Daily Telegraph
Robert Cray: Wedded Bliss Blues
Profile and Interview by Mark Cooper, Daily Telegraph, September 1990
Mark Cooper asks, can contented men sing the blues? I do, says Robert Cray ...
Tony Bennett: Hi-De-Hi-Me To The Moon: Tony Bennett At Butlins
Report by Michael Gray, Daily Telegraph, December 1990
IT WAS AN ADVERT in a tabloid that caught my eye. "Lose Your Heart To Tony Bennett... Butlin's Super Weekend Break." Mesmerised, I read on: ...
Joni Mitchell: Lookin' Good, Sister
Interview by Mick Brown, Daily Telegraph, February 1991
Woodstock days: Joni Mitchell's early songs depicted her as a restless free spirit; men loved her for it and women envied or identified with her. ...
Richard Thompson: The Unsung Thompson
Interview by Mark Cooper, Daily Telegraph, May 1991
Mark Cooper meets the folk hero who is now sharply observing home from abroad. ...
Kirsty MacColl: Kirsty In Control
Interview by Mark Cooper, Daily Telegraph, June 1991
Mark Cooper watches as Kirsty MacColl reluctantly prepares to meet the world ...
Lyle Lovett: The Singer Who Argues With God
Profile and Interview by Mark Cooper, Daily Telegraph, March 1992
Lyle Lovett's latest album gives a contemporary twist to the Old Testament, says Mark Cooper ...
Frank Zappa: The Double Life Of Frank Zappa,
Profile and Interview by Michael Gray, Daily Telegraph, September 1992
SINCE CONTRACTING prostate cancer in 1989 Frank Zappa, now 51, has cancelled many public appearances and new projects. Tonight he re-emerges at the Frankfurt Music ...
Obituary by Charles Shaar Murray, Daily Telegraph, December 1993
A FEW YEARS AGO, Gail Zappa, wife and business partner of the late Frank Zappa, was shopping for groceries in Los Angeles when the cashier ...
Bo Diddley: Godfather Back On The Beat
Profile and Interview by Mark Cooper, Daily Telegraph, May 1996
If guitar rhythms could be copyrighted, Bo Diddley would be a millionaire. As it is Mark Cooper finds him warily hitting the comeback trail again ...
Ray Coleman: The Man Behind the Maker
Obituary by Chris Charlesworth, Daily Telegraph, September 1996
RAY COLEMAN, who has died from cancer aged 59, played a leading role in the growth of the British music press in the Sixties and ...
Shane MacGowan, Pogues, The: Shane MacGowan: One More For The Road
Profile and Interview by Mick Brown, Daily Telegraph, November 1997
THERE ARE THOSE who believe that Shane MacGowan is among the most gifted and singular singer-songwriters to have emerged in British music in the past ...
Chess Set Still Sings The Blues: Marshall Chess and Chess Records
Interview by James Maycock, Daily Telegraph, 1998
JUST OVER 50 YEARS AGO, brothers Phil and Leonard Chess, two industrious Polish immigrants in Chicago, tentatively established what would become the most famous blues ...
Massive Attack: Looking for Identities: Massive Attack
Interview by Ben Thompson, Daily Telegraph, May 1998
A STATELY HARPSICHORD looms up out of a gently tapping drumbeat. A piano escorts an exquisite female voice through a bass guitar archway with the ...
Missy Elliott: Missy In Action: The Divine Ms. Elliott
Interview by Ben Thompson, Daily Telegraph, May 1999
MISSY "MISDEMEANOR" Elliott is an infamously snappy dresser, so when she emerges from a discreet recess in her LA hotel room wearing nothing more elaborate ...
Dr. John: The Doctor and the Duke: A Night with Mac Rebennack
Profile and Interview by Mick Brown, Daily Telegraph, July 1999
ON A WARM Saturday afternoon, in a studio just off 5th Avenue, in the downtown section of New York, Dr John is recording an album ...
Supergrass: Supergrass (Parlophone)
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Daily Telegraph, September 1999
WE HEAR AN awful lot about how Oxford is still the gateway to eminence in thrusting new young Britain, but what about Wheatley Park Comprehensive? ...
Interview by Ben Thompson, Daily Telegraph, October 1999
THE ATMOSPHERE of ersatz serenity that is supposed to prevail in newly-refurbished West End hotel lobbies was never going to withstand the arrival of Eminem. ...
Robert Johnson: Turning Points: Robert Johnson
Retrospective by Charles Shaar Murray, Daily Telegraph, November 1999
THE LEGEND OF Robert Johnson was a long time in the building, and it was forged by the fusion of his brilliance and his obscurity. ...
Profile and Interview by Paul Lester, Daily Telegraph, February 2000
"I'M NOT INTO CHAOS," says Noel Gallagher, who along with his brother Liam has always appeared to be one of the last true standard bearers ...
Kelis: The 'I Hate You So Much Right Now' Woman: Kelis
Report and Interview by Ben Thompson, Daily Telegraph, April 2000
STRIDING PURPOSEFULLY down one of the seamiest streets in Soho, 20-year-old Kelis (pronounced kuh-leece) Rogers is a day-glo Amazon. ...
Interview by Ben Thompson, Daily Telegraph, May 2000
THERE WAS ONE gig that really caught the attention of the swarming hordes of A&R men at 1998's In The City convention in Manchester. The ...
Rickie Lee Jones: Life On The Edge
Interview by Mick Brown, Daily Telegraph, August 2000
"EVERYBODY," Rickie Lee Jones sang on her 1997 album Ghostyhead, "starts out pure, starts out ridiculous, starts out beautiful..." And then? And then, says Jones ...
Interview by Tom Cox, Daily Telegraph, February 2001
IMAGINE IF YOU made the best record of your career, in collaboration with one of your heroes, and it was released only abroad, leaving such ...
Bob Dylan: The Art of the Ageless Bob Dylan
Retrospective by Michael Gray, Daily Telegraph, April 2001
Bob Dylan is approaching his 60th birthday on a tide of adulation. Michael Gray, a long-time Dylan chronicler, considers his lasting appeal. ...
Incredible Bongo Band, The: The Strange Life Of The Incredible Bongo Band
Retrospective and Interview by James Maycock, Daily Telegraph, June 2001
THE TALE OF the Incredible Bongo Band is, aptly, an improbable one. With a highly eclectic cast that includes Bobby Kennedy’s assassin, Sirhan Sirhan, ...
Report and Interview by Mark Hudson, Daily Telegraph, June 2001
A TOUGH-LOOKING character in a back-to-front baseball cap slaps hard around a semi-circle of conga drums. An older man, small and self-contained, who could easily ...
David Axelrod: Swinging with The Ax: David Axelrod
Profile and Interview by Ben Thompson, Daily Telegraph, June 2001
"LET ME straighten something out first," rasps living Los Angeles legend David Axelrod; crooking a bony finger at the heavy sunglasses he wears even though ...
Interview by Ben Thompson, Daily Telegraph, July 2001
ON ENCOUNTERING a would-be interviewer who'd just been robbed of all his pound coins by a renegade parking meter, the Beta Band of a couple ...
N*E*R*D: The Search Is Over: N*E*R*D
Report and Interview by Ben Thompson, Daily Telegraph, August 2001
THEIR NAMES MIGHT not be familiar, but you'll know Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo by the sounds they make. As multi-million selling production team the ...
Elvis Presley: The King and I: A Visit to Graceland
Report by Michael Gray, Daily Telegraph, August 2001
KREATURE COMFORTS – "the Lowlife Guide to Memphis" – claims that Memphis can offer visitors "the best or worst of vacations: you could hit a ...
So Solid Crew: They Do Know: So Solid Crew
Report and Interview by Ben Thompson, Daily Telegraph, October 2001
SIFTING THROUGH a pile of So Solid Crew fanmail might be a disturbing experience for anyone worried about the state of the nation's spelling, but ...
Interview by Ben Thompson, Daily Telegraph, February 2002
Kurt Wagner, songwriter and former floor-layer, has stripped down the sound of his 13-strong band for their latest and finest album. He tells Ben Thompson ...
Cornershop: Back In Business: Cornershop
Profile and Interview by Ben Thompson, Daily Telegraph, February 2002
Four years after a tribute to Bollywood chanteuse Asha Bhosle gave them 1998's most unlikely number one single, Ben Thompson welcomes the return of Cornershop. ...
Profile and Interview by Mark Hudson, Daily Telegraph, March 2002
BEFORE MIRIAM Makeba's first venture outside South Africa in 1959, her mother, a sangoma or traditional medium, was warned by one of her familiar spirits ...
Wilco: Taking Control in a Crisis
Report and Interview by Ben Thompson, Daily Telegraph, March 2002
ROCK AND ROLL is not the first place you would look for a new form of patriotism. Yet Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, the latest album by ...
Bob Dylan: Dylan Opens New European Tour
Report by Michael Gray, Daily Telegraph, April 2002
THE OMENS ARE bad from the start. Take the Stockholm subway to Globen, the stop for the stadium, and you alight in a postmodern mega-estate, ...
Bob Dylan: On the trail of the Bobcat: Bob Dylan
Live Review by Michael Gray, Daily Telegraph, April 2002
THE OMENS are bad from the start. Take the Stockholm subway to Globen, the stop for the arena, and you alight in a postmodern estate, ...
So Solid Crew, MC Romeo: MC Romeo: Alpha Romeo
Profile and Interview by Ben Thompson, Daily Telegraph, August 2002
IN THE TOP floor of the London bus that is taking me to interview fast-talking UK garage heartthrob MC Romeo, an effervescent group of black ...
Elvis Presley: Memphis Still Sings The Blues
Report by Michael Gray, Daily Telegraph, 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 ...
Elvis Presley: He Made Old Men's Blues Sound Young: Remembering Elvis
Comment by Michael Gray, Daily Telegraph, August 2002
WE REMEMBER his ignominious end, and the cavalcade of white Cadillacs driving through Memphis for his funeral 25 years ago this month, but mostly the ...
Beatles, The: Miles: John, Paul, George and… Barry
Profile and Interview by Mick Brown, Daily Telegraph, 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 ...
Louis Prima: An Entertainer In His Prime: The Great Louis Prima
Retrospective by James Maycock, Daily Telegraph, December 2002
2003 note: I interviewed his saxophonist and arranger, Sam Butera, for an article that was published in the month of what would have seen Louis ...
James Brown: The Making Of James Brown Live At The Apollo
Retrospective by James Maycock, Daily Telegraph, February 2003
"ARE YOU READY for Star Time?" exclaimed MC Lucas "Fats" Gonder from the stage of Harlem’s Apollo on 24th October, 1962. The eager crowd ...
Robert Wyatt: Triumph Of A Late Bloomer: Robert Wyatt
Interview by Robert Sandall, Daily Telegraph, October 2003
CONTRARY TO THE impression given by the list of cool, metropolitan mates who play on his latest album - Pink Floyd's David Gilmour, Paul Weller, ...
Eddie Palmieri: The Man Who Stirred Up Salsa
Interview by Mark Hudson, Daily Telegraph, March 2004
Eddie Palmieri, maverick genius and opening act in next month's Latin music festival at the South Bank, tells Mark Hudson why salsa is more than ...
Digital Magic Makes A Musician Of Me
Comment by Tom Cox, Daily Telegraph, May 2004
I THINK IT'S SAFE to say I'm never going to learn to play a musical instrument properly now. The realisation first came to me about ...
Nick Drake: Brighter Very Much Later: Nick Drake
Retrospective by Robert Sandall, Daily Telegraph, May 2004
POSTHUMOUS ACCLAIM is not uncommon in rock - "death sells" and all that - but the clamour surrounding the English singer-songwriter Nick Drake gets more ...
Sufjan Stevens: The 50 States of Rock: Sufjan Stevens
Interview by Ben Thompson, Daily Telegraph, June 2004
THERE HAVE BEEN MANY extra-curricular activities traditionally associated with the life of the travelling rock'n'roller. Teaching knitting to the blind is not one of them. ...
Windor 1974: The Forgotten Festival – I Was There
Memoir by Mark Hudson, Daily Telegraph, June 2004
A world away from today's money-spinning Glastonbury, the Windsor Free Festival of 1974 was illegal, drug-happy and absurdly idealistic, recalls Mark Hudson ...
Björk: Björk: 'This Time It's Intuition Only – No Brain, Please'
Interview by Robert Sandall, Daily Telegraph, August 2004
Icelandic singer Björk has made a compelling new album that contains not a single musical instrument and is named after the Latin for 'marrow'. Robert ...
Elvis Costello and the Imposters: The Delivery Man
Review by Ben Thompson, Daily Telegraph, September 2004
RECORDED AT Sweet Tea Studios in Oxford, Mississippi, with guest appearances by Emmylou Harris and Lucinda Williams, The Delivery Man initially looks like a bold ...
Seun Kuti, Femi Kuti, Fela Kuti: Fela Kuti: A Difficult Fela To Follow
Report and Interview by Mark Hudson, Daily Telegraph, October 2004
As the Barbican celebrates the life and music of Fela Kuti, Mark Hudson travels to Lagos to meet his sons Femi and Seun, bitter rivals ...
Report by Michael Gray, Daily Telegraph, October 2004
Michael Gray follows the trail of some great American musicians who moved from the rural South in the early 1900s. ...
Buggles: Trevor Horn: Vast Cities Of Sound
Profile by Paul Morley, Daily Telegraph, November 2004
Trevor Horn, one of pop music's great ministers of sound, celebrates 25 years of recording wizardry this week. And it all started with The Buggles, ...
Gang of Four: The Gang's All Here – Again
Retrospective and Interview by Robert Sandall, Daily Telegraph, January 2005
LIKE THE VELVET Underground a decade before them, Gang of Four were one of those bands who never had a proper hit but who created ...
Report and Interview by Sheryl Garratt, Daily Telegraph, March 2005
THERE ARE many ways to reach a rock band's heart. Sex and drugs are the most tried and tested, but I've never found either very ...
Adam & The Ants: Adam Ant: Adam And The Fall
Interview by Paul Lester, Daily Telegraph, April 2005
STUART GODDARD is one of the most gifted – and most troubled – pop stars this country has ever produced. ...
Billy Corgan, Smashing Pumpkins: Beyond The Nightmares: Billy Corgan
Interview by Robert Sandall, Daily Telegraph, June 2005
THE YOUNGER ONES recognise him and stop to say hello, but heaven knows what the older visitors make of Billy Corgan as we wander around ...
Eric Clapton: From Sex and Drugs to Domestic Bliss
Interview by Robert Sandall, Daily Telegraph, August 2005
It's day four of Eric Clapton's week off from paternal duties, and the born-again family man doesn't know what to do with himself. On Monday ...
Report and Interview by Ben Thompson, Daily Telegraph, August 2005
Their accent may be regional but their success is global. Ben Thompson meets three new bands from pop music's latest hotspot ...
Earth Wind and Fire: Earth, Wind and Fire: Relighting the Fire
Report and Interview by Robert Sandall, Daily Telegraph, September 2005
MAYBE IT'S AN effect of the baking late-August heat, but the concert scene in Houston, Texas has gone all topsy-turvy. ...
Bon Jovi: Jon Bon Jovi Has a Nice Day
Interview by Precious Williams, Daily Telegraph, September 2005
GONE is the once fearsome mane of highlighted hair and without it Jon Bon Jovi is almost unrecognizable. Strolling into Beverly Hills' Four Seasons ...
Review by Ben Thompson, Daily Telegraph, November 2005
Ben Thompson reviews an album of two halves ...
Jamie Lidell: King's Cross Scala, London
Live Review by Ben Thompson, Daily Telegraph, November 2005
JAMIE LIDELL'S live show at the King's Cross Scala offers a number of delightfully incongruous spectacles. Looming large among them is the sight of a ...
White Stripes, The: The White Stripes: Hammersmith Apollo, London
Live Review by Paul Morley, Daily Telegraph, November 2005
Paul Morley watches The White Stripes at the Hammersmith Apollo and is blown away by their impeccably skewed greatness ...
Retrospective by Mark Hudson, Daily Telegraph, November 2005
Mark Hudson reveals the tragic tale of the British Joni Mitchell; Sandy Denny ...
Morrissey, David Bowie: Tony Visconti: Bolan, Bowie, Morrissey And Me
Interview by Mick Brown, Daily Telegraph, March 2006
"WHAT A LOT of people don't realise about Morrissey," says the producer of his new album, Tony Visconti, "is that he has a sense of ...
Elvis Presley: Rediscovering the joy in the sad story of Elvis
Retrospective by Philip Norman, Daily Telegraph, May 2006
NO POP ICON ever came to a sadder or less regal end than the once gorgeous, gaudy "King" of rock 'n' roll, Elvis Presley. When ...
Allen Toussaint: The Jazz Café, London
Live Review by Simon Witter, Daily Telegraph, November 2006
THOUGH HE IS the greatest living exponent of the extraordinary New Orleans piano tradition that produced Professor Longhair, Fats Domino, Huey Smith, James Booker, Dr ...
Tony Joe White: Audience With The Other Elvis
Interview by Chris Campion, Daily Telegraph, December 2006
Tony Joe White, writer of 'Polk Salad Annie' and 'Rainy Night in Georgia', talks to Chris Campion about his mythic songs and his Louisiana childhood ...
Lou Reed: Iron Glove, Velvet Fist
Interview by Mick Brown, Daily Telegraph, May 2007
The legendarily cantankerous Lou Reed's definition of abject misery is being interviewed by an English journalist. But get him on the right subject and he ...
How I Took On The New York Dolls
Memoir by Mark Hudson, Daily Telegraph, June 2007
As a new exhibition marks the 30th anniversary of punk, Mark Hudson, lead singer in a college band, recalls the once-in-a-lifetime feeling of the summer ...
White Stripes, The: The White Stripes: Detroit Spinners
Interview by Ben Thompson, Daily Telegraph, June 2007
SON HOUSE WAS one of the greatest of all blues singers. Born on a Mississippi cotton plantation in 1902, he died 86 years later – ...
New York Noise: Anarchy in the USA
Book Review by Simon Witter, Daily Telegraph, 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 ...
Baby Dee: The Torch-Singing Tree Surgeon Branches Out
Interview by Ben Thompson, Daily Telegraph, February 2008
"SOMETIMES I WORRY that I've become addicted to upheaval," says Baby Dee, torch singer, native of Cleveland, Ohio, and former harpist for Mercury Prize-winner Antony ...
Tricky: Return Of The Bristol Rover
Interview by Ben Thompson, Daily Telegraph, June 2008
After exploding on to the trip-hop scene with Massive Attack and as a solo artist, Tricky decamped to America to go through what some see ...
Kings of Leon: Only By The Night (RCA)
Review by Ben Thompson, Daily Telegraph, September 2008
WITH THE White Stripes facing an uncertain future, and The Strokes fragmenting into underwhelming solo careers, Kings of Leon are the sole survivors of America's ...
Buddy Holly: Why Buddy Holly will never fade away
Retrospective by Philip Norman, Daily Telegraph, January 2009
ON A BASIS OF simply counting heads, rock music surpasses even film as the 20th century's most influential art form. By that reckoning, there is ...
Live Review by Simon Witter, Daily Telegraph, April 2009
IN A YEAR in which it would be almost easier to count the bands not reforming, and in which a startling percentage of pop newcomers ...
Specials, The: The Specials: 02 Academy, Birmingham
Live Review by Simon Witter, Daily Telegraph, April 2009
FROM AGING ROCKERS who won’t let it be to '80s ravers going to pilled-up, Facebook-coordinated reunions, everybody these days is raging against the dying of ...
Frank Zappa, Tom Waits: Frank Zappa's Manager: A Smile On His Lips, And A Pistol Under The Bar
Obituary by Mick Brown, Daily Telegraph, March 2010
Mick Brown pays tribute to Herb Cohen, who managed Frank Zappa while maintaining an enthusiasm for music, cheese, confectionery and armaments. ...
Brian Eno: 'Lady Gaga's Meat Dress? I Did It First'
Interview by Ben Thompson, Daily Telegraph, November 2010
Fashion disasters, electronic music, even the Lib-Con coalition...The super-producer and former Roxy Music wizard saw it all coming ...
Janet Jackson: 'I Eat To Fill The Void'
Interview by Michael A. Gonzales, Daily Telegraph, November 2010
With an Oscar-tipped role in Tyler Perry's new film and a handsome young billionaire in her life, Janet Jackson is, finally, 'in a good place'. ...
Beyoncé Is Too Good For Glastonbury
Comment by Ben Thompson, Daily Telegraph, June 2011
Glastonbury's complacent Pyramid Stage crowd just doesn't deserve the great Beyoncé ...
Retrospective by James Maycock, Daily Telegraph, November 2011
IT'S EVERYWHERE. It's become part of the air we breathe. 'Summertime' certainly feels like it's been with us forever. One day this June, while making ...
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