Scenes
807 articles
Johnny Kidd & The Pirates: The Star Club: Fantastic, That's the Scene in Germany
Report and Interview by uncredited writer, Disc, 15 September 1962
"FANTASTIC. Like a world on its own. Things there swing so much it's breathtaking." And "there" is NOT America, but... Germany, the country that is ...
The Beatles, Gerry & The Pacemakers: Merseyside Beat Pays Off At Last!
Interview by June Harris, Disc, 23 March 1963
IT'S ALL happening up in Liverpool! First The Beatles, now Gerry and the Pacemakers and in a few weeks time, who knows? The music the ...
The Rolling Stones: Genuine R&B!
Profile by Norman Jopling, Record Mirror, 11 May 1963
AS THE TRAD scene gradually subsides, promoters of all kinds of teen-beat entertainment heave a long sigh of relief that they have found something to ...
The Tornados: Hamburg — Where The Big Beat Reigns
Interview by Peter Jones, Record Mirror, 1 February 1964
CLEM CATTINI TALKS TO PETER JONES ...
Readers' Letters by uncredited writer, Rave, May 1964
I STOPPED being Mod two months ago because it was getting played out. Manufacturers started to put out trash to youngsters of 12, telling them ...
The Beatles: Now You Can Be A Beatle People And Get Right In Here With Them
Overview by uncredited writer, Rave, June 1964
● Just a few people share the Beatles' lives — and their wit, charm, gaiety — because the Beatles can't meet everyone. ● But now YOU ...
The Who: The High Numbers: How High Will These Numbers Go?
Profile and Interview by Peter Jones, Record Mirror, 11 July 1964
HAILED AS "the first authentic mod record," four hip young men called the High Numbers are out right now with 'I'm the Face', backed with ...
Vicki Wickham's Pop Guide To London
Guide by Vicki Wickham, Fabulous, 3 October 1964
If you live in London or just come visiting — here's where to find the stars. ...
In A Mellotone: Hoods and Rocks
Essay by Michael Lydon, Yale Daily News, 10 December 1964
THERE IS A phrase current in Long Island high schools, that fertile spawn of teen age norms, which describes someone as a "'54", meaning a ...
Herman's Hermits, Petula Clark: On the Beat
Column by Louise Criscione, KRLA Beat, 31 March 1965
PETULA CLARK really "tore up" the Ed Sullivan audience Sunday night. This girl sure swings; she even had the sedate adult audience clapping their hands ...
Report and Interview by Peter Jones, Record Mirror, 1 May 1965
Manchester's musical conquest of the States, by Peter Jones ...
Sybil — and a discotheque named Arthur — set the trends
Report by Lillian Roxon, Sydney Morning Herald, the, 16 May 1965
Sybil Burton, ex-wife of actor Richard Burton, has suddenly become the leader of New York's glittering social set. Fashion and entertainment trend-setter and close friend ...
Petula Clark: Backstage Report: Pet Clark A Hit At Party
Report by Louise Criscione, KRLA Beat, 26 May 1965
ONE OF THE record world's most popular attractions is the meet-the-press party for a performer whose records are bursting through the charts. ...
The Beatles, Cilla Black, George Harrison, Tommy Quickly, Ringo Starr: Liverpool: Home Town
Report and Interview by Sylvia Stephens, Fabulous, 19 June 1965
...that's Liddypool, home of so many greats in the pop world, and from the streets where they lived Fab's SYLVIA STEPHEN reports... ...
The Byrds, Sonny & Cher: Beat Music Background: Carnaby Street — New Way To Shop
Report by uncredited writer, KRLA Beat, 18 September 1965
WHILE ENGLAND has its huge department stores with multiple floors crammed with everything from needles and thread to tuxedos and minks, it also boasts a ...
Interview by uncredited writer, Melody Maker, 15 January 1966
And does it prove that what Manchester is today, London can be tomorrow? ...
Is Trips Festival Really Necessary?
Report by Philip Elwood, The San Francisco Examiner, 24 January 1966
AFTER THREE weekend nights of ear-splitting, head-aching, eye-straining audio-visual bedlam in the Longshoremen's Hall, a collective patronage of 10,000 kicks-seekers should be wondering by now, ...
Live Review by Philip Elwood, The San Francisco Examiner, 5 February 1966
New Sounds Fill the Night Air ...
MC5: All-Night Graduation Party
Report by Loraine Alterman, Detroit Free Press, 24 June 1966
DO THE graduating seniors at Lincoln Park High spend graduation night carousing at wild private parties? Not since 1964, when a group of parents under ...
Live Review by Philip Elwood, The San Francisco Examiner, 18 August 1966
Some Real Flying In the Fillmore ...
Comment by Greg Shaw, Mojo Navigator, 30 August 1966
FROM OUR RATHER strongly-worded editorial in the last issue, many have drawn the conclusion that we are totally against Bill Graham. Nothing, of course, could ...
Column by Miranda Ward, Hit Parader, October 1966
A FEW WEEKS ago when I met the KINKS for a drink, PETE QUAIFE ruined my stockings! The pub was crowded and in the crush ...
Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane: San Francisco Bay Rock
Guide by Gene Sculatti, Crawdaddy!, October 1966
THE SAN FRANCISCO rock scene is a complex one. It is a plentiful jumble of hard rock, folk-rock, blues-rock, bubble-gum, and adult bands that have ...
Kim Fowley, The Mothers Of Invention: Freak Out!
Report and Interview by Norman Jopling, Record Mirror, 22 October 1966
The latest West Coast way of life — rebels with a cause, & their music ...
Pink Floyd, Soft Machine: 2500 Ball at IT Launch
Report by uncredited writer, International Times, 31 October 1966
IT ISN'T SO cool to rave about your own party, but the IT Rave-Up at the Roundhouse two Saturdays ago was such an event we ...
Kim Fowley, The Mothers Of Invention: Kim Fowley: Portrait of a Freak
Interview by uncredited writer, International Times, 31 October 1966
KIM FOWLEY is a hustler. He telephoned International Times and bombarded me with ideas. His main idea was that I should interview him and give ...
The Move: The Speakeasy, London
Live Review by Nick Jones, Melody Maker, 24 December 1966
MIDST OF A smog of smoke bombs, smashed TV sets, smashed people, and the psychedelic decor — well, who would settle for anything else — ...
Riots on Sunset Strip: Strip Of No Man's Land
Comment by uncredited writer, KRLA Beat, 31 December 1966
The following is the first half of an opinion poll where teenagers give their views on the Sunset Strip controversy. Part II of this series ...
The Move, Pink Floyd, The Who: The Who, The Move, Pink Floyd: The Roundhouse, Chalk Farm, London
Live Review by Nick Jones, Melody Maker, 7 January 1967
Psychedelicamania at Roundhouse ...
Riots on Sunset Strip: Strip Of No Man's Land (part 2)
Comment by uncredited writer, KRLA Beat, 14 January 1967
This is the second half of The BEAT'S opinion poll where teens express their feelings about the Sunset Strip controversy. Part I appeared in the ...
Tim Hardin, The Rascals, The Velvet Underground: Pop Eye: Mover
Profile and Interview by Richard Goldstein, The Village Voice, 19 January 1967
"HOW MANY columns you get in Newsweek?" ...
MILES: UFO and the Underground
Column by Miles, International Times, 30 January 1967
UFO in Tottenham Court Road affords us a unique opportunity to examine the London "Underground" generations. ...
Psychedelic Pop — When The Freaking Out Has To Stop...
Report and Interview by Nick Jones, Melody Maker, 11 February 1967
AN ATTEMPT AT AN EXPLANATION BY NICK JONES ...
War Between the Generations: "This Thing Can't Be Stopped"
Report by uncredited writer, KRLA Beat, 11 February 1967
Or Beware The Postage Stamps You Lick! ...
Now it's all above ground — the Underground
Report by Lillian Roxon, Sydney Morning Herald, the, 12 February 1967
It's the new 'in' thing ...
The Beach Boys, Jackson Browne, Buffalo Springfield, Love: Los Angeles: The Vanishing Underground
Report by Richard Goldstein, The Village Voice, 16 February 1967
LOS ANGELES — Sunset Strip is dead. ...
Donna Lynn, MC5, The Outsiders: The MC-5: 'More Like One Big Musician'
Interview by Loraine Alterman, Detroit Free Press, 17 February 1967
SOME PEOPLE call it psychedelic. The MC-5 call it the "new music". They should know, for they are the leading exponents of the far-out sounds ...
Report and Interview by Richard Goldstein, The Village Voice, 2 March 1967
SAN FRANCISCO — Forget the cable cars; skip Chinatown and the Golden Gate; don't bother about the topless mother of eight. ...
Hippies take over from the Beatniks
Report by Lillian Roxon, Sydney Morning Herald, the, 4 March 1967
A new youth grouping, the Hippies, has sprung up in San Francisco and promises to spread over America and to Europe. Hippies are still way-out, ...
The Diggers: In Search of George Metesky
Report by Richard Goldstein, The Village Voice, 16 March 1967
ON A WINTER evening, knots of anxious hippies assembled at San Francisco's Howard Presbyterian Church, overlooking the treelined mall called the Panhandle. Now and then ...
Jonathan King: Our Man in America: They're Even Knocking Jonathan King Here!
Column by Derek Taylor, Disc and Music Echo, 8 April 1967
AS IT IS still the Beatles towards whom pop-America leans for leadership, there is profound regret here (among those who are aware of the British ...
Now it's the big "Be-In": they all go to the park
Report by Lillian Roxon, Sydney Morning Herald, the, 30 April 1967
New Yorkers go gay in the 800 acres they have found right in the heart of town ...
Report by Danny Fields, Hullabaloo, May 1967
SHE HAD ALWAYS BEEN FASCINATED WITH HIM... AND HE HAD ALWAYS WANTED TO MEET HER ...HULLABALOO SAW THEM TOGETHER, SAW HER POSING, SAW HIM FILMING ...
Live Review by Nick Jones, Melody Maker, 6 May 1967
TECHNICOLOUR DREAM STIRS UNDERGROUND ...
MC5: Our Hippies — What They Say and Do
Report by Loraine Alterman, Detroit Free Press, 19 May 1967
IN SAN Francisco a sight-seeing bus runs tours into the Haight-Ashbury district billing it as "the only foreign tour within the continental limits of the ...
Hippy Ideas That Shock Parents
Report by Loraine Alterman, Detroit Free Press, 26 May 1967
LAST WEEK on this page I reported on the teen-age hippies in the Detroit area, on where they hung out, what they looked like, and ...
Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane: California Dreamin'
Report by Nick Jones, Melody Maker, 27 May 1967
AMERICA'S WEST COAST — ESPECIALLY SAN FRANCISCO — IS WHERE IT'S ALL AT NOW. WHAT LESSON CAN WE LEARN FROM IT? NICK JONES EXPLAINS ...
The Flower Children and How They Grow
Essay by Richard Goldstein, Los Angeles Times, 28 May 1967
Richard Goldstein is a young writer with a special view of the Flower Children and their contribution to modern American culture. He has been called ...
Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane: The Golden Road: A Report on San Francisco
Overview by Paul Williams, Crawdaddy!, June 1967
SITTING IN THE window. Sixth Avenue, Greenwich Village, flirting with the girls going by, the Grateful Dead very loud on 4X speakers somewhere in the ...
MC5: 'Aid, Comfort For Parents Of Hippies'
Readers' Letters by uncredited writer, Detroit Free Press, 2 June 1967
In response to the story on the parents of hippies which appeared in the Free Press Women's Section last Sunday, and the two stories about ...
Arthur Brown, Pink Floyd, Procol Harum, Soft Machine: Love, Beauty, the Fuzz and the UFO
Report and Interview by Chris Welch, Melody Maker, 17 June 1967
THE IN CLUBS: CHRIS WELCH takes in the London club scene — beginning with UFO ...
Report by Pete Johnson, Los Angeles Times, 19 June 1967
MONTEREY — Thirty thousand people swelled the city of Monterey over the weekend for the first International Festival of Pop Music, held in the outdoor ...
The Deviants, Pink Floyd, Soft Machine: U.F.O. — in front of what's happening!
Report by Hugh Nolan, Disc and Music Echo, 24 June 1967
AS FAR as London is concerned, the hippies' paradise known as U.F.O. — stands for unidentified flying object, the non-own-up official term for flying saucers ...
The Fugs, Grateful Dead, The Mothers Of Invention: Miles' Trip: New York
Report by Miles, International Times, 30 June 1967
"Two persons were shot dead and several others injured in a gun battle between shoplifters and store detectives in a Bronx supermarket today." ...
Fraternity of Man: The Hippie Movement
Report by uncredited writer, KRLA Beat, 1 July 1967
THE WORD Is Out. The Hippies Are Coming. ...
Switching On: It All Depends On Where You're Going
Guide by uncredited writer, KRLA Beat, 15 July 1967
or What To Wear To A Love-In ...
Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane: Birth of the San Francisco Scene
Overview by Jim Delehant, Hit Parader, August 1967
by Martin Balin, leader of the Jefferson Airplane ...
Jackson Browne, Penny Nichols: The Billy James Underground
Report by Richard Goldstein, The Village Voice, 3 August 1967
HE CRUISES along the Freeway out of Los Angeles in an open Rolls, the kind that used to have upholstery and windows. His young son ...
Hippies: How? Why? What Does It Mean?
Report by Jacoba Atlas, KRLA Beat, 26 August 1967
SAN FRANCISCO – Five o'clock in the afternoon. The going home traffic already crowding the freeway to a frustrating halt. ...
Report and Interview by Richard Goldstein, Los Angeles Times, 27 August 1967
HIS DESK looks impressive. A clean blotter is piled high with correspondence. A vertical file bulges with memos. A calendar and a trash can are ...
Column by Judith Sims, TeenSet, September 1967
HOWDY, hip happies! I'm in a good mood, in case you couldn’t guess from that kray-zee salutation! Why am I in a good mood? You ...
The Beatles, Arthur Brown, Pink Floyd, Soft Machine: The Flower Game
Report by Maureen O'Grady, Rave, September 1967
What do flowers mean to you? To the Flower People (the Gentle People, the Beautiful People) they signify love, freedom, goodness, fun and new experiences. ...
The Beatles, George Harrison: The George Harrison Interview
Interview by Alan Walsh, Melody Maker, 2 September 1967
"You may think this interview is of no importance to me," said George Harrison across a table in NEM's Enterprises Mayfair offices. "But you'd be ...
Donovan, Hearts & Flowers, Jefferson Airplane, Mother Earth: The West Coast And Hippieland
Report by Loraine Alterman, Detroit Free Press, 6 October 1967
BACK FROM two weeks in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Back to Detroit where the man on the street still gets uptight seeing long-haired, bearded ...
Comment by Nick Jones, Melody Maker, 7 October 1967
NICK JONES is worried about British pop audiences. Here he explains why. ...
Tomorrow: U.F.O.: Who Killed Flower Power?
Report and Interview by Nick Jones, Melody Maker, 28 October 1967
U.F.O. the Flower power mecca has closed. Did it die a natural death — or was it murdered? And if it was... ...
Report by Miranda Ward, Hit Parader, November 1967
...from Our Gal In London... Miranda Ward ...
Report from swinging London town
Report by Miles, Los Angeles Free Press, 26 January 1968
LITTLE HAS happened since winter came upon us and forced London's underground underground. The organisation called RELEASE has become one of the most valuable community ...
The Beach Boys, Taj Mahal: How Goes It Underground?
Report and Interview by Tom Nolan, Los Angeles Times, 18 February 1968
IT WAS A big day for me, for I had just met Andrew Oldham, the brains behind the Stones. He was very thin and he ...
Light Shows: Adventure Into Experimental Living
Report and Interview by Jacoba Atlas, KRLA Beat, 24 February 1968
THERE'S A revolution happening; happening on all levels of society. From the streets to the museums people are talking about new trends, new ways of ...
The Byrds In Words But The Real Story Is In Your Own Head
Profile by Derek Taylor, Hit Parader, March 1968
THE BYRDS are back in the record charts and on national TV where they began so long ago, so long ago, so long ago; so ...
Report by uncredited writer, The Warren-Forest Sun, 1 March 1968
DETROIT IS turning into ROCK CITY before our eyes, and we love it! All over the country groups are being "discovered, " and cities like ...
Report and Interview by Chris Welch, Melody Maker, 6 April 1968
When the Stones were rollin' – for £10 a gig ...
Report by Miles, International Times, 19 April 1968
The UFO idea first began in February 1966 when Steve Stollman (front the ESP avant-garde jazz record label in New York – then still in ...
Traffic and the US Underground
Interview by Derek Boltwood, Record Mirror, 1 June 1968
THE "UNDERGROUND" in England is a collection of dark damp platforms and jostling crowds and miles and miles of tube trains weaving in and out ...
Johnny Shines, Sunnyland Slim: Chicago Blues are Dying
Interview by Alan Walsh, Melody Maker, 6 July 1968
and Britain's Mike Vernon tries resuscitation ...
Richard Green Takes You Out To An In-Party! At The Revolution In London
Report by Richard Green, New Musical Express, 3 August 1968
GO DOWN TO the Revolution, we thought. Take a photographer and get some pictures of the star names. And what a night we picked! It ...
John Mayall, MC5, Traffic: Rock and Roll Dope #6
Comment by John Sinclair, Fifth Estate, 15 August 1968
NOW THAT things have cooled down a little for the MC5 and myself after all the excitement of recent weeks maybe I can get into ...
Bob Dylan: From Rock to Acid Rock
Essay by Michael Gray, International Times, 18 October 1968
FROM ROCK to Acid Rock is first a ride to freedom, second an illusion. Rock, the kind of music for which Rosko still does extravagant ...
Our Famed Fillmore Goes East — With a Difference
Report by Philip Elwood, The San Francisco Examiner, 27 October 1968
DURING THE past two and a half years the San Francisco Fillmore has become internationally famous as the principal shrine of rock 'n' roll concerts ...
The Deviants: Revolution — With Guitars, Not Bullets
Interview by Hugh Nolan, Disc and Music Echo, 2 November 1968
FOR MICK FARREN, magnificently hairy leader of the (formerly Social) Deviants, the underground is a very definite force against the establishment, blind authority and the ...
Underground: Not So Much Pop Music More A Way Of Life
Overview by Hugh Nolan, Disc and Music Echo, 2 November 1968
Let's kill all barriers in music... ...
Report by Michael Lydon, The New York Times, 24 November 1968
SAN FRANCISCO — In the heady first days of the "San Francisco Sound," someone dubbed the city the "Liverpool of the USA." The title, though ...
Essay by Geoffrey Cannon, Oz, December 1968
Update, 2019. My Oz episodes — 1. IN DECEMBER 1968, age 28, I was interviewed for the post of editor of Radio Times, the BBC's ...
The Beach Boys, Charles Manson, Dennis Wilson: Dennis Wilson: 'I Live With 17 Girls'
Interview by David Griffiths, Record Mirror, 21 December 1968
SAID DENNIS WILSON, a bemused frown on his face: "I don't know why I'm telling you all this..." Well, whatever Dennis's reasons (if any), the ...
Eric Clapton, Jethro Tull, The Rolling Stones: The Rolling Stones: Rock and Roll Circus
Report by Chris Welch, Melody Maker, 21 December 1968
IT WAS a group fan's dream, when the giants of pop held a three hour jam session, while rehearsing for the Rolling Stones' Rock And ...
Jefferson Airplane: Bill Graham: Scrooge McDuck?
Letter by Michael Lydon, The New York Times, 19 January 1969
To the Editor: ...
Lady Wootton talks to Caroline Coon about Pot
Interview by Caroline Coon, International Times, 31 January 1969
THE BARONESS Wootton of Abinger was chairman of the subcommittee on 'Cannabis' of the Advisory Committee on Drug Dependence whose Report was published on 8th ...
The Beatles: Apple: 1988 — A Year For Nostalgia
Memoir by Derek Taylor, Hit Parader, March 1969
IT WAS GOOD then, good when we were young then, when we were new and The Apple was fresh and the other apples, wrinkling and ...
Jerry Garcia, Grateful Dead: AUDIO: The Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia (1969)
Audio transcript of interview by Michael Lydon, Rock's Backpages Audio, May 1969
This is a transcript of Michael's interview with the Grateful Dead mainman. Listen to the audio of this interview. ...
The Pink Fairies Motorcycle Club And All Star Rock And Roll Big Band: A Fairy-tale
Report and Interview by Mick Farren, International Times, 9 May 1969
A NUMBER of musicians from various well known bands in London have, it was revealed to IT in an exclusive interview this week, formed an ...
The Doors: Column: Around About, And Then Some
Report by Anne Moore, World Countdown News, 13 June 1969
I HAVE JUST attended a happening, one that in a year or less will become another legend in the cycle of Jim Morrison. The event ...
Family, The Rolling Stones: The Rolling Stones in Hyde Park: Out of the Way
Report by Geoffrey Cannon, New Society, 10 July 1969
A world turned upside down ...
Grateful Dead: The Grateful Dead: Burnout Sets In
Special Feature by Michael Lydon, Rolling Stone, 23 August 1969
But I reckon l got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she's going to adopt me and sivilise ...
Johnny Winter: The Apollo Theatre and the Fillmore East: Black and White Music in NYC
Comment by Loraine Alterman, New York Scenes, September 1969
MORE THAN Central Park and city blocks separate the Apollo Theatre in Harlem and the Fillmore East in the East Village. ...
Interview by Richard Williams, Melody Maker, 20 September 1969
RICHARD WILLIAMS TALKS TO THE DEVIANTS ...
Cream, Fleetwood Mac, John Mayall: Union Jack Blues
Comment by Geoffrey Cannon, The Guardian, 21 October 1969
MEETING JANIS Joplin a few months ago, before her Albert Hall concert, I was staggered to feel how nervous she was. Then she explained. She ...
Charles Manson, John Phillips: You just don't know Hollywood
Report by Lillian Roxon, Sydney Morning Herald, the, 1 November 1969
More things there than murder are bizarre, reports Lillian Roxon ...
Interview by Richard Williams, Melody Maker, 22 November 1969
OXFORD GARDENS, just off Ladbroke Grove in deepest West Eleven, is currently the focal point of a community of artists (musicians, painters, poets) who will ...
Charles Manson: Death Valley Drop-outs
Report by Ivor Davis, Daily Express, 3 December 1969
IVOR DAVIS • HOLLYWOOD • TUESDAY ...
Quintessence: Notting Hill Gate – a Single, a Group, and a Place
Profile and Interview by Rob Partridge, Record Mirror, 3 January 1970
LONDON WEST Ten is the Grove. It is that part of Notting Hill straddling Ladbroke Grove, where, over the past few years, a whole new ...
Bill Graham Plans Winterland Move
Report by Philip Elwood, The San Francisco Examiner, 20 January 1970
ROCK CONCERT-dance impresario Bill Graham, threatened with eviction from his Fillmore West location at Market and Van Ness sometime this year, has made long-range agreements ...
Quicksilver Messenger Service: Quicksilver Does A Quickchange
Retrospective and Interview by Lenny Kaye, Circus, March 1970
ON THE NEW Year's Eve separating 1968 and its successor, the Quicksilver Messenger Service played a farewell concert at Fillmore West. Looking back at the ...
The Deviants, Mick Farren, Steve Peregrin Took: The Devious Thoughts of Mick Farren
Interview by Lon Goddard, Record Mirror, 21 March 1970
ONCE UPON a time, Mick Farren was a social deviant. Then he became a Deviant. Not satisfied, young Mick decided to deviate and dispensed with ...
Comment by Charles Shaar Murray, Oz, May 1970
IT WAS, AT least for me and most of the people I know, the music that first aroused interest in things Underground, and the music ...
The Sound of the Seventies and The Pop Proms: It's All a Put On
Report by Mark Williams, International Times, 8 May 1970
Pop Proms, Rock machine & the penis of promoting. ...
Is Pop Music Putting The Boot In For Bovver?
Overview by Rob Partridge, Record Mirror, 9 May 1970
Robert Partridge argues that violence has taken on a different meaning ...
Report by Jacoba Atlas, Melody Maker, 12 September 1970
Jacoba Atlas reports on the street where she lives – Laurel Canyon, Hollywood, home of the rock stars... ...
Grateful Dead: An Evening with the Grateful Dead
Report and Interview by Michael Lydon, Rolling Stone, 17 September 1970
WE CHANGE and our changings change, a friend said once. It sounded true, but it seems too that through it all we stay the same. ...
Notes to the Institute, By Stanley Mouse
Profile by Mike Gormley, Detroit Free Press, 17 October 1970
STANLEY MOUSE, better known to poster art lovers as just plain Mouse, has a show of his works at the Detroit Institute of Art. In ...
Bill Graham: The Man The US Kids Love To Hate
Interview by Roy Hollingworth, Melody Maker, 14 November 1970
BREAKFAST at London's Savoy Hotel with Bill Graham. The man, who has the high cheekbones and thick mouth of an American Indian, and the thundering ...
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 ...
Report by Dave Godin, Blues & Soul, 8 January 1971
BY SOME miracle I managed to catch the train on time at Euston. Anyone who knows me will gladly confirm that I am a terror ...
Butterscotch Caboose, Rufus Thomas: Memphis
Report by Richard Williams, Melody Maker, 23 January 1971
Richard Williams in the Soul capital of America ...
Overview by Richard Williams, Melody Maker, 30 January 1971
Richard Williams on the European bands who are rejecting the traditions of Anglo-American rock. ...
Grateful Dead: Fillmore East, New York NY
Live Review by Mike Jahn, The New York Times, 29 April 1971
Grateful Dead Draws Far-Out Fans ...
MC5, John Sinclair, The Up: Rock & Roll Dope: John Sinclair
Retrospective by Frank Bach, The Ann Arbor Sun, 28 May 1971
IT WAS back in the fall of 1966 when Rob Tyner, lead singer for the then "Avant Rock" MC5, and myself got in Rob's beat ...
If You Think It's Groovy To Rap, You're Shucking
Overview by Mike Jahn, The New York Times, 6 June 1971
WHEN YOU are trying to be a suburban Dharma Bum you have to try harder. Between the tennis court and the parking lot I read ...
Fillmore West Going — Police Blamed
Report and Interview by Philip Elwood, The San Francisco Examiner, 11 June 1971
THE FILLMORE West rock-dance operation at Market and Van Ness will close down permanently at the end of June, an exhausted and bitter Bill Graham ...
John Lennon, Yoko Ono: The Top of Pop: John & Yoko
Report by Lillian Roxon, New York Sunday News, 20 June 1971
JOHN AND Yoko Lennon have come to town. ...
Comment by Frank Bach, The Ann Arbor Sun, 25 June 1971
IT WAS A Friday night back in the fall of 1966 when Gary Grimshaw, myself and some brothers and sisters from Detroit set up some ...
The Dave Godin Column: Northern Soul
Report by Dave Godin, Blues & Soul, 25 June 1971
THE CALL of the North was getting too strong to resist any longer, and I just had to take some time out and make another ...
Last Rites Are Merry Ones at the Fillmore East
Report by Mike Jahn, The New York Times, 29 June 1971
WITH SEVERAL thousand dollars worth of free food and beer and what one Fillmore regular described as "the best vibes since the place opened," the ...
Alexis Korner, Father of Us All
Interview by Andrew Bailey, Rolling Stone, 8 July 1971
The man who has influenced a universe of British musicians and movements ...
Grand Funk Railroad, John Sebastian: Is this the end of the festival?
Report by Lillian Roxon, Sydney Morning Herald, the, 17 July 1971
LAST WEEK was not a very nice week for rock music. ...
Rick Derringer, Johnny Winter: Johnny Winter: Behind the Scene With Steve Paul
Report and Interview by Ed McCormack, Rolling Stone, 14 October 1971
THE BIG dusty black Cadillac limousine comes rolling around the comer at Twenty-First Street, turns into the dimly-lighted stage-set stillness of Gramercy Park East, and ...
The Rainbow Theatre: Cheap Seats In Pot Of Gold
Report and Interview by Penny Valentine, Sounds, 16 October 1971
"ROCK audiences now are interested in having a comfortable place to sit and really listen to music. The days of freak out dancing to anything ...
Comment by Tony Cummings, Record Mirror, 20 November 1971
...the feud that rages between North and South ...
Live Review by Miles, New York Dolls/Glam Rock, 1972
"It’s a fact that LA soft rock has been stomped on by glittering lurid day-glo platform shoes worn by a female impersonating, posturing hard-rock singer... ...
Hawkwind: The Truth About Hawkwind
Interview by James Johnson, New Musical Express, 5 February 1972
LIKE THEM or not, you must admit that Hawkwind are honest. Guitarist Dave Brock is not loath to admit that most of the band's musicians ...
Column by John Mendelssohn, Disc and Music Echo, 18 March 1972
PLEASE ALLOW me to introduce myself: ...
The Philadelphia Story, Early Sixties Style: What It Was, Was Pud
Retrospective by Greg Shaw, Fusion, October 1972
It all started in 1959, perhaps rock 'n' roll's bleakest year. Buddy Holly had gone down in flames over N. Dakota, Little Richard had gone ...
Various Artists: Fillmore – The Last Days
Review by Jon Tiven, Fusion, October 1972
NO PART OF this review is meant as a slur against the names of Bill Graham, Fillmore Records, or Columbia Records. I realize that the ...
Report by Roy Hollingworth, Melody Maker, 7 October 1972
MAX'S KANSAS City stands on Park Avenue South, with 17th Street, New York City, downtown enough to be not so bright, and far less peopled. ...
Report by Roy Hollingworth, Melody Maker, 21 October 1972
New York Report by Roy Hollingworth ...
New York Dolls: Subterranean satyricon: New York City's Ultra-Living Dolls
Report and Interview by Ed McCormack, Rolling Stone, 26 October 1972
NEW YORK — David Bowie, a brittle, powdered flake of hermaphroditic humanity, is watching the bodies writhing to the music of the New York Dolls ...
Overview by Lester Bangs, Phonograph Record, December 1972
DETROIT, FOUNDED in 1736 by a turncoat (to both sides) halfbreed Indian named Quazimodo from the Kuitee tribe which dwelled circa 1670-1777 on the shores ...
English Trends in L.A.: Rodney Bingenheimer Makes Good
Report and Interview by Marty Cerf, Phonograph Record, December 1972
HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA — Just when we all expected it least, it happened. With our pants down, mouths wide open, Rodney Bingenheimer fulfilled the unknown pledge ...
The Deviants, The Pink Fairies: Pink Fairies
Profile by Chris Rowley, International Times, 2 December 1972
Chris Rowley has been probing the life and times of the Pink Fairies: the women, the liquor, the hot hot music, the grim realities behind ...
The Pink Fairies: Pink Fairies: Pink Finks
Profile by Nick Kent, New Musical Express, 16 December 1972
NICK KENT charts the rise and astonishing survival of the Pink Fairies. ...
Sir Doug Weston's Troubadour: They Hate it, but They Play it
Report and Interview by Judith Sims, Rolling Stone, 18 January 1973
LOS ANGELES — Why was Joni Mitchell recently playing the Troubadour folk club for several nights when she could play for as many people (and ...
Dave Van Ronk: Lament for the Village
Interview by Mike Jahn, Baltimore Sun, 21 January 1973
"THIS WAS our last resort," Dave Van Ronk says, referring to Greenwich Village. "It was the only place we could live in, and it's been ...
Retrospective by John Pidgeon, Let It Rock, February 1973
AT A TIME when most receptive organs — eyes, ears, pockets — were turned to Liverpool and its Merseybeat, another (and as it turned out ...
Barry Manilow, Bette Midler: The Gold Lamé Dream of Bette Midler
Profile and Interview by Ed McCormack, Rolling Stone, 15 February 1973
"Puh-leez, Honey" ...
The Rolling Stones: Rolling Stones Gather No Groupies
Report by Lillian Roxon, New York Sunday News, 25 February 1973
GERI MILLER, where are you? They had a party for the Rolling Stones here in Sydney, Australia, this week, and it might as well havebeen ...
New York Dolls, Wayne County & The Electric Chairs: New York: The Dark Side Of Town
Report by Nick Kent, New Musical Express, 5 May 1973
THE GRAFFITI IN the toilets at Max's Kansas City is abysmal. It's the only word that comes to mind – there's not one subversive scrawl, ...
Comment by Jonathon Green, International Times, 17 May 1973
THEY'RE RIGHT, you know. I always had this sneeking suspicion that they might be, but ferchrissake, I never really wanted to talk about it before. ...
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 ...
Dave Bartholomew, The Coasters, Fats Domino: Behind The Sun: New Orleans
Report by John Broven, Blues Unlimited, June 1973
IT HARDLY SEEMED three years ago that Robin Gosden and myself were making the same journey from his Weybridge home to Heathrow Airport. Nothing had ...
Dr. John: Dr John aka Mac Rebennack
Overview by Greg Shaw, Phonograph Record, 1 July 1973
THE STORY OF NEW ORLEANS ROCK 'N' ROLL ...
Chicago: A James William Guercio Enterprise
Report and Interview by Judith Sims, Rolling Stone, 19 July 1973
CHICAGO, THE line goes, would be a useless slag heap of Midwestern has-beens went it not for the strong hand of their producer, a young ...
Report by Lillian Roxon, New York Sunday News, 5 August 1973
SO THEY'RE saying rock and roll is dead? Not this week, they aren't! What a week! While every newspaper, radio and TV station was telling ...
Report by Dave Marsh, Newsday, 19 August 1973
Being a Partial Compendium of Some of the More (Or Less) Outstanding New York Unknowns ...
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 ...
Professor Longhair: The Professor of Rock
Interview by Rob Partridge, Melody Maker, 8 September 1973
THE PROFESSOR, THEY SAY, influenced just about every musician in New Orleans. And it’s not a claim he’s about to deny. "I taught most of ...
New York Dolls: New York Confidential: the Mercer Arts Center
Report by Ed McCormack, Rolling Stone, 13 September 1973
THE MERCER Arts Center, home hatchery for New York's indigenous glitter rock scene and erstwhile social headquarters for its proletarian neodecadents, has gone the way ...
The Rolling Stones: Stones-On-The Road Special
Report and Interview by Nick Kent, New Musical Express, 22 September 1973
THE LADY behind the amps, staring hazily at Billy Preston and his band performing on stage, looked elegantly damaged. Half of her face was covered ...
Overview by Greg Shaw, Phonograph Record, October 1973
The N.Y. Dolls & Blue Oyster Cult Revive Manhattan ...
New York Dolls: They Weren't Dolls at the Waldorf Concert
Report by Dave Marsh, Newsday, 4 November 1973
PROMOTER HOWARD Stein wanted to add some glamor and sophistication to the rock scene, so he put on rock's first show at the Waldorf Astoria ...
The Who’s Mod Generation: Quadrophenia Through The Years
Overview by Greg Shaw, Phonograph Record, December 1973
If I could somehow live my teenage years over again, I think I would choose to live them as a Mod. What it must have ...
Dawn, Glen Campbell: Live in Las Vegas: Dawn and Glen Campbell
Report by Chris Charlesworth, Melody Maker, 1 December 1973
"HANG ON tight," said the man in the next seat on the Western Airlines jet. "Landings in Las Vegas are the roughest in the world." ...
Marc Bolan, T. Rex: AUDIO: Marc Bolan (1974)
Audio transcript of interview by John Pidgeon, Rock's Backpages Audio, 1974
This is a transcript of John Pidgeon's interview. Listen to the audio of this interview. ...
Electric Light Orchestra, The Moody Blues, The Move, Spencer Davis Group, Wizzard: Brum Beat
Overview by Rob Partridge, Melody Maker, 26 January 1974
"Liverpool today – Birmingham tomorrow. That's the forecast for the beat business in rock music. Yes, the Brum Beat is all set to take over ...
Report by Michael Gross, Zoo World, 14 March 1974
HIPPY DIED in 1967. Time Magazine was the accused murderer, but the case was thrown out of court for lack of evidence. Since then, all ...
Overview by Nick Kent, New Musical Express, 16 March 1974
Is it time to shut the closet door? OUR HERO SEES THROUGH THE SEE-THROUGHS AND COMES TO THE CONCLUSION THAT ELEGANCE IS MORE THAN A LIMP ...
Report by Richard Cromelin, Phonograph Record, May 1974
DESPITE (OR maybe because of) its position as a center of the entertainment industry and one of the Big Gigs on any artist's tour, Los ...
New York Dolls, Television: The New York Club Scene
Report by Alan Betrock, Phonograph Record, May 1974
THE NEW York club scene had its heyday during the mid-sixties. On Long Island, the Action House ruled over the suburban scene featuring house bands ...
San Francisco: Who needs music when we've got the Zebra?
Report by Mick Farren, New Musical Express, 15 June 1974
IT WAS A bad times for San Francisco. It was spring, but whereas in most places this is greeted with some joy – with snows ...
Report by Chris Charlesworth, Melody Maker, 6 July 1974
— that's how the Americans describe those freaky New York bands like Wayne County and Teenage Lust. Chris Charlesworth, guided by photographer Bob Gruen, takes ...
Armadillo World Headquarters: Uptown At The "Dillo"
Report and Interview by Joe Nick Patoski, Zoo World, 26 September 1974
JIM FRANKLIN stood on the stage of the Armadillo World Headquarters wearing his Armadillo helmet, holding a female mannikin's leg and doing a little history ...
Live Review by Richard Cromelin, Los Angeles Times, 15 October 1974
Glitter-Rock Stages a Symbolic Wake ...
Audio transcript of interview by Karl Dallas, Rock's Backpages Audio, 1975
This is a transcript of Karl's interview. Listen to the audio of this interview. ...
Report by Glenn O'Brien, The Village Voice, 6 January 1975
Is its closing an act of terror by the forces of Art Detention? Who is Donald Soviero and why didn't he pay the light bill? ...
Art Ensemble of Chicago: The Art Ensemble of Chicago: Like Hi Man, I's Yo New Neighbour
Report and Interview by Brian Case, New Musical Express, 11 January 1975
Yep, it's a tough town and the music fits like a glove. BRIAN CASE meets The Art Ensemble of Chicago on their home patch. ...
Soft Machine, The Wilde Flowers: Soft Machine, part 1
Retrospective by Ian MacDonald, New Musical Express, 25 January 1975
CLASS OF '61 at the Simon Langton School, Canterbury – an exclusive, private establishment for the sons of local artists and intellectuals. Very free, emphatically ...
Rodney Bingenheimer: The Patron Saint of Teenage
Profile and Interview by John Mendelsohn, Phonograph Record, March 1975
FORGET THE hillside enclaves of those who either can not yet or no longer afford Beverly Hills, and what's left of the San Fernando Valley ...
Alice Cooper, Lou Reed: Nick Kent – A Limey in LA #1: Hey Man, You With A Gwoop?
Report and Interview by Nick Kent, New Musical Express, 15 March 1975
Speech impediments are the thing in Los Angeles this year. There are quite a lot of naked men jumping out of bushes – whereas more ...
Gloria Gaynor, Labelle, Barry White: Disco: "Kids Want Something Different — This Is It!"
Report and Interview by Chris Charlesworth, Melody Maker, 5 April 1975
...so says Billy Smith, an expert on New York's booming discos. In a country where radio rules, it's an amazing phenomenon. CHRIS CHARLESWORTH reports... ...
Report by Nick Kent, New Musical Express, 5 April 1975
ALSO INCLUDES: The Dog That Ate The Dog That Ate Los Angeles ...
Report by Nick Kent, New Musical Express, 12 April 1975
...in a tune-up room on the last night of the Faces' 1975 LA gigs? Why, the closing aria in D from 'il Cavalleria Rusticana', of ...
Jimmy Jones: Timin' Is The Thing
Retrospective by Penny Reel, Let It Rock, May 1975
What would have happened if you and IHadn't just happened to meet?We might have spent the rest of our livesWalking down misery street. ...
Iggy Pop, The Stooges: Iggy Pop: The Mighty Pop vs. the Hand of Blight
Special Feature by Nick Kent, New Musical Express, 3 May 1975
Never before told! The story of a brilliant monster called IGGY POP, whose life and countless near-demises have provided Rock with one of its most ...
Gloria Gaynor & the Disco Boom
Overview by Tony Cummings, Black Music, June 1975
"WE'RE PRODUCTION-orientated sure, but I can't agree that we're cynical in our approach. We simply carry our production techniques one stage further than the competition. ...
Patti Smith, Television: Down In The Scuzz With The Heavy Cult Figures
Report by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 7 June 1975
C.B.G.B. is a toilet. An impossibly scuzzy little club buried somewhere in the sections of the Village that the cab-drivers don't like to drive through. ...
Neil Young: Tonight's the Night: Play It Loud and Stay in the Other Room!
Interview by Bud Scoppa, New Musical Express, 28 June 1975
NEIL YOUNG isn't out to win any popularity contest. Just as he reached the top of the heap three years ago with the huge-selling Harvest, ...
Report by Ed McCormack, Rolling Stone, 28 August 1975
In which a suburban prole decadent does battle with a hot midtown Manhattan discotheque — two out of three falls, no curfew ...
Report by Richard Cromelin, Rolling Stone, 28 August 1975
Where cycle sluts, tanktoppers and dedicated bumpers dance, dance, dance, stick poppers up adversity's nose and dodge surging roachers... ...
Report by Vivien Goldman, New Musical Express, 11 October 1975
Up T’NORTH, they don’t like London journalists snooping about. Still, this was a special occasion at the shrine of the " Northern Soul Scene". ...
Report by Ed McCormack, Rolling Stone, 23 October 1975
NEW YORK — The gaudy white awning of CBGB shines like a lighthouse for freaks amid the darkened, derelict-strewn doorways of the Bowery — where ...
Report by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 8 November 1975
"BEAT ON the brat, beat on the brat, beat on the brat with a baseball bat..." ...
Northern Soul: Fact, Fiction, Faction, Friction
Report by Idris Walters, Street Life, 15 November 1975
IS NORTHERN SOUL DYING ON ITS FEET? ...
Jefferson Airplane, Jefferson Starship, Grace Slick: AUDIO: Grace Slick (1976)
Audio transcript of interview by Jim Esposito, Rock's Backpages Audio, 1976
This is a transcript of Jim's audio interview with Grace. Note that almost all his questions are inaudible on his tape. Hear the interview here ...
Interview by Mary Harron, Punk, January 1976
RIGHT NOW I am sitting by the stage where Joey Ramone has wrapped his tall languorous body and his long long hands around the microphone ...
The Ramones, Talking Heads, Television: Punk Rock: Its Day Will Come
Report by Wayne Robins, Newsday, 25 January 1976
IF YOU thought Jefferson Airplane was a weird name, let some of these drop off your tongue. Talking Heads. Tuff Darts. Ramones. Planets. Heartbreakers. Shirts. ...
The Hollywood Stars, The New Order (US), Iggy Pop, The Runaways: The L.A. Rock Explosion
Overview by Phast Phreddie Patterson, New York Rocker, February 1976
IN THE BEGINNING... ...
Talking Heads Hyperventilate Some Clichés
Report by Richard Goldstein, The Village Voice, 2 February 1976
TALKING HEADS offers a fragile middle finger to bands in which anonymous sidemen play powerhouse back-up through a Luftwaffe of amplifiers, while the man with ...
Report by Nick Kent, New Musical Express, 27 March 1976
In downtown Manhattan the rock 'n' roll war rages on as potential crown princes of Punkdom battle for recognition.. NICK KENT interprets the action ...
Report by John Sinclair, The Ann Arbor Sun, 22 April 1976
Well I'm going to New Orleans, I wanna see the Mardi Gras When I see the Mardi Gras, I wanna know what the carnival for. ...
Sex Pistols: The Sex Pistols are four months old...
Report and Interview by Jonh Ingham, Sounds, 24 April 1976
THE SEX PISTOLS are four months old, so tuned in to the present that it's hard to find a place to play. Yet they already ...
Quick, The (U.S.), The Runaways: The Sound of the Cities, 1976: Los Angeles
Overview by Kim Fowley, Phonograph Record, May 1976
LOS ANGELES — Local talent is never taken seriously in England; a yesteryear example is the phenomena of Love being worshiped in London and Savoy ...
Horslips: Rock in Ireland: Rock in the Dark Ages
Report and Interview by Harry Doherty, Melody Maker, 15 May 1976
IF OXFAM WERE to adopt the same stategy towards rock starvation as they do towards the plight of the world's hungry, then one of the ...
The Sex Pistols: 100 Club, London
Live Review by Greg Shaw, Phonograph Record, June 1976
LONDON, THE TREND centre of last decade’s mod rebellion, has been running a poor second, if not third, this time around. ...
The Ramones: Grins and Groans with the Ramones
Profile and Interview by Susin Shapiro, Sounds, 26 June 1976
Everyone in New York has got the Ramones bug. Some people like the punks, others hate them but they sure don't ignore them. Nor will ...
Spirit: America: The Titanic Might Be Sinking, But There Are Plenty Of Lifeboats Left
Essay by Max Bell, New Musical Express, 3 July 1976
BACK IN this very spot, Mick Farren pulled out his critical cudgels and delivered a sorely needed attack on the current state of rock'n'roll. ...
The Sex Pistols: Punk Rock: Rebels Against the System
Report and Interview by Caroline Coon, Melody Maker, 7 August 1976
JOHNNY ROTTEN looks bored. The emphasis is on the word "looks" rather than, as Johnny would have you believe, the word "bored". His clothes, held ...
The Ramones: Are the Ramones, or Is the Ramone?
Interview by Lisa Jane Persky, New York Rocker, September 1976
PUNK IS A word described in many dictionaries as that which is used to light fireworks; and in this case it is. Eager to pin ...
Glenn Swings Out — Now It's Funky Shorts
Report by Colin Irwin, Melody Maker, 4 September 1976
Colin Irwin visits the Lacy Lady in Ilford, where deejay Chris Hill is leading a new disco trend. ...
Report and Interview by Davitt Sigerson, Black Music, October 1976
Davitt Sigerson investigates New York's soul music underground ...
Report by Caroline Coon, Melody Maker, 2 October 1976
THE 600-STRONG line, which last Monday straggled across two blocks outside London's 100 Club in Oxford Street, waiting for the Punk Rock Festival to start, ...
Burning Spear, Bob Marley & the Wailers, Peter Tosh, Bunny Wailer: Reggae: Black Punks On 'Erb
Report and Interview by Vivien Goldman, Sounds, 16 October 1976
"Youth is the first thing that hits you about the musicians...reggae is still a young music, further progress is made every day." * ...
The Dictators, The Ramones, Television: The Punk Rock Machine
Report and Interview by Lester Bangs, Screw, November 1976
IT'S A WARM New York night in the spring of 1976, and there are a lot of places that the press moguls who publish, edit, ...
Lynn Anderson, Ronnie Prophet, Steve Young: Nashville
Report by Mick Farren, New Musical Express, 13 November 1976
An Englishman's adventures in the city of the rhinestone kings. Mick Farren was that Englishman. ...
Report by Mick Farren, New Musical Express, 20 November 1976
In which Mick Farren doesn't talk to Chet Atkins, visits Opryland, views the tourist spots from the OAP's bus and, (quiver, quiver....), converses with Dolly ...
CBGBs, Max's etc: Underground Overground
Report and Interview by Chris Charlesworth, Melody Maker, 27 November 1976
"PUNK ROCK? What's that supposed to mean? The bands that play at my club aren't punks. They might wear leather jackets, chew gum and try ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 27 November 1976
YOU KNOW what these albums remind me of: The This Is Mersey Beat collections that Oriole put out after the first wave of Liverpool bands had gotten ...
The Miamis, Mink DeVille, The Shirts, Tuff Darts: Various Artists: Live At CBGB's (CBGB 315)
Review by Gene Sculatti, Crawdaddy!, December 1976
MEANWHILE, DOWNTOWN ...
Kim Fowley, The Runaways: L.A. Rock Resurgence
Interview by Richard Cromelin, Los Angeles Times, 18 December 1976
LOS ANGELES is the home of countless musicians and the center of the music industry, but in terms of nurturing local teen-on-the-street talent, the city ...
The Eagles: Life in the Fast Lane
Interview by Barbara Charone, Sounds, 8 January 1977
"A friend of mine in L.A. said 'talkin' about music is a lot like singing about football'." — Jackson Browne. ...
The Ramones, Talking Heads: Ramones & Heads: Punk Art?
Report and Interview by Toby Goldstein, Crawdaddy!, February 1977
NEW YORK — The glittered frenzy of recent years has receded into a brooding severity of black and grays. The punk-rockers, newest manifestations of media ...
Generation X, Sex Pistols: Just Dropped Intuh Tha Fun House: Impressions Of The Roxy
Report by Jane Suck, Sounds, 12 February 1977
I CAME to see Generation X and to look for prospective musicians as I had been assured that the floor was knee deep in 'em ...
Interview by Ed McCormack, Rolling Stone, 10 March 1977
"Nobody wants to see Punk grow up" ...
Mumps, New York Dolls, The Ramones, Talking Heads: The Ramones: Punk City Night
Interview by Gary Kenton, Circus, 17 March 1977
The Ramones Leave Home While Talking Heads and Mumps Play the Bowery ...
The Damned, The Dead Boys: The Damned: The Fantastic Four versus the Big Apple
Report by Barry Cain, Record Mirror, 23 April 1977
The story so far: Barry Cain and The Damned have journeyed to New York in pursuit of the evil CBGB... ...
Overview by Joe Nick Patoski, Phonograph Record, May 1977
THANKS TO the migration of musicians who actually believed Austin's blind boast that it was the new country music capital of the world, the central ...
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 ...
Blondie, Debbie Harry: AUDIO: Blondie's Debbie Harry & Chris Stein (1977)
Audio transcript of interview by John Tobler, Rock's Backpages Audio, 1 May 1977
This is a transcript of John's audio interview with Blondie's Debbie and Chris. Listen to the audio of this interview. ...
Talking Heads: "We're Not Punks!" "We're Not Punks!" "We're Not Punks!" "We're Not Punks!"
Profile and Interview by Giovanni Dadomo, Sounds, 21 May 1977
Not just another Noo Wave Band From Noo Yawk, says GIOVANNI DADOMO ...
Grateful Dead: My Night With The Dead
Report and Interview by Mick Farren, New Musical Express, 28 May 1977
IT'S LIKE GOING back home."Acid!""Acid, black beauties!""Acid!""You got any pot to sell?""No, man, all I got is acid and black beauties."What else could it be ...
The Sex Pistols, Television: Pimp-Rock?
Comment by Lisa Jane Persky, New York Rocker, June 1977
EVERYTHING happens to us all so quickly these days that even before something is completed, it is dated, labels must be attached for definition and ...
New York: Suddenly It's A Hell Of A Town Again…
Report by Mick Farren, New Musical Express, 4 June 1977
And why? Because folks have got nothing to lose. Because it's happening, it's exciting, life is fun again and people aren't ashamed to have a ...
Buzzcocks, Howard Devoto, The Fall: Manchester: They Mean It Maaanchester
Overview by Paul Morley, New Musical Express, 30 July 1977
MANCHESTER as a Rock and Roll town just didn't use to exist. It fed dutifully off London, and there were frequent visits from groups to ...
The Ramones, Sex Pistols, Patti Smith, Talking Heads, Television: The Possibilities of Punk
Comment by Richard Goldstein, The Village Voice, 10 October 1977
UP UNTIL about six months ago, CBGB's was the only rock bar I ever felt comfortable in. All you needed was a long scarf and ...
Overview by Robert Duncan, Creem, November 1977
A Consumer Guide To Rock's Last Drag by Robert Drizzle Duncan ...
Overview by Jack Basher, Creem, December 1977
CREEM's Punk Guides Stagger On... ...
Overview by Vernon Gibbs, Penthouse, January 1978
"YOU KNOW why salsa is so popular in New York?" asks Izzy Sanabria, publisher of Latin New York. "Because the rhythms of salsa are the ...
Interview by Paul Rambali, New Musical Express, 7 January 1978
THEY SAY ENVIRONMENT determines character, and when it comes to American music, they're probably right. ...
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 4 March 1978
"CBGB & OMFUG" is what it says over the door of Hilly Kristal's rock and roll dive down on New York's Bowery. That's the club ...
Overview by Paul Rambali, New Musical Express, 1 April 1978
Exploring alternative hives of industry in Akron, City of Rubber, and Cleveland, City of Steel. ...
Devo, The Dickies, The Heaters, The Screamers, The Zippers: Punk Bands: Some Do, Some Don't
Report by Richard Cromelin, Los Angeles Times, 15 April 1978
THE DICKIES and the Heaters have it. The Runaways and the Quick did, but not anymore. Venus & the Razorblades had it for an instant, ...
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 ...
Jane Aire & The Belvederes, Tin Huey, The Waitresses: Rock in Akron: The Music Of Greater Akron
Report and Interview by Peter Silverton, Sounds, 17 June 1978
Is this the avant-garde or the sound of cash registers? Pete Silverton has a pretty good idea ...
Review by Jon Savage, Sounds, 24 June 1978
OH JESUS! After Devo, the (marketing) deluge. ...
Lydia Lunch, Teenage Jesus & the Jerks: Teenage Jesus and the Jerks: Out To Lunch
Interview by Roy Trakin, New York Rocker, July 1978
A Dialogue between Roy Trakin and Lydia Lunch of Teenage Jesus and the Jerks ...
The Idols, New York Dolls, Johnny Thunders & The Heartbreakers: The Jerry Nolan Story!!
Interview by Andy Schwartz, New York Rocker, July 1978
JERRY NOLAN is 32 years old. He has been in the New York Dolls and the Heartbreakers. He has made three albums which did not ...
Cabaret Voltaire: Sheffield – This Week's Leeds
Profile and Interview by Andy Gill, New Musical Express, 9 September 1978
UNTIL LAST YEAR, Sheffield was undoubtedly the most musically inactive city in Britain. For a city with over half a million people, the paucity of ...
Profile and Interview by Philip Elwood, The San Francisco Examiner, 29 September 1978
CHET HELMS was the great visionary of the innocent early days of San Francisco's rock music and hippie scene. ...
Joe Ely, Butch Hancock, Buddy Holly, The Legendary Stardust Cowboy: The Sons of Buddy Holly
Essay by Joe Nick Patoski, Texas Monthly, November 1978
Lubbock was the birthplace of rock'n'roll. And Texas rock'n'roll hasn't left home. ...
Studio 54: Innocent Until Proven Decadent
Comment by Richard Goldstein, The Village Voice, 25 December 1978
IT OUGHT TO be possible to wish the combined forces of the IRS and the DEA well in their early morning raid on Studio 54 ...
Audio transcript of interview by John Tobler, Rock's Backpages Audio, Spring 1978
This is a transcript of John's interview with Patti. Listen to the audio of this interview. ...
Joy Division, The Passage, Spherical Objects: New Stirrings On The North-West Frontier
Report and Interview by Paul Morley, New Musical Express, 13 January 1979
The Underground sticks its Collective head overground to explain how the rest of the world went wrong. Please fasten your safety helmets now. Words: PAUL ...
The Alley Cats, The Screamers, X, The Zippers: L.A. Bands: Rocking Or Reeling?
Report by Richard Cromelin, Los Angeles Times, 21 January 1979
A YEAR AGO, Pasadena's Van Halen was just a promising band on the L.A. scene. Its most stellar dates were in Glendora, Redondo Beach and ...
Overview by Penny Reel, New Musical Express, 27 January 1979
Say hello to the schoolgirl revolution and the shortest cut to cleaning up in UK reggae. And ya thought reggae was all about guns, ganga, ...
Village People: The Annals Of Disco
Report and Interview by Danny Baker, New Musical Express, 17 February 1979
DANNY BAKER tests the dancefloor action 1979 from uptown Manhattan to downtown Rotherhithe, interviews THE VILLAGE PEOPLE people, lays on a historical overview of Disco, ...
Rodney Bingenheimer: A Child of the Myth
Profile and Interview by Lisa Jane Persky, L.A. Weekly, May 1979
KEEPING MY fingers on the minimal pulse of the musical movement in L.A. which, gratefully, is growing, I cannot ignore one of its prime gardeners. ...
Report and Interview by Paul Morley, New Musical Express, 14 July 1979
IT'S OUT of the blue and into the black. A place is left somewhere behind where the front pages of the daily newspapers comment hysterically ...
Echo & The Bunnymen, The Teardrop Explodes: The Teardrop Explodes, Echo & the Bunnymen: Zoo Games
Report and Interview by Dave McCullough, Sounds, 25 August 1979
A small label at the warm end of the cold wave. The music of the Eighties! says Dave McCullough. ...
Kim Fowley, Helen Reddy: Sandy Robertson's Hollywood Confidential
Report by Sandy Robertson, Sounds, 1 September 1979
"On my first visit to Los Angeles I was conventionally prepared for almost anything except for what it really looked like – a quite beautiful ...
The Who: The Ace Face’s Forgotten Story: Pete Meaden
Interview by Steve Turner, New Musical Express, 17 November 1979
I’m the face babyIs that clear?I’m the faceIf you want it.All the others are third-class tickets by me babyIs that clear?– Pete Meaden for the ...
Rock Dreams Come True For Rodney
Interview by John Mendelssohn, Los Angeles Times, 9 December 1979
"IN GOING FROM a kid standing in utter terror outside Connie Stevens' house to a Monkee's double to the king of the local nightclubs, he's ...
Report by Steven X Rea, Oui, 1980
The City of Angels has become a Dada delight ...
Remember Those Fabulous Seventies? A Musical Stroll From Woodstock To Punk-rock
Overview by Ira Robbins, Trouser Press, January 1980
The best characterization of rock'n'roll's third decade is that of 10 years spent revising, refining and recalling the music of the '60s. While '50s bands ...
The Velvet Underground: Pop Art/Art Pop: The Warhol Connection
Report and Interview by Mary Harron, Melody Maker, 16 February 1980
Like to be a galleryPut you all inside my show— David Bowie, 'Andy Warhol' Some people claim that only James Brown can match Andy Warhol's ...
Report by Penny Kiley, Melody Maker, 29 March 1980
PENNY KILEY on the demise of Liverpool Eric's — the city's rock 'n' roll heart. ...
Fist, Mythra, Raven, Tygers of Pan Tang, White Spirit: Are You Ready For The NENWOBHM?
Report and Interview by Ian Ravendale, Sounds, 17 May 1980
In other words, the North East New Wave Of British Heavy Metal. IAN RAVENDALE reports from Wallsend, matrix of metal mayhem (it says here) with ...
The Kinks, Randy Newman, The Police, The Rolling Stones, The Who: Burbank Calling
Comment by J. Kordosh, Creem, July 1980
They were six fine English boys Who knew each other in Birmingham They bought a drum and guitar Started a rock-roll band. ...
Def Leppard, Iron Maiden, Saxon: The Lustre of Heavy Metal
Report by Mary Harron, The Guardian, 19 July 1980
Mary Harron takes a trip to Sheffield and discovers a surprising rock revival. ...
Report and Interview by Don Snowden, Los Angeles Times, 31 August 1980
YOU WOULD expect a venue that's been presenting live popular music longer than any local club this side of the Lighthouse to be a familiar ...
Spandau Ballet: The New Romantics — a Manifesto for the Eighties
Interview by Betty Page, Sounds, 13 September 1980
"INITIALLY 'mod' meant a very small group of young working class boys who, at the height of the trad boom formed a small, totally committed ...
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 ...
Profile and Interview by Paul Sexton, Record Mirror, 15 November 1980
THE DARK and mysterious Notting Hill Gate tube station, one cold and rainy night. Outside it stands an equally dark and mysterious stranger, armed with ...
Interview by Mark Cooper, Record Mirror, 29 November 1980
STEVE STRANGE, chief of the new clan of the beautiful people has made a record. MARK COOPER talks to him about the concept ...
Method Actors, Pylon: Pylon, the Method Actors: The Post Bouffant Bop
Interview by Roy Carr, Richard Grabel, New Musical Express, 6 December 1980
Athens, Georgia, apres the B-52's: still weird, but definitely not wacky ...
Interview by Betty Page, Sounds, 6 December 1980
THE MINUTE I walked in the joint, I could see he was a man of distinction, a real big spender... king of the nighttime jungle, ...
Fab 5 Freddy: In Praise of Graffiti: The Fire Down Below
Report by Richard Goldstein, The Village Voice, 24 December 1980
JOHN LINDSAY hated graffiti. He vowed to wipe it off the face of the IRT, and allocated $10 million to its obliteration. But the application ...
1967: The Year It All Came Together
Retrospective by Simon Frith, The History of Rock, 1981
Rock is Jimi Hendrix’s guitar introduction to ‘Hey Joe’; it is Mick Jagger strutting onstage; it is Bob Dylan singing ‘John Wesley Harding’; it is ...
The Beatles: Gypsy Dave on the Beatles (1981)
Interview by Keith Altham, Rock's Backpages Audio, 1981
Travel with Donovan-acolyte Gypsy Dave to the ashram at Rishikesh to witness The Beatles meeting the Maharishi. Gypsy Dave is the cynic in the camp, and makes his escape with Ringo and Maureen.
File format: mp3; file size: 19.8mb; Interview length: 21' 38"; sound quality: **
Bush Tetras, James Chance & the Contortions: Why the Big Apple Lacks Real Bite
Report by Mary Harron, The Guardian, 7 February 1981
London's rock scene is fizzing, but New York's has turned flat. Mary Harron reports ...
Phast Phreddie & Thee Precisions: Phast Phreddie Finds His Calling
Interview by Bill Bentley, L.A. Weekly, 27 February 1981
PHAST PHREDDIE, one of rock & roll's die-hard enthusiasts and actual true believers in the power of American jungle music to transform workaday stiffs to ...
Postmark: Austin, Texas — The Demise of the Armadillo and the Rise of Garagelend Punk
Report by Cynthia Rose, New Musical Express, 7 March 1981
IF YOU PAID to survive The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and saw it as anything other than a blackly anarchic polemic in favour of vegetarianism, then ...
Essay by Jon Savage, The Face, April 1981
Jon Savage went to the People's Palace and watched Blitz Culture go public. FLASH! ...
The Funky Four + 1, Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five: The Funky Four + 1: Rap, Rap, Rap
Report and Interview by Richard Grabel, New Musical Express, 30 May 1981
Young South Bronx unwraps the rapping revolution ...
Overview by Richard Cromelin, Los Angeles Times, 5 July 1981
BESIDES MAKING names for themselves in local rock clubs and in the hearts of the police and the media, the Southland's hard-core punk bands have ...
Black Flag, Minor Threat, Henry Rollins, State of Alert: Slamdancing in the Big City
Report and Interview by Richard Harrington, The Washington Post, 19 July 1981
THE PIT is ferocious and frightening: Young men's bodies slam into each other, arms and elbows out, fist flailing, like razor-edged Mexican jumping beans popping ...
Visage: …And Their British Guru, Steve Strange
Interview by Jim Sullivan, The Boston Globe, 27 July 1981
SOMETIMES, confides Steve Strange, weeks go by when he doesn't buy any clothes. ...
Funkapolitan: Your Flavour Of The Month
Profile and Interview by Deanne Pearson, Smash Hits, 20 August 1981
Deanne Pearson learns to Dance, Scream & Scoobydoo ...
Profile and Interview by Ian Ravendale, Kerrang!, September 1981
"WE DID this gig for the Hell's Angels once. Ended up playing 'Born To Be Wild' five times. Or else!" ...
The Neville Brothers, Professor Longhair: New Orleans: "The city that time forgot"
Report by Don Snowden, New York Rocker, October 1981
One City And Its Romance With R&B ...
Invasion Of The Walkmen People
Report by Cynthia Rose, City Limits, 16 October 1981
It was was back in 1964 when Andy Warhol married his cassette machine. "The acquisition of my tape recorder" he revealed eleven years later, "really ...
Sonic Youth: The State of New York
Overview by Andy Schwartz, New York Rocker, November 1981
TO ANYONE who's been reading this magazine even semi-regularly for the past year, it should be obvious that there's something very wrong with the current ...
The Outcasts: Culture Shock Rock!
Report and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 28 November 1981
Barney Hoskyns and survives a night in Belfast with the town's longest surviving punk band, the Outcasts. ...
Britain invades the world: Mid-Sixties British Music
Retrospective by Tom Hibbert, The History of Rock, 1982
Before 1964, the United States' worldwide domination of the pop music industry — and youth culture in general — was virtually total. Few British artists ...
New York: Positively 4th Street
Retrospective by Lenny Kaye, The History of Rock, 1982
The music that came out of New York's melting pot ...
Blondie, Johnny Thunders & The Heartbreakers, Television: The Bowery Beat: CBGBs and All That
Retrospective by Tom Hibbert, The History of Rock, 1982
FROM 1970 ONWARDS, the US rock mainstream grew increasingly staid, predictable and unimaginative. On the surface, the American scene appeared to offer nothing but sleepy ...
McCabe's Hippie Spirit Celebrates Anniversary
Report and Interview by Todd Everett, Los Angeles Herald Examiner, 30 January 1982
TOMORROW, MCCABE'S guitar shop in Santa Monica is marking its 13th anniversary, even though its actual opening took place in October, 1969 (which means, if ...
The Beach Boys, Charles Manson: Surfin' Death Valley USA
Essay by David Toop, Collusion, February 1982
"WE'LL GET THE ROUGHEST AND THE TOUGHEST INITIATION WE CAN FIND."from Our Car Club (Brian Wilson/Mile Love) Beach Boys, 1963 What were the connections between Beach ...
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 ...
45 Grave, Vox Pop: California Screamin': 45 Grave and Vox Pop
Profile and Interview by Byron Coley, New York Rocker, September 1982
"All I can say is that everyone in Vox Pop is smarter than everyone in 45 Grave."--Jeff Dahl, May '82"I'm smarter than everyone in Vox ...
Interview by Maureen O'Grady, 19, November 1982
THE TALL white house in Notting Hill Gate had three doorbells. All, however, were nameless, not giving away any clues who lived there. ...
Angelic Upstarts, Cockney Rejects, Splodgenessabounds, UK Subs: Oi! and Skinheads: Coming a Cropper
Comment by Garry Bushell, Sounds, 6 November 1982
A passionate defence of skinhead culture by GARRY BUSHELL. ...
Report and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 27 November 1982
"Only the mice and the great ones are happy when I arrive." ...
Book Excerpt by Danny (Shredder) Weizmann, 'Hardcore California', 1983
IN 1978 THE suburbs of Los Angeles (Anaheim, Fullerton, Garden Grove, Huntington Beach, Redondo Beach etc.) were still a home for Disneyland, Movieland Wax Museum ...
Malcolm McLaren: The Mud Club, London
Live Review by Neil Tennant, Smash Hits, 3 February 1983
ALL THE OLD dances are coming back, you know. ...
Report by Betsy Sherman, Boston Rock, 30 March 1983
IF YOU'RE keen to witness a major cultural capital in hibernation, try being in London the week between Christmas and New Years. Just about everything ...
Letter from Britain: The Beautiful And The Damned Hit Pay Dirt
Report by Cynthia Rose, Creem, April 1983
'RECESSION ROCK' on the radio (cf. 'My City Was Gone', 'Allentown' or 'Out of Work') may call forth condemnations from America's urban mayors — many, ...
Grateful Dead: Dawn of the Deadheads
Report and Interview by David Gans, Headliner, August 1983
THE PSYCHEDELIC era is ancient history, and LSD is so far out of fashion that it probably doesn't even need to be illegal any more. ...
R.E.M.: Subverting Small Town Boredom
Interview by J.D. Considine, Musician, August 1983
ALMOST EVERYBODY else at the Athens, Georgia, Holiday Inn was there for some convention being held at the University of Georgia — seminars in bovine ...
Larry Levan, Peech Boys: Peech Boys: Muscle Peech Party
Interview by Paolo Hewitt, New Musical Express, 27 August 1983
Paolo Hewitt checks for the Peech Boys' Console Companions Larry Levan and Michael "Mafia" Benedictus. ...
Interview by Mark Leviton, BAM, 23 September 1983
LOS ANGELES – Fringe jackets, mini-skirts, turtlenecks, striped trousers, long hair, 12-string guitars, LSD, acoustic instruments, garage rehearsals – lots of things are coming back ...
Report by Michael Goldberg, Rolling Stone, 13 October 1983
Sixteen years after the Summer of Love, the bands that made the Fillmore famous are as mainstream as Tony Bennett. Meanwhile, a new generation of ...
Interview by Richard Grabel, New Musical Express, 14 April 1984
Hip-hop? Hell no, go-go! RICHARD GRABEL keeps up with TROUBLE FUNK, grand masters of the D.C. sound. ...
Mods: The Resurrection Of Chad
Report by Lesley White, The Face, June 1984
For two days the town slept uneasily, anticipating events prophesied by dark whispers in the roadside inns. As the pilgrims gathered by their tents, huddled ...
Quicksilver Messenger Service: Quicksilver's John Cipollina (1984)
Interview by Gene Sculatti, Davin Seay, Rock's Backpages Audio, June 1984
Cipollina looks back on his childhood and youth, falling in love with the electric guitar and starting his first bands; meeting Dino Valenti and the formation of Quicksilver Messenger Service; the emergence of hippies, and the early Fillmore scene; hanging out with the Charlatans; signing to Capitol, and their first recordings; the evolution of psychedelic rock, and the brotherhood of the San Francisco bands.
File format: mp3; file size: 91.5mb, interview length: 1h 35' 21" sound quality: ***
Interview by Fiona Russell Powell, The Face, July 1984
Pausing only to change from one outrageous outfit to the next, PHILIP SALLON has hosted a mad whirl of parties that unite youth tribes in ...
Report by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 1 September 1984
Earlier this year, BARNEY HOSKYNS visited Prague to find out if Czechoslovakia's heavily repressed rock scene could have any effect on loosening the European blocs. ...
Report by Richard Grabel, New Musical Express, 22 September 1984
Go-go's got a godfather and a group in every area!! RICHARD GRABEL goes ga-ga in Washington as he uncovers the biggest show in those suburbs. ...
Interview by Paul Sexton, Record Mirror, 2 February 1985
In our fascinating profile of Mr Glenn Gregory, crooner of this parish, we discover what Heaven 17 and toilet paper have in common. And there's ...
Guide by Julian Henry, Ms London, 11 March 1985
Julian Henry helps newcomers to town find their feet in the glitter domes. ...
Interview by Martin Aston, Melody Maker, 18 May 1985
Drugs? Paisley shirts? Forget it, say L.A.'s RAIN PARADE, currently in Britain courtesy of friendly Island Records. Martin Aston wades through the beads and patchouli ...
Special Feature by Richard Harrington, The Washington Post, 19 May 1985
GO-GO MUSIC, the hard-hitting street funk born and bred in Washington's inner city 15 years ago and the heart of a vibrant black subculture for ...
Hüsker Dü, Prince, The Replacements: Minneapolis: The Art of the Heart of the Country
Report by Laura Fissinger, Record, October 1985
IF YOU believe music comes from a state of mind rather than a state on the map, now's a good time for a look at ...
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 ...
The Rolling Stone Interview: Bill Graham
Interview by Michael Goldberg, Rolling Stone, 19 December 1985
The P.T. Barnum of rock & roll celebrates his twentieth anniversary ...
Report by Cynthia Rose, Vogue, 1986
Aginners, glyphies, rednecks, rattlesnakes, conjunto, honky-tonk and wheatberry pancakes: Austin is the cultural nexus of Texas. ...
Interview by Richie Unterberger, unpublished, 1986
Author’s note: This was based around one of the first significant historical interviews I did. The essay wasn't published anywhere, just typed out for a ...
Deep Soul Mecca: Muscle Shoals, Alabama
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, unpublished, 1986
MUSCLE SHOALS: the very name suggests some grotesque image dreamt up by a surrealist painter. Shouldn't it be Mussel, you wonder... and yet this North ...
Patti Smith: The Patti Smith Group's Lenny Kaye (1986)
Interview by Mat Snow, Rock's Backpages Audio, January 1986
Musician and journalist Kaye on the CBGBs scene, the differences between US and UK Punk, Patti Smith and his seminal Nuggets compilation.
File format: mp3; file size: 59meg, interview length: 1h 01' 26" sound quality: ***
Peter Stringfellow: The Peter Principle
Interview by Frank Owen, Melody Maker, 4 January 1986
With his glittering night club The Hippodrome, working class entrepreneur PETER STRINGFELLOW seeks to bring glamour into everybody's life. But, asks Frank Owen, is he ...
Overview by Jon Savage, i-D, February 1986
Jon Savage is one of the arch voices of our time, a blithe spirit with a vicious tongue and a wicked pen: dedicated, deadly and ...
Simply Red: Punk in Manchester: Oh, How We Laughed
Essay by Paul Morley, New Musical Express, 15 February 1986
BE OFF with you! Little Red, it is said, is not happy at the hollow allegations that suggest he has 'sold out' by leaping from ...
Patti Smith, Television: Punk in New York: Blitzkreig Bop
Retrospective and Interview by Mat Snow, New Musical Express, 15 February 1986
"And one fine morning she turns on a New York-station / And doesn't believe what she hears at all / She started dancing to that ...
Report and Interview by Richard Grabel, Creem, April 1986
THIS IS CRAZY. I'm in Cheriy's Roller Rink, in Northeast Washington, D.C. The place is filled with black teenagers, and even their younger brothers and ...
Report and Interview by Simon Witter, New Musical Express, 7 June 1986
Go Go all gone? Washington DC all fini? Not on your Nelly, argues Simon Witter, Go Go guru of the King’s Roadeo. The deaths of ...
Essay by Simon Reynolds, Melody Maker, 28 June 1986
All this talk about indiepop, about the death and resurgence of an underground, an alternative to chart pap. But is there really life beyond the ...
Led Zeppelin: Rodney B.'s Endless Party
Retrospective and Interview by Steven Rosen, Guitar World, July 1986
The parties were legendary, the hotels trashed regularly, the hangers-on flowed constantly when the Zep cruised the skyways. ...
Chip E., Frankie Knuckles, Marshall Jefferson: Chicago House: Last Night A DJ Saved My Life, Part 1
Report and Interview by Frank Owen, Melody Maker, 16 August 1986
In the first of two instalments, Atlantic-hopping Frank Owen introduces DJ International, home of CHICAGO HOUSE music, the finest club beat of the moment ...
Report by Sheryl Garratt, The Face, September 1986
"Sue the bastards!" WE'VE BEEN IN Chicago for two hours now, and for reasons too ridiculous to explain we are sitting in an Armenian restaurant talking ...
Ron Hardy, JM Silk, Frankie Knuckles, Jamie Principle: Time To Jack: The House Sound Of Chicago
Report and Interview by Simon Witter, i-D, September 1986
Is House music the latest in a long line of Urban American dancefloor explosions – or the latest in a long line of record company ...
Talulah Gosh: Ladybirds & Start-Rite Kids
Report by Simon Reynolds, Melody Maker, 27 September 1986
Is there more to jumble-sale chic than saving precious pennies? Simon Reynolds thinks so and spots an asexual revolution unfolding within the indie scene. So ...
Billy Vera: Billy & the Beaters et al: Bar Bands Make The Rounds
Report and Interview by Don Snowden, Los Angeles Times, 21 December 1986
THE SATURDAY NIGHT crowd packed into At My Place in Santa Monica whooped it up as Billy & the Beaters kicked off their opening set ...
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: **
The Pop Tarts: Downtown: Life After Death
Report and Interview by Frank Owen, Melody Maker, 17 January 1987
Downtown New York is where people are famous for being famous, but you're only famous if you're on the guest list. Downtown is the home ...
Guns N' Roses, Jane's Addiction: Guns N' Roses: The Subterraneans
Report and Interview by Jon Wilde, Melody Maker, 6 June 1987
Something's crawling from the gutters of Los Angeles, something bright and proud and bad, something making claims on setting a scene. Jonh Wilde took a ...
Husker Du, The Replacements: Husker Du and The Replacements: Euphoric… Urgent... Raucous... Drunk
Profile and Interview by Andy Gill, Q, August 1987
MINNEAPOLIS: it must be something they put in the water. ...
What's The Matter With Kids Today?
Comment by John Mendelsohn, Creem, October 1987
THERE ARE lots of wide open spaces around where I live. In the late spring, I can gaze out from the window of my study ...
Smith & Mighty: Smith And Mighty: Bristol Rising
Profile and Interview by John McCready, The Face, 1988
Coming from the same sound system roots as Soul II Soul, dance producers Smith And Mighty are at the centre of a thriving West Country ...
The Farm: The Dark Side Of The Mersey: Retro-Rock Scallies
Report and Interview by John McCready, The Face, 1988
A HIPPIE IS chased down a darkened street by a group of 16 year-old Casuals. In most parts of Britain, what follows is likely to ...
Report and Interview by Tom Hibbert, Q, February 1988
OUTSIDE THE LONG BEACH Arena, south of Los Angeles on the California coast, there is a massive field. Reserved for recreational activities throughout the rest ...
Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin: Thinking About the Sixties
Essay by Richard Goldstein, The Village Voice, 8 March 1988
Something's happening here. What it is ain't exactly clear. Is the '60s revival a thaw in the Big Chill, or just more evidence of fashion ...
Overview by Simon Witter, unpublished, May 1988
2002 note: I went to New Orleans to see the Red Hot Chili Peppers in Dec 87, took a week's holiday there with photographer Chris ...
Beats Workin': Turn On, Drop Out
Report and Interview by Sean O'Hagan, New Musical Express, 16 July 1988
Methylenedioxymetheamphetamine, aka Ecstasy has been described as a "love drug" and "a new age mind bender". Whatever, there is no doubting its effect on a ...
Paul Oakenfold, Danny Rampling: From Acid House to the Balearics
Report by David Toop, The Times, 18 August 1988
What is the link between acid and House, between Ibiza and a music that does not exist? ...
Jim Dickinson, Steve Earle, R.E.M., U2: Memphis: A Legendary Music City is on the Rebound
Report by Rob Tannenbaum, Rolling Stone, 8 September 1988
Keith Richards, U2 and R.E.M. have recorded there, but the city's future hinges on its home-grown talent ...
Report by John McCready, The Face, October 1988
Scorned by the purists and ignored elsewhere, British soul has finally decided to go it alone. From bedrooms in Hackney and basements in Bristol a ...
Report and Interview by Jon Savage, The Observer, 13 October 1988
IT'S 8.45 ON A typically crisp Friday evening in Sheffield. The queue is already beginning to lengthen, even though the doors to the City Hall ...
Overview by Push, Melody Maker, 24 December 1988
AT THE BEGINNING of this year a House record would have cleared the majority of London's dancefloors. ...
Report by Sean O'Hagan, Spin, January 1989
A heady mix of sex, drugs, and trance dance music, Acid House has swept England with a wave of hedonism and made going out fun ...
Report and Interview by Jon Savage, The Observer, 26 February 1989
Ritualised violence, style and beauty make up the male world of Voguing: the new dance from New York's ghettos. ...
Profile and Interview by Paolo Hewitt, New Musical Express, 11 March 1989
Here PAOLO HEWITT gets on the Voice Beat with SMITH & MIGHTY and SOUL II SOUL. ...
Blackpool Weekender: Keeping The Faith
Report by Sheryl Garratt, The Face, May 1989
A modern Mecca: the finale of the Third Blackpool Soul, Funk & Jazz Weekender in early April, where dancers left cold by rap and acid gather ...
Report by Don Snowden, Los Angeles Times, 28 May 1989
The new sound pumps up the volume and eyes a move from R&B underground to the pop mainstream. ...
Report by Richard North, New Musical Express, 29 July 1989
"IN NEW YORK, you don't need a reason for murder, just an occasion," says one clubber. He's talking about the recent shooting at THE WORLD ...
Report by Sheryl Garratt, The Face, August 1989
THERE WERE stories of people dancing to police sirens, traffic noises, anything to stretch the Summer Of Love out a little longer, but never before ...
KISS, Ozzy Osbourne, Poison, W.A.S.P.: Spheeris of Influence
Interview by Dele Fadele, New Musical Express, 5 August 1989
The macho world of Heavy Metal is not the most likely place to find a female film director, but PENELOPE SPHEERIS took her camera and ...
Studio 54 Co-Owner Steve Rubell Dead at 45
Report by Michael Goldberg, Rolling Stone, 7 September 1989
STEVE RUBELL, whose celebrity-studded New York discotheque Studio 54 was at the epicenter of the disco craze during the late Seventies, died July 25th in ...
Overview by Cathi Unsworth, Sounds, 23 September 1989
It's been the decade of the goth — but, somewhere along the line, the innovation of the Birthday Party, the Banshees and the Sisters gave ...
The Blue Nile, Danny Wilson: The Soul of Scotland: Danny Wilson/The Blue Nile
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Sunday Correspondent, October 1989
"THE WHOLE Scottish scene is getting a little out of hand", admits Ronnie Gurr, an affable, affluent-looking Scotsman who, in his capacity as a roving ...
Report and Interview by Mark Cooper, Sunday Correspondent Magazine, 1 October 1989
"Takin' a life or two/That's what the hell I do." The rap band NWA – Niggers with Attitude – compares Los Angeles street life to ...
Making It: Heavy Metal in Hollywood
Report and Interview by Jim Sullivan, The Boston Globe, November 1989
LOS ANGELES – It's 2:20 a.m., a Sunday, just after the rock clubs on Sunset Boulevard have rousted the last rowdies and kicked out the ...
808 State, A Guy Called Gerald: House-proud
Report by Len Brown, The Observer, 17 December 1989
Techno-beat may have played itself out in the capital, but in Manchester it's the rhythm which has sparked a working-class musical revolution. LEN BROWN reports ...
The Motels: Not Long Ago, But Far, Far Away: They Were There When L.A.'s Vital Club Scene Was Reborn
Retrospective and Interview by Don Snowden, Los Angeles Times, 29 July 1990
IT WAS 1976 and they were five newcomers in three bands. Together, they helped stage 'Radio Free Hollywood' and opened the door for hundreds of ...
By the Time I Got Back to Woodstock
Essay by Steve Turner, The Independent, 4 August 1990
TO SALLY GROSSMAN, the living room of her Bearsville home near Woodstock in New York State is nothing extraordinary. It has an old fireplace, some ...
John Lennon: Some Time in New York City: John Lennon’s Manhattan
Essay by Steve Turner, The Independent, 18 August 1990
"I SHOULD HAVE been born in New York," John Lennon once said. "I should have been born in the Village. That’s where I belong. Everybody ...
Retrospective and Interview by Michael Goldberg, Rolling Stone, 23 August 1990
"My eyes were opened. There's a new world and a new society and a new spirit." ...
Alice In Chains, Mother Love Bone, The Posies: A Seattle Slew
Report and Interview by Dave DiMartino, Rolling Stone, 20 September 1990
Record companies are flocking to the Great Northwest, signing bands like crazy and hoping to find the Next Big Thing ...
Blondie, The Ramones, Talking Heads: Meet The Family: Ramones, Blondie, Talking Heads
Report and Interview by Mat Snow, Q, October 1990
There's Debbie, and there's Tina and, let's see, there's little Joey, hasn't he grown? Then there's and Chris and, uh, Chris... From the shadowy depths ...
A Special Time In Rock: 1966 On The Sunset Strip
Retrospective by Roy Trakin, Los Angeles Times, 1991
THE SUMMER of 1966 on L.A.'s Sunset Strip was a time when many young musicians thought anything was possible. A teenager from the San Fernando ...
Interview by Steven Daly, Rock's Backpages Audio, 1991
The Bristol trio talk about the time being right for their music; what they listen to; albums vs. singles; the Bristol scene and sound, plus the influence of reggae; their recording and mixing process and the place for remixing.
File format: mp3; file size: 42.3mb; Interview length: 44' 04"; sound quality: **
Massive Attack: The Bristol Bunch
Interview by John McCready, The Face, January 1991
MASSIVE ATTACK were part of Bristol's Wild Bunch crew, a posse who pioneered UK hip hop. In 1986 they helped put together ‘The Look Of ...
Report and Interview by Ngaire Ruth, Melody Maker, 6 April 1991
While all the major record company A&R men are scouring the country oop North for the next Happy Mondays, a revolution was spawned in Camden, ...
Elvis Presley: Rock first rolled here
Guide by Steve Turner, The Independent, 13 April 1991
Thousands of worshippers still flock to Memphis, birthplace of Elvis. They should bypass Graceland. Rock first rolled here. ...
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: ***
Beat Happening, Fugazi, Thee Headcoats, L7: The Alternative Underground
Report by Ira Robbins, Rolling Stone, 17 October 1991
Bands on the real cutting edge turn out for six-day Washington festival. ...
The Durutti Column, Happy Mondays, Joy Division, New Order: Anthony Wilson: Renaissance Manc
Interview by Stuart Maconie, New Musical Express, 30 November 1991
FACTORY: aloof, elegant, misunderstood Mancunian home of Joy Division, New Order, Happy Mondays, possibly the coolest record label in the world — but there are ...
Wayne Kramer, MC5: MC5: Young, Powerful and Full Of Sperm
Retrospective and Interview by Edwin Pouncey, New Musical Express, 7 December 1991
It wasn't all flowers and freedom in the '60s for Detroit's finest rock'n'revolutionary band the MC5, whose legendary 1968 debut LP Kick Out The Jams, ...
Massive Attack: Wheeling In The Years
Interview by Jim Arundel, Melody Maker, 22 February 1992
BRITAIN IS CRAP, we decide over lunch in a Bristol restaurant where we're waiting for Massive Attack. The food is cold, the service is virtually ...
Report by Frank Broughton, Mixmag, March 1992
Back in October Mixmag covered the exploding LA Rave scene. Since then New York itself, city of metal, noise and chaos, has gone techno mental. ...
Green River, The Melvins, Mudhoney, Nirvana, Soundgarden, Supersuckers: Seattle: Grunge City
Report and Interview by Michael Azerrad, Rolling Stone, 16 April 1992
For real rockers Seattle is the ultimate wet dream. By Michael Azerrad ...
Audio transcript of interview by Kris Needs, Rock's Backpages, 21 April 1992
This is a transcription of Kris's audio interview with Derrick. Listen to the audio of this interview. ...
The Haçienda: Club It To Death
Report by John Robb, Siren, May 1992
BRICKS AND mortar. For a building the Haçienda has become one hell of an icon for youth culture, a myth perpetrated by Manchester and Factory ...
N-Joi, Orbital, The Shamen: The Shamen, the Prodigy, Basti, Orbital, N-Joi: Sound City '92, Norwich
Live Review by Dele Fadele, New Musical Express, 9 May 1992
FRIDAY ...
New Order, The Smiths, The Stone Roses: For Faç's Sake! 10 Years of the Haçienda
Retrospective and Interview by Push, Melody Maker, 23 May 1992
Few clubs can lay claim to changing the face of music, but THE HAÇIENDA certainly made it smile, giving fledgling acts like The Stone Roses, ...
Mother Love Bone, Pearl Jam: Pearl Jam: Pump up the 'Jam
Interview by Paul Elliott, Kerrang!, 27 June 1992
12 months ago PEARL JAM were just another Seattle band. Singer EDDIE VEDDER had arrived from San Diego, guitarist STONE GOSSARD and bassist JEFF AMENT ...
Junior Vasquez: Out in New York
Report by Frank Broughton, Mixmag, September 1992
Despite a million AIDS warnings, New York clubbers are going wild. Clubs like the Roxy and the Sound Factory are packed with acres of exposed ...
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, ...
Report by Caitlin Moran, The Times, 17 October 1992
Caitlin Moran gives a morning-after report on a steamy Friday all-nighter at a students' club ...
The Shamen: Brixton Academy, London
Live Review by Simon Price, Melody Maker, 17 October 1992
CHAS N'RAVE ...
Overview by Kodwo Eshun, The Wire, December 1992
Kodwo Eshun digs up the history of Clubland UK, from Boodles to Style Wars to all-day nights on the Cybernet. * ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 1993
A brief history of Hollywood (the Fowley version); growing up in L.A., and growing up fast; getting into the music biz, and the calamity that was The Beatles. The King of the Hollyweird Night tells all.
File format: mp3; file size: 110.3mb, interview length: 1h 54' 55" 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: ***
Spiral Tribe: You Can't Beat The System!
Interview by Stephen Dalton, New Musical Express, 9 January 1993
Back to the future! SPIRAL TRIBE set out on the road to Stonehenge two years ago and never came back, lost in a world of ...
Jefferson Airplane: The Jefferson Airplane Chronicles: Marty Balin
Interview by Jeff Tamarkin, Relix, April 1993
READING THE following interview, one might get a sense that there are two Marty Balins. ...
Report by John Robb, i-D, April 1993
Three years ago Manchester was famous for flares, clubs and the Happy Mondays. Now it's guns, drugs and violence. How accurate is the city's media ...
Overview by Stephen Dalton, New Musical Express, 22 May 1993
From The Kinks to Carter, Bowie to Blur, the Small Faces to Suede, British pop groups have eulogised, mythologised, criticised, glamorised, immortalised, romanticised and agonised ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, June 1993
The L.A. deal-maker on first finding Joni Mitchell in NYC and becoming her manager; on moving to L.A. and into David Crosby's orbit; on getting Joni signed to Warners; on meeting Neil Young and the end of Buffalo Springfield; on the L.A. music scene; on David Geffen; on the Eagles; on cocaine; on Tom Waits and Warren Zevon... and the end of his partnership with Geffen.
File format: mp3; file size: 48.1mb, interview length: 50' 07" sound quality: ****
Report and Interview by RJ Smith, L.A. Weekly, 17 June 1993
One Nation Under An Overpass ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, July 1993
His arrival in Los Angeles in 1965; hanging out with the Beatles and the Stones; his legendary English Disco; the groupies — Lori, Sable and Queenie... the Mayor of the Sunset Strip looks back.
File format: mp3; file size: 29.9mb, interview length: 32' 39" sound quality: ***
Profile and Interview by Martin Aston, The Independent Catalogue, September 1993
IT'S FOUR IN the afternoon, and Liz Phair is itching to go jogging. But there's plenty of time; this is her first bout of UK ...
Penelope Spheeris: See You at the Bank, Dude!
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Vogue, December 1993
Like the subjects of her forthcoming film The Beverly Hillbillies, she went from a poor Southern background to become a Hollywood hotshot. Barney Hoskyns meets ...
Boulevard of Broken Dreams: A Trip Down the Sunset Strip
Guide by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, January 1994
SUNSET BOULEVARD: the very name is synonymous with dreams, unrealities, tableaux of palm trees and convertibles in the golden light of southern California. Billy ...
Report by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, January 1994
Barney Hoskyns visits the idyllic Catskill mountain retreat colonized by The Band, Bob Dylan, Van Morrison and fellow bohemians. ...
Liz Phair: Phair Enough: The Girl From Guyville
Profile and Interview by Gerrie Lim, BigO, February 1994
This is the story of Liz Phair, the "new" gal in town who shocked the music biz flack and functionaries when she gave GERRIE LIM ...
Report by Michael Azerrad, Rolling Stone, 10 February 1994
CBGB celebrates its 20 years of rock & roll ...
Country Joe & The Fish: Country Joe McDonald
Interview by Joel Selvin, San Francisco Chronicle, March 1994
ONE FIGURE straddles the two polar events of the '60s – Woodstock and the Vietnam War – and that's Country Joe McDonald. In fact, such ...
A Guy Called Gerald, Goldie: Jungle!: The Last Dance Underground
Report by Kodwo Eshun, i-D, May 1994
Jungle is a fierce and frenzied soundtrack to inner city Britain in '94. Based around raw, ragga-influenced white labels, raves and pirate radio stations, it's ...
The Prodigy: Touched By The Hand Of Prod
Interview by Simon Reynolds, Melody Maker, 16 July 1994
"So I've decided to take my work back underground... to stop it falling into the wrong hands." ...
Massive Attack, Portishead: Trip Hop Don't Stop: Massive Attack and Portishead
Interview by Simon Reynolds, Melody Maker, 17 September 1994
Imagine a cross between ambient and hip-hop. Imagine a Brit version of Cypress Hill or Gravediggaz's spooky Gothic Hop. Imagine the sound of 'bombs exploding ...
Overview by Simon Reynolds, Melody Maker, 15 October 1994
Ask yer proverbial suburban kid on the street, and chances are they won't be into Blur, Suede, Nirvana or Oasis — they'll be hardcore JUNGLE ...
Barbara Tucker: Work It, Girlfriend
Report and Interview by Frank Broughton, Mixmag, December 1994
A clubland fixture, both on record and on the dancefloor, Miss Tucker proves that if you want to make it in New York you better ...
Portishead: The Reluctant Debutante
Report and Interview by Ben Thompson, Independent on Sunday, 11 December 1994
IF YOU WERE the most compelling and enigmatic new group in Britain, playing your first proper gig in the sort of London club where Christine ...
Essay by Jon Savage, The Guardian, 16 December 1994
The media's love affair with football has spawned a huge culture industry. But is it to blame for the return of loutishness? ...
Retrospective and Interview by Pat Blashill, unpublished, 1995
NOTE: I conducted these interviews and more for a magazine story that never ran. What follows is a rough, incomplete edit of the piece. I ...
Overview by Chris Campion, URB, 1995
NEW MUSIC is born of the old. Hip-hop and Rock 'n' Roll can be traced back through Delta Blues, field and slave songs back to ...
The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Yes: The Moment: 25 Years of Rock Photography
Book Excerpt by Jill Furmanovsky, 'The Moment' (Paper Tiger), 1995
A Beatles fan MY FIRST ROCK picture, taken circa 1967 on an instamatic camera, was of Paul McCartney with two of my school friends outside his ...
Hank Marvin, The Shadows: Four-Eyes, One Vision: The Shadows
Interview by Jon Savage, MOJO, February 1995
BRIAN RANKIN GREW UP IN NEWCASTLE: WHEN he was 16, in 1957, he travelled to London with his school friend Bruce Welch "in an attempt ...
Interview by Jon Savage, MOJO, February 1995
HELEN SHAPIRO WAS BRITAIN'S FIRST TEENAGE FEMALE pop star. Born in 1946, she made her first record at the age of 14, for Norrie Paramor ...
Move It! The British Rock 'n' Roll Explosion
Overview by Jon Savage, MOJO, February 1995
FOR MOST PEOPLE OF 40 AND UNDER, British pop begins with The Beatles: this is the view that has been encouraged by rock writers ever ...
Marty Wilde: The Blackheath Jungle
Interview by Jon Savage, MOJO, February 1995
MARTY WILDE WAS, ALONG WITH CLIFF, BRITAIN'S BIGGEST ROCK star from 1958 through 1960: there was even a girl's comic named after him. Born Reginald ...
Frankie Knuckles Interviewed in NYC
Interview by Frank Broughton, djhistory.com, 27 February 1995
Anyone with even a passing knowledge of dancefloor history knows Frankie Knuckles respectfully as the 'Godfather of House'. Together with his childhood friend Larry Levan ...
Report and Interview by Nicholas Jennings, Maclean's, 27 March 1995
WITH HIS STRAGGLY, shoulder-length hair, torn blue jeans and red sneakers, Greig Nori doesn't look like the sort of man to be wined and dined ...
The Wilde Flowers: Wilde Flowers: Tales Of Canterbury: The Wilde Flowers Story (Voiceprint)
Essay by Rob Chapman, MOJO, April 1995
Caravan, Soft Machine, Kevin Ayers & The Whole World: all grew from the stem of the legendary Wilde Flowers. Rob Chapman tells their story. ...
Jon of the Pleased Wimmin, Andrew Weatherall: Liverpool's Cream: Bag Company
Report by Bethan Cole, New Musical Express, 8 April 1995
TRAVELLING TO Liverpool by train, passing through the industrial landscape of warehouses and factories that once made Britain 'Great', you're reminded of the North's 19th ...
Massive Attack, Portishead, Tricky: Trip Hop: Another City, Another New Sound
Report by Simon Reynolds, The New York Times, 28 May 1995
POP GROUPS hate being identified as part of a scene centred on a city. But if there's one thing bands resent even more, it is ...
Toerag Studios: 'Rag Against The Machine
Report and Interview by Cathi Unsworth, Melody Maker, 17 June 1995
If you dig the sound off an unfettered rumble — be it Jon Spencer, Jerry Lee Lewis, Dick Dale or The Sex Pistols — then ...
Report by Bethan Cole, Mixmag, July 1995
Jellies used to be heavy shit, for addicts and desperados. Then serious clubland hedonists started taking them to come down. Now, in the search for ...
Report by Angus Batey, Vox, August 1995
Snoop and Dr Dre's tales of the 'hoods of South Central may have redirected the media's fickle attention to the West Coast, but New York ...
Husker Du, The Jayhawks, The Replacements, Soul Asylum: The Minneapolis Scene: Left Of The Dial
Overview by Marc Weingarten, Guitar World, August 1995
In the early Eighties, Hüsker Dü, The Replacements and a handful of other scruffy Minneapolis bands forged what is now known as indie rock. This ...
Report by Simon Reynolds, The New York Times, 6 August 1995
JUNGLE – A FRENETIC, fiercely percussive dance sound made using samples and computers – is the most exciting musical movement to emerge from Britain since ...
Happy Mondays, Oasis, The Smiths, The Stone Roses: Madchester: My Baggy Hell!
Memoir by Susan Corrigan, i-D, October 1995
Five years ago an explosion of music, drugs and flares hit a certain Northern city. Now with Oasis, the Stone Roses and Black Grape in ...
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 ...
Junior Vasquez: The Sound Factory
Report and Interview by Frank Broughton, i-D, October 1995
As the legendary club closes, the mainstream begins to encroach on New York's nightlife heritage. ...
Juno Reactor: Goa: Trance tripping
Report by Bethan Cole, i-D, November 1995
Goa's legendary party scene has turned a global network of travellers on to its unique sound. Spiritual, psychedelic and blowing up across the world: is ...
Report by Susan Corrigan, i-D, November 1995
JUNK CULTURE IS NOT MERELY FASHIONABLE ANYMORE, IT'S GONE MAINSTREAM Heroin kills two people every week in Glasgow. It's the most common street drug in Manchester. ...
Juno Reactor: Goa Trance: Paradise Lost Can Be Regained
Report by Andrew Smith, The Guardian, 16 November 1995
Is a movement that started 12 years ago in a small south Indian state about to take over the British club scene? Andrew Smith chills ...
BT (Brian Transeau), Deep Dish: DC: White House House
Report and Interview by Frank Broughton, USA Update, 1996
In the wake of Deep Dish's UK success, the American capital is claiming its own sound. ...
Retrospective and Interview by Richard Gehr, unpublished, 1996
In 1996, Richard Gehr went down to Texas to explore the history and mythology of Buddy Holly’s home town. This was his unpublished report for ...
Profile and Interview by Phil McMullen, Ptolemaic Terrascope, January 1996
ROLL THE NAME around your mind a while and try to imagine what they sound like, and whatever you come up with I guarantee you'll ...
Report and Interview by RJ Smith, The New York Times, 28 January 1996
EVEN FOR A break-all-the-rules punk rock band, some rules still apply. It's 10 minutes to stage, and the members of Rancid are sitting in their ...
Dr. John: Retropop Scene: Emmett, Mac and Peter Coyote
Memoir by Al Aronowitz, The Blacklisted Journalist, 1 May 1996
I. NEW YORK, October 27, 1971 Emmett Grogan sent Tuesday Weld home early. He didn't like all the publicity that was going around about the two ...
Report and Interview by Bethan Cole, i-D, June 1996
You reckoned the rave dream died years ago? Think again! They may have hung up their whistles and white gloves, but Scotland's musical youth are ...
Report by Frank Owen, The Village Voice, 25 June 1996
Looking for Angel: Did King of Club Kids Michael Alig really Kill Angel Melendez? Or is it all a hoax? By Frank Owen ...
Waiting For The Sun by Barney Hoskyns (Viking)
Book Review by Richard Cook, The Wire, July 1996
The darkside of LA music ...
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 ...
Book Review by Stephen M H Braitman, Los Angeles Times, 28 July 1996
Sex, Drugs, Rock'n'Roll ...
Phast Freddie's Hollywood (Circa 1973-1983)
Guide by Phast Phreddie Patterson, unpublished, October 1996
"There's a world where I can go and tell my secrets to...."* ...
Report and Interview by Emma Warren, Jockey Slut, December 1996
More than any other British city Bristol has always had an identifiable musical sound. From Smith and Mighty, Massive Attack, Tricky and Portishead, to current ...
Tupac Shakur: Sprayers for a lost soul
Report by Vivien Goldman, Daily Telegraph, 14 December 1996
The murder of rap star Tupac Shakur in September has brought the simmering rivalry between two New York graffiti artists to a head. Vivien Goldman ...
The Troubadour Club: A History
Retrospective by Johnny Black, Troubadour, 1997
WHEN THE SUN goes down over Santa Monica Boulevard, there's really only ever been one place to be and that's inside Doug Weston's legendary Troubadour ...
Earl Palmer, Dave Bartholomew and Alvin "Red" Tyler (1997)
Interview by Tony Scherman, Rock's Backpages Audio, March 1997
Three giants of New Orleans R&B — bandleader Bartholomew, drummer Palmer and sax player Tyler — look back on the days on the bandstand and NOLA studios: on recording with Fats Domino and Little Richard; on the characters — Lightnin' Slim, the unlucky Smiley Lewis and more; on hassles with the Musicians' Union; on Palmer leaving for L.A.; on squeezing in bebop; on the beloved Dew Drop Inn... and what made the Crescent City sound. [NOTE: The most audibly prominent voice belongs to Tyler, with Palmer's the most distant. Bartholomew's is somewhere in the middle, with the deepest register.]
File format: mp3; file size: 94.7mb, interview length: 1h 38' 35" sound quality: ***
Nico, The Velvet Underground: Name Game: Billy Name
Interview by Jon Savage, The Guardian, 25 April 1997
At Andy Warhol's Factory everybody wanted to be a star. Everyone except Billy Name. He designed the Factory, curated it, soothed the egos of Warhol's ...
808 State, Happy Mondays, New Order: The Haçienda: Working on a Building of Love
Retrospective by John McCready, The Face, May 1997
It gives us such great joy to sayThat fifteen years ago todayA club was born — the HaçiendaA venue for the maddest bendersSo as you ...
Report by Martin Aston, Q, June 1997
Dangerous business, rock'n'roll. One minute, you're having hits, the next, you're taking them. Whether as macho prop or tool of the trade, totin' a gun ...
Paul Oakenfold: House Music: Promised Land
Overview by John McCready, The Face, August 1997
What have we got to celebrate after ten years of non-stop ecstatic dancing? Loads, says John McCready ...
Speed Garage: Sound Of The Future
Report and Interview by Bethan Cole, Muzik, September 1997
It's harden faster, sharper and more bass-heavy than ever before, it has MCs, rewinds, ragga vocals and time-stretching. Its energy and hedonism is hard to ...
Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane: Haight-Ashbury
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, Independent on Sunday, December 1997
The times they have a-changed, but not without a certain irony. Or a certain continuity, come to that. ...
Working on a Building of Love: The Great Days of the Haçienda
Retrospective by John McCready, The Face, Spring 1997
With Michael Winterbottom's 24 Hour Party People opening in the UK this weekend, we reprint Face writer John McCready's wonderful account of the club's rise, ...
Marc Bolan, David Bowie, Freddie Mercury: The Androgynous Mirror
Book Excerpt by Jim Farber, 'Rolling Stone: The Seventies' (Little, Brown), 1998
ON A SWAMPY July night in 1974, I left my suburban home bound for David Bowie's Diamond Dogs concert, dressed in midnight-blue eyeliner, hepatitis-yellow platforms ...
Retrospective and Interview by Chris Campion, Ray Gun, 1998
FROM ITS ACUTELY localised inception, the influence of Bristol's Wild Bunch has spread far and wide. The sound system that spawned Massive Attack, Tricky and ...
New York Dolls: Too Much, Too Soon: The Dolls take New York
Book Excerpt by Barney Hoskyns, 'Glam!' (Faber), 1998
Note: this is a piece adapted in edited form from Glam! Bowie, Bolan & the Glitter-Rock Revolution (Faber, 1998) ...
Georgie Fame: Fame at the Flamingo: Golden years in Soho
Retrospective and Interview by James Maycock, The Independent, 16 January 1998
Georgie Fame and his band were regular performers at a nightclub that was a catalyst for British music in the early '60s. He looks back ...
Dance Culture: One Nation Under A Groove
Essay by Bethan Cole, Muzik, March 1998
Ten years ago, a few hundred people were raving all night to the sounds of acid house. A year later there were a few thousand ...
Retrospective and Interview by Andy Crysell, New Musical Express, 25 April 1998
Disco biscuits, gurning, raves, sartorial bonkersness, and, um, Guru Josh! The ACID HOUSE scene brought us many things when it exploded in 1988; it also ...
B.B. King, Lowell Fulson, Robert Lockwood Jr.: B.B. King: Bright Lights Big City
Report and Interview by Paul Trynka, MOJO, May 1998
Fifty years ago B.B. King arrived in Memphis, Tennessee, and found himself in the eye of a musical hurricane. Today he celebrates the giants who ...
Overview by Andria Lisle, Memphis Downtowner, July 1998
There’s an old saying that goes like soKeep trying and you’ll get where you want to goWhen things get rough, buckle downDon’t give up – ...
Report and Interview by Susan Corrigan, i-D, August 1998
Glitz and glamour, sex and celebs, drugs and death: Studio 54 was the ultimate New York nightlife hit. So is it any wonder they're trying ...
Carl Cox, Fatboy Slim: Ibiza: Big Beach Boutique
Report by Andy Crysell, New Musical Express, 15 August 1998
When Radio 1 decamped to Ibiza for a weekend of daft dancing, super funky anthems and celebs behaving badly, it seemed only polite for NME to join them. ...
Afrika Bambaataa, Fab 5 Freddy, Grandmaster Flash, The Rock Steady Crew: Kool Lady Blue (1998)
Interview by Bill Brewster, Frank Broughton, Rock's Backpages Audio, 29 September 1998
Ruza "Kool Lady" Blue talks about moving to New York, working for Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood; getting into club promotion, and meeting Afrika Bambaataa and the Rock Steady Crew; going up to the Bronx and the Disco Fever club; starting her night at Club Negril, then moving to the Roxy; the diversity of the scene; hip hop exploding, and Bam and 'Planet Rock'; the importance of the DJs rather than the MCs; taking Trevor Horn up to the Bronx, and the Rock Steady Crew playing the Royal Variety Performance and meeting the Queen!
File format: mp3; file size: 48.1meg, interview length: 50' 06" sound quality: ***
Interview by Frank Broughton, Rock's Backpages Audio, 30 September 1998
The pioneering DJ drives around the Bronx, pointing out the hip-hop sites while talking about the rec rooms, block parties, B-boys, breaks and everything that went into the form's invention.
File format: mp3; file size: 59mb, interview length: 1h 04' 28" sound quality: ***
DJ Pierre, Marshall Jefferson, Frankie Knuckles: House Music: Jack in the Day
Book Excerpt by Sheryl Garratt, The Face, October 1998
Chicago's Eighties club scene was the tinderbox that sparked a global dance music explosion. Sheryl Garratt remembers the time... ...
Report by Kris Needs, Jockey Slut, October 1998
IBIZIAN VIRGIN KRIS NEEDS SPENDS A MONTH WITH MANUMISSION AND ENDS UP IN A WHEELCHAIR SURROUNDED BY BUNNY RABBITS. ...
Book Excerpt by Ben Thompson, 'Seven Years of Plenty' (Gollancz), October 1998
"A recent article in the New York Times proclaimed Newport as The New Seattle..." Caroline Sullivan, The Guardian, 13 December, 1996 ...
Paul Oakenfold, Paul van Dyk: Trance: New Invader on the Dance Floor
Report by Simon Reynolds, The New York Times, 29 November 1998
THE ESPERANTO of electronic dance music, trance is probably the most popular rave sound in the world. Although this kinetic, hypnotic music has maintained a ...
Essay by Blake Gumprecht, Journal of Cultural Geography, Fall 1998
Landscape into Art THE ROLE OF LANDSCAPE and the importance of place in literature, poetry, the visual arts, even cinema and television, is well established ...
The Dream Syndicate, Gutterball, Steve Wynn: Steve Wynn (1999)
Interview by Francesco Calazzo, Rock's Backpages Audio, 1999
The ex-Dream Syndicate frontman looks back fondly at the Paisley Underground; being on tour for many years; his new album My Midnight; his side project Gutterball; on singers and singing, and guitars and guitar playing; songwriting; his move to New York, and being revered by a new generation of artists.
File format: mp3; file size: 88.1mb, interview length: 1h 36' 11" sound quality: ***
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: ****
Report and Interview by Bill Brewster, The Face, March 1999
Sunday afternoon disco classics down a Manhattan side street ...
Retrospective and Interview by Jack Barron, Melody Maker, 13 March 1999
It was the scene that produced some of the best bands the world had ever seen. Now, with the Happy Mondays reforming end The Stone ...
The Graying of Indie Rock: What do you do for an encore after the spark is gone?
Essay by Eric Weisbard, The Village Voice, 24 March 1999
WHEN THE guy in Fuck announced his 37th birthday, people thought he was joking. The occasion was too cruddy: the rumpus-room attic of a gross ...
Basement Jaxx: The House that Jaxx Built
Report and Interview by Emma Warren, Jockey Slut, April 1999
HAVING JUST COMPLETED THE ALBUM OF THE YEAR SO FAR, BASEMENT JAXX ARE ABOUT TO KICK HOUSE MUSIC INTO THE NEXT CENTURY: NOT BEFORE SHOWING ...
Audio transcript of interview by Frank Broughton, Rock's Backpages Audio, 7 April 1999
This is a transcript of Frank's audio interview with Paul. Hear the interview here ...
Interview by Bill Brewster, Frank Broughton, Rock's Backpages Audio, 6 May 1999
The dance music legend on the power of the DJ and the club as a place or worship; his pioneering club night Shoom, and the eventual corruption of the rave scene; becoming a radio DJ, and the evolution of the Superstar DJ.
File format: mp3; file size: 27.7mb, interview length: 30' 17" 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. ...
Report by Steven Wells, New Musical Express, 26 June 1999
When the Glasto Green Field vibes work their magic, we all come over a bit hippy. But for the good folk of Glastonbury, being a ...
Loud, Fast, and Out of Control
Report by Pat Blashill, Spin, August 1999
Welcome to the Hardcore Rave scene, where the DJs throw meat, the kids stick their heads inside speakers, and the scent of grape lollipops mixes ...
Smart, Lyrical, Even Genteel, But Is It Rock?
Essay by Eric Weisbard, The New York Times, 1 August 1999
FOR ONE breed of rock fan, last year's most important album was probably Lucinda Williams's Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, a dozen perfectly turned ...
Retrospective by Ben Myers, Kerrang!, 7 August 1999
Thirty years ago this week, followers of CHARLES MANSON committed a series of brutal murders that changed US culture forever. On the anniversary of the ...
Paul van Dyk: Follow The Leader
Interview by Dorian Lynskey, Muzik, September 1999
On a mission to the Love Parade with two million German ravers and the biggest trance DJ in the world. Paul van Dyk on Berlin, ...
Moloko: Beefa: How Low Can You Go?
Report by Andy Crysell, New Musical Express, 18 September 1999
Ibiza — sun-kissed vibes central or merely an over-commercialised supermarket for disco dudes 'n' dollies? With the help of Balearic housers Moloko, NME went in ...
Profile and Interview by Frank Broughton, The Face, October 1999
His home was The Loft. He played house before it existed. And New York's David Mancuso has a nun to thank for it all ...
The Chemical Brothers: Dark Side of the Rave
Report by Pat Blashill, Rolling Stone, 11 November 1999
Drug deaths and police crackdowns threaten the national rave scene ...
Report by Dave Simpson, The Guardian, 20 December 1999
Dave Simpson tunes into the latest pop cult ...
Norman Jay: Good Times: The Stately Sound of London
Sleeve notes by Frank Broughton, Nuphonic Records, 2000
"IT'S VERY SIMPLE," says Norman Jay behind his shades, as we drive round the hallowed sites of the Notting Hill Carnival. "Good Times is about… ...
Sleeve notes by Carol Cooper, 'Hip Hop Fever' (Warlock Records), 2000
NOBODY'S TRYING to say that Disco Fever was the only important hip-hop club. But for various reasons, the Fever is still remembered as the most ...
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 ...
Retrospective and Interview by Kieron Tyler, Record Collector, March 2000
KIERON TYLER UNCOVERS THE STORY OF A PUNK BAND AT THE HEART OF THE KING'S ROAD EXPLOSION ...
Buzzcocks, Howard Devoto: Howard Devoto talks about Punk's Year Zero
Retrospective and Interview by Kieron Tyler, Record Collector, May 2000
"I'M TIRED OF noise and short of breath. I'm sick of having to address people out of breath and under my breath." That was how ...
Profile and Interview by John Swenson, Offbeat, 1 May 2000
ON AN UNSEASONABLY warm December afternoon, Wardell Quezergue walks carefully into the Musicians Union meeting hall on Esplanade Avenue. ...
Bleachin': Jeremy Healy and Amos Pizzey: Club Class
Interview by Sheryl Garratt, The Observer, 13 August 2000
Guest lists and free champagne, bright cocaine nights and dark, empty comedowns... Jeremy Healy and Amos Pizzey have the power to pack dance floors everywhere ...
Jon Langford, Jim O'Rourke, Wilco: Chicago: Indie City
Report and Interview by Eric Weisbard, Spin, September 2000
Sick of a world ruled by Britney and Backstreet? Visit Chicago: a salt-of-the-earth midwestern town where old-world pleasures like community, cheap rent, cheap beer, gritty ...
Horslips: Short Takes: Horslips
Retrospective and Interview by Colin Harper, Record Collector, November 2000
They've come a long way from Tipperary, and now the original Celt rockers have finally regained control of their back catalogue. Lyricist Eamon Carr talks ...
Retrospective by Philip Norman, The Sunday Times, 2001
THE TWO pre-eminent British bands of the gaudy 1960s marked the grey dawn of the 1970s in very different ways. ...
Interview by Chris Campion, URB, January 2001
TEN YEARS AGO, rave spawned a monster. The Prodigy, a bastard progeny spat out screaming from a dirt chamber of sound. This twisted British mutation ...
Comment by James Hunter, The Village Voice, 30 January 2001
DJ Music Builds Its Way Out of the Velvet-Rope Underground ...
Heshima: Do the Harlesden Shuffle
Report and Interview by Lloyd Bradley, The Evening Standard, 16 February 2001
NW10 is a patch of London that suffers a reputation for drugs and violence — a "murder hotspot" according to the Met. But Harlesden has ...
The Electric Eels, The Mirrors, The Styrenes: Electric City
Retrospective and Interview by Kieron Tyler, Record Collector, March 2001
The Cleveland punk scene exposed — starring the Electric Eels, the Styrenes and the Mirrors. ...
Report by Angus Batey, Dazed & Confused, March 2001
"I'm a person just like youBut I've got better things to doThan sit around and fuck my headHang out with the living deadSnort white shit ...
The Guess Who, Michel Pagliaro, Teenage Head: Ten Canadian Records You Shouldn’t Live Without
Guide by Gary Pig Gold, Cosmik Debris, April 2001
CULTURALLY, CANADA is without a doubt one of the most diverse nations on the planet, and with its record stores awash since the 1950's in ...
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. ...
Hot House: Headin' South: Muscle Shoals '87
Memoir by Martin Colyer, Rock's Backpages, July 2001
Martin Colyer was a member of Hot House, the Brit deep-soul trio who ventured down to Muscle Shoals in 1987 to cut their first album ...
The White Stripes: London Loves Us: The White Stripes
Report and Interview by Robin Bresnark, Detroit Metro Times, 8 August 2001
DETROIT, YOU HAVE a secret admirer. Admittedly, we're not terribly local, not all of us are single, and you certainly wouldn't want to come round ...
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 ...
Sleeve notes by Richie Unterberger, Collector's Choice Records, 2002
WHEN DAVID BLUE came out in August 1966, folk-rock singer-songwriters with folk roots were scurrying to ride Bob Dylan's coattails into the rock mainstream. For ...
Retrospective and Interview by Kieron Tyler, Ugly Things, 2002
ALTHOUGH EATER were at the centre of the great British punk rock storm of 1976, they've never been treated with the cap-doffing respect granted to ...
The GTOs: Girl Together Outrageously: Pamela Des Barres
Interview by Ian Fortnam, Classic Rock, 2002
IN CASUAL DEFIANCE of the fact that her fifty-fifth birthday looms large, the Marchioness Des Barres positively radiates rude good health and an undeniably disarming ...
Boy George, Culture Club: AUDIO: Boy George (2002)
Audio transcript of interview by Bill Brewster, Rock's Backpages Audio, January 2002
This is a transcript of Bill's audio interview with Boy George. Listen to the audio of this interview. ...
Chuck E. Weiss: When the Gig Ended, His New Career Began
Report and Interview by Marc Weingarten, Los Angeles Times, 27 January 2002
Story line: Los Angeles club legend records first album in his late 40s, and now follows it with a stellar effort that includes a 32-year-old ...
Book Excerpt by Penny Reel, Deep Down With Dennis Brown, 9 February 2002
Penny Reel was the pre-eminent reggae writer of reggae's '70s heyday, contributing regularly to NME, Black Echoes and other publications. His Deep Down With Dennis ...
Fugazi, Minor Threat: Ian MacKaye: Inventing Hardcore
Profile and Interview by Ben Myers, Careless Talk Costs Lives, March 2002
"These are our demands: we want control of our bodies. decisions will now be ours. you can carry out your noble actions, we will carry ...
Report and Interview by Will Hermes, The Village Voice, 9 April 2002
LET US NOW praise great Americans: Louis Armstrong, Jerry Garcia, and Grandmaster Flash made their history with equal parts pioneer cojones and improvisatory derring-do. They ...
Adult, Fischerspooner: The '70s are so '90's: The '80s are the thing now
Report and Interview by Simon Reynolds, The New York Times, 5 May 2002
AND NOW, the '80s. It was probably inevitable. The pop music and fashion industries depend on recycling their own history, and the retro styles of ...
Profile and Interview by Sean O'Hagan, Observer Music Monthly, 23 June 2002
It's a long way from illegal raves to Buckingham Palace. But Norman Jay, the godfather of club culture, has been there and done that – ...
The Chemical Brothers, Matthew Herbert, Stephane Pompougnac, Rinôçérôse: Lifestyles of the Rhythm
Overview by James Hunter, The Village Voice, 2 July 2002
Dance music accesses an unseparatist pop sensibility ...
Shine On, The Lights Of The Bowery: The Blank Generation Revisited
Retrospective and Interview by Peter Murphy, Hot Press, 12 July 2002
ONE MORE MAN gone. A year after the passing of his brother in arms Joey, Dee Dee Ramone died from a narcotics overdose. ...
Elvis Presley: Memphis Still Sings The Blues
Report by Michael Gray, Daily Telegraph, 10 August 2002
MEMPHIS IS ONLY technically in Tennessee. In psychic reality, it's the capital of Mississippi. Everyone who lives there knows it. What this 50 per cent ...
Book Review by Will Hermes, The New York Times, 25 August 2002
Do Not Speak Ill of the Dead ...
Grateful Dead: A Long, Staid Trip: How Deadheads ruined the Grateful Dead
Book Review by Marc Weingarten, Slate, 30 August 2002
"THERE IS nothing like a Grateful Dead Concert," the old bumper stickers read. After attending my first 10 Dead shows, I soon realized this wasn't ...
The Beatles: Miles: John, Paul, George and… Barry
Profile and Interview by Mick Brown, Daily Telegraph, 16 October 2002
IN 1965, A YOUNG bookseller named Barry Miles decided to throw a birthday party in his London flat for his friend, the beat poet Allen ...
Paul Du Noyer : Liverpool - Wondrous Place (Virgin Books)
Review by Tim Clifford, Rock's Backpages, November 2002
THE FORMER EDITOR of Q magazine 's history of music in Liverpool hangs his tale on three venues – the Cavern, Eric's and Cream. In ...
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 ...
David Mancuso And The Art Of Deejaying Without Deejaying
Retrospective by Greg Wilson, electrofunkroots.co.uk, 2003
CLUB CULTURE is a nowadays a global business, dance music transcending language, translating via rhythm rather than words. Inter-city has become inter-continental where the top ...
Notes Towards a Definition Of “Indie”
Essay by Tim Footman, Careless Talk Costs Lives, January 2003
From: Jerry Thackray. To: Contributors. Sent: 15 April 2002 08:21. Subject: From MOJO. "Opening with an editorial diatribe about the state of the music press, ...
Norah Jones: Keeping up with Jones
Report and Interview by Edward Helmore, The Guardian, 28 February 2003
Multiple Grammy winner Norah Jones honed her skills in the clubs of New York — and now those dingy venues are bracing themselves for a ...
Jefferson Airplane: The Summer Of Haight
Retrospective and Interview by Jeff Tamarkin, MOJO, April 2003
In January 1967, Jefferson Airplane were all set for take-off. But within months their dream was crumbling. Jeff Tamarkin on the destructive undercurrent to the ...
Retrospective and Interview by Bill Bentley, Austin Chronicle, 23 May 2003
DESIGNATED DRUMMER. IF YOU'RE GOING to hang a tag on the able shoulders of Ernesto "Ernie" Durawa, that would be the one. For almost 50 ...
Bright Eyes, Cursive, The Faint, The Good Life: Omaha: Next Stop Nowhere
Report and Interview by Will Hermes, Spin, July 2003
America's new indie-rock capital was born when a 13-year-old songsmith named Conor Oberst started putting out recordings on his brother's bedroom cassette label. Ten years ...
Funkadelic, George Clinton, Parliament: George Clinton: Motor Booty
Retrospective and Interview by Lloyd Bradley, MOJO, October 2003
In 1963 George Clinton took a first step toward funk overlordship. He shut his East Coast barbershop and flew to Motown. Lloyd Bradley finds out ...
Profile and Interview by Gavin Martin, Daily Mirror, 6 October 2003
SIAN EVANS juggles being a mum with fronting THE FAST-RISING DANCE TRIO. ...
Peter and Gordon, Linda Ronstadt, James Taylor: Peter Asher (2003)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 18 October 2003
The singer-turned-producer talks about returning to Los Angeles with client James Taylor; the Troubadour scene; the people: Jackson Browne, Joni Mitchell, J.D. Souther; meeting Linda Ronstadt and being turned on to C&W; fellow businessmen David Geffen and Elliot Roberts, and the rise of the Eagles.
File format: mp3; file size: 59.1mb, interview length: 1h 01' 31" sound quality: ***
Electro-Funk – What Did It All Mean?: Dance Culture's Missing Link
Retrospective by Greg Wilson, electrofunkroots.co.uk, November 2003
ELECTRO-FUNK IS undoubtedly the most misunderstood of all UK Dance genres, yet probably the most vital with regards to its overall influence. ...
Report by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, November 2003
On wildfires, Schwarzenegger and the suicide of a troubled genius – Barney Hoskyns’ diary of a month in Hollywood Babylon. ...
Eminem: Can't Forget The Motor City: Detroit from Hitsville to 8 Mile
Book Excerpt by Nick Hasted, Omnibus Books, Summer 2003
The Dark Story of Eminem is the first book by Nick Hasted, whose work has previously appeared in The Independent, the Guardian and Uncut magazine. ...
Retrospective by Bill Brewster, Faith, 2004
If Frankie Knuckles is the Godfather of House, Ron Hardy was its Baron Frankenstein. ...
King Creosote: Choose Fife: The Fence Collective
Report and Interview by James Medd, Esquire, January 2004
THE SIGNS have been there for a while,in current artists from Bonnie "Prince" Billy to Portishead's Beth Gibbons and Kings of Convenience. And it was ...
Retrospective by Mark Paytress, MOJO, January 2004
The avant-garde post-'77 post-punk sound was a revolutionary amalgam of funk, punk, disco and reggae. Mark Paytress explains the battle plan. ...
The Distillers: The Ballad of Brody Dalle
Interview by Sylvia Patterson, The Face, February 2004
Just as they're about to make it huge, The Distillers are in the middle of a bitter punk-rock feud. The LA punk scene's split down ...
Arthur Brown, Mick Farren, The Move, Pink Floyd, Soft Machine, Tomorrow: We Have Lift Off!
Retrospective by Johnny Black, MOJO, February 2004
In less than one year, London's UFO (pronounced "you-foe") club became the nocturnal haunt of the '60s counterculture, gathering place for the Beatles, Stones and ...
Various Artists: Night Train To Nashville: Music City Rhythm & Blues, 1945-1976
Review by John Morthland, No Depression, 29 February 2004
Nashville really jumps, really jumps all night long I'd rather be in Nashville than to be way back down at home – Cecil Gant, 'Nashville Jumps' ...
Rodney Bingenheimer: L.A.'s own Mayor Zelig
Profile and Interview by Richard Cromelin, Los Angeles Times, 21 March 2004
A new film follows Rodney Bingenheimer's journey from a torn childhood to hanging with the hip bands of the music scene. ...
Norah Jones: Don't Fence Me In
Profile and Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, MOJO, April 2004
Success Nearly Cost Norah Jones Her Sanity. Now She's Back – Stronger, Wiser And Ready To Do Things Her Way. ...
Guide by Paul Gorman, MOJO, May 2004
MOD'S FASTIDIOUS nature dictates that the path between purism and pedantry is oft-trod. Were the Birds arty r&b enthusiasts, more allied to the scruffy Stones ...
Profile and Interview by Chris Campion, Observer Music Monthly, 23 May 2004
FRIDAY NIGHT AT Pals Bar & Brasserie in Croydon. An idolatrous battle cry curls through the venue. "You doan wanna war wid whoo? War wid ...
Retrospective by Don Waller, MOJO, July 2004
Ignored by the major labels, hounded by cops, fuelled by booze and drugs, L.A. punk was born in a concrete basement in Hollywood known as ...
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 ...
Interview by Bill Brewster, Rock's Backpages Audio, 20 July 2004
The pioneering DJ and artist takes us on a journey through London's clubland and the early days of electronic dance music, from Billy's and Blitz, via the gay club scene and the introduction of Ecstasy and House music, through to hitting with S'Express.
File format: mp3; file size: 60.5mb, interview length: 1h 06' 04" sound quality: *****
Interview by Bill Brewster, Frank Broughton, Rock's Backpages Audio, 30 August 2004
The techno pioneer tells the whole epic story: his childhood in Detroit; meeting Kevin Saunderson and Juan Atkins; discovering Chicago house and seeing Frankie Knuckles and Ron Hardy DJ; making 'Nude Photo' and 'Strings of Life', and being recognised in the UK. Plus a whole lot more...
File format: mp3; file size: 153.4mb, interview length: 2h 39' 48" sound quality: ****
Lhasa de Sela , Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Kid Koala: Montreal, mon amour
Report and Interview by Robert Sandall, The Sunday Times, 24 October 2004
Why is Canada's second city No. 1 for so many musicians? ...
Essay by Michael Baker, Perfect Sound Forever, November 2004
In Memory of Robert Quine, Master of Beautiful Musical Expression, 12/30/1942 Akron, Ohio5/30/2004 NYC ...
Essay by Michael Baker, Perfect Sound Forever, November 2004
V. The Pagans: Claustrophobia and Creation ...
Dizzee Rascal, So Solid Crew, Wiley: London Calling
Report and Interview by Lloyd Bradley, MOJO, November 2004
Dizzee Rascal is the first artist to score two five-star MOJO reviews with successive albums. Yet Britain's freshest music star is only the most visible ...
The Stone Roses: Stone Roses' Mani (2004)
Interview by Simon Morrison, Rock's Backpages Audio, November 2004
Mr. Mountfield on all things Madchester: the Haçienda, the Stone Roses, and the impact of dance music on the scene. Hilarious!
File format: mp3; file size: 9.9mb, interview length: 10' 47" sound quality: ****
Overview by Mark Mordue, Sydney Morning Herald, the, 28 December 2004
I'VE STARTED writing this story a hundred different ways and every time I think I might be getting somewhere I end up stumbling across some ...
The Damned, Sex Pistols: Citizen Punk
Retrospective by Jonh Ingham, Q, 2005
APRIL 1976: For me it began at the El Paradise strip club, where the Sex Pistols filled a tiny room with three-chord beat and Rotten ...
Book Excerpt by Barney Hoskyns, 'Hotel California' (4th Estate), 2005
Five adapted excerpts from Barney Hoskyns' 2005 book Hotel California that chart the rise of Warner-Reprise Records during the reign of its revered chief Mo ...
Book Excerpt by Barney Hoskyns, 'Hotel California' (4th Estate), 2005
This is an excerpt from Barney Hoskyns' Hotel California: Singer-Songwriters & Cocaine Cowboys in the L.A. Canyons (Fourth Estate, 2005) ...
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, ...
Report by Simon Reynolds, The New York Times, 23 January 2005
IN THE FIRST months of 2005, two of electronic dance music's biggest bands will release what are generally referred to as long-awaited albums. ...
The Roxy London WC2 — A Live Punk Box Set
Sleeve notes by Kieron Tyler, Sanctuary Records, February 2005
Every musical movement has a club at its heart. Merseybeat had The Cavern. Mods gravitated towards The Scene and The Flamingo. British psychedelia will always ...
Soul II Soul's Jazzie B (2005)
Interview by Bill Brewster, Frank Broughton, Rock's Backpages Audio, 2 February 2005
The original Funki Dread goes deep into his roots, from a family background in reggae sound systems to Soul II Soul at the Africa Centre, via bunking off school to go to Crackers; DJs like George Power and Paul 'Trouble' Anderson; setting up S II S, and the original warehouse parties. Riveting stuff.
File format: mp3; file size: 87.2mb, interview length: 1h 35' 15" sound quality: *****
Audio transcript of interview by Bill Brewster, Frank Broughton, Rock's Backpages Audio, 4 February 2005
This is a transcript of Bill and Frank's audio interview with Fabio. Listen to the audio of this interview. ...
Retrospective and Interview by Marc Weingarten, Los Angeles Times, 17 February 2005
O.C. was the birthplace of surf music and the fabled, amped-up Fender guitar. So take that, L.A. ...
Interview by Bill Brewster, Frank Broughton, Rock's Backpages Audio, 23 February 2005
The pioneering House DJ tells the whole story, from a tin bath in Notting Dale to Shoom and beyond: his youth in Slough; discovering the club Crackers; the soul all-dayers and weekenders; the warehouse scene and rare groove; the dawn of House and Ecstacy; the opening of Shoom; his and Andrew Weatherall's Boy's Own fanzine; Danny Rampling; the emergence of the superstar DJ... and House's longevity.
File format: mp3; file size: 117.9mb, interview length: 2h 02' 50" sound quality: ****
Nirvana: The Betrayal Of Olympia
Retrospective and Interview by Everett True, Plan B, May 2005
How the home of K Records, Sub Pop, Riot Grrrl and the punk rock librarians gave rise to Nirvana, and became subsumed into the myth ...
Beck: The Man Who Wasn't There
Profile and Interview by Sylvie Simmons, MOJO, June 2005
Beck's back, with a b-boy bouillabaisse to compare with his grooviest work. But behind the impassive visage, what's really going on? And can he really ...
Sleater-Kinney: The Power Of Three
Interview by Everett True, Plan B, June 2005
Seven albums in, trailblazing Olympia trio Sleater-Kinney still feel like punk rock ruffians. ...
Circulus: If You Go Down to the Woods Today
Profile and Interview by Tom Cox, Observer Music Monthly, 19 June 2005
If you go down to the woods today... then you're sure to meet Britain's finest neo-medieval psychedelic folk-rock band. Or you are if you're author ...
Foo Fighters, Nirvana: Dave Grohl
Interview by Stevie Chick, MOJO, July 2005
Grooving on Led Zep, dossing with mud-wrestlers, he joined the "fucking dark" world of Nirvana a goofy naif and left it a rock star. "I ...
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 ...
The Ramones, Patti Smith, Talking Heads, Television: Heaven or Las Vegas: CBGBs closes down
Report by Laura Barton, The Guardian, 8 July 2005
Laura Barton on what the closure of the world's most famous punk-rock club, CBGB's, says about the state of New York's live music scene. ...
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 ...
Report and Interview by Ben Thompson, Daily Telegraph, 22 August 2005
Their accent may be regional but their success is global. Ben Thompson meets three new bands from pop music's latest hotspot ...
Fun Lovin' Criminals: Huey Morgan: King of New York
Profile and Interview by Tim Cooper, The Independent, 26 August 2005
A walking, talking advertisement for the city, Huey Morgan of Fun Lovin' Criminals takes Tim Cooper downtown. ...
New Orleans: The Heart of the Matter
Retrospective by Bill Bentley, L.A. Weekly, 8 September 2005
"I'm not sure, but I'm almost positive, that all music came from New Orleans."–Ernie K-Doe, 1979 * ...
The Alarm, The Birthday Party, Flesh For Lulu, Sisters of Mercy: Goth: Back to the Batcave
Overview by Jenny Valentish, Australian Guitar, October 2005
"WE HATED BEING called goth," muses the impeccably suave Flesh For Lulu frontman Nick Marsh. "If they called you a goth then you couldn't be ...
Retrospective and Interview by Bill Bentley, Austin Chronicle, 28 October 2005
TIME IS A CONTINUUM that's sometimes hard to trace. Look too far back and things get hazy. Try gazing into the future and it's all ...
Book Review by Nick Coleman, Independent on Sunday, 13 November 2005
DOES NARCISSISM have a sound? If it does, it is surely a dulcet, soft, melodic, tender sound. The music – for narcissism is nothing if ...
Stardust and Sawdust Nights: Los Angeles Bars of a Bygone Age
Guide by Kirk Silsbee, LA CityBeat, 8 December 2005
Martoni's ...
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 ...
Overview by John Sinclair, Honest Tune, Spring 2005
WHEN YOU hear the word "blues" you're bound to think of Mississippi. The phrase "Mississippi blues" leads at once to thoughts of Clarksdale and Greenwood ...
The Coral: The Invisible Invasion
Profile and Interview by Scott McLennan, Rip It Up (Australia), Spring 2005
"I HATE KNOBS who hang on the very thought of Pete Doherty being on smack and thrive off it – they're dickheads," the Coral's guitarist ...
Neil Young: Canyon of the Mind: Tall Tales of Topanga Rock
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, Calabasas, Summer 2005
REMOVE THE WORD "Canyon" from the glossary of Southern California rock and you're left with a gaping hole. Canyons have been inseparable from LA's music ...
Book Excerpt by Barney Hoskyns, 'Hotel California', 2006
UP ON THE Sunset Strip, the live scene was hurting. Name bands were now too big to play small clubs like the Whisky: they'd be ...
Slaughter and the Dogs: Leper Messiahs
Retrospective and Interview by Kieron Tyler, Q Classic, 2006
Formed by two young Bowie fans, Slaughter & the Dogs' bark was worse than their bite. But, as Kieron Tyler reveals, that was before they ...
Richard Hell: CBGB: The Venue from Hell
Retrospective and Interview by Jenny Valentish, Inpress, January 2006
It seems like every other prepubescent has a CBGB T-shirt these days, but over in New York, the old guard are fighting a losing battle ...
Retrospective by Bill Brewster, Springsix Festival brochure, May 2006
Well, someone had to explain what Quavers were to those funny foreigners. ...
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 ...
This Be an Empty World Without the Blues – So Clifford Antone filled it
Retrospective by Bill Bentley, Austin Chronicle, 26 May 2006
THE FIRST TIME I met Clifford Antone, he sold me a sandwich. He had opened a shop on Guadalupe, right around the corner from the ...
New York Dolls: Make-up America!
Retrospective and Interview by Kris Needs, MOJO, June 2006
In 1971 Manhattan, five teenage toughs in make-up, tried to kick-start the punk revolution. By 1976 the New York Dolls seemed finished, poleaxed by drugs, ...
The Clash, The Damned, Sex Pistols, The Vibrators: Punk File #1: The First Anarchic Year
Retrospective and Interview by Kieron Tyler, MOJO, June 2006
'76 WAS PRETTY hairy. The anniversary headlines might read "1976, The Year Of Punk", but for most kids flares and long hair (still a sign ...
The Costa del Sol: Elvis Has Left The Cantina
Report by Caroline Sullivan, The Guardian, 21 July 2006
ELVIS PRESLEY is having a grand time. He is cuddling up to tipsy girls and giving them individual verses of 'Return to Sender' as they ...
Move Over 1976 – The Revolution Is Here And Now
Comment by Mark Pringle, Rock's Backpages, 4 October 2006
ANYONE UNDER 30 reading this can piss off right now. This is for your mum and dad. You don't need the help, they do. The ...
Retrospective by Bob Stanley, The Times, 20 October 2006
THE EIGHTIES HAVE – like the stack-heeled Seventies before them – been repackaged and filed away as an era of Duran Duran, Dynasty and mobile ...
Rockin' on the Outskirts: S.F. Rock Beyond the Ballrooms
Sleeve notes by Gene Sculatti, Rhino, 21 October 2006
Love Is the Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets box (Rhino) ...
Retrospective by Simon Reynolds, Time Out, 23 October 2006
Dig out your grandad cardigans, your old-school anoraks and your infant-school plimsolls — the shambling indie scene that was C86 is back. Simon Reynolds, who ...
How An NME Cassette Launched Indie Music
Retrospective by Nick Hasted, The Independent, 27 October 2006
C86, the unassuming mail-order cassette compiled by NME, through which the indie sound and scene first coalesced, will have its 20th anniversary celebrated tonight with ...
Cabaret bands: Working Man's Soul
Retrospective and Interview by Bill Brewster, djhistory.com, November 2006
You can almost smell the crushed velvet. While Led Zeppelin were doing unspeakable things with sharks and glam rock was ubiquitous, thousands of musicians plied ...
Report and Interview by Kirk Silsbee, LA CityBeat, 3 November 2006
FLYING INTO Kansas City, Missouri, you see a huge patchwork landscape of eccentric green and brown shapes that is farmland acreage. These are both separated ...
Kansas City: Sorry But I Can't Take You
Report and Interview by Kirk Silsbee, JazzTimes, December 2006
KANSAS CITY, MO – It was like a scene out of The Godfather or Goldfinger, only it was on the storied corner of 18th and ...
King Creosote: It's the Wee Folk Hobbit!
Profile and Interview by Jude Rogers, The Word, December 2006
After 20 years, King Creosote — humble cottage-industry troubadour — has reached the Rivendell of a major label and a signing to Elton John's management. ...
They Think It's All Over? The Slight Return Of Football Hooligan Subcultures
Essay by Steve Redhead, Rock's Backpages, 2007
ONCE AGAIN the book shelves are heaving, a few weeks before a new season, with football hooligan memoirs. One of the best of these 'histories' ...
Retrospective by Paul Elliott, MOJO, February 2007
Threatened by punk, Led Zep, Sabbath and Purple came under fire in 1977. A year later Iron Maiden, Def Leppard and Saxon led a New ...
Summer of Love: 40 Years Later
Retrospective by Joel Selvin, San Francisco Chronicle, 20 May 2007
1967: The stuff that myths are made of ...
The Go-Betweens, The Saints: Brisbane's Pig City Festival
Report by Clinton Walker, Brisbane Courier-Mail, July 2007
THE QUEENSLAND Music Festival, which is launched next Friday with a dawn concert in Winton and runs for a fortnight till July 29, is an ...
Retrospective and Interview by Robert Webb, The Independent, 3 July 2007
IT'S THE MIDDLE of the day in Palm Desert, California, 104 degrees and rising. Terry Reid, rock legend, is out by the pool, sucking on ...
Grateful Dead: For The Unrepentant Patriarch Of LSD, Long, Strange Trip Winds Back To Bay Area
Profile and Interview by Joel Selvin, San Francisco Chronicle, 12 July 2007
THE SMALL, barefoot man in black T-shirt and blue jeans barely rates a second glance from the other Starbucks patrons in downtown San Rafael, although ...
The Boys Next Door, Radio Birdman, The Saints, The Scientists: Come the Revolution: Oz punk
Retrospective and Interview by Keith Cameron, The Guardian, 20 July 2007
You thought punks in the UK had things to be angry about? Over in Australia, bands had a real fight on their hands, says Keith ...
Retrospective by Will Hermes, The Village Voice, 31 July 2007
OH YES, it was wicked cool: getting jacked at machete-point on the subway after a night of clubbing, and at bayonet-point outside of high school. ...
Frankie Knuckles, David Mancuso, David Morales: Def Mix: The house that Judy built
Retrospective and Interview by Bill Brewster, Pacha, August 2007
AT THE CENTRE of every story is what philosopher Malcolm Gladwell calls a "connector". Connectors are people who know lots of other people. They are ...
Georgie Fame: Rik Gunnell, 1931-2007
Obituary by Andy Gill, The Word, August 2007
RIK GUNNELL, who died recently aged 75 in the Austrian ski resort of Kitzbuhel, where he owned and ran a bar called The Londoner, was ...
Happy Mondays: Salford Lads Club
Essay by Steve Redhead, Rock's Backpages, August 2007
'YOU SALFORD NANCY Boy!' was a regular insult hurled from the wings at the late Anthony H. Wilson, educated at De La Salle College in ...
Devendra Banhart: Stranger than Folk: Devendra Banhart
Profile and Interview by Chris Campion, Observer Music Monthly, 12 August 2007
IN A HOUSE on a hill, in a canyon near L.A., Devendra Banhart scatters popcorn on the earth like seed. "This is for the hairs," ...
Review by Stuart Maconie, The Word, December 2007
THE '70S BEGAN and ended in turmoil, with strikes, crises, terrorism, class war and new political orthodoxies on the march. ...
New York Noise: Anarchy in the USA
Book Review by Simon Witter, Daily Telegraph, 22 December 2007
PERUSING THE WEALTH of multi-disciplinary artistic talent beaming out of the 400 black and white images in New York Noise (Soul Jazz Publishing), it's hard ...
Black Flag and All That: Joe Carducci's Enter Naomi
Memoir by Barney Hoskyns, eMusic.com, Winter 2007
THE RECENT PUBLICATION of Joe Carducci's moving and fascinating Enter Naomi: SST, L.A. and All That... (Wyoming: Redoubt Press) takes me back 25 years to ...
The Beatles, George Harrison: George Harrison Visits Haight-Ashbury In Summer 1967
Retrospective by Richie Unterberger, MOJO, Summer 2007
UNCOMMON sightings were downright common in the Haight-Ashbury during the Summer of Love. But even in that colorful context, the visit of George Harrison to ...
The Beatles: When Acid Reigned
Retrospective by Harry Shapiro, MOJO, Summer 2007
Hippies tripped, tabloids raged and police cheered as Engelbert Humperdinck's Jan '67 hit, 'Release Me' became the real theme tune for the Summer of Love. ...
Retrospective by Joe Carducci, The New Vulgate, 2008
Author's note: All Tomorrow's Parties had the Meat Puppets playing their second album in 2008, and I was asked to write about that album for ...
Book Review by Nick Coleman, Independent on Sunday, 3 February 2008
In the summer of 1971, Keith Richards and Anita Pallenberg holed up in a villa on the Riviera with the other members of the Rolling ...
Interview by Caroline Sullivan, The Guardian, 15 February 2008
"THERE'S A LOVELY Welsh word, cynefin, which means 'habitat'. It's the idea that there are factors in your environment that have an influence on you ...
Realistic Crew, Suhancos: "This is Hungary - we don't have stars": Realistic Crew and Suhancos
Report and Interview by Angus Batey, The Guardian, 29 February 2008
Hungarian hip-hop has been going strong since 1984, and its musicians are keen to be recognised globally. The problem: they're just not Hungarian enough. Angus ...
Obituary by Ken Hunt, The Guardian, 27 March 2008
Co-owner of L.A.'s Whisky a Go Go venue ...
Culture's Coming Home? Liverpool And Pop
Essay by Steve Redhead, Rock's Backpages, April 2008
LIVERPOOL ONE! The slogan for a new regenerated port city, European Capital of Culture, 2008. Liverpool One is the name for a retail project in ...
The Special AKA, The Specials: The Specials: Original Gangsters
Retrospective and Interview by Lois Wilson, MOJO, May 2008
Out of the inner-city misery and post-punk experiment of the late '70s came a group of black and white Coventry kids called the Specials who ...
Neil Sedaka: New York's Rock'n'Roll Rhapsody
Overview by Philip Norman, Mail On Sunday, 7 July 2008
NEW YORK HAS inspired so much of the greatest popular music ever written. London may have its chirpy Cockney ditties like 'Underneath the Arches', and ...
Love: Orange Skies Over the Castle
Retrospective by Kirk Silsbee, New Angeles Monthly, October 2008
"Love – featured tonight in the Diamond Mine! On display in the psychedelic department store!" –Dave Diamond, KBLA, June 16, 1967 ...
New Order: Off the Hook – The Peter Hook Interview
Interview by Stephen Dalton, Scotland on Sunday, 5 October 2008
Since his acrimonious split with New Order, Peter Hook has seldom been happier. Ahead of his memoir about the legendary Hacienda club, the pirate captain ...
Lydia Lunch, Sonic Youth: No Wave: Histories Along The Bowery
Interview by Olly Beck, Garageland, 30 November 2008
The New York No Wave Movement: More Punk than Punk. Olly Beck talks to Thurston Moore ...
John Lennon, Yoko Ono: John Lennon: Give New York A Chance
Guide by Philip Norman, Daily Mail, 3 December 2008
FEW EXILES have been so cherished by a city as John Lennon was by New York. Certainly, none has ever left such a legacy of ...
Various Artists: A Complete Introduction To Northern Soul (Universal)
Review by Stuart Maconie, The Word, January 2009
A COMPLETE HISTORY? Yes. A Short Introduction? Yes. But A Complete Introduction? Surely a contradiction in terms. ...
The Astoria: Share your beer-stained memories
Report by Ian Winwood, The Guardian, 13 January 2009
YOU CAN ALWAYS tell when a gig at the Astoria has just finished because you'll be greeted with the sight of 2,000 people spilling out ...
The Stooges: "Come on, Ronnie, tell em' how I feel!"
Special Feature by Bill Holdship, Detroit Metro Times, 14 January 2009
IT WASN'T always this way. Years ago, TV commercials and film soundtracks didn't feature the guitar sound Ron Asheton pioneered with the Stooges. Even in ...
Rocking Cincinnati's R&B Cradle
Retrospective and Interview by RJ Smith, The New York Times, 23 January 2009
A CROWD GATHERS around crumbling walls that are a small evolutionary step up from a miserable pile of bricks. The facade leaks water, and masonry ...
Bikini Kill, Huggy Bear: Grrrl Power
Retrospective and Interview by Laura Barton, The Guardian, 4 March 2009
The Riot Grrrl scene brought feminism to alternative rock in the '90s. Fifteen years on, the aftershocks are still making waves, says Laura Barton. ...
The Mamas and The Papas, John Phillips: King of the Wild Frontier: Papa John Phillips
Retrospective and Interview by Chris Campion, Observer Music Monthly, 15 March 2009
IN AUGUST 1977, John Phillips was supposed to be recording the album with Keith Richards that would mark his comeback. ...
Retrospective by Johnny Black, Music Week, 25 April 2009
IN THE WORDS of the jazz legend who founded it, Ronnie Scott's club has always been, "just like home … filthy and full of strangers." ...
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. ...
Interview by Bill Brewster, Rock's Backpages Audio, 28 May 2009
The legendary DJ and producer looks back at his suburban childhood and mispent youth; starting the dance music fanzine Boy's Own; the whole acid house scene and its effects; what it means to be a DJ, and his move into the recording studio and his work with Primal Scream.
File format: mp3; file size: 49.2mb, interview length: 53' 44" sound quality: ****
Manchester Studies: Reading John Robb's The North Will Rise Again
Essay by Steve Redhead, Rock's Backpages, June 2009
The North Will Rise Again: Manchester Music City 1976-1996 John Robb (Aurum, 2009, £16.99) ...
Memoir by John Pidgeon, Rock's Backpages, July 2009
ONE WARM SPRING Friday night in 1964, cooling off between sets outside the Ricky Tick club in Windsor, I share a match flame with a ...
The Grand Story Of Beach Music
Retrospective by Robot A. Hull, Rock's Backpages, 5 August 2009
IT IS WITH much trepidation that I write of "beach music", a phenomenon that has consistently been making waves across America and the world (yes, ...
Alexis Korner, Blues Incorporated, Cyril Davies: Blues Incorporated: How British R&B Trashed Trad
Retrospective by John Pidgeon, Rock's Backpages, 24 September 2009
ALEXIS KORNER'S Parisian birthplace, Austro-Greek parentage, noble features and languid growl endowed him with an aura of exoticism unreflected in his musical partner Cyril "Squirrel" ...
Flailing and Railing: Brendan Mullen, 1949-2009
Memoir by Don Snowden, Rock's Backpages, October 2009
BEST KNOWN as a catalyst and chronicler of the late '70s L.A. punk scene centred around the Masque club, Brendan Mullen died suddenly of a ...
Book Review by Keith Cameron, Q, October 2009
Manc-rock, from punk to Oasis, by legendary lensman. ...
This Charming Manchester (Manchester Music, Then and Now)
Overview by Stephen Dalton, The National, October 2009
From Joy Division and The Smiths, to the headliners at next month's Dubai Sound City, Happy Mondays and Doves, Manchester has long been Britain's self-styled ...
Retrospective and Interview by John Pidgeon, Rock's Backpages, 2 October 2009
THE FIRST PUBLIC appearance of what would one day be touted as "the greatest rock and roll band in the world" was hardly headline news, ...
Jonathan Wilson: Son of the Source
Comment by Kandia Crazy Horse, San Francisco Bay Guardian, 28 October 2009
CALIFORNIA MY WAY: Pacifica in all her roaring glory; 'Bluebird'; Gene Clark suffering for his art at the Troubadour; Arthur Lee perched atop Laurel Canyon ...
Chipmunk, Dizzee Rascal, N-Dubz, Taio Cruz, Tinchy Stryder: N-Dubz and The Second Coming of Brit Pop
Overview by Ben Thompson, Observer Music Monthly, 1 November 2009
It has been a long, rocky road for homegrown urban music in the UK, but this year N-Dubz and a close-knit group of stars have ...
Patti Smith, Television: The Mapplethorpe Effect: Patti, Polaroids and Punk
Retrospective by Simon Warner, Rock's Backpages, 15 January 2010
IT WOULD NOT BE outrageous to propose that the two greatest albums of the punk tsunami featured cover images by arguably the most important post-war ...
Report and Interview by Paul Lester, The Guardian, 22 January 2010
THERE'S AN OLD adage in the trades (the music business, newspapers and magazines) that value glamour and novelty: two's a coincidence, three's a scene. In ...
Manchester's Music Scene Now Has Everything Everything
Overview by Paul Lester, The Guardian, 22 January 2010
Never mind the Buzzcocks... or Stone Roses, or New Order: Manchester can stop trading on its former glories. Three new bands explain how they are ...
From Mod to Emo: Why Pop Tribes Are Still Making a Scene
Overview by Jude Rogers, The Guardian, 25 February 2010
Like-minded music fans have been herding together for half a century — but are die-hard pop tribes now a thing of the past? Do today's ...
The Descendents: Frank Navetta and The Descendents
Retrospective by Joe Carducci, The New Vulgate, 17 March 2010
IN 1980 I wasn't aware of the first 45 by the Descendents, 'Ride the Wild'/'lt's a Hectic World' (Orca 001). It was recorded by Spot ...
Retrospective by Don Waller, Detroit Metro Times, 7 April 2010
ON AUGUST 12th, 1975, the Runaways played their first gig — at Back Door Man fanzine founder Phast Phreddie Patterson's parents' house in north Torrance, ...
Lowell George, Little Feat: Lowell George: Time Loves a Hero
Retrospective by Michael Simmons, MOJO, May 2010
A '70s guitar visionary and genius songwriter, Lowell George of Little Feat is rock's lost star. Michael Simmons pays tribute. ...
Broken Social Scene: An Ever-Changing Canadian Collective of Rock'n'Roll Royalty
Retrospective and Interview by Edward Helmore, The Independent, 14 May 2010
IT'S CLOSE TO MIDNIGHT and Kevin Drew, co-founder of Broken Social Scene, is sleeping on the floor of a New York recording studio, headphones clamped ...
The Ugly Ducklings: The Yorkville Scene
Book Excerpt by Nicholas Jennings, 'Before the Gold Rush' (Penguin), 2 June 2010
ON A SPRING night in 1965, a warm breeze blew along Toronto's Yorkville Avenue, carrying with it a strange mixture of scents: rich coffee, pungent ...
The Fugs: For The Benefit Of Tuli Kupferberg
Report by Michael Simmons, Huffington Post, 15 June 2010
For those who trot out the tired cliché of hippies morphing into stockbrokers, check out the Fugs. No sell-out here. ...
Sleeve notes by Bob Fisher, unpublished, August 2010
ON CHRISTMAS EVE 2016, Dave Bartholomew celebrated his 98th birthday and over 65 years as a professional musician. ...
Retrospective by Gene Sculatti, Rock's Backpages, September 2010
LAST SATURDAY, paging through an article on Robert Plant in the September issue of MOJO, I learned that, upon their initial meeting in a Dublin ...
The Dream Syndicate: Unsung Heroes: The Dream Syndicate
Retrospective and Interview by Rob Hughes, Uncut, September 2010
Bad medicine! The dark lords of the Paisley Underground revisited. ...
Tony Wilson: A Fitting Headstone For Tony Wilson's Grave
Comment by Dorian Lynskey, The Guardian, 26 October 2010
A memorial headstone for Factory Records founder Tony Wilson has been unveiled in a Manchester cemetery this week. ...
At Large in the Black Hole of Punk L.A.
Sleeve notes by Jon Savage, 'Black Hole' (Domino Records), November 2010
NOTE: Adapted from Strange Things # 1, published spring 1988, this forms the first part of the liner notes for Black Hole: Jon Savage Presents ...
Bob Dylan: Izzy Young: The Man Who Made Bob Dylan
Retrospective and Interview by Kris Needs, MOJO, December 2010
NOVEMBER 4, 1962: Bob Dylan is invoking the time-honoured image of the out-of-town rambler lost on New York's convoluted subway system as he nervously attempts ...
Retrospective and Interview by Paul Lester, Record Collector, December 2010
Paul Lester celebrates the enduring pop power of the Bangles. ...
Mickey Newbury: Guitars, Boats And Fairways: Mickey Newbury and Friends on Old Hickory Lake
Sleeve notes by Chris Campion, Saint Cecilia Knows Records, 2011
IT LOOKS, FROM ABOVE, like a snake arching through the brush. A series of long blind curves that begins at Hendersonville, the small community formed ...
Mick Taylor, Ronnie Wood: Saving the 100 Club
Report and Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, MOJO, February 2011
"RONNIE WOOD was one of the first musicians I ever met," says Mick Taylor, seated deep in the murk of the 100 Club. "The Cherry ...
Tim Brown: The Wigan Casino Years (Outta Sight)
Book Review by Mike Atherton, Echoes, February 2011
THE TITLE of this striking new book is carefully chosen. Of course there was Northern Soul before the Wigan Casino and, almost 30 years after ...
Retrospective by Jaan Uhelszki, Uncut, February 2011
Resurrected! A remarkable, uncompromising proto-punk band from Detroit! ...
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. ...
Beth Ditto: Winning The Fame Game With No Regrets
Interview by Luke Turner, The Quietus, 1 March 2011
As she prepares to release her new EP with Simian Mobile Disco, Luke Turner sits down with Beth Ditto and finds that, a million record ...
Deerhunter: The Psychedelic South: Deerhunter's Atlanta
Profile and Interview by Martin Aston, The Guardian, 10 March 2011
NOTE: In 2011, I flew to Atlanta, Georgia, to spend the weekend with Bradford Cox, frontman of the city's great neo-psychedelic rockers Deerhunter, for the ...
The Rebirth Brass Band: Rebirth of New Orleans
Review by Carol Cooper, The Village Voice, 20 April 2011
DURING THE FIRST episode of HBO's Treme, members of the Rebirth Brass Band and the show's trombone-playing character Antoine Batiste end a jazz parade in ...
David Bowie, Kraftwerk: Taxi zum Klo's Berlin is a sexual playground
Retrospective by Jon Savage, The Guardian, 21 April 2011
Bowie, Christiane F and Taxi zum Klo: these are the things that made Berlin so alluring to the British pop culture of the late '70s ...
Hank Ballard and the Midnighters, Chubby Checker, Joey Dee & the Starliters: Let's Twist again
Retrospective by Richard Williams, The Guardian, 4 June 2011
Fifty years ago, a new dance craze swept the world and changed for ever the way people move. Richard Williams, up on his feet when it ...
Bad Brains, Minor Threat: Ian Mackaye meets Bad Brains and invents hardcore
Retrospective by Stevie Chick, The Guardian, 14 June 2011
NO MERE THREE-CHORD punk dullards, Washington DC's Bad Brains had chops to spare. They'd started as jazz-fusion quintet Mind Power, worshipping at the altar of ...
Lana Del Rey: Is Lana Del Rey The Kreayshawn Of Moody, Electro-Tinged "Indie"?
Report by Maura Johnston, The Village Voice, 15 September 2011
LAST NIGHT, Glasslands played host to a "secret" show by Lana Del Rey, an up-and-coming singer who was described by the one press release I ...
Gong, Magma, The Yardbirds: Giorgio Gomelsky: An Interview
Retrospective and Interview by Archie Patterson, Eurock, Spring 2011
IF THERE EVER was a man who lived and breathed music it's the international vagabond Giorgio Gomelsky. Born in the former Soviet-Georgia, his parents fled ...
The Beach Boys: Good Vibrations and Endless Summers: The Beach Boys in Hawthorne
Retrospective by Kirk Silsbee, South Bay, Summer 2011
YOU HAVE TO look for it. Nothing on 120th Street gives an indication as you drive along the north side of the Hawthorne Airport. ...
Retrospective and Interview by Alan Clayson, Record Collector, Fall 2011
Alan Clayson investigates British artists of the 1960s whose early output included records issued only in Germany. ...
The Doors: Cars Hiss By My Window: The Doors' L.A. Woman landmarks
Retrospective and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, unpublished, February 2012
Sunset Sound Recorders, 6650 Sunset Blvd.The Doors had made their first two albums in this celebrated Hollywood studio, but it was also here that L.A. ...
Bunky & Jake, Jake and the Rest of the Jewels: Everything's Jake on A Lick and a Promise
Review by Gene Sculatti, Rock's Backpages, 8 February 2012
THE SUBTITLE of a recently published book on Manhattan's Seventies punk scene is Five Years in New York That Changed Music Forever. It's a sure ...
Interview by Bob Ruggiero, Houston Press, 13 March 2012
A BOON FOR classic-rock fans in recent years has been an increased activity in vault-mining, as record labels are discovering, polishing up, and releasing a ...
Retrospective and Interview by Sean O'Hagan, The Observer, 25 March 2012
Dennis Morris is celebrated for his iconic photographs of the Sex Pistols and Bob Marley. But few knew that in that pivotal era he was ...
Memoir by John Pidgeon, Rock's Backpages, 8 June 2012
I'M IDLING ALONG the High Street in my tan sit-up-and-beg Ford Pop, when 'Whatcha Gonna Do About It' comes on the radio. ...
Retrospective and Interview by Sheila Weller, Vanity Fair, July 2012
It was billed as "the Summer of Love", a blast of glamour, ecstasy, and Utopianism that drew some 75,000 young people to the San Francisco ...
Report and Interview by Andy Gill, The Independent, 21 July 2012
From Brooklyn to Glasgow, a new wave of musicians are choosing laptops over guitars as their instruments of choice, says Andy Gill. ...
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, The Times, 3 September 2012
RIPLEY... EPSOM... WALLINGTON. The names hardly resonate in the way that Clarksdale or Greenville or Natchez do. Yet in their way these Surrey towns are ...
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 ...
Massive Attack: Blue Lines: Massive Attack's blueprint for UK pop's future
Retrospective by Sean O'Hagan, The Guardian, 28 October 2012
In 1991, the laidback Bristol collective roused themselves to unleash their debut album. Reissued 21 years on it remains a landmark. Here, an early champion ...
Retrospective by Greg Wilson, electrofunkroots.co.uk, 9 November 2012
DURING THE 1980s Morgan Khan was viewed as a "dance music mogul", a true instigator who enriched British culture via his unyielding efforts, driven by "an ...
New Order: Lost Years in Original Modernity? On Listening to New Order's Lost Sirens
Retrospective by Steve Redhead, Rock's Backpages, March 2013
THIRTY SEVEN Year Party People! Since Ian Curtis, Stephen Morris, Bernard Sumner and Peter Hook began playing regularly as Joy Division in 1978, that's effectively ...
Comment by Gene Sculatti, Rock's Backpages, 18 April 2013
IS IT JUST ME? Or has anyone else who's seen the PBS special Muddy Waters and the Rolling Stones Live found the whole affair cringe-worthy ...
Peace: Tiny, Smug and Blissfully Ignorant Minds: New British Indie and Peace's In Love (Columbia)
Special Feature by Neil Kulkarni, fuckyouneilkulkarni.blogspot.co.uk, 30 April 2013
"I. Man's perceptions are not bound by organs of perception; he perceives more than sense (tho' ever so acute) can discover." — William Blake, ...
Retrospective and Interview by Sean O'Hagan, The Observer, 26 May 2013
He photographed the most enduring images of the '60s folk-rock stars who lived in L.A.'s Laurel Canyon. Now Henry Diltz stars in a documentary about ...
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 ...
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 ...
Review by Jon Savage, MOJO, September 2013
Reissue of '74-77 home demos by Ohio's deviant intellectuals: the true sound of the '70s underground. ...
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 ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 9 October 2013
The man who produced the Woodstock festival talks about the importance of its name; moving to the town in 1968; the major figures around town: The Band, Bob Dylan and Albert Grossman; the notable people and places in the vicinity, including Jimi Hendrix, Tim Hardin and Fred Neil; the relationship between town and festival; his Just Sunshine label and its abiding cult signing Karen Dalton; the town's incestuousness; the Bearsville label and studio, and Todd Rundgren; the 1994 festival... and Woodstock today.
File format: mp3; file size: 65.2mb, interview length: 1h 07' 55" sound quality: ***
Club to Catwalk: London Fashion in the 1980s: V&A, London
Review by Nicky Charlish, Culture Wars, 21 December 2013
WHEN WE LOOK at a product of physical design – a building, say – we don't usually think about the influences which went into its ...
Lou Reed: A Last Waltz on the Wild Side
Memoir by Ed McCormack, Vanity Fair, 13 January 2014
In an excerpt from his in-progress memoir, former Rolling Stone writer Ed McCormack remembers his friend Lou Reed, and the small theft and turn on ...
Sex & Drugs & Herring rolls: Punk's Jewish Roots Revealed
Retrospective by Nick Hasted, The Independent, 26 February 2014
PUNK ROCK'S transatlantic fuse was lit when Malcolm McLaren saw Richard Hell in New York in 1975. McLaren, whose Jewish family background was in the ...
Retrospective by Vivien Goldman, The Guardian, 27 February 2014
Punk Svengalis Malcolm McLaren and Bernie Rhodes were Jewish, and the faith had an influence on UK labels and journalists. For Jewish kids, meanwhile, the ...
Obituary by Bill Brewster, The Guardian, 1 April 2014
Trailblazing American record producer and club DJ hailed as the Godfather of House ...
Blur, Elastica, Oasis, Pulp, Suede: Modern Life Isn't Rubbish: The Trouble With Britpop Nostalgia
Comment by Luke Turner, The Quietus, 10 April 2014
The mainstream media are currently engaged in a collective misty-eyed throwback to the 'glory days' of the mid 90s. Luke Turner, who was a teenager ...
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 ...
Review by Michael A. Gonzales, Ebony, 18 April 2014
WHEN IT COMES to the Minneapolis sound, most folks might believe the entire history begins and ends with the musical genius known as Prince. ...
Review and Interview by Luke Torn, Uncut, 12 May 2014
Swamp-pop goes Woodstock: Louisiana legend's rarely heard '72 masterpiece with The Band... ...
Soul II Soul's Jazzie B: "Ride what you've got until the wheels fall off"
Report and Interview by Lloyd Bradley, The Evening Standard, 11 June 2014
Some people already know that Jazzie B is a London Legend but tonight at the first London Music Awards he takes the title officially. The ...
Randy California, Spirit: California Dreaming: The Wild and Tragic Story of Spirit
Retrospective by Max Bell, Classic Rock, 18 June 2014
Led by mercurial guitarist Randy California, Spirit were buddies of Jimi Hendrix and praised by Led Zeppelin. But their promise would collapse in blur of ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 23 June 2014
Van talks about his escape to Woodstock after Bert Berns and Bang records: the Band, Albert Grossman, not recognising Bob Dylan; the making of the Moondance and Street Choir albums, and not buying into the Woodstock mythology.
File format: mp3; file size: 41mb, interview length: 44' 48" sound quality: *****
The Flesh Eaters, The Gun Club: Locals Only: The Flesh Eaters and The Gun Club
Retrospective by Don Snowden, Rock's Backpages, July 2014
NO ONE ON the L.A. scene in 1981 got enough of the version of the Flesh Eaters featured on A Minute to Pray, A Second ...
Interpol on supermodels, surfing and (not) hanging out with the Strokes
Interview by Sophie Heawood, The Guardian, 28 August 2014
THINGS HAVE CHANGED on the eve of the New Yorkers' fifth album, El Pintor. Not only is it their first without bassist, Carlos D, they ...
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 ...
Memoir by Michael A. Gonzales, Cuepoint, 8 October 2014
I lost my disco virginity at the hottest club in town, the same night a wild crowd tried to burn the genre down. ...
The Beach Boys, The Eagles, Charles Manson: Charles Manson and the Death of the Californian Dream
Retrospective by Gavin Martin, Sabotage Times, 17 November 2014
The swinging '60s in the Golden State – California. A decade of sex, drink, drugs and debauchery soundtracked by the Beach Boys, the Eagles and ...
Guide by Kieron Tyler, Q Classic, 2015
Author's note, 2020: The Harder They Come, conspicuous by its absence from this list, was not included, since it was the subject of a feature ...
Obituary by Richard Williams, The Guardian, 18 January 2015
FEW PEOPLE IN pop music spanned such a range as Kim Fowley, the record producer, songwriter and Sunset Strip svengali who has died aged 75. ...
Interview by Bud Scoppa, Uncut, March 2015
Recommended this month: a prodigious L.A. multi-tasker, anointed as Chosen One by Jackson Browne, Rick Rubin, Benmont Tench et al. ...
David Johansen, New York Dolls, Buster Poindexter: David Johansen: The MOJO Interview
Interview by Alan Light, MOJO, March 2015
DAVID JOHANSEN sits on the couch in the living room of his wife's long-time, walk-up apartment on a nondescript block of Manhattan's Upper West Side. ...
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 ...
The Eagles: Boyd Elder: Encounters of the Southwestern Kind
Report and Interview by Stephen K. Peeples, stephenkpeeples.com, 31 March 2015
A close encounter with the artist who created the skull art for Eagles' One of These Nights and Their Greatest Hits. ...
Brits Are Still in Love with Rave Culture
Comment by Carl Loben, Huffington Post, 12 August 2015
"HALF OF UK nightclubs close as Brits abandon rave culture," reported the Daily Telegraph yesterday morning (Tuesday 11th August). Other titles led with "Clubs close as dancing ...
Lizzy Mercier Descloux: Rockfort: Remembering Lizzy Mercier Descloux
Retrospective by David McKenna, The Quietus, 10 September 2015
David McKenna looks back at the life of Parisian poet, painter and post punk musician, Lizzy Mercier Descloux. ...
Boogie Wonderland: Disco's hottest '70s nightclubs
Retrospective and Interview by Sean O'Hagan, The Observer, 26 September 2015
IT WAS President Jimmy Carter's mother, Lillian, who first brought photographer Bill Bernstein to the legendary Studio 54 nightclub in New York one evening in ...
Big Brother & The Holding Company, Janis Joplin: Big Brother: John Simon in Woodstock and Bearsville
Book Excerpt by Barney Hoskyns, 'Small Town Talk' (Faber & Faber), 2016
Two excerpts from Small Town Talk that tell part of the story of John Simon, producer of The Band and Janis Joplin… plus one excerpt ...
Retrospective by Mitchell Cohen, Music Aficionado, 2016
THE LOVIN' SPOONFUL were NYC's Beatles. Lillian Roxon, in her indispensable Rock Encyclopedia, called them "our own little moptops, born, bred and raised right here ...
Jan & Dean & the Rise of L.A. Pop
Retrospective by Mitchell Cohen, Music Aficionado, 2016
AS MUCH AS anyone else, including the Beach Boys, Jan & Dean helped establish the mythology of Los Angeles. When the city was still in ...
Report and Interview by Peter Silverton, The Independent, 25 January 2016
JUST WHEN WE thought we didn't have any more space in our life for 21st century Denmarkia, along comes another slice of Danish. This time, ...
Book Excerpt by Barney Hoskyns, 'Small Town Talk' (Faber), February 2016
BY THE TIME Bob Dylan's 'Blowin' In The Wind' was turbo-charging the folk-protest movement in the summer of 1963, his manger Albert Grossman had become ...
Bob Dylan: Going Up the Country: Woodstock's Post-Dylan influx
Book Excerpt by Barney Hoskyns, 'Small Town Talk' (Faber), February 2016
BOB DYLAN WASN'T the only artistic giant to seek sanctuary in the Catskill Mountains in the 1960s. Just as the singer had fled controversy and ...
The Sex Pistols, Patti Smith: Provincial Gains: Sex Pistols in the Early Summer of '76
Book Excerpt by Clinton Heylin, 'Anarchy in the Year Zero' (Route Books), May 2016
"The sound is a mean cacophony, not unreminiscent of Bowie's early Spiders, the material a mixture of Anglo-American teen punk classics – the Stooges' 'No ...
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 ...
Alan Vega: Infinity Punk: A Career-Spanning Interview With Suicide's Alan Vega
Interview by Simon Reynolds, Pitchfork, 19 July 2016
Following the musical iconoclast's death at age 78 – an in-depth conversation from 2002 that includes tales of dangerous old New York, what it meant ...
Escape from Sanity: An Englishman in San Francisco in 1967
Memoir by Andrew Tyler, unpublished, October 2016
NOTE: This is an excerpt from an as-yet unpublished memoir by the former Disc/NME writer and Animal Aid activist, who very sadly died on 28 ...
Retrospective by Kris Needs, Shindig, October 2016
2016 MARKS 70 years since Syd Barrett entered this world, ten since he left it and an incredible half century since Pink Floyd played their ...
Marc Almond: "I've had the chance to be subversive in the mainstream"
Profile and Interview by Jude Rogers, The Observer, 23 October 2016
With a career-spanning 10-album box set coming out, the Soft Cell star reflects on the '80s, Brexit and his fading love affair with London. ...
David Bowie, Freddie Mercury: Growing Up Gay to a Glam Rock soundtrack
Memoir by Jim Farber, The New York Times, 3 November 2016
Freddie Mercury, David Bowie and Alice Cooper send signals to a semi-closeted gay teen in the '70s. ...
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. ...
Light Years: The Golden Age of the Night Club
Retrospective by James Medd, The Rake, December 2016
When you think of the '70s, what do you see? How about Bianca Jagger on a white horse at Studio 54, or Grace Jones on ...
Karen Dalton: Are You Leaving for the Country? Karen Dalton in Woodstock
Book Excerpt by Barney Hoskyns, 'Small Town Talk' (Da Capo), Spring 2016
FRED NEIL had returned to his beloved Florida by the early '70s, but from 1970 onwards Karen Dalton spent much of her time in Woodstock. ...
Jan & Dean: A Walk on the Wet Side: Gary Pig Gold In Conversation With Mark A. Moore
Interview by Gary Pig Gold, Vulcher, January 2017
ONE THING THAT'S always bugged me – besides the price of Ramones t-shirts at the Newark Airport CBGB, that is: Why the name Jan Berry ...
Andrew Czezowski and Susan Carrington: The Roxy, 14 December 1976 – 23 April 1977, Our Story
Book Review by Chris Charlesworth, Just Backdated, March 2017
ON DECEMBER 14, 1976, after a brief stint as the first in an endless stream of optimists who tried to manage the Damned, Andrew Czezowski, ...
The Sonics' 'Witch' Craft: Huntersville Resident's 1960s Garage-Rock Band Invented Punk
Retrospective and Interview by Mark Kemp, Creative Loafing, 17 May 2017
WHEN MILD-MANNERED Rob Lind isn't on the links at Birkdale Golf Club with his wife Suzanne, or on his boat with his son Robbie during ...
Ed Kuepper, Laughing Clowns, The Saints: Saint Ed Kuepper to be honoured with renamed Brisbane park
Report and Interview by Andrew Stafford, The Guardian, 9 July 2017
Push for Brisbane to further celebrate its second seminal band as Ed Kuepper Park named in city's south-west. ...
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. ...
The Doors, Jim Morrison: Jim Morrison at Thee Experience
Book Excerpt by Kirk Silsbee, 'The Doors: Summer's Gone', September 2017
AFTER THE DOORS had tasted success, Hollywood was Jim Morrison's playground. The Whisky a Go Go in West Hollywood, which launched the band, showcased all ...
Book Review by Pete Paphides, Medium, 4 September 2017
THIRTY-THREE YEARS have elapsed since the wildly prodigious Roddy Frame volunteered Aztec Camera's most impressive song to date for release on Alan Horne's Postcard label. ...
Shilpa Ray: Door Girl (Northern Spy)
Review by Jon Young, Mother Jones, 22 October 2017
Shilpa Ray's songs capture life on the edge in New York City. Door Girl echoes the streetwise, hard-boiled vibe of Lou Reed. ...
The Eagles: Trouble in Paradise: The Eagles' Hotel California and mid-'70s Los Angeles
Retrospective by Ed Doheny, Rock's Backpages, November 2017
DON HENLEY once described the Eagles' 1976 album Hotel California as "our interpretation of the high life of Los Angeles", adding that the band had ...
Retrospective by Mitchell Cohen, Music Aficionado, 2018
THE IMAGE OF Los Angeles rock in the '80s is imprinted like a tacky tattoo: bands with poofed-up hair and eyeliner, girls with poofed-up hair ...
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 ...
Retrospective and Interview by Patrick Clarke, The Quietus, 10 April 2018
Through a series of interviews, Patrick Clarke charts the history of Liverpool's brilliant, bitter and burgeoning music scene of 1976-1988, from Eric's and Probe to ...
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 ...
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 ...
Retrospective by Erik Himmelsbach, Journal of Alta California, 28 May 2018
LIKE ITS New York counterpart the Velvet Underground, whose props as a fundamental rock and roll influence came only after years in oblivion, Los Angeles's ...
Tav Falco's Panther Burns: Tav Falco
Book Excerpt by Robert Gordon, 'Memphis Rent Party' (Bloomsbury), June 2018
TAV LOOKED at me and said, "Our show was great. We cleared the room." A pal of mine was at the smallish San Francisco club ...
Judge Jules: How we made: Ministry of Sound
Interview by Dave Simpson, The Guardian, 13 November 2018
"I found a car park in Elephant and Castle, south London, with a roof covered in pigeon poo. I walked in and thought, 'This is ...
The GTOs: Miss Christine: The Fast Life of a Rock Legend
Retrospective by Erik Himmelsbach, Alta Journal, 11 December 2018
Christine Frka was a muse to Alice Cooper, a secretary to Frank Zappa, and a member of a pioneering all-girl band. The glamour goddess-icon of ...
Big Brother & The Holding Company, Janis Joplin: Big Brother's Chick Singer
Book Excerpt by Holly George-Warren, 'Janis: Her Life and Music' (Simon & Schuster), 2019
Playing is the "mostest" fun there is – feeling things and really getting into it. That's what it's all about. – Janis Joplin ...
Crosby Stills and Nash: Crosby, Stills & Nash: At Large
Book Excerpt by Ellen Sander, Dover Publications, 2019
Excerpted from Ellen's seminal 1973 book Trips: Rock Life in the Sixties, reissued in 2019 in an "Augmented Edition" by Dover Publications ...
Nitzer Ebb: The return of pop perverts Nitzer Ebb
Retrospective and Interview by Luke Turner, The Guardian, 3 January 2019
Loud, rude and flirting with fascistic imagery, Nitzer Ebb took synth-pop and sexual deviance to working class Essex. Three decades on, they're back – now ...
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 ...
Retrospective and Interview by David Burke, Classic Pop, June 2019
Reggae may have been born in Jamaica, but it grew up in '80s Britain at a time of evolving multiculturalism, finding an unlikely ally in ...
Book Review by Tony Burke, Morning Star, 24 June 2019
BIG BEAR BOSS Jim Simpson holds a unique place in UK music business. A promoter, record producer, festival director, rock band manager and photographer, his ...
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 ...
Patrick Cowley's pioneering electronica
Retrospective by Jude Rogers, New Statesman, 30 October 2019
Today, Patrick Cowley is barely known outside record-collecting circles: but his ecstatic electronic disco left an indelible mark on the music scene. ...
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 ...
The Big Boys, Butthole Surfers, Scratch Acid: Someday All the Adults Will Die!
Book Excerpt by Pat Blashill, 'Texas is the Reason' (Bazillion Points), February 2020
THE MISFITS had never been to Texas. They were just four lunkheads from Lodi, New Jersey, who had heard about punk. They had black leather ...
Cab Calloway, August Darnell, Gene Krupa: Time Machine: June 1943 – L.A.'s Zoot Suit Riots
Retrospective by Fred Dellar, unpublished, February 2020
CAB CALLOWAY was something of a superstar by 1943. A would-be Harlem Globetrotter, he'd had that possible career nixed by his big sister Blanche, who ...
Book Excerpt by Paul Gorman, 'The Life & Times of Malcolm McLaren' (Constable), April 2020
IN 1975, THE regular customers at Sex – the fetish boutique operated at 430 King’s Road by Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood – included David ...
Obituary by Chris Campion, Los Angeles Times, 31 July 2020
MISS MERCY, the effervescent rock 'n' roll superfan who found fame as a member of Frank Zappa's "groupie" girl-group the GTOs (Girls Together Outrageously), died ...
The Seeds: Jan Savage 1942-2020
Obituary by Harvey Kubernik, Ugly Things, 11 August 2020
JAN SAVAGE (born Buck Jan Reeder), guitarist with American rock band the Seeds, died in early August, according to a report in The Ada News ...
Book Review by Tony Burke, Morning Star, 23 November 2020
MANCHESTER'S FREE Trade Hall was built on the site of the 1819 Peterloo massacre as a public hall celebrating the repeal of the Corn Laws ...
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 ...
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, ...
The Ultimate Top 10 Pirate Radio DJ guide to Underground Black Music clubs and Anthems
Guide by Paul Wellings, Vice, April 2021
1. The Four Aces, Dalston, London I was never one to go to those mainly white clubs that the suburban househeads went to. I was partly ...
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 ...
The Descendents: The Return of the Descendents
Retrospective and Interview by Irina Shtreis, Louder Than War, 21 July 2021
Pioneers of Californian pop-punk revisit their early material on the upcoming 9th & Walnut album. ...
Retrospective by Mick Brown, Daily Telegraph, 18 August 2021
Bob Dylan has just been accused of a sexual assault there in 1965 - the latest in a long line of claims about the storied ...
Joni Mitchell: "I didn't want anyone to know it was me": On being Joni Mitchell's 'Carey'
Retrospective and Interview by Kate Mossman, New Statesman, 17 December 2021
For 50 years, the "mean old daddy" immortalised in one of Mitchell's best-loved songs has been an enigma. Now he tells his side of the ...
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. ...
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", ...
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. ...
The Avengers: Watching the Avengers Absolutely Crush the Pistols
Book Excerpt by Michael Goldberg, 'Wicked Game' (HoZac Books), June 2022
NOTE: What follows is an excerpt from Michael Goldberg's new book Wicked Game: The True Story of Guitarist James Calvin Wilsey (HoZac Books). Goldberg is ...
Hawkwind: In Search Of Hawkwind
Retrospective by Adam Blake, Rock's Backpages, October 2022
SO, IN A FIT of nostalgia for my old Ladbroke Grove stomping ground, I spent rather more money than I anticipated picking up a first ...
The Beatles: My City: Keith's Wine Bar
Memoir by Spencer Leigh, Liverpool Echo, March 2023
IN THE LATE 1990s Bob Wooler, the former Cavern DJ, used to live off Lark Lane, and I would meet him every Saturday at Keith's ...
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