Q
Profile and Interview by Steve Turner, Q, 1986
Jackson Browne used to hang his head and weep when he considered the folly of Man. These days he doesn’t bother. These days he gets ...
Profile and Interview by Steve Turner, Q, 1986
Suzanne Vega had a feeling and tried to imagine what shape this feeling would have if it had been an object. She imagined it small ...
Profile and Interview by Tom Hibbert, Q, October 1986
"THERE COMES A time in a kid's life when they have to take over. It's hard for the parents to let go – and I'm ...
Report by Adam Sweeting, Q, October 1986
THE CONNAUGHT ROOMS in London, WC2, are used to Lord Mayors, masonic gatherings and businessmen full of brandy, but on a grey August Monday the ...
Bruce Springsteen: "My cousin saw Bruce down Fifth Avenue!"
Report and Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, October 1986
"HI gang, this is Martha in Marietta, Georgia. I gotta lotta Springsteen bootlegs and I wanna trade... Hi, Howie in Boston again. My cousin in ...
Interview by Chris Salewicz, Q, October 1986
IN JULY last year Big Audio Dynamite were at Sarm West Studios in Notting Hill, recording their first album with Mick Jones producing. Early in ...
Paul McCartney: An Innocent Man?
Interview by Chris Salewicz, Q, October 1986
Paul McCartney curls up on the couch and relives the Beatles’ story for the first time since the death of John Lennon. "He was one ...
Human League, The: The Human League: Crash
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, October 1986
THE CAREER OF The Human League – from Sheffield art-school beginnings to their current miraculous return from the dumper – has been a comedy of ...
Lionel Richie: Dancing On the Ceiling
Review by Adam Sweeting, Q, October 1986
IT IS SAID THAT Lionel Richie's previous solo album, Can't Slow Down, sold an unthinkable 15 million copies, the kind of statistic that can cause ...
Elvis Costello: Blood and Chocolate
Review by Mark Cooper, Q, October 1986
ELVIS COSTELLO'S CAREER now consists of a spiral of sidesteps and multiplying identities, all designed to accommodate the extraordinary fecundity of his writing. ...
Specials, The, Selecter, The, Madness: The End of 2-Tone: Madness/The Specials/The Selecter
Report by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, November 1986
Farewell, Madness – the last of the 2-Tone tribe. Phil Sutcliffe follows the fate of the three groups that pioneered the ska revival. ...
Monkees, The: The Monkees et al: Comebacks
Report and Interview by Andy Gill, Q, December 1986
TWENTY YEARS ago, Mickey Dolenz, a former child actor best known in the title role of Circus Boy, answered an ad for "Four Insane Boys, ...
Profile and Interview by Dave Rimmer, Q, December 1986
JOHN PEEL IS sitting in his pyjamas in the kitchen of his Suffolk home. It is a Sunday afternoon. On the wall is a Radio ...
Elton John: The Fall and Rise of Reginald Dwight
Interview by Chris Salewicz, Q, December 1986
Chris Salewicz meets the occupant of the Presidential Suite, Floor 30, Century Plaza Hotel, Los Angeles. "I’ve had my scrotum removed, and I'm having it ...
Interview by Adam Sweeting, Q, December 1986
THESE ARE MY favourite 10, and not in any particular order. For instance, I do think Billie Holiday was better than Peter Cox, the singer ...
Interview by Tom Hibbert, Q, December 1986
LEAFING IDLY through the pages of last year's diary – recalling his early adventures in the wonterful world of pop – Neil Tennant arrives at... ...
Little Richard: "I Am The Rill Thang!"
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, December 1986
GOOD GOSH A-MIGHTY...it's Little Richard. A little fuller in the face, a little thicker in the waist, but there he is in a Mayfair Hotel ...
Debbie Harry: It's About Time, Isn't It?
Interview by Dave Rimmer, Q, December 1986
SO WHY, WE must ask, is Debbie Harry back right now, exactly? Has she brought out her brand new single, 'French Kissing In The USA', ...
David Byrne: "It Didn't Feel Like Acting"
Interview by Vivien Goldman, Q, December 1986
True Stories: first the book, then the Talking Heads LP, now the film. David Byrne writes, directs, acts and supports the cause ordinary people everywhere. ...
Big Audio Dynamite: No 10 Upping St.
Review by Lloyd Bradley, Q, December 1986
IN THE HILLS above Rio, until his recapture, lived Jose Carlos dos Reis Encina, a violent criminal and provider of food and medicine to the ...
Frankie Goes to Hollywood: The Revenge of Frankie Goes To Hollywood
Report and Interview by Dave Rimmer, Q, Summer 1986
"NO ONE GETS IN HERE!" screams Brian Nash, slamming the caravan door and flicking the lock. "No one!" Outside hover a few members of the ...
Profile and Interview by Steve Turner, Q, 1987
Sting holds court not in the music room with the sofas and grand piano nor in the oak-panelled study with the leather-topped desk and racing ...
Pink Floyd: Roger Waters: "...a rage for simple vengeance"
Report and Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, January 1987
After all those nights of psychedelic love and peace at the UFO and the Middle Earth in '67, Pink Floyd have ended up — like ...
Van Morrison: "I’m not doing this because I want to be on Top Of The Pops."
Interview by Chris Salewicz, Q, January 1987
Van Morrison’s job is the pursuit of magic moments. All the rest – the touring, the recording, the interviews, the selling – is an irrelevance ...
Annie Lennox: The Right Stuff: Annie Lennox on Singers
Interview by Adam Sweeting, Q, February 1987
I NEVER HAD enough money to have a record player, so I never got into the habit ol buying records, and so my only real ...
Human League, The: Human League: Dynasty!
Interview by Tom Hibbert, Q, February 1987
They bickered their way through six different line-ups. They were consumed by power and ego. They made a fortune and lost it. Tom Hibbert charts ...
Interview by Adam Sweeting, Q, February 1987
MADNESS ALWAYS called him Uncle Ian, and there's still that avuncular earthiness about Ian Dury. "They always say, we are entertainers," he notes, "and I'll ...
George Benson: "If It Ain't Broke, Don't Fix It"
Interview by Adam Sweeting, Q, February 1987
KEN FRITZ, the slim, obsessively neat half of George Benson's management team Fritz & Turner, was worried that he may have caught a chill while ...
Alison Moyet: Too Much, Too Soon
Profile and Interview by Chris Salewicz, Q, February 1987
The LP Alf went quadruple platinum but now she's beginning to count the cost — a failed marriage, crippling lawsuits, doubts about her music and ...
Eurythmics, Dave Stewart: The Man Most Likely To: Dave Stewart
Profile and Interview by Adam Sweeting, Q, February 1987
THE MATCHING PAIR of black and white Mercedes limousines nose, cautiously down the narrow street, unearthly craft looking for a landing space in the Milan ...
Profile and Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, March 1987
NEW YORK CITY 1985. The Rolling Stones are holed up in the studio cutting tracks for Dirty Work, their first album under their new deal ...
Jonathan King: Who The Hell Does Jonathan King Think He Is?
Interview by Tom Hibbert, Q, March 1987
"WHO IS THE REAL Jonathan King? There is no real Jonathan King. Jonathan King simply does not exist, dear heart..." ...
Interview by Dave Rimmer, Q, March 1987
THAT RESTLESS, relentless and often quite ridiculous search for the Next Big Thing has to be the longest-running game in pop. When Anita Baker's album, ...
Style Council, The: The Style Council: The Cost Of Loving
Review by Dave Rimmer, Q, March 1987
IT'S FOUR YEARS now since Paul Weller knocked The Jam on the head and launched his new group with "Merton" Mick Talbot. Ever since the ...
Warren Zevon: Rugged Individualism
Interview by Mark Cooper, Q, July 1987
The return of Warren Zevon (with a little help from Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Don Henley, George Clinton, REM...) ...
U2: Another Day, Another Dollar
Profile and Interview by Steve Turner, Q, July 1987
WHEN U2 FIRST played Chicago, in the spring of 1981, it was as part of a loss-making tour. They played one club and a university ...
Cure, The: The Cure: In Search Of El Dorado
Report and Interview by Johnny Black, Q, July 1987
EARLY IN THE evening of 27 March 1987 in Rio de Janeiro, Robert Smith is sipping tea in the air-conditioned cool of The Cure's luxury ...
Review by Lloyd Bradley, Q, July 1987
WHITNEY HOUSTON had a lot to live up to from the moment 'Saving All My Love For You' and its shiny video went public. Its ...
Beatles, The: The Beatles: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, July 1987
AND ONCE THE tumult and the shouting have died, and life returns to something resembling normality... Sgt. Pepper remains a central pillar of the mythology ...
Retrospective and Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, July 1987
"I WANT TO look eighteen or younger, right?" says Christine McVie, aged 42. "I know – an impossible task!" ...
Beatles, The: The Beatles: Sgt Pepper, The Inside Story Part II
Retrospective and Interview by Steve Turner, Q, July 1987
'STRAWBERRY FIELDS Forever' and 'Penny Lane', released in February '67, were the first-fruits of the sessions and they didn't disappoint. As American rock critic Greil ...
Replacements, The, Hüsker Dü: 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. ...
Randy Newman: The Back Room Boy
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, August 1987
"There's no excuse at all. It's just bad career planning, bad work habits, bad discipline...and I keep doin' it." ...
Interview by Adam Sweeting, Q, August 1987
HE HAS HEARD the big music, and he'll never be the same. "At the end of the day we are a hell of a noise," ...
Pink Floyd, Roger Waters: Over The Wall: An interview with Roger Waters
Interview by Chris Salewicz, Q, August 1987
ROGER WATERS assumed leadership of the Pink Floyd in '68, turning them from a fringe festival attraction into the most popular touring group of the ...
Dr. Feelgood: Dr Feelgood: Pure Essex Voodoo
Retrospective and Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, August 1987
ONE OF THE few remaining saving graces of rock'n'roll is that its most compelling legends do not always belong to those who achieve the greatest ...
Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five: Various Artists: Genius Of Rap — The Sugar Hill Story
Review by Dave Rimmer, Q, August 1987
"I SAID A HIP, HOP..." starts the rap by The Sugar Hill Gang's Wonder Mike over a riff faithfully copied from (though only much later ...
Terence Trent D'Arby: Introducing The Hardline According To Terence Trent D'Arby
Review by Mark Cooper, Q, August 1987
HERALDED AS THE NEW crown prince of soul, Terence Trent D'Arby already has Britain at his feet courtesy of 'If You Let Me Stay', his ...
Diana Ross: Red Hot Rhythm And Blues
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, August 1987
Miss Ross: not exactly on the front burner, but cooking nonetheless. ...
Boy George: The Boy Who Fell From Grace
Interview by Tom Hibbert, Q, September 1987
THE PRESS OFFICER has pleaded, in the nicest possible way. "You're not going to ask him about drugs, are you?" Maybe. Maybe not. In the ...
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, September 1987
"I'M VERY, VERY self-critical. I'm very critical of others, but I'm also very critical of my own work and there's no-one that could possibly put ...
Billy Joel: We All Make Mistakes…
Interview by Tom Hibbert, Q, September 1987
DOWN THE HALL of the Mayfair hotel, the beautiful star model, Christie Brinkley, she of 1,000 swimsuits on 1,000 glossy covers, and the less beautiful ...
Mick Jagger, Rolling Stones, The: Mick Jagger: A Trial Separation
Interview by Tom Hibbert, Q, October 1987
WORLD'S END, CHELSEA, just down the King's Road from the old Drug Store, there's a charmingly delapidated terraced house that serves as occasional management offices ...
Diana Ross: The Gospel According To Miss Ross
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, October 1987
"I'VE BEEN HERE so many times before," murmurs Diana Ross as she sweeps, surrounded by a clucking entourage, through the foyer of the EMI Records ...
Jesus & Mary Chain, The: The Jesus & Mary Chain: Ah, Showbusiness...
Interview by Adam Sweeting, Q, October 1987
...the roar of the crowd, the smell of the greasepaint, the reverberating thud of boot through amplifer. Live sets lasting nine whole minutes. A riot ...
Pink Floyd: A Momentary Lapse Of Reason
Review by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, October 1987
I WRITE AS a person of definably bog-standard taste when it comes to the Floyd; each in their season, I liked 'See Emily Play', Dark ...
Interview by Tom Hibbert, Q, November 1987
CLIFF IS PERPLEXED. He is attempting to curl his upper lip into a smouldering sneer but the flesh is not willing. "I can't do it." ...
Bryan Adams: The Life Of Bryan
Interview by David Sinclair, Q, November 1987
MOST OF THE stories about Bryan Adams tend to emphasise how ordinary the guy is. Like the one about an occasion in New York two ...
Interview by Mark Cooper, Q, November 1987
SOMETHING HAPPENED halfway through the recording of Babylon And On, Squeeze's seventh studio album. They ran out of money. ...
Peter Tosh, Wailers, The: Peter Tosh: 'Volatile'
Obituary by Lloyd Bradley, Q, November 1987
Bitter, violent, a few bricks short of the load, Peter Tosh was a hard man to love. Lloyd Bradley investigates the gangland connections that resulted ...
Review by Dave Rimmer, Q, November 1987
"WITHOUT FREEDOM FROM the past," sings a typically philosophical Sting on one track called 'History Will Teach Us Nothing', "things will only get worse." ...
M/A/R/R/S: Sound Wars: M/A/R/R/S Vs. Stock, Aitken, Waterman
Report and Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, December 1987
At what point does sampling cross the fine line between flattery and theft? The battle between Stock Aitken Waterman and M/A/R/R/S may be the first ...
Interview by Mat Snow, Q, December 1987
The Triffids, authors of the greatest Australian country and western album, address the darker undercurrents beneath the sparkling antipodean surf. ...
You Don't Have to Say You Love Him: The Divine Simon Napier-Bell
Profile and Interview by Dave Rimmer, Q, Summer 1987
IN A DISCREET east London venue, in the smaller dressing room backstage, a new group called Blue Mercedes are packing up their gear after their ...
Profile and Interview by Mark Cooper, Q, January 1988
IN 10,000 MANIACS' native America, hotel operators hang up when friends ask for the band by name and nervous radio programmers assume that Elektra are ...
Report and Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, January 1988
Remixed albums are big business. Call in a remix engineer and squeeze more sales out of the same songs. Ideal for injecting added danceability. Useful ...
LL Cool J: Rap – A Storm In A Teacup
Report and Interview by Lloyd Bradley, Q, January 1988
WITH WORLDWIDE sales of his second album, Bigger And Deffer, approaching the three million mark (50,000 in Britain) three times more than the last David ...
Bryan Ferry: In Every Dream Home a Heartache
Interview by Chris Salewicz, Q, January 1988
Los Angeles. Paris. Nassau. Los Angeles again. Then London. And Paris again. And back to London. Recording is a nerve-wracking, schedule-shredding pastime for the itinerant ...
Interview by Dave Rimmer, Q, January 1988
"WE GOT a letter last week," Peter Hook, the bearded and occasionally belligerent bass player, the one who answers all New Order fan mail, is ...
Interview by Adrian Deevoy, Q, January 1988
THE FIRST time Suzanne Vega says "oral sex" it is most physically disturbing. But you get used to it after a while. Look, she's saying ...
Review by Lloyd Bradley, Q, January 1988
THE SINGLE, 'SKELETONS', made a couple of bold statements: its earthy, chunky bass synth lines proved Stevie Wonder to have recaptured the simple approach to ...
Screaming Blue Messiahs: Bikini Red
Review by Andy Gill, Q, January 1988
WITH THEIR LAST album Gun-Shy, The Screaming Blue Messiahs suggested that, with a little focusing, they might easily grow into Britain's equivalent of ZZ Top ...
Review by David Sinclair, Q, January 1988
WHILE ANDREW ELDRITCH has been away, all sorts of musical mice have been out to play. In the wake of the first and last Sisters ...
Review by David Sinclair, Q, January 1988
IN THE WORLD league table of entertainers' earnings recently compiled by Forbes magazine, only one rock group, U2, was thought to have amassed more than ...
Interview by Adrian Deevoy, Q, February 1988
Stylists have thrown in the towel, promotional persons have blanched, record execs have shed real tears as, over six years, Talk Talk have been increasingly ...
Eurythmics: Annie Lennox: Just Think...
Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, February 1988
...about the group she formed with the acid-drenched folk-strumming minstrel who proposed to her in a vegetarian restaurant. And the calamitous demise. And the legal ...
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 ...
Profile and Interview by Mark Cooper, Q, March 1988
FIVE YEARS AGO Ry Cooder packed out the Hammersmith Odeon for eight consecutive nights, the culmination of a triumphant European tour. ...
Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, March 1988
They signed a record deal and – two years, four producers and £600,000 later – released an LP. Wet Wet Wet had to sell a ...
Led Zeppelin, Robert Plant: Robert Plant: Guilty!
Interview by Tom Hibbert, Q, March 1988
"I CAN'T BLAME anybody for hating Led Zeppelin. If you absolutely hated 'Stairway To Heaven', nobody can blame you for that because it was, um...so ...
Review by Mark Cooper, Q, March 1988
LEONARD COHEN HAS spent 53 years perfecting the art of being Leonard Cohen, poet of romantic despair. A self-declared "ladies' man" in his songs, Cohen's ...
Leonard Cohen: The Profits Of Doom
Interview by Steve Turner, Q, April 1988
HIS SINGING VOICE is only slightly more tuneful than the low rumble of his speaking voice. His melancholy outlook attracts the special attention of the ...
Talking Heads: Still Making Sense?
Profile and Interview by Steve Turner, Q, April 1988
Talking Heads were once unconventional art-school types looking for an audience on the underground rock circuit. Now they’re unconventional multi-media types who convene annually for ...
Overview by David Sinclair, Q, April 1988
IF THERE IS ONE group for whom the enhanced audio medium of CD might have been invented, it is Pink Floyd. From its earliest days ...
Report and Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, April 1988
THE BIGGEST FOOTBALL stadium in the world is the Maracana in Rio de Janeiro: a big game such as a World Cup Final can pack ...
Frankie Goes to Hollywood: The Final Chapter?
Report and Interview by Lloyd Bradley, Q, April 1988
ON WEDNESDAY 10 February, the usual knot of press photographers and television camera crews on permanent point duty outside the Law Courts in The Strand ...
Kevin Rowland, Dexy's Midnight Runners: Who The Hell Does KEVIN ROWLAND Think He Is?
Profile and Interview by Adrian Deevoy, Q, April 1988
It's that time again, when the curmudgeonly chairman of Dexys Midnight Runners rejoins the giddy carousel of pop to peddle more intense ideology in a ...
Prefab Sprout: From Langley Park To Memphis
Review by Dave Rimmer, Q, April 1988
A RUM PROPOSITION, this Prefab Sprout. It depends on your mood and mode of musical preference, of course, but while much of the time they ...
Profile and Interview by Mat Snow, Q, May 1988
They talk in units of a million. They plan tours like military invasions. They know the rules, Def Leppard: it takes craft, hard graft, spectacle ...
Joni Mitchell: Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter
Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, May 1988
She's danced to the beat of her own drum all the way from Laurel Canyon to uptown Los Angeles. Joni Mitchell talks about her life, ...
Godley & Creme: "We've got just the video for you, Sir!"
Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, June 1988
You have entered the celebrated emporium of Godley & Creme — Makers of Bespoke Promotional Footage For The Rich And Famous. Money, no object. Egos, ...
George Michael: The Lone Star State
Interview by Adrian Deevoy, Q, June 1988
His second career is already more succesful than his first. His spry and winning pop songs have a greater-than-average life expectancy. He is uncountably wealthy. ...
Elton John: You've got to laugh…
Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, August 1988
There aren't many options when you're alleged to have cancer, be involved in scandalous sexual malpractices and your hotel room has been bugged by the ...
Pet Shop Boys: Outsiderdom: The Pet Shop Boys
Profile and Interview by Mat Snow, Q, August 1988
The Pet Shop Boys have played live once, never toured and only grudgingly socialize with the pop fraternity. They've stoutly refused to take the conventional ...
Iggy Pop: The Madcap Laughs Again
Profile and Interview by Mat Snow, Q, September 1988
Iggy Pop "The Prophet Of Punk" — has ricocheted through some combustible times. There were fleeting stabs at bona fide rock celebrity, then prolonged bouts ...
Jethro Tull: Phew! Rocke’n’Rolle!
Profile and Interview by Mat Snow, Q, September 1988
For 20 long years Jethro Tull have peddled their hoary riffs and uniquely rustic folklore, ever clad in sturdy items from the winter wardrobe. They ...
Talk Talk: Spirit Of Eden (EMI)
Review by Mark Cooper, Q, October 1988
TALK TALK'S fourth LP is the kind of record which encourages marketing men to commit suicide. ...
Richard Thompson: The Minstrel’s Tale
Profile and Interview by Mat Snow, Q, December 1988
He is, by all accounts, a brilliant songwriter, a breathtaking guitarist, profoundly unphotogenic, a Moslem, an awkward old sod. Richard Thompson has spent 20 eventful ...
Report and Interview by Robert Sandall, Q, December 1988
Hers was the face that graced a thousand magazine covers, the sound that became a fashion accessory, the image that seemed to encapsulate effortless video-age ...
Freddie Mercury, Queen: Freddie Mercury: Bravo Sir Frederick!
Report and Interview by Adrian Deevoy, Q, December 1988
NEVER HAVING been one to opt for the outrageous when the downright preposterous will do, Freddie Mercury concludes his operatic concert by attempting to blow ...
Gary Numan: The Mad Max Factor
Report and Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, December 1988
Despised by the press, cold-shouldered by radio, physically attacked by members of the public — life's never been a bowl of cherries for Old Chalk ...
Crosby Stills Nash and Young: Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young: American Dream
Review by Tom Hibbert, Q, December 1988
It has been suggested that this LP is the result of the compassion of Graham Nash, Stephen Stills and Neil Young–a bid to keep their ...
Jonathan Richman: Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers
Review by Robert Sandall, Q, 1989
BESERKLEY HAVE re-issued their entire catalogue of Jonathan Richman albums but they should have stopped with this one, a brilliant piece of East Coast proto-punk ...
Blue Nile, The: The Blue Nile: Hats
Review by Johnny Black, Q, 1989
GLASGOW'S BLUE NILE did rather well with their debut album, A Walk Across The Rooftops. Following almost universal critical acclaim it sold a respectable 80,000 ...
Acid House: The Selling Of Smiley Culture
Report by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, January 1989
Like punk before it, acid house was a cult fanned by the media into a mass market industry. Major labels latched on to the music, ...
Report and Interview by Adrian Deevoy, Q, January 1989
"BON JOVI... Back To Kick Ass" declare the T-shirts outside the Royal Dublin Society Arena. Below this raunchy statement of intent is the list of ...
Fleetwood Mac: Fleetwood mac: Greatest Hits
Review by Mat Snow, Q, January 1989
A GREATEST HITS without 'Oh Well'? 'Man Of The World'? 'The Green Manalishi'? A Fleetwood Mac Greatest Hits without, for goodness' sake, 'Albatross'?!? Apart from ...
Roy Orbison: It's Over: Roy Orbison
Obituary by Robert Sandall, Q, February 1989
Roy Orbison died on the crest of sudden universal acclaim for his soaring and deliciously mournful ballads, ending a 30-year recording career in which life ...
Fairport Convention: Trebles all round!
Profile and Interview by Mat Snow, Q, March 1989
The revived Fairport Convention are celebrating their thriving cottage industry, Woodworm Records, with a 40-date tour. But it wasn’t always beer and skittles... ...
Report by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, March 1989
Even the most commercial artists can't be guaranteed to sell cinema tickets. But then history has rarely smiled upon the safe self-edited rock documentary. ...
Review by Mark Cooper, Q, March 1989
ELVIS COSTELLO'S LAST two albums were released back in 1986. Despite their excellence, the combination of King Of America and Blood & Chocolate suggested that ...
Report by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, April 1989
Madonna has signed a $7.5 million deal with Pepsi which allows them the "world exclusive" on her single. They call it "synergy". Others call it ...
Edie Brickell: "Irreplaceable": Edie Brickell & the Bohemians
Report and Interview by Mat Snow, Q, April 1989
CURRENTLY HIGHER in the US Top 10 than the latest blockbusters by Bon Jovi and U2 is the first album by a group which, until ...
Depeche Mode: The Unlikely Lads
Profile and Interview by Mat Snow, Q, April 1989
The latest stadium-filling attraction in the States is a band that began as a cheaply equipped electronic pop act from Basildon. Today, Depeche Mode are ...
Interview by Robert Sandall, Q, April 1989
XTC’s Andy Partridge is from that eccentric, uniquely English school of songwriters that brought you Ray Davies and Vivian Stanshall. His problem has been his ...
Dusty Springfield: Blondes Have Less Fun
Interview by Tom Hibbert, Q, April 1989
"I CAN'T STAND that word!" says Dusty Springfield sitting with tea in the plush suite of the plush West End hotel. ...
Jimi Hendrix: Radio One (Rykodisc)
Review by David Sinclair, Q, April 1989
AHEAD OF NEXT year's 20th anniversary of his death there are already tell-tale signs of renewed interest in the legacy of Jimi Hendrix, still unquestionably ...
Deacon Blue: When The World Knows Your Name
Review by Mat Snow, Q, April 1989
Starry-eyed and real gone, Deacon Blue are born to run and run. ...
Review by Robert Sandall, Q, April 1989
72,000 sunny Californians go monkey-poo to the pitch-perfect sound of Depeche Mode. ...
David Crosby, Crosby Stills Nash and Young, Byrds, The: David Crosby
Interview by Tom Hibbert, Q, May 1989
THE AGING MUSICIAN sits in his hotel room, an acoustic guitar propped upon his considerable paunch. He tosses back his long, greying hair, fingers his ...
Cure, The: The Cure: Caught In The Act
Interview by Robert Sandall, Q, May 1989
He denies any grasp of promotional ploys, yet The Cure have built up a vast international following. Is there, behind all that lipstick and conspicuous ...
New Model Army: Join The Professionals: New Model Army
Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, May 1989
There are few more devoted disciples than the followers of New Model Army. For many it's a full-time job — hitchhiking to every concert, home ...
Kirsty MacColl: 20-Track Record
Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, May 1989
Kirsty MacColl is much in demand as the single-handed supplier of "Beach Boys" backing vocals to the discerning megastar. Now, with a bold and characterful ...
Peter Gabriel: Organised Chaos: Peter Gabriel
Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, May 1989
Peter Gabriel: patron of the arts, tireless campaigner for human rights, influential champion of world music and, now, proud proprietor of a studio complex and ...
Triffids, The: The Triffids: The Black Swan
Review by Martin Aston, Q, May 1989
THE FIFTH full-length and second major-label album from The Triffids will inevitably receive acclaim from the critical ranks as a multi-faceted alternative to Australia's pub-circuit ...
Cult, The: The Cult: Sonic Temple
Review by David Sinclair, Q, May 1989
Led-heavy and light of finger, The Cult are back ...
Review by David Sinclair, Q, May 1989
Are You ExperiencedAxis: Bold As LoveSmash HitsElectric LadylandBand Of GypsiesThe Cry Of LoveIsle Of WightHendrix In The WestWar HeroesLoose EndsCrash LandingMidnight LightningThe Singles AlbumKiss The ...
Review by Lloyd Bradley, Q, May 1989
TRUE BLUE was not going to be bettered and the three years since haven't been Madonna's easiest, so Like A Prayer follows the only logical ...
Neville Brothers, The: The Neville Brothers: Yellow Moon
Review by Andy Gill, Q, May 1989
The Neville Brothers bring it all back home. ...
Deacon Blue: The Pilgrims’ Progress: Deacon Blue
Interview by Mat Snow, Q, June 1989
Raised on solid moral values like hard work and the importance of belief, Ricky Ross of Deacon Blue has steered his band to the heady ...
David Bowie: Boys Keep Swinging
Interview by Adrian Deevoy, Q, June 1989
Six years since his last convincing album, and with the overblown Glass Spider tour still fresh in the memory, David Bowie has rapidly returned to ...
Profile and Interview by Mat Snow, Q, June 1989
Come to the heart of the Trossach mountains, breathe the fresh Perthshire air, and discover a troupe of weary travellers footsore from their labours upon ...
Fairground Attraction: Diversion!
Report and Interview by Lloyd Bradley, Q, June 1989
THE FIGURE WAVING wildly from inside the bar of The American Hotel, Amsterdam, is Mark E. Nevin, guitarist and songwriter in Fairground Attraction. As the ...
Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers: Tom Petty: Full Moon Fever
Review by Robert Sandall, Q, June 1989
Sans Heartbreakers, Tom Petty revives the Golden Age of Pop. ...
Review by Mat Snow, Q, June 1989
UNLIKE THE Sex Pistols, the other great London punk-rock group had ambitions beyond delivering the short, sharp shock to the system suggested by the sudden ...
Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, Traveling Wilburys: Tom Petty: Outlaw Blues
Interview by Tom Hibbert, Q, July 1989
Tom Petty survived the scuffling Southern bar circuit, soul-destroying legal wrangles and a self-inflicted hospital spell to bring his mid-tempo memories of fickle women and ...
Public Image Ltd, John Lydon: John Lydon: …Heeere's Johnny!
Interview by Tom Hibbert, Q, July 1989
IN THE BAR OF the North London rehearsal studio complex, John Lydon, wearing a typically loud shirt, a pair of unorthodox dark spectacles and the ...
Pete Townshend, Who, The: Who The Hell Does Pete Townshend Think He Is?
Interview by Tom Hibbert, Q, July 1989
Doesn't time fly? Seems like only yesterday he was a powerful advertisement for reckless hedonism and passionate irresponsibility. Today he's a bookish publishing consultant, earnest ...
Specials, The: The Specials: More Specials (2-Tone)
Review by Lloyd Bradley, Q, July 1989
GIVEN THE QUANTITY of ska compilations on the market at the moment, it's a good time to revive the ska revival of 10 years ago. ...
Paul McCartney: Flowers In The Dirt
Review by Mark Cooper, Q, July 1989
Spiked by Costello, Paul McCartney is back in the pink ...
Review by Mat Snow, Q, July 1989
Tears and consolation: the gospel according to Maria McKee. ...
Review by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, July 1989
LET'S GET this straight at the outset; this isn't the new Prefab Sprout album and they aren't protest songs. Confused? Listen to Paddy McAloon and ...
Sex Pistols, The, Malcolm McLaren: Malcolm McLaren: Pernicious? Moi?
Interview by Tom Hibbert, Q, August 1989
IN THE "PIANO BAR" of a Mayfair hotel, portion of club sandwich in one hand, glass of fine red wine in the other, Malcolm McLaren ...
Maria McKee: To The Manor Born: Maria McKee
Profile and Interview by Mat Snow, Q, August 1989
Maria McKee has mingled with rock’s aristocracy since she was a babe-in-arms. At three she was on first-name terms with Frank Zappa, while to Arthur ...
Review by Johnny Black, Q, August 1989
THE FREQUENTLY poor quality of second albums is often explained by reference to the unavoidable circumstances whereby most successful artists have 18 years to write ...
Pogues, The: The Pogues: Peace & Love
Review by Mark Cooper, Q, August 1989
BY RIGHTS, The Pogues should surely be dead by now, overcome by the drink or the enthusiasm of their fans. Yet somehow they've survived the ...
Robert Wyatt: Rock Bottom and Ruth Is Stranger Than Richard
Review by Martin Aston, Q, August 1989
NOW ON CD: how Robert Wyatt found beauty in the aftermath of personal disaster. ...
Beastie Boys, The: The Beastie Boys: Paul's Boutique
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, August 1989
PRANKSTERS TO THE last, The Beastie Boys slide into their comeback album so quietly and casually that you double check the volume knob on your ...
The Penis De Milo: Cynthia Plaster Claster
Profile and Interview by Mat Snow, Q, September 1989
Cynthia was a normal 1960s American teenager, with an abnormal interest in rock musicians. Then, one day in art school, she was told "to make ...
Report by Lloyd Bradley, Q, September 1989
AT 11 O'CLOCK on Friday June 30, shoppers in Oxford Street's HMV Records noticed a growing number of predominantly female teenagers filing into the store. ...
Kinks, The: The Kinks: Tales of Drunkenness and Cruelty
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, September 1989
REAL LIVE EARLY '60's beat combos don't just grow on trees. As the greenhouse summer of '89 wears on, The Who and The Rolling Stones ...
Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, September 1989
Three years. Four producers. Nine studios. A million pounds. One album. When Curt Smith and Roland Orzabal began recording the successor to their nine million-selling ...
Average White Band: Aftershock
Review by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, September 1989
FROM CALEDONIA to California, the Average White Band pick up the pieces and bounce off the ceiling. ...
Review by Robert Sandall, Q, September 1989
Earthy but out of this world: at last on CD, Van Morrison's swinging '70s. ...
Interview by David Sinclair, Q, October 1989
FOREVER PORTRAYED as a moody, maverick, Jeff Beck has blazed an erratic trail littered with the detritus of broken guitars and broken bands. ...
Björk, Sugarcubes, The: The Sugarcubes: 'World Domination or Die!'
Profile and Interview by Mat Snow, Q, October 1989
Such is the manifesto of Iceland's Sykurmolar, internationally more familiar as The Sugarcubes. And to this end they have invested funds from their rapidly increasing ...
Gloria Estefan: Treasure Island Ahoy!
Profile and Interview by Lloyd Bradley, Q, October 1989
BASKING IN FLORIDA'S almost blood temperature waters, with the ice cream-coloured Miami Beach architecture in the background, the 50-acre, man-made haven of Star Island is ...
Review by Robert Sandall, Q, October 1989
NOW ON to their tenth album and with sales of the previous nine topping 25 million in the States, Aerosmith are still just about unknown ...
Rolling Stones, The: The Rolling Stones: Steel Wheels
Review by David Sinclair, Q, October 1989
NOT ONLY did The Rolling Stones come out of the traps considerably faster than the current wave of mouthy young turks but they have stayed ...
Tears For Fears: The Seeds Of Love
Review by Lloyd Bradley, Q, October 1989
FOUR YEARS and the best part of £1 million are ominous amounts of time and money to spend following up a huge-selling album. In this ...
Review by Mark Cooper, Q, October 1989
Eurythmics: the kind of sadness that can't shed tears ...
Review by Andy Gill, Q, October 1989
Prophet in an anorak: Dylan delivers at last. ...
Allman Brothers Band: The Allman Brothers: Dream
Review by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, October 1989
THE STORY OF The Allman Brothers Band has been one of the great epics of rock 'n' roll, replete with all the Homeric ingredients of ...
Janet Jackson: Janet Jackson's Rhythm Nation 1814
Review by Lloyd Bradley, Q, October 1989
IT'S ALMOST FOUR years since Janet Jackson's last album – Control The Remixes hardly counts – and nearly 12 months since she began recording this ...
Profile and Interview by Mark Cooper, Q, November 1989
J.J.CALE LEANS back from his lunch and reaches for the tab, waving aside the objections of his guests with unusual tenacity. "Might as well do ...
Profile and Interview by Mat Snow, Q, November 1989
Guru to innumerable pale and interesting persons, champion of all things noisesome and "challenging", fully paid-up Good Bloke... When John Peel celebrated his 50th birthday ...
Who, The: The Who: Rock On, Tommy!
Report and Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, November 1989
That deaf, dumb and blind kid is back, along with all the unsavoury characters – Cousin Kevin, Uncle Ernie, the Acid Queen – who made ...
Report and Interview by Mark Cooper, Q, November 1989
The drugged and the destitute, the needy and the greedy, unrest between East and West...Don't ask Neil Young where it's all leading. "I'm just a ...
Report and Interview by Tom Hibbert, Q, November 1989
"VERNA!" CRIES Luke Goss, the drummer. "Verna! Can I have another triple Hennessy's, please, darl?" ...
Kate Bush: Iron Maiden: Kate Bush
Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, November 1989
Although signed at the tender age of 18, Kate Bush stoutly refused to be "the record company's daughter". She's quietly become her own manager, producer, ...
Yes: Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman & Howe: Mission Improbable
Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, November 1989
They’ve survived countless changes of fashion, years of critical contempt, musical and personal differences de luxe. For legal reasons they can’t even call themselves Yes. ...
Aerosmith: A Quiet Word In Your Ear
Interview by Robert Sandall, Q, November 1989
Aerosmith? Mere jumpers on the heavy metal bandwagon? Struggling Stones-meet-Zeppelin copyists? Run-DMC’s backing band? For years they’ve been one of the America’s biggest, most influential ...
Essay by Johnny Black, Q, November 1989
Any self-respecting Yes album used to feel naked without a fantasy cover by artist Roger Dean. It seems only fitting, then, that he has done ...
Sugarcubes, The: The Sugarcubes: Here Today, Tomorrow Next Week!
Review by Martin Aston, Q, November 1989
THE SUGARCUBES may have plucked their second album title from Wind In The Willows's whimsical pages but the quote has an altogether more serious import: ...
Review by Mark Cooper, Q, November 1989
NEW LIGHT Through Old Windows, last year's re-recorded look through his back pages, finally established Chris Rea as a frontrunner in his own country. ...
Review by Mark Cooper, Q, November 1989
DESPITE DAVID Byrne's beaver-like activities over the last few years, his persona and his work have gradually been losing much of their old allure. Perhaps ...
Terence Trent D'Arby: Neither Fish Nor Flesh
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, November 1989
"PEOPLE, LISTEN to me," announces Terence Trent D'Arby over the intro of 'I Don't Want To Bring The Gods Down', "this is not a film, ...
Review by Robert Sandall, Q, November 1989
ROMPING HOME a close second to the Blue Nile in the increasingly competitive Studio Marathon stakes, Kate Bush's sixth album has finally arrived almost exactly ...
Book Review by Richard Williams, Q, December 1989
Charles Shaar Murray: Crosstown Traffic: Jimi Hendrix And Post-War Pop (Faber) ...
Frank Zappa: Frank's Wild Years
Interview by Andy Gill, Q, December 1989
AT DEAD OF night, behind barred gates and video security cameras up in the Hollywood Hills above Los Angeles, a tall, angular man with neatly ...
Bruce Springsteen: All Or Nothing
Retrospective by Richard Williams, Q, December 1989
"FILMS ABOUT America should be composed entirely of long and wide shots, as music about America already is," the German film director Wim Wenders wrote ...
Profile and Interview by Mark Cooper, Q, December 1989
OUTSIDE NENEH CHERRY'S modest terraced house in West London's Kensal Green, four bursting rubbish sacks jostle for attention by the front door. Round the back, ...
Wedding Present, The: The Wedding Present
Profile and Interview by Mat Snow, Q, December 1989
Chauffered car-rides on the record company’s account bear witness to The Wedding Present’s emergence out of indie-land’s "shambling" band scene. But for their singer Dave ...
Smiths, The, Morrissey: Morrissey: The Soft Touch
Profile and Interview by Mat Snow, Q, December 1989
Your fans are fiercely loyal but always "with an aura of love and gentleness". You’re being sued by two former band members but accept it ...
J.J. Cale: J.J.Cale: Travel Log
Review by Andy Gill, Q, December 1989
SOME ARTISTS set a style so distinctively their own they become immediately generic; as with The Ramones or Led Zeppelin, J.J. Cale's first album Naturally ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, December 1989
A CERTAIN self-deprecating irony is evident in the title of Eric Clapton's latest: a journeyman is certainly what he has become in his post-God years. ...
Wet Wet Wet: Holding Back The River
Review by Lloyd Bradley, Q, December 1989
PLEASANT AS it was, Wet Wet Wet's first album, Popped In Souled Out, was always too slick to be really interesting. ...
Michelle Shocked: Captain Swing
Review by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, December 1989
Short Sharp Shocked may have established a reputation as a serious radical, but it's her sheer exuberance that makes you pay attention. ...
Review by Mat Snow, Q, December 1989
AS DEBUT LP titles go, Introducing The Hardline According To Terence Trent D'Arby is a mouthful, but a memorable mouthful. ...
Jimi Hendrix: The Jimi Hendrix Concerts
Review by Mark Cooper, Q, December 1989
THE RECENT spate of activity that has surrounded Jimi Hendrix – The South Bank Show, Charles Shaar Murray's musical biography Crosstown Traffic and now the ...
Buzzcocks, The: The Buzzcocks: Product
Review by Martin Aston, Q, December 1989
LIKE MOST punk escapades, Buzzcocks started with Johnny Rotten, whose "We're not into music, we're into chaos" motto drew Bolton students Peter Shelley and Howard ...
Review by Mat Snow, Q, December 1989
Ten fingers, 88 keys, 569 days – the rise and fall of Jerry Lee Lewis. ...
Gipsy Kings, The: Gipsy Kings: Let's Do The Shoe Right Here!
Report and Interview by Mat Snow, Q, January 1990
IN THE PLAIN of the Camargue, where the Rhone feeds into the Mediterranean, lies the small but distinguished town of Arles Settled by the Ancient ...
Report and Interview by Mark Cooper, Q, January 1990
RAIN IS STREAMING down in sheets on the Long Island suburb of Hempstead but, inside Public Enemy's headquarters, the group's leader Chuck D is just ...
Interview by Tom Hibbert, Q, January 1990
WEDGING HIMSELF with effort into a most negligible pair of silver spangled trouserlettes, Gary Glitter is struck by the possibilities of a mirth-making ruse. He ...
Interview by Mat Snow, Q, January 1990
ALREADY A MINOR celebrity in the fevered confines of New Romantic London clubland, Boy George's band Culture Club secured a deal with Virgin in early ...
Interview by Robert Sandall, Q, January 1990
Quietly reinvented, curiously coiffeured, steadfastly single, and with an unprecedented 18 sold-out shows at the Albert Hall, Eric Clapton enters the '90s more a battered ...
Quincy Jones: Back On The Block
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, January 1990
ON THE FACE of it, this is where the man who was called 'Q' even before this magazine generously allows his address book to make ...
Review by Lloyd Bradley, Q, January 1990
THE SECOND VOLUME of classic reggae songs – the first album, released in 1983, spawned the group's first Number 1 single ('Red Red Wine'), topped ...
Review by Robert Sandall, Q, January 1990
POP STARDOM, AND all the tabloid accolades which followed his unofficial award "Most Beautiful Man in Britain" 1981, did not agree with David Sylvian. ...
Captain Beefheart: Colin David Webb: Captain Beefheart - The Man And His Music
Book Review by Andy Gill, Q, February 1990
PUBLISHERS MAY BE willing to publish books on fairly marginal artists such as (to choose two recent examples) R.E.M. and Tom Waits, but a cult ...
Miles Davis: Miles, The Autobiography
Book Review by Lloyd Bradley, Q, February 1990
THE PERFECT BIOGRAPHY, operating on three levels: an insight into Davis's often abrasive personality; an on-the-spot commentary on the evolution of jazz as a music ...
Tanita Tikaram: Do Not Disturb: Tanita Tikaram
Interview by Robert Sandall, Q, February 1990
Bookish, Studious, unsurprisingly naïve, Tanita Tikaram sidestepped university at the age of 18 when her darkly sonorous vocals and "sixth-form poetry" suddenly found an international ...
John Lee Hooker: The Voodoo Guru
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, February 1990
ON 74TH & BROADWAY, the Gotham fog freezes your lungs with every breath, but inside the Beacon Theatre, Van Morrison has just spent something under ...
Jerry Lee Lewis: Who The Hell Does Jerry Lee Lewis Think He Is?
Interview by Tom Hibbert, Q, February 1990
THE ODDEST COUPLE are sitting side by side on the sofa. Bar the obvious – common conquered "drinking problems" – the two would seem to ...
Interview by Mark Cooper, Q, February 1990
Although embarrassed at being hailed a "cultural ambassador", David Byrne has temporarily put Talking Heads on hold to step out with his 14-piece Latin big ...
Paul McCartney: The Support Group
Report and Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, February 1990
They are a bona fide rock'n'roll family unit, in the magnanimous — if somewhat fanciful — view of their proprietor. And his band back him ...
Mission: The Mission: It's For You-Hoo!
Profile and Interview by Lloyd Bradley, Q, February 1990
IN A CRAMPED loft-conversion on the outskirts of Leeds, something of a party atmosphere prevails. Ring pulls are being pulled, Silk Cuts smoulder in ashtrays, ...
Christians, The: The Christians: Colour
Review by Andy Gill, Q, February 1990
IT SEEMS TO have been a long time coming, but in fashioning a worthy successor to their triple-platinum debut album, The Christians did set themselves ...
Residents, The: The Residents: Re-issues
Review by Andy Gill, Q, February 1990
LISTENING TO THE early Residents LPs as they came out through the '70s was always attended by the excitement of knowing you were going to ...
Little Richard: The Specialty Sessions
Review by Andy Gill, Q, February 1990
THOUGH HE RECORDED for several other labels in his career, the few years that Little Richard spent with Art Rupe's Specialty Records were to provide ...
Fine Young Cannibals: Hands On! Fine Young Cannibals
Profile and Interview by Mat Snow, Q, March 1990
They turned down top photographers, refused advertising offers, ignored invitations from the Hollywood glitterati (bar a dinner-date with Madonna). They scrutinized every detail of their ...
Sinead O'Connor: Forgive…And Forget
Interview by Mark Cooper, Q, March 1990
She arrived in '87, all Doc Marten's and radical chic, disparaging those who'd helped her, declaring support for the IRA. Now there's a new Sinead ...
Notting Hillbillies, The: The Notting Hillbillies: For a Few Dollars Less
Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, March 1990
Knackered by the stadium circuit and in urgent need of spiritual rejuvenation, Mark Knopfler played a pub gig back in ’86 with two fellow fingerpicking ...
Book Review by Tom Hibbert, Q, March 1990
ROCK'N'ROLL, EH? It really does 'em in. They fall like ninepins (or used to) which is gurrreat news for necrophiles – and for music buff ...
Review by Mat Snow, Q, March 1990
SINCE SUCH NAMES as Simone De Beauvoir and Eve Marie Saint dropped from Lloyd Cole's lips on his debut with The Commotions, 1984's Rattlesnakes, the ...
Tanita Tikaram: The Sweet Keeper
Review by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, March 1990
TANITA TIKARAM IS blessed. She has a voice which, on the evidence so far, is incapable of sounding unattractive; strong, low and husky, hinting at ...
Review by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, March 1990
AS IF UNTOUCHED by the international success of their last album, Diesel And Dust ('87), and its attendant smash single 'Beds Are Burning', Blue Sky ...
Mission: The Mission: Carved In Sand
Review by Robert Sandall, Q, March 1990
THE GOOD NEWS is that The Mission's third album is easily their best. ...
Dick Gaughan: Handful Of Earth
Review by Mark Cooper, Q, March 1990
FIRST RELEASED BACK in 1981, Handful Of Earth survived the '80s so well that it was voted Album Of The Decade in Folk Roots magazine's ...
Book Review by Mat Snow, Q, April 1990
THERE'S A NEW story about The Beatles, and it was told by Pete Best, the drummer famous for getting sacked. ...
Quireboys, The: The Quireboys: Right Place, Wrong Decade
Interview by Mat Snow, Q, April 1990
"Guy?" A little voice wheedles from the small but perfectly formed Griff, lead guitarist with The Quireboys. "Have you got any of that stuff, Guy?" ...
Quincy Jones: Mr Jones, I Presume!
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, April 1990
THE THREE DUMBEST questions you could possibly ask this month are, "Do the ambulance workers deserve more pay?", "Is Mike Gatting a pillock?" and "Does ...
Cramps, The: The Cramps: From Hell to Eternity
Profile and Interview by Mat Snow, Q, April 1990
Ravaged, cadaverous, generally rather unsavoury, they crawled from rock 'n' roll's crypt to bring their X-rated voodoobilly music to a devoted troupe of ghoulish disciples. ...
Singles Incentives, Rank Outsiders
Report by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, April 1990
SO, FAREWELL – to the Fine Young Cannibals single in a tin, to the Eurythmics in a wooden casket, and to Eric Clapton in a ...
Sinead O'Connor: I Do Not Want What I Have Not Got
Review by Robert Sandall, Q, April 1990
ON THE FACE of it, Sinead O'Connor is an unlikely person to be setting such a cracking pace into the new decade. ...
Review by Mat Snow, Q, April 1990
ROBERT PLANT'S ALBUM Now And Zen was one of 1988's more delightful surprises: whilst quoting in jest from his own proud past in Led Zeppelin ...
Review by Mat Snow, Q, April 1990
BY ONE OF those neat symmetries, David Bowie introduced his prime persona at the very end of the '60s with Space Oddity, and laid it ...
Muddy Waters: Chess Records Round-Up
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, April 1990
THE NAME OF Chess Records spells "Chicago Blues" just as clearly as Levi's spells jeans, Zippo spells lighters and Special Brew spells headaches. ...
Moody Blues, The: Moody Blues: Step This Away…
Retrospective and Interview by Tom Hibbert, Q, April 1990
Two genial curators greet you in a small town record shop, ready to take you on a journey...from shiny suits and grimy clubs to "concept" ...
Fleetwood Mac: Mick Fleetwood: The Ancient Tympanist…
Profile and Interview by Mat Snow, Q, May 1990
... and he stoppeth one of three. With a cautionary tale about a troupe of travelling musicians who, seeking their fortunes, embarked upon a journey ...
Mick Jagger: Who The Hell Does JERRY HALL Think She Is?
Interview by Tom Hibbert, Q, May 1990
WANTED: drawling Southern belle with modelling experience, fun-loving socialite/raunchsome rock star's moll with sidelines in amateur dramatics, swimwear design and promoting beefy hot drinks. Position ...
Bob Dylan: Elizabeth Thomson & David Gutman (eds): The Dylan Companion
Book Review by Mark Cooper, Q, May 1990
DESPITE THE CRITICAL and commercial success of Oh Mercy and the recent Hammersmith shows, the reverence with which Bob Dylan was regarded in the '60s ...
Robert Plant’s Record Collection
Guide by Mat Snow, Q, May 1990
BACK IN the Spring of 1968, things aren't looking too rosy for 19-year-old singer Robert Plant. His promising group The Band Of Joy have just ...
John Cale, Lou Reed: John Cale and Lou Reed: Songs For Drella
Review by Mark Cooper, Q, May 1990
ANDY WARHOL'S NAME was all over the famous banana sleeve of The Velvet Underground's debut album. ...
Review by Mat Snow, Q, May 1990
HIS STANDING AS the Greatest Living Englishman only jeopardised by that nasty prang on the old Harley, Sir William Idol has in fact reinforced his ...
Public Enemy: Fear Of A Black Planet
Review by Lloyd Bradley, Q, May 1990
PUBLIC ENEMY ARE one of the last, relevantly active crews from the second wave of hip hop that included Run-DMC, LL Cool J, Mantronix and ...
Interview by Andy Gill, Q, June 1990
THERE ARE SEVEN of us round the microphone, and I, for one, am a little nervous. I should be, too: three of the voices present ...
Pretenders, The: Chrissie Hynde: "I Want To Die For Something…"
Interview by Tom Hibbert, Q, June 1990
CHRISSIE HYNDE tosses her big black cowboy hat on to the hotel sofa, glances around at the foyer's dainty decor with an air of sniffy ...
Interview by Tom Hibbert, Q, June 1990
IN THE SUITE of a hotel just off Sunset Boulevard, Billy Idol is sitting with leg encased in a cast resting upon a pile of ...
Jim Marshall: Right Place, Right Time
Profile and Interview by Mat Snow, Q, June 1990
Jim Marshall's taut black-and-white photographs, unobtrusively snapped in unguarded moments, are a powerfully evocative record of that first freewheeling decade before the men with the ...
Review by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, June 1990
FOR ALL THAT he's blind, white, Canadian and holds his guitar on his lap as if it were a zither, a year ago Jeff Healey ...
Review by Mark Cooper, Q, June 1990
THE VIDEO FOR Madonna's recent Number 1 has her "voguing" her way through a series of classic Hollywood images. As Madonna metamorphoses into blonde after ...
Pretenders, The: The Pretenders: Packed
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, June 1990
CHRISSIE HYNDE CAN certainly never be accused of flooding the market: barring a Best Of, Packed is only The Pretenders' fifth album in 12 years. ...
Review by Johnny Black, Q, June 1990
WORLD PARTY – BEST known for the 'Ship Of Fools' hit off their 1986 debut – is, to all intents and purposes, Ex-Waterboy Karl Wallinger, ...
Inspiral Carpets: Wish you were here
Report and Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, July 1990
It’s a sun-kissed "no-lose situation" for Inspiral Carpets. Surfing on the stupendous sales of their shock-the-vicar T-shirt selection, and equipped with a user-friendly record deal ...
Stone Roses, The: The Stone Roses: Another Early Night
Report and Interview by Adrian Deevoy, Q, July 1990
Stockholm, 4 am: the amateurs are going to bed. Not so the Stone Roses, who are limbering up to go out and dance...like fish. Having ...
B-52s, The: The B-52s: When Your World Falls Apart…
Profile and Interview by Mat Snow, Q, July 1990
Fate dealt a sobering blow to the plastic-shoed party terrorists from Athens, Georgia: their principal songwriter died when they were on the verge of worldwide ...
Rory Gallagher: The Show Must Go On!
Profile and Interview by David Sinclair, Q, July 1990
AT THE START of 1970 the world was Rory Gallagher's oyster. Cream had split up towards the end of 1968 and Hendrix, having dissolved the ...
Overview by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, July 1990
He began making records as a control-fixated 18-year-old studio rat from Minneapolis. Ten albums later Prince had become the definitive pop icon of the '80s. ...
John Lennon: That Lennon Concert In Full!
Live Review by Tom Hibbert, Q, July 1990
AS WE ENTER the scene, we spy a rockin' Reverend on the stage performing a boisterous version of an old Beatles' tune. ...
Joan Armatrading: Hearts And Flowers
Review by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, July 1990
NOW HERE'S A surprise. The words go, "Touch me baby/I don't wanna get up after we've made love/Don't wanna leave your bed" and the singer ...
Review by Mark Cooper, Q, July 1990
LIKE THE PRETENDERS, Aztec Camera have long since become a solo act in all but name with Roddy Frame matching Chrissie Hynde's refusal to churn ...
Tim Buckley: Dream Letter — Live In London 1968
Review by Martin Aston, Q, July 1990
FOR ANY ADMIRER of Tim Buckley's unique talent, this double live album taken from his London debut in 1968 (at Queen Elizabeth Hall) comes right ...
Review by Mat Snow, Q, July 1990
YOU DO NOT listen to John Hiatt for easy-going likeability. ...
Live Review by Mat Snow, Q, August 1990
IN DAYS OF yore, the elders tell, the grassy slopes of Knebworth would resound to the pagan strains of Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Allman Brothers and ...
Neville Brothers, The: Neville Brothers: The Mississippi Mafia
Profile and Interview by Andy Gill, Q, August 1990
THE NEW ORLEANS Jazz & Heritage Festival makes most British music festivals, even the Readings and Glastonburys, look a bit sick by comparison. It's not ...
Marta Sebestyen, Muzsikas: Marta Sebestyen and Muzsikas: No Sleep 'til Ballachulish!
Report and Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, August 1990
Their flight cases crammed with goatskin bagpipes and three-stringed contras, Hungarian minstrels Marta Sebestyen and Muzsikas are midway through a whistle-stop international tour. And as ...
Rolling Stones, The: The Rolling Stones: A Game of Two Halves
Report by Robert Sandall, Q, August 1990
There are 287 workers on the Day Shift, ensuring the impeccable construction of the Stones' three gigantic stages as they "leapfrog" around the European stadium ...
Book Review by Mat Snow, Q, August 1990
ONE WOULD IMAGINE that even the most loyal fan must be groaning under the weight of paper and ink dedicated of late to the venerable ...
Review by Andy Gill, Q, August 1990
UNCLE FRANK'S EXTENSIVE reissues programme continues apace with eight more blasts from various bits of his past. ...
Bob Geldof: The Vegetarians Of Love
Review by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, August 1990
WHAT A SUPERB surprise – Geldof in brilliant comeback shock! ...
Beach Boys, The: The Beach Boys: Re-issues
Review by Andy Gill, Q, August 1990
AFTER LEAVING THE Beach Boys mid-tour in 1964 thanks to a nervous breakdown, Brian Wilson passed most of his time in the studio, one of ...
Review by Mark Cooper, Q, August 1990
WITH THE EXCEPTION of Luther Vandross, most of the current crop of soul men restrict themselves to the limited sphere of their bedroom mirrors and ...
John Mayall: This Is Where I Came In
Retrospective and Interview by Mat Snow, Q, August 1990
The Flamingo in Soho, 1964: bearded disciples and pilled-up mods are packed into an airless basement. Brooms are being dusted, mojos worked, as the Hohner-huffing ...
Nick Drake: Five Leaves Left, Bryter Layter, Pink Moon and Heaven Is A Wild Flower
Review by Martin Aston, Q, August 1990
RAISED BY UPPER-middle class parents in the Black Country, educated at public school and Cambridge, Nick Drake's life was never as comfortable as his upbringing ...
Robert Johnson: Peter Guralnick: Searching For Robert Johnson
Book Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, September 1990
THE POWERFUL FASCINATION which the legend of Robert Johnson still exerts over virtually all blues fans is derived, in almost equal proportion, from his genius ...
Pink Floyd: David Gilmour: The Rightful Heir?
Interview by Mat Snow, Q, September 1990
Twenty-five years ago he was just the hired hand. Then he became Syd Barrett's full-time replacement. By 1985, following group leader Roger Waters' traumatic exit, ...
Roger Waters: The Wall In Berlin
Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, September 1990
They said it couldn’t be done. The most extravagant reconstruction of The Wall, featuring the most unlikely and impressive cast, the most immodestly proportioned props ...
Pixies, The: The Pixies: No Time-Wasters!
Interview by Andy Gill, Q, September 1990
"IT'S NOT I'M ORIGINAL or anything." Charles Kittridge Thompson IV, aka Black Francis, Pixies frontman, is describing how he comes up with the lyrics to ...
Interview by Tom Hibbert, Q, September 1990
He's the man who made classical music mass-market. And this he achieved by reinventing himself into a lager-handed, spike-topped pseudo-lout, complete with textbook rock star ...
Van Der Graaf Generator: Where Are They Now?
Profile by Martin Aston, Q, September 1990
VAN DER GRAAF Generator, one or Britain's vaunted bands from the progressive era known for their unusual sax/organ front line. "Can you try and dig ...
Bruce Springsteen: Busman's Holiday: Bruce Springsteen 1987-1990
Overview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, September 1990
When not touring the world's stadiums, was Bruce Springstreen to be found morosely grouting his bathroom tiles and ruefully reflecting upon his broken marriage? Indeed ...
Neville Brothers, The: The Neville Brothers: Brother's Keeper
Review by Mark Cooper, Q, September 1990
AFTER SPENDING A decade producing four albums for as many labels, the four Nevilles finally got the bit between their teeth with the Daniel Lanois-produced ...
Prefab Sprout: Jordan: The Comeback
Review by Lloyd Bradley, Q, September 1990
ALMOST THREE YEARS on from Langley Park To Memphis, Prefab Sprout are once again produced by Thomas Dolby, and on first impression there's no obvious ...
Review by Martin Aston, Q, September 1990
AT THE SUGGESTION of their drummer Gary Leeds, who'd just returned from backing PJ Proby, The Walker Brothers shifted camp from the US to the ...
Bonnie Raitt: The Bonnie Raitt Collection
Review by Mark Cooper, Q, September 1990
THE RELEASE OF this 20-track retrospective of her nine Warners albums must be sweet revenge for Bonnie Raitt. ...
Profile by Martin Aston, Q, October 1990
CRASS WERE BRITAIN'S seminal anarcho-punk band, whose communal life and own Crass label epitomised the movement's DIY ethic. Handling everything from mail order, promoting gigs ...
Eric Clapton, Elton John: Ray Cooper: Who Are Those Blokes Up There With Ray?
Profile and Interview by Robert Sandall, Q, October 1990
Wherever stellar rockular personages gather together he's there at the back, shiny of pate and blurred of hand. But who is this Bongo Basher By ...
Talking Heads, Ramones, The, Blondie: 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 ...
World Party: In A World Of His Own
Report and Interview by Mat Snow, Q, October 1990
Karl Wallinger’s wilderness years were ended when he formed World Party. Gone forever the endless dabblings that took him from the rock ‘n’ roll ...
Fall, The: Mark E. Smith's Record Collection
Interview by Andy Gill, Q, October 1990
CROUCHED IN THE CORNER of a back room in a semi somewhere in Prestwich, Mark Smith flips through one of several large stacks of records; ...
Joan Armatrading: Sean Mayes: Joan Armatrading
Book Review by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, October 1990
WEATHERED AS HE was by turbulent years on the road with The Equals and Vinegar Joe, when it came to Joan Armatrading producer Pete Gage ...
Jimi Hendrix: Bitter Experience
Book Review by Mat Snow, Q, October 1990
It was 20 years ago today...that Jimi Hendrix's brief but brilliant career came to an end. To mark the occasion, his former colleagues have published ...
Interview by David Sinclair, Q, October 1990
Carlos Santana's fortuitous appearance at the bottom end of the Woodstock bill completely changed his life. From that moment, he was swept up into an ...
Interview by Andy Gill, Q, October 1990
This Is Spinal Tap: the movie that became a legend, the spoof band whose name became a by-word for all that is incompetent, disastrous and ...
Cocteau Twins: Heaven Or Las Vegas
Review by Martin Aston, Q, October 1990
"THIS WARM BATH of a record is a sensual invitation to wallow in an opiate haze of drifting melody" – Q's review of The Cocteau ...
Robert Cray: The Robert Cray Band: Midnight Stroll
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, October 1990
ANOTHER ROBERT CRAY album: we all know what to expect by now, right? ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, October 1990
ONE EASY WAY of telling who the record industry considers to be this year's hot producer is to check the credits of the latest Dylan ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, October 1990
LIVING COLOUR'S CHOICE of guest stars for their debut album Vivid was a significant one: Mick Jagger (who had produced their original demos and virtually ...
George Michael: Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1
Review by Mat Snow, Q, October 1990
SOME THREE YEARS and 14 million copies later, George Michael follows up his solo debut Faith with an album that should prove to any lingering ...
Prince: Music From The Graffiti Bridge
Review by Lloyd Bradley, Q, October 1990
THE GRAFFITI BRIDGE of the title being Prince's scheduled-for-August-but-yet-to-be-finished feature film. ...
Review by Martin Aston, Q, October 1990
IF ANY GROUP seem wholly inappropriate for CD repackaging, then Crass are it, being eight admitted non-musicians who used snarl-toothed punk music as a vehicle ...
Joe Jackson: Stepping Out: The Very Best Of Joe Jackson
Review by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, October 1990
MAYBE JOE JACKSON has never stood still long enough for a lot of people to get to like him. Although The Very Best Of – ...
Bob Marley & the Wailers: Bob Marley & The Wailers
Review by Lloyd Bradley, Q, October 1990
Confrontational classics from Bob Marley ...
ZZ Top: Welcome To Weirdsville…
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, November 1990
ROBERT CRAY'S favourite ZZ Top story: the last time the Robert Cray Band played San Antonio, Billy Gibbons called up and requested tickets. Come show-time, ...
Wham!, George Michael: Bare: George Michael, His Own Story by George Michael And Tony Parsons
Book Review by Lloyd Bradley, Q, November 1990
The Life Of George: from self-conscious childhood, to soul boy suburbia, to immense wealth, incredible fame and alarming desirability – all between hard covers. ...
Brian Eno: Back to the Future: Brian Eno
Interview by Robert Sandall, Q, November 1990
The teenage keyboard pioneer with the left-field dress sense evolved into the amiable egghead in the "gardening clothes". And in between – via the avant-garde, ...
Doors, The: The Doors: Velvet Menace and Sudden Rage
Retrospective by Mat Snow, Q, November 1990
Oblique visionaries, pioneering musicians, "missionaries of apocalyptic sex", The Doors cast a giant shadow forward over the new wave music and have come to symbolize ...
Miming: Here's One We Prepared Earlier…
Report by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, November 1990
IT WAS THE Prince's Trust Concert of 1985 and Wembley Arena swayed gently to Dire Straits' lushly bestringed lament for star-crossed lovers, 'Romeo And Juliet'. ...
Shamen, The: The Shamen: Mission Control
Profile and Interview by Mat Snow, Q, November 1990
The Shamen switched orbits from the doomed indie rock circuit, re-entering as dancedelic house cosmonauts with a mobile ‘interactive’ club show. Mat Snow steps cautiously ...
Various Artists: Rubaiyat: Elektra's 40th Anniversary
Review by Mat Snow, Q, November 1990
IN 1950 NEW YORKER Jac Holzman started Elektra with $600 of his bar mitzvah money, recording artists in their own homes with a tape machine ...
Review by Mark Cooper, Q, November 1990
DURING LAST YEAR'S concerts, Pet Shop Boys reserved a moment amidst the costumes and the dancing for an intimate spell at the piano with Neil ...
Review by Jeremy Clarke, Q, November 1990
ON RECYCLER, ZZ Top jettison the hi-tech adventurism of Afterburner, their last album, released in 1985, which, despite the brilliance and wit of tracks like ...
Review by Mat Snow, Q, November 1990
THERE ARE FEW people who will deny that the first time they lowered the needle on side one, track one of album one, Are You ...
Electronica: Electronics Anonymous
Report by Johnny Black, Q, December 1990
Swatched in dry ice, tucked behind towering banks of keyboards, they are the spiritual descendents of Tangerine Dream and Vangelis, prescribing "psycho-active music to bring ...
Rolling Stones, The: Bill Wyman: Stone Alone
Book Review by Mat Snow, Q, December 1990
UNTIL HE WAS 26, Bill Perks was a suburban South Londoner, married with a kid and a secure job, having done his National Service rising ...
Interview by Mat Snow, Q, December 1990
IT IS FOUR in the afternoon and Shaun Ryder, the allegedly handsome front man of Happy Mondays, is enjoying his breakfast. Manchester being the only ...
Interview by Tom Hibbert, Q, December 1990
OCCASIONALLY, WHEN they feel like it, the Pet Shop Boys take great delight and perverse pride in portraying themselves as the most preposterously pretentious pop ...
Paul Simon: The Rhythm Of The Saints
Review by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, December 1990
IN THE CHARTS The Rhythm Of The Saints has already proved itself an apt follow-up to Graceland with 'The Obvious Child' a sizable hit single ...
Traveling Wilburys: Traveling Wilburys Vol. 3
Review by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, December 1990
SO SPIKE, MUDDY, Boo and Clayton are back – in the sense that, although that's not at all what the Wilburys were called last time, ...
Retrospective and Interview by Mat Snow, Q, December 1990
IT IS 10 YEARS since, disconsolate at the death of drummer John Bonham, Led Zeppelin ceased to be. Though there is perhaps no conscious attempt ...
AC/DC: Phew! Got Away With It, Readers!
Retrospective and Interview by David Sinclair, Q, December 1990
MOST PEOPLE in Britain first heard about AC/DC at about the time of the punk explosion. A bunch of roughneck Aussies with a guitarist dressed ...
Robert Johnson: Robert Johnson: The Complete Recordings
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, December 1990
And the days keeps on worryin' me There's a hellhound on my trail ...
Interview by Lloyd Bradley, Q, 1991
"At least people know what I look like now." ...
Essay by Mark Cooper, Q, 1991
WHEN U2's recent Number 1 single 'The Fly' first came on the radio, it sounded like a confused mess, an irritating jangle of throbbing guitars ...
Leonard Cohen: Porridge? Lozenge? Syringe?
Interview by Adrian Deevoy, Q, 1991
He's been a poet and songwriter for more than 40 years, but Leonard Cohen still can't find a rhyme for 'orange'. "It drives you mad," ...
Beautiful South, The: The Beautiful South: Vive La Slight Difference!
Profile and Interview by Mat Snow, Q, January 1991
AS THE Beautiful South's single ‘A Little Time’ slips down the UK charts from Number 1, in Germany it's starting to pick up sales. And ...
Report and Interview by Tom Hibbert, Q, January 1991
OUTSIDE THE Grugahalle, a monstrous concert erection in Essen, Germany, a bearded fellow bearing more than a passing resemblance to the young Charles Manson is ...
Rolling Stones, The: Rolling Stones: The Rolling Stones And The Death Of The Sixties
Book Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, January 1991
THE HISTORIES of the legendary rock bands and movie stars have been told so often that they have not so much achieved the status of ersatz ...
Iron Maiden: Pas de moshing, s’il vous plait!
Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, January 1991
"MES AMIS, il faut que nous arretons un moment," says the longhaired singer in leather jacket, skintight sports trews and a French accent truly Churchillian ...
Beatles, The, Ringo Starr: Ringo Starr
Interview by Robert Sandall, Q, January 1991
"LAST YEAR," says the man with more rings in his ears than on his fingers, "I was sittin' round wondering what I was gonna do ...
Rolling Stones, The, Bill Wyman: Who the hell does Bill Wyman think he is?
Interview by Mat Snow, Q, January 1991
WITH SOME 15 minutes to go before the appointed end of our 60-minute afternoon session, your reporter is having a decidedly sticky moment with Bill ...
Byrds, The: The Byrds: Box-Set
Review by Mark Cooper, Q, January 1991
PRIOR TO THIS exhaustive four-CD box set with its careful remixing, 17 previously unissued recordings, four new songs by three of the original band and ...
Various Artists: The Blues Guitar Box
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, January 1991
FORTY-THREE tracks featuring 39 guitarists for over three hours of music: if this bouncing, bulging blue box demonstrates anything other than the blues' current high ...
Book Review by Tom Hibbert, Q, February 1991
TWO EXCELLENT ways to become a sort of "cult" rock hero: 1) Be dead; 2) Be bonkers...Actually, come to think of it, the first option ...
David Essex: Who The Hell Does David Essex Think He Is?
Interview by Tom Hibbert, Q, February 1991
DAVID ESSEX KNOWS all about the pressures that go with being an international star but still manages to keep a friendly smile on his face ...
Herman's Hermits: Where Are They Now?
Interview by Martin Aston, Q, February 1991
'I'M INTO SOMETHING Good', 'Silhouettes' and 'My Sentimental Friend' established Herman's Hermits as a top Manchester band in the days when Bez had barely mastered ...
Proclaimers, The: The Proclaimers Favourite Records
Interview by Andy Gill, Q, February 1991
CRAIG REID holds up a copy of Prince's Parade, his favourite album by the tiny genius, and lavishes approbation upon the sublime 'Kiss' – "just ...
Sting : Where The Hell Have You Been?
Report and Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, February 1991
"I HAD A FUNNY experience a couple of months ago when I took my eldest son. Joe, to see England versus Hungary," says Sting – ...
Charlatans, The (UK): The Charlatans
Profile and Interview by Mat Snow, Q, February 1991
TONIGHT, ON the last leg of their sold-out tour of Europe, The Charlatans play Amsterdam's modish Milkweg — the Milky Way in almost bilingual Holland ...
Profile and Interview by Mat Snow, Q, February 1991
Ian hated Ritchie. Ritchie hated Ian. Roger had to go, but then he came back. Jon stayed, and David joined. Then Ritchie left — and ...
Various Artists: The Sun Story Vols 1 & 2
Review by Johnny Black, Q, February 1991
IT WOULD BE convenient to be able to cite Sam Phillips's Memphis-based Sun Records, with Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis on its roster, as ...
Fats Domino: My Blue Heaven: The Best Of Fats Domino (Volume 1)
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, February 1991
IN IDLE MOMENTS, it's often mildly amusing to visualise the stars of yesteryear, relaxing backstage at some oldies package show and taking bets on who ...
Review by Andy Gill, Q, February 1991
JESUS JONES'S Liquidizer was one of the most assured debuts of recent years, an exhilarating but solid presentation of a band who, though mindful of ...
Various Artists: The Sun Story Vols 1 & 2
Review by Johnny Black, Q, February 1991
Sun compiled. Historic and musically satisfying – even without Elvis. ...
Lemmy, Motorhead: Lemmy: Just Say… Yes!
Profile and Interview by Mat Snow, Q, March 1991
Lemmy did not get where he is today by shying away from all the doubtful pleasures the rock'n'roll life can offer. As the grand old ...
Rock And The Tabloids: Publish And Be Damned
Report by Tom Hibbert, Q, March 1991
The pop columnists of Britain's tabloid papers had a high old time of it in the 1980s. Then they woke up to an unpleasant lesson ...
Tom Jones: Who The Hell Does Tom Jones Think He Is?
Interview by Tom Hibbert, Q, March 1991
THE BIG-BONED "boyo" stands in the centre of the room engaged in an elaborate mime: he crouches as he runs his clenched fists down along ...
One-Hit Wonders: They’re Coming To Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!
Guide by Mat Snow, Q, March 1991
Rock ‘n’ roll, they say, is a cruel mistress. How often has pop fame proved but a tragically brief interlude between obscurity and oblivion! Well, ...
Cowboy Junkies: The Cowboy Junkies: Chill out
Interview by Robert Sandall, Q, March 1991
THERE IS something about 547 Crawford Street with its beer crate-strewn hallway, ashtray-scented kitchen (replete with moist, green furry organisms in the unlikeliest of places) ...
Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, March 1991
Mostly victorious, the reign of Queen has seen two decades of pomp and bombast, outsized gestures and theatrical flamboyance. But, as Phil Sutcliffe discovers, even ...
Gloria Estefan: Into The Light
Review by Lloyd Bradley, Q, March 1991
GLORIA ESTEFAN'S FIRST new album since a coach crash last March left her with, among other things, a broken back. ...
Bob Marley & the Wailers: Bob Marley: Talkin' Blues
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, March 1991
IT IS A popular truism that the obsessiveness with which popular culture picks through the bones of its most illustrious dead is the sign of ...
Alexander O'Neal: All True Man
Review by Mark Cooper, Q, March 1991
ALEXANDER O'NEAL ONCE once remarked that he was successful because he helped "bring back masculinity to the black industry". ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, March 1991
FOR A FEW good years in the mid-'70s, Dublin cowboys Thin Lizzy bought the pop virtues of literate, evocative wordplay, danceable, funky grooves and a ...
Interview by Robert Sandall, Q, April 1991
Whenever he makes an album nowadays, it duly finds its way inside a million houses. The biggest of budgets are his to command. And yet ...
Lenny Kravitz: Fancy Seeing You Here!
Interview by Robert Sandall, Q, April 1991
"OH MAN, people are always hitting me with this retro thing. And they're all missing the point. A lot of bands now are being psychedelic ...
Doors, The: John Densmore: Riders On The Storm
Book Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, April 1991
GOD PRESERVE US from brilliant pricks. John Densmore played drums alongside one in The Doors for six years and he's still attempting to recover from ...
Interview by Lloyd Bradley, Q, April 1991
EASTERN BLOC RECORDS in Manchester's rapidly-becoming-fashionable Oldham Street is, at first glance, no different to any other specialist dance music emporium. ...
Byrds, The, Roger McGuinn: Roger McGuinn: The Jingle Jangle Man
Interview by Tom Hibbert, Q, April 1991
Nothing defined the sound of The Byrds so much as the 12-string Rickenbacker guitar of their leader Jim McGuinn. As the years went by his ...
Interview by Andy Gill, Q, April 1991
If R.E.M. appear to walk the street of Athens, Georgia, as if they owned the place – well, that's because they do. Now, as the ...
Andy Fraser, Free: Andy Fraser: Out Of It
Report and Interview by Mat Snow, Q, April 1991
A rainy night in Shrewsbury was to alter the course of Andy Fraser's life. For it was there in 1970 that he first hummed the ...
Overview by Johnny Black, Q, April 1991
Concept albums...What are they? Are they: ...
Review by Mat Snow, Q, April 1991
NO STRANGER TO the extravagant gesture, on the sleeve of his first all-new long-player since 1988's Viva Hate, Morrissey is pictured from below as if ...
Review by Mark Cooper, Q, April 1991
DESPITE MICHAEL STIPE'S production activities with the likes of the Chickasaw Mudd Puppies and the recent emergence of Tourfilm, from 1989's Green tour, R.E.M. have ...
Review by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, April 1991
WHEN IT COMES to a "Dadodadodadodado" there's never been one to match the start of Eurythmics' only British Number 1, 'There Must Be An Angel ...
Mantronix: The Incredible Sound Machine
Review by Lloyd Bradley, Q, April 1991
FIVE YEARS AGO, hip hop duo Mantronix were among the best there was: techno-boff Mantronik's search for that perfect beat involved the unlikeliest noises fed ...
Profile by Martin Aston, Q, May 1991
FAMOUS – OR SHOULD that be infamous? – for their punk-era, terrace-anthem hits 'If The Kids Were United (They Would Never be Divided)' and 'Hurry ...
Interview by David Sinclair, Q, May 1991
JOE JACKSON is clearing up and moving out of his first floor Manhattan apartment. A cool breeze blows gently through the open French windows and ...
Annie Lennox, Eurythmics: Annie Lennox: Hmm... What Rhymes with "Angst"?
Profile and Interview by Mat Snow, Q, May 1991
Her career has not been what she would call a bed of roses. For Annie Lennox, more like a diary of private nightmares played out ...
Johnny Cash: Pills'n'Thrills And Bellyaches
Profile and Interview by Mark Cooper, Q, May 1991
HITCHING UP HIS blue jeans to give his hands something to do, country music's Greatest Living Legend smothers a cough before the familiar voice offers ...
Profile and Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, May 1991
"I ENJOY staying here," says Jim Kerr, the broth of his Glasgow accent as thick as ever. His upturned palms take in not only ...
Julian Cope: Je Ne Suis Pas Sting!
Report by Andy Gill, Q, May 1991
IN A FUNKY but chic little Parisian cafe called the Piano Vache (rough translation: Soft Cow), Julian Cope faces a roomful of French journalists and ...
Troggs, The: The Legendary "Troggs Tapes"
Report and Interview by Mat Snow, Q, May 1991
Long before there was Spinal Tap, there was something else that stood for all that is inept in rock'n'roll. A fading pop group assembled in ...
Pentangle: Where Are They Now? Pentangle
Interview by Martin Aston, Q, May 1991
EVEN BEFORE Fairport Convention had set their wheels in motion, Pentangle were attempting to contemporise and explore British folk music. ...
Gary Numan: Who The Hell Does Gary Numan Think He Is?
Interview by Tom Hibbert, Q, May 1991
THANK CHRIST for this "Siberian snap" and all this snow, is all I can say. Thank Christ that "it's cold outside" (as G. Numan sang ...
Interview by Robert Sandall, Q, May 1991
"NOBODY SETS OUT TO BAFFLE PEOPLE; at least, I don't think they do." As general observations go, this sounds sensible enough, and it causes no ...
Fleetwood Mac: Peter Green: Rarities, Two Greens Make A Blue and Tramp: Tramp
Review by Andy Gill, Q, May 1991
AS A RULE, old legends might best be left alone to gather mythic dust. ...
Mike & The Mechanics: Word Of Mouth
Review by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, May 1991
MIKE RUTHERFORD NEED never have established contact with Planet Earth as most of us know it. ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, May 1991
AN ASSEMBLAGE of 71 tracks and slightly less than five hours of music, weighing in at four CDs or cassettes (committed vinylists are, unfortunately, totally ...
Review by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, May 1991
LAST YEAR'S HANDS-DOWN winner in the specialist category of best debut album by a dreadlocked Russo-Jewish Bahamian-American, Lenny Kravitz has since gone global, being taken ...
Rolling Stones, The: The Rolling Stones: Flashpoint
Review by David Sinclair, Q, May 1991
THE STEEL MACHINE/Urban Jungle extravaganza of 1989 and '90 was the most colossal tour the rock world has ever witnessed. By its close, The Rolling ...
Review by Mat Snow, Q, May 1991
MUCH HAS HAPPENED to Simple Minds since their 1989 album Street Fighting Years topped the album charts in nine countries. ...
13th Floor Elevators: Various Artists: Where The Pyramid Meets The Eye
Review by Andy Gill, Q, May 1991
ROKY ERICKSON, LEADER OF LEGENDARY Texan psychedelic combo the 13th Floor Elevators, is perhaps an odd choice for the tribute album treatment. ...
Ian Dury: lan Dury: Hello Tosh, Got A New Career Strategy?
Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, June 1991
"ME AND The Blockheads were gigging in Spain a few weeks ago, partly to see if we really did want to get together again. ...
Robert Fripp, Toyah Wilcox: Robert Fripp and Toyah: Mr Chalk Loves Mrs Cheese
Profile and Interview by Mat Snow, Q, June 1991
They seemed to belong to different worlds: the avant-garde guitar boffin and the marmalade-haired Princess of Punk. Listen awhile, as Mat Snow recounts the ...
Profile and Interview by Mat Snow, Q, June 1991
So, farewell Jane's Addiction? They were born in LA's sleaziest clubs, and hailed as this year's brightest hopes. Now their leader Perry Farrell wants the ...
Elvis Costello: Mighty Like A Rose
Review by Mat Snow, Q, June 1991
RECENTLY OBSERVED sporting a trainee Father Christmas beard and chewing the fat with Jerry Garcia, Elvis Costello seemed to have completed his self-reinvention as a ...
Guns N' Roses: Tears Before Bedtime?
Profile and Interview by Sylvie Simmons, Q, July 1991
Axl fired the band. The band fired Axl. Then they made up – and fired the drummer instead. Slash checked into rehab — than checked ...
Teardrop Explodes, The: The Teadrop Explodes: Where Are They Now?
Profile by Martin Aston, Q, July 1991
ALONGSIDE ECHO & THE Bunnymen, The Teardrop Explodes were the focal point for Liverpool's emerging post-punk new wave scene. According to the group's linchpin Julian ...
Michael Bolton: Not Very Big In Belgium
Interview by Mat Snow, Q, July 1991
LAST YEAR Michael Bolton was in L.A. working on his new album, the follow up to the multi-platinum Soul Provider, when he got a telephone ...
Interview by Robert Sandall, Q, July 1991
SOME BRITISH ROCK MUSICIANS move to America to make their fortunes; others go to avoid sharing them with the Inland Revenue. Quite what the Psychedelic ...
Pink Floyd: Nicholas Schaffner: Saucerful Of Secrets: The Pink Floyd Odyssey
Book Review by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, July 1991
"THE SITUATION WAS GOING from mad to worse," writes Nicholas Schaffner as Syd Barrett goes AWOL inside his head yet again. ...
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, July 1991
"I'M BLOWING MY COVER," Elvis Costello announces mournfully, as the sun, knowing no better, blazes happily down on Notting Hill Gate. ...
Review by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, July 1991
THEY PROBABLY STARTED DIPPING the gold discs the moment it was announced that New Order's singer Bernard Sumner and the modern world's most in-demand freelance ...
Review by Mark Cooper, Q, July 1991
AS THE REIGNING king of Dancehall, Rexton Gordon aka Shabba Ranks is a major Jamaican sex symbol, ambitious enough to crush his rivals at Sunsplash ...
Luther Vandross: Battle Of The Bulge
Interview by Mark Cooper, Q, August 1991
ON THE HOSPITALITY TABLE OF Luther Vandross's suite at Hollywood's Four Seasons Hotel, four untouched plates of king prawns lie waiting next to a half-demolished ...
Profile by Lloyd Bradley, Q, August 1991
AS THE BAND'S FINAL CHORD dies away, the young man who's been singing tender words of love looks up and flashes his audience a dazzling ...
Black Crowes, The: The Black Crowes: Guilty!
Profile and Interview by Mat Snow, Q, August 1991
Guilty of making music that was going out of style in 1973. Guilty of flying the tattered flag of rock'n'roll idealism. Guilty, indeed, "of never ...
Profile and Interview by Robert Sandall, Q, August 1991
IF A BAND’S success could be measured simply in terms of gold, silver and platinum discs earned, then Deacon Blue have clearly had a lot ...
Profile and Interview by Mark Cooper, Q, August 1991
THE FAMOUS DANCER'S legs are hidden by the kind of white trouser suit favoured by the molls of Italian mobsters, but the tiny figure with ...
Stone Roses, The: The Stone Roses: Stone Free
Report by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, August 1991
After nine months of strenuous legal wrangling, The Stone Roses have extricated themselves from an "oppressive", "one-sided and unfair" contract. Report by Phil Sutcliffe. ...
Rough Trade Records: Life After Debt?
Report by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, August 1991
On May 31, Rough Trade was pronounced dead. Thus ended a 15-year indie dynasty run by "brown ricers" — with a £40 million turnover. But ...
Review by David Sinclair, Q, August 1991
IS DAN REED a little too good to be true? ...
Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers: Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers: Into The Great Wide Open
Review by Mat Snow, Q, August 1991
THE TITLE says it all. Space, horizon and all those rich possibilities are so central to the idea of America that it's hardly surprising they ...
Transvision Vamp: The Little Magnets Versus The Bubble Of Babble
Review by Mat Snow, Q, August 1991
IT'S A FOOL who writes anyone off, but the supposedly triumphant return-to-the-fray that was the single '(I Just Wanna) B With U' barely penetrated an ...
Beach Boys, The: The Beach Boys: Re-issues
Review by Andy Gill, Q, August 1991
SUNFLOWER (1970), THE FIRST ALBUM of a new contract with Warner Bros following their disaffection with Capitol, was on a par with later '60s albums. ...
Report and Interview by Mat Snow, Q, September 1991
TODAY, MARIAH Carey is, at 21, the proud possessor of a debut album whose worldwide sales exceed seven million, and a pair of Grammys awarded ...
Report and Interview by Mat Snow, Q, September 1991
"We've done our time in the backs of Transits!" ...
Profile and Interview by Mat Snow, Q, September 1991
They're a notch above your average cochlea-rupturing, pensioner-intimidating thrash outfit, Metallica. But their passage from fresh-faced punk-paced hopefuls to multi-platinum metal phenomenon has not been ...
Sheena Easton: Mary Poppins Meets Deep Throat?
Profile and Interview by Mat Snow, Q, September 1991
IT'S A MIGHTY long way from Bellshill, Glasgow, to Beverly Hills, LA, and for Sheena Easton, the journey started even before Esther Rantzen's The Big ...
Interview by Andy Gill, Q, September 1991
Collectors of happy endings, look no further. Bonnie Raitt's career was dumper-bound until a P45 from her record company inspired her to rediscover her musical ...
Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, September 1991
ON MAY 7, Beverley Craven did a show in Enschede, Holland, then she caught a plane back to England to record Top Of The Pops ...
Mock Turtles: The Mock Turtles
Interview by Robert Sandall, Q, September 1991
THE FACT THAT HE is considerably more famous now than at any point in his previous 30 years has come as no particular surprise to ...
Interview by Andy Gill, Q, September 1991
IN WHAT MUST HAVE been a classic, once-in-a-lifetime meeting of the Ts, Ice-T once taught Mr T to rap. You remember Mr T: burly black ...
Interview by Robert Sandall, Q, September 1991
Fresh out of jail, James Brown got back on the good foot with a couple of UK shows last month. Backstage afterwards, Robert Sandall met ...
Interview by Robert Sandall, Q, September 1991
"We're playing the same halls as before, we just get to go on a few hours later." ...
Review by Andy Gill, Q, September 1991
"AAAH, IT'S JUST BEEN NON-STOP," says Seal of his virtual year-long bout of promotional chores. "I just wanna get out and play. I'm not interested ...
Review by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, September 1991
OF COURSE, WHEN IT COMES to pop lyrics, any old bollocks will do, given the tune and given the feel. "All right now", "She loves ...
Chris Whitley: Living With The Law
Review by Mark Cooper, Q, September 1991
ON THE COVER OF THIS, his debut, Chris Whitley's long hair and cowboy boots are shrouded in shadows, while his open shirt reveals a crucifix ...
Review by Andy Gill, Q, September 1991
THIS, THE FIRST of two volumes of previously unissued Tom Waits tracks, is the latest fruit of the deal with Herb Cohen and Frank Zappa's ...
Mock Turtles: The Mock Turtles: Two Sides
Review by Robert Sandall, Q, September 1991
AS PROVIDERS OF the best rock single of the year, the entrancingly tuneful, head-to-toe tapper 'Can You Dig It?', the Mock Turtles find themselves now ...
David Bowie: Tin Machine: Versus
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, October 1991
PICTURE THIS: you are in a sex shop in Sydney (for whatever twisted reasons people have for patronising such institutions), and this scholarly-looking gent with ...
Interview by Martin Aston, Q, October 1991
"I'M A MUSICIAN when I remember to be," Robert Wyatt confesses with an earnest tug at his straggly, greying beard. "In fact, I don't even ...
Billy Bragg: Who The Hell Does Billy Bragg Think He Is?
Interview by Tom Hibbert, Q, October 1991
Here he comes again: "pop's political conscience" in his dilapidated trousers and sensible shoes, worthily correcting the unenlightened and uplifting the downtrodden with his unsubtle ...
Level 42, Squeeze: Level 42; Squeeze: Crystal Palace, London
Live Review by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, October 1991
THE MICRO-economic indicators at Crystal Palace Bowl are contradictory: the touts are offering tickets at "less than box office price" but with the opening act ...
Robbie Robertson: The Big Easy
Report and Interview by Andy Gill, Q, October 1991
It's New Orleans, high summer, and everybody's wilting with the heat. Everybody, that is, except Robbie Robertson – the legendary Band guitarist who's just made ...
Pixies, The: Pixies: Trompe Le Monde
Review by Mark Cooper, Q, October 1991
BOSTON'S PIXIES have already ascended close to stadium status judging from their recent triumph at Crystal Palace. Yet their mounting success betrays no loss of ...
Van Morrison: Hymns To The Silence
Review by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, October 1991
QUINTESSENTIALLY quare maybe, but Van Morrison is certainly a worker. His third new album within 27 months weighs in at 95 minutes. For Van addicts ...
Billy Bragg: Don't Try This At Home
Review by Mat Snow, Q, October 1991
"WHAT DO they know of England who only England know?" enquires Billy Bragg, Bard of Barking. He is quoting, with a tiny adjustment, Rudyard Kipling, ...
Review by Robert Sandall, Q, October 1991
THE REASONS FOR the six-year absence are well known: Brothers In Arms – the 15-million-selling album and 250-date world tour – banished an unassuming bloke ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, October 1991
TALK ABOUT COOL: it's as if John Lee Hooker is so relaxed he can afford to be late for his own album. ...
Pogues, The: The Pogues: The Best Of
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, October 1991
SHANE MACGOWAN HAS set himself a truly heroic task: in the seven-year lurch of The Pogues, he has distilled an aromatically personal poetic myth from ...
Beats International: Play That Funky Music, White Boy
Report by Mat Snow, Q, November 1991
SOME POP MUSICIANS know stardom has arrived when the crowds at the in-store signing have to be kept back by a police cordon. For others, ...
Top Of The Pops: Down The Pan?
Report by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, November 1991
Top Of The Pops has been the BBC's flagship music show for 27 years. But it's facing problems: stale format, falling teenage population, and public ...
Peter Gabriel, Van Morrison: Peter Gabriel: World Party
Report by Johnny Black, Q, November 1991
One week this summer, Peter Gabriel's dream came true. Musicians of the world, from Sinead O'Connor and Van Morrison to stars of Lapland and Tanzania, ...
Interview by Andy Gill, Q, November 1991
IT'S AUGUST 1991, and rock personages everywhere are cashing in on the summer season. Simple Minds pack Wembley Arena. Prince (temporarily) contemplates an outdoor spectacular ...
Nina Simone: Here Comes Trouble
Interview by Lloyd Bradley, Q, November 1991
"BE PUNCTUAL," they implored. "Be punctual, and everything should be all right." Ask about Nina Simone at her publisher's offices and you'll soon be appraised ...
Charlie Feathers: He Forgot To Remember To Forget
Interview by Robert Gordon, Q, November 1991
THE REBEL INN is on Highway 78, once a major thoroughfare linking Mississippi cottonland to the delta's big city of Memphis. The old motel's neon ...
Sex Pistols, The: Jon Savage: England's Dreaming
Book Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, November 1991
EVEN THOUGH 15 YEARS have passed since the release of 'Anarchy In The UK', there has never been a book which has satisfactorily documented Britain's ...
Gram Parsons: Ben Fong-Torres: Hickory Wind: The Life And Times Of Gram Parsons
Book Review by Mark Cooper, Q, November 1991
HE VIRTUALLY INVENTED country rock with The Byrds and The Flying Burrito Brothers and was a major influence on the Stones of Sticky Fingers. He ...
Review by Robert Sandall, Q, November 1991
THESE ARE TESTING times for little PR Nelson. His Graffiti Bridge movie, due out last autumn, has never been publicly shown, and the accompanying double ...
Elton John: Various Artists: Two Rooms
Review by Mark Cooper, Q, November 1991
HITHERTO, TRIBUTE ALBUMS have tended to be the preserve of the American college circuit with R.E.M. seemingly ubiquitous as today's aspiring eccentrics queue up to ...
Review by Mat Snow, Q, November 1991
FOR FIVE YEARS R.E.M. steadily grew on Miles Copeland's IRS label until they took the Warner Bros shilling and were thus promoted to the big ...
Review by Andy Gill, Q, November 1991
JUST WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS, to quote Uncle Frank: yet another record label, and eight more Zappa albums hot on the heels of his two ...
Review by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, November 1991
MORE THAN A SCORE of Top 30 hits under four different names over 10 years and it seems obvious that Chorus will only keep them ...
Essay by Danny Baker, Q, December 1991
EVER SINCE the Medved Brothers published their Fifty Worst Movies Of All Time, it's been a cinch that a similar, meatier job has been going ...
Lisa Stansfield: Northern Soul
Interview by Mat Snow, Q, December 1991
WHEN THERE’S promotion to be done, it's all go chez Lisa Stansfield. At 11 in the morning, the house is full of people. BBC2's Rapido ...
Pogues, The, Joe Strummer: The Pogues: Determined
Report and Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, December 1991
THE WILTERN THEATRE, LOS ANGELES, October 10, 1991 ...
Profile and Interview by Mat Snow, Q, December 1991
Bob Seger is a hard-rockin' evergreen with a scrub of grizzly beard and a laugh like one of his native Detroit gas-guzzlers starting up on ...
Review by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, December 1991
CALLING IT WE CAN'T DANCE may be a chucklesome admission that, in the five years since Invisible Touch, Genesis have candidly let the rave scene ...
Review by Mat Snow, Q, December 1991
WITH EACH NEW U2 album there has been a growing buzz of anticipation, a sense of event stoked by the way the band has stamped ...
Review by Andy Gill, Q, December 1991
THANKS TO INNOVATORS LIKE Kraftwerk, Cabaret Voltaire and the Human League, alongside the huge leaps made in drum-machine technology by the Roland corporation, musicians finally ...
R.E.M.: Touched! Chuffed! Etc!
Report and Interview by Mat Snow, Q, January 1992
For R.E.M., 1991 will always be the year in which a low-key LP brought them high-profile success, the year a tiny tour won them a ...
Morrissey: "A gentle adoration"
Report by Robert Sandall, Q, January 1992
Morrissey's US shows have been the scenes of riotous affection. And nobody can figure it out. "It's the intensity of the reverence..." ...
My Bloody Valentine: About Bloody Time!
Interview by Andy Gill, Q, January 1992
In terms of mystique, My Bloody Valentine would have been better off never releasing another record. But three years and many pale imitators later, they ...
Cliff Richard: Who The Hell Does Cliff Richard Think He Is?
Interview by Tom Hibbert, Q, January 1992
THIS IS a tricky question, I said, but tell me, Cliff: what is it in your half-a-century bound on earth, in your illustrious career, that ...
Review by Martin Aston, Q, January 1992
FACED WITH MY Bloody Valentine's formative fumblings, few would have predicted that this garage lurch could metamorphosise into the swooning melody crush that constituted 1988's ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, January 1992
DETROIT'S ECLECTIC, MILITANT-HIPPY combo MC5 were the ultimate in late '60s punkadelia. Though they never sold any significant quantity of records, the influence of their ...
Review by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, January 1992
WHETHER A FOUR-RECORD COMPILATION covering Factory's history is timely self-celebration or urgent self-preservation against the recession, the label's deserved reputation as innovator and provocateur prepares ...
Review by Mark Cooper, Q, January 1992
WHEN U2'S RECENT NUMBER 1 single 'The Fly' first came on the radio, it sounded like a confused mess, an irritating jangle of throbbing guitars ...
Big In Japan: Big in Japan: Where Are They Now?
Retrospective by Martin Aston, Q, January 1992
FEW OTHER groups in the post-punk era can claim to have launched so many successful careers as Big In Japan – The KLF, Frankie Goes ...
Review by Mat Snow, Q, January 1992
Michael Jackson: hip hop and gospel, Slash and God, sublime and ridiculous. ...
Paul Simon: Concert In the Park
Review by Mark Cooper, Q, January 1992
TEN YEARS after Simon And Garfunkel crowned their short-lived reunion with a concert in Central Park, Paul Simon returned solo to claim the patch as ...
Interview by Mark Cooper, Q, February 1992
THESE DAYS, PREPARING for a Lou Reed interview is like joining the Civil Service. First, the specially run-off CD of the new album, Magic And ...
Who The Hell Does Anthony H. Wilson Think He Is?
Interview by Tom Hibbert, Q, February 1992
IN THE headquarters of Factory Records, Manchester, I found myself privy to a sight and sound seldom witnessed, I dare say, by any human being ...
Moe Tucker: One Woman Named Moe
Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, February 1992
FORMER Velvet Underground drummer Moe Tucker’s life seems to have involved two passionate commitments: to music and motherhood. Her reminiscences, though, often come round to ...
Marc Cohn: This Man Is About To Expose Himself…
Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, February 1992
"Here's a tune that I wrote in the back seat of a cab going to meet my girlfriend," says Marc Cohn, doodling a few piano ...
Ticket Touting: On Every Street
Report by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, February 1992
"IT'S A QUESTION of water in the desert," say Harry the ticket tout. "If someone's got the water and you need it, you'll pay him ...
George Michael: One Night in New York
Report by Adrian Deevoy, Q, February 1992
In Britain, George Michael is a household name. In the USA, however, he is really well known. To alleviate the pressures of touring there, he ...
Profile and Interview by Mat Snow, Q, February 1992
If you have a moment, Tori Amos, composer, songstress and troubled soul has a few things she’d like to get off her chest. There’s her ...
Procol Harum: Feeling Kind of Seasick?
Profile and Interview by Tom Hibbert, Q, February 1992
DUM-DI-DUM ... How did it go again? Something about a light fandango and 17 vestal virgins? Or was it 15? In fact, what was 'A ...
Review by Robert Sandall, Q, February 1992
SINCE POWERING HIS WAY BACK info everybody's good books three years ago with the New York album, Lou Reed has become more creatively focused than ...
Crosby Stills and Nash: CSN: CSN Box-Set
Review by Mat Snow, Q, February 1992
DAVID CROSBY, STEPHEN STILLS AND Graham Nash: respectively refugees from The Byrds (fired by Roger McGuinn), Buffalo Springfield (broke up) and Manchester's very own Hollies ...
Fairground Attraction, Eddi Reader: Mrs Ordinary Boring MacTartan: Eddi Reader
Profile and Interview by Mat Snow, Q, March 1992
Unbearably arrogant, brimming with self-confidence, "in ya face" ... Eddi Reader is distinctly lacking in these most basic of frontperson qualifications. "I’m very insecure," she ...
Garth Brooks: Meet Nashville's New Breed Of Generously Stetsoned Crooner
Profile and Interview by Mark Cooper, Q, March 1992
BANDY-LEGGED and pigeon-toed, Garth Brooks has finally taken off his stetson and is staggering around the stage of Atlanta's Omni like a man who's just ...
Love Compilations: The Fast Food Of Love
Overview by Lloyd Bradley, Q, March 1992
Passion to go. Ambience-U-Like. Take-away smooch. Marketing men have discovered the public's appetite for romantic compilation albums. "Everyone loves love," they tell Lloyd Bradley. "We've ...
Soundtracks: 'Mumble Mumble Film'
Overview by Andy Gill, Q, March 1992
As De Niro so eloquently put it, movie soundtracks are not what they were. Too often they're just second-rate rock songs slung together. There are ...
David Byrne, Talking Heads: Severed Heads: Talking Heads and David Byrne
Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, March 1992
"LOOKING AT old videos of Talking Heads," says David Byrne, "it's like three normal kids backing up this maniac — three people who have their ...
Elvis Presley: Greil Marcus: Dead Elvis
Book Review by Andy Gill, Q, March 1992
AT THE CLOSE OF the Presliad, the most substantial part of his classic Mystery Train and still the most illuminating work on Elvis, Greil Marcus ...
Ray Charles: Charles The First
Interview by Robert Gordon, Q, March 1992
Ray Charles did soul music a big favour one day: he invented it. In 1992, the blind maestro they call "The Genius" is still going ...
Echo & The Bunnymen: Ian McCulloch: Mustn’t Grumble
Interview by Robert Sandall, Q, March 1992
Ian McCulloch’s commercial appeal may be "more selective" than it was in the glory days of Echo And Bunnymen, but at least he’s found a ...
John Lydon, Sex Pistols, The: John Lydon
Interview by Tom Hibbert, Q, March 1992
THE MAN IN THE ETHNIC-TEA-COSY-STYLED headwear and the unsightly puce satin ski pants lies back on my sofa, swigs lustily from a bottle of strong ...
Review by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, March 1992
A YEAR AGO, with Gulf War self-censorship at fever pitch, the Phonogram board would have needed sedation after the opening lines from 'Mother': "These wars ...
Review by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, March 1992
FAIRGROUND ATTRACTION SPLIT after one platinum album, The First Of A Million Kisses; 'Perfect', the sound of summer '88, was soundaliked and killed by an ...
Review by Mat Snow, Q, March 1992
THE RISE AND fall and rise of Aerosmith has been rock's most up-beat cautionary tale of the last few years. ...
Review by David Sinclair, Q, March 1992
IN 1990, IN A REGULAR feature called "The Experts' Expert", The Observer canvassed a cross-section of guitarists (David Gilmour, Hank Marvin, Brian May and others) ...
Interview by Mark Cooper, Q, April 1992
MONDAY IS TRADITIONALLY a slow night in the music calendar, especially the first Monday in January in clubs like the Sweetwater, a small but chic ...
Interview by Andy Gill, Q, April 1992
JOHN FLANSBURGH of They Might Be Giants, that most droll of duos, albeit one with a serious undertow, is anxious. ...
Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, April 1992
He's tooled around for 20 years like a leisurely gentleman-hippie. Isn't it time Kevin Ayers got back on the case? ...
Profile by Andy Gill, Q, April 1992
WHEN TONI HALLIDAY first bumped into Dean Garcia backstage at a Eurythmics gig, it wasn't so much love at first sight as the first inklings ...
Profile and Interview by Mat Snow, Q, April 1992
You're a hard-rockin' heavy metal mutha of — how shall we put it? — a certain age. A mid-life crisis looms! But if you're Gary ...
Profile and Interview by Mat Snow, Q, April 1992
They used to be called Venereal and The Diseases. They owe their career to a bank manager called Roger. They've sold their souls to the ...
Review by Andy Gill, Q, April 1992
PACKED WITH ALL MANNER of musical invention, oddball observations and joyous pop nonsense, Uh-Oh is by some way David Byrne's most commercial – and enjoyable ...
Review by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, April 1992
SAME VANCOUVER studio, same production/writing team of lang, Greg Penny and Ben Mink, even the same pesky lower-case initials, but Absolute Torch And Twang was ...
Joe Cocker: All Together Now: Joe Cocker
Profile and Interview by Mat Snow, Q, May 1992
After two decades blurred by addiction, tragedy and confusion, Joe Cocker is back in the saddle and preparing to mount a well-timed comeback. "I just ...
Profile and Interview by Mark Cooper, Q, May 1992
Confusion and uncertainty are Lyle Lovett's middle names. Is he country? Or is he blues, or gospel, or swing? What the hell, he decides, "They're ...
Annie Lennox: No worries? That’s worrying...
Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, May 1992
Leaving Eurythmics has given her freedom. Becoming a mother has brought her happiness. So what’s Annie Lennox’s problem now? It’s writing songs, she tells Phil ...
Fall, The: Mark E. Smith on Lyrics
Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, May 1992
Few people alive today can remember a time when there wasn't Mark E. Smith, fronting his band The Fall and snarling harsh, cryptic couplets at ...
Manic Street Preachers: Pathetic…
Interview by Tom Hibbert, Q, May 1992
Well it is, isn't It? You expected to be confronted by a group of palace-torching, system-smashing situationist art guerillas and you wind up having a ...
David Byrne, Talking Heads: David Byrne
Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, May 1992
For years the frontman of Talking Heads, David Byrne has emerged as a solo artist now – but his newest album shares the same off-beat ...
Interview by Andy Gill, Q, May 1992
NICK CAVE SIGHS. He sighs a lot, as if weary of the world and all that's in it. ...
Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, May 1992
THERE ARE worse jobs than being Smokey Robinson. He's 52, with 2,000 songs down the pike, and still writing as easily as falling out of ...
Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, May 1992
Salt is a member of New York rap act Salt 'N' Pepa, makers of hits such as 'Push It' and 'Let's Talk About Sex'. Of ...
Spiritualized: Lazer Guided Melodies
Review by Andy Gill, Q, May 1992
Spiritualized: Blissed out, numbly minimalist and distinctly unsweaty. ...
Review by Robert Sandall, Q, May 1992
IT'S LATE AT NIGHT; a couple of echoey electric guitars are plinking and howling at each other across a doom-laden backbeat; a frail and young-sounding ...
Review by Andy Gill, Q, May 1992
IT'S OFTEN OVERLOOKED in the face of the wholesale "decadent" mythology that has surrounded him since the early Velvet Underground, but of all the poets ...
Beatles, The, Ringo Starr: Who The Hell Does RINGO STARR Think He Is?
Interview by Tom Hibbert, Q, June 1992
He was The Lovable One who cracked his daft mop-top jokes for The Queen. The Fab With The Big Nose who you could take home ...
Cabaret Voltaire's Record Collection
Interview by Andy Gill, Q, June 1992
Spookily delayed trumpets, primitive drum machines, bone-shaking bass, the original "bleep" record, loads of Germans and "Elvis gone wrong". Earplugs at the ready, Andy Gill ...
Crosby Stills and Nash: Crosby, Stills & Nash: My, How You've Grown!
Interview by Robert Sandall, Q, June 1992
On the physique front at least, Crosby, Stills & Nash have paid top whack for the years of drug abuse, gunplay and prison visits, but ...
Profile and Interview by Mat Snow, Q, June 1992
Shameless image-mongers? Absolutely. Cynical marketing merchants? Good point. Purveyors of welterweight pop metal? Fair comment. But gay? "You’ll meet enough women who’ll tell you we’re ...
Report and Interview by Andy Gill, Q, June 1992
THE CONCERT FOR LIFE: INXS, CROWDED HOUSE, DIESEL, JENNY MORRIS, RATCAT, YOTHU YINDI, DEF FX – CENTENNIAL PARK, SYDNEY, March 28, 1992 ...
Tracy Chapman: Matters Of The Heart
Review by Mark Cooper, Q, June 1992
THE COMBINATION OF 'Fast Car' and the Mandela show transformed Tracy Chapman from an odd throwback to the era of folk protest into the voice ...
Retrospective and Interview by David Sinclair, Q, June 1992
IF EVER A story has grown in the telling it is that of Jimi Hendrix. From a no-name sideman on the American chitlin circuit to ...
Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine: Carter USM: 1992 – The Love Album
Review by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, June 1992
"I WAS born under a wandering star/In the second council house of Virgo/Forcibly removed from the belly of my ma/And raised on milk and Pernod". ...
Sisters of Mercy: Some Girls Wander By Mistake
Review by Robert Sandall, Q, June 1992
"I LIKE to think it was the songs that made this band," Andrew Eldritch writes in the sleevenotes, "I know it wasn't." And as this ...
Review by David Cavanagh, Q, June 1992
THERE IS already one ZZ Top compilation in the shops, and thereby hangs a tale. Entitled The Best Of ZZ Top, it was released in ...
Report and Interview by Martin Aston, Q, July 1992
Australians impersonate them; Erasure cover their songs; U2 and Nirvana are on their case; and there's even a box set on the way. Martin Aston ...
Report by Johnny Black, Q, July 1992
The sound of compact discs was hailed as a technical miracle. But is it? Classic albums get re-issued on CD and we're told they're better. ...
Orange Juice: Where Are They Now?
Profile by Martin Aston, Q, July 1992
AS SELF-EFFACING drummer Stephen Daly said, Orange Juice were "the smartest band on the island at the time. We had no affiliation with anyone – ...
Beautiful South, The: The Beautiful South: Assembly Rooms, Derby
Live Review by Mat Snow, Q, July 1992
IN THE FINAL of the Barclays' Football League programme for the 1991-92 season, The Beautiful South have deviated from the script that identifies them as ...
Elton John: Bernie Taupin: Him Indoors
Interview by Robert Sandall, Q, July 1992
The 25-year You-wash-I'll-dry relationship between Elton John and lyric-writing househusband Bernie Taupin has never been happier. ...
Emerson Lake And Palmer: ELP: Cecile B de Mrs Mills
Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, July 1992
They've called them "Progressive dinosaurs", "excessive musos", "self-gratifying bores". They've always called themselves ELP. "Probably one of the most misunderstood bands in the world," they ...
Crowded House: Don't Dream It's Over
Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, July 1992
Last year, Crowded House played Britain and hardly anyone noticed. This time they've had to book Wembley Arena. Maybe the turnaround came just in time ...
Nymphs, The: The Nymphs: Here’s To… Me!
Interview by Mat Snow, Q, July 1992
Self-promotion can be such a draining business: what with weeing on record company executives' desks, administering on-stage blow jobs and showing up hours late for ...
Arthur Lee, Love: Arthur Lee: Right Church, Wrong Pew
Interview by Tom Hibbert, Q, July 1992
"I FEEL REAL PHONEY when my name is Bell." This may not mean very much to the younger generation, but for those who struggled through ...
Love, Arthur Lee: Arthur Lee and Love: Arthur Lee and Love
Review by David Cavanagh, Q, July 1992
IT'S BEEN quite a year for the cult heroes. 1992 has already seen re-issued albums by Alex Chilton's long-deceased Big Star and Scott Walker tussling ...
Fatima Mansions: Valhalla Avenue
Review by Mat Snow, Q, July 1992
IN THEIR CHOICE of support act in the UK, no one could accuse U2 of playing safe. ...
Review by Mat Snow, Q, July 1992
GOTH, HAS ALWAYS BEEN more of a fashion statement than a musical phenomenon. ...
Prince: The Entertainment Centre, Sydney, Australia
Review and Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, July 1992
"I DIDN'T really notice Prince till he walked through the schoolyard one day wearing just an open trench coat and a pair of underpants," says ...
Review by Mat Snow, Q, July 1992
Was goth really any more than wearing silly clothes and humming funereal dirges? ...
Was (Not Was): David Was' Top Ten
Interview by Andy Gill, Q, August 1992
David Was of Was (Not Was) invites us into his lovely garage. Much of his collection stems from an earlier career as a jazz writer: ...
Marc Almond: The Innocent Exhibitionist
Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, August 1992
His search for inner fulfillment took him to places that respectable folk would sooner not know about. Now Marc Almond has decided where he truly ...
Just a Thought…Whatever Happened To New Age Music?
Comment by Lloyd Bradley, Q, August 1992
Dreamy celestial soundscapes. Tinkly cosmic meditations Worryingly little public interest...Is the music of the future becoming a thing of the past? ...
Beach Boys, The, Brian Wilson: Brian Wilson: Wouldn't It Be Nice - My Own Story
Book Review by Tom Hibbert, Q, August 1992
IT IS HARD TO IMAGINE Brian Wilson, inspired composer of surfing symphonies and divine pop, writing anything as tabloidesque as: "I was a zonked-out zombie, ...
Elvis Presley: The King Of Rock'n'Roll: The Complete '50s Masters
Review by Mat Snow, Q, August 1992
FROM US postage stamps to academic treatises like Greil Marcus's Dead Elvis which ponders how a rock singer ends up as apple-pie as Abe Lincoln, ...
Prefab Sprout: A Life Of Surprises: The Best Of
Review by Robert Sandall, Q, August 1992
Prefab Sprout: whatever happened to great songs? ...
Review by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, August 1992
Elton John returns with one great song, a few deft touches and some stodge. ...
Bruce Springsteen: Charles R. Cross: Backstreets and Marc Eliot: Down Thunder Road
Book Review by David Sinclair, Q, September 1992
BACKSTREETS IS THE AMERICAN quarterly fanzine whose editors maintain a painstaking and uncritical log of the life of Bruce Springsteen. First published in November 1989, ...
Interview by Adrian Deevoy, Q, September 1992
The lighter side of football violence. The death of pop music. Getting the urge for sex. Being racist. The TV star who is "a pig ...
Adam & The Ants: Adam And The Ants: Where Are They Now?
Profile by Martin Aston, Q, September 1992
"DON'T WORRY – HE'LL soon be a hairdresser in North Finchley." So it was that, with Malcolm McLaren's unprophetic words as encouragement, the original Ants ...
Profile and Interview by Mat Snow, Q, September 1992
LOCATED IN one of the drearier fringes of the City of London, Strongroom Studios offers an oasis of cool, high-tech sheen. The main studio gleams ...
Lindsey Buckingham, Fleetwood Mac: Lindsey Buckingham: Your Money or Your Wife!
Profile and Interview by Mat Snow, Q, September 1992
It was a real-life adult farce: drinks and shrinks, drugs and deceit, marital breakdowns and "lifestyle-problems", lies and lunacy. Then Lindsey Buckingham quit Fleetwood Mac. ...
Profile and Interview by Mark Cooper, Q, September 1992
A SIREN IS wailing somewhere outside in the sunshine, one of Art Blakey's bebop bands is trading solos on the stereo and Henry Rollins is ...
Report and Interview by Mat Snow, Q, September 1992
Has Matthew Sweet quietly gone and made one of the best rock albums of the year? ...
Report by Lloyd Bradley, Q, September 1992
IT'S NEARLY 1 AM ON A SUNDAY MORNING IN June. The paying audience for the opening show of Michael Jackson's Dangerous World Tour have long ...
INXS: Welcome To Wherever You Are
Review by David Sinclair, Q, September 1992
NOW 15 years old, INXS have made remarkably little go a long way. ...
Review by Mat Snow, Q, September 1992
NOW IN their 30s, this band are no longer quite so youthful as when they formed 11 years ago in New York, yet they remain ...
Review by Mark Cooper, Q, September 1992
THE GUINNESS BOOK Of British Hit Singles offers no less than nine entries for Orange Juice, beginning in November 1981, with their cover of Al ...
Retrospective and Interview by Andy Gill, Q, September 1992
STEVIE WONDER NEVER REALLY HAD a say in the matter: right from, his first album, he was Little Stevie Wonder, The 12-Year-Old Genius; an assessment ...
Review by Andy Gill, Q, September 1992
Stevie Wonder reissued: from 12-Year-Old-Genius to I Just Called To Say I Love You. ...
James Carr: The Lost Voice Of Soul
Report and Interview by Robert Gordon, Q, October 1992
WHEN IT WAS BUILT IN THE 1950s, Memphis's Mid South Building was probably stylish and sleek. Today, the blocky turquoise exterior pales next to the ...
Profile and Interview by Robert Sandall, Q, October 1992
"I HATE IT, I hate it, I hate it," says Nuno Bettencourt, nodding at the 48-track mixing console of the New River Studio, Fort Lauderdale, ...
Profile and Interview by Martin Aston, Q, October 1992
SEATTLE, IN the top left-hand corner of America, is famous for its once-thriving post-war aerospace industry, for its breweries and coffee, pine forests and clean ...
Frankie Goes to Hollywood: Frankie Goes To Hollywood: Where Are They Now?
Profile by Martin Aston, Q, October 1992
THERE ARE FEWER more meteoric sagas than that of Liverpool's Frankie Goes To Hollywood – from almost complete obscurity to the hottest, and the most ...
Television: One Big Happy Family…
Interview by Tom Hibbert, Q, October 1992
...with child abuse, divorce and incest. Television can't agree why they split up and now they can't work out if they've re-formed. "We're still the ...
Interview by Andy Gill, Q, October 1992
THE ENTRANCE to the grounds is classic old Hollywood style, with a phone you have to call from to get someone to operate the remote-controlled ...
Interview by Mat Snow, Q, October 1992
THE LAST RESORT is a civilised eatery offering a wide selection of imported beers in what must surely be – after Asbury Park, New Jersey ...
Review by Andy Gill, Q, October 1992
ON HIS EARLIEST albums, piano was the definitive Tom Waits instrument, its chords illuminated only by the dimmest of nightclub spotlights, filtered through a tumbler ...
Review by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, October 1992
AH YES, THE BONZOS. Laugh? Uh. Well, did we? When an expensive CD three-pack of all their albums (plus bits) demands that the critical cobwebs ...
Police, The: The Police: Greatest Hits
Review by David Sinclair, Q, October 1992
"ALL SONGS WRITTEN by Sting", it says under the 16 titles on Greatest Hits – 15 of them Top 20 hits, five of them Number ...
Mike Oldfield: Tubular Bells II
Review by Mat Snow, Q, October 1992
IN 1973, THE 49-minute progressive-rock classic Tubular Bells not only seeded the Virgin empire by selling 16 million copies but also set a benchmark of ...
Keith Richards, Rolling Stones, The: Keith Richards
Interview by Mat Snow, Q, November 1992
IN THE MIDDLE of the night, all blocks in mid-Manhattan offer a blank facade. But behind one particular stout steel door lurks a true temple ...
R.E.M.: Lyrically Dark, Musically Oddball
Interview by Mat Snow, Q, November 1992
R.E.M.'s new album, Automatic For The People, is released this month. Here, the group dissect the LP, track by track...hang on, Automatic For The People? ...
Roger Waters: Who the hell does he think he is?
Interview by Tom Hibbert, Q, November 1992
"SO HOW'S SYD these days?" ...
Report and Interview by David Cavanagh, Q, November 1992
NOT FOR THE first time in his tenure as squire of the Old School House, Zachary Sebastian Rex James Foley the Second wonders who he's ...
Christians, The: The Christians: Blood On The Tracks
Report and Interview by Andy Gill, Q, November 1992
Song-sequencing is a small yet significant element of what experts call "the album-making process". Could Revolver have started with anything other than 'Taxman?' Should 'Madame ...
Orb, The: The Orb: Mystic Pizza
Report and Interview by Andy Gill, Q, November 1992
They're cooking up something deeply strange in the sound kitchen. The Orb explore your inner space with endless sonic dreamscapes that suggest a planet where ...
Report and Interview by Martin Aston, Q, November 1992
Weird but true. The average unknown band will get more work and better money by pretending to be someone famous than by being themselves. Martin ...
Prince and The New Power Generation: 0{+>
Review by David Sinclair, Q, November 1992
APPARENTLY UNAFFECTED by his elevation to executive status at Warner Brothers Records, Prince bounces back with yet another 75 minutes' worth of music celebrating his ...
Review by Robert Sandall, Q, November 1992
THE '80S BOOM IN world music generated much tourism but comparatively few settlers: quick excursions into Township jive, brief flirtations with hot Latin rhythms, the ...
R.E.M.: Automatic For The People
Review by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, November 1992
MILLIONS HAVE BEEN waiting on the new R.E.M. album, and almost none of them is barmy. ...
Bob Marley & the Wailers: Bob Marley: Songs For Freedom
Review by Mark Cooper, Q, November 1992
WHEN LITTLE RICHARD stood up at his piano and hollered 'Tutti Frutti', he sounded like a man who'd just broken out of prison. ...
Sex Pistols, The: The Sex Pistols: Kiss This
Review by Mat Snow, Q, November 1992
NEARLY 15 YEARS after John Lydon quit the Sex Pistols, effectively ending them bar a few final pranks, his subsequent band, PiL, find themselves no ...
Happy Mondays: That Monday Mourning Feeling
Report and Interview by Tom Hibbert, Q, December 1992
FOR NO IMMEDIATELY discernible reason, Shaun Ryder is attempting to perform a party trick and failing miserably. He is trying to flick a cigarette (one ...
George Clinton: Funkadelic: Doctor Funkenstein, I Presume
Report and Interview by Andy Gill, Q, December 1992
"Free your ass," he once advised the world, "and your mind will follow." Another song of his explored the fear of being eaten by a ...
Shadows, The, Hank Marvin: Hank Marvin: The King Of Twang
Report and Interview by Mat Snow, Q, December 1992
Raise your glasses to Hank B. Marvin: more than mere rhyming slang. ...
Prince: Crazy Place, Crazy Guy
Report by Mat Snow, Q, December 1992
LIKE SO MUCH in life, the reality of Paisley Park proves a little different from the ad. Where is the laughing girl on the see-saw ...
Tasmin Archer: Stop The World, I Want To Get Off
Profile and Interview by Mark Cooper, Q, December 1992
Your very first record has just gone to Number 1. Tonight you're on Top Of The Pops for the third time in a month. The ...
Profile and Interview by Tom Hibbert, Q, December 1992
FROM SOMEWHERE within the packed and sweaty audience at Whelan's, small and quaint and antique club in a Dublin back street, a projectile comes, wings ...
Interview by Andy Gill, Q, December 1992
ON A TWISTY MOUNTAIN ROAD ABOUT 25 miles outside Toulon, another mad bastard is laying his life on the line, taking his bike way over ...
Pink Floyd: Storm Thorgerson: Daily Departures From Reality
Interview by Martin Aston, Q, December 1992
"I LIKE PICTURES that don't necessarily have an explanation off pat," Storm Thorgerson says of the beguiling, often outlandish record sleeves that cemented the ...
Review by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, December 1992
WEIRD. ALMOST EVERY blushful purchaser will have recently caught the artist in flagrante, bollock, so to speak, naked. ...
Review by Mark Cooper, Q, December 1992
TRUST THAT CONTRARY old buzzard Neil Young to come up with something as cunning and contrary as this "sequel" to 1972's Harvest, his biggest-selling record ...
Jimi Hendrix: Calling Long Distance and The Ultimate Experience
Review by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, December 1992
THERE ARE RECKONED to have been only six Hendrix albums authorised by the artist himself, but he has been so ruthlessly repackaged, reassembled, re-issued and ...
Bob Dylan: Acoustic/Good As I Been To You
Review by Mat Snow, Q, December 1992
PERHAPS AN even bigger shock than his 1965 electrification, in 1992 Dylan goes acoustic. And whereas back in '65 the spokesman for his generation was ...
Review by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, 1993
THESE DIGITAL remasters are diamonds in the tottering junkpile of Hendrix re-releases and cutting-room floor detritus. Augmented by both sides of the first three singles ...
13th Floor Elevators: Easter Everywhere
Review by Mat Snow, Q, 1993
THE SECOND INSTALMENT of Decal's noble policy of reissuing all four 13th Floor Elevators albums finds the influence of San Francisco (whose Avalon Ballroom they ...
Neil Young: Got A Problem Pal?
Interview by David Sinclair, Q, January 1993
Neil Young is back with a new LP and an all-consuming grievance. Lately, something has been getting the old goat's goat like nothing before. That ...
Sinead O'Connor: Crazy Baldhead
Comment by Adrian Deevoy, Q, January 1993
IT'S A PHILOSOPHICAL agenda that would make David Icke vibrate with envy. Consider Sinead O'Connor's current take on the state of play: 96 per cent ...
George Michael: D.I.V.O.R.C.E.
Report by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, January 1993
George Michael vs. Sony: "We do not speak the same language." ...
Leonard Cohen: The Future (Columbia)
Review by Andy Gill, Q, January 1993
THE PROJECT bears a logo, or more accurately a sort of heraldic device, comprising hummingbird, heart and handcuffs: is this how Leonard Cohen views the ...
Ian Dury: The Bus Driver's Prayer & Other Stories (Demon Fiend)
Review by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, January 1993
"I TOOK a sudden notion/To go down to the ocean", Ian Dury imparts in 'Poo-Poo In The Prawn'. ...
Review by David Sinclair, Q, January 1993
With the colossal success of Nevermind, Nirvana brought grunge to the masses, a phenomenon which has radicalised "mainstream" rock across the board. ...
Review by Mat Snow, Q, January 1993
IT HAD to happen. Rock's back catalogue has been repackaged so often from so many angles that sooner or later the selling point would become ...
Factory Records: Hacienda that?
Report by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, February 1993
THE LATEST Manchester T-shirt says "Hacienda that". But is it? After the great indie label's collapse under debts of more than £2 million in late ...
Shane MacGowan, Pogues, The: Shane MacGowan: Crash Course To Oblivion
Report and Interview by Adrian Deevoy, Q, February 1993
Cancel the hearses! Desist with the obituaries! For Shane MacGowan lives, in spite of a heroic chemical intake and his ownership of the Western world's ...
Roxy Music, Bryan Ferry: Bryan Ferry: My Indecision Is Final…
Profile and Interview by Mat Snow, Q, February 1993
Once he was the prolific matinee idol of spaceglam, the original Earl Of Suave and the king of luxuriously lined lovelessness. Now Bryan Ferry takes ...
B.B. King: Uneasy Lies The Head That Wears The Crown
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, February 1993
From the no-horse town of Ita Bena, Mississippi, to the planet's most prestigious culture palaces, Riley "Blues Boy" King has spent half a century as ...
Review by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, February 1993
PERVERSE COULD be the sound of tomorrow today, if it wasn't so full of yesterdays. Not surprising when the sleeve of Jesus Jones's debut, Liquidizer, ...
Joan Baez: Play Me Backwards (Virgin)
Review by David Sinclair, Q, February 1993
WHAT EXACTLY is the most dignified role for the faded activist folk singer who wakes one morning to find herself five years older than the ...
Review by Mat Snow, Q, February 1993
MATT JOHNSON, principal boy of The The, is 31 going on 17, a perennial quester after spiritual fulfilment and soul's ease. In his last two ...
Rolling Stones, The, Mick Jagger: Who The Hell Does Mick Jagger Think He Is?
Interview by Adrian Deevoy, Q, March 1993
MICK WAS so out of it that I could tell the waiters were scared he'd pass out. His head was so far back and he ...
Interview by Mark Cooper, Q, March 1993
Yikes! Ice Cube is America's most controversial (dead heat with Ice-T) and successful rapper, recently blasting good ole Garth Brooks off the top of the ...
Lenny Kravitz: Come in, sit down, skin up…
Profile and Interview by Mat Snow, Q, March 1993
Enter, why don't you, Lenny Kravitz's psychedelically appointed freak pad, where herbular smells prevail, outdoor footwear is outlawed and co-habitees number willowy blondes and cantankerous ...
The Auteurs: New Wave (Hut Hut)
Review by David Sinclair, Q, March 1993
A NAME that the nation's tastemakers have been looking up in their dictionaries and dropping in the right circles for, oh, weeks. ...
Love: Comes In Colours (Raven)
Review by Mark Cooper, Q, March 1993
Long before psychedelic rock meant meandering guitar solos drifting peacefully towards nirvana or oblivion, there was Love. ...
Mick Jagger: Wandering Spirit (Atlantic)
Review by Mat Snow, Q, March 1993
A GLAMOROUS grandad of 49, no one in rock'n'roll is more tightly corsetted than Mick Jagger. His iron determination to keep lean and mean, to ...
k.d. lang: k.d. Sings The Blues
Profile and Interview by Mat Snow, Q, April 1993
She’s a genre-hopping pantheist, Lesbian, vegetarian, big-mouthed aromatherapist. In big boots. Yet despite unpromising ingredients, k.d. lang’s multi-layered cake continues to rise quite beautifully and ...
Alice In Chains: Dearly Beloved
Profile and Interview by Mark Cooper, Q, April 1993
ALMOST TWO years ago to the very day, Seattle's Alice In Chains supported Megadeth here in Berlin's Neu Welt club on a first, rather pointless ...
Johnny Cash: The Man in Blackpool
Report by Mick Houghton, Q, April 1993
JOHN R. CASH is somewhat bemused by questions about Butlin's – or Bognor come to that. He's between sets at Southcoast World (Butlin's, Bognor to ...
David Coverdale, Jimmy Page: Jimmy Page and David Coverdale: Who’d Have Thought…?
Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, April 1993
... thought, that is, that the devil devotee doyen of decibel dementia (that's Jimmy Page) and the python-powered potentate of poodle rock, David Coverdale, could, ...
Spin Doctors: Pocket Full Of Kryptonite (Epic)
Review by David Sinclair, Q, April 1993
Spin Doctors must be the first group in recent memory to sell a million records and get their faces on the cover of Rolling Stone ...
Depeche Mode: Songs of Faith and Devotion
Review by Andy Gill, Q, April 1993
THEIR LAST album, Violator, was a quantum leap over Depeche Mode's previous output, as if the live-double compilation, 101, had purged their past. Buoyed by ...
Pink Floyd: 25 Million Gloomy Punters Can't Be Wrong
Retrospective and Interview by Stuart Maconie, Q, April 1993
Right now, someone, somewhere on this planet is playing Dark Side Of The Moon. Released 20 years ago this month, its mixture of blues and ...
Kenny G: No Accounting For Taste
Interview by Lloyd Bradley, Q, May 1993
AS PART of last year's campaign, Bill Clinton appeared on MTV's Rock The Vote, taking questions from a studio full of young electors. ...
Jonathan Richman: The Man Who Hates Sitting Down
Interview by Tom Hibbert, Q, May 1993
OCCUPANTS OF automobiles cruising the road betwixt the crumbling house of Margaret Mitchell (she who wrote Gone With The Wind) and the shiny tower of ...
Interview by Stuart Maconie, Q, May 1993
BARNEY SUMNER slips snugly into line between his three chums. As one, they turn to face the camera. But Barney's face bears the pained expression ...
Report by Martin Aston, Q, May 1993
AH, THAT FRINGE, and the velvet bow around the ponytail, and the impossibly tight trousers with the suspiciously vulnerable seams. He once warbled his way ...
Happy Mondays: It’ll End In Tears…
Report by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, May 1993
IT WAS KENTUCKY Fried Chicken that did for the Happy Mondays, according to eye-witness accounts. The band were all foregathered at EMI's London HQ with ...
Vince Power: Power, Corruption and Lies?
Profile and Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, May 1993
Once, he ran a junk shop; now Vince Power's a powerful music impresario. But last month's acquisition of London's Town & Country Club has led ...
Review by Stuart Maconie, Q, May 1993
BEFORE ALL this took off, Brett Anderson, Suede's 25-year-old singer, would gloomily tick off each passing birthday as another year gone without his appearing on ...
World Party: Bang! (Ensign Chen)
Review by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, May 1993
Bang! is Karl Wallinger's Victor Meldrew album. Sequestered in a garret for two years since Goodbye Jumbo, he shuffles blinking into the daylight to enquire, ...
David Bowie: Black Tie White Noise
Review by David Sinclair, Q, May 1993
THE 1980S WAS not a happy decade for David Bowie. ...
Ice-T: Home Invasion (Virgin/Rhyme Syndicate)
Review by Andy Gill, Q, May 1993
ICE-T'S FIFTH album – his first post-riot record and, more importantly, his first following the 'Cop Killer' brouhaha and his subsequent departure from Sire – ...
Interview by Adrian Deevoy, Q, June 1993
From nowhere, his first LP sold like thermonuclear cakes and he became the most sexy, mouthy, loppy, self-promoting star in pop. Then his second album ...
Replacements, The, Paul Westerberg: Paul Westerberg: The Agony Aunt Of Grunge
Interview by Andy Gill, Q, June 1993
MID-APRIL in Minneapolis. This weather is serious business. It's bitterly cold. Bob Mould, now of the mighty Sugar but then of the mighty Hüsker Dü, ...
Steely Dan, Donald Fagen: Donald Fagen: Back To Bed For Another 11 Years Then
Interview by Andy Gill, Q, June 1993
VARIOUSLY JET-LAGGED and eyeing each other guardedly from behind their paper plates and coffee cups, half a dozen representatives of the world's rock press settle ...
Review by David Sinclair, Q, June 1993
IT STARTS with the musical equivalent of an itch. A guitar plonks away softly, a light clattery drum sound brushes against the beat, and eventually ...
Terence Trent D'Arby: Symphony Or Damn: The Tension Inside The Sweetness (Columbia)
Review by Mat Snow, Q, June 1993
SO MUCH for "that difficult third album". Being a precocious kind of guy, Terence Trent D'Arby cleared that hurdle one album early, 1989's Neither Fish ...
Curtis Mayfield: The Original Superfly Guy
Interview by Robert Gordon, Q, July 1993
Curtis Mayfield is a full-scale genius. First with the Impressions, and afterwards with his solo stuff, he defined, then redefined, the sound of black America. ...
Peter Gabriel: Gawp Factor Ten
Interview by Robert Sandall, Q, July 1993
NOBODY LIKES being stuck inside one of those old red telephone boxes with a suspect handset and Peter Gabriel is clearly not a happy man. ...
Velvet Underground: Party On, Dudes!
Profile and Interview by Mat Snow, Q, July 1993
The kinky boots and whips have gone; so have the "interesting" light shows and the medicinal heroin. But, yes, The Velvet Underground — the most ...
Charles & Eddie, En Vogue: Harmony Singing: You Have A Lovely Singing Voice
Report and Interview by Lloyd Bradley, Q, July 1993
Three years ago it had all but disappeared beneath the deluge of hard rap and technological beats. Now, from the choreographed trouser arousal of En ...
Donald Fagen: Kamakiriad (Warner Bros.)
Review by Mat Snow, Q, July 1993
KAMAKIRIAD (Japanese for "insect" but used in this case as a futuristic steam-driven car with its own vegetable garden) tells of a journey, as much ...
INXS: Welcome To Our New Direction
Report and Interview by Adrian Deevoy, Q, August 1993
In a fully comprehensive roots-and-reality reacquaintance exercise, INXS are nostalgically experiencing the sights, the sounds, the smells of their earliest days in a series of ...
Bruce Springsteen, Patti Scialfa: Patti Scialfa: Red-Headed Woman
Profile and Interview by Ian Birch, Q, August 1993
ABOUT AN HOUR and a half from New York going south down the New Jersey Turnpike and then east on the Garden State Parkway is ...
Report and Interview by Mat Snow, Q, August 1993
THE ONLY 1980s musician with a teased hairdo who was actually forgiven for it, Aimee Mann started the 1990s staring up from the dumper. ...
Crowded House: Crowded House OBE
Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, August 1993
WHAT A QUEER old month it's been for past and present members of Crowded House. In June they visited the UK to sequence their album ...
PJ Harvey: Sun, Sea, Sand And Sex!
Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, August 1993
And very nice too, thanks, apart from the sex, which in the warped world of PJ Harvey is an anguished, violent, even blood-spattered activity. Set ...
Dexy's Midnight Runners: Kevin Rowland & Dexy’s Midnight Runners: This Is My Confession
Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, August 1993
Meet Kevin Rowland, famously difficult leader of Dexy’s Midnight Runners, where the protestant work ethic collided with catholic guilt and violins combined with brass to ...
Blondie, Debbie Harry: Debbie Harry: Three Times A Lady
Interview by Tom Hibbert, Q, August 1993
DATELINE: MAY 28, 1977. There she stood, growling, upon the stage of the Hammersmith Odeon with her skinny-tied boys around her. ...
Paul Rodgers: Muddy Waters Blues (Victory)
Review by Mat Snow, Q, August 1993
Whoever declared that new art is created when somebody gets old art wrong may well have had blues-rock in mind. ...
Beach Boys, The: The Beach Boys: Candy Striped Avenger
Interview by Andy Gill, Q, September 1993
Once, turban-topped, he trod the path to inner contentment; but now, baseball-hatted and belligerent, Beach Boy Mike Love is fighting mad, especially at his cousin ...
Verve, The: The Verve: Touched I'm Sure
Interview by Stuart Maconie, Q, September 1993
"ER, A PINT of lager, did you say?" The barmaid is distracted. She has every right to be. Her current customer cuts rather a visual ...
Proclaimers, The: The Proclaimers: Eight Eyes, One Vision
Report and Interview by Mat Snow, Q, September 1993
The Proclaimers: Top 10 in America after four years in the wilderness. ...
Report and Interview by Lloyd Bradley, Q, September 1993
After 35 hit singles and 13 big-selling Lps, UB40's secret is out – they're a load of idle layabouts! Their new album is making the ...
U2: I Had Too Much To Dream Last Night
Report and Interview by Adrian Deevoy, Q, September 1993
It seemed like such a good idea at the time: serenading Axl Rose; sleeping in an igloo; drinking the swimming pool; licking the promoter; blowing ...
Duran Duran: The Amazing Lazarus Brothers
Profile and Interview by Mat Snow, Q, September 1993
"I MASTURBATE to Duran Duran videos," announced Andy Warhol in his twilight days. Should one's speculations incline in that direction, one wonders whether the peroxide-periwigged ...
Arthur Brown: The Original Torch Singer
Interview by Tom Hibbert, Q, September 1993
It's not the most promising of CVs – "God of Hellfire; sets hair alight; slightly bonkers" – but for a few short years it did ...
Paul Weller: We All Make Mistakes
Profile and Interview by Mat Snow, Q, October 1993
He split Britain's most loyally supported rock band to form a collective specializing in weedy white sould and ersatz jazz. He created "a Motown for ...
Janis Ian: Protest and Survive
Profile and Interview by Andy Gill, Q, October 1993
AT THE age of 42, Janis Ian is making a comeback (her second, or is it third?), which would be unexceptional save for the fact ...
Björk: Björk Gudmundsdottir's Record Collection
Interview by Martin Aston, Q, October 1993
DOWN THE concrete steps, round the back and to the left, you'll find Björk Gudmundsdottir's comfortably compact and bijou new residence, on the cusp of ...
Nirvana: Kurt Cobain: King Of Pain
Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, October 1993
On the eve of the release of In Utero, the hungrily-anticipated successor to their planet-rogering Nevermind, Q meets Nirvana and delves into Kurt Cobain's curious ...
Cure, The: The Cure: Show (Fiction)
Review by Mat Snow, Q, October 1993
The Cure are a cult band much as Scientology is a cult religion: their adherents are legion and the degree of cultist identification is intense. ...
Al Green: Don't Look Back (RCA)
Review by Andy Gill, Q, October 1993
When Al Green first recorded with Willie Mitchell in 1970, his cover of The Temptations' 'I Can't Get Next To You' launched his career as ...
Guide by Mat Snow, Johnny Black, Q, November 1993
... and the law, being an all-powerful customer, usually won. Johnny Black and Mat Snow investigate the link between the crazy, hot-headed outlaws of rock ...
Police, The: The Police: Oh, How We Laughed!
Interview by Adrian Deevoy, Q, November 1993
They were one big happy family. They were brothers by different parents. They were all for one and one for all. Except they weren't. The ...
Brian Eno: Towards An Understanding of Pop Past and Present
Interview by Andy Gill, Q, November 1993
IN THE BIG room at Peter Gabriel's Real World studio down in Box, Wiltshire, Brian Eno holds court at an informal workshop involving himself and ...
Lemonheads, The: Evan Dando: Just Say No… Kinda
Interview by Adrian Deevoy, Q, November 1993
A respectful silence, please, for Evan Dando, Lemonhead-in-chief and arguably the most generously gifted songwriter of his generation: "I'd like to impart this message to ...
Pearl Jam: 'You, My Son, Are Weird!'
Profile and Interview by Mat Snow, Q, November 1993
They’ve a singer, Eddie Vedder, who makes Lou Reed look like a happy-go-lucky bloke; they’re vilified in the press and manically suspicious of The Biz. ...
Kate Bush: The Red Shoes (EMI)
Review by Andy Gill, Q, November 1993
INITIALLY SOMEWHAT shrill and unimpressive, The Red Shoes improves immeasurably after repeated plays over a long period of time, gaining a solidity at odds with ...
Lemonheads, The: The Lemonheads: Come On Feel The Lemonheads (Atlantic)
Review by David Sinclair, Q, November 1993
IT SEEMS a quaint idea now, but there was a time when being a "serious" rock band didn't necessarily mean carting a ton of attitude ...
Pet Shop Boys: Very (Parlophone)
Review by Mat Snow, Q, November 1993
NEXT YEAR Neil Tennant celebrates both his 40th birthday and the tenth anniversary of the first Pet Shop Boys record, 'West End Girls'. Chances are ...
Kate Bush: Little Miss Can't Be Wrong
Interview by Stuart Maconie, Q, December 1993
She might be a self-confessed power head, prone to control freakery and studio-hermitdom and a total stranger to the nightclub dancefloor... "bit I'm never grumpy, ...
George Michael Vs Sony: This Time It's Personal
Report by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, December 1993
DOWN AT THE High Court, as Q went to press, the case of George Michael versus Sony was prodigiously well-paid business as usual for the ...
Stereo MCs: If Bob Marley Came To Nottingham
Report and Interview by Mark Cooper, Q, December 1993
"ARE YOU there, Milwaukee?" enquires a ghostly but undoubtedly English voice. It is around seven o'clock in the evening at the Marcus Amphitheatre in Milwaukee ...
Review by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, December 1993
BASICALLY, UNCOOL, £12-million-a-year, Tory-endorsing Phil Collins is good on Love, not much cop on Life. So although, for reasons unknown, the totally solo Both Sides ...
Baker Bruce Moore: BBM: Grumpy Old Men
Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, 1994
Call it the half-fat Cream reunion at your peril, mention old boy Eric if you dare, but BBM does share some of the legendary stroppiness ...
Public Enemy: Muse Sick N Hour Mess Age
Review by Mark Cooper, Q, 1994
BY RIGHTS, THEY should be out of here. Hip hop may be black folks’ news channel, as Chuck D likes to point out, but today’s ...
Comment by Mark Cooper, Q, January 1994
Randy Newman does not suffer fools gladly but surely he is currently pushing a point a little too far. ...
Half Man Half Biscuit: Lads, I Feel Another Title Coming On…
Interview by Stuart Maconie, Q, January 1994
EMERGING FROM the dark of the Mersey tunnel into the almost dark of autumn in Birkenhead, the first thing the visitor sees are the giant ...
Profile and Interview by Robert Sandall, Q, January 1994
Adopt Murray Walker voice: "Aaahnd aaas Nigel Mansell attempts radical chassis reshaping at Starkey's Bridge, whooo's this bringing up the rear?" It's Chris Rea, actually, ...
Ice Cube: Lethal Injection (Island)
Review by Andy Gill, Q, January 1994
CUBE'S LATEST missive from the front line of black resentment opens with a homicidal racist gag, Dr Ice Cube getting his patient Mr White to ...
Mothers Of Invention, The, Frank Zappa: Frank Zappa: A Real Mother
Obituary by Andy Gill, Q, February 1994
Francis Vincent Zappa II, 1940-1993 ...
Crowded House: The Fine Art of Surfacing
Report and Interview by Stuart Maconie, Q, February 1994
SATURDAY NIGHT in Glasgow, traditionally the comic's most difficult audience, and it's time to give a big hand to two young fellows with a bright ...
Review by David Sinclair, Q, February 1994
THE LONGEST-RUNNING trio in rock, ZZ Top come down from the hills less frequently these days, yet they remain blithely impervious to the ravages of ...
Aphex Twin: Armed and Fairly Dangerous
Interview by Stuart Maconie, Q, March 1994
AND BY their conspicuous celebrity consumption you shall know them. When Rick Wakeman entered rock's upper echelon, he armed himself with a fleet of Rolls-Royces. ...
Tori Amos: Under The Pink (Atlantic)
Review by Mark Cooper, Q, March 1994
THESE HAVE not been good years for distinctive new voices who have to swiftly follow their groundbreaking debuts with that crucial sophomore outing. ...
Fugs, The: The Fugs: F*** Art, Let's Levitate The Pentagon
Retrospective and Interview by Johnny Black, Q, March 1994
DECEMBER 16, 1965. A press conference is under way at Columbia Studios, Los Angeles. Bob Dylan is holding court. One reporter throws a question: "What ...
Level 42: The Most Famous Thumb in Rock
Interview by Stuart Maconie, Q, April 1994
NOW WHO would live in a house like this? one thinks, as the taxi traverses the length of the drive and passes between the ornamental ...
Interview by Stuart Maconie, Q, April 1994
Goodbye, big-bloused flower-fondler; cheerio, depressed devotee of deathly doom; toodle-oo teetotal football-fearing perma-hermit; we'll sithee, bespectacled Billy NoMates. At 34, Morrissey is no longer the ...
Interview by Robert Sandall, Q, April 1994
Who's a busy homeboy then? His CV already bulges with a prison sentence, a US Number 1 LP and a still-fresh murder charge. Now, gangster ...
Mayhem: Black Metal: Bloody Hell!
Report by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, April 1994
Of course, it's all a right old laugh, Death Metal, isn't it? But in the long Scandinavian nights, some people have failed to see the ...
Proclaimers, The: The Proclaimers: Hit The Highway (Chrysalis)
Review by Mark Cooper, Q, April 1994
DEF LEPPARD, Tears For Fears, even The Stone Roses have their excuses. After all, success breeds its own insecurities and what's a year or two ...
Review by Stuart Maconie, Q, April 1994
A PERFORMER as singular as Elvis Costello invites any number of critical perspectives and, needless to say, few gain his approval. Still, here's one. Through ...
Profile and Interview by Andy Gill, Q, May 1994
POISED ON the brink of widespread success after nearly 14 years as linchpin of Sheffield glum-rock combo Pulp, Jarvis Cocker muses upon the long and ...
Beatles, The: Backbeat: A Bit Of Slap And A Wig
Report and Interview by Mat Snow, Q, May 1994
Backbeat, the much-trumpeted, unauthorised Beatles biopic with the grunge-pedigree soundtrack, est arrivé. It revolves around the tragic story of original bassist Stu Sutcliffe, who died ...
George Clinton, Primal Scream: Primal Scream and George Clinton: You're My Best Mate You Are
Report by Stuart Maconie, Q, May 1994
FORTY SECOND Street. Outside, Manhattan shivers and cowers beneath a coverlet of snow and prepares for the next much-forecasted blizzard. It's minus 10. Worse, there's ...
Chaka Demus and Pliers: The Rolls Royce of Ragga
Report and Interview by Mark Cooper, Q, May 1994
"ANY QUESTIONS then?" ...
Bob Dylan, Beatles, The: Eyewitness: Dylan Turns The Beatles On To Dope
Essay by Al Aronowitz, Q, May 1994
History ahoy! In the second of our new series, journalist Al Aronowitz recalls introducing Bob Dylan to The Beatles and how His Bobness turned the ...
PJ Harvey, Tori Amos, Björk: PJ Harvey, Björk, and Tori Amos: Hips. Lips. Tits. Power.
Interview by Adrian Deevoy, Q, May 1994
Well, would you spill their pint? In the last 18 months, Polly Harvey, Björk, and Tori Amos have rogered the charts with their special brew ...
Pink Floyd: The Division Bell (EMI)
Review by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, May 1994
WHAT PINK Floyd are telling the world in official communiques – and presumably telling themselves – is that their first new album since 1987's A ...
Interview by David Sinclair, Q, June 1994
ISN'T IT odd how some bands can carry on year after year, getting consistently good reviews, backed by major record company muscle, yet still end ...
Sex Pistols, The, John Lydon: Who the Hell Does John Lydon Think He Is?
Interview by Tom Hibbert, Q, June 1994
THE INTERVIEW, Q vs Lydon, should have taken place several months ago but when I turned up on his Fulham doorstep and rang his bell, ...
Profile and Interview by Martin Aston, Q, June 1994
"POPULAR MUSIC, in all its rich varieties, has milestones." So began the Sunday Times review of David Ackles's 1972 album, American Gothic, which compared the ...
Profile and Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, June 1994
SHE HAD never played a gig in her life before and now she was about to make her debut in front of 15,000 people at ...
Nirvana: Kurt Cobain: The Heartbreak Kid
Overview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, June 1994
KURT COBAIN was a great success. He wrote, he sang, he played lead guitar for the new band of the '90s. He made millions of ...
Clash, The: The Clash: Clash on Broadway (Legacy)
Review by Tom Hibbert, Q, June 1994
DID YOU know that The Clash's song, 'Career Opportunities', was written whilst the band feasted on potato croquettes from Kentucky Fried Chicken? ...
Review by Stuart Maconie, Q, June 1994
TO USE the vernacular of our friends in the American therapy industry, today's music business is not "a nurturing environment". One might use the expression ...
Interview by Mark Cooper, Q, July 1994
WHEN SEAL first appeared on billboards all around Britain in 1991, he cut a vast, almost monumental figure. Hands on hips like a fashion model, ...
Interview by Andy Gill, Q, July 1994
IN AN abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of Toronto, Henry Rollins is getting beaten up. A huge, Rasputin-like figure (monk's garb, frankly Messianic face-fungus) throws ...
Prince Talks To Q: 'I Am Normal!'
Interview by Adrian Deevoy, Q, July 1994
Pleased to meet you... Hope you've guessed my name. For the first time since God alone knows when, the artist formerly known as Prince talks ...
Jimi Hendrix Burns His Guitar For The First Time
Essay by Keith Altham, Q, July 1994
Date: March 31, 1967 Location: Astoria Theatre, LondonTHE BRIGHT LITTLE pyromaniac who told Jimi Hendrix to set fire to his guitar? Yup, that’s me. Thirty-three ...
Nick Drake: Way To Blue (Island)
Review by Stuart Maconie, Q, July 1994
IN FEBRUARY 1972, upon the release of Pink Moon, Nick Drake's third and final album proper, the press information issued by Island Records ran, in ...
Sutherland Brothers and Quiver, Sutherland Brothers, The: The Sutherland Bros: Where Are They Now
Retrospective by Martin Aston, Q, July 1994
ONCE UPON a time, there were two Scottish brothers, lain and Gavin Sutherland, peddlers of particularly earthy soft-rock fare with two albums on Island (1972's ...
Spin Doctors: Turn It Upside Down (Epic)
Review by David Sinclair, Q, July 1994
"Oh, mama, I'm gonna roll with a truckload of hurt. These wheels have rolled across I don't know how many bags of dirt."(from 'Bags Of ...
Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, September 1994
SINEAD O'CONNOR is back in Dublin, her home town, and she's in a milk stout frame of mind, blacks and whites all mixed up. Indeed, ...
Chuck Berry: The Poet of Rock'nRoll (Charly)
Review by David Sinclair, Q, September 1994
A colossally influential talent in his prime and a painful embarrassment in his decline, Chuck Berry has bequeathed a musical legacy that is like the ...
Public Enemy: Muse Sick N Hour Mess Age (Def Jam)
Review by Mark Cooper, Q, September 1994
BY RIGHTS, they should be out of here. Hip hop may be black folks' news channel as Chuck D likes to point out but today's ...
Interview by Martin Aston, Q, October 1994
A CLASSIC glam rock drum beat is quickly interrupted by a whistle of the "OYI! OVER 'ERE!" variety before a majestically bounding punk-pop riff throws ...
Review by Stuart Maconie, Q, October 1994
Farewell then, writer's block, hello topiary ...
Interview by Martin Aston, Q, November 1994
"IT'S NOT that I'm sick of hearing praise," Geoff Barrow retorts, "it's just that I can't quite believe it, or even understand it." ...
Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, November 1994
"I ENVY edgy babes like Sheryl, Tori, Polly Jean," says Shawn Colvin, though she seems like a nice girl. "I haven't been embraced by the ...
Oasis: Nine Months That Shook The World
Overview by Stuart Maconie, Q, November 1994
IT'S A terrible name. Terrible. It immediately and unjustly tags them as one of those risibly mediocre makeweights of the so-called 'baggy" explosion. It is ...
Heaven 17, Human League, The, Duran Duran, Culture Club: Top Of The Pops and The '80s Brit Pop Boom
Overview by Stuart Maconie, Q, November 1994
YOU CAN tell if they're boys or girls these days, that's the trouble. Just look at them, these so-called modern pop phenomena. ...
Chris Rea: The Very Best of (East West)
Review by Mat Snow, Q, November 1994
Somewhere left of Eric Clapton and Phil Collins resides Chris Rea, a bluesman for whom the burden of life consists less of stones in his ...
Review by Stuart Maconie, Q, November 1994
When U2 swapped their Romany drifter look for the PVC strides and comedy shades, there was, after the initial confusion, a general hum of approbation. ...
Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers: Tom Petty: Wildflowers (Warner)
Review by Andy Gill, Q, November 1994
THE SURPRISING choice of Rick Rubin as producer after a highly successful liaison with Jeff Lynne over his last couple of albums might suggest a ...
Review by David Sinclair, Q, November 1994
SUEDE'S FANS have always been utterly unwavering in their belief in the band. But out there, in the big bad world, the group still suffers ...
Manic Street Preachers: Smile, It Might Never Happen
Report and Interview by Stuart Maconie, Q, December 1994
'THE INTENSE Humming Of Evil', 'Mausoleum', 'Archives Of Pain', 'Die In The Summertime'. Even a cursory glance at the titles will confirm that this is ...
Marianne Faithfull: Venus & Mars
Interview by Mat Snow, Q, December 1994
Stop sniggering at the back. Marianne Faithfull may well have bedded the world and his whippet, but that smutty old story about the cunningly concealed ...
Jimmy Page/Robert Plant: Jimmy Page and Robert Plant: Not The Led Zep Reunion
Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, December 1994
That Page And Plant Unledded film, plugged. ...
Black Crowes, The: The Black Crowes: Amorica
Review by Andy Gill, Q, December 1994
AMORICA, ACCORDING to Chris Robinson, is "somewhere north of hell and south of heaven", a Utopia for the frazzled and the put-upon. Amorica the album ...
Review by Mat Snow, Q, December 1994
"MINNIE MOUSE on helium," was how wags described Madonna back in the days of 'Holiday' and 'Lucky Star'. Such a girlie voice clearly betokened a ...
Jamiroquai: The Return Of The Space Cowboy
Review by David Sinclair, Q, December 1994
ONLY JAY Kay could come up with as naff a title as The Return Of The Space Cowboy and make it sound about right. A ...
Joy Division: She’s Got Control
Interview by Len Brown, Q, 1995
Fifteen years after he hanged himself in their Macclesfield kitchen, Joy Division leader Ian Curtis has been "outed" by his widow, Deborah, as an ill-tempered, ...
Police, The: Wiry: The Police Live
Review by David Sinclair, Q, 1995
IT’S EASY TO forget what an outstanding live act The Police were. Combining musicianly flair (guitarist Andy Summers) with furious bursts of energy (drummer Stewart ...
Joy Division: Deborah Curtis: Touching From A Distance: Ian Curtis And Joy Division (Faber & Faber)
Review by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, 1995
AS THE JOURNALIST and pop historian Jon Savage Suggests in his foreword, for one narrowly defined sub-generation, Ian Curtis's suicide was a first personal encounter ...
Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, January 1995
How the devil are you? I'm having a ball. ...
John Lydon: The Q 100 interview
Interview by Tom Hibbert, Q, January 1995
HOW THE devil are you?Oh, I'm all right. I'm fiiiine. I'm lovely. I'm doing a solo record. Just me. John Lydon and nobody else. ...
Band, The, Robbie Robertson: Robbie Robertson: The Q 100 Interview
Interview by Andy Gill, Q, January 1995
How the devil are you? ...
Barry White: The Q 100 interview
Interview by Martin Aston, Q, January 1995
HOW THE devil are you?I'm fine. I couldn't be happier. Everything is beautiful in my life. I got a hit album and hit single. I'm ...
Rolling Stones, The, Keith Richards: Keith Richards: The Q 100 interview
Interview by Bill Prince, Q, January 1995
How the devil are you?I'm fine, man. Very, very well. ...
New York Dolls: Hairspray and Hard Drugs: The New York Dolls
Retrospective and Interview by Mat Snow, Q, January 1995
The Stones in drag, the proto-Sex Pistols, Aerosmith's role models, Morrissey's mad aunts. What were the legendary New York Dolls about, other than leather, leopardskin, ...
Human League, The: The Human League: Didn't We Used To Be The Human League?
Interview by Stuart Maconie, Q, February 1995
WITH SOME groups, it is records on the Stax and Okeh record labels; with others it is fine wines or the tailoring of Messrs Miyake ...
Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, February 1995
She worked with Michael Jackson, Rod Stewart and Don Henley. Now she's feted by Bob Dylan, Neil Young and the Stones. And in time-honoured fashion, ...
The Q New Year Summit 1995: Where Are We Now?
Interview by Robert Sandall, Q, February 1995
We teeter on the lip of a New Year, and, let's not flagellate around the shrub-like foliage here, The Future. In an attempt at stocktaking ...
Bruce Springsteen: “I Wanna Tell You A Story...”
Overview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, February 1995
Bruce Springsteen, Rock Orator, on Life, Love, Art and everything ...
Review by David Sinclair, Q, February 1995
IT'S STRANGE when you think of the qualities we demand from our rock stars. ...
Stone Roses, The: Who The Hell Do The Stone Roses Think They Are?
Interview by Adrian Deevoy, Q, March 1995
Their second album took longer to record than the equivalent World War took to wage. Meanwhile, Geffen kept them in golf clubs and "heroin". Last ...
Steely Dan, Walter Becker: Walter Becker: Hasn't He Grown
Interview by Andy Gill, Q, April 1995
WHAT'S WRONG with this picture? Halfway up a volcano on the Hawaiian island of Maui, Walter Becker, one-half of Steely Dan, the most cynical rock'n'roll ...
Stevie Wonder: It's Good To Be The King
Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, April 1995
It's been a few years — oh alright then, decades — since "Little" Stevie Wonder was seriously big. But beyond the heavyweight collaborations, the myriad ...
Faith No More: Regrets, They Have A Few
Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, May 1995
"I'M A FUCKED-up individual," says Roddy Bottum, Faith No More's keyboard player, reviewing recent difficult times. He grins, sort of. ...
Interview by Adrian Deevoy, Q, May 1995
Fabled and reconstructed, the all-new, star-spangled, itinerary-wielding R.E.M. were poised to take on the world. Then Bill Berry took ill. ADRIAN DEEVOY caught the doomed ...
Del Amitri: It's All Downhill From Here
Interview by Andy Gill, Q, May 1995
"FUCK! NOOOOOO!" The man in the prog-rock vintage greatcoat, Soviet military headgear and unfeasibly sizable sideburns wavers under the implacable pull of gravity, a tremor ...
Profile and Interview by Martin Aston, Q, May 1995
US Geek Rockers inspired by Gary Numan and Jesus Christ Superstar to produce rattlingly fine buzz pop. ...
Elastica: You're Never Alone With Elastica
Report and Interview by Adrian Deevoy, Q, May 1995
...Elastica. With impeccable Suede, Blur and, ahem, Stranglers connections, 1995's Great British Export-in-waiting put the "New" in New Wave. And, Iggy Pop tells Adrian Deevoy, ...
Rolling Stones, The: The Rolling Stones: How It Happened
Retrospective and Interview by Johnny Black, Q, May 1995
By 1963, The Rollin' Stones lacked only a "g" and a manager. Enter Andrew Loog Oldham, 19-year-old music publicist and soon-to-be Stones Svengali... ...
Elvis Presley: Long Live The King!
Overview by Johnny Black, Q, June 1995
Most insist that Elvis Presley died on August 16 1977. Yet some say that not only is The Memphis Flash alive, but that they've seen ...
Retrospective by Johnny Black, Q, June 1995
Pink Floyd, The Soft Machine, The Move... Some of Swinging London's swingiest played at the legendary International Times benefit at Alexandra Palace. Johnny Black rounds up a ...
Report by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, July 1995
It also dines on doubt, nibbles the nerve endings and makes a hell of a mess of your trousers. Stage fright, that least welcome of ...
Review by Andy Gill, Q, July 1995
HAVING EFFECTED the transition from cult figure to '90s style object with the universally popular Debut, Björk Gundmundsdottir's Post finds her and producer Nellee Hooper ...
Van Morrison: Days Like This (Polydor)
Review by Mark Cooper, Q, July 1995
Although Van Morrison has enjoyed unprecedented commercial success since signing to Polydor in 1989, in creative terms it has been an uncertain period for him. ...
Morrissey: Do You F***king Want Some?
Interview by Stuart Maconie, Q, September 1995
Morrissey's back in the ring with a violently good LP, Southpaw Grammar, and he's having a Cantona-styled pop at anyone in his path: Hugh Grant, ...
Björk: Björk: All Together Now
Interview by Stuart Maconie, Q, September 1995
ICELAND, OR Lydvelid Island to give it its native name, is the westernmost state of Europe. It is a land of magnificent geo-physical architecture; three ...
Pearl Jam, Neil Young: Neil Young: Oh But I Was So Much Older Then...
Interview by Mark Cooper, Q, September 1995
...he's younger than that now. Neil Young's new album, Mirror Ball, is a scintillating trans-guitar-generational collaboration with hip young gunslingers Pearl Jam, and has given ...
Morrissey: Morrisey: Southpaw Grammar (RCA)
Review by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, September 1995
Wherein Morrissey discovers the missing link between The Byrds' jingle-jangle and Young/Cobain grunge. In contrast to Vauxhall And I, often gentle of mood and sentiment, ...
Interview by Martin Aston, Q, October 1995
HAILING – along with the rubber tyre and Rachel Sweet – from Akron, Ohio, Devo's prankful art-pop, deconstructivist theories and matching boilersuits made perfect-imperfect sense ...
Jerry Garcia, Grateful Dead: The Last Great American Adventurer: Jerome John Garcia 1942-1995
Obituary by Tom Hibbert, Q, October 1995
On August 9, Jerry Garcia, leader of the Grateful Dead, the most successful live group of all time, died in a Californian rehab center. To ...
Supergrass: Hey Hey We're The Cheeky Monkeys: Supergrass
Profile and Interview by Stuart Maconie, Q, October 1995
IN SPINAL TAP, that penetrating cinema verité dissection of the music industry, various scenes are offered as examples of the rampant absurdity of the rock'n'roll ...
Jethro Tull: Roots Before Branches (Chrysalis)
Review by Stuart Maconie, Q, October 1995
Flutes in rock. Hmmm. Thijs Van Leer of Focus. Does James Galway's epochal rendition of Annie's Song count? It's really just Ian Anderson, isn't it ...
Sex Pistols, The: The Sex Pistols Sign To A&M Records
Retrospective and Interview by Johnny Black, Q, October 1995
Early 1977, and following the inevitable bust-up with EMI, the Sex Pistols are about to release 'God Save The Queen' and embark on their shortest ...
Yoko Ono, John Lennon: Eyewitness: John & Yoko record 'Give Peace A Chance'
Retrospective by Paul Williams, Q, November 1995
Give Peace A Chance may not be the last word in protest performances, but it can lay claim to one of the weirdest musical births ...
Pulp: Jacques Brel Art Disco I Gave You The Best Years Of My Life
Interview by David Quantick, Q, November 1995
"I'VE BEEN in the studio all the time. I mean, look at me, I'm nearly transparent! I feel bad, really – they're saying it's the ...
Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, November 1995
Still red — politically, tonsorially and Simply — the alleged panther-like Mick Hucknall is teetering on the brink of another globe-goosing success with the follow-up ...
Lenny Kravitz's Record Collection
Interview by Robert Sandall, Q, November 1995
LENNY KRAVITZ'S record collection is, mostly, in his new house in New Orleans, not far from the pair of Jimi Hendrix's purple flares which he ...
Review by Andy Gill, Q, November 1995
MICK HUCKNALL has barely put a foot wrong over the past six years, since A New Flame set new, impeccable standards for Brit-soul back in ...
Queen: Made In Heaven (Parlophone)
Review by David Sinclair, Q, November 1995
MADE IN Heaven is an album so heavily freighted with emotional resonance that it is quite impossible to disentangle the music from the unique historical ...
Wizzard: Making 'I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day'
Retrospective and Interview by Johnny Black, Q, January 1996
Mike Burney (sax, Wizzard): I'd been doing really boring big band gigs on the ballroom circuit so when Roy offered me a job in Wizzard ...
Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, February 1996
"You wouldn’t believe the number of people who come to our front door," says Noel Gallagher with a grin full of rue and a wary ...
Rutles.The: The Rutles: The Making Of All You Need Is Cash
Retrospective by Johnny Black, Q, February 1996
The time had finally come to stick a pin in the monolithic zeppelin that was Beatles mythology – and with the aid of a star-sprinkled ...
Martha and The Muffins: Where Are They Now? Martha and the Muffins
Retrospective by Martin Aston, Q, February 1996
ONCE, CANADIAN new wavers Martha And The Muffins were "far away in time", via 'Echo Beach', Number 10 in March 1980. ...
Report and Interview by Lucy O'Brien, Q, March 1996
"THE BEST THING was when we had Tora Tora, or The Artist Formerly Known As Prince," says Chris Cowey, the noticeably effusive producer of The ...
Blur: Stop The Band, I Wanna Get Off!
Report and Interview by Adrian Deevoy, Q, March 1996
Are BLUR really going to the dogs? Behind all the adoring screams, we hear internal bickering, the tell-tale snii-ii-i-iff! of media-centric decadence, a hollow champagne ...
Profile and Interview by Martin Aston, Q, March 1996
"TIM" WAS A familiar name around the Greenwich Village folk scene of the '60s, but one with a tragically portentous ring to it. Tim Hardin ...
Billy Bragg, Tom Robinson Band, Paul Weller: Red Wedge
Retrospective and Interview by Johnny Black, Q, March 1996
Only one thing could possibly save us from vicious '80s Conservatism: the assembly of pop pinkos that made up the Labour-supporting Red Wedge organisation. Johnny ...
Pulp: Here's Looking At You, Kids
Report and Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, April 1996
PULP LANDED in Sweden last night, but they're still coming down from Japan. Circumnavigational jet lag vies with cultural bouleversement for command of the mental ...
Nirvana: The Kurt Cobain Memorial
Interview by Dave Thompson, Q, April 1996
Four days after Kurt Cobain's suicide, thousands gathered in his home city to attend the event that became his public funeral, falling somewhere between touching ...
Steve Earle: Birth, School, Work, Heroin, Coke, Marriage, Heroin, Marriage, Crack, Prison...
Interview by Bill Prince, Q, May 1996
There are eight million stories... and they all happened to Steve Earle. Six weddings, 27 years of drug addiction, 30 days in chokey, one hit ...
Review by David Quantick, Q, June 1996
FOR DEF Leppard, it really ought to be That Time Of The Career. ...
Burt Bacharach: See You Later, Elevator!
Profile and Interview by Stuart Maconie, Q, July 1996
Imprisoned in music's metaphorical lift for years, Burt Bacharach has emerged on to a mezzanine packed with thousands of dewy-eyed disciples. "It's sensational news," he ...
Everything But The Girl: We Want To Be Togethurr…
Interview by David Quantick, Q, July 1996
LUXEMBOURG IS not, it may be safely said, the most exciting country in the world. Even the national anthem is reduced to banging on about ...
Blue Nile, The: The Blue Nile: Peace At Last (Warner)
Review by Stuart Maconie, Q, July 1996
AS PROLIFIC AS the Easter Island statue makers and with almost as underworked a PR, The Blue Nile will feature heavily when Arthur C. Clarke's ...
T. Rex: Eyewitness: The First Glastonbury Festival, September 19-20, 1970
Retrospective and Interview by Johnny Black, Q, July 1996
No Glastonbury this year! No matter! Let Q whisk you back to the first festival of Pop, Folk & Blues At Worthy Farm – a ...
Mark Morrison: Have You Paid For That, Sir?
Interview by David Quantick, Q, August 1996
I have actually – for I am Number 1 swingster Mark Morrison, former lodger at Her Majesty's pleasure, Leicester's most wanted and fully qualified (and, ...
Eagles, The: 'We're the F***in' Eagles. Kiss My Ass!'
Retrospective and Interview by Tom Hibbert, Q, August 1996
Thus, in 1972, spake Bernie Leadon, then guitarist with FM country rock's Biggest Band Ever. As their Hell Freezes Over tour hits the UK, and ...
Boo Radleys, The: The Boo Radleys: Didn't Feel A Thing
Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, September 1996
"IF YOU'RE doing music you're supposed to pretend you're something you're not, you're supposed to sound as though you come from a different planet. You're ...
Review by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, September 1996
HE MAY be 30 years "in the business", 25 albums down the line, and possessed of all the fans his idiosyncratic body of work is ...
Associates, The, Billy Mackenzie: Those Last Impressions: Billy MacKenzie
Retrospective by Lucy O'Brien, Q, 1997
When Billy MacKenzie committed suicide in January, he was about to re-launch a career that sparkled briefly but brilliantly with The Associates. Lucy O'Brien recalls ...
Retrospective by Johnny Black, Q, February 1997
THE TWIST WAS the most remarkable dance phenomenon in the history of the rock era. Here's the story of how it happened in the words ...
Report and Interview by Dave Rimmer, Q, February 1997
They're back, and this time they're organic... Dave Rimmer hops on board the Yes reunion special ...
Interview by Martin Aston, Q, April 1997
They varnish their nails, yet they eat at McDonald's. The singer has a Ziggy-like alter ego, while the bassist likes to pretend he's called Stove. ...
Monkees, The: The Monkees: People Said They Monkeyed Around
Interview by David Quantick, Q, April 1997
...only they didn't. At all. For being The Monkees was no fun. They couldn't play on their records; their film was crap, but, unlike the ...
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds: The Boatman's Call
Review by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, April 1997
"I DON'T believe in an interventionist God/But I know, darling, that you do" ('Into My Arms'). Those are the first lines of the album; Cave's ...
Fleetwood Mac: Eyewitness: The Recording of Fleetwood Mac's Rumours
Interview by Johnny Black, Q, May 1997
They were, it seemed, about to go their own ways, but first, troubled Fleetwood Mac had to finish off Rumours. To this end they needed ...
Fun Lovin' Criminals: De Westercas Fabriek, Amsterdam
Live Review by Lucy O'Brien, Q, May 1997
"WHEN WE STARTED, people would throw stuff at us for free. We got $25,000 this time," says Huey, lead singer and guitarist of New York ...
Faithless: Wir Sind Berliners!
Profile and Interview by Martin Aston, Q, May 1997
Faithless: in no way Eurosceptic. ...
James: Valiant James Back From the Brink
Report and Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, May 1997
James: The Roxy, Atlanta, Georgia ...
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 ...
Creedence Clearwater Revival, John Fogerty: John Fogerty: Rock Now, Pay Later
Interview by Bill Prince, Q, July 1997
Life's a bitch when you lose a few million in a big banking scam, get sued for plagiarising yourself and haven't released a record in ...
Interview by David Quantick, Q, July 1997
They are the quite spicy girls. A long time ago, they were manufactured by a pair of svengalis. Since then, they've had lorryloads of hits, ...
Dollar: Where Are They Now? Dollar
Interview by Martin Aston, Q, July 1997
Once they sat behind the gilt-inlaid desk of success, with the keys to the executive washroom; then, suddenly, they were "downsized". ...
Pet Shop Boys: Savoy Theatre, London
Live Review by Stuart Maconie, Q, August 1997
Exuberant! Pet Shop Boys goosing the good folk of Evita-land ...
“Bastards. Liars. Pimps. Theives. Scumsuckers. Perverts...”
Report and Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, August 1997
...And that's some of the nicer things they say about rock'n'roll managers. they may have swapped their baseball bats for law degrees, but as Phil ...
Paul Weller: Heavy Soul (Island) ****
Review by Mark Cooper, Q, August 1997
Paul Weller: very much lord of his "manor". ...
Oasis: In The Studio With Oasis
Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, September 1997
An interview with Oasis producer Owen Morris ...
Oasis: “Piece of piss!”: The Oasis Diaries
Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, September 1997
The drugs, the in-fighting, the secret weddings and, in the midst of it all, just the small matter of the most anticipated album of the ...
Oasis: “Of course, me and Liam had a row about it...”
Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, September 1997
Seventy-two minutes. Twelve tracks. No co-credits. Noel Gallagher talks Phil Sutcliffe through Oasis's third magnum opus, Be Here Now. ...
Overview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, November 1997
Or the New Dylans. Or the New Stones. Maybe they were the New Johnny Hates Jazz. Whatever, whether plugging a gap left by the originals ...
Bob Dylan: Drop-kicked by Jesus: Bob Dylan's Conversion
Retrospective by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, December 1997
In which the eternal sceptic did a Damascus and managed an unlikely artistic rebirth. Phil Sutcliffe takes confession... ...
Mary J. Blige: Amager Bio, Copenhagen ****
Live Review by David Quantick, Q, January 1998
Once grumpy and so hopeless live she'd get booed offstage. Now... Nice Girl ...
Oasis: Put It Next To The Other Three
Interview by Adrian Deevoy, Q, January 1998
What a shoddy old year it's been for Oasis. Only six million copies of Be Here Now shifted. Only voted The Best Act In The ...
Kristin Hersh, Throwing Muses: Kristin Hersh
Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, March 1998
At 6, Kristin Hersh was a hippy commune kid whose babysitter was on acid. At 22 she had a brain tumor and thought evil spirits ...
Report and Interview by David Quantick, Q, March 1998
They're about to break through, they're ever so Welsh and their singer is losing her voice on the first date of the tour... ...
Madonna: Ray Of Light (WEA) ****
Review by Stuart Maconie, Q, April 1998
She's dumped Warren Beatty, she's been Eva Peron and she's had Carlos The Tackle's child. Now it's time to go back to work... ...
Report and Interview by Lucy O'Brien, Q, May 1998
Envy All Saints, but only a little bit, because Brit Awards mean nothing when you're in Miami, working your hits off. Lucy O'Brien is along ...
Garbage: What Do You Think Of It So Far?
Interview by David Quantick, Q, June 1998
Garbage! They've sold millions of albums, but they wonder if that's a good thing when Steve Marker's gone stir crazy, Shirley Manson is shackled and ...
Simply Red: Have You Got A Bit Of Manchester In You?
Interview by Adrian Deevoy, Q, June 1998
And if not, would you like some? Beware, ladies, for it is Mick Hucknall, humbled by heartbreak but still hopping on like a russet-headed horny ...
Saint Etienne: Town Hall Crypt, Middlesbrough
Live Review by Stuart Maconie, Q, July 1998
What's a nice, fey band doing in a place like this? ...
Oasis, Saint Etienne, Verve, The: Eyewitness December 1993: Oasis Support The Verve
Retrospective and Interview by Johnny Black, Q, July 1998
Freshly signed to Creation, Oasis venture out on UK tour earning £50 a night supporting The Verve – known at the time as just plain ...
Primal Scream, Depeche Mode: Depeche Mode and Primal Scream: The Most Debauched Tour Ever
Retrospective and Interview by Johnny Black, Q, August 1998
Depeche Mode have been touring for almost a year. Drug and alcohol abuse is rife and the group are close to breaking point. The obvious ...
Prince: The Artist Formerly Known As Successful
Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, September 1998
He wriggled away From Warners and the quality control went West. He swopped Prince for Victor for Slave for O(+>) and the fans just couldn't ...
Voice Of The Beehive: Where Are They Now? Voice Of The Beehive
Interview by Martin Aston, Q, September 1998
Fronted by American sisters Tracey and Melissa Belland, Voice Of The Beehive mixed frothy pop, zany threads, girl-power attitude and Top 30 action in 1988 ...
Billy Mackenzie: Tom Doyle: The Glamour Chase – The Maverick Life Of Billy MacKenzie (Bloomsbury)
Book Review by Martin Aston, Q, September 1998
EVERY PICTURE tells a story. In this biography of the late singer Billy MacKenzie, there's a photo, circa 1971, of St. Michael's School's under-15s Football ...
Sinead O'Connor: Eyewitness October 1992: America Slays Sinead O'Connor
Retrospective and Interview by Johnny Black, Q, September 1998
Two weeks after tearing up a picture of the pope on Saturday Night Live and receiving a lifetime ban from the US TV show, Sinead ...
UNKLE: Psyence Fiction (Mo'Wax)
Review by Stuart Maconie, Q, September 1998
Thom Yorke, Richard Ashcroft, one of Metallica, a Beastie Boy: all on the same record. Whoo! ...
Interview by Adrian Deevoy, Q, October 1998
She hasn't taken heroin and she won't gossip about Eric Clapton, so what will she do? "People have needs," she tells Adrian Deevoy, darkly. ...
Marilyn Manson: Mechanical Animals (NOTHING) ****
Review by Ian Gittins, Q, November 1998
Return of the Thin White Berk. ...
Jools Holland’s Rhythm And Blues Orchestra: Exeter University, October 8, 1998
Review and Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, November 1998
At 3pm Jools Holland skis down the clouds above Exeter airport in the co-pilot’s seat of a chartered four-seater. Thumb aloft he leers over his ...
Joy Division: The Making Of Unknown Pleasures
Retrospective and Interview by Johnny Black, Q, November 1998
Joy Division settle into 10cc's Strawberry Studios in Stockport to record one of the greatest albums of the 70s. But Ian Curtis has just discovered ...
Overview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, December 1998
Stress, nervous exhaustion, clinical depression: a litany of mental maladies lie in wait for the endlessly-gigging, maniacally-drugging, heart-on-sleeve purveyor of rock'n'roll. Phil "Prozac" Sutcliffe dons ...
Report and Interview by David Sinclair, Q, December 1998
Yes, maam! Safety-conscious Celine Dion is the vowel-wobbling queen of candyfloss pop, and for 30 months she's sold one album every 1.2 seconds. David Sinclair ...
Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, December 1998
It is the '80s, and the decade is full of one Irish band and their guitarist's exotic millinary. So, follow Edge through the first ever ...
Review by Ian Gittins, Q, December 1998
New album which isn't the new album, but which still has a certain genius. ...
Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, 1999
"I spent last weekend in this delirium of writing," bubbles Beth Orton, delight unleashing her accent’s full eccentricity – Cockney caw, Norfolk moo and middle-class ...
Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, 1999
Sharleen Spiteri is foaming in retrospect. "I don’t like lies, I don’t like bullshit," she affirms, her fist impressing the point on the arm of ...
Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, 1999
As soon as Smashing Pumpkins released Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness in October 1995, their shaven-skulled mainman Billy Corgan buttheaded his way round the ...
Prince: The Artist: Emancipated Slave
Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, 1999
"I have dreams of angels holding notes indefinitely in perfect pitch and you don’t want it to stop because if it does you’re dead!" The ...
Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, 1999
Coolio stands centre-stage holding a rubber johnny aloft. "How many o’you been fuckin’?" he hollers. "Huh?" Two thousand of what one can only describe as ...
Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, 1999
At the Variety Theatre in Five Points, Atlanta’s erstwhile hippy district, Joan Osborne is three songs in, sweating, big as a stallion up there on ...
Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, 1999
Phil Sutcliffe talks to Jon Bon Jovi & Richie Sambora ...
Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, 1999
"I heard it on the radio: Dave had overdosed, nearly died, then been arrested for drugs offences. That was when I thought Depeche Mode were ...
Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, 1999
Between a midnight skyful of stars and the sparkling carpet of Seattle’s city lights a small jetplane winks and twinkles. Within, knee to knee in ...
Radiohead: an interview with Thom Yorke
Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, 1999
This is odd. Bound for America, gnawing a touch anxiously on the prospect of an interview with Radiohead’s Thom Yorke – and here he is, ...
Retrospective by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, 1999
The Wedding Of The Decade’s glamourous shambles began back-stage after The Rolling Stones’ Paris Olympia show on September 23, 1970. When Mick Jagger met 25-year-old ...
Report and Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, 1999
IN THIS ISSUE of Q, Michael Stipe, whose public utterances have crept closer to coming out of late, finally does the deed in a cool ...
Report and Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, 1999
The Verve are gone and rumour says it was Richard Ashcroft being a prima donna, it was Nick McCabe being a wimp, it was their ...
Report and Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, 1999
Phil Sutcliffe checks out the history of British bands making it, and failing to make it, in the USA, and looks at the example of ...
Emerson Lake And Palmer: ELP: The Unsung Roadie
Report and Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, 1999
Consider this as a picture at an exhibition. A 10,000-seat arena on the afternoon before an Emerson, Lake & Palmer concert; on stage an orderly ...
Sheryl Crow, Joan Osborne, Alanis Morissette: Silent Partners: Writers, Producers, Players
Report and Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, 1999
Phil Sutcliffe looks at the men who helped midwife albums by Sheryl Crow, Joan Osborne and Alanis Morissette ...
Report by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, 1999
There’s a knock at the front door. You open it. A slight young man standing there says, "Today I’m here to talk to you about ...
Sinead O'Connor: Sinéad O’Connor Hits Back at Tabloid Critics
Report by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, 1999
Yet another awful week in the tabloids for Sinéad O’Connor began on April 12 with The Sun’s "Sinéad’s Shambles" headline on its coverage of the ...
Overview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, 1999
Nobody goes into rock’n’roll for the money. No, really. Ask any band. But the trouble is if a lot of people like them they get ...
Overview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, 1999
Phil Sutcliffe tells of the winners and losers in music publishing ...
Kinky Friedman: God Bless John Wayne (Faber and Faber)
Review and Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, 1999
Kinky Friedman is full of himself. He always was in his ’70s singing days with provocateur country & western outfit The Texas Jewboys. And now ...
Dave Matthews Band: The Pyramid, Memphis, August 11, 1998
Review and Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, 1999
BIG IN AMERICA. Small everywhere else. Knows how to deal with tear gas. "I’m here to serve woman, to knock out that moose and drag ...
Manic Street Preachers: Northgate Arena, Chester
Review and Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, 1999
"It’s quite corny," James Dean Bradfield allows, reflecting on Manic Street Preachers' September tour of the towns that rock forgot. "I just remember where we ...
Retrospective and Interview by Johnny Black, Q, 1999
29 JULY 1974. Filming begins on the rock movie Slade In Flame, on location in the UK. ...
Review by Mark Cooper, Q, January 1999
Yo! Apocalypse: It's a mad, bad, Wu-Tang world ...
Eyewitness: March 1952 — The First Rock'n'Roll Concert
Retrospective and Interview by Johnny Black, Q, February 1999
10,000 people smashed down the doors to get in, none of the bands were paid and one man was stabbed in the arse. After the ...
Beck: The Town Hall, New York NY
Live Review by Ian Gittins, Q, March 1999
He's released an odd new album. Oddly, he's only going to play it once. ...
Interview by Dorian Lynskey, Q, March 1999
This Houston teen foursome are produced by Timbaland for Missy Misdemeanour's label but it's not going to their heads. ...
Kate Bush: Eyewitness: The Grooming Of Kate Bush
Retrospective and Interview by Johnny Black, Q, March 1999
It wouldn't happen now. Kate Bush was 16 when Pink Floyd's David Gilmour recommended her to EMI records. Over the next two years, the arty ...
Kula Shaker: Peasants Pigs & Astronauts (Columbia) ***
Review by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, March 1999
FOR A WHILE in 1996 it looked as though Kula Shaker were being watched over by the pantheon of gods and other bods portrayed on ...
Blur: The Prehistory of Blur: 'We Were Very... Purple'
Retrospective and Interview by Stuart Maconie, Q, April 1999
A mohican, Artaud, pyjama bottoms, The Cardiacs, sackings, Pernod, dressing up as the Ayatollah Khomeini: all of this and more in the story of Blur ...
Report and Interview by Dorian Lynskey, Q, October 1999
Music invented by Jean Michel Jarre and already declared passé twice in the last 10 years is all over the charts, packing out clubs and ...
Report and Interview by Adrian Deevoy, Q, November 1999
Sometimes even Q needs a break. Usually this means a week in a prefab on Selsea Bill, but this year Signor Sting – Tuscan summer ...
Destiny's Child: Destiny’s Child: Invasion Of The Booty-Snatchers
Interview by Lucy O'Brien, Q, 2000
What’s "up" with Destiny’s Child, R&B’s only three-piece quartet? Members keep getting whacked and replaced by ringers, but millions of fans – many of them ...
Bee Gees, The: How the Bee Gees got into Disco: An Oral History of Main Course
Retrospective and Interview by Johnny Black, Q, April 2000
NOTE: This is a considerably extended version of the piece published in Q. ...
Garbage: Cash For Questions With Shirley Manson
Interview by David Quantick, Q, June 2000
Chair throwing, coprophagy, sniffing Courtney Love... and that's just you lot – arf! Garbage's fiery songstress would much rather relax with Ravel and some GM ...
Band, The, Bob Dylan: Dylan and The Band: Obviously Five Believers
Retrospective and Interview by Andy Gill, Q, October 2000
He took them round the world – to endless booing. They settled in Woodstock, separated, and then reunited for the highest grossing tour of the ...
Retrospective and Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, December 2000
THE POOR BOY looked at Paul McCartney. "I saw him through a crack in the door, going up the stairs chatting with my mum," says ...
Review by Dan Gennoe, Q, 2001
JAMIROQUAI/JAY KAY has shrugged off many a jibe about his disco-funk devotion – not to mention hats, dancing... But if 16 million album sales haven't ...
Dido: No Angel? An Audience with Pop's New Queen
Profile and Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, January 2001
"HELLO, LOVE, IT'S ME," chirps Dido into her mobile phone. Q tries not to listen. Q listens. "Did you record The Sopranos? Great." Then some ...
Review and Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, April 2001
IAN MACDONALD, now 52, was enraptured by The Beatles as a teenager, then generally disappointed by pop music from 1980 onwards. His attempt "to bring ...
Guns N' Roses: Democracy in Action: Guns N'Roses
Report and Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, July 2001
THURSDAY IS a low-key night at The Cat on Sunset. Proprietor, Slim Jim Phantom, ex-Stray Cats drummer and current self-styled Prince Of The Strip, has ...
Interview by Adrian Deevoy, Q, August 2001
Dido Florian Cloud de Bounevialle Armstrong left home at 15, reckons she's "worth 15 billion pounds", guzzles painkillers and measures hotel swimming pools before she ...
Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, August 2001
CERYS MATTHEWS slung a guitar round her neck and strummed a few chords. Then something caught her eye. She stopped and stared. Her jaw dropped. ...
Mike Oldfield: The Making of Tubular Bells
Retrospective and Interview by Johnny Black, Q, August 2001
One of the most influential pieces of music in rock history – much imitated, used in movies, TV commercials and documentaries, sampled by Janet Jackson, ...
Spiritualized: Jason Pierce: The Urban Spaceman Falls To Earth
Report and Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, September 2001
COSMIC OR WHAT? Jason Pierce has conducted Q to a yellowed Hoxton hostelry called the Macbeth. By the door it sports a tiled mural illustrating ...
Terence Trent D'Arby: Where Are They Now: Terence Trent D'Arby
Report and Interview by Johnny Black, Q, Summer 2001
ONCE THE snake-hipped future of soul, Terence Trent D'Arby never quite capitalized on the enormous publicity that greeted his arrival in the mid-'80's, nor the ...
Review by Dan Gennoe, Q, 2002
AS THIS COLLECTION of reworked tracks from last year's Outrospective album makes all too clear, Faithless don't wear remixes well. So reliant are their songs ...
Dashboard Confessional: The Places You Have Come To Fear The Most
Review by Dan Gennoe, Q, 2002
IF THE "EMO" fraternity need a hero, Florida's Christopher Carrabba, aka Dashboard Confessional, is their man. Hurling a barrage of poetic abuse and violently chugging ...
Review by Dan Gennoe, Q, 2002
DITCHING THE TEEN seduction of her 1999 debut, Christina Aguilera’s second album attempts to speedup the aging process and shake off her wannabe Britney Spears ...
Review by Dan Gennoe, Q, 2002
A 17-YEAR-OLD skate chick with the face of a rebellious angel and attitude to match, singer-songwriter Avril Lavigne should be the answer to every record ...
Report and Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, February 2002
"I WAS TRYING to prove I could do it and come out alive." That was Eric Clapton's account of his immersion in heroin from 1970-74. ...
Wilco: Hi, My Name's Jeff, and I'm a Wilcoholic
Interview by Toby Manning, Q, May 2002
LIKE ALL LAS VEGAS hotels, the Mandalay Bay is a self-contained city, comprising restaurants, bars, even a "beach," complete with electric waves: anything and everything ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Q, Summer 2002
SINCE IT WAS to l’il old me that a strangely sober Liam Gallagher first whispered the title of the fifth Oasis album – yes, folks, ...
Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, 2003
THE SCENE SHOULD you need it: quiet, sunny May Tuesday morning in Oxford. 10am and all quiet because the students are in bed or at ...
Neil Young: Greendale's Grandpa: Neil Young
Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, September 2003
A WHITE PICKET FENCE, a neat clapboard house, smoke drifting from the chimney. Grandpa Green's rocking on the front porch, reading the paper. He says, ...
Retrospective and Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, September 2003
"SHE'LL BE BIGGER than Olivia Newton John!" That's what incandescent young A&R man Michael Rosenblatt told his boss, Sire Records founder-owner Seymour Stein back in ...
Retrospective by Chris Charlesworth, Q, Spring 2003
NOTE: Like almost everyone else who encountered Led Zeppelin in their pomp in the ‘70s, including many in their employ, I was intimidated by them. ...
Radiohead: The Story Of Tchocky
Report and Interview by Ian Gittins, Q, Summer 2003
ON FEBRUARY 27, 2002, Radiohead designer Stanley Donwood mounted the stage at the Staples Center, Los Angeles, to receive a Grammy for "Best Recording Package" ...
Pink Floyd: No One Knew What They Looked Like: Pink Floyd and the Press
Retrospective by Chris Charlesworth, Q, 2004
THE BOX ARRIVED in Melody Maker’s offices in December 1970, just in time for Christmas, addressed to Michael Watts. It was a sturdily constructed hardwood ...
Robbie Williams: Q Icons: Robbie Williams
Profile by Ian Gittins, Q, 2004
EVERY BRITISH comprehensive school class has its in-house clown. Tirelessly hyperactive and compulsively subversive, he (and it always is a he) leaves at 16 in ...
Soft Cell: The Tainted Life of Soft Cell
Retrospective and Interview by Ian Gittins, Q, 2004
IN 1973 A 16-YEAR-OLD Marc Almond travelled from his hometown of Southport to Liverpool to see David Bowie on his Aladdin Sane tour. Having suffered ...
Review by Dan Gennoe, Q, 2004
BILLIE HOLIDAY crossed with ball-busting rapper Eve, Camden’s Amy Winehouse is easily the most entertaining product of the Sylvia Young stage school – admittedly she ...
Elvis Presley: Elvis: The First Sun Sessions
Retrospective and Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, January 2004
IT WAS A QUIET WEEK in Memphis. Monday, January 4, 1954. Everyone easing into the new year. Nobody paid any attention when, around lunchtime, a ...
Bob Marley & the Wailers: Bob Marley
Retrospective by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, February 2004
DECEMBER 3, 1976. A mellow, starry Friday night at 56 Hope Road, Bob Marley's Kingston home. Children playing in the yard – three of them ...
Bob Marley & the Wailers: The Shooting of Bob Marley
Retrospective by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, February 2004
DECEMBER 3, 1976. A mellow, starry Friday night at 56 Hope Road, Bob Marley's Kingston home. Children playing in the yard - three of them ...
Pete Townshend, Who, The: The Who: Lifehouse
Retrospective and Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, April 2004
TRICKY CUSTOMER, Lifehouse. Pete Townshend spent the best part of a year from autumn, 1970, trying to explain it... ...
Pink Floyd: Life After Roger: Pink Floyd
Retrospective and Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, September 2004
UNTIL AUTUMN 1986, Pink Floyd was the invisible band. Their fame and fortune huge, their individual members anonymous. The arrangement always looked a perfect fit ...
Who, The: Kit Lambert: A Profile
Retrospective by Chris Charlesworth, Q, Spring 2004
"GET HIM OUT of here." "What?" "Get him out. He’s making things worse." "But Pete, he’s... he’s Kit, their manager." ...
Sex Pistols, The, Damned, The: 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 ...
Review by Dan Gennoe, Q, 2006
ANYONE FEARING that the Day-Glo brilliance of 2003's triple Grammy winner, Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, might have marked the height of the Atlanta duo's R&B powers ...
Review by Dan Gennoe, Q, Spring 2006
AFTER INSTIGATING the '80s rock revival currently sweeping the hit factories of US pop, it's only fair that Pink should now get to be its ...
Joan as Policewoman: Joan As Police Woman: Real Life
Review by Dan Gennoe, Q, 2007
FOR JOAN WASSER, having to defer her debut due to viola playing commitments with Antony And The Johnsons, Rufus Wainwright and Scissor Sisters was probably ...
Interview by Robert Sandall, Q, January 2008
The return of was the music event of the year. On the eve of their comeback show at London's O2 arena, here for the first ...
Review by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, June 2012
"TEA ANYONE?" says Rumer from the doorway of her beach hut. "Plenty of sandwiches left." Dazed by the mad March sun, her audience of biz ...
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