Andrew Purcell

Art Brut

Profile and Interview by Andrew Purcell, Big Takeover, The, June 2006

ART BRUT'S guitars lean against gently buzzing amplifiers as the back room of Brooklyn's Sound Fix Records slowly clears out. The penultimate gig of their ...

Black Keys, The: The Black Keys (2011)

Interview by Andrew Purcell, Rock's Backpages Audio, May 2010

Messrs. Auerbach and Carney rap about classic American recording studios, working with Danger Mouse, Ike Turner, the Blackroc project with Damon Dash, and their Brothers and Attack & Release albums.

File format: mp3; file size: 45.6mb, interview length: 49' 48" sound quality: ***

Black Keys, The: The Black Keys: 'It's ridiculous to say that we play the blues'

Report and Interview by Andrew Purcell, Guardian, The, July 2010

FOR EIGHT MONTHS NOW, since the end of a relationship, the Black Keys drummer Pat Carney has been living in New York's Lower East Side. ...

David Byrne: Imelda – The Nightclub Years

Interview by Andrew Purcell, Guardian, The, January 2007

DAVID BYRNE KEEPS a small black diary on his bookcase, with 'DB – Idears' written on the spine in gold ink. Without rifling through its ...

Rosanne Cash

Interview by Andrew Purcell, Sunday Herald (Scotland), January 2007

JOHNNY CASH lives with his daughter. He's in the set of her jaw, the power of her voice, and he stares down proudly from every ...

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah

Profile and Interview by Andrew Purcell, Independent, The, January 2007

TWO YEARS AGO, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah proved that popular music's rules have changed. The old logic of rise and fall still applies though, ...

Ornette Coleman

Interview by Andrew Purcell, Guardian, The, June 2007

THIS AFTERNOON I will meet Ornette Coleman, the world's greatest living jazz musician. Coleman is an iconoclast's iconoclast, Lou Reed's hero, a saxophonist who plays ...

Dion:

Interview by Andrew Purcell, Guardian, The, December 2006

IT'S TEN O'CLOCK on a muggy Florida morning and Dion is ready to talk. He'll talk all day, about his lifelong love of the blues, ...

Good The Bad and The Queen, The, Gorillaz: Gorillaz

Interview by Andrew Purcell, Independent, The, April 2006

THERE ARE GHOSTS at the Apollo. Bobby Byrd holds his master's cape, the amateur night regulars bawl, shimmy and shake, and Fats Gonder asks "are ...

Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five: Grandmaster Flash (2009)

Interview by Andrew Purcell, Rock's Backpages Audio, 2009

Flash talks about his latest album The Bridge, but then takes us back to the Bronx in the mid-'70s, his technical innovations, experiences with Sugar Hill records, and his addiction and the lost years.

File format: mp3; file size: 61.8mb, interview length: 1h 07' 31" sound quality: ****

Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five: Grandmaster Flash: All Hands On Deck

Profile and Interview by Andrew Purcell, Guardian, The, February 2009

They thought he was mad, they spat him off stage, he hit the drugs... But Grandmaster Flash gave 'DJ' a whole new meaning. Andrew Purcell ...

Herbie Hancock (2008)

Interview by Andrew Purcell, Rock's Backpages Audio, November 2008

The piano great on the great '63 Miles Davis Quintet, band democracy, Buddhism, commercialism and much more.

File format: mp3; file size: 52.1mb, interview length: 56' 55" sound quality: *****

Herbie Hancock: Herbie Rides Again

Interview by Andrew Purcell, Guardian, The, November 2008

He has enjoyed electro, pop and funk incarnations but, as Herbie Hancock tells Andrew Purcell, it's all about playing one right note ...

Jeffrey Lewis: The Neurotic from New York: Jeffrey Lewis

Interview by Andrew Purcell, Guardian, The, April 2009

A FEW YEARS AGO, Jeffrey Lewis wrote a song called 'Sal's Pizza Has Sold Out To The Yuppie Scum', complaining about the rising cost of ...

Steve Martin (2011)

Interview by Andrew Purcell, Rock's Backpages Audio, May 2011

The comedian/bluegrass picker Steve Martin talks about banjos, learning to play, his long association with the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and more.

File format: mp3; file size: 27.4mb, interview length: 29' 58" sound quality: *****

National, The: The National: Gloomy … with a Hint of Sunshine

Report and Interview by Andrew Purcell, Guardian, The, April 2010

IT WAS PAST SIX in the morning, in the bar of Bono's hotel in Dublin. The members of the National and REM were seated around ...

Phoenix: By the Time They Get to… Phoenix

Interview by Andrew Purcell, Guardian, The, October 2009

GROWING UP IN Versailles, an affluent suburb of Paris, the four boys who would eventually form Phoenix bonded over their love of American pop culture. ...

Swamp Dogg Bites Back

Interview by Andrew Purcell, Guardian, The, June 2007

"WHEN I FELT like I needed profanity, I used profanity," Swamp Dogg begins. And as he cheerfully swears his way through his 50 years in ...

TV on the Radio: TV On The Radio's Curse

Report and Interview by Andrew Purcell, Big Takeover, The, October 2009

TV ON THE RADIO are victims of their own success. After three albums, they are indisputably the most critically adored band in the western world, ...

Rufus Wainwright: A Year Of Living Judy Garland

Interview by Andrew Purcell, Independent, The, February 2007

THERE IS AN anecdote that Rufus Wainwright enjoys telling about his childhood fascination with Judy Garland. "I wanted to be Dorothy – on good days," ...

Don't Mention The War – Unless You're Over 50

Comment by Andrew Purcell, Guardian, The, June 2006

NEIL YOUNG'S latest album, Living With War, was supposed to be more than a collection of protest songs. To optimistic critics of the occupation of ...