Journalists, authors and publications
918 articles
Charles Mingus: Charlie Mingus: Jazz Man Is Changing His Beat
Report and Interview by Robert Shelton, The New York Times, 27 August 1962
Charlie Mingus at Work on Story of His Hard Times Bassist Is Planning to Leave U.S. and Write Symphony ...
The Beatles, John Lennon: A Beatle In His Own Write!
Report by Peter Jones, Record Mirror, 4 April 1964
John Lennon Talks About His New Book ...
Elvis Presley: David Griffiths recalls Elvis' days as the King of Western Bop
Retrospective by David Griffiths, Record Mirror, 5 June 1965
PARDON US while we do a little boasting but, after all, it IS the RM's birthday and we HAVE got something to celebrate. For we ...
Crawdaddy: Get Off Of My Cloud!
Comment by Paul Williams, Crawdaddy!, 7 February 1966
YOU ARE looking at the first issue of amagazine of rock and roll criticism. Crawdaddy will feature neither pin-ups nor news-briefs; the specialty of this ...
Our Nancy's Life Abroad — with Those British Pop Stars
Profile and Interview by Loraine Alterman, Detroit Free Press, 13 February 1966
The telegram came from Interpop. It read "ARRIVING IN DETROIT FROM LONDON ON PANAM FLIGHT 57 TUESDAY 3:20 PM IS YOUNG LADY OF POSSIBLE INTEREST ...
The Astronauts, The Beach Boys, The Righteous Brothers, The Rolling Stones: One Day On The Beat
Report by Carol Deck, KRLA Beat, 9 April 1966
SO YOU'D like to be a BEAT reporter, huh? So you think we lead an interesting exciting life full of nothing but fun and games ...
Charles Keil: Urban Blues (The University Of Chicago Press)
Book Review by Max Jones, Melody Maker, 22 October 1966
THE BLUES AS AN URBAN NEGRO CULTURE ...
Readers' Letters by uncredited writer, Record Mirror, 1 April 1967
RECORD MIRROR'S Norman Jopling went to the very first performance of the "Hit The Road Stax" tour in Britain — first house at Finsbury Park. ...
The Bloodless Battle Of The Badge: The Press at Monterey Pop
Report by Derek Taylor, World Countdown News, July 1967
THE CLEAN YOUNG man at the window said he was from the Los Angeles Times and there was nothing in his face to say he ...
The Mothers Of Invention: Mother's Rites: Freak Out/Absolutely Free
Review by Geoffrey Cannon, The Listener, 19 October 1967
2012 NOTE: Here below is the second column I wrote for The Listener in late 1967. It was the first of a number I ...
Nico, The Velvet Underground: Andy Warhol: A Mirror Of American Death
Essay by Geoffrey Cannon, New Society, 13 June 1968
2012 note: Cometh the hour... Paul Barker, the second and last editor of the UK weekly journal New Society, was once asked to speak on ...
The Rolling Stones: How I Survived Beggar's Banquet
Report by Chris Welch, Melody Maker, 14 December 1968
THAT custard pies would one day be hurled by the Rolling Stones at the gentlemen of the press was fairly inevitable. ...
Nico, The Velvet Underground: Letter to a Mystified Man
Comment by Geoffrey Cannon, The Guardian, 28 January 1969
DEAR Mr Davey — You write a neat letter, and I smiled, too. Last week you wrote to the editor of the Guardian (January 20). "If you ...
The Rolling Stones: Rolling Stone Magazine: Ripples from the Stone
Report by Geoffrey Cannon, The Guardian, 25 March 1969
FEW REVIEWS can make a first-rank artist doubt his ability at the height of his success. At this level, critics can rarely do more than ...
Foreword to Outlaw Blues by Paul Williams
Book Excerpt by Michael Lydon, Rolling Stone, April 1969
[For the 21st-century edition of this book, Michael Lydon, a founding editor of Rolling Stone magazine and the author of Rock Folk, Boogie Lightning and ...
The Kinks, Barbara Lewis, The Who: Styles of the City
Comment by Geoffrey Cannon, The Guardian, 19 August 1969
GEOFFREY CANNON ON POP MUSIC ...
Nik Cohn: Pop; Paul Oliver: The Story of The Blues
Book Review by Charlie Gillett, Record Mirror, 23 August 1969
Charlie Gillett reviews two books on music: Pop by Nik Cohn, and The Story of The Blues by Paul Oliver ...
Profile by Geoffrey Cannon, Harper's Bazaar, September 1969
Author's note, 2019. The first thing to know about Nic Cohn is that his 1969 book AWopBopaLooBopLopBamBoom: Pop from the Beginning was chosen in 2016 ...
Electric Kool-Aid: On & Off the Bus
Essay by Michael Lydon, Fusion, 6 March 1970
The last words of Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test are "WE BLEW IT". In caps, naturally. ...
Book Review by Greg Shaw, Who Put The Bomp!, October 1970
WITH THIS book, the study of rock & roll reaches a level of sophistication matching that of blues and jazz research. The day is gone ...
Book Review by John Morthland, Rolling Stone, 15 October 1970
CHARLIE GILLETT is a very likeable Englishman who recently released the most exhaustive study yet of rock and roll and the music industry. He's 28, ...
George Melly: Revolt into Style (Allen Lane/Penguin Press)
Book Review by Geoffrey Cannon, Punch, 25 November 1970
"HERE LIES not only its origins, but its glory. It came, after all, out of a yearning for the marvellous, out of a need on ...
Creem Reflects Detroit Rock 'n' Roll And Tries to Direct 'the Monster'
Interview by Mike Gormley, Detroit Free Press, 19 December 1970
ROCK 'N' ROLL has always had its own journalistic field. The teen magazines used to tell us about Paul Anka's nose job and Elvis Presley's ...
Letter by Lester Bangs, Excerpts from letters to Charlie Gillett, 1971
CREEM,187 South Woodward Avenue, Suite 203Birmingham, Michigan 48011(313) 642-8833[Autumn 1971] ...
Review by David G. Walley, Zygote, 1971
TARANTULA: twenty-five year-old visions of reality/letters to himself and posterity, now here in some other form from miracle xerox. Tarantula--visions of Aretha, soul singer in ...
Germaine Greer: A Groupie in Women's Lib
Report and Interview by Robert Greenfield, Rolling Stone, 7 January 1971
LONDON — ON a crazy Sunday afternoon in London, Germaine Greer lolls in the corner of a crowded room with a silver knit flapper's hat ...
Comment by John Mendelsohn, Phonograph Record, February 1971
(This article was a response to an article in Jazz & Pop highly critical of rock criticism in general, and John Mendelsohn in particlular, by rock writer ...
Music Magazines: The Real Rock ‘n’ Roll Underground
Overview by Greg Shaw, Creem, June 1971
DO YOU EVER get so sick of the latest Leon Russell or Ten Years After album that you switch off the FM radio in disgust ...
Book Review by Philip Elwood, The San Francisco Examiner, 22 July 1971
A Fine Text on the Rise of Rock ...
Comment by Martin Hawkins, Record Mirror, 31 July 1971
"DID YOU EVER HEAR A TENOR SAX, SWINGING LIKE A RUSTY AXE?" ...
Mick Farren: Rock Rebel with a Cause
Interview by Roy Carr, New Musical Express, 28 August 1971
TWENTY-SIX-year-old Mick Farren, ex-singer with the Deviants, writer, political activist and spokesman for the underground, has been called many things. However, he prefers to define ...
The Oz Obscenity Trial: Guilty
Report by Robert Greenfield, Rolling Stone, 2 September 1971
LONDON — Great Britain no longer need envy America its Chicago Conspiracy Trial. They've come up with a pretty good one of their own and ...
Underground Press An Important Promotion Outlet
Overview by Lon Goddard, Billboard, 13 November 1971
THE BRITISH underground press, or experimental press serves the budding supporters of the "Alternative Society" in a manner that is easily digestible; from a literary ...
Charlie Gillett replies to Book Review
Letter by Charlie Gillett, Who Put The Bomp!, Spring 1971
THANKS FOR the fantastic review — I had begun to get uneasy about praise that was coming from people who didn't know too much about ...
So You Wanna Be a Rock'n'Roll Writer (Keep a Carbon!)
Guide by Charlie Gillett, Rock File 1, 1972
My favourite music magazine is called Creem. It's published in Detroit, Michigan, and every month the first thing I see is a statement next to ...
Elvis Presley: Jerry Hopkins: Elvis – The Biography
Book Review by Greg Shaw, Phonograph Record, January 1972
THERE HAS never been an entertainer quite like Elvis Presley. His life and his contribution to rock 'n' roll have assumed such legendary proportions, which ...
Overview by Metal Mike Saunders, The Rag, 24 January 1972
MOST PEOPLE LISTEN to rock and roll. Yet others read about it, and some actually have the lunacy to write about it! Where there’s money ...
Rock Folk, Michael Lydon; Feel Like Going Home, Peter Guralnick; The Rolling Stone Interviews
Book Review by Charlie Gillett, Creem, March 1972
WHEN DOES the interviewer become PR man? Or vice-versa. It's depressing how often rock papers, in Britain and in the States, are prepared to let ...
Nik Cohn: My Book is Rubbish but it’s the Best
Interview by Steve Turner, Beat Instrumental, May 1972
"There is only one decent book that has ever been written on pop," said Nik Cohn from beneath his wide brimmed hat, "and that's Awopbopaloobopalopbamboom ...
Christopher Milk: Some People Will Drink Anything (Warner Brothers)
Review by Alan Niester, Creem, January 1973
THE RUMOR you may have heard about all rock critics secretly wanting to be rock and roll stars is absolutely true. They won't all admit ...
Review by Greg Shaw, Rolling Stone, 4 January 1973
Punk Rock: the arrogant underbelly of '60s pop ...
RockFile: Where The Writing Ends, The Memory Game Begins
Review by Mick Houghton, Let It Rock, February 1973
ROCK FILE is one of the current crop of books on music which has moved away from the more historical analysis, and deals with the ...
Essay by Greil Marcus, Let It Rock, March 1973
IN THE NOVEMBER issue of Let It Rock, Tony White offered some rather hysterical opinions in his Dylan bootleg discography, and Tony Scaduto, author of ...
Rock Critics Rule... and other startling musical revelations!
Special Feature by J. Montague Fitzpatrick, Coast, April 1973
Or: how Lester Bangs, Dave Marsh, Chet Flippo, Nick Tosches, Robot A. Hull, Lenny Kaye, Richard Meltzer, Mike Saunders, Gene Sculatti, Ed Ward and 26 ...
Jon Landau: It’s Too Late To Stop Now
Review by Simon Frith, Let It Rock, May 1973
I FEEL UNEASY, confronting Landau. If a rock critic is a parasite, what is the critic of a rock critic? Landau is a rock critic ...
OZ: More Than Simply Another Hippy Rag
Report by Jonathon Green, International Times, 31 May 1973
I TOLD YOU so. I've always wanted to say it, and now I can. Here, as I hack out yet another goddam obituary, I can ...
Obituary by Richard Goldstein, The New York Times, 26 August 1973
LILLIAN ROXON, who died on Aug. 9, understood something important about pop music and its milieu, which is that the very basis of its impact ...
Lillian Roxon, Journalist-Author Of Rock Encyclopedia Dies at 41
Obituary by Loraine Alterman, Rolling Stone, 13 September 1973
NEW YORK — Lillian Roxon, author of the Rock Encyclopedia, was many things to many people. ...
Lester Bangs: Exile in Detroit City: A Imaginary Conversation with Lester Bangs
Comment by Metal Mike Saunders, Brain Damage, 1 June 1974
SO WE FINALLY decided it was time to come to terms with Lester Bangs... ...
How to be a Rock Critic: A Megatonic Journey
Essay by Lester Bangs, Shakin' Street Gazette, 10 October 1974
LATELY I'VE NOTICED a new wrinkle on the American landscape: it seems as if there's a whole generation of kids, each one younger than the ...
Star Trek: You, too, can be a superstar
Report by uncredited writer, IPC News, December 1974
A MILLION men go from ashes to ashes. Only the man-in- a-million journeys from dust to stardust. ...
How to Become a Rock Critic in 7 Easy Lessons
Guide by Deanne Stillman, MORE: A Journalism Review, 1975
1 Isolating the Primary Facts Just as college journalism students learn the comprehensive "Five-W" lead (who, what, when, where, why), the rock journalist must learn the ...
Lester Bangs: Epistle to a Young Critic: A Letter from Lester Bangs, February 1975
Letter by Lester Bangs, unpublished, February 1975
Thirty years ago, RBP contributor Susan (then Suzan) Compo was an apprentice punkette and aspiring rock scribe living in Tustin, California. An avid reader of ...
Ralph J. Gleason: Yesterday, we were all losers
Obituary by Philip Elwood, The San Francisco Examiner, 4 June 1975
EARLY MORNING phono calls are the bad ones. A year ago I was jangled awake and plunged into gloom on hearing "Duke died." ...
Perspectives on Ralph J. Gleason
Memoir by j. poet, Rolling Stone, 17 July 1975
ONE OF THE things that inspired me to become a record reviewer was Ralph Gleason's record collection. It completely filled all the walls of his ...
Perspectives on Ralph J. Gleason
Memoir by Al Aronowitz, Rolling Stone, 17 July 1975
RALPH GLEASON got hooked on music when he was a high school kid in Chappaqua, New York, back in the early '30s. You gotta dig ...
The Rolling Stones: Robert Greenfield: A Journey through America with the Rolling Stones
Book Review by Mick Farren, New Musical Express, 20 September 1975
I FEAR THIS book may be the one that could finally O.D. the reader on rock writing, particularly that flat, conscientious, detailed, post-Truman Capote style ...
Neil Young Paints It Black: Zuma
Review by Paul Nelson, The Village Voice, 24 November 1975
NOTE: ON APRIL 14, 1983, Elliot Roberts, Neil Young's manager, wrote a letter to Paul: "This is to advise you that we will co-operate with ...
Pete Wingfield: The Wheel Goes Full Circle
Interview by John Tobler, ZigZag, January 1976
IN THE EARLY DAYS of ZigZag, when Frame and I were young lads, Childs wasn't even born, and San Francisco was where it was at ...
Gil Scott-Heron (1976) [transcript]
Transcript of audio interview by Cliff White, Rock's Backpages transcripts, February 1976
This is a transcript of Cliff's audio interview with Gil. Listen to the audio of this interview. ...
Rock Dreams/Schemes: The History of Crawdaddy(!)
Retrospective by John Swenson, Crawdaddy!, March 1976
YOU ARE looking at the first issue of a magazine of rock and roll criticism. Crawdaddy! will feature neither pin-ups nor news briefs; the specialty ...
Ian Hunter: Reflections Of A Rock Star
Review by Lester Bangs, Phonograph Record, September 1976
Ian Hunter: Coping With Modern Day Rock Stardom ...
Report by Ed Jones, Time Out, 8 October 1976
THERE ARE ruffled feathers at Stalag Meymott, prefab home of Melody Maker, where editor Ray Coleman has been enjoying unusually frank communication with his staff. ...
The (?) Rock Special (#4): Mark P
Profile and Interview by Jonh Ingham, Sounds, 9 October 1976
"I may be sounding dramatic but I wanna go out and hear the sounds that I like every night, I wanna have to choose what ...
Essay by Dave Marsh, Rolling Stone, 16 December 1976
THERE'S BEEN nothing but grief since Newsweek (or was it the Sunday New York Times!) decided that rock critics invented Bruce Springsteen. Only a moron ...
Essay by Dave Marsh, Rolling Stone, 13 January 1977
ROCK CRITICISM is now often seen in many quarters as more important than rock itself. Many critics carry this one step further by superimposing their ...
Interview by Ed McCormack, Rolling Stone, 10 March 1977
"Nobody wants to see Punk grow up" ...
Patti Smith: Lenny Kaye: New York Nuggets
Interview by Kris Needs, ZigZag, May 1977
IN ISSUE 68 [of ZigZag], Patti Smith talked about a number of things during an account of the first half of her visit to this ...
Comment by Susan Whitall, Creem, May 1977
Dozens listen. ...
What The New Wave's Thrown Up — Punk Press Report
Overview by Kris Needs, ZigZag, May 1977
THE RECENT deluge of New Wave fanzines can only be a good thing... they're written and created by fans for the fans, with no sign ...
Valerie Wilmer: "Art is a luxury. Music is a functional thing."
Interview by Brian Case, New Musical Express, 7 May 1977
Photographer-writer VALERIE WILMER opts for unlearning and the sovereignty of the heart ...
American Grandstand: The Reel Paper
Comment by Dave Marsh, Rolling Stone, 19 May 1977
JOAN MICKLIN Silver's new movie, Between the Lines, purports to tell the story of the Boston Mainline, an alternative weekly not unlike Boston's relatively real-life ...
The Beatles: Paperback Writer: A New History Of The Beatles by Mark Shipper (Marship Publications)
Book Review by Marty Cerf, Phonograph Record, June 1977
BEATLEFICTION. It's so simple so obvious, it's amazing no one's thought of it till now. What, short of the re-grouped Beatles, could be more logical ...
Just a few thousand words in your ear: A history of the rock press
Retrospective by Giovanni Dadomo, Jon Savage, Sounds, 20 August 1977
... Is this communicating? (Arthur Lee, 1968) ...
The Art Attacks: Art Attax: Red Cow, London
Live Review by Sandy Robertson, Sounds, 1 October 1977
Great but brain-Attaxing ...
Elvis Presley: Junk, junk food junk prose (pulpitations for all)
Book Review by Mick Farren, New Musical Express, 15 October 1977
Red West, Sonny West, Dave Hebler, as told to Steve Dunleavy: Elvis – What Happened? ...
Essaying The Sound of the City: Gillett and After
Essay by Paul Yamada, Terminal Zone, Spring 1977
ANYONE WELL acquainted with the pop and R&B charts from 1948-1954 knows a few odd things about rock. ...
Bruce Springsteen: Proceedings of Discovery
Comment by Bruce Pollock, Gannett Westchester Newspapers, 1978
WE ROCK PUNDITS, critics and reviewers, Rockwells of good taste, O'Neills of moral fervor, are in reality no better than the average slob on the ...
Fanzines: Pure Pop Art For Now People
Overview by Jon Savage, Sounds, 14 January 1978
"THEY are vital, audacious, reckless insofar as they represent an extreme view adopted in a broad popular m way, and they have a curious brave ...
The Art Attacks: Art Attacks: The Vortex, London
Live Review by Jane Suck, Sounds, 28 January 1978
YOU LOVE me, and I'll love you, or I won't love you at all. When you've been assured of a place on the guest list ...
Sex Pistols: Letter From Britain: Winter Wasteland
Comment by Simon Frith, Creem, March 1978
I HATE WINTER, even in cosy old Britain, so I certainly don't know what I'm doing here, sitting in a motel room in Birmingham, Michigan, ...
William Burroughs: Junkie, Junkey... An Interview With William Burroughs
Interview by Jeffrey Morgan, Creem, April 1978
"I WAS AROUND people who were using it. Then I started, you know, taking an occasional shot. It is, for most people, I think, a ...
The Bush Fire That Ate Bogville, Arizona
Overview by Paul Rambali, New Musical Express, 8 April 1978
Oh-no-not-another-fanzine-survey (goes West) ...
The Rolling Stones: Everybody's talking to Lisa Robinson
Profile and Interview by Dave Marsh, Rolling Stone, 4 May 1978
NEW YORK — IT IS conceivable that America's most influential rock byline has never appeared in Rolling Stone. Lisa Robinson's natural turf is self-created and ...
Patti Smith: Babel (Putnam/Longman)
Review by Jeffrey Morgan, Roxy, June 1978
TEMPTING AS IT MAY BE, it would be far too easy to dismiss Patti Smith merely as a literary quack and let it go at ...
John Cooper Clarke: Just Another Ex-Gravedigger Poet Into Dada and the TV
Interview by Garry Bushell, Sounds, 9 September 1978
GARRY BUSHELL GOES PUNK-SURREAL ...
Live Review by Peter Silverton, Sounds, 23 September 1978
"HELLO, MY name's Mick Farren...I wanna drink!" ...
Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones: Rolling Stones Dump On Rolling Stone
Report by Bob Woffinden, New Musical Express, 14 October 1978
THE CHANGES which the imaginary magazine depicted in Between The Lines goes through — from radical underground to counter-culture to hip capitalist establishment — is ...
Angry Samoans, Vom: The Metal Mike Saunders Interview
Interview by Gary Sperrazza!, Big Star, Spring 1978
In the early '70s, Mike Saunders was one of the leading and best writers around, especially when he was writing about the topics most near ...
Report by Sandy Robertson, Sounds, 17 March 1979
...sometimes. The rock critic as musician. By Sandy Robertson ...
Punk Attack: 'The Obituary of Rock and Roll'
Book Review by Dave Marsh, Rolling Stone, 28 June 1979
Julie Burchill and Tony Parsons: The Boy Looked at Johnny (Pluto Press) ...
Blondie, Brian Eno, Robert Fripp, Philip Glass, Michael Nyman: Crits fiddle while public burns...
Report by Richard Grabel, New Musical Express, 30 June 1979
Fripp, Eno and others debate the future of a species ...
Lester Bangs, Blondie: Everyone's a rock critic: The lost Lester Bangs interview
Interview by uncredited writer, unpublished, 1980
FOLLOWING the release of Blondie, Lester Bangs was interviewed for a radio program called News Blimp. A copy of the tape was sent to me ...
William Burroughs, Mick Jagger: Table talk
Report by Victor Bockris, Tatler, 1980
Victor Bockris fails to entertain Jagger, Warhol and Burroughs ...
Pete Frame: The Man Behind the Trees
Interview by Peter Silverton, Sounds, 15 March 1980
FIRST, I suppose, I should declare an interest. I get thanked for my help three times in Pete Frame's Rock Family Trees (Omnibus £3.95) and ...
John Cooper Clarke: The Bard Of Beasley Street At The Seat Of Learning
Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Sounds, 24 May 1980
THE OXFORD University Union porter peered at us fish-eyed. "Are you members?" he said. "Er, no - we're with the poet." ...
Interview by Ian Penman, New Musical Express, 21 June 1980
Following a more-than-rigorous analysis of the last Slits/Pop Group single, the twin terrors of Rough Trade challenged Ian Penman to a verbal showdown. This is his ...
Stewart Copeland, The Police: The Police: Turning Tables
Interview by Ronnie Gurr, Record Mirror, 4 October 1980
Cub reporter STEWART COPELAND grills RONNIE (the star) GURR ...
Report by Don Snowden, New York Rocker, November 1980
LOS ANGELES — Rumors have been running rampant about the imminent demise of Slash magazine. A forthcoming issue may indeed be its swansong... but then ...
Memoir by Al Aronowitz, The Blacklisted Masterpieces of Al Aronowitz, 1981
YEAH, I KNEW Emmett Grogan, knew him well enough to've gone on a half-ass caper with him in behalf of a coke dealer who thought ...
John Lennon, Yoko Ono: Rolling Stone Gathers A Little Moss
Report by Richard Cromelin, Los Angeles Times, 9 January 1981
SIX LOS Angeles area supermarket chains, including Ralphs, Safeway and Alpha Bela, have refused to carry the Jan. 22 issue of Rolling Stone magazine. The ...
Nick Kent, The Subterraneans: The Almost Legendary Nick Kent Story
Interview by Chris Salewicz, New Musical Express, 10 January 1981
The modest (if a mite incestuous) tale of the celebrated NME writer who is now on the threshold of becoming a bona fide rock star ...
Jim Carroll: The Transformation of Jim Carroll
Profile and Interview by Laura Fissinger, Musician, February 1981
IS JIM CARROLL, streetwise poet, athletic Catholic Boy, being pushed into the vacant position of rock'n'roll martyr? ...
Obituary by Dave Marsh, Creem, April 1981
(On January 29 CREEM publisher and founder Barry Kramer died at 37, just as we were going to press. Our business is words, but they ...
Book Review by Robot A. Hull, Creem, May 1981
Less Is More? ...
Letter from Britain: Rock Papers For Brits
Report by Penny Valentine, Creem, June 1981
BEING A survivor of at least two British rock papers — one of them now slipped in the annals of time — a new arrival ...
Sam Charters: Chains that Gave Birth to the Blues
Profile and Interview by Mick Brown, The Guardian, 6 June 1981
Mick Brown reports how the musicologist Sam Charters learned to stop feeling guilty about slavery ...
Bruce Springsteen: Springsteen Forged Passports To A Promised Land
Comment by Nick Kent, New Musical Express, 4 July 1981
"What my band and I are about is a sense of responsibility. If you accept it, that makes you responsible for everything that happens. People ...
Hank Williams: Chet Flippo: Your Cheatin' Heart — A Biography Of Hank Williams (Simon and Schuster)
Book Review by Susan Whitall, Creem, September 1981
ROSANNE CASH, Johnny's first-born and as I write, No. 1 on the country charts, was quoted in Esquire: "A lot has happened in country music ...
Elvis Presley: Goldman Ain't Nothin' But A Hound Dog!
Book Review by Bill Holdship, Creem, February 1982
Elvis by Albert Goldman (McGraw-Hill) ...
Todd Rundgren: Utopia in Woodstock: Todd Rundgren
Interview by Paul Morley, New Musical Express, 24 April 1982
IF I AM THE LAST writer about pop music of any standing, Alfred G. Aronowitz was the first. He was matchmaking, twitching and joking from ...
Lester Bangs: Jook Savages on the Brazos (Live Wire Records)
Review by Byron Coley, L.A. Weekly, 7 May 1982
Lester Bangs Writes a Good 'Un ...
Lester Bangs: Ballad of a Loudhearted Man
Obituary by Nick Kent, New Musical Express, 15 May 1982
"Lester Bangs is the rock critic's rock critic, a man gifted verbally in much the same way that James Brown is gifted as a dancer. ...
Lester Bangs: The Immortal Lester Bangs
Obituary by Robot A. Hull, Unicorn Times, July 1982
"...but there is a death in the balance and you better look long and hard at it, you stupid fuckheads, you who treat life as ...
Obituary by Ira Robbins, Trouser Press, August 1982
LESTER BANGS, whose writings probably influenced the style and outlook of countless rock critics, died in his New York apartment on April 30 at the ...
Steve Beresford: Everywhere Man: Steve Beresford
Profile and Interview by Richard Cook, New Musical Express, 25 September 1982
You name it, Beresford had done it. He'd played bass, played piano, played trumpet...he'd composed music, improvised music, organised music, he'd written about the damn ...
William Burroughs: The Beat Guru Loaded For Bear
Interview by Mick Brown, The Guardian, 1 October 1982
Burroughs is in Britain for a series of readings. Mick Brown reports. ...
Interview by John Tobler, Rock's Backpages audio, 12 October 1982
Christgau talks about how he became a critic and about his record rating system; the nature of his writing and why he's collected it in his Record Guide; why he doesn't interview artists and the abuse he receives from them; the importance of Black music to American culture; why the '70s were great for rock; how music isn't just for the young; British pop vs. American rock; the future of the form and the wonders of the new hip hop.
File format: mp3; file size: 26.2mb, interview length: 27' 18" sound quality: *****
Leonard Cohen: Songs from a Room: The Inside Story of Leonard Cohen
Retrospective by Liz Thomson, The History of Rock, 1983
IT WAS IN 1956 that the work of Leonard Cohen first appeared before the general public in book form, an event that marked his transformation ...
Gloria Stavers: October 3rd, 1927-April 1st, 1983
Obituary by Dave Marsh, Rolling Stone, 12 May 1983
ON THE surface, 16 magazine was no more than a shallow, dizzy fanzine for teenage girls. It was crammed with bubblegum singers, TV idols, "win ...
Subbed Culture: The Meaning of Bile
Essay by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 18 February 1984
Should the rock press only reflect what's happening, or has it the power to make things happen? With the proliferation of teen pop glossies, which ...
Rock & Roll Fanzines: A New Underground Press Flourishes
Report and Interview by Michael Goldberg, Rolling Stone, 29 March 1984
Inside news for the hard core ...
Shredder: Teen Scene from Belly of the Beast
Interview by Don Waller, Los Angeles Times, 13 May 1984
Now flip that teen coin and meet a breed of kiddies who are not going to dance clubs, who are not listening to floaty romantic ...
Davitt Sigerson: Falling In Love Again (Ze Records)
Review by Jane Solanas, New Musical Express, 11 August 1984
I'M HAPPY to announce this is The Worst Record I've Ever Listened To, not so ecstatic to say that it's on Ze Records, the reason ...
Davitt Sigerson: AOR? Write On! An Interview with Davitt Sigerson
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 22 September 1984
DAVITT SIGERSON insists he isn’t smarting from the NME review which described Falling In Love Again as ‘The Worst Record I’ve Ever Heard." ...
Not a Perfect Portrayal Of Rolling Stone Editor
Film/DVD/TV Review by Ben Fong-Torres, San Francisco Chronicle, 9 June 1985
I JUST saw Perfect, the new movie with John Travolta as a Rolling Stone reporter and Jann Wenner (the actual editor of Rolling Stone) as ...
Jack Kerouac: Hit The Road, Jack: A Man Called Kerouac
Retrospective by Biba Kopf, New Musical Express, 6 July 1985
AMERICAN RHAPSODISTS come thick and fast, frenziedly spurtspraying words across the broad continental canvas by way of leaving traces, eager to fill in every dingly ...
Marvin Gaye: Divided Soul: The Life of Marvin Gaye by David Ritz
Review by Chris Salewicz, Time Out, 8 July 1985
The anguished life of Marvin Gaye ended on April 1, 1984, at the home in Los Angeles he had bought for his parents, when a ...
Interview by Ira Robbins, Rock's Backpages audio, 5 August 1985
ABC mainstays Mark White and Martin Fry on the state of the UK music press (particularly Smash Hits); on the making of their first three albums; on producer Trevor Horn; on songwriting and lyrics; on avoiding pandering to American tastes; and on their great dislike of touring.
File format: mp3; file size: 37meg, interview length: 38' 31" sound quality: ***
Led Zeppelin: Hammer Of The Gods: The Led Zeppelin Saga by Stephen Davis (Wm. Morrow & Co.)
Book Review by Bill Holdship, Creem, October 1985
LEMONS OF THE GODS ...
J.G. Ballard: Closely Observed Trains
Profile and Interview by Don Watson, New Musical Express, 26 October 1985
He never listens to music but he inspired the writing of 'Warm Leatherette' and Magazine's 'Motorcade', his trilogy of Crash, High Rise and Concrete Island ...
Book Review by Tony Fletcher, Jamming!, November 1985
THE TITLE says it all. There are those of us who have, over the years, battled on our own territory desperately hoping that the downward ...
Julie Burchill: The 'Sweetest Girl'
Profile and Interview by Caroline Sullivan, Melody Maker, 2 November 1985
JULIE BURCHILL has torpedoed more sacred cows than a pop star has brain cells, though she likes (among other things) Sade and the Maker. Caroline Sullivan ...
Pet Shop Boys: The Pet Shop Boys: An ex-Smash Hits Writer and the Grandson of a Nitwit
Interview by Tom Hibbert, Smash Hits, 18 December 1985
Doesn't sound like the ideal line-up for a successful pop duo, does it? But now that 'West End Girls' is whizzing up the charts that's ...
Report and Interview by Steven Wells, New Musical Express, 22 March 1986
Soaraway Sun scribe GARRY BUSHELL finds himself on the other side of the fantastic fact-finding fence. STEVEN 'Scoop' WELLS digs a grave. ...
Interview by Steven Wells, New Musical Express, 3 May 1986
It's point and counterpoint in this bout of champions; in the camel pen, bile scribbler JULIE BURCHILL, defending her high-profile prose against the red trunks ...
Garry Bushell: The Most Evil Man In Pop
Interview by Colin Irwin, Melody Maker, 10 May 1986
Scourge of the Looney Left, creator of Oi and prime exponent of the dreaded 'Sunspeak', GARRY BUSHELL makes a clean breast of it to Prof ...
Pop Journalism: Write or Wrong?
Overview by Frank Owen, Melody Maker, 24 May 1986
Is it pop we're disillusioned with, or pop journalism? Is Paul Morley the curse or the saviour of the scribbling classes? Frank Owen takes a ...
Jim Carroll: A Nod Of Approval: The music and poetry of Jim Carroll
Interview by Gerrie Lim, Orange County Review, June 1986
"I'VE ALWAYS CONSIDERED myself a poet first," Jim Carroll says, his slightly cracked voice resounding clearly over the phone from New York. "That's what brings ...
Rock Magazines: Why They're So Good
Overview by John Mendelsohn, Creem, July 1986
YOU KNOW WHAT'S interesting about the rock print medium nearly two-thirds of the way through the '80s? That so much of it is aimed at ...
Boy George: From Culture Club To Vulture Club
Comment by Paolo Hewitt, Don Watson, New Musical Express, 26 July 1986
Boy George's romance with the Fleet Street scandal sheets came to an abrupt end when they turned on him in an hysterical anti-drugs campaign. But ...
The Beatles: Four Who Dared : Backstage With the Beatles on Their Last Tour
Retrospective by Judith Sims, Los Angeles Times, 3 August 1986
Twenty years ago this month, the Beatles, on their third American tour, staged 18 concerts in 14 cities and played to more than 450,000 screaming ...
Peter Guralnick's Soul Hits Sweet Spot
Interview by Don Waller, Los Angeles Times, 9 November 1986
DO YA LIKE good music? (Yeah, yeah.) Then Peter Guralnick's new book Sweet Soul Music (Harper & Row) is right down your alley, two steps ...
Nelson George: The Death of Rhythm & Blues (Omnibus)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, The Wire, 1987
NELSON GEORGE, self-described "B-Boy intellectual" and one of pop culture's few black writers of note, has written a book which (sort of) argues that the ...
Sam Charters on Folkways Records' Moe Asch (1987)
Interview by Tony Scherman, Rock's Backpages audio, January 1987
Charters talks about his friend, colleague and mentor Moe Asch: about starting to release his field recordings through Folkways; the importance of the label; the Harry Smith anthology; Sam Goody's support for the label; the label's bankruptcy and tax problems; Asch's brilliance, but being a difficult man to work with; the magnificent catalogue, and the scene surrounding the label.
File format: mp3; file size: 56.8mb, interview length: 59' 08" sound quality: **
Pet Shop Boys: Neil Tennant: Smash Hits Editor For A Day!?
Report and Interview by Chris Heath, Smash Hits, 25 February 1987
Oh no! What to do? The Editor had flounced off to some so-called "conference", with half an issue of Britain's Brightest Pop Magazine still to ...
The Mamas and The Papas, John Phillips: John Phillips with Jim Jerome: Papa John (W.H. Allen/Virgin)
Book Review by Hugh Fielder, Sounds, 6 June 1987
PAPA DON'T PREACH ...
1967, The Summer of Love: There Was a Brief Moment When the Sun Really Shone
Memoir by Judith Sims, Los Angeles Times, 2 August 1987
I'LL GET right to the point: 1967 was one of the best years of my life. ...
Angry Samoans: The Angry Samoans: Samoa, Ho!
Profile and Interview by Chuck Eddy, Creem, December 1987
"THE PURPOSE of music as a reflection of the ever-changing nature of the world is to make everything you like seem silly five years later, ...
Book Review by Mark Dery, L.A. Weekly, 24 December 1987
Bang's Big Theory ...
Interview by Ralph Traitor, Sounds, 16 January 1988
During 1987 the US indie underground began surfacing in much the same way as it had here a full decade earlier. BYRON COLEY, co-editor of ...
Book Review by Jon Savage, The Observer, 10 July 1988
Inside outsider ...
Nelson George: The Death Of Rhythm & Blues (Pantheon, 256 pages, $18.95 hardcover)
Book Review by Mark Dery, L.A. Weekly, 28 July 1988
SOLD BROTHERS ...
Interview by Adam Blake, Rock's Backpages audio, 29 September 1988
The leading pop culture commentator on his latest book, Music for Pleasure: the book as clarification, and academic life vs. rock'n'roll; showbiz vs. pop; where pop is at now; the effects of globalisation; the declining importance of rock; music and capitalism; the space for idiosyncrasy; the impact of sampling; packaging vs. product, and what constitutes bourgeois culture.
File format: mp3; file size: 20.7mb, interview length: 21' 33" sound quality: **
Waxing Lyrical: The Rock Press
Essay by Paul Morley, Time Out, 4 October 1988
As the monochrome music press got lost in the technicolour '80s, and good- looking glossies took over colourful music writing, one thing was sure: just ...
Jon Savage: Cool and the Crazy
Interview by Richard North, Offbeat, November 1988
Richard North tackles post-punk pessimist, writer, dreamer and rebel without a cause – Jon Savage ...
The Rolling Stones: Stanley Booth: Myth and Misquotation
Essay by Greil Marcus, The Threepenny Review, Fall 1988
This was originally the address at the commencement ceremonies of the Department of History, University of California at Berkeley, on 20th May 1988. Greil Marcus ...
Interview by Paolo Hewitt, New Musical Express, 14 January 1989
As a columnist for Billboard and The Village Voice, Nelson George has been America's most incisive commentator on the changing face of black music culture. ...
The Doors, Iggy Pop: Danny Sugerman: American Excess
Interview by Jon Wilde, Melody Maker, 18 March 1989
DANNY SUGERMAN is the wastrel previously responsible for the Doors' epic biography, No One Here Gets Out Alive. Now he's back with Wonderland Avenue, his ...
Simon Frith: Music For Pleasure/Facing The Music/Art Into Pop
Book Review by Tim Riley, The Boston Phoenix, May 1989
AS A SOCIOLOGIST who draws on Marxist principles to make sense of the Byzantine channels through which pop flows, Simon Frith was the first British ...
Interview by Jon Wilde, Melody Maker, 8 July 1989
IN 1977, GREIL MARCUS PUBLISHED MYSTERY TRAIN, ONE OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL BOOKS OF ROCK CRITICISM EVER WRITTEN. HIS NEW BOOK, LIPSTICK TRACES: A SECRET ...
Book Review by Richard Williams, Q, December 1989
Charles Shaar Murray: Crosstown Traffic: Jimi Hendrix And Post-War Pop (Faber) ...
Jimmy Buffett: Oh, The Stories He Can Tell
Profile and Interview by Richard Harrington, The Washington Post, 17 December 1989
"IF THE NUNS at school saw me signing like this, they'd hit me on the knuckles with a ruler," says Jimmy Buffett, scribbling his name ...
Lydia Lunch (1989) [transcript]
Transcript of audio interview by Martin Aston, Rock's Backpages transcripts, Winter 1989
This is a transcript of Martin's interview with Lydia. Listen to the audio of this interview. ...
Lester Bangs: Liberation Critic
Essay by Richard Riegel, Throat Culture, 1990
JAMMED INTO that soft-sided suitcase of guilts I've carried with me into my forties is the dull-but-persistent ache that I "owed" Lester Bangs a letter ...
Those That Can, Do … Music Criticism and Other Evils
Report by Chris Bourke, Rip It Up (New Zealand), January 1990
Rock critics are a bunch of misanthropic know-alls who like to talk more than they like to dance. They think they're the only ones who ...
Book Review by Tim Riley, The Boston Phoenix, February 1990
WHEN PAUL MCCARTNEY announced his $8.5 million promotion deal with Visa at a recent press conference, he was challenged to explain how his new sideline ...
Report by Adam Sweeting, The Guardian, 2 June 1990
Adam Sweeting looks at a new round of paper wars ...
Jack Kerouac: The Mythmaking of Jack Kerouac: The Jack Kerouac Collection (Rhino)
Review by Tom Graves, Rock & Roll Disc, September 1990
TRUMAN CAPOTE very nearly sank Jack Kerouac’s literary reputation with five well-chosen words that exploded like cigarette loads in the public eye. ...
Book Review by Tim Riley, The Boston Phoenix, October 1990
THE BRITISH have always tried to claim Hendrix as their own. This argument falls apart right away not only because he was an American, but ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Vox, November 1990
Barney Hoskyns talks to Fredric Dannen, author of a chilling study of the American record industry. ...
Interview by Mark Dery, Mondo 2000, 1991
GLENN BRANCA and Elliott Sharp philosophize with a hammer. And an anvil. And a stirrup. The two New York composers take Friedrich Nietzsche, who subtitled ...
Book Review by Tom Hibbert, Q, February 1991
TWO EXCELLENT ways to become a sort of "cult" rock hero: 1) Be dead; 2) Be bonkers...Actually, come to think of it, the first option ...
Interview by Sean O'Hagan, The Guardian, 9 February 1991
On the titter count he scores high. And he insists on playing the prat because it pays off so handsomely. But the music biz has ...
Rock And The Tabloids: Publish And Be Damned
Report by Tom Hibbert, Q, March 1991
The pop columnists of Britain's tabloid papers had a high old time of it in the 1980s. Then they woke up to an unpleasant lesson ...
Jim Morrison: Roll Over Elvis : The Second Coming Of Jim Morrison
Memoir by Eve Babitz, Esquire, March 1991
I know why I loved him. I know why lots of women loved him. But what I want to know is this: Why now, does ...
Unsound Moves in the Print Trade
Report by Caroline Sullivan, The Guardian, 11 April 1991
Caroline Sullivan investigates the long-standing malaise afflicting the weekly music press after last week's closure of Sounds and the merger of Record Mirror with Music ...
The Band, Bob Dylan: Al Aronowitz (1991)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages audio, 10 August 1991
Hired and fired by the New York Post; having "total phoney" Andy Warhol steal the Velvets from him; running with Dylan and, extensively, his dealings with The Band – "blacklisted journalist" Al Aronowitz vents his not-inconsiderable spleen.
File format: mp3; total file sizes: 73.8meg, interview length: 1h 16' 53" sound quality: ***
Alma Cogan: Gone to rock 'n' roll heaven, or perhaps she's stuck in limbo
Report and Interview by David Toop, The Times, 26 August 1991
Twenty-five years after her death, singer Alma Cogan is the subject of two new books and a BBC TV programme. David Toop suggests that records ...
The Adverts, The Clash, Sex Pistols, X-Ray Spex: Jon Savage: "I Remember Punk Rock..."
Interview by Steven Wells, New Musical Express, 26 October 1991
He was a bored public schoolboy, then JON SAVAGE heard the Pistols and the Clash and the strings of his heart went ping. He's now ...
Elvis Presley: Greil Marcus: Elvis for everybody
Interview by Andy Gill, The Independent, 7 March 1992
Andy Gill talks to the writer Greil Marcus, Serious Elvis Person, about his chronicle of a cultural obsession ...
Book Review by Stuart Maconie, New Musical Express, 16 May 1992
A FANATIC, they say, is someone who redoubles his effort when he has forgotten his aim. The Smiths spawned many fans — I know, I ...
Bruce Springsteen: Charles R. Cross: Backstreets and Marc Eliot: Down Thunder Road
Book Review by David Sinclair, Q, September 1992
BACKSTREETS IS THE AMERICAN quarterly fanzine whose editors maintain a painstaking and uncritical log of the life of Bruce Springsteen. First published in November 1989, ...
Who the hell does GARRY BUSHELL think he is?
Interview by Tom Hibbert, Q, September 1992
Here he comes, Mr Lager Top, with his shining nose and monstrous grin and unsupportable beard, talking about "poofs" and "Oi!" and "invalidated Socialism" and ...
Rolling Stone: A Day in the Life
Memoir by Andrew Bailey, Rolling Stone, 15 October 1992
I RAN THE magazine's London office for five years in the early Seventies, contributing stories and acting as editor for a bunch of other writers, ...
Paul McCartney: "It was my role to be a bit more the cheerful chap than the others"
Memoir by Paul Gambaccini, Rolling Stone, 15 October 1992
PAUL McCARTNEY changed my life when I heard 'I Want to Hold Your Hand' for the first time, on WINS in New York in late ...
Madonna: The Madonna Pornucopia
Preview by Richard Harrington, The Washington Post, 21 October 1992
PSSSST! WANNA see some new Madonna product? ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages audio, 1993
Mojo Navigator and Bomp founder Greg Shaw on his early days in psychedelic San Francisco, L.A. Garage Punk, The Doors, Love and Los Angeles rock.
File format: mp3; file size: 86.5mb, interview length: 1h 30' 08" sound quality: ***
The GTOs: Pamela Des Barres (1993)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages audio, 1993
The Girl Together Outrageously looks back with fondness at her time as L.A.'s Queen of the Groupies: the people — Captain Beefheart, Zappa, Gram Parsons, Lowell George, Led Zep; the scenes from the '60s Sunset Strip to Rodney's English Disco, and the transition from free love to corruption and abuse.
File format: mp3 File size: 60.3mb Interview length: 1h 05' 53" seconds Sound quality: ***
Book Review by Andy Gill, Q, April 1993
The ex-wife speaks: David Bowie was an alien, had nothing to do with his own success and was no Cherry Vanilla. ...
Morrissey, Suede: Brett Anderson & Morrissey: Suedegate
Comment by Sheryl Garratt, The Face, May 1993
Does this magazine print deliberate lies? Well actually no, we don't ...
Elvis Presley, Sex Pistols: Greil Marcus: A Surfer on the Zeitgeist
Profile and Interview by Andy Beckett, The Independent, 23 May 1993
This isn't exactly life on the edge: Greil Marcus is married, nearly 50, and lives in a nice big house in northern California. But he ...
Obituary by Brian Case, Melody Maker, 14 August 1993
IT WAS ALWAYS impossible to tell Max Jones, who died this month aged 76, anything about jazz that he didn't already know, or indeed get ...
Nirvana: Winners Get Scars, Too
Book Excerpt by Michael Azerrad, Vox, October 1993
Nirvana's meteoric rise was a classic example of the American Dream in action — until heroin turned it into a nightmare for singer Kurt Cobain. ...
Report by Caroline Sullivan, The Guardian, 29 October 1993
Mojo, a glossy monthly aimed at ageing rockers, is the latest in a long line of minutely targeted music magazines ...
John Lennon, Elvis Presley: Albert Goldman: Double Fantasy?
Obituary by Miles, MOJO, 1994
The late Albert Goldman wrote two vicious character profiles, of Elvis and Lennon, and was crucified for his pains. He claimed their fans simply couldn't ...
Elvis Presley: Elvis: The Goldman Factor
Essay by John Tobler, 'Aspects of Elvis', 1994
ELVIS PRESLEY WAS THE UNKNOWING centre of controversy in his quite short life: only being screened from the waist upwards on TV so that his ...
Lester Bangs: Rock 'n' roll as literature, literature as rock 'n' roll.
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, March 1994
Whither Rock Gomorrah, the great gonzo hack's unpublished swansong? ...
Kurt Cobain, Nirvana: Kurt Cobain: Sound of silence
Comment by Adam Sweeting, The Guardian, 18 April 1994
Adam Sweeting explains how the media didn't react to the significance of Kurt Cobain's death. ...
The Rolling Stones, The Sex Pistols, The Stooges: Nick Kent: Hack From The Brink
Interview by Paul Lester, Melody Maker, 28 May 1994
Wanna find out where MM acquired its taste for livid purple prose? Then let PAUL LESTER introduce you to legendary rock journalist NICK KENT, whose ...
Nick Kent: The Write Stuff: Nick Kent
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Vogue, June 1994
FOR ANY CALLOW, maladjusted youth growing up in the early-to-mid-‘70s with the New Musical Express as his bible, Nick Kent was unquestionably the coolest rock ...
R.E.M.: Rock Criticism and the Rocker: A Conversation With Peter Buck
Book Excerpt by Anthony DeCurtis, Rocking My Life Away, September 1994
IN SEPTEMBER 1994 R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck kindly took time off from promoting R.E.M.'s Monster to do an interview with Anthony DeCurtis, who wanted an ...
Strange New Ways To Kill A Rock Critic
Overview by Paul Gorman, MOJO, September 1994
PREHENSILE Monkey-Tailed Skink? Screeching Weasel? PopDefect? Anus The Menace? Never heard of 'em? You may well yet, because these are the American bands being championed ...
East Coast Lives: The Rockin' Chiropodist
Profile by Michael Gray, LiveWire, October 1994
IT'S IMPOSSIBLE to interview Charles White if you walk alongside him around the streets of his adopted hometown, Scarborough: too many people are greeting him ...
Marianne Faithfull Springs Eternal
Interview by Deborah Frost, BAM, 7 October 1994
"Since AIDS, I've changed my attitude. Now I'm honored. I want to be part of the gay community and I am." ...
Elvis Presley: Love Him Tender, Love Him True
Book Review by Jon Savage, MOJO, December 1994
Peter Guralnick: Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley ...
Memoir by Nick Tosches, The Nick Tosches Reader, 1995
LESTER BANGS, with whom I had drunk but whose writing I had never read, had died not long after Hellfire came out, in the spring ...
Richard Hell: Victor Bockris presents Susan Sontag & Richard Hell, New York City, 1978
Interview by Victor Bockris, The Poetry Project, February 1995
IT WAS THE EVENING of the fifteen-foot snow blizzard and SUSAN SONTAG was due at my Greenwich Village apartment from her 107th Street penthouse at ...
Combustible Edison, Esquivel, Stereolab: Incredibly Strange Music: The Revenge of the Un-Hip
Report and Interview by Simon Reynolds, The New York Times, 5 February 1995
IT'S OFFICIAL: IT'S HIP TO BE square. Collectors are paying top dollar for original albums from such '50s and '60s easy-listening fare as LP's designed ...
Berry Gordy: To Be Loved – The Music, The Magic, The Memories Of Motown (Headline)
Book Review by Jim Irvin, MOJO, March 1995
AT THE get-go, Berry Gordy states that "the misconceptions about me and Motown have become so great I finally had to deal with them." Four ...
Patti Smith: Early Work 1970-1979 (Plexus)
Book Review by Susan Compo, MOJO, March 1995
ROCK'S MOST evocative lines from the 1970s involved religion: "I am an anti-Christ/I am an anarchist". . . "Jesus died for somebody's sins/But not mine." ...
Book Review by Cliff Jones, MOJO, March 1995
IMAGINE BEING able to skip through time and witness historv first-hand. On my own list of happening temporal destinations would be McGoo's Pizza Parlour in ...
Gil Scott-Heron: A Frail Godfather
Profile and Interview by Mark Mordue, Sydney Morning Herald, the, 1 March 1995
GIL SCOTT-HERON greets me genially. He's slightly spidery in his dangled movements, surprisingly slight and aged. At 45 the man oft referred to as The ...
The Coal Porters, Sid Griffin: What a Long, Strange Ryde(r) It's Been: Sid Griffin
Interview by Bill Wasserzieher, The Bob, April 1995
SID GRIFFIN emerges from the underground tube station at Piccadilly Circus, a long coat over his shoulders, collar up against the chill, and coattails adrift ...
Joy Division: Deborah Curtis: Touching From A Distance: Ian Curtis And Joy Division (Faber & Faber)
Review by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, June 1995
AS THE JOURNALIST and pop historian Jon Savage Suggests in his foreword, for one narrowly defined sub-generation, Ian Curtis's suicide was a first personal encounter ...
Joy Division: She’s Got Control
Interview by Len Brown, Q, June 1995
Fifteen years after he hanged himself in their Macclesfield kitchen, Joy Division leader Ian Curtis has been "outed" by his widow, Deborah, as an ill-tempered, ...
Review by Tony Russell, MOJO, July 1995
WHEN BLUES PEOPLE WAS PUBLISHED in 1963, LeRoi Jones became the first black American to have written a book about the blues. It did not ...
Big Star, Alex Chilton, Jim Dickinson: Robert Gordon: It Came From Memphis (Secker & Warburg)
Book Review by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, October 1995
"WE HAD poetic furor," says Memphis scenester Randall Lyon, a key figure in Robert Gordon's new book about the music of his home town. "I ...
Interview by Marc Weingarten, Rolling Stone, 5 October 1995
THE HISTORY of rock & roll has been told many times. Why is your version of the story any different? ...
Joe Carducci's Rock and the Pop Narcotic
Retrospective by Simon Reynolds, Artforum, February 1996
WHEN Rock And The Pop Narcotic was first published in 1990, it incited a fair bit of controversy, startling many by the sheer aggression with ...
The Mean, Mean Month of March: Judith Sims and Les Malloy
Memoir by Ben Fong-Torres, The Gavin Report, 5 April 1996
IT'S BEEN a miserable month. I lost two friends, from two different worlds and generations, yet somehow connected with you and me. ...
Iceberg Slim: Needles and Pimps
Retrospective by Sean O'Hagan, The Observer, 12 May 1996
Sean O'Hagan chills out on Iceberg Slim, king of the ghetto ...
Brian Eno: A Year with Swollen Appendices (Faber & Faber)
Book Review by John L. Walters, The Wire, June 1996
NOTE: This is a "director's cut" version of John's review of Eno's book. ...
The Gospel according to Anthony Heilbut
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, The Independent, 24 June 1996
From Mahalia Jackson to Death in Venice might seem a long journey. But for Anthony Heilbut, the renowned gospel expert and author of a new ...
Waiting For The Sun by Barney Hoskyns (Viking)
Book Review by Richard Cook, The Wire, July 1996
The darkside of LA music ...
Strolling Down Punk-Rock Lane: Legs McNeil
Profile and Interview by Ira Robbins, The New York Times, 7 July 1996
THE CLASS OF 1976 held a reunion in the lobby of the Gershwin Hotel late last month. While inspecting a photography exhibition documenting their youth, ...
Waiting For The Sun: The Story Of The Los Angeles Music Scene by Barney Hoskyns (Viking £20)
Book Review by Sean O'Hagan, The Observer, 21 July 1996
Weird scenes inside the goldmine ...
Ray Coleman: The Man Behind the Maker
Obituary by Chris Charlesworth, Daily Telegraph, September 1996
RAY COLEMAN, who has died from cancer aged 59, played a leading role in the growth of the British music press in the Sixties and ...
Secret Knowledge: Hi Bunny, I'm Home!
Interview by Push, Muzik, September 1996
Kris Needs and Wonder. A boy from Aylesbury and a girl from Ohio. Music from the heart, some hard lessons from the street... and a ...
Profile and Interview by Gavin Martin, Vox, December 1996
THE TWO self-proclaimed Zen masters speed through the lush and leafy lanes of England's green and pleasant land to meet us at the train station. ...
Pamela Des Barres: No Holds Barres
Interview by Carol Clerk, Melody Maker, 19 December 1996
Carol Clerk reports on the latest book from groupie supreme, Pamela Des Barres ...
Bruce Springsteen: Fred Goodman: The Mansion on the Hill (Times Books, $25)
Book Review by Ira Robbins, Rolling Stone, 6 March 1997
BABY, YOU'RE A RICH MAN A new book explores how rock & roll became a $20 billion business ...
Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young: Fred Goodman: The Mansion on the Hill (Times Books)
Book Review by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, April 1997
Deny it all we might, the truth is that music is a business. And its richest players have made billions without ever striking a single ...
Trouser Press: The Story Behind The Legendary Zine
Retrospective by Ira Robbins, Perfect Sound Forever, June 1997
EDITOR’S NOTE: One of the reasons that our zine started up was because there were other music nuts before us who wanted to tell the ...
Obituary by Miles, MOJO, June 1997
ALLEN GINSBERG and I were friends for over 30 years, and even though I am his "official" biographer, it is hard to sum up so ...
The Beatles: Derek Taylor, 1932-1997
Obituary by Chris Welch, The Independent, 9 September 1997
DEREK TAYLOR, the Beatles' press officer, brought calm, authority and a sense of dignity to the chaos of the '60s. As spokesman for the band ...
The Beatles: Derek Taylor: Obituary
Obituary by Richard Williams, MOJO, November 1997
IN 1963, WHEN BRIAN EPSTEIN INVITED HIM TO HANDLE the Beatles' PR, Derek Taylor was a 31-year-old national newspaper reporter with a suit and tie. ...
The NME: Days of Guns and Roses
Memoir by Barbara Ellen, The Observer, 9 November 1997
IF MUSIC BE the food of love then the New Musical Express is, has always been, chips with everything. Part of its unique charm is ...
Obituary by Ted Drozdowski, The Boston Phoenix, 1 December 1997
POPULAR MUSIC has never had a better friend than Robert Palmer, the critic and musician who died l POPULAR MUSIC has never had a better friend ...
Obituary by Michael Gray, The Guardian, 17 December 1997
ROBERT PALMER, THE distinguished American music journalist and blues expert, has died in New York aged 52. ...
Press Officers: Trying to Keep the Customer Satisfied
Report and Interview by Steven Wells, Vox, February 1998
When you're the PRESS officer for a rock group, life's about fending off the scum press, nannying drug-addled lead singers... and punching out the odd ...
The NME Awards: You And NME We're History...
Retrospective by Ian Fortnam, New Musical Express, 7 February 1998
So which future James Bond handed out the awards in 1963 and '68? Who played their last UK show at 1966's do? And who sparked ...
Old, Jilted and Fat: Julie Burchill: I Knew I Was Right
Book Review by Fiona Russell Powell, Punch, 14 February 1998
Julie Burchill is celebrating the publication of her autobiography, but does the book provide a realistic portrait of the venomous and personally troubled columnist? Fiona Russell ...
Book Review by David Stubbs, Uncut, March 1998
THESE TWO volumes comprise anthologies of journalism, contemporary and retrospective, about two great black musicians of the 20th century whose brilliance was not usually matched ...
Interview by Frank Broughton, Rock's Backpages audio, 13 July 1998
Tony Elliott talks about founding Time Out at university as a project in 1968; reading the underground press but not being a dope-smoking hippie; his awareness of both the pop, art and political scenes, and the need to package a variety of information; extending the editorial content, and the people he interviewed; their successes and failures, and missing punk and club culture; political and investigative journalism, and run-ins with the law; increasing lifestyle emphasis after the 1981 strike, and the magazine's philosophy and brand.
File format: mp3; file size: 67.6mb, total interview length: 1h 10' 26" sound quality: ***
Grateful Dead: Ken Kesey: The prank outsider
Interview by Max Bell, The Evening Standard, 12 August 1998
In the Sixties the Beatles stitched him up. But chemically challenged cult novelist Ken Kesey still loves London in the summer. MAX BELL meets the ...
Interview by Max Bell, The Evening Standard, 2 December 1998
The exceptionally named Gay Dad will headline the New Year's NME Brats night. And they're set for even bigger things, says MAX BELL ...
The critical condition: Awop bop aloo bop and so on
Essay by Andy Gill, The Independent, 18 December 1998
The thing about pop music is it's everywhere. It's part of the day to day fabric of the world we live in, whether we like ...
Kinky Friedman: God Bless John Wayne (Faber and Faber)
Review and Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, 1999
Kinky Friedman is full of himself. He always was in his ’70s singing days with provocateur country & western outfit The Texas Jewboys. And now ...
Music Journalists: Why They Have To Write
Report and Interview by uncredited writer, Music Biz, 1999
MOST MUSIC industry professionals will argue that receiving press is more a matter of business than it is a desire to be in the limelight, ...
Rock 100: Um, What Was It We Wanted To Say?
Book Excerpt by David Dalton, Lenny Kaye, Cooper Square (reissue), 1999
Introduction to the Second Edition David Dalton & Lenny Kaye, June 15, Very Late Twentieth Century ...
Adam Gussow: Mr. Satan's Apprentice: A Blues Memoir (Pantheon)
Book Review by Ted Drozdowski, The Boston Phoenix, 25 January 1999
NO, AUTHOR Adam Gussow hasn't sold his soul to Ol' Nick for wealth, fame, and power. Just the opposite, in fact, is the usual blues ...
Interview by Frank Broughton, Rock's Backpages audio, 2 February 1999
The NME's NYC correspondent on the rise of hip hop and its impact on the downtown scene; clubs like the Roxy and the Funhouse; the dancefloor movers: Bambaataa, Arthur Baker, Jellybean Benitez and more.
File format: mp3; file size: 48.8mb, interview length: 53' 19" sound quality: ****
Interview by Bill Brewster, Rock's Backpages audio, 25 May 1999
The late Guardian journalist and sometime Mixmag editor talks about his first awareness of dance music; the role of the DJ and the rise of the superstar DJ; dance music's punk and hippie ideals; the multiple histories of the music and the evolution of rave culture; Fatboy Slim and Prodigy et al. as "the new rock'n'roll"; how dance music liberated men; the true financial value of DJs and the art of DJing, plus female DJs and the inherent sexism of the dance scene.
File format: mp3; file size: 37mb, interview length: 59' 44" sound quality: *** (background noise)
Interview by Bill Brewster, unpublished, 25 May 1999
NOTE: This interview with the former Mixmag editor, murdered in the Amazon in June 2022 with his friend and activist Bruno Pereira, was conducted as ...
Book Review by Jon Savage, MOJO, June 1999
Party like it's 1977. In the depressed 1970s, one musical movement dared to say (mirror)balls to despondency. Don't get down, get down! urges Jon Savage. ...
The Doors, John Lennon, Elvis Presley: What Killed Albert Goldman? A literary X-file
Retrospective by Victor Bockris, Gadfly, July 1999
In the 1980s, Albert Goldman became the most famous and despised biographer in the world because of his biographies of Elvis Presley (Elvis, McGraw Hill, ...
Secret Knowledge: Kris Needs: I Snogged Debbie Harry
Profile and Interview by Dave Simpson, The Guardian, 3 August 1999
If you can't be a rock star, you can always get your kicks by hanging out with them. Kris Needs tells Dave Simpson how it's ...
David Bowie: David Buckley: Strange Fascination – The Definitive David Bowie Story
Book Review by Keith Cameron, The Guardian, 23 September 1999
WHILE MOST BOWIE biographies (notably Alias David Bowie, Peter & Leni Gillman's 1986 exposé of family mental illness and the Bowie "myth") are as welcome ...
Almost Famous: 1973 and all that
Essay by Charles Shaar Murray, The Guardian, 2000
1973 AS A rock and roll annus mirabilis? Six thousand miles away from the old Rolling Stone office in San Francisco, it felt more like ...
Mojo Navigator: Memories of Mojo
Retrospective by Gene Sculatti, Scram, 2000
SAN FRANCISCO, 1966. This was a long time ago. The Grateful Dead swung hard, fast and scary, and Peter Albin's demented LSD-preacher stalked stages as ...
Bill Drummond, The KLF: Bill Drummond: 45
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, The Independent, 2000
"POP MUSIC," writes Bill Drummond, "has become like a cancer that has spread through my whole body and is now affecting my brain." Having been ...
Charles Mingus: Growing Up Absurd
Book Excerpt by Gene Santoro, 'Myself When I Am Real' (Oxford University Press), 2000
THE BABY, barely three months old and pudgy but with bright eyes and an inquiring air, was the center of attention as he fussed on ...
Retrospective by Victor Bockris, Gadfly, January 2000
BEFORE THE New Journalism of Tom Wolfe and Gay Talese, before the absurd cinema of Stanley Kubrick, before the Brave Gonzo World of Hunter S. ...
The KLF: Burning question: The KLF
Report and Interview by Andrew Smith, The Observer, 13 February 2000
Why did Bill Drummond set fire to £1 million? Why did he want to chop off his own hand on stage? And why did the ...
Dave Haslam: Manchester, England – The Story of the Pop Cult City (Fourth Estate)
Book Review by Andy Beckett, London Review of Books, 17 February 2000
ON TIB STREET in the centre of Manchester, in the part of the city keen to promote itself as the Northern Quarter, a new delicatessen ...
Lester Bangs, Warren Zevon: What ever happened to rock critic Paul Nelson? An Interview
Interview by Steven Ward, rockcritics.com, March 2000
ROCK WRITING WAS not the first choice of Paul Nelson. A pioneer of rock criticism, and one of its most talented practitioners, Nelson (who cites ...
Lester Bangs: Did Lester Bangs Die In Vain?
Book Review by Ira Robbins, salon.com, 4 April 2000
Let It Blurt: The Life and Times of Lester Bangs, America's Greatest Rock Critic By Jim DeRogatis, Broadway, 256 Pages ...
Laurie Anderson: Epiphanies: Laurie Anderson
Interview by Rob Young, The Wire, May 2000
Laurie Anderson tells Rob Young how a great white whale lured her towards her latest revelations ...
Book Review by Ian Penman, The Wire, May 2000
HIP HOP NEEDS its users' manuals. How many of the millions who bought their in-vogue Fugees CD, say, could untangle the dialectic that daisychains together ...
Richard Meltzer: A Whore Just Like The Rest (Da Capo)
Book Review by Edwin Pouncey, The Wire, May 2000
"I'M FAT, I drink too much. I feel grey, I feel old, I am old. This could be my last book," is how writer, critic, ...
The not-so-hip J.D. Considine: A music critic who writes about music
Interview by Steven Ward, rockcritics.com, May 2000
J.D. CONSIDINE has been writing about popular music since 1977. During his more than 22-year career in rock criticism, he has polarized as many of ...
Marc Spitz: I Wanna Be Adored/Eric Winick: Lay Me Down
Review by Eric Weisbard, The Village Voice, 10 May 2000
NO ONE ROCKS harder in rock and roll theatre than the hangers-on. Rocks, that is, the category of knowingness, like a playwright. Gets corrosive in ...
David Toop: Jeff Noon & David Toop: Needle In The Groove (Sulphur)
Review by Ian Penman, The Wire, June 2000
AT A CERTAIN point in my journey through Jeff Noon and David Toop's shapeshifter alliance — an ingeniously treated setting of Noon's latest novel — ...
Interview by Steven Ward, rockcritics.com, July 2000
IF CHUCK EDDY is heavy metal's bastard child, Martin Popoff is its favourite son. Popoff, 37, has been writing about metal for more than a ...
Lester Bangs: Rock 'n' Roll was the Big Bang
Retrospective by David Dalton, Gadfly, July 2000
FOR A LONG time, its shockwaves obliterated thought altogether. That was the great thing about it: it was anti-matter, it vaporized everything that wasn’t immediate, ...
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) ...
Caroline Coon: Still fighting the bad guys
Profile and Interview by Barbara Ellen, The Observer, 30 July 2000
In the '60s, Caroline Coon was famous for helping people caught in drugs busts. In the '90s she defended her right to paint penises. Now, ...
Sniffin' Glue: The Essential Punk Accessory
Retrospective and Interview by Jon Savage, MOJO, August 2000
WHEN THE FIRST Ramones album appeared in London, during the spring of 1976, it changed everything: not only the tempo and the look of rock, ...
Interview by Jason Gross, Perfect Sound Forever, August 2000
AS ONE OF the first people who decided that rock and roll was something that could and should be something that could be seriously written ...
Interview by Steven Ward, rockcritics.com, August 2000
STANLEY BOOTH IS one hell of a writer. The evidence is clear once you pick up his book on the world's greatest rock ‘n' roll ...
Comment by Colin Harper, The Irish Times, 1 September 2000
CURRENTLY HOT on the heels of Miles Davis, Jimi Hendrix and Johnny Cash as an individualist icon of 20th Century music – name-dropped as an ...
Book Review by Barbara Ellen, The Observer, 3 September 2000
THE WOMAN THE world remembers as kohl-eyed, bouffant-haired, nightingale-voiced Dusty Springfield was actually born Mary Isabel Catherine Bernadette O'Brien in 1939. ...
Allman Brothers Band: Crowe's Nest: Film Festival becomes Almost Famous for its 25th anniversary
Interview by Noe Gold, The Hollywood Reporter, 12 September 2000
Director Cameron Crowe presented his poetically autobiographical Almost Famous to the Toronto International Film Festival at a world premiere gala screening in the Roy Thomson ...
Craig Werner: A Change Is Gonna Come – Music, Race & the Soul Of America
Book Review by Gavin Martin, Uncut, October 2000
Potent history of black American music, from Gospel-fuelled Civil Rights-era freedom marches, through Motown, Monterey, The Million Man March and much, much more. ...
Part-Time Writer: Tom Smucker Keeps Us Hangin' By the Telephone
Interview by Steven Ward, rockcritics.com, October 2000
TOM SMUCKER writes about music when he wants to. I wish he would "want to" more than he does. ...
Special Feature by David Dalton, Gadfly, 12 October 2000
INTERIOR DAY: A SMALL CUBICLE AT THE OBSOLETE ROCK 'N' ROLL WRITERS' RESIDENCY ...
Anthony DeCurtis: Populist at Large
Interview by Steven Ward, rockcritics.com, November 2000
ANTHONY DECURTIS never liked the rock writing of Lester Bangs. He never read Creem. After 20 years, DeCurtis still writes for Rolling Stone and still loves and defends ...
Greil Marcus: Top Spin Service!!
Profile and Interview by Charlie Gillett, Rock's Backpages, 17 November 2000
Charlie Gillett, broadcaster and author of The Sound of the City, regularly invites guests to play radio "ping-pong" on his Saturday night show on London ...
David Cavanagh: The Creation Records Story – My Magpie Eyes Are Hungry for the Prize (Virgin)
Book Review by Stevie Chick, The Guardian, 25 November 2000
WHEN NEWS OF the closure of Creation Records broke on November 26 1999, one person at least must have been grateful. David Cavanagh now had ...
He Got a TV Eye on You: The Ken Tucker Interview
Interview by Steven Ward, rockcritics.com, December 2000
ONE DAY, BACK in 1974, a Lower East Side resident named Ken Tucker wrote Village Voice music editor Robert Christgau an angry letter because the Voice wasn't covering the ...
Melody Maker, 1926 - 2000, RIP
Obituary by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, 15 December 2000
An era came to an end on 14th December when IPC Magazines announced the closure of its oldest music title, Melody Maker. ...
Book Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Revolver, Spring 2000
WHO WAS Lester Bangs? He was a rock critic. To be more precise, he was a rock critic like Muhammad Ali was a boxer or ...
Book Excerpt by Paul Gorman, Sanctuary Press, 2001
Paul Gorman's In Their Own Write: Adventures in the Music Press (Sanctuary Press) was an oral history of rock journalism in Britain and America – ...
Book Excerpt by Phil Hardy, Dave Laing, Faber Companion to 20th Century Popular Music, 2001
b. 13 September 1914, London, England, d. 22 September 1994, New York, USA ...
Book Review by John L. Walters, The Times Literary Supplement, 2001
"IF YOU'VE NEVER read Paul Williams but love Brian Wilson's music, you're in for a revelation", promises David Leaf in the introduction to this amiable ...
Nikki Giovanni: Whaddya Mean You've Never Heard Of… Nikki Giovanni?
Retrospective by James Maycock, MOJO, 2001
IN THE CRAZY, HEADY DAYS of the Black Power era, Nikki Giovanni was one of the few female voices to offset the rampant machismo of ...
David McGee: He will never be the editor of a rock magazine again
Interview by Steven Ward, rockcritics.com, January 2001
IF ANYONE EVER writes a history on rock criticism and music writing, the names of Stanley Booth, Peter Guralnick and Nick Tosches will surely lead ...
Alternative TV: The iJamming! Chat: Mark Perry
Interview by Tony Fletcher, iJamming.net, January 2001
AS THE FIRST sentence of my mission statement makes clear, Mark Perry was a major factor in my deciding to write about music – though, ...
Report by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, 26 January 2001
Anticipating the February 9 UK release of Cameron Crowe’s film Almost Famous, about a callow young scribe hitting the road with a mid-’70s rock band, ...
On the Guest List: Almost Famous
Review by Ed Doheny, Rock's Backpages, February 2001
Ed Doheny on Cameron Crowe’s almost-good Almost Famous – the first movie with a rock journalist for a hero. ...
The Rev. Charles M. Young calms down, grows up, and sings the joys of middle-age
Interview by Steven Ward, rockcritics.com, February 2001
BACK IN THE mid and late '70s, Charles M. Young – known then as The Rev. Charles M. Young – roamed the halls of Rolling Stone magazine ...
So, what do Q know? RBP’s 50 favourite music books
Guide by Mat Snow, Rock's Backpages, 25 February 2001
"Genius!" trumpets the cover of this month’s Q magazine: "The 50 Best Music Books Ever Written." Naturally, we wuz hooked and forked over our three ...
A Rousing Interview of Self-affirmation with John Mendelssohn, King of L.A.
Interview by Steven Ward, rockcritics.com, March 2001
ALTHOUGH NO one has written a biography about him, portrayed him in a movie, or released a collection of his rock writing, John Mendelssohn's name ...
In His Own Right: Ian MacDonald
Interview by Paul Gorman, unpublished, March 2001
I INTERVIEWED Ian MacDonald for my music press history In Their Own Write in March 2001. As charming, tolerant and insightful as the first-class prose ...
Richard Riegel: From Jester to Lester
Interview by Steven Ward, rockcritics.com, March 2001
THERE WAS A TIME when Richard Riegel worried about his idolization of a friend. Worshipping a friend, co-worker and colleague doesn't really sound too healthy, ...
Report by Bud Scoppa, Rock's Backpages, 1 March 2001
"I Was Robbed," A Loser Whines, Then Delivers An Acceptance Speech That Never Was ...
LeAnn Rimes, Shaggy: Lure of Mr Lover Lover
Review by Lisa Verrico, The Times, 30 March 2001
Shaggy's breathless tales of sexual conquest will beguile pop fans who enjoy the simpler pleasures, says Lisa Verrico. ...
Gina Arnold in the Present Tense
Interview by Steven Ward, rockcritics.com, April 2001
LOVE HER OR hate her, rock critic Gina Arnold writes from her own point of view. For Arnold, when writing about music, objectivity is thrown ...
Bob Dylan: Howard Sounes: Down the Highway – The Life of Bob Dylan
Book Review by Peter Stone Brown, Gadfly, April 2001
BOB DYLAN HAS been the subject of innumerable books. In this (the fifth) full-scale biography, British reporter Howard Sounes tracked down people previously unknown and ...
Review and Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, April 2001
IAN MACDONALD, now 52, was enraptured by The Beatles as a teenager, then generally disappointed by pop music from 1980 onwards. His attempt "to bring ...
Obituary by Andy Schwartz, The Village Voice, 7 April 2001
Alan Betrock was the passionate fanatic who founded the groundbreaking New York Rocker. Andy Schwartz, who succeeded him as the magazine’s publisher and editor, here ...
Caught With His Trousers Down: The Ira Robbins Interview
Interview by Steven Ward, rockcritics.com, May 2001
IF ANYONE OUT there has a million dollars and wants to start a music magazine, please let Ira Robbins know about it. ...
El David: Saint Dalton Shoots His Mouth Off
Interview by Steven Ward, rockcritics.com, May 2001
DAVID DALTON WAS a founding editor of Rolling Stone magazine. In between 1968 and 1971, Dalton penned Rolling Stone cover stories on Little Richard, James Brown and Elvis Presley. ...
Book Review by Peter Stone Brown, Gadfly, 28 May 2001
A SIMPLE TWIST of Fate might have been a more appropriate title for this book, which is essentially a biography of Richard Fariña in disguise. ...
glenn mcdonald's War Against Rock Criticism
Interview by Steven Ward, rockcritics.com, June 2001
glenn mcdonald [all lower case – RBP Ed.] is one of the most important rock critics working in the field today, though maybe "working" is ...
Bob Dylan: Howard Sounes: Down The Highway – The Life of Bob Dylan
Book Review by Charles Shaar Murray, MOJO, June 2001
How pleasant to know Mr Dylan, who has written such oodles of stuff — or is it? ...
Ice-T: Iceberg Slim: The Best-Selling Pimp Remembered By His Widow
Retrospective and Interview by James Maycock, Pride, June 2001
"YOU SEE, pimping's big business," growled an experienced pimp to Goldie, his aspiring protégé in the classic 1970's film, The Mack. Concluding his informal lecture, the ...
Chuck Klosterman: Fargo Rock City – A Heavy Metal Odyssey in Rural Nörth Daköta
Book Review by Eric Weisbard, The New York Times Book Review, 3 June 2001
SPANDEX MAKES the heart grow fonder. When I was an editor at Spin magazine a few years ago, the article most people gushed over was ...
Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger: Irwin Silber of Sing Out!
Interview by Richie Unterberger, Perfect Sound Forever, July 2001
IN THE mid-1960's Irwin Silber was editor of Sing Out! magazine, the leading folk periodical in the United States. Here he talks about his personal ...
The Grey Lady's Pop Music Man: Jon Pareles in Conversation
Interview by Steven Ward, rockcritics.com, July 2001
WHENEVER I INTERVIEW rock writers for this site, I always ask them to name their favourite music critics — writers that make them want to ...
Laurie Anderson: Invisible Jukebox: Laurie Anderson
Interview by Mike Barnes, The Wire, August 2001
MOST PEOPLE first heard about Laurie Anderson when her 1980 single, 'O Superman', an eight minute voiceloop and vocoder incantation, reached number two in the ...
Man On the Moon: An Interview With Tom Moon
Interview by Steven Ward, rockcritics.com, August 2001
FORMER PROFESSIONAL musician Tom Moon, currently the pop music critic at the Philadelphia Inquirer, started his career in rock journalism because he was anxious to hear ...
Memoir by Charles Shaar Murray, The Guardian, 2 August 2001
It's 30 years since Oz was prosecuted in an infamous obscenity trial. The underground magazine had been guest-edited by a bunch of teenagers – and ...
Book Review by Eric Weisbard, The New York Times, 12 August 2001
WHEN JOEY Ramone died this past April, the flood of appreciations must have surprised casual music fans. The Ramones, quintessential 1970's punks, had never sold ...
The New Rolling Stone is... The New Yorker?!
Report by Michael Goldberg, Neumu, 25 August 2001
Who would expect to find this year's best offline writing about music in The New Yorker? ...
Review by Edwin Pouncey, The Wire, September 2001
ENDGAME ARE a trio from Leicester, featuring brothers Alan and Steven Freeman, with musician, engineer and designer Jim Tetlow. ...
Flaubert On the Off Days: Interview with Fred Schruers
Interview by Steven Ward, rockcritics.com, September 2001
FROM AN EARLY stint at Circus, through a tenure at Rolling Stone magazine that spanned from the late '70s to the early '90s, then to Entertainment Weekly and Premiere in the '90s ...
Interview by Edwin Pouncey, The Wire, September 2001
"KIRBY'S FOURTH WORLD period was sort of like when Miles went electric," enthuses jazz percussionist Gregg Bendian about the inspirational force behind his improvised tribute ...
Lester Bangs: Loud Bangs and Bestial Noises
Essay by Mark Sinker, The Wire, September 2001
In the 20 years since Lester Bangs wrote his 'Reasonable Guide to Horrible Noise', the multi-mediated world has largely assimilated the hostile sounds he espoused. ...
Some Smiles With Miles: Milo Miles in Conversation
Interview by Steven Ward, rockcritics.com, September 2001
IF YOU HAVE read rock criticism consistently during the last two decades, odds are, you have a read a piece by Milo Miles. Or maybe ...
Lester Bangs: Cum on Read The Noise: An Interview with former Creem writer Robert Duncan
Interview by Steven Ward, rockcritics.com, October 2001
ROCK CRITIC Robert Duncan, a second generation Creem writer — he joined the magazine in the mid-'70s — is also the author of The Noise: Notes From a ...
Cornel West: Go See The Doctor: Cornel West's Sketches of My Culture
Review by RJ Smith, The Village Voice, 16 October 2001
CORNEL WEST'S Sketches of My Culture is probably the first hip-hop record by a Harvard professor. I demand that academia reciprocate and immediately put Ol' Dirty Bastard ...
Lester Bangs: Remembering Lester
Book Excerpt by Paul Gorman, In Their Own Write: Adventures in the Music Press, November 2001
"Everybody's a rock critic." – Lester Bangs ...
Yank Rachell: Richard Congress: The Blues Mandolin Man – The Life And Music of Yank Rachell
Book Review by Neil Slaven, Blues & Rhythm, November 2001
PREVIOUS (AUTO)BIOGRAPHIES of Honeyboy Edwards and Henry Townsend have established the format followed by this one and like the editors of the above works, Richard ...
Rock's Backpages: Blasts from the past
Report and Interview by Andy Farquarson, The Guardian, 1 November 2001
Your ancient copies of NME can go. Andy Farquarson reports on an online library of music journalism. ...
Comment by Michael Goldberg, Neumu, 17 November 2001
Four decades on, rock criticism is still (though barely) alive ...
The Deviants, Mick Farren: Mick Farren on the Deviants, Fantasy Fiction and Blowing Things Up
Profile and Interview by Erik Himmelsbach, L.A. Weekly, 23 November 2001
PUBLISHING MOGUL Felix Dennis was staring at the Caribbean Sea a few months ago, sucking down cocktails with fellow gazillionaires at Basil's Bar on the ...
Memoir by Chris Charlesworth, Rock's Backpages, December 2001
It is a year since IPC shut down Melody Maker, the oldest of all popular music magazines. In this affectionate memoir, former MM staffer and ...
Paul Gorman: In Their Own Write: Adventures In The Music Press
Book Review by Ian MacDonald, Uncut, December 2001
Perceptive, hysterical history of rock journalism — from the horses' mouths ...
The Rolling Stones: Stephen Davis' Old Gods Almost Dead
Interview by David Dalton, Gadfly, December 2001
David Dalton Talks to Stephen Davis, Author of the First Full-Dress Biography of the Rolling Stones in Twenty Years ...
Mick Farren: Devout Deviant Takes A Trip Down Memory Lane
Book Review by Charles Shaar Murray, The Independent, 7 December 2001
Mick Farren: Give the Anarchist a Cigarette ...
Let's talk about me: Paul Gorman's In Their Own Write
Book Review by Adam Sweeting, The Guardian, 8 December 2001
The music industry is full of pompous bores – and that's just the writers. ...
Rock's Backpages: The Memory Bank
Report and Interview by Edward Helmore, MOJO, Fall 2001
Websites: Rock journalism now has its own archive. Edward Helmore thinks that's a good idea. ...
Book Review by Tim Footman, Tangents, 2002
THERE'S MORE THAN one way to string a Strat, and there are several ways to tell the story of a band. The most obvious is ...
Robert Milliken: Lillian Roxon, Mother Of Rock
Book Review by Clinton Walker, Sydney Morning Herald, the, 2002
ROCK JOURNALISM is, of course, the lowest of the low. Trust me, I know. It has recently enjoyed improved profile with films like High Fidelty ...
Essay by Kandia Crazy Horse, Rock's Backpages, January 2002
"What matters most is how well you walk through the fire." - Charles Bukowski ...
Being My Almost Absolutely True Adventures with Stanley Booth
Essay by David Dalton, Rock's Backpages, January 2002
The South, sir, is no more than the Creation viewed by a crocodile.– Rev. Sydney Smith I ADMIT I don't know what ...
Interview by Steven Ward, Scott Woods, rockcritics.com, January 2002
THIS SITE TIPS its hat all over the place to people who write about pop music, but perhaps not enough has been said about the ...
The Rolling Stones: If You Want To Know Anything, Ask Stanley: A Memoir
Memoir by Tina McElroy Ansa, David Sandison, Chris Wohlwend, Rock's Backpages, January 2002
David Sandison handled PR for the Rolling Stones when Stanley Booth went on the road with them in 1969. ...
Losin' His Mind in Detroit Rock City: Gary Graff
Interview by Steven Ward, rockcritics.com, January 2002
GARY GRAFF FIRST earned his reputation in the mid-'80s as the in-house music critic for the Detroit Free Press, a stint that terminated a decade ...
The Rolling Stones: Rolling Away the Stones: Stanley and I
Essay by Michael Lydon, Rock's Backpages, January 2002
Michael Lydon was the other reporter on the infamous Rolling Stones' 1969 tour of America. This is his recollection of meeting Stanley Booth, and the ...
The Last of the Voodoos: A Rock & Roll Retrospective
Essay by Kandia Crazy Horse, Black Renaissance/Renaissance Noire, January 2002
This essay was originally published in NYU Africanist Manthia Diawara’s Black Renaissance/Renaissance Noire [Vol.3, No.2, Spring 2001]. Since the very weird period when I wrote ...
Mary Chapin Carpenter/Anne Lamott: Royce Hall, UCLA
Live Review by Marc Weingarten, Los Angeles Times, 28 January 2002
THE PAIRING OF author and singer-songwriter Mary Chapin Carpenter at UCLA's Royce Hall on Saturday could have gone any number of ways. ...
From Hard Rock to Rock of Ages: Former Hit Parader Writer, Father Charley Crespo
Interview by Steven Ward, rockcritics.com, February 2002
BACK IN THE '70s and '80s, Charley Crespo frequented the rock clubs of New York and New Jersey gathering info for his fan-obsessed dispatches for ...
Chuck E… So Addictive: Voice Music Editor in His Second rockcritics.com Interview
Interview by Steven Ward, rockcritics.com, March 2002
ROCK CRITIC Chuck Eddy. Love or hate? Let us count the ways… ...
Report by David Quantick, Rock's Backpages, 9 March 2002
THERE ARE many differences between Britain and America – they like Hootie and the Blowfish, for example, and we like Chas and Dave; their milk ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Mark Pringle, Rock's Backpages audio, 13 March 2002
High Fidelity author Hornby picks his Top Ten tracks, from Bruce Springsteen's 'Thunder Road' to Steve Earle's 'Telephone Road'.
File format: mp3; file size: 54.9mb, interview length: 59' 59" sound quality: ***
Obituary by Chris Welch, The Independent, 22 March 2002
Roy Hollingworth, journalist, singer, guitarist and composer: born Derby 12 April 1949; married 1999 Anthea Yeomans; died Kingston upon Thames, Surrey 9 March 2002. ...
Obituary by Richard Williams, The Guardian, 22 March 2002
Colourful critic who embarked on a mission to become a rock star. ...
About a Bloke: The 10 Tracks Nick Hornby Couldn't Live Without
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Mark Pringle, Rock's Backpages, 29 March 2002
WELCOME TO a new if occasional treat: AURAL SURVIVAL, a sit-down with a much-loved CELEBRITY FAN in order to ascertain the 10 recorded performances he ...
Book Review by Miles Marshall Lewis, The Village Voice, 2 April 2002
Generation Hiphop's Aesthetics ...
Give Up The Day Job!: Scribes turned Stars, Poachers Turned Gamekeepers!
Guide by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, 12 April 2002
This week, a propos of nothing in particular – the new Pet Shop Boys album, perhaps? – we consider the careers of the many ...
Lester Bangs: Pills And Thrills
Retrospective by Nick Kent, The Guardian, 12 April 2002
ALTHOUGH HIS NAME is already starting to be listed among the ranks of the elite late 20th-century literary trailblazers, Lester Bangs – the fragile-hearted, drunken ...
Comment by Michael Goldberg, Neumu, 12 April 2002
Why do writers pursue this often-thankless "profession"? ...
And So It Began: Remembering the First Issue of Crawdaddy!
Book Excerpt by Paul Williams, 'The Crawdaddy! Book' (Hal Leonard), May 2002
THE FIRST ISSUE of the first American rock music magazine was printed on Sunday, January 30, 1966, in a basement in Brooklyn, New York, on ...
Interview by Jason Gross, Perfect Sound Forever, May 2002
Depending on how you see music journalism, Simon Frith is either a sinner or a saint. After the late '60's, rock criticism began to show ...
Warren Zevon: A Literary Answer to Lyricist's Block
Report and Interview by Marc Weingarten, Los Angeles Times, 16 May 2002
Musician/bookworm Warren Zevon recruits famous authors for lyrics on a new album. ...
Neil Young: Bio Warfare: Why did Neil Young try to squelch Shakey?
Comment by Marc Weingarten, salon.com, 24 May 2002
SHAKEY, A 786-PAGE biography of Neil Young that's just been published, almost wasn't. For that reason, it serves as an apt metaphor for the way ...
Rolling Stone's Nathan Brackett Snubs Breakfast Reviews, Predicts Klezmer Kraze
Interview by Jason Gross, rockcritics.com, June 2002
Perfect Sound Forever founder/editor Jason Gross interviews Rolling Stone's reviews editor. ...
Blue Öyster Cult: Rock Criticism as Brain Surgery: Deborah Frost Looks Back
Interview by Steven Ward, rockcritics.com, June 2002
MUSICIAN/SONGWRITER Deborah Frost took a little break in the early '70s from a gig with an all-girl band that lasted until the early '90s. ...
Chet Baker: James Gavin: Deep in a Dream – The Long Night of Chet Baker
Book Review by Gene Santoro, The Nation, 27 June 2002
IT'S EASY TO rephrase Tolstoy's opening to Anna Karenina so it describes junkies, who all share an essential plot line: Who and how to hustle ...
Muddy Waters: Robert Gordon: Can't Be Satisfied: The Life and Times of Muddy Waters (Jonathan Cape)
Book Review by Sean O'Hagan, The Observer, July 2002
The ONE-ROOM shack where Muddy Waters grew up originally stood on the edge of Stovall's plantation in Coahoma County in the Mississippi Delta. A few ...
Obituary by Chris Charlesworth, The Guardian, July 2002
IN HIS POLKA-DOT bow tie, cream chinos and white buckskin shoes, Timothy White, who has died aged 50, cut a stylish figure in a profession ...
Book Review by Will Hermes, The New York Times, 25 August 2002
Do Not Speak Ill of the Dead ...
Out of His Pen: The Words of Richard Williams
Interview by Simon Warner, rockcritics.com, September 2002
IN U.S. CULTURE, the rock critic is valued, even venerated. From Lester Bangs to Dave Marsh, from Ben Fong-Torres to Greil Marcus, the voices that ...
Ginsberg's Flannel And Other Stories
Book Review by Ian Penman, The Guardian, 12 October 2002
In the Sixties, Barry Miles, 322pp, Jonathan Cape, £17.99 ...
John Coltrane: Ashley Kahn: A Love Supreme – The creation of John Coltrane's classic album
Book Review by Nick Coleman, The Independent, 23 October 2002
Hot sax and religion in New Jersey ...
Memoir by Richard Cook, The Wire, November 2002
Well, there are worse ways of making a living. Richard Cook tells how a compulsive jones for collecting records — only partly sated by music ...
Profile and Interview by Bill DeMain, MOJO, November 2002
Ken Nordine is the laird of language, the maestro of the monologue, the wizard of word jazz. Bill DeMain lends an ear. ...
Book Review by Simon Warner, Rock's Backpages, November 2002
Simon Warner peruses a fresh academic take on rock journalism ...
Mogwai, Primal Scream, The Shop Assistants, The Wedding Present: 96 Tears
Retrospective by Tim Footman, Tangents, December 2002
I FELT A RUSH of nostalgically bad haircuts and Proustian army surplus anoraks while reading Alistair [Flitchett]'s consideration of C86. Nostalgia also for the days ...
Essay by Simon Warner, Rock's Backpages, December 2002
Simon Warner on Dazed & Confused at 10 – and The Wire at 20! ...
Nirvana: Kurt’s Chronicler: A Chat With Charles R. Cross
Interview by Alvaro Costa, Rock's Backpages, December 2002
Alvaro Costa checks in with the author of the acclaimed Heavier Than Heaven. ...
Publish and be Damned: The Decline and Fall of the UK Music Press
Overview by Paul Gorman, slantmagazine.com, Summer 2002
WHAT’S UP WITH the music press? The once proud sector of the British media, created from the unholy union of the 60s underground and the ...
Obituary by Richard Williams, The Guardian, 13 January 2003
Richard Williams mourns "probably the first woman to write about pop music as though it really mattered". Below, some examples of what made Valentine such ...
The Beatles: Fandom of the pop era
Retrospective by Bob Stanley, The Times, 14 January 2003
As we bid farewell to Beatles Monthly, our writer discusses how fanzines come and go - but they have always been vital to the music. ...
Review by Simon Warner, Rock's Backpages, February 2003
"WHAT WOULD entice social misfits from provincial hellholes like, say, Northampton, Wigan and Exmouth to join the world of sex, drugs, travel and free records ...
Book Review by Gene Santoro, The New York Times Book Review, 16 February 2003
THE ''GOSPEL HIGHWAY,'' the church-based circuit toured by black preachers and religious entertainers, was paved largely by segregation, but it also meant to bypass the ...
Book Review by Robert Sandall, The Sunday Times, 23 February 2003
WE SEEM TO BE in for a heavily-annotated favourites list, rather like the ones that the narrator in Hornby's novel High Fidelity fills his life ...
Overview by Simon Warner, Rock's Backpages, March 2003
Why new music titles keep coming despite uncertain times. ...
Jimi Hendrix: Paul Williams On Jimi Hendrix
Interview by Mike Mettler, UniVibes, April 2003
WHO'S YOUR Daddy? Think Rolling Stone magazine invented rock criticism? Think again. ...
Hail, Hail, Rock'n'Roll Writing!
Comment by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, 9 May 2003
This month, Bloomsbury – the home of rockin' Harry Potter – publishes The Sound & the Fury: A Rock's Backpages Reader, a selection of seminal ...
George Wein: Myself Among Others – A Life in Music
Book Review by Gene Santoro, The Nation, 26 June 2003
NOT MANY PEOPLE can say they changed the world and make it stick. In Myself Among Others: A Life in Music, George Wein does. Without ...
Jimi Hendrix: Midnight Lightning: Jimi Hendrix and the Black Experience by Greg Tate (Lawrence Hill)
Book Review by Charles Shaar Murray, MOJO, July 2003
Erudite, eclectic and pungently demotic polemic on Hendrix's centrality in the 20th century African-American cultural pantheon. ...
Ian MacDonald: The People's Music - Selected Journalism (Pimlico)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, The Observer, July 2003
BROADLY SPEAKING there are three kinds of British rock writers: boring ones, brash ones, and genuinely bright ones. Somehow it's typical of our anti-intellectual culture ...
Phil Spector, Radiohead: Steven Wells On Rock Snobs
Column by Steven Wells, playlouder.com, 2 August 2003
The The Stages Of Pop-Man ...
Lester Bangs: My Black Pages: Lester Bangs' Mainlines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste
Book Review by Don Waller, LA CityBeat, 21 August 2003
BACK FROM THE dead and bigger than ever! As a writer – hell, more importantly, as a reader – the Editorial We wuz turnin' cataleptic ...
Obituary by Richard Williams, The Guardian, 8 September 2003
PROBABLY NO other critic – not even the late William Mann of The Times, with his famous mention of pandiatonic clusters – contributed more to ...
Lester Bangs: Joy And Rage Of A Dishevelled Rock Critic
Book Review by Charles Shaar Murray, The Independent, 23 September 2003
Mainlines, Blood Feasts And Bad Taste: A Lester Bangs Reader Lester Bangs; ed. John Morthland (Serpent's Tail; £9.99) ...
Revelations In The Head: Ian MacDonald 1948-2003
Obituary by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, 24 September 2003
THE NEWS THAT Ian MacDonald has taken his own life comes as a terrible shock, both to the colleagues who knew him and to the ...
Retrospective and Interview by Angus Batey, The Times, 23 October 2003
For more than 20 years, hip-hop culture has shaped the face of popular music, fashion, even political debate. And for the past decade, Vibe magazine ...
Gathering Moss: The Fossilisation of Rolling Stone
Comment by Tim Footman, Rock's Backpages, November 2003
BILLY JOEL? Billy fucking Joel??? ...
The Fanzine Editor: Publish And Be Damned
Memoir by Tom Cox, Observer Music Monthly, November 2003
Tom Cox channelled his teenage aggression into sport — until he learnt to be just as competitive about obscure post-grunge US indie bands. Here he ...
Morrissey: Mark Simpson: Saint Morrissey
Book Review by Simon Price, Independent on Sunday, 16 November 2003
Former World's Biggest Smiths Fan Simon Price checks his credentials against a passionately provocative analysis of Morrissey's art. ...
Book Review by Robert Sandall, The Sunday Times, 16 November 2003
AROUND THE TIME he won his scholarship to Newcastle grammar school, Sting – or Gordon Sumner as he was then known – witnessed his mother ...
Devo: Jade Dellinger & David Giffels: Are We Not Men? We Are Devo!
Book Review by Edwin Pouncey, The Wire, December 2003
DEPENDING ON which side of the critical fence you were standing at the time, '70s art rock group Devo from Akron, Ohio were either "the ...
Profile and Interview by William Shaw, The Word, December 2003
A thin evolutionary strand connects the forgotten sounds of the psychedelic North and a meticulous chronicle of megalithic Europe. It's Julian Cope, a man whose ...
Book Review by Mark Rozzo, Los Angeles Review of Books, 21 December 2003
ONE DAY ABOUT 40 years ago, the Rolling Stones found themselves ogling the Beatles' tour van, regally parked outside Royal Albert Hall. "It was covered ...
Retrospective by Chris Charlesworth, Rock's Backpages, 2004
A WHIFF OF hedonism lingered amid the dense fog of cigarette smoke inside the top floor suite of Detroit's luxurious Ponchartrain hotel. David Bowie sighed, ...
Book Excerpt by Paul Wellings, 'I'm a Journalist...Get Me Out of Here!', 2004
I BLUFFED my way into journalism and am still bluffing in the PR world. If the truth were told, most journalists are bluffers to some ...
Robert Plant: The Secret Life Of Plant
Interview by Geoff Barton, Classic Rock, January 2004
It's 1982, and Robert Plant is worried. He's just released his first solo album Pictures At Eleven, and he's expecting a critical slating. Led-free reflections ...
Retrospective by Danny Baker, The Word, February 2004
"The Seventies' attitudes, cultures and repercussions are almost too incredible for a modern youth to imagine" By Danny Baker ...
John Holmstrom: Floating in a bottle of formaldehyde
Interview by Jeffrey Morgan, Detroit Metro Times, 4 February 2004
EVER SINCE R. F. Outcault's irreverent creation, The Yellow Kid, first appeared as an incidental character in Joseph Pulitzer's New York World on Feb. 16, ...
Nik Cohn and Guy Peellaert: Rock Dreams (Taschen)
Book Review by Charles Shaar Murray, The Observer, 22 February 2004
Charles Shaar Murray sees the Rolling Stones lose their minds – as well as their trousers – in a classic work of the imagination. ...
Walter Yetnikoff with David Ritz: Howling at the Moon (Little, Brown)
Book Review by Robert Sandall, The Sunday Times, 22 February 2004
DURING WALTER Yetnikoff's reign as president of CBS Records (later Sony Music), the music industry generated unprecedented profits, and commensurately large corporate egos. ...
The Beatles, Danger Mouse: More Than Words: Musings on Music Journalism — Life Goes On
Comment by Devon Powers, PopMatters, 10 March 2004
FEBRUARY 24 WAS a banner day for the Copy Left, a loose network of computer activists, intellectuals, forward-thinking musicians and zealous fans who continue to ...
Retrospective and Interview by Kathryn Flett, The Observer, 28 March 2004
The Observer's TV critic, Kathryn Flett, was among the first readers of The Face, and later became its features and fashion editor. Here she mourns ...
Book Review by David Stubbs, Jockey Slut, May 2004
THIS IS A revised edition of a volume first published almost a decade ago. ...
Hugh Masekela and D. Michael Cheers: Still Grazing – The Musical Journey of Hugh Masekela
Book Review by Eric Weisbard, The New York Times Book Review, 13 June 2004
IN THE MID-1950s, as Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley and all the rest were leading a rock 'n' roll revolution across America, Hugh Masekela found himself ...
Report and Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Los Angeles Times, 13 June 2004
"IT'S OUR job to serve the lives of music fans," enthuses Conor McNicholas, editor of the NME, last survivor of the UK's once thriving weekly ...
Comment by Devon Powers, PopMatters, 30 June 2004
IF EVER there was a time when writing about music felt utterly pointless, that time is now. ...
Patti Smith: The MOJO Interview: Patti Smith
Interview by Ben Edmonds, MOJO, July 2004
Working in a piss factory, breaking her neck on stage, the "horror" of her armpit hair. All this plus punk poetry, tragedy and "gentleman" Bill Burroughs in the amazing ...
The Pogues: I Remember... (Melody Maker Reminiscences)
Memoir by David Stubbs, mr-agreeable.net, 26 July 2004
I REMEMBER a three month stint in 1986 as a trainee chartered accountant, a profession for which I was ill-suited in every respect except the ...
Razorlight: Johnny Borrell: "I don't even look human"
Interview by Laura Barton, The Guardian, 28 July 2004
He claims to be a better songwriter than Bob Dylan and has likened himself to Charles Dickens. But is there more to Johnny Borrell, the ...
This Is Rebel Music: The Harvey Kubernik InnerView: Part One
Interview by Gary Pig Gold, fufkin.com, September 2004
"If there is a secret history of LA's music scene – the real dirt, the telling minutiae, the diseased spirit of the place – then ...
This Is Rebel Music: The Harvey Kubernik InnerView: Part Two
Interview by Gary Pig Gold, fufkin.com, October 2004
"THIS EXTRAORDINARY ASSEMBLAGE of interviews by journalist and record producer Harvey Kubernik is, as Brian Wilson's blurb on the back cover says, "inside stuff." It's ...
The Beatles, Bob Dylan: Al Aronowitz: The Man Who Invented the '60s
Profile and Interview by Gary Pig Gold, Cosmik Debris, October 2004
Gary "Pig" Gold meets the Man Who Invented the Sixties. ...
Who Put The Bomp? Why, Greg Shaw, Of Course!
Obituary by Gary Pig Gold, torpedopop.com, October 2004
ACCOLADES AND AWARDS are being tossed around far too indiscriminately these days, wouldn’t you agree? Especially within the, uh, Wonderful World of Entertainment. I mean, ...
Dave Godin: Champion of Black Music who coined the term "Northern Soul"
Obituary by Richard Williams, The Guardian, 20 October 2004
WHEN THE MUSICIANS and singers of the first Motown Revue – the Miracles, the Supremes, Martha and the Vandellas, "Little" Stevie Wonder and Earl Van ...
Hawkwind: Ian Abrahams: Hawkwind – Sonic Assassins
Book Review by John Doran, Classic Rock, November 2004
PSYCH-ROCK visionaries Hawkwind have undeniably one of the most interesting stories in rock: paranoia, madness, drugs, fatal road accidents, not to mention startlingly inventive music ...
Overview by Caitlin Moran, The Word, December 2004
For centuries celebrities have loomed large in our pub-time fairytales. Now electronic media has made our thirst for gossip insatiable. Well at least that's what ...
Bob Dylan, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Robbie Williams: The Holy and Sacred thoughts of His Bobness
Book Review by Caitlin Moran, The Times, 11 December 2004
THE GREATEST music book this year, of course, is Bob Dylan's Chronicles, Vol. 1 (Simon & Schuster, £16.99; offer £13.39) — a cultural event so notable ...
Retrospective by Joel Selvin, San Francisco Chronicle, 23 December 2004
NOTE: I’ve never done a more personal piece of journalism. Ralph was a distant figure on my horizon, but his presence surrounded me; from reading ...
Hail Hail The Bangs All Here Department: Lester Bangs' Lost Letters To MAD
Memoir by Jeffrey Morgan, Fun House, 2005
EDITORIAL NOTE: For the gullible out there, this "memoir" of Morgan's may not be 100% true. It was originally published in slightly different form a ...
Bill Nelson: My Bizarre Double Life In The Pop World Of The Eighties
Memoir by Beverley Glick, beverleyglick.com, 2005
After a small ripple of public demand, I'm going to start posting a series of extracts from my unpublished memoir Hit Girl: My Bizarre Double Life ...
Spandau Ballet's Bible: How I Played My Part in Inventing the New Romantics
Memoir by Beverley Glick, beverleyglick.com, 2005
Here is the second extract from my memoir Hit Girl: My Bizarre Double Life in the Pop World of the Eighties. It is September 1980 and, ...
The Sex Pistols: Children In The Mire: A Reading Of Bangs, Marcus And The Sex Pistols, part 1
Essay by Michael Baker, Perfect Sound Forever, January 2005
"THE DOMAIN OF the theater is not psychological but plastic and physical. And it is not a question of whether the physical language of theater ...
The Sex Pistols: Children in the Mire: Bangs, Marcus, and the Sex Pistols, Part II – Polly
Essay by Michael Baker, Perfect Sound Forever, January 2005
The hot night makes us keep our bedroom windows open.Our magnolia blossoms. Life begins to happen. My hopped up husband drops his home disputes, and ...
Memoir by Charles Shaar Murray, The Independent, 23 January 2005
The Seventies: a decade to forget or to conjure with? Dull, grey ligament connecting the bones of the Sixties to the meat of the Eighties, ...
Report and Interview by Caitlin Moran, The Times, 21 February 2005
The once-great tongue-in-cheek music press has gone, but its spirit lives on. ...
Hunter S Thompson: Rock of Rages
Comment by Andrew Mueller, The Guardian, 26 February 2005
FOLLOWING HUNTER S THOMPSON'S suicide, many obituarists, looking for a representative snippet of the Doctor's bug-eyed vitriol, served up the following trenchant assessment of the ...
Walter Yetnikoff with David Ritz: Howling at the Moon (Abacus Books)
Review by Mark Pringle, Rock's Backpages, 4 March 2005
THERE IS AN immutable law of Recovery that states that the man with the loudest voice (and it usually is a man) will consume great ...
And Now, For Something Completely Different
Comment by Mark Kemp, Creative Loafing, 11 May 2005
HAVING SERVED as The Charlotte Observer's entertainment editor for the past two and a half years, I've often picked up the latest issue of Creative ...
Van Morrison: Johnny Rogan: Van Morrison – No Surrender (Secker & Warburg)
Book Review by David Sinclair, The Guardian, 28 May 2005
Johnny Rogan supplies everything you wanted to know about Van Morrison – and even more that you didn't. David Sinclair digests an almost comically unflattering ...
Bob Dylan: Greil Marcus: Like a Rolling Stone
Book Review by Nick Coleman, Independent on Sunday, June 2005
POP MUSIC turned out not to be quite as disposable as was first thought. Not only is it still going, in modulated, increasingly moribund form, ...
Interview by Richard Cabut, Rock's Backpages audio, 23 June 2005
The former Voidoid talks at length about his latest novel, Godlike: the provocative nature of the material; the politics of identity and political correctness, poetry. He also reflects on his '70s self; why he left music, and how his new compilation CD, Spurts: the Richard Hell Story, draws a line under his life as a musician.
File format: mp3; file size: 43.2mb, interview length: 47' 13" sound quality: ** (phoner)
Book Review by Rob Young, The Wire, July 2005
PRACTICALLY EVERY city in Britain has a roster of musical hod carriers with appalling names. This exhaustive history of Sheffield's music scene is crammed with ...
Bob Dylan: Sam Shepard: The Rolling Thunder Logbook
Book Review by Terry Staunton, Record Collector, July 2005
30th anniversary reprint for a bizarre chronicle of the infamous Dylan tour. ...
Peter Shapiro: Turn the Beat Around
Book Review by Robert Sandall, The Sunday Times, 17 July 2005
GIVEN ITS frivolous image and naff rituals – fright wigs and flares, revolving glitterballs and girls dancing around their handbags – a serious book about ...
The Beach Boys: An Interview With Dominic Priore: Good Things Come To Those Who SmiLE, part 1
Interview by Gary Pig Gold, fufkin.com, August 2005
Gary Pig Gold climbs into the Virtual Sandbox ...
Book Review by Andy Beckett, London Review of Books, September 2005
IN JANUARY 1978, the Sex Pistols, then and now the most famous punk band in the world, split up. Johnny Rotten, the band's singer, most ...
Live Review by Everett True, Plan B, October 2005
HOW COOL IS this intoxication? She struts onstage dressed like a goddamn old-fashioned rock'n'roll star in her man's jacket and dirty boots. She pirouettes a ...
Obituary by Dave Laing, The Guardian, 14 October 2005
A writers' champion, he spanned rock, royalty and robust trade unionism. ...
Marvin Gaye: Divided Soul: The Life Of Marvin Gaye
Book Review by Terry Staunton, Record Collector, December 2005
DEFINITIVE BIOGRAPHY of the Trouble Man ...
The Beatles: Revolutionaries, Eight Days a Week: New Beatles books
Book Review by Mark Rozzo, Los Angeles Review of Books, 4 December 2005
IN THE LATE summer of 1963, with Beatlemania sweeping into every corner of the British Isles, a reporter approached Paul McCartney for his thoughts on, ...
Nik Cohn: Triksta – Life and Death and New Orleans Rap
Book Review by Charles Shaar Murray, The Independent, 9 December 2005
JUST AFTER THE first printing of this iconic writer's account of his cultural and musical misadventures in an iconic city, the situation changed almost beyond ...
Nik Cohn: Triksta – Life and Death and New Orleans Rap
Book Review by Sean O'Hagan, The Observer, 11 December 2005
Nik Cohn tells how the alienation and anger of New Orleans exploded into a whole new genre of hip hop in his best book yet. ...
Book Review by Bill Wasserzieher, Ugly Things, Summer 2005
GENE CLARK of the Byrds was many things - a charismatic stage presence in a '60s band that became an American icon; a gifted and ...
Neil Young: Jimmy McDonough: Shakey - Neil Young's Biography
Book Review by Craig W. Thomas, Rock's Backpages, Fall 2005
INTO MY HOLIDAY knapsack this year I tucked a biography of Lowell George that a friend had lent me, and I picked it up on ...
Iain McIntyre: Tomorrow is Today: Australia in the Psychedelic Era, 1966-1970
Book Review by Clinton Walker, Rolling Stone (Australia), 2006
IAIN MCINTYRE'S first book, 2004's Wild About You!, was unfortunately a very limited edition, published by – of all people – the Community Radio Federation ...
Allen Ginsberg: The Adventures Of The Imagination: Allen Ginsberg's Kaddish
Sleeve notes by Harvey Kubernik, Water Records, 2006
IN A PARIS CAFÉ in November 1957, Allen Ginsberg began the initial notations for Kaddish. In Ginsberg: A Biography, by longtime friend and author Barry ...
Interview by Jon Wilde, Uncut, January 2006
He inspired Townshend and Bowie to create Tommy and Ziggy Stardust, wrote the article that became Saturday Night Fever and penned the greatest pop book ...
Sam Cooke: Peter Guralnick: Dream Boogie – The Triumph of Sam Cooke (Little, Brown)
Book Review by Robert Sandall, The Sunday Times, 1 January 2006
SAM COOKE WAS the first black American pop superstar. By 1962, the year of his biggest British hit, 'Twistin' the Night Away', he was the ...
Obituary by Joel Selvin, San Francisco Chronicle, 11 January 2006
Beloved Bay Area jazz and blues critic ...
Book Excerpt by David Kamp, Broadway Books, February 2006
2021 AUTHOR'S NOTE: This was written in 2005 and does not entirely hold up today. (But most of it does.) ...
Farewell, Smash 'Makes Mash' Hits
Obituary by Pete Paphides, The Times, 3 February 2006
Paying tribute to the mag that had its finger on the pulse, but now has no pulse at all ...
Nick Drake: Trevor Dann: Darker Than The Deepest Sea – The Search for Nick Drake (Portrait)
Book Review by Robert Sandall, The Sunday Times, 5 February 2006
THIS BOOK IS surprisingly topical, and not just because of the deepening spell cast by Nick Drake, the English singer-songwriter, 31 years after his death. ...
The Thick of Hip: Touré's Never Drank the Kool-Aid
Book Review by Angus Batey, The Times, 25 February 2006
WRITING ABOUT MUSIC, Elvis Costello once remarked, is like dancing about architecture. If that were true, writing about hip hop, with its inherent wordiness, its ...
The Press Gang:: Music Journalists (AKA: Sleeping With The Enemy)
Overview by Jon Stewart, Guitarist, March 2006
Jon Stewart talks to the enemy, music journalists, and finds out what makes them tick... ...
Willie Nelson: Graeme Thomson: Willie Nelson – The Outlaw
Book Review by Adam Sweeting, Daily Telegraph, 9 March 2006
MANY RECORDING artists have flirted with cowboy-chic, from the Eagles with their "gunfighter" album Desperado to Jon Bon Jovi preposterously claiming to be "Wanted Dead ...
John Robb: Punk Rock – An Oral History (Ebury Press)
Book Review by Robert Sandall, The Sunday Times, 19 March 2006
WHAT IS THERE still to say, really, about the British punk rock movement? As this year marks the 30th anniversary of its uproarious debut in ...
Book Review by Nick Coleman, Independent on Sunday, May 2006
IN 1980 – following the triumphant release of the London Calling album and during the recording of what would become Sandinista! – the Clash had ...
The Beatles: Bob Spitz: The Beatles – The Biography (Aurum Press)
Book Review by Robert Sandall, The Sunday Times, 7 May 2006
WITH ITS BIBLICAL length and its epigraph from that underused pop pundit, Plato — "When the mode of the music changes, the walls of the ...
The Byrds, Crosby Stills and Nash, Joni Mitchell, Frank Zappa: Michael Walker: Laurel Canyon
Book Review by Mark Rozzo, Los Angeles Review of Books, 7 May 2006
UP LAUREL CANYON Boulevard at the corner of Lookout Mountain there sits a walled-in postage stamp of lawn and trees. It's a prime slice of ...
Book Review by Robert Sandall, The Sunday Times, 14 May 2006
THIS PROTEIN-PACKED memoir entwines a number of stories that reach well beyond the subtitle's modest brief. At one level it's a boy's own adventure. Joe ...
Lester Bangs, Big Star: Great Lig in the Sky: The 1973 Rock Writers Convention
Retrospective and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, June 2006
ON MEMORIAL DAY weekend in May 1973, over a hundred of the leading rock writers of the day flew into Memphis, Tennessee, for 72 hours ...
Book Review by Christine Natanael, crushermagazine.com, August 2006
THIS IS A review that has been very, very hard to write. Not because the 600-page collection of columns, essays, random thoughts and photos is ...
Book Review by Miles Marshall Lewis, The Washington Post, 20 August 2006
The early years of a reggae superstar who gained worldwide renown. ...
Greil Marcus: The Shape of Things to Come – Prophecy and the American Voice
Book Review by Mark Rozzo, Los Angeles Review of Books, 3 September 2006
IN THE relatively short history of rock criticism, the 1975 appearance of Greil Marcus' first book, Mystery Train, was an explosion as unexpected and indelible ...
Dominic Sandbrook: White Heat – A History of Britain in the Swinging Sixties
Book Review by Nicky Charlish, Culture Wars, 5 September 2006
THE IDEA OF the '60s as an era of exciting change for everyone has remained more or less the accepted orthodoxy – until now. Few ...
Howard Sounes: Seventies – The Sights, Sounds and Ideas of a Brilliant Decade
Book Review by Nicky Charlish, Culture Wars, 21 September 2006
AMUSINGLY STUPID, vulgar, a time of endearingly foolish fashions. These views – according to the book's author – represent the consensus thinking of cultural pundits ...
Comment by Michael Simmons, Huffington Post, 18 October 2006
Dear Jann, We both know that Rolling Stone – the magazine you founded and remain Editor and Publisher of – has been the subject of endless ...
Courtney Love: Dirty Blonde: The Diaries of Courtney Love
Book Review by Ben Thompson, The Independent, 12 November 2006
Make tea, get nose fixed ASAP ...
Stewart Copeland, The Police, Andy Summers: Kings of Pain: Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland
Interview by Terry Staunton, Record Collector, December 2006
More than 20 years after the Police split, Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland have broken lengthy silences about their time in the band. Terry Staunton ...
Douglas Wolk… Dean of American Comics Critics
Interview by Steven Ward, rockcritics.com, 2007
THAT TITLE WAS not self-proclaimed by Douglas Wolk. I came up with the unofficial designation as soon as I finished the last page of Wolk's ...
Richard Brautigan, Mad River: Just Like a Poem: Richard Brautigan and Mad River
Retrospective and Interview by David Biasotti, Richard Brautigan (ed. John F. Barber), McFarland, 2007
THOUGH THEY RECORDED two albums for Capitol Records, Mad River remains one of the least-documented and enigmatic Bay Area bands of the late '60s. ...
Read All About It: Rock Books to Live By
Book Excerpt by Barney Hoskyns, Time Out's 1000 Books To Save Your Life, 2007
YOU'D THINK I'd be able to write about rock books in my sleep. But of course the task is dreadfully daunting, "rock" now being an ...
Strumming, Picking, and Shredding: An Oral History of Guitar Player Part 3: Steven Rosen
Interview by Steven Ward, rockcritics.com, 2007
STEVEN ROSEN is a professional music journalist with a career spanning thirty years. During this period he has published well over 700 articles appearing in ...
Report and Interview by Andria Lisle, Memphis Flyer, 15 February 2007
Legendary producer Joe Boyd hits Memphis. ...
Arcade Fire: Why the Arcade Fire are molten hot
Comment by Jude Rogers, The Guardian, 20 February 2007
Two weeks until Neon Bible hits the shops and the hype has hit Arctic Monkeys levels. But where are the sceptical critics to keep the ...
The kids are all right: Jon Savage's Teenage – The Creation of Youth
Book Review by Andy Beckett, The Guardian, 14 April 2007
Andy Beckett enjoys Jon Savage's compelling and meticulous prehistory of adolescence, Teenage. ...
Warren Zevon: Crystal Zevon's Story: Warren from A to Z
Interview by Fred Schruers, Los Angeles Times, 4 May 2007
Through interviews and diaries, the musician's ex-wife chronicles the hedonistic life of one of the genre's bad boys. ...
Blur: Alex James: Where There's Muck, There's Blur
Interview by James Medd, The Word, July 2007
Britpop pin-up, champagne-guzzler and gentleman farmer... Just how much of Alex James's extraordinary life has gone into his new book? ...
Obituary by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, 27 August 2007
THE DEATH of Richard Cook at the age of 49 robs us of one of the finest writers UK music journalism has produced. He was ...
Richard Cook 1957-2007: Friends and Colleagues Pay Tribute
Obituary by Various Writers, Rock's Backpages, September 2007
The great jazz and rock writer, who died on August 25, 2007, is remembered by those who worked with him at NME and Sounds. ...
Madonna: For the first time, her friends and lovers speak out
Retrospective by Lucy O'Brien, Independent on Sunday, 2 September 2007
How did a destitute dance student become the princess of pop? ...
Obituary by Robert Sandall, The Sunday Times, 2 September 2007
IF WRITING ABOUT music is like dancing about architecture, then Richard Cook, who died of cancer last week at 49, was the Norman Foster of ...
Book Review by Bob Ruggiero, Houston Press, 19 September 2007
SHE IS PERHAPS rock's most famous muse: Pattie Boyd Harrison Clapton. This lithe, leggy, blonde fashion model directly inspired a troika of classic rock's most ...
Book Review by Nicky Charlish, Culture Wars, 24 September 2007
POPULAR MUSIC is, by its very nature, ephemeral. So are its singers. Every rock or pop record that makes it to the charts is a ...
Jools Holland: Barefaced Lies and Boogie Woogie Boasts (Michael Joseph)
Book Review by Robert Sandall, The Sunday Times, 7 October 2007
FOR JOOLS Holland, autobiography is a rigorously selective business. ...
Eric Clapton: The Autobiography (Century)
Book Review by Robert Sandall, The Sunday Times, 14 October 2007
IT IS HARD to believe that the first book to spill the beans on Eric Clapton should arrive more than 40 years after the graffitied ...
Report and Interview by Andy Gill, The Independent, 18 October 2007
MOST PEOPLE'S MINDS, as they enter their sixties, probably turn to thoughts of retirement and a sedate glide along the gentle lower slopes of life's ...
A Love From Outer Space: Why Greg Tate Matters
Essay by Michael A. Gonzales, Blackadelic Pop, 25 October 2007
THIS MORNING, I couldn't write. Though I'm on deadline to finish a Village Voice critique about my favorite band Apollo Heights (whose disc White Music ...
Mötley Crüe: Ban this Sixx filth!
Report by Ian Gittins, The Guardian, 27 October 2007
Thought Mötley Crüe's biog The Dirt was the ultimate rock read? Pah! Ian Gittins helped bassist Nikki Sixx write his gruesome journals. Those of a ...
Book Review by Ben Thompson, The Independent, 16 December 2007
HOW BETTER to salve the pangs of remorse induced by a season of over-indulgence than by voraciously consuming the reminiscences of those whose lifestyles make ...
GTR, Billy Joel: A Creem editor remembers…
Book Excerpt by Bill Holdship, 'America's Only Rock 'N' Roll Magazine', 2008
THERE ARE loads of CREEM stories to tell, such as the time I answered the editorial phone and Billy Joel was on the other end, ...
Obituary by Mike Atherton, unpublished, 2008
RAY TOPPING, who has died aged 65, was arguably the world's foremost researcher of and authority on rock'n'roll and blues. ...
Retrospective by Bill Holdship, Detroit Metro Times, 16 January 2008
ALMOST FAMOUS was probably the big bang that finally pushed it over the top. Doesn't matter that director Cameron Crowe — a former CREEM and ...
CREEMed: The life, death, and strange resurrection of America's only rock 'n' roll magazine, Part 2
Retrospective by Bill Holdship, Detroit Metro Times, 23 January 2008
Last week, we examined the Detroit origins and early history of CREEM, "America's Only Rock 'N' roll Magazine." This week, we take a look at ...
Joe Jackson: Still Looking Sharp
Profile and Interview by David Burke, R2/Rock'n'Reel, March 2008
David Burke catches a rare sighting of pop music's invisible man. ...
Is the party over for the NME?
Comment by Stephen Dalton, The Times, 7 March 2008
Fifty-six years old today, the NME is battling for its life, beset by mud-slinging and falling sales. But the music magazine is ready to fight ...
Jack White, The Raconteurs: Jacks White: Is Jack White Trying To Kill Music Journalism?
Comment by David Bennun, The Guardian, 18 March 2008
The new Raconteurs album is to be released without pre-publicity. Is this a gesture of fairness to the fans, or an attempt to silence the ...
Ed Sanders: The American Bard Takes On Katrina
Essay by Michael Simmons, Huffington Post, 1 April 2008
THERE IS A GIANT in our midst and his name is Edward Sanders. Ed was born in 1939 in Kansas City, Missouri. He moved to ...
Book Review by Mark Anthony Neal, PopMatters, 21 April 2008
I'VE SPENT better part of that last 20-years – what seems like a lifetime – trying to write about Donny Hathaway. It's not as though ...
Book Excerpt by Joe Nick Patoski, Austin Chronicle, 25 April 2008
This is an excerpt from Joe Nick's biography Willie Nelson: An Epic Life, published by Little, Brown and Co. ...
Essay by Mark Mordue, markmordue.com, 5 May 2008
WHEN I THINK ABOUT rock 'n' roll and my life trying to write about it, my trying to get inside rock 'n' roll through words ...
Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads? Ten Years After The Repetitive Beat Generation
Essay by Steve Redhead, Rock's Backpages, July 2008
OVER A decade ago I researched the rise and fall of a British publishing phenomenon – the so called 'cult fiction' of writers like Nicholas ...
Rock, Roll, and Me: Writing the '60s
Memoir by Jane Heil, Forum of World Cultures, 20 July 2008
THE FIFTY or so articles I wrote for Hit Parader and other rock and country magazines are packed away on a high shelf in my apartment. I ...
Interview by Jon Savage, Observer Music Monthly, 10 August 2008
Julian Cope believes in music made by outsiders for outsiders. Now 50, and still incandescent with his passions for Krautrock and stone circles, he tells ...
Book Review by Robert Sandall, The Sunday Times, 7 September 2008
SUSAN, OR SUZE, Rotolo was Bob Dylan's first serious girlfriend, and unlike many other characters from his pre-iconic phase she has, up until now, revealed ...
Comment by Michael Azerrad, Spin, 27 October 2008
For a music critic, being immortalized in song could be the highest compliment...unless the song is a death threat. ...
Special Feature by Various Writers, Rock's Backpages, December 2008
Rob Partridge was a true music man – a witty, loyal, and deeply knowledgeable fan whose loss will be felt throughout the UK ...
Flirtations with Chaos: The Life and Work of Robert Palmer
Essay by Anthony DeCurtis, 'Blues & Chaos', 2009
NOTE: This is Anthony DeCurtis' introduction to Blues & Chaos, his 2009 anthology of Bob Palmer's work. * ...
Ian Whitcomb: The Troubadour Of Lost Time
Retrospective and Interview by Kirk Silsbee, Arroyo Monthly, January 2009
POET HOLLY PRADO once observed: "A city either wants you or it doesn't." Ian Whitcomb was a history student at Dublin's Trinity College with ...
Book Review by Robert Sandall, The Sunday Times, 4 January 2009
ROCK HISTORY, like other sorts, tends to get told from the point of view of victors rather than losers. By popular acclaim, the big winners ...
Book Review by Jeff Tamarkin, The Boston Phoenix, 13 January 2009
LIKE ANY GOOD murder mystery, Steve Knopper's Appetite for Self-Destruction keeps the tension high and the action swift as the search for a culprit drags ...
The OZ trial: John Mortimer's finest hour
Memoir by Felix Dennis, The Week, 19 January 2009
The great barrister, novelist and playwright – who died last Friday aged 85 – stood up to and beat the British establishment, recalls a grateful ...
How The Fanzine Refused To Die
Report and Interview by Simon Reynolds, The Guardian, 2 February 2009
Blogs are the cheapest, fastest and easiest way to get your music writing out there — but that hasn't stopped a new generation of writers picking ...
Janis Ian: Society's Child (Tarcher/Penguin)
Review by Roy Trakin, Rock's Backpages, March 2009
I ADMITTEDLY hadn't thought much about Janis Ian lately, even as my good friend Andy Schwartz kept recommending this surprisingly compelling, always-candid autobiography, going so ...
Book Review by Mike Atherton, Record Collector, March 2009
WE ALL KNOW Tommy Hunt the former member of star doowop group the Flamingos, the '60s 'Human' hitmaker, the '70s UK 'Loving On The Losing ...
Tom Waits: Barney Hoskyns: Lowside of the Road – A Life of Tom Waits (Faber & Faber)
Book Review by Nick Coleman, The Independent, 1 March 2009
SELF-REVELATION has never come easily to the Los Angeleno songwriter, musician and occasional actor Tom Waits, which is presumably why he writes the kinds of ...
Memoir by Leyla Sanai, Rock's Backpages, 5 March 2009
OK, SO ROCK CRITICS are meant to be the epitome of cool, but all writers have embarrassing moments, don't they? What have been the most ...
Mario Panciera: 45 Revolutions
Book Review by Alex Ogg, Rock's Backpages, 20 March 2009
DISCUSSING MUSICAL encyclopaedias recently reminded me of what is probably the ultimate reference work I have ever encountered: Mario Panciera's completely mind-boggling 45 Revolutions. I ...
MC5, John Sinclair: Memoirs of rock mentor John Sinclair
Profile and Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, The Sunday Times, 29 March 2009
Poet, activist, entrepreneur, critic, journalist, manager of MC5 and kingpin of US punk scene still performing and writing. ...
Elvis Presley, John Lennon: Sympathy for the Devil – A Kind Word for Albert Goldman
Essay by Tom Graves, Rock's Backpages, April 2009
ALBERT HARRY GOLDMAN is inarguably the most controversial music biographer of the last generation. His biographies of first Elvis, then John Lennon, have been spit ...
Liner Notes: Recollections of a Dying Art
Retrospective by Fred Dellar, Rock's Backpages, 17 April 2009
DURING THE LATE '60s I received a fee of seven pounds for supplying my first sleeve note – one that adorned Dizzy Gillespie's Jambo Caribe. ...
New Music News: My Part in IPC's Downfall
Memoir by Mark Williams, Rock's Backpages, 21 April 2009
IN RESPONSE TO an earlier blog, a generous comment from Johnny Black resurrected the ghost of a magazine I thought I'd laid to rest some ...
Creem: Censored by a Futurist!
Memoir by Richard Riegel, Rock's Backpages, 24 April 2009
CREEM SUFFERED ITS first bankruptcy in August 1985, a little over ten years after I'd begun writing regularly for the magazine. ...
Memoir by Richard Riegel, unpublished, May 2009
NOTE: I wrote this mini-memoir for one of the neo-Creem projects of recent years, but it wasn't used. ...
The Rolling Stones: Electric gypsies : Tommy Weber and friends
Book Review by Kandia Crazy Horse, San Francisco Bay Guardian, 6 May 2009
TOMMY WEBER (né Thomas Ejnar Arkner, 1938 — 2006) was a trickster, so I cannot help but love him. ...
All Tomorrow's Parties: Breeders And Fans Strike Back II
Live Review by John Doran, The Quietus, 26 May 2009
I'M MORE appreciative of ATP than usual at the moment (and I'm usually damn appreciative of its quasi-utopian spread of music, guilt-free loafing and social ...
Rage Against the Machine: Steven Wells, 1960-2009
Special Feature by Various Writers, Rock's Backpages, June 2009
An august bunch of RBP contributors – friends, colleagues, and plain admirers of the man – pay tribute to an inspired rent-a-gob who died bravely ...
Memoir by John Pidgeon, Rock's Backpages, 5 June 2009
IT'S THURSDAY, 6th July 1972. The Guardian lies on the doormat, its front page torn, as usual. I've questioned the paperboy. He says the slot's ...
Memoir by John Pidgeon, Rock's Backpages, 15 June 2009
IN JANUARY 1980, the gates of 4641 Hayvenhurst Avenue in Encino were open, unguarded. As I parked, an Alsatian bounded to the car and bared ...
Book Review by Danny Goldberg, Truthdig, 26 June 2009
STEVE KNOPPER'S Appetite for Self-Destruction is an entertaining, well-written attempt to chronicle the economic decline of record companies, but his thesis echoes conventional wisdom that ...
Steven Wells 1960-2009: A Tribute
Memoir by John Doran, Andrew Mueller, John Robb, Terry Staunton, David Stubbs, The Quietus, 29 June 2009
David Stubbs ...
Speaking Of Dying: R.I.P. Vibe
Comment by Andria Lisle, Memphis Flyer, 2 July 2009
A MERE three years after purchasing the 16-year old Vibe magazine from founder Quincy Jones, the Wicks Group pulled the plug this week, dumping the hip-hop publication on the top ...
Sound of the World: Otro Mundo: An Interview with Charlie Gillett
Report and Interview by Mark Hudson, Daily Telegraph, 15 July 2009
"WHEN I PLAY a new album," says Charlie Gillett, "I want to be surprised, to be completely captivated by the music – the way we ...
The Demise of Vibe and the Future of Criticism
Comment by Mark Anthony Neal, PopMatters, 23 July 2009
THERE'S NO SMALL irony to the fact that the announcement of the folding of Vibe magazine occurred the day after the death of Michael Jackson. ...
Nick Cave: A Rake's Progress: Nick Cave's Death of Bunny Munro
Book Review by Mark Mordue, The Australian Literary Review, August 2009
IS BUNNY MUNRO Nick Cave's version of Willy Loman with a hard on? In The Death of Bunny Munro the Australian rock 'n' roll singer ...
Los Campesinos!: Exclamation Proclamation
Interview by Ned Raggett, OC Weekly, 20 August 2009
Welsh rockers Los Campesinos! grow up (quickly) in the spotlight ...
The Magazine Explosion: UK Pop Publications in the '60s
Retrospective by Jon Savage, The Observer, 6 September 2009
IT'S FEBRUARY 1963. The Beatles are No 2 in the charts with 'Please Please Me' and it's time to meet the press. An anonymous reporter ...
The Thrill Of It All: The Advent of MP3 Blogs
Essay by Nick Hornby, The Observer, 6 September 2009
MY FIRST NOVEL, High Fidelity, was published in 1995, and shortly afterwards, I embarked upon my first American book tour. I took with me a ...
Leonard Cohen: This story about Leonard Cohen has sex in it
Memoir by Mike Jahn, Rock's Backpages, 22 September 2009
I REMEMBER Leonard Cohen well from the Chelsea Hotel. This story has sex in it. ...
Gimme Some Truth: Music reference works in the digital age
Comment by Alex Ogg, Rock's Backpages, October 2009
REMEMBER WHEN content was king? It was one of the enduring myths of the tech bubble alongside stratospheric growth projections, the paperless office, etc. But ...
Interview by James Medd, The Word, October 2009
Nick Cave's new fiction hero is a monstrous expression of the male psyche grotesquely obsessed with sex, he tells James Medd. Did he evolve from ...
Imperial Dogs: They Wanna Get Their Poodles In Your Noodles: Imperial Dogs
Retrospective and Interview by Dave Laing (Australia), Rock's Backpages, November 2009
IN RECENT YEARS, as I've hit an age where time fucking flies by, and an entire decade has passed by in what feels like ...
Louis Armstrong: Terry Teachout: Pops – The Wonderful World of Louis Armstrong (JR Books)
Book Review by Robert Sandall, The Sunday Times, 22 November 2009
AS TERRY Teachout makes clear in this terrific biography, the world that Louis Armstrong inhabited was anything but wonderful. It was, for most of his ...
The Feelies: Rick Moody Interviews the Feelies
Interview by Steven R Rosen, Blurt, 10 December 2009
The celebrated novelist and Wingdale Community Singers rocker interviews his favorite band. Blurt takes notes. ...
The 1973 Let It Rock Critics Poll
Retrospective by John Pidgeon, Rock's Backpages, 16 December 2009
THIRTY-SIX YEARS AGO, I polled contributors to and friends of Let It Rock, the monthly magazine I edited: what, I wanted to know, were their ...
Flexipop!'s shameless pop legacy
Retrospective by Tim Lott, The Guardian, 4 February 2010
Trashy, silly and unashamedly puerile, Flexipop! only lasted two years. But, says novelist Tim Lott, who started the magazine, its revolutionary spirit can still be ...
Patti Smith: Promises Fulfilled: Patti Smith: Just Kids
Review and Interview by Bill Holdship, Metro Times, 17 February 2010
LOVE RELATIONSHIPS between great artists have inspired some fine literature throughout history, be it works the artists created for each other during their own lifetimes ...
Spoon: Rough Draft: Spoon's Transference
Review and Interview by Bud Scoppa, Rock's Backpages, 19 February 2010
WHEN I WAS doing A&R late in the previous century, a musician in one of my bands – it might have been Jolene guitarist Dave ...
Nick Kent, The Rolling Stones, The Sex Pistols: Nick Kent: Apathy for the Devil – A 1970s Memoir
Book Review by Robert Sandall, The Sunday Times, 21 February 2010
AS AN EYEWITNESS account of the dangerous excesses of the 1970s rock scene, Apathy for the Devil is in a compulsively readable class of its ...
Man of the World: A Rock's Backpages Tribute to Charlie Gillett, 1942-2010
Special Feature by Various Writers, Rock's Backpages, March 2010
CHARLIE GILLETT'S contributions to music are far too numerous to be listed here. Briefly, he was the author of the seminal history The Sound Of ...
David Bowie, Iggy Pop: Nick Kent: Once Upon a Life
Memoir by Nick Kent, The Observer, 14 March 2010
In 1972 he was sorting mail in a Sussex post office. Twelve months later he was partying with Led Zeppelin. Here, the hugely influential music ...
Rock Journalist Carol Clerk Broke the Mould
Obituary by Caroline Sullivan, Guardian Unlimited, 19 March 2010
Former Melody Maker news editor Carol Clerk, who died last week, was a role model for female music writers. She loved old-school rock – and ...
Profile and Interview by John Lewis, Hotline, April 2010
GIL SCOTT-HERON has long been a regular and popular visitor to the UK's jazz and soul venues. However, by the late 1990s, he'd become an ...
Stevie Wonder: Mark Ribowsky: Signed, Sealed, and Delivered – The Soulful Journey of Stevie Wonder
Book Review by Robert Sandall, The Sunday Times, 2 May 2010
His charisma is beyond doubt but, as this valiant life reveals, Stevie Wonder is on a different wavelength from everybody else. ...
Paul Edwards: How To Rap – The Art & Science of the Hip-Hop MC (Virgin)
Book Review by Alex Ogg, Rock's Backpages, 17 May 2010
"You want to be able to stand out from the others and just be distinct, period. A lot of shit sounds the same, so when ...
Thurston Moore, Sonic Youth: Byron Coley: An Interview
Interview by Jason Gross, Perfect Sound Forever, June 2010
SITTING ON A back porch in bucolic Western Massachusetts on a gorgeous summer's day, my friend’s adorable little daughter coyly asked, "Wanna see a picture ...
Van Morrison: Greil Marcus: Listening to Van Morrison
Book Review by Robert Sandall, The Sunday Times, 6 June 2010
An appreciation of the best bits of Van the Man's career wisely concentrates on the sublime music, not the grouch who made it. ...
Richmond Fontaine: Willy Vlautin: It's only rock'n'roll
Profile and Interview by David Burke, R2/Rock'n'Reel, July 2010
Devotees of Richmond Fontaine can rest easy: frontman Willy Vlautin's burgeoning reputation as a novelist doesn't portend the demise of the Americana outfit – at ...
Lady Gaga and the New World Order
Comment by Dorian Lynskey, The Guardian, 1 July 2010
Lady Gaga's music videos are undoubtedly elaborate — but is there any truth to one blogger's claims that they are loaded with occult references and ...
Obituary by David Sinclair, The Sunday Times, 21 July 2010
David Sinclair, a friend of Robert Sandall's since the 1970s, remembers the life of the late, great Sunday Times music critic, who died on Tuesday. ...
Ben Folds/Nick Hornby: Lonely Avenue
Review by Pete Paphides, The Times, 24 September 2010
WHEN IT WORKS the clever lyrical conceits glow like the criminals you see on helicopter cameras, but it's an uneven affair. ...
"The World's Best Rock Read": Let It Rock magazine 1972-1975
Essay by Dave Laing, Popular Music and Society, October 2010
Introduction THIS ARTICLE IS a case study of an influential British music publication of the 1970s. Let It Rock (hereafter LIR) was a monthly magazine and ...
Blade, KRS-One, Public Enemy, Ruthless Rap Assassins: The hip-hop heritage society
Report and Interview by Angus Batey, The Guardian, 7 October 2010
Why aren't Public Enemy, Boogie Down Productions and other classic hip-hop acts lovingly reissued in the same way as other genres? Because guardians of rap's ...
Kings of Leon: Joel McIver: Holy Rock 'n Rollers – The Story of Kings of Leon (Omnibus Press)
Book Review by Bob Ruggiero, Houston Press, 25 October 2010
JUST IN TIME for the release of their fifth record, Come Around Sundown, comes the second biography (after Michael Heatley's Kings of Leon: Sex on ...
Keith Richards' Life or How To (Not) Review a Rock God
Comment by Jeff Slate, Examiner.com, 24 November 2010
I WAS LOOKING forward to the review of Keith Richards' new book Life in last Sunday's New York Times. ...
Paul Morley's Showing Off ... Alex Ross
Comment by Paul Morley, The Observer, 12 December 2010
Paul Morley readies himself for a gladiatorial clash of the critics with New Yorker music writer Alex Ross. ...
Chicago: Mobsters, Crime And Jazz: Danny Seraphine's Chicago Story
Review and Interview by Bob Ruggiero, Houston Press, 16 December 2010
FROM THEIR 1967 founding to his unceremonious ouster from the group in 1990, Danny Seraphine provided the pounding backbeat for Chicago, both for the early, ...
Joan As Police Woman: What I Like
Interview by James Medd, The Word, January 2011
Joan As Police Woman aka Joan Wasser, fearsome singer, songwriter and serial collaborator, formerly of Antony & the Johnsons and Jeff Buckley's girlfriend ...
Dan Charnas: The Big Payback – The History of the Business of Hip-Hop
Book Review by Evelyn McDonnell, Los Angeles Times, 4 January 2011
"HERE'S A LITTLE story that must be told," Dan Charnas writes by way of an ironic introduction to his brick-sized epic, quoting a classic rap ...
Book Review by Richard Williams, The Guardian, 8 January 2011
Richard Williams hails the man who devoted his life to recording the songs and soundscapes of America and beyond. ...
Alan Lomax: John Szwed: The Man Who Recorded The World – A Biography Of Alan Lomax
Book Review by Rob Young, The Wire, February 2011
WHO'D BE A folk song collector? ...
David Bowie, The Clash, Sex Pistols: Kate Simon: An Interview
Interview by Paul Gorman, Paul Gorman Is, 18 February 2011
THERE IS A portrait of David Bowie taken by Kate Simon at Olympic recording studios in Barnes, west London, on January 14, 1974. The photograph ...
Maggoty Lamb goes behind the barricades in Rock Writers' Class War
Comment by Ben Thompson, The Guardian, 23 February 2011
Journalists would have us believe it's public-school leavers v the salt of the earth in the battle of the charts. Is that really the case? ...
Cherry Vanilla: Nymphomaniacs Anonymous
Retrospective and Interview by Rob Hughes, Uncut, March 2011
Whatever happened to the celebrity groupie? Legendary '70s party animal Cherry Vanilla has a few theories. ...
John Storm Roberts: An Appreciation
Memoir by Don Snowden, Rock's Backpages, April 2011
I'VE ALWAYS BEEN more than a bit ambivalent about the whole concept of mentoring, at least when it applies to the music world we run ...
Lennon, Lenin, The Oz Schoolkids Issue And Me
Retrospective by Charles Shaar Murray, The Word, April 2011
In 1970 Charles Shaar Murray answered an ad in furry freak magazine Oz for a bunch of juveniles to edit a Schoolkids issue. Next thing ...
Charlie Haden: Paul Morley On Music: Charlie Haden
Comment by Paul Morley, The Observer, 24 April 2011
Amazon has made critics of us all. But how does that bode for the professional critic? ...
Obituary by James Maycock, The Independent, May 2011
GIL SCOTT-HERON lived a life of two distinct, very different halves – as dissimilar as night and day. Up to his mid-30s, Scott-Heron was a ...
Rock Critic Superpower Summit: Nick Kent meets Greil Marcus
Interview by Nick Kent, The Word, May 2011
On-site action terrorist Nick Kent and stay-at-home scholar Greil Marcus. Would they mesh or clash if The Word brought them together? ...
Sloan: Happy 20th Birthday Sloan: The Band That Most Made Me Want To Write For A Living
Report and Interview by Tom Cox, tom-cox.com, 11 May 2011
ALL WRITERS HAVE an early turning point or moment of encouragement that kicks off their career in earnest, gives them that little extra push to ...
Led Zeppelin: Nick Kent on Led Zeppelin (2011)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages audio, 14 May 2011
Legendary NME journalist Nick Kent remembers his days in the orbit of Led Zeppelin: the many highs, and quite a few lows; Peter Grant; Zep v journalists; the sleaze and the gangsters.
File format: mp3; file size: 132.8mb, interview length: 2h 25' 03" sound quality: ****
Book Review by Rob Young, The Word, June 2011
AROUND 15 MAY 1970, Neil Young glanced at Time magazine's coverage of the killing of four students at Kent State, grabbed a guitar and within ...
Ellen Willis: Out Of The Vinyl Deeps – Ellen Willis on Rock Music (University of Minnesota Press)
Book Review by Evelyn McDonnell, The New York Times, 10 June 2011
WOODSTOCK WAS A RIP-OFF. Creedence Clearwater Revival eclipsed the Rolling Stones. Bob Dylan struggled with identity. Janis Joplin "was not so much a victim as ...
Gil Scott-Heron: Growing Up With Gil Scott-Heron: In Loving Memory
Memoir by Danny Goldberg, AlterNet, 11 June 2011
GIL SCOTT-HERON'S death last week at the age of 62 stimulated a wave of appreciation from critics and the jazz and hip hop communities who ...
Brian Eno/Rick Holland: Drums Between The Bells
Review by Wyndham Wallace, bbc.co.uk, July 2011
IT'S HARD TO know what's more surprising: the fact a man approaching his mid-60s continues to release groundbreaking music in such quantities that this is ...
The World's Oldest Teenager: Remembering Jane Scott
Obituary by Holly Gleason, Los Angeles Times blogs, 4 July 2011
SHE WAS LIKE Andy Warhol: iconic blond hair set in a most determined pageboy that never moved. That, and red oversized glasses. You couldn't miss ...
Interview by Jude Rogers, The Word, August 2011
Leather-clad pop cat, amateur Soviet historian and Tony Hancock aficionado. Do not disturb between 4 and 6pm. * ...
Mary Anne Hobbs: Things I Like
Interview by Jude Rogers, The Word, September 2011
Music-deprived teenager turned DJ, bikini motorcyclist, Raymond Carver fan. Reads Stuart Maconie on repeat. ...
It's Tom Hibbert's World, And We'll Miss It
Memoir by Mark Williams, Rock's Backpages, 13 September 2011
SOMETIMES IT'S impossible not to write in clichés, and this is one of them: There have been too many deaths in my life recently and ...
Kid Koala: "I always wanted to work on The Muppet Show"
Profile and Interview by John Lewis, Metro, 16 September 2011
Musician, cartoonist, graphic novelist, DJ, primary school teacher… Metro meets the many sides of Canadian polymath Kid Koala. ...
Interview by Rob Hughes, The Word, October 2011
Head Bunnyman; admires The Doors' "sea shanties" the lyrics of Shania Twain, the poetry of John Betjeman and the voice of Alan Yentob ...
Paul Nelson: First You Dream, Then You Die
Essay by Joe Carducci, The New Vulgate, October 2011
Author's note: I'm not in the reviewing game at The New Vulgate,but David Lighthourne had introduced me to Paul and told me about Kevin Avery's ...
Ellen Willis: Out of the Vinyl Deeps
Book Review by Maura Johnston, The Village Voice, 5 October 2011
The late New Yorker pop critic and Voice editor's work still vibrates off the page in Out of the Vinyl Deeps. ...
Book Excerpt by Kevin Avery, Everything is an Afterthought (Fantagraphics), November 2011
ON APRIL 14, 1983, Elliot Roberts, Neil Young's manager, wrote a letter to Paul: "This is to advise you that we will co-operate with you ...
Book Excerpt by Kevin Avery, Everything is an Afterthought (Fantagraphics), November 2011
MUSIC PLAYED A PART IN young Paul's life. "My aunt played piano. I remember hymns very fondly as the first music I ever heard." There ...
Kevin Avery: Everything is an Afterthought: The Life and Writings of Paul Nelson (Fantagraphics)
Book Review by Barney Hoskyns, The Word, December 2011
NOTE: This is a slightly expanded version of the review that ran in The Word. ...
Profile and Interview by Mark Rozzo, The New York Times, 4 December 2011
BARELY A MONTH after his 22nd birthday, the British reporter, novelist and pop critic Nik Cohn hunkered down in a cottage in Connemara, on Ireland's ...
Memoir by Michael Gray, Michael Gray Outtakes, 2012
IT'S 20 YEARS since the writer, socialist and East End of London doctor David Widgery died prematurely, and I want to join those who have ...
Jackie Leven, 1950–2011: "I'm too connected to the pain of other people. It really breaks me up."
Retrospective and Interview by Graeme Thomson, Uncut, February 2012
In his life as in his music, the Scottish singer-songwriter who died last November found inspiration in the raw extremes of human behaviour, which he ...
Simple Minds: Jim Kerr: The Things I Like
Interview by Graeme Thomson, The Word, February 2012
Simple Mind, Celtic FC supporter, fan of prog and proto-punk. Buys much of his new music via TV ads ...
Guide by Rob Hughes, The Word, February 2012
Folk luminary, former librarian, Anne Briggs acolyte and breadmaker. Well-versed in the history of war. ...
Kent Hartman: The Wrecking Crew – The Inside Story Of Rock And Roll's Best-Kept Secret
Book Review by James Medd, The Word, February 2012
If it's Monday it must be the Beach Boys, Tuesday it's Sinatra. The fantasy life of L.A.'s fabled sessioneers told as soap opera ...
Greil Marcus: A Life In Writing
Profile and Interview by Simon Reynolds, The Guardian, 17 February 2012
GREIL MARCUS lives in a newly built, cedar-shingled house on the border between Oakland and Berkeley. ...
The Ghost of Roland Barthes is Suitably Perplexed: NME in the Post-Punk Era
Book Excerpt by Pat Long, Portico Books, March 2012
NOTE: In this excerpt from his History of the NME, published in the UK by Portico, Pat Long chronicles the decline of the world's top ...
Davy Jones, The Monkees: The day I performed for Davy Jones
Memoir by Beverley Glick, Rock's Backpages, 12 March 2012
IN HONOUR OF the late Monkee, I feel compelled to share with you this vignette from my sadly-still-unpublished memoir, Hit Girl: My Bizarre Double Life ...
Maggoty Lamb interviews visionary music critic David Toop
Interview by Ben Thompson, The Guardian, 23 March 2012
So influential is the author of Ocean of Sound that some are now saying "we are all David Toops". How does that feel? ...
Memoir by Mark Shipper, Rock's Backpages, April 2012
WELL, I CAN'T STAND IT ANYMORE. Deep in the back of my head I have this Karmic debt I owe to Greg Shaw for setting ...
Where Did (My) Zeitgeist Go?: A Life in Rock Writing
Comment by Richard Riegel, Rock's Backpages, 18 April 2012
I'VE JUST FINISHED reading Rock and Roll Always Forgets: A Quarter Century of Music Criticism, by my old friend and former Village Voice editor Chuck Eddy, ...
The Rolling Stones: True Adventures with the Rolling Stones: Stanley Booth
Retrospective and Interview by Mick Brown, Daily Telegraph, 19 April 2012
Fifty years after the band was formed, Stanley Booth, who wrote a book about the infamous American tour of 1969, talks to Mick Brown. ...
Interview by Rob Hughes, The Word, May 2012
Songwriting, film-scoring opera-pop dandy with formative Thomas Hardy habit. Puccini apologist and Family Guy fanatic. ...
Buddy Guy on his autobiography
Interview by Alan Light, MSN.com, June 2012
"A LOT OF people have the blues and don't even know they got it," says Buddy Guy. "But just keep living and you'll figure out ...
Justin Bieber: Overcovering Pop: Are We There Yet?
Comment by Gene Sculatti, Rock's Backpages, June 2012
WHAT have we wrought, us guys and gals who write about pop music? ...
Louise holds a handful of rain...
Retrospective by Richard Riegel, Rock's Backpages, 6 June 2012
VERY GLAD TO see Louise Criscione as the featured rockwriter in the "Almost Famous" spot on RBP's front page this week, as I'd meant to ...
Bruce Springsteen: Marc Dolan: Bruce Springsteen and the Promise of Rock 'n' Roll (Norton)
Book Review by Bob Ruggiero, Houston Chronicle, 15 June 2012
WHILE MOST classic rockers his age are either slowing down, retired or dead, sexagenarian Bruce Springsteen (who might also be called "sexy-genarian" by legions of ...
Interview by Alan Light, Relix, July 2012
"WITH THE FACES, you never know what's going to happen." It's a theme that comes up again and again in conversation with Ronnie Wood and ...
Retrospective by Archie Patterson, Rock's Backpages, 12 August 2012
ROCK BEGAN in opposition to mainstream culture. The metamorphosis from (black) race music into white rock 'n' roll shook the very foundations of society. It ...
Mick Jagger: Christopher Andersen: Mick – The Wild Life and Mad Genius of Jagger
Book Review by Dorian Lynskey, The Guardian, 17 August 2012
Christopher Andersen's biography of Mick Jagger is little more than an anthology of juicy gossip. ...
Memoir by Ann Moses, Rock's Backpages, 7 September 2012
DAVID CASSIDY WAS first introduced to Tiger Beat readers in the June 1970 issue. He had appeared on TV on Marcus Welby, MD, The F.B.I ...
Joy Division: Peter Hook: Unknown Pleasures – Inside Joy Division
Book Review by Andy Beckett, The Guardian, 19 September 2012
Andy Beckett on a raw, surprising account of the classic post-punk band ...
Andrew Smith: Totally Wired – On The Trail Of The Dotcom Swindle
Book Review by Pat Kane, The Independent, 20 September 2012
A high-energy romp through digital boom-and-bust has lessons for today ...
Hold the Middle Page, or: My Short Career as Melody Maker's Singles Reviewer
Memoir by John Pidgeon, Rock's Backpages, 26 September 2012
WITH THREE MONTHS of 1978 – the year in which UK singles sales hit an all-time peak – still to go, perhaps the regular writer ...
Bill Sykes: Sit Down, Listen To This! – The Roger Eagle Story/Pat Long: The History Of The NME
Book Review by Tony Burke, Blues & Rhythm, October 2012
THE LATE Roger Eagle was an enigma. Born in Oxford into a middle class family during the Second World War, like many others of his ...
Book Review by Michel Faber, The Guardian, 9 November 2012
GIVEN THE VASTNESS of the subject, calling a treatise How Music Works seems intellectually arrogant, but it could also be seen as disarmingly frank, a ...
Crazy Horse, Neil Young: Neil Young: Waging Heavy Peace/Journeys/Psychedelic Pill/live in Seattle
Review by Charles Bermant, Rock's Backpages, 12 November 2012
SIX YEARS AGO, Neil Young brought his CSN buddies through town imploring the country to impeach the president for lying. This week he began the ...
Elvis Presley: Yes, I was in an Elvis Movie!
Memoir by Ann Moses, Rock's Backpages, 23 November 2012
THE FIRST QUESTION whenever I tell someone I was in an Elvis movie is "Which one?" And my answer is usually "Not one of his ...
Pete Townshend, The Who: Pete Townshend: Who I Am – A Memoir (Harper)
Book Review by Robert Dean Lurie, National Review, 20 December 2012
THE INNER FLAP of the dust jacket says it all: "Pete Townshend has some explaining to do." ...
The Village Voice and the Birth of Rock Criticism: Two Excerpts from Writing the Record
Book Excerpt by Devon Powers, University of Massachusetts Press, 2013
1) From the Introduction: "Village" ...
Foo Fighters: Record reviews: Who needs them?
Comment by Ira Robbins, salon.com, 1 January 2013
Music criticism is in a horrible state. It wouldn't have to be if we talked about albums like they really mattered. ...
Graham Stewart: Bang! A History of Britain in the 1980s
Book Review by Andy Beckett, The Guardian, 17 January 2013
A study of Thatcher's era that leaves vital questions unanswered ...
Review by Michel Faber, The Guardian, 14 February 2013
Michel Faber asks if this explicit novel of poverty and sex is any more than a historic curio. ...
Duncan Heining Equinox: Trad Dads, Dirty Boppers and Free Fusioneers – British Jazz, 1960-1975
Book Review by Rob Young, The Wire, March 2013
IN 1971, TRUMPETER Kenny Wheeler walked into a studio, greeted bassist Ken Baldock, organist Harry Stoneham, composer Duncan Lamont and others, and laid down a ...
David Bowie: When Bowie met Burroughs
Retrospective by Jon Savage, The Guardian, 9 March 2013
ON 28 FEBRUARY 1974, Rolling Stone magazine published a remarkable encounter between David Bowie and William Burroughs. Entitled "Beat Godfather Meets Glitter Mainman", the event had been hosted ...
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, April 2013
MOST PEOPLE WHO KNOW ANYTHING about music journalism know that the late Frank Zappa defined it, in 1977, as "people who can't write interviewing people ...
Patrick Lundborg: Psychedelia: An Ancient Culture, A Modern Way of Life
Book Review by Byron Coley, Forced Exposure, April 2013
PATRICK LUNDBORG is a dapper Swedish record collector and culture writer with a penchant for the American underground scene. He's done a few quite good ...
Comment by Mark Shipper, Rock's Backpages, June 2013
ONLY FOUR YEARS too late, but I never looked for anything like this, since I never expected anyone to share my feelings for the work ...
Profile and Interview by Sean O'Hagan, The Observer, 2 June 2013
Last year, the multi-millionaire publishing mogul and drug-addled dissolute Felix Dennis was diagnosed with throat cancer. But don't count him out yet, he tells Sean ...
The Riot Grrrl Collection by Lisa Darms (The Feminist Press)
Book Review by Evelyn McDonnell, Los Angeles Times, 6 June 2013
The Riot Grrrl Collection spreads girl germs of the '90s movement ...
Burt Bacharach: Royal Festival Hall, London SE1; Anyone Who Had a Heart (Alcourt)
Review by Kate Mossman, New Statesman, 18 July 2013
The effect of seeing Bacharach live at the Royal Festival hall was to be hit by more top-40 songs that you'd think a single act ...
The Deviants, Mick Farren: Goodbye, Mick Farren, activist, rabble-rousing rocker and NME journalist
Memoir by Charles Shaar Murray, The Guardian, 29 July 2013
Mick Farren, who died onstage in London on Saturday, was a "living banner for the psychedelic left". He was also a friend who joined me ...
Memoir by Paul Gorman, Rock's Backpages, 31 July 2013
GROWING UP IN London in the '60s and '70s with an interest in the counterculture, music and street politics meant that the shaggy-headed figure of ...
The Runaways: Evelyn McDonnell: Queens of Noise – The Real Story of the Runaways (Da Capo)
Book Review by Bob Ruggiero, Houston Press, 21 August 2013
ANYONE WHO has seen either the Hollywood film The Runaways or the documentary Edgeplay may think they know the story of this band of five ...
The Who: Richard Weight: Mod – A Very British Style (Bodley Head)
Book Review by Ian Penman, London Review of Books, 29 August 2013
IN A LOVELY 1963 piece on Miles Davis, Kenneth Tynan quoted Cocteau to illuminate the art of his "discreet, elliptical" subject: Davis was one of ...
Lloyd Bradley: Sounds Like London – 100 Years Of Black Music In The Capital (Serpent's Tail)
Book Review by Karl Dallas, Morning Star, 8 October 2013
Authentic account of black music's capital origins ...
Book Review by Greg Wilson, electrofunkroots.co.uk, 9 October 2013
JUST FINISHED a captivating and, to my mind, long-overdue book, which covers the history of black music in the capital spanning (almost) 100 years, the ...
Morrissey: Autobiography (Penguin)
Book Review by Stuart Maconie, The Observer, 19 October 2013
IT CAME UPON a midnight clear. Or just after anyway, if you downloaded the eBook or queued in one of the several bookshops that opened ...
Comment by Ryan Carse, Rock's Backpages, November 2013
FRANK ZAPPA successfully offended an entire industry in 1977 during an interview with Bruce Kirkland for the Toronto Star newspaper. He said, "Most rock journalism ...
The Beatles: Mark Lewisohn: Tune In: The Beatles – All These Years, Volume 1
Book Review by Tim Riley, The New York Times, 6 December 2013
APPROACHES TO retelling the Beatles' story slice in two distinct directions: narrow or wide. Some authors choose a single figure and bore down deep, which ...
Book Excerpt by Charles Shaar Murray, 'Elvis Died For Somebody's Sins But Not Mine', Spring 2013
MICK FARREN IS a man of many parts, an impressive number of which are still working despite the natural wear and-tear incurred by decades of ...
Donald Fagen, Steely Dan: Donald Fagen: Eminent Hipsters (Viking)
Book Review by Ian Penman, City Journal, 16 January 2014
IN JANUARY 1974, Joni Mitchell released the exquisite, deceptively sunny Court and Spark; two months later, on the penultimate day of March, the Ramones played their ...
Genesis, Mike + the Mechanics: Mike Rutherford: The Trick Of The Tale
Retrospective and Interview by Daryl Easlea, Record Collector, February 2014
Genesis and Mike + The Mechanics' founder Mike Rutherford has written an autobiography with a difference. Daryl Easlea met him to discuss The Living Years. ...
Lester Bangs: Remembering Philip Seymour Hoffman, Lester Bangs and Almost Famous
Retrospective by Jaan Uhelszki, Spin, 3 February 2014
WHEN PHILIP Seymour Hoffman died Sunday of an apparent overdose in his Greenwich Village apartment, it was like losing Lester Bangs all over again. ...
Book Review by Bob Ruggiero, Houston Press, 18 March 2014
MAKE NO MISTAKE. While only two of the six original members of the Allman Brothers Band were actual biological siblings, the fraternal ties of Duane ...
KISS: Paul Stanley: Face the Music – A Life Exposed (HarperOne)
Book Review by Bob Ruggiero, Houston Press, 9 April 2014
WITH THE publication of this glitter-, greasepaint- and leather-slathered tome, all four original members of KISS have now penned their autobiographies. ...
Big Star, The Box Tops, Alex Chilton: Holly George-Warren's Alex Chilton
Memoir by Binky Philips, Huffington Post, 11 April 2014
When I was running the East Village record store, St Mark's Sounds in the 1980s, Alex Chilton's LP Like Flies On Sherbert [sic] was a ...
Obituary by Dave Laing, The Guardian, 25 April 2014
THE LATE 1960s and the '70s saw a sea change in media coverage of popular culture, especially cinema and music. Film reviewers and pop journalists ...
Bob Dylan: Oh No! Not Another Bob Dylan Book: David Kinney's The Dylanologists
Book Review by Larry Jaffee, Huffington Post, May 2014
"Sometimes it seemed that every fan in Britain had launched a fanzine…" —David Kinney, The Dylanologists ...
Viv Albertine, The Slits: The Creative Life of Viv Albertine
Interview by Sheryl Garratt, Daily Telegraph, 11 May 2014
She hung out with Sid Vicious, trashed hotel rooms and her album was blacklisted. So what's changed for the former punk Viv Albertine – apart ...
Book Review by Holly Gleason, Paste, 12 May 2014
EVERY SO OFTEN, a music bio arrives that becomes "the book to read." Think of Last Train To Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley and ...
Book Review by Robert Dean Lurie, Front Porch Republic, 16 May 2014
LEONARD COHEN occupies an unusual position in popular music history. He is routinely neglected by those "Best of the 60's" nostalgia-fests you see on VH1, ...
Bert Berns: Hit Man: Joel Selvin's Here Comes the Night
Book Review by Robert Gordon, The New York Times Book Review, 30 May 2014
BERT BERNS the producer is the Phil Spector you've never heard of. Bert Berns the songwriter is the Leiber and Stoller you've never heard of. ...
Sturgill Simpson: Metamodern Sounds in Country Music (Loose)
Review by Rob Hughes, Uncut, June 2014
Anyone for metaphysical prog country? Nashville songwriter heads for the stars ...
Book Review by Kirk Silsbee, Downbeat, July 2014
AMERICAN POP MUSIC from the no-man's-land after The Day The Music Died (Buddy Holly's fatal 1959 plane crash) and before the arrival of the Beatles ...
Book Review by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, July 2014
IF EVERYBODY WHO heard the Velvet Underground in the late 1960s went on to form a punk group, it could be argued that everybody who ...
Bob Dylan: In The Dylan Zone: An excerpt from True Love Scars
Book Excerpt by Michael Goldberg, 'True Love Scars' (Neumu Press), July 2014
True Love Scars is a rock 'n' roll/ coming of age novel set in the late '60s and early '70s. If you liked On The ...
David Stubbs: Krautrock and the Building of Modern Germany
Book Review by Stuart Maconie, New Statesman, 22 August 2014
Krautrock is a term that is bandied about alarmingly freely by bloggers, hipsters and, most of all, bands, desperate for its reflected cool — but ...
Worth Their Wait: The UK Music Press in the late '70s/early '80s
Retrospective by Simon Reynolds, Pitchfork, 2 September 2014
Originally published in the first edition of our print quarterly The Pitchfork Review last winter, this story finds author Simon Reynolds looking back on his ...
Book Review by Ian Penman, London Review of Books, 25 September 2014
IN THE SPRING of 1965, on the road between Memphis and Hollywood, desert plains all around, his bloodstream torqued by a tinnital static of prescription ...
The Fall: Steve Hanley and Olivia Piekarski: The Big Midweek: Life Inside The Fall
Book Review by Barney Hoskyns, The Guardian, 1 October 2014
(This is the original – and very slightly different – version of the review that appeared in the Guardian...) IN HER BLURB for this compelling memoir, ...
Obituary by Chris Salewicz, The Independent, 14 October 2014
AT THE 1979 Christmas party thrown by Rolling Stone magazine, Charles M. Young, one of the publication's star writers, who in a long 1977 article ...
Leonard Cohen: Tea and Oranges on High Holy Days
Retrospective by Kirk Silsbee, Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, 17 October 2014
LIKE MANY OF us, author Harvey Kubernik first heard Leonard Cohen through his interpreters. Judy Collins recorded Cohen's obliquely lyrical 'Suzanne' and the sardonic suicide ...
Anthrax's Scott Ian Spins Tales From the Thrash Side
Interview by Bob Ruggiero, Houston Press, 5 November 2014
LIKE MANY MEN currently in their mid-to-late forties, Anthrax co-founder/rhythm guitarist Scott Ian was a huge, practically obsessive KISS fan growing up. ...
Hunter Thompson Pays a Visit to Babylon
Retrospective by Bill Wasserzieher, Rock's Backpages, 2015
HUNTER THOMPSON'S SUICIDE ten years ago this month should not have come as a surprise. His dark tales about riding with a biker gang, Mace-spraying ...
Book Excerpt by Brian Case, On the Snap (Caught by the River, 2015), 2015
THERE WAS a general impression among the rock writers when I arrived that jazz was something that went with pottery in St Ives, whereas I ...
James Bay: The new noise bubble: are critics' choice awards for new artists a blessing or a curse?
Comment by Caroline Sullivan, The Guardian, 1 January 2015
Awards such as the BBC's Sound Of 2015 can be vital in helping new artists break through and get noticed by fans — but can ...
Report and Interview by Dorian Lynskey, The Guardian, 21 January 2015
Forget moon in June. Today's pop lyrics are written by Pulitzer-winning novelists. We talk to the writers muscling into pop – and the musicians flirting ...
Dead Kennedys: Highway to Hell: My Life on the Road with the Dead Kennedys
Memoir by Amy Linden, Cuepoint, 3 February 2015
IN 1981, I MOVED back to New York City after spending four years in San Francisco. I was 22, and a childhood friend and I ...
Bob Stanley: Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! – The Story of Pop Music from Bill Haley to Beyoncé (W.W. Norton)
Book Review by Robert Dean Lurie, The American Conservative, 13 February 2015
I WISH I COULD say that my love of pop music began when my middle school music teacher showed me a documentary called The Compleat ...
When the NME was the best place in the world to be
Memoir by Mark Ellen, The Independent, 20 February 2015
The magazine is on its uppers, but Mark Ellen, a former writer for the publication, would rather remember the good times ...
Gil Scott-Heron: The Revolution Lives On
Report and Interview by Paul Lester, The Guardian, 22 February 2015
Political activist, rap pioneer and poet Gil Scott-Heron shaped the sound of today – from Talib Kweli and Kanye West to Kendrick Lamar. His friends ...
Phil Spector: Talk of the Town: Phil Spector in London
Book Excerpt by Norman Jopling, 'Shake It Up, Baby!', March 2015
THE RECORD MIRROR office was a four-room apartment above Drum City at 116 Shaftesbury Avenue and employed a total of nine full-time staff and numerous ...
Sleaford Mods: Grammar Wanker: Sleaford Mods 2007‑2014 by Jason Williamson (Bracketpress)
Book Review by John Harris, The Guardian, 18 March 2015
Drug comedowns and fist fights — an angry and uncompromising collection of lyrics. Who else in modern English music is doing anything quite like this? ...
Tracey Thorn: "I'd kill to be able to sing like Adele"
Interview by Jude Rogers, The Guardian, 12 April 2015
The Everything But the Girl frontwoman, whose book about the art of singing is out this month, on Twitter, The X Factor – and why ...
Norman Jopling: Shake It Up Baby – Notes From A Pop Music Reporter, 1961-1972 (Rock History Ltd.)
Book Review by Tony Burke, Blues & Rhythm, May 2015
IN THE EARLY 1960s the U.K.'s music press was dominated by a small group of weekly papers, notably the New Musical Express, (aka NME), the ...
The Rolling Stones: Norman Jopling: Shake It Up Baby! Notes From A Pop Music Reporter 1961-1972
Book Review by Mark Paytress, MOJO, May 2015
ON MAY 8,1963, an issue of New Record Mirror hit the London streets with a lead story that had enormous unforeseen consequences. ...
Richard King: Original Rockers (Faber & Faber)
Book Review by Jamie Atkins, Record Collector, May 2015
IT IS DIFFICULT to imagine a book more guaranteed to stir the nether regions of RC readers than Richard King's expansive memoir of his time ...
Book Review by Barney Hoskyns, The Guardian, 23 May 2015
WHEN RICHARD GOLDSTEIN got married, Murray "the K" Kaufman – the famous New York disc jockey who'd anointed himself "the Fifth Beatle" in 1964 – ...
David Bowie's DNA: Spaceboy Keeps Swinging
Essay by Steve Pafford, DNA, June 2015
David Bowie was the bisexual alien rock star who sold genderfuck to the world. He's also claimed to be the first pop star to declare ...
Keith Richards with James Fox: Life
Book Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, June 2015
LIFE MAY BE a ghosted rock autobiography but it's much more than that. Credit to voracious reader Richards that in James Fox he hired no ...
The Dean of Rock Critics Schools Us On Himself: Robert Christgau's Going Into the City (Dey St.)
Book Review by Jason Gross, Rock's Backpages, June 2015
LET'S SAY THAT you're interested in New York City's mid-to-late 20th century history, plus journalism, plus music journalism, plus critical theory. You're not just in a pretty ...
Kathryn Williams: "Sylvia was a big shadow over my writing"
Interview by Jude Rogers, The Guardian, 14 June 2015
Singer-songwriter Kathryn Williams talks about how Sylvia Plath inspired her new album, and why she is determined to rescue the poet from the 'sexy, depressing ...
Book Review by James Medd, New Statesman, 18 June 2015
That's Entertainment: My Life in the Jam Rick Buckler Omnibus Press, 384pp, £14.95 Deal: My Three Decades of Drumming, Dreams and Drugs with the Grateful Dead Bill ...
Book Review by Peter Stone Brown, CounterPunch, 3 July 2015
THIS YEAR IS the 50th Anniversary of Bob Dylan armed with an electric guitar, taking the stage at the Newport Folk Festival, backed by a ...
Comment by James Brown, Daily Telegraph, 8 July 2015
As the New Musical Express announces it is to go free, here former features editor James Brown writes how the lights went out at the ...
Essay by Paul Bradshaw, Ancient to Future, 15 July 2015
ONE EVENING, as I left the home of friend and fellow scribbler, Neil Spencer, he thrust a weighty tome into my hands and said, "You ...
Book Review by Evelyn McDonnell, Los Angeles Times, 17 September 2015
There's no pretending in Chrissie Hynde's spare, deft memoir Reckless ...
Elvis Costello: Unfaithful Music and Disappearing Ink (Blue Rider Press)
Book Review by Bob Ruggiero, Houston Chronicle, 18 October 2015
Elvis Costello's autobiography offers musical influences, celebrity anecdotes and rock and roll mythology. ...
Terence Trent D'Arby: Neither Fish Nor Flesh
Retrospective by Michael A. Gonzales, soulhead, 21 October 2015
EVERY COUPLE OF years some former fan-turned-journalist comes along to rattle the fame cage of singer/songwriter/producer Sananda Francesco Maitreya, the man who used to be ...
"The Best Things in Life Are Free": Downloads, Streaming, You Tube and Mags
Comment by James Musker, Rock's Backpages, November 2015
THE AGE OF INSTANT access is upon us. We are currently living in a world where it's difficult to avoid sensory overload, as there seems ...
Elvis Costello: Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink
Book Review by Chris Charlesworth, Just Backdated, November 2015
LIKE A HANDFUL of rock stars I have encountered along the way – among them Townshend, Bowie and Zappa – Elvis Costello would have made ...
Book Review by Mike Barnes, The Wire, November 2015
WYNDAM WALLACE was a publicist for the City Slang record label in the late 1990s and our paths crossed many times. My memory of him ...
Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers: Warren Zanes: Petty – The Biography (Henry Holt)
Book Review by Bob Ruggiero, Houston Press, 11 November 2015
YOU WOULD THINK that Tom Petty had it all in the mid to late '90s. On the backside of his forties, he had already enjoyed ...
Patti Smith's Journey to Horses: A Timeline
Retrospective by Caryn Rose, Vulture, 13 November 2015
PATTI SMITH'S Horses, which turned 40 this week, is such a perfectly formed rock-and-roll artifact that it's difficult to imagine that Patti didn't just wake up ...
Elvis Presley: Next Train to Memphis: Peter Guralnick's Sam Phillips
Profile and Interview by Chris Campion, Rock's Backpages, 17 November 2015
AS THE PRE-EMINENT and passionate chronicler of music history, Peter Guralnick is in a league of his own, with a bibliography that not only — ...
Book Review by Larry Jaffee, Women Across Frontiers, 17 November 2015
MY FIRST REVELATORY encounter with Patti Smith was listening on the radio in the fall of 1975 around the time of the release of her ...
Jon Savage: 1966 – The Year the Decade Exploded
Book Review by Bob Stanley, The Guardian, 20 November 2015
THE POP MUSIC you hear in your teenage years affects you more deeply than at any other time in your life. People who don't go ...
Retrospective and Interview by Rob Hughes, Classic Rock, December 2015
WITHOUT PRODUCER and label boss Mike Vernon, the history of British blues would look very different. In the first part of a feature charting his ...
Report and Interview by Bob Ruggiero, Houston Press, 29 December 2015
WELL, AS Guralnick clarifies shortly into his foreword, if Sam Phillips didn't exactly "invent" rock and roll, he at least discovered it. Or so it ...
Book Excerpt by Everett True, '101 Albums You Should Die Before You Hear', 2016
TO THIS DAY, I am not sure why I was so attracted to Lennon as a surly teen. He was egotistical, sexist verging on misogynist, ...
The Rolling Stones: The real-life Jumpin' Jack Flash: how David Litvinoff shook the '60s
Book Review by Jon Savage, The Guardian, 19 January 2016
He inspired Mick Jagger, fought with Lucian Freud and shared lovers with Ronnie Kray. But David Litvinoff's taste for danger would take him into the ...
Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom: The book that declared pop music dead
Retrospective by Bob Stanley, The Observer, 6 February 2016
Nik Cohn thought John Lennon "self-pitying", Led Zeppelin "embarrassing" and rated Del Shannon's 'Runaway' above Van Morrison's entire career. Bob Stanley revisits his 1969 book. ...
Retrospective by Paul Gorman, Paul Gorman Is, 12 February 2016
TODAY IS THE 40th anniversary of the gig at central London venue The Marquee by the Sex Pistols which generated their first substantial media coverage, ...
Black Gospel Music: A white fan considers a hundred-year musical history
Memoir by Tony Cummings, Contemporary Musicians, 25 February 2016
White journalist Tony Cummings muses on his decades-long fascination with black gospel music. ...
The Pad: An excerpt from Michael Goldberg's The Flowers Lied
Book Excerpt by Michael Goldberg, 'The Flowers Lied', March 2016
Michael Goldberg's rock 'n' roll coming-of-age novel, The Flowers Lied, has just been published. Richard Meltzer wrote that Goldberg's first novel, True Love Scars, was ...
Book Review by Byron Coley, The Wire, March 2016
THE LATE Bob Cobbing was an extraordinary individual. People, especially Americans such as myself, tend to be familiar with just one aspect of his long ...
The Replacements: Bob Mehr: Trouble Boys – The True Story of the Replacements
Book Review by Will Hermes, Rolling Stone, 10 March 2016
A new biography dives deep into the "'80s punk underdogs" epic, tragic story. ...
Marvin Gaye, MC5, Iggy Pop & James Williamson: Ben Edmonds, 1950-2016
Obituary by Susan Whitall, Detroit News, 11 March 2016
AWARD-WINNING music journalist Ben Edmonds died at his home in Detroit on Friday morning after a battle with pancreatic cancer that lasted most of last ...
The Replacements: Bob Mehr: Trouble Boys – The True Story Of The Replacements (Da Capo)
Book Review by Jamie Atkins, Record Collector, April 2016
IN RECENT YEARS there's been a shift in the way the Replacements are regarded. While for those in the know, they've always been adored, there ...
Lita Ford, The Runaways: Lita Ford: Living Like A Runaway – A Memoir (Dey Street)
Book Review by Bob Ruggiero, Houston Press, 6 April 2016
SHORTLY BEFORE hitting her commercial peak in 1988 with her third solo record, Lita, and its two monster singles and videos – 'Kiss Me Deadly' ...
Captain and Tennille: Toni Tennille on her Memoir
Retrospective and Interview by Bob Ruggiero, Houston Chronicle, 22 April 2016
Memoir reveals Captain and Tennille's private (and bizarre) misery. ...
Interview by Sean O'Hagan, The Guardian, 24 April 2016
WILLY VLAUTIN is an American musician and novelist based in Portland, Oregon. His alt-country band Richmond Fontaine won critical acclaim with their 2004 album, Post ...
Book Review by Ian Penman, London Review of Books, 5 May 2016
THE WOMAN WHO cuts my hair – forty-something, old enough to remember punk but a neo-hippie these days – recently mentioned she'd been to see ...
Sniffin' Glue: A fanzine that epitomized punk
Retrospective and Interview by Peter Silverton, The Independent, 10 May 2016
It's UK punk's 40th anniversary year – sort of – and among the work being celebrated is Sniffin' Glue, the photocopied publication that embodied the ...
Ben Ratliff: Every Song Ever/John Seabrook: The Song Machine and other new books
Book Review by James Medd, New Statesman, 13 May 2016
The digital revolution has turned pop into a world of smart playlists and surprise albums. Yet the way we engage with music remains remarkably similar. ...
Paul McCartney: Philip Norman: Paul McCartney – The Biography
Book Review by Chris Charlesworth, Just Backdated, June 2016
WHAT MUST IT be like to be Paul McCartney? Deluged by gargantuan levels of fame since the age of 21, he has remained squarely in ...
Skyhooks: The Glory Days Of RAM Magazine: A Q&A with Anthony O'Grady
Retrospective and Interview by Dave Laing (Australia), I Like Your Old Stuff, 20 July 2016
ONE OF THE most influential figures on the Australian rock scene of the late '70s and early '80s – and the man who wrote liner notes ...
Vivien Goldman: Do Everything Yourself: The Lessons Of Punk Renaissance Woman Vivien Goldman
Profile and Interview by Evelyn McDonnell, Record, The (NPR), 21 July 2016
ON JUNE 29, 64 years after the day she was born in London to Jewish parents who had fled Nazi Germany, Vivien Goldman was back ...
The Faces, Michael Jackson, The Police, Slade: John Pidgeon, 1947-2016
Obituary by Richard Williams, The Guardian, 21 July 2016
Rock writer turned broadcasting executive who did much to reinvigorate BBC radio comedy. ...
Guide by Edwin Pouncey, The Wire, August 2016
Channelling the magick of Aleister Crowley and the neo-paganism of witchcraft, occult rock is the sound of rock 'n' roll's secret society. Edwin Pouncey reads ...
The Economics of Rock Criticism
Comment by Fred Mills, Blurt, September 2016
Ever wonder why reviewers do what they do when they are actually LOSING money on the deal? (First in a series, collect them all.) ...
Bruce Springsteen: Born To Run (Simon & Schuster)
Book Review by Chris Charlesworth, Just Backdated, October 2016
TWO OF THE best Bruce Springsteen shows I ever saw were at Wembley Stadium in July of 1985. ...
The Fall: Totally Wired: The Fall in NZ, 1982
Book Excerpt by Roger Shepherd, 'In Love with These Times' (Harper Collins), October 2016
WE ALL LOVED The Fall. They were one of the original English punk bands inspired by the Sex Pistols' visit to Manchester and quickly grew ...
New Order: Peter Hook: Substance – Inside New Order
Book Review by Andy Beckett, The Guardian, 5 October 2016
The band's bassist gives full details of drugs, groupies and excesses on tour, but his account of New Order's voyage to becoming a pop institution ...
Brian Wilson with Ben Greenman: I Am Brian Wilson – A Memoir (Da Capo)
Book Review by Bob Ruggiero, Houston Chronicle, 7 October 2016
FOR MOST of his life, Brian Wilson has heard voices in his head. They might be the sweet harmonies of his bandmates in the Beach ...
The Beach Boys: Mike Love: Good Vibrations
Book Review by Bob Stanley, The Guardian, 13 October 2016
Love lacked the sensitivity of his cousin Brian Wilson, but he kept the band going after their fall from grace. He tells his side of ...
John Cage: Laura Kuhn (ed.): The Selected Letters of John Cage
Book Review by Tim Page, New York Review of Books, 27 October 2016
THERE ARE CERTAIN creative figures whose mature works are almost tangential to their enduring artistic influence. Marcel Duchamp falls into this group, as does Andy ...
Marc Bolan, David Bowie: Simon Reynolds: Shock & Awe – Glam Rock And Its Legacy (Faber)
Book Review by Jamie Atkins, Record Collector, November 2016
AFTER DEFINING studies of post-punk (Rip It Up & Start Again) and nostalgia (Retromania), Simon Reynolds turns his gaze to glam in all its glory. ...
Johnny Marr, The Sex Pistols: Steve Jones – Lonely Boy; Johnny Marr – Set The Boy Free
Book Review by Jude Rogers, The Observer, 20 November 2016
Contrasting memoirs of life in the Sex Pistols and the Smiths from two charismatic working-class guitarists. ...
Johnny Marr, The Smiths: Johnny Marr: Set The Boy Free
Book Review by Stuart Maconie, Daily Mail, 26 November 2016
Written in disarmingly unaffected prose, Johnny Marr's long-awaited autobiography avoids all the rock and roll clichés. ...
David Hepworth: 1971 – Never A Dull Moment, Rock's Golden Year
Book Review by Chris Charlesworth, Just Backdated, December 2016
THERE CAN'T BE many amongst us who haven't at one time or another wished we could turn the clock back to a period in time ...
Paul Simon: Peter Ames Carlin: Homeward Bound – The Life Of Paul Simon
Book Review by Chris Charlesworth, Just Backdated, December 2016
IF EVER A career in music was pre-ordained, it is that of Paul Simon, the ambitious, gifted and ever-so-scrupulous first son of a professional double-bass ...
Book Review by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, December 2016
THE BAND'S STORY continues to beguile: how did a group so rich in talent and promise implode so hopelessly, only to pull the rabbit out ...
The Band, Robbie Robertson: Robbie Robertson: Testimony (Heineman)
Book Review by Jamie Atkins, Record Collector, December 2016
ONE OF THE delightful aspects of The Last Waltz, Martin Scorsese's doc of The Band's goodbye hootenanny, are the scene-setting vignettes from the group that ...
The Best Music Journalism Of 2016
Essay by Jason Gross, Rock's Backpages, December 2016
WE WANTED 2016 to end and we're getting our wish, but the fallout from this awful year will be haunting us for a while – ...
Skid Row: Sebastian Bach: 18 and Life on Skid Row (Dey St. Books)
Book Review by Bob Ruggiero, Houston Press, 13 December 2016
FOR ANYONE WHO has seen an interview with Sebastian Bach, he of the motor-mouth, hellzapoppin', frenetic energy and a constant stream of verbal non sequiturs, two ...
Bruce Springsteen: Born to Run (Simon & Schuster)
Book Review by Robert Dean Lurie, National Review, 31 December 2016
SPRINGSTEEN. THE BOSS. Bruuuuuce. A lot of hyperbolic ink has been spilled over this man through the years, so I'm going to walk it back ...
Paul Nelson: Bartleby on Carmine Street
Memoir by Raphael Rubinstein, The Brooklyn Rail, Summer 2016
"Bartleby, when confronted by failure, conceded magnificently, he did not commit suicide or become interminably bitter, he simply ate ginger-nuts." – Enrique Vila-Matas ...
Barry Cain and Neil Matthews: Flexipop! The Book
Book Review by Jamie Atkins, , January 2017
ADAM ANT revealing that, as a child, his father used to call him Fadius Nicodemus; the peculiar habits of Robert Smith ("Today I dressed up ...
The Brian Jonestown Massacre, Spacemen 3, Spiritualized: Will Carruthers: Spaced
Interview by Julian Marszalek, Bass Guitar, January 2017
After playing bass with Spacemen 3, Spiritualized, the Brian Jonestown Massacre and Dead Skeletons, what's a man to do? Write a memoir of course. Julian ...
Book Review by Ian Penman, London Review of Books, 5 January 2017
IN 1975, DAVID BOWIE was in Los Angeles pretending to star in a film that wasn't being made, adapted from a memoir he would never ...
David Hajdu: Love for Sale/Marc Meyers: Anatomy of a Song/ Ed Ward: History of Rock'n'Roll, Vol. 1
Book Review by James Medd, New Statesman, 14 January 2017
For decades, white male critics have championed white male rock. Can a new school of writing re-evaluate the history of pop music? ...
The Band, Robbie Robertson: Robbie Robertson: Testimony
Book Review by Clinton Heylin, The Spectator, 21 January 2017
THE RECENT SPATE of rock memoirs has proved one of the less rewarding sub-genres in the post-digital Gutenberg galaxy. Obeying few rules of a good ...
The Beatles: Steve Turner: Beatles '66 – The Revolutionary Year
Book Review by Chris Charlesworth, Just Backdated, February 2017
"ED SHEERAN," screams the cover of this months GQ magazine. "How he became the biggest pop star on the planet." Not while Paul McCartney walks ...
Wilson Pickett: Tony Fletcher: In The Midnight Hour – The Life & Soul Of Wilson Pickett
Book Review by Chris Charlesworth, Just Backdated, February 2017
ABUSE RUNS in the family, or so they say. Those ill-treated as children go on to ill-treat as adults and it's near impossible to break ...
Working at the Artists' Garage: Excerpts from Michael Goldberg's Untitled
Book Excerpt by Michael Goldberg, Neumu Press, March 2017
Michael Goldberg's rock 'n' roll coming-of-age novel, Untitled, has just been published. "Oral prose," writes Larry Beckett, the brilliant poet and songwriter who penned the ...
Prince: Ben Greenman: Dig If You Will The Picture (Faber & Faber)
Book Review by Jamie Atkins, Record Collector, May 2017
IT'S NO SURPRISE that Prince's death has inspired reams of writing attempting to either unravel the man, his creativity and unique appeal or – less ...
Remembering the writer Richard C. Walls
Memoir by Bill Holdship, Detroit Metro Times, 22 May 2017
Detroit-based writer Richard C. Walls died in hospice care over the weekend. Walls was a longtime writer for Creem, and reviewed films as recently as ...
Meow! My Life with Tiger Beat's Teen Idols: An Introduction
Book Excerpt by Ann Moses, 'Meow!', June 2017
FEBRUARY 3, 1968 IT'S MY TWENTY-FIRST birthday. I'm standing at the front window of my house a block below the Hollywood sign, wearing a dress made ...
Harold Bronson: My British Invasion
Book Review by John Tobler, Rock's Backpages, June 2017
MY FIRST ENCOUNTER with Harold Bronson was at the Pasadena Rose Bowl Swapmeet in November, 1973. We have met subsequently on probably more than a ...
Margaret Moser: Queen Of Austin, Is Dancing In The Light
Report and Interview by Joe Nick Patoski, NPR, 22 June 2017
JUNE 18 WAS the beginning of a week-long Open House at Tex Pop, the South Texas Museum of Popular Culture — a storefront wedged between ...
Elvis Presley: Caught in a Trap: The Kidnapping of Elvis – Two Excerpts
Book Excerpt by Chris Charlesworth, (Red Planet Books), August 2017
The first extract from Caught in a Trap features Elvis in hospital (which is true) accepting a phone call from Richard Nixon (which probably isn't). ...
Allan Jones: Can't Stand Up For Falling Down: Rock'n'roll War Stories
Book Review by Chris Charlesworth, Just Backdated, August 2017
THE AGE OF DEFERENCE had yet to lapse when I joined Melody Maker in 1970. Four years later, when Allan Jones joined the paper, it ...
Book Review by Barbara Ellen, The Guardian, 8 August 2017
This oral history of New York's musical renaissance is vivid, informative and full of passion. ...
Report and Interview by Edward Helmore, The Guardian, 22 October 2017
Jann Wenner, whose magazine charted pop music and culture since the '60s, gave Joe Hagan full access but is unhappy with the result, especially "the ...
Joe Hagan: Sticky Fingers – The Life and Times of Jann Wenner and Rolling Stone Magazine
Book Review by Mick Brown, Daily Telegraph, 29 October 2017
This biography of Rolling Stone's founder is a lurid and revelatory tale of drugs, sex — and power. ...
Life after the NME: Nick Logan's journey from Smash Hits to The Face
Book Excerpt by Paul Gorman, 'The Story of The Face' (Thames & Hudson), November 2017
PAUSING TO MAKE his last appointment in the form of Danny Baker, fresh from punk fanzine Sniffin' Glue, Nick Logan handed in his notice as ...
Paul Gorman: The Story of The Face
Book Review by Andy Beckett, The Guardian, 1 November 2017
This huge, rich book is a celebration not only of the style bible but of London, Manchester and Liverpool in the late 20th century. ...
Joe Hagan: Sticky Fingers – The Life & Times of Jann Wenner & Rolling Stone Magazine
Book Review by Chris Charlesworth, Just Backdated, 3 November 2017
THE IMAGE OF the brooding, avaricious, power-hungry newspaper proprietor was set in stone by Orson Welles in the film Citizen Kane and through the ages ...
How The Face Launched the 21st Century
Retrospective by Paul Gorman, GQ, 9 November 2017
OVER THE SUMMER of 1988, editor/publisher Nick Logan — hands-down the greatest British magazine innovator of our time — seriously contemplated shuttering his independently published ...
David Hepworth: Uncommon People – The Rise and Fall of the Rock Stars
Book Review by Erik Himmelsbach, Los Angeles Times Book Review, 16 November 2017
IT'S PROBABLY SAFE TO assume that most of us have wanted to be a rock star at some point in our lives. The impulse is ...
Joe Hagan: Sticky Fingers – The Life and Times of Jann Wenner and Rolling Stone Magazine
Book Review by Bob Ruggiero, Houston Press, 17 November 2017
JOE HAGAN IS one smart guy. ...
Profile and Interview by Holly Gleason, The East Nashvillian, December 2017
How a move to East Nashville invigorated NPR's lead music critic Ann Powers ...
Memoir by Steve Pafford, stevepafford.com, 7 December 2017
IT'S AMAZING THE stuff you find when you're least expecting it. ...
Slade: Dave Hill: So Here It Is (Unbound)
Book Review by Jude Rogers, New Statesman, 22 December 2017
THE EXCLAMATION mark in biography is a peculiar thing. It leaps from the page like a spark from a bomb, but it is jollier, perkier, ...
Joni Mitchell: David Yaffe: Reckless Daughter: A Portrait of Joni Mitchell
Book Review by Clinton Heylin, unpublished, Fall 2017
WARREN ZEVON, a Laurel Canyon contemporary of Joni Mitchell, once wrote a song called 'Accidentally Like A Martyr'. Taking a leaf from Zevon, David Yaffe's ...
James Brown: Cliff White, 1945-2018
Obituary by Paul Sexton, Music Week, 30 January 2018
CLIFF WHITE, one of the UK's leading journalistic authorities on soul music and a Grammy winner for his work on James Brown's Star Time box ...
Bob Dylan: "A hundred-mile-an-hour clip": Bob Dylan and the Beats
Book Excerpt by Michael Goldberg, 'Kerouac on Record' (Bloomsbury), March 2018
Editor's note: The just-published Kerouac On Record includes many essays about the influence of Jack Kerouac on musicians, including the Grateful Dead, Patti Smith, Tom ...
Obituary by Bill Millar, Now Dig This, March 2018
Bill Millar raises a glass to the well-known and highly respected record industry veteran, long-time R&B, rock 'n' roll, soul and blues fan who passed ...
Anna von Hausswolff: 'Forget about space and time, it's eternal and mysterious'
Interview by Kieron Tyler, The Arts Desk, 2 March 2018
The Swedish singer-songwriter on her new album Dead Magic ...
The NME is dead. But its soul left its body long ago
Essay by Nick Hasted, The Independent, 9 March 2018
The former bastion of counterculture captured the spirit of punk and in its heyday was uncompromising. Nick Hasted remembers the good times, and charts how the magazine ...
Farewell NME – irreverent, acerbic, essential. At least when I was there!
Comment by Barbara Ellen, The Observer, 11 March 2018
In an era of bland stars and Spotify, is it any wonder the printed music press is no more? ...
The lost world of the music weekly: Why NME was the last of an extinct species
Comment by Stuart Maconie, New Statesman, 14 March 2018
ONE EVENING IN the late 1980s, returning from my part-time job teaching "scallies" ethnomethodology in Skelmersdale, I opened a letter with a London postmark. It was ...
Book Excerpt by Jim Irvin, 'From Hallelujah to the Last Goodbye' (Post Hill), May 2018
Excerpted from Jeff Buckley: From Hallelujah to the Last Goodbye by Jeff's former manager Dave Lory and former MOJO man Jim Irvin (Post Hill Press). ...
The Beatles: Derek Taylor: As Time Goes By (Faber)
Book Review by Mick Brown, Sunday Telegraph, 5 May 2018
ONE MAGICAL weekend in the summer of 1968, Derek Taylor, the press agent for the Beatles, took a trip with Paul McCartney and the singer ...
Retrospective and Interview by Craig McLean, The Observer, 6 May 2018
Pamela Des Barres had the giants of rock'n'roll in the palm of her hand, as her candid memoir reveals. ...
Stiff Little Fingers: Stuart Bailie on Trouble Songs: "I wanted to do something beautiful and pure"
Interview by Peter Murphy, The Irish Times, 12 May 2018
For his new book, about the music that soundtracked the Troubles in Northern Ireland, Belfast journalist Stuart Bailie followed the DIY aesthetic of the punk-era ...
The Beatles: Derek Taylor: The Fifth Beatle
Retrospective by Jon Savage, GQ, 20 May 2018
He was the proto multi-hyphenate, serving as press officer, PA and confidante to the Beatles while still finding time to master journalism, launch the Byrds, ...
"Country Music … Was Anything BUT Pure": An Interview with Bill Malone and Tracey Laird
Retrospective and Interview by Will Hermes, Longreads, 4 June 2018
The co-authors of Country Music USA – a revised edition of the genre's definitive history – talk about the music's African-American tributaries, its unpredictable politics, ...
Memoir by Chris Charlesworth, Just Backdated, 5 June 2018
MY WRITER FRIEND Jerry Hopkins, who died at the weekend aged 82, was a grizzled old veteran of rock's seminal years. ...
Book Excerpt by Martin Colyer, 'Five Things I Saw & Heard This Week', July 2018
Excerpts from RBP co-founder Colyer's new book Five Things I Saw & Heard This Week, published this week with an introduction by Richard Williams ...
The Band: John Niven's Music from Big Pink: A Foreword
Book Excerpt by Barney Hoskyns, 'Music from Big Pink' (Bloomsbury), July 2018
THE FACT THAT John Niven was just two years old in 1968 – the year in which The Band's Music from Big Pink was released ...
Jimmy Page: Chris Salewicz: Jimmy Page – The Definitive Biography
Book Review by Chris Charlesworth, Just Backdated, August 2018
BACK IN 2012 I was involved in convoluted negotiations with Jimmy Page's lawyer for Omnibus Press to publish a trade edition of the photo book ...
Wayne Kramer: MC5's Wayne Kramer Testifies about Music, Drugs, and Not Being "Revolutionary" Enough?
Report and Interview by Bob Ruggiero, Houston Press, 13 August 2018
IT'S HARD TO fathom today that the FBI would be interested in the daily activities of, say, the Foo Fighters, Imagine Dragons, or Fall Out ...
Guide by Steve Matteo, Boomer, 17 August 2018
Recent books by and about favorite boomer musicians and influencers ...
Interview by Larry LeBlanc, Celebrity Access, 30 August 2018
YOU ARE GOING to have to wait for a film to make much sense of Toby Mamis' fabulously winding career. ...
Report and Interview by Steven R Rosen, Cincinnati CityBeat, 23 October 2018
Kramer and members of Soundgarden, Faith No More and Fugazi perform MC5 classics at Bogart's on Oct. 25. ...
What crisis? Why music journalism is actually healthier than ever
Report and Interview by Dave Simpson, The Guardian, 24 October 2018
A steady decline in circulation of the music press, epitomised by the closure of NME this year, has created new opportunities for stalwarts and niche ...
Roger Daltrey: Thanks A Lot, Mr. Kibblewhite – My Story
Book Review by Chris Charlesworth, Just Backdated, November 2018
AMONGST THEIR many virtues, the Who were disgustingly honest. Jagger only told you what he wanted to tell you, Led Zep were taciturn, Floyd aloof ...
David Bowie's DNA: Spaceboy Keeps Swinging
Retrospective by Steve Pafford, DNA, 3 November 2018
David Bowie was the bisexual alien rock star who sold genderfuck to the world. He's also claimed to be the first pop star to declare ...
Roger Daltrey: Thanks a Lot Mr Kibblewhite – My Story
Book Review by Stephen Dalton, The Times, 10 November 2018
The recollections of the most sober member of the Who are distinctly hazy, Stephen Dalton finds. ...
A Top 40 Countdown & A Plea For a Mitzvah in the Streaming Age: The Best Music Journalism of 2018
Guide by Jason Gross, Rock's Backpages, December 2018
2018 WAS A really good year, just not politically, socially, psychologically and spiritually... well, there was plenty of good music, as Fader, Consequence of Sound ...
Obituary by Clinton Walker, Rock's Backpages, December 2018
ANTHONY O'GRADY, who died on 19 December, was the Godfather here in Australia. He was the writer/editor/publisher who transformed Australian rock journalism and music magazines, ...
Mick Jagger: Memo from Jagger: The Story of Performance
Book Excerpt by Jay Glennie, Rock's Backpages, December 2018
"DO YOU FANCY writing a book on Performance?" It was Sandy Lieberson on the phone, the producer of Performance, with the offer of a lifetime. ...
Billie Holiday: Lady Sings the Blues
Book Review by Nick Hornby, The Sunday Times, 9 December 2018
Unsparing in its portrayal of addiction, divorce and racism, Billie Holiday's memoir is now a Penguin Modern Classic. ...
Laurence Cane-Honeysett: The Story of Trojan Records
Book Review by Tony Burke, Morning Star, 15 December 2018
GROWING UP in the early 1960s in Manchester, with grandparents living in Moss Side, the infectious music of bluebeat and ska records newly imported from ...
David Cavanagh: The writer who saw the musicians behind the music
Comment by John Harris, The Guardian, 31 December 2018
With his acute observations on David Bowie, Paul Weller and Radiohead, Cavanagh combined a passion for music with an eye for the small details of ...
Book Excerpt by Maud Berthomier, 'Encore Plus De Bruit' (Éditions Tristram), 2019
"Because in the end to me, even today, it's never entirely clear exactly what any interview is about. Sometimes, the most important thing in an ...
The Doubts Aired As Gags: Three Decades of Cross-Cultural Utopianism in UK Music-Writing
Book Excerpt by Mark Sinker, Strange Attractor Press, January 2019
Extract from Mark Sinker's introduction to A HIDDEN LANDSCAPE ONCE A WEEK: The Unruly Curiosity of the UK Music Press in the 1960s-80s, in the words ...
Obituary by Tony Russell, The Guardian, 14 January 2019
Music writer, rock correspondent and academic who understood and communicated the cultural worth of pop. ...
Uncle Tupelo, Wilco: Jeff Tweedy: At Least That's What He Said
Interview by Jamie Atkins, Record Collector, February 2019
The recent publication of his autobiography and the release of his first solo album, Warm, have seen Wilco man Jeff Tweedy reflect on a remarkable ...
Les Fancourt and Bob McGrath: The Blues Discography 1943–1970 (Third Edition)
Book Excerpt by Tony Burke, Eyeball Productions, February 2019
WELCOME TO the expanded and revised third edition of The Blues Discography 1943–1970. It is now 50 years since Mike Leadbitter and Neil Slaven first ...
Memoir by Geoffrey Cannon, Rock's Backpages, February 2019
"THE PAST is never dead. It is not even past" rightly said William Faulkner. My time as a regular writer on rock music was half ...
Lazy Lester, Lightnin' Slim, Slim Harpo: Randy Fox: Shake Your Hips – The Excello Records Story
Book Review by Tony Burke, Blues & Rhythm, March 2019
FOR MANY UK blues fans, Mike Vernon's Blue Horizon Records opened the door to Excello Records. ...
Taylor Jenkins Reid: Daisy Jones & the Six
Book Review by Chris Charlesworth, Just Backdated, March 2019
IN DECEMBER 1972 I found myself in the US reporting for Melody Maker on a Deep Purple tour as it visited Des Moines and Indianapolis. In ...
Nirvana: Danny Goldberg: Serving the Servant – Remembering Kurt Cobain (Ecco)
Book Review by Michael Simmons, L.A. Weekly, 12 April 2019
MUSIC BIZ macher, political activist and author Danny Goldberg's new book is Serving the Servant: Remembering Kurt Cobain (Ecco), a reminiscence of his time as ...
Nick Cave, Larry "Ratso" Sloman: Ratso Has A Record (and a duet with Nick Cave)
Comment by Michael Simmons, Dangerous Minds, 25 April 2019
WHAT MOST PEOPLE dream about, Larry "Ratso" Sloman makes happen. Anyone who's read Ratso's first book, 1978's On The Road With Bob Dylan, has witnessed ...
Book Review by Tony Burke, Morning Star, May 2019
THOUGH HE only made 40 recordings, US blues artist Robert Johnson's legacy has endured for over eight decades and his songs are now part of ...
Cypress Hill, Tricky, Barry White: It's Like That: The Makings of a Hip-Hop Writer
Memoir by Michael A. Gonzales, Longreads, June 2019
Hip-hop was a different kind of music that needed a different kind of writer to cover it. This is how Michael A. Gonzales came of ...
Book Review by Clinton Heylin, The Spectator, 8 June 2019
The post-punk band were great performers. But they sold very few records, and their lead singer committed suicide aged 23 ...
Retrospective and Interview by Jude Rogers, New Statesman, 4 July 2019
How mythmakers shaped the music scene. ...
The Beatles: Mark Lewisohn: Why I can't just ...Let It Be!
Interview by Graeme Thomson, Mail On Sunday, 13 July 2019
The world's foremost authority on the Beatles, Mark Lewisohn, reveals why he'll stop at nothing to complete his definitive history of the band. ...
An Interview with Baron Wolman
Interview by Don Armstrong, Music Journalism History, 17 July 2019
BARON WOLMAN – Rolling Stone's first photographer – changed the course of rock music journalism during the pivotal counterculture era, and I was delighted when ...
Interview by Andrew Stafford, The Guardian, 29 August 2019
In Australia with his new memoir, the 'songwriting sociopath' discusses creativity and what Shatner taught him about coolness: 'He just does not give a shit' ...
The Black Crowes: Steve Gorman's Explosive Memoir Tells Wayward Flight of the Black Crowes
Interview by Bob Ruggiero, Houston Press, 18 September 2019
THROUGH THE entire career of the Black Crowes — from when they were known as Mr. Crowe's Garden, to their 1990 hit debut record Shake ...
Breaking out of the galaith box: Women music journalists in America, 1920–1960
Retrospective by Don Armstrong, Music Journalism History, October 2019
Introduction In a gay, diminutive galaith box comes an indelible lip paste blended from the finest beautifiers, exuberantly youthful in color. 'Feminine Frills', Edita Miller Lenz (Billboard, ...
Blondie, Debbie Harry: Debbie Harry: Face It
Book Review by Chris Charlesworth, Just Backdated, October 2019
IT IS A popular misconception that – once they have tasted chart success and seen their faces in magazines – music stars like Debbie Harry ...
Elton John with Alexis Petridis: Me
Book Review by Chris Charlesworth, Just Backdated, October 2019
A POPULAR musician who has stepped on stage dressed as Donald Duck, Minnie Mouse and Amadeus Mozart, complete with elevated, powdered wig, is unlikely to ...
Obituary by Richard Williams, The Guardian, 23 October 2019
American writer who epitomised the rackety world of the 1960s rock press and went on to become a successful biographer ...
George Michael, Andrew Ridgeley, Wham!: Andrew Ridgeley: Wham! George & Me (Michael Joseph)
Book Review by Graeme Thomson, Event Magazine, 26 October 2019
Despite being crushed' at his bandmate's death, Andrew Ridgeley's memoir, Wham! George & Me, is merely a bland look at the duo's career. ...
The Animals, Manfred Mann, The Rolling Stones: The History of the Blues-Rock Press: Part 1
Retrospective by Don Armstrong, Music Journalism History, November 2019
Based on a series of posts published in Music Journalism History from November 9, 2019 to March 13, 2020. ...
The Teardrop Explodes: Wilder Times: How the Teardrops Exploded
Book Excerpt by Mick Houghton, 'Fried and Justified' (Faber & Faber), Summer 2019
AUTHOR'S NOTE: The back story here is the release of the Teardrop Explodes' second album Wilder on 20 November 1981. Rather than do the usual ...
Book Review by Bill Wasserzieher, Ugly Things, Summer 2019
WHAT CAN BE said about the artist known as Screamin' Jay Hawkins? Perhaps that he did more to promote over-population than any other American, fathering ...
Little Richard, Billy Vera: Billy Vera: Rip It Up – The Specialty Records Story
Book Review by Tony Burke, Record Collector, January 2020
ONE OF THE most important independent post-war record labels, Specialty is up there with Chess, Modern/RPM, King, and Atlantic. ...
John and Colin Mansfield: As You Were – The True Adventures Of The Ricky Tick Club
Book Review by Tony Burke, Blues & Rhythm, February 2020
THE RICKY TICK Club has a permanent place in the development of British rhythm and blues and rock music. I can't recall any decent history ...
Book Review by Chris Charlesworth, Just Backdated, March 2020
IN 1990, JOHN Entwistle spent two months in the region of Connemara on the west coast of Ireland, where fierce winds coming off the Atlantic ...
Retrospective by Don Armstrong, Music Journalism History, March 2020
Based on a series of posts published in Music Journalism History from November 9, 2019 to March 13, 2020. ...
The Go-Go's: Kathy Valentine of the Go-Go's Reveals All She Ever Wanted
Interview by Bob Ruggiero, Houston Press, 27 March 2020
FOR KATHY Valentine, it was a Christmas gift that not only kept on giving, but in many ways came to define her life and music. ...
Malcolm McLaren: Paul Gorman: The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren
Book Review by Sean O'Hagan, The Guardian, 6 April 2020
Huckster, visionary — or a bit of both? An exhaustive new biography chases down the elusive punk promoter ...
Richard Russell: Better Music Through Listening: XL's Richard Russell Interviewed
Interview by Angus Batey, The Quietus, 11 April 2020
The XL Records boss on his first book, new LP, and how not to be a dickhead. ...
The Beatles: From Beetles to Beatles: It was 60 years ago today
Essay by Simon Warner, Kerouac.com, 1 June 2020
How Beat and a British poet changed the history of rock music ...
Memoir by Gary Pig Gold, Ballbuster Music, 1 June 2020
THE CHRISTMAS following my Pancakes with Pat, a strange package arrived on my doorstep from a hitherto unknown address in Burbank, California. "Boone Productions, Inc.," ...
Comment by Ian Winwood, Daily Telegraph, 8 July 2020
IN THE FIRST decade of the 21st Century, the British rock magazine Kerrang! ran a small weekly item called "Stimulants". Secreted away at the bottom ...
Why we should mourn the loss of Q magazine
Retrospective by David Hepworth, New Statesman, 22 July 2020
The music title was a thrill-ride at the front and a good shopping guide at the back. ...
Book Review by Chris Charlesworth, Just Backdated, 24 July 2020
DAVID MITCHELL is a distinguished author whose books are regularly reviewed by fellow novelists in upmarket broadsheets. His best known work, Cloud Atlas, is a dazzling ...
Jimi Hendrix: So who killed Jimi Hendrix?
Book Excerpt by Philip Norman, 'Wild Thing' (Weidenfeld & Nicholson), 5 August 2020
50 years after musician's death, Philip Norman tracks down the key players to tell the definitive story of one of rock's most tantalising mysteries - ...
Eddie Floyd with Tony Fletcher: Knock! Knock! Knock! On Wood – A Life In Soul
Book Review by Chris Charlesworth, Just Backdated, 30 September 2020
EDDIE FLOYD isn't a household name like Wilson Pickett or Otis Redding, his private life was never as lively as Marvin Gaye or James Brown, ...
Bruce Springsteen: "Cuyahoga": An excerpt from Loudmouth
Book Excerpt by Robert Duncan, Three Rooms Press, October 2020
...
Interview by Bob Ruggiero, Houston Press, 3 December 2020
PETER GURALNICK didn't set out to be a music journalist. The occupation didn't really exist at the time when a combination of luck and bluster ...
Book Excerpt by Kieron Tyler, unpublished, Spring 2020
ASTONISHINGLY, Bear Family Records celebrates its 45th year in business in 2020. During that time, the label has never stopped producing the ultimate in reissues ...
John Doe, X: John Doe: How Antioch Prepared The X Co-Founder To Make Punk Rock History
Retrospective and Interview by Geoffrey Himes, Antioch Alumni Magazine, Fall 2020
WHEN THE California quartet X released its first album in 1980, it upended everyone's assumptions about punk rock. The twin lead vocals from a man ...
Nick Kent: "I was in the right place at the right time, on the wrong drugs"
Interview by Sean O'Hagan, The Observer, 9 January 2021
The rock critic who revived British music writing at the NME in the 70s is back with his first novel — a caustic tale of ...
The Byrds, David Crosby, Johnny Marr, Van Morrison, Morrissey, The Smiths: Johnny Rogan, 1953-2021
Obituary by Chris Charlesworth, Rock's Backpages, February 2021
MY GOOD FRIEND Johnny Rogan, who died unexpectedly in January aged 67, was among the most prolific and acclaimed music biographers of his generation. Much ...
Nick Cave: The Journalist and the Singer
Book Excerpt by Mark Mordue, 'Boy On Fire' (Allen & Unwin), February 2021
THE FIRST TIME I ever spoke to Nick Cave was in a phone interview to promote his second solo album, The Firstborn Is Dead (1985), ...
Kim Fowley, Jan & Dean: California Eden: Sun, Surf, Sex, and Some Great Music
Interview by Bob Ruggiero, Houston Press, 22 March 2021
THE OLD ADAGE goes that high school is the place to experience "the best years of your life." And while that's hardly a universal feeling, ...
Interview by Lisa Verrico, The Sunday Times, 28 March 2021
The pop star turned author on her memoir of the Go-Betweens drummer Lindy Morrison ...
Various Artists: Jon Savage's 1972-1976 – All Our Times Have Come
Review by Kieron Tyler, The Arts Desk, 28 March 2021
Tracking the route to punk without stating the obvious ...
Interview by Sean O'Hagan, The Observer, 18 April 2021
A fractured childhood, years as a hippie drifter… the musician's new memoir tells of her incredible adventures before she found fame – and of her ...
"He was our Google": Fred Dellar, 1931-2021
Special Feature by Various Writers, Rock's Backpages, May 2021
I REMEMBER being slightly shocked when I heard that Fred Dellar was going to turn 80 years old. A decade later, he has died just ...
Keith Altham at 80: An Appreciation
Memoir by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, May 2021
TWENTY YEARS AGO, when I co-founded Rock's Backpages with Mark Pringle and Martin Colyer, one of the first names on our Wants List was Keith. ...
Bob Dylan: The World Of Bob Dylan
Book Review by Tony Burke, Record Collector, June 2021
COINCIDING WITH Dylan's 80th birthday this tome is curated by Sean Latham, Director of the Institute For Bob Dylan Studies at the University of Tulsa, ...
Lydia Lunch's Infinite Rebellion
Profile and Interview by Jim Farber, The New York Times, 28 June 2021
FOR NEARLY two hours on a recent afternoon, Lydia Lunch sat in her bright Brooklyn apartment and spoke with bracing speed, and at an alarming ...
The Clash, Sex Pistols: Jon Savage: A Conversation about England's Dreaming
Interview by Irina Shtreis, Louder Than War, 14 July 2021
The new edition of England's Dreaming is out now via Faber & Faber and Rough Trade as part of the bundle including two other pivotal ...
Michael Horovitz OBE (4 April 1935 – 7 July 2021)
Obituary by Jon Newey, Jazzwise, September 2021
The celebrated British beat poet, writer, artist, 'anglo saxophonist', Michael Horovitz, has died age 86. ...
Bob Dylan, Jack Kerouac: The Legend of Zimmerman
Retrospective by Simon Warner, Rock and the Beat Generation, 24 September 2021
Bob Dylan delighted in the tales he could spin to embroider his early biography and Jack Kerouac adapted his own life for fictional purposes. ...
Jack Kerouac: Still Rockin' in the Beat world
Essay by Simon Warner, Perfect Sound Forever, October 2021
How Kerouac cool continues to fuel popular music passions as the writer's Centenary nears in 2022 ...
Obituary by Bill Millar, Now Dig This, November 2021
Bill Millar commemorates the life of the gifted writer and pioneering back catalogue expert whose devotion to rock n roll, blues and soul enhanced the ...
Shane MacGowan: Richard Balls: A Furious Devotion – The Authorised Story Of Shane MacGowan
Book Review by Chris Charlesworth, Just Backdated, December 2021
WITH HIS uncombed hair, rotten teeth and charity shop clothes, not to mention the obligatory bottle, Shane MacGowan presented himself to the world as a ...
Punk fanzines: ideological, educational, critical
Retrospective and Interview by Irina Shtreis, Louder Than War, 31 December 2021
Drawing from the tradition of independent rock 'n' roll publications, punk fanzines attempted to reveal hidden facets of life. ...
Gilles Peterson: Lockdown FM: Broadcasting in a Pandemic
Book Review by John L. Walters, Eye, Fall 2021
GILLES PETERSON is known for his unfeasibly large record collection and an unstoppable enthusiasm for Black music. The pandemic forced radical changes to the DJ's ...
Alternative TV: Mark Perry on Sniffin' Glue
Book Excerpt by Hamish Ironside, 'We Peaked at Paper' (Boatwhistle Books), 2022
NOTE: This interview is an excerpt from We Peaked At Paper: An Oral History of British Zines by Gavin Hogg and Hamish Ironside, published by ...
Jack Kerouac: The many sounds of Kerouac's On the Road
Retrospective by Simon Warner, Rock and the Beat Generation, 2 February 2022
Kerouac's most famous book is obviously first and foremost a written text. But the refrains of music ripple through its rolling adventures and there are ...
The Residents: Aaron Tanner: The Residents – A Sight For Sore Eyes Vol. 1
Book Review by Irina Shtreis, Louder Than War, 3 February 2022
A Sight For Sore Eyes Vol. 1 celebrates the story of the Residents – extreme art propagators and underground musicians who influenced the likes of ...
Book Review by Barney Hoskyns, Financial Times, 15 February 2022
AS INELEGANT acronyms go, NWOBHM was at least onomatopoeic: an approximation of metal's thudding, bludgeoning bass registers. Certainly the "New Wave Of British Heavy Metal", ...
Delines, The : The Delines: Two If By Sea
Report and Interview by Steven R Rosen, Rock & Roll Globe, 12 March 2022
Willy Vlautin and Amy Boone overcome the odds to create their best album with The Sea Drift. ...
Alice Cooper, Lemmy: A Walk on the Wild Side of Sunset: Remembering Lemmy and the Hollywood Vampires
Book Excerpt by Ian Winwood, 'Bodies' (Faber & Faber), April 2022
This is an excerpt from Ian's new book Bodies: Life and Death in Music, published by Faber on April 21. ...
Tom Waits: Alex Harvey: Song Noir – Tom Waits and the Spirit of Los Angeles (Reaktion Books)
Book Review by Simon Warner, Rock and the Beat Generation, July 2022
I REVIEWED Rickie Lee Jones' vividly illuminating autobiography Last Chance Texaco in these pages earlier this year, applying a Beat microscope to her always energetic, ...
Book Review by Barney Hoskyns, The Critic, August 2022
ROCK'N'ROLL years are all the rage these days. Ever since Jon Savage published his monumental 1966 (in 2015), the anni – particularly the 1970s – ...
"I Killed Christgau with My Big F*****g Dick". US indie magazines of the '80s and '90s
Book Excerpt by Paul Gorman, 'Totally Wired' (Thames & Hudson), September 2022
This is an excerpt from Paul's book Totally Wired: The Rise and Fall of the Music Press (Thames & Hudson, 2022) ...
Jann Wenner on Rolling Stone: "Some reviews were just insufferably nasty"
Interview by Jim Farber, The Guardian, 16 September 2022
The founder of the legendary magazine discusses his rise to the top, navigating famous friendships and hiding his sexuality ...
Kate Bush: 'Under the Ivy' on The Tube, 1986
Book Excerpt by Tom Doyle, Nine Eight Books, October 2022
RAMSHACKLE AND FUNNY, chaotic and controversial, Channel 4's live-to-air music show The Tube flew in the face of the glossy pop cultural trends of the ...
The Beatles' Revolver: A report and five rave reviews
Retrospective by Various Writers, Rock's Backpages, October 2022
1: Revolver is Title for New Beatle LP Tony Barrow, KRLA Beat, 13 August 1966 ...
Clive Davis and Arista Records
Book Excerpt by Mitchell Cohen, 'Looking for the Magic' (Trouser Press Books), Summer 2022
This is the second of two excerpts on RBP from Mitchell Cohen's book Looking for the Magic: New York City, the '70s and the Rise ...
Book Excerpt by Mitchell Cohen, 'Looking for the Magic' (Trouser Press Books), Summer 2022
This is the first of two excerpts on RBP from Mitchell Cohen's book Looking for the Magic: New York City, the '70s and the Rise ...
Paul Gorman: Totally Wired – The Rise & Fall of the Music Press (Thames & Hudson)
Book Review by Chris Charlesworth, Just Backdated, January 2023
THE HOME computer and its promiscuous offspring the internet were wrecking balls, demolishing much that was worth treasuring. Amidst the debris they left behind, the ...
The Beatles, The Rolling Stones: The return of the Beatles vs Stones wars
Retrospective by David Hepworth, New Statesman, 24 February 2023
As news of a Rolling Stones album featuring Paul McCartney appears, the press reignites a culture war it confected. ...
Book Excerpt by Adele Bertei, 'Twist: An American Girl' (ZE Books), April 2023
This is an excerpt from Adele's memoir Twist: An American Girl, published by ZE Books in April 2023. ...
Obituary by Simon Warner, Rock and the Beat Generation, 20 May 2023
BACK IN 2010, in the heart of the most bitter January I can recall, I visited the home of Pete Brown with a BBC radio ...
Book Excerpt by Tony Burke, Hardinge Simpole Books, June 2023
This is Tony's foreword to Derek Coller's biography Big Joe Turner – Feel So Fine ...
Paul Jones, Manfred Mann: Monday, December 4, 1972
Book Excerpt by Harold Bronson, 'Time Has Come Today' (Trouser Press Books), September 2023
I RECEIVED a letter (dated November 21) from Paul Jones, the original lead singer of Manfred Mann, thanking me for an album I had sent ...
Richard Hell: What Just Happened (Winter Editions)
Book Review by Raphael Rubinstein, The Brooklyn Rail, September 2023
THE TITLE OF Richard Hell's new collection of poems and prose, What Just Happened, can be taken in several ways. It could be referring to ...
Hollywood Swinging: Joan Didion in '60s L.A.
Book Excerpt by Evelyn McDonnell, 'The World According to Joan Didion' (4th Estate), October 2023
An excerpt from Evelyn's biography, published in the UK by 4th Estate. ...
Book Excerpt by Will Hermes, 'The King of New York' (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), October 2023
...
Slade: Daryl Easlea: Whatever Happened To Slade? When The Whole World Went Crazee (Omnibus)
Book Review by Chris Charlesworth, Just Backdated, November 2023
AT LAST! At last an author with insight, sympathy and commitment has written a substantial book about Slade that dissects the highs and lows of ...
John Peel, The Undertones: Terri Hooley: I Need Excitement
Book Excerpt by Stuart Bailie, Dig With It Books, November 2023
NOTE: This is an excerpt from Seventy-Five Revolutions, Stuart Bailie's book about the legendary owner of Belfast's Good Vibrations record store. Buy the book here. ...
The Beatles: You say you don't want a 'Revolution 9'
Book Excerpt by Michel Faber, 'Listen: On Music, Sound and Us' (Canongate), November 2023
In this excerpt from "The siren call of horrible din", the eighth section of his Listen: On Music, Sound and Us (Canongate), Michel explains why ...
The Bee Gees: Bob Stanley: The Bee Gees – Children Of The World
Book Review by Chris Charlesworth, Just Backdated, January 2024
"THE BEE GEES didn't fit in," observes Bob Stanley at the start of Children Of The World, his new biography of the Gibb brothers. He's quite ...
Keef Hartley, John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers, Frank Zappa: Neil Slaven, 1944-2023
Obituary by Tony Burke, Rock's Backpages, January 2024
RECORD PRODUCER, researcher, author and discographer Neil Slaven, who died on December 23rd aged 79, was one of the leading lights of the 1960s British ...
Hibbert and I: "Haunting the plains of west London"
Book Excerpt by Robyn Hitchcock, 'Phew, Eh Readers?' (Nine Eight Books), February 2024
OH, WHAT A VISION is Tom Hibbert. Thin with dark ruffled hair, a scarf, John Lennon spectacles, cigarette permanently in his blue-veined talons, the delight ...
Book Excerpt by Robert Greenfield, 'Rain Gray Town', May 2024
An excerpt from Robert Greenfield's 2024 novel, available via Kindle Direct. ...
Book Excerpt by Ann Powers, 'Traveling' (Dey Street Books), June 2024
Excerpted from Traveling: On the Path of Joni Mitchell © 2024 by Ann Powers. Reprinted by permission of Dey Street Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. ...
Bob Dylan: No Direction Home: Listening to Bob Dylan at boarding school
Book Excerpt by Robyn Hitchcock, '1967' (Constable), June 2024
An excerpt from Robyn's splendid memoir 1967: How I Got There and Why I Never Left (Constable). Reproduced with kind permission of the author and ...
Dr. John, Steve Mann: Mystic vapour: 'Jump Sturdy'
Book Excerpt by David Toop, Strange Attractor Press, August 2024
An excerpt from David Toop's Two-Headed Doctor: Listening For Ghosts in Dr. John's Gris-Gris, published by Strange Attractor Press in the UK and MIT in ...
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