Gadfly

Sex Pistols, The: Sod Awf! The Sex Pistols And Other Pleasantries Of Punk

Retrospective by David Dalton, Gadfly, February 1998

A Short History of the NOW! ROCK EXISTS in the humming; now, an all-enveloping bubble of sound, energy and ecstasy. Like being at the flashpoint ...

Carl Perkins - Let It Bleed

Profile by David Dalton, Gadfly, July 1998

IF THIS WERE the world it ought to be — that fantasy rockabilly kingdom dream up at Sun Records in the mid-fifties of flash, trash ...

Paul McCartney: Linda McCartney: How Rock 'n' Roll Saved Our Lives

Retrospective by David Dalton, Gadfly, August 1998

I first met Linda McCartney at the Scene on West 46th Street. A hip little grotto in a cellar, it was run by the cool ...

Janis Joplin, Big Brother & The Holding Company: A Shot From The Heart: Janis and Cheap Thrills

Retrospective by David Dalton, Gadfly, September 1998

IT'S 30 YEARS ago today since Cheap Thrills was released, but as soon as the needle touches the surface of the record (I’m sentimental about ...

Palace Music, Will Oldham: Will Oldham aka Bonnie Prince Billy

Profile and Interview by David Dalton, Gadfly, January 1999

LO-FI POET OF THE MIND'S OWN TIDE ...

Velvet Underground, John Cale: John Cale: What's Welsh for Zen?

Interview by David Dalton, Gadfly, January 1999

THE VELVET Underground in their classic phase (1966-1968) lasted barely two years and released only two studio albums, but their influence has been immense. ...

Kinks, The: The Kinks : Remembrance Of Kinks Past

Retrospective and Interview by David Dalton, Gadfly, March 1999

Take a look at that face, the face of Ray Davies, it's the classic Dickensian mug, the face of a silent movie comedian, a vaudevillian, ...

D.A. Pennebaker: I Film While Leaping From My Chair

Retrospective and Interview by David Dalton, Gadfly, April 1999

"Almost immediately reality gave in on more than one point. The truth is, it longed to give in" –Jorge Luis Borges ...

Rolling Stones, The: Redlands: The Drug Bust of The Rolling Stones

Retrospective by David Dalton, Gadfly, May 1999

Friday 11th February 1967. Keith Richard has just invited you down to Redlands, his fourteenth-century manor house in Sussex, for the weekend. Mick and Marianne ...

Woodstock

Retrospective by David Dalton, Gadfly, August 1999

Woodstock. August 15, 16, 17, 1969. Three days of peace, love and music. For the past thirty years, it has been touted as a new ...

Rolling Stones, The: Altamont: An Eyewitness Account

Retrospective by David Dalton, Gadfly, November 1999

The Rosy Apocalypse ALTAMONT, 6th December, 1969. The name itself is fraught with menace – its flinty suggestive syllables (altar-mountain-tumult) reinforcing biblical overtones. ("The ...

Beach Boys, The, Brian Wilson: Brian Wilson: "Help Me, Rhonda," Indeed!

Essay by David Dalton, Gadfly, 2000

HEY, ALL you surfin’ dudes and hardbody wahinis, check out this thing on TNT. It’s a tribute to the surf god, Brian Wilson! ...

Lester Bangs: Rock 'n' Roll was the Big Bang

Retrospective by David Dalton, Gadfly, July 2000

For a long time, its shockwaves obliterated thought altogether. That was the great thing about it: it was anti-matter, it vaporized everything that wasn’t immediate, ...

Bob Dylan: Something Was Happening, But I Didn’t Know What It Was

Retrospective by David Dalton, Gadfly, September 2000

In the spring of 1970, I saw Les Blank’s lush, lyrical intimate documentaries about the blues singers Lightnin’ Hopkins and Mance Lipscomb. They’re amazing films ...

Last Poets, The: The Last Poets: Progenitors of Rap

Retrospective and Interview by David Dalton, Gadfly, September 2000

Perhaps it was the Vietnam War dragging on, nightly television footage of bombed villages, body bags and helicopters dropping flaming glue on Vietnamese farmers or ...

Marianne Faithfull, Rolling Stones, The: God (Marianne Faithfull) and the Devil (Anita Pallenberg) Talk About Their Ab Fab episode

Interview by David Dalton, Gadfly, 2001

AFTER A six-year break the outrageous Britcom Absolutely Fabulous is back with a new six-part series. The "Donkey" episode airing on the Comedy Channel on ...

Down From the Mountain: Invasion of the Autoharp Damsels and Flat-Pickin' Boys

Report and Interview by David Dalton, Gadfly, 2001

OPENING SHOT: SOMEWHERE IN the mid-West. Through windscreen we see two-lane black top. Flat, farmland stretches out to the horizon. We pull back to see ...

Paul McCartney, Wings: On the Wings of a Beatle

Retrospective by David Dalton, Gadfly, 2001

"DADDY, tell us how it all began, how the walls of Pepperland crumbled, how the Blue Meanies with their lawyers and chartered accounts came and ...

Rolling Stones, The, Jack Nitzsche: Tuning the Key of the Universe: Jack Nitzsche Remembered

Profile and Interview by David Dalton, Gadfly, 2001

Jack Nitzsche, who died last August at the age of 63, was a seminal but shadowy figure in rock ’n’ roll since the early '60s. ...

Al Kooper, Mike Bloomfield: Mike Bloomfield: Bloomfield's Doomed Field

Memoir by Al Kooper, Gadfly, March 2001

FOR SOME strange reason, we referred to each other by our "proper" names, Michael and Alan. To everyone else, it was Mike Bloomfield and Al ...

Rolling Stones, The: The Rolling Stones: Old Gods Almost Dead

Interview by David Dalton, Gadfly, December 2001

David Dalton Talks to Stephen Davis, Author of the First Full-Dress Biography of the Rolling Stones in Twenty Years ...

Beatles, The: The Day the Angels Spent Christmas with the Beatles

Memoir by David Dalton, Gadfly, December 2001

WELL, NO, IT'S NOT that kind of story, exactly, although given the fairytale element in the legend of the Fab Four you might, circa 1964, ...

Nico and The Marble Index: A Conversation with Danny Fields

Interview by David Dalton, Gadfly, 2002

WHEN THE MARBLE Index appeared in 1969 it seemed unplaceable, flying out of some timeless place, as if we were hearing from a possessed medieval ...

Richard Hell: What Fresh Hell Is This?

Interview by David Dalton, Gadfly, 2002

RICHARD HELL was the primal Punk, the ur-Punk: the spiky-haired one. The torn t-shirts, the safety pins, the era-defining ‘Blank Generation’–much of the ...

George Harrison: My Walk-On in the Life of George

Memoir by David Dalton, Gadfly, March 2002

"FIRST OF ALL," my friend Richard said, "he was a Beatle, how could he die?" They were immortal, weren't they? Gods, even if flawed. A ...

Marianne Faithfull: The Curse of the Multiplying Mariannes

Interview by David Dalton, Gadfly, March 2002

PART 1: THE SCATTERED SELVESGadfly: I wanted to start by asking you to describe the various Mariannes who have manifested themselves over the years. ...

Beach Boys, The, Brian Wilson: Epiphany At Zuma Beach Or Brian Wilson Hallucinates Me

Memoir by David Dalton, Gadfly, May 2002

AFTER PET SOUNDS Brian Wilson became the mad genius of the Beach Boys, a prodigy who had miraculously emerged out of the surf and car ...

Ozzy Osbourne: "Martha Stewart Can Lick My Scrotum!" Life chez the Osbournes

Review by David Dalton, Gadfly, May 2002

A COUPLE OF years ago, my wife Coco and I did a few shows in which we played Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen if had ...