Rory Gallagher, the man who put all he had into his music and took nothing back in ...

Quincy Jones: Mr Jones, I Presume!

Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, April 1990

THE THREE DUMBEST questions you could possibly ask this month are, "Do the ambulance workers deserve more pay?", "Is Mike Gatting a pillock?" and "Does ...

Cher, LaBelle: LaBelle: It Happened In Hollywood

Report by Charles Shaar Murray, NME, 4 January 1975

IT HAPPENED in Hollywood.To be precise it happened on The Cher Show. ...

Muddy Waters: The Blues Had A Baby… And They Called It Rock 'N' Roll

Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, NME, 30 April 1977

"THE KIND OF BLUES I play there's no money in it. You makes a good livin' when you gets established like I did, but you ...

Prince: Sleazy Grandeur

Overview by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, July 1990

He began making records as a control-fixated 18-year-old studio rat from Minneapolis. Ten albums later Prince had become the definitive pop icon of the '80s. ...

Eric Clapton, The Who: Pete Townshend part1: The True Saga Of Clapton's Rainbow Gig

Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, NME, 24 February 1973

IF YOU TURN up at the famous Track office in Soho's historic Old Compton Street, you're sure of a big surprise – there's a glitzy ...