Barney Hoskyns
Barney Hoskyns began writing about music for MELODY MAKER and NEW MUSICAL EXPRESS after leaving Oxford University in 1980. In 1985, he quit his job as staff writer at NME to research a book about soul music. The result was SAY IT ONE TIME FOR THE BROKENHEARTED (UK: Fontana, 1987; Bloomsbury reissue 1998).
Hoskyns’ other books include JAMES DEAN: SHOOTING STAR (UK: Bloomsbury/ US: Doubleday, 1989), MONTGOMERY CLIFT: BEAUTIFUL LOSER (UK: Bloomsbury/ US: Grove, 1992), ACROSS THE GREAT DIVIDE: THE BAND AND AMERICA (UK: Viking/US: Hyperion, 1993) and the novel THE LONELY PLANET BOY: A POP ROMANCE (UK/US: Serpent’s Tail, 1995). His WAITING FOR THE SUN: STRANGE DAYS, WEIRD SCENES & THE SOUND OF LOS ANGELES (UK: Viking/US: St. Martin’s Press, 1996) was nominated for a Ralph J. Gleason award in the U.S.
Aside from his books, Hoskyns has written regularly on pop culture and the arts for British VOGUE, where for five years he was a Contributing Editor, and for THE TIMES, THE GUARDIAN, THE INDEPENDENT, THE OBSERVER and ARENA. Between 1993 and 1999, Hoskyns worked as ASSOCIATE EDITOR and then U.S. BUREAU CHIEF of MOJO, simultaneously contributing to such American publications as HARPER'S BAZAAR, INTERVIEW, SPIN and ROLLING STONE, as well as to AMAZON and CDNOW. In 1998, Faber (UK) and Simon & Schuster (US) published his GLAM! BOWIE, BOLAN & THE GLITTER ROCK REVOLUTION, tying in with Todd Haynes’ VELVET GOLDMINE. Haynes provided an introduction. 1999 saw the publication of the bestselling THE MULLET: HAIRSTYLE OF THE GODS, written with Mark Larson and published by Bloomsbury.
After four years in America, Hoskyns returned to London, writing for GQ (U.S.), SPIN (U.S.), REVOLVER (U.S.), MOJO, THE GUARDIAN, THE INDEPENDENT and the TELEGRAPH magazine. He is a regular broadcaster and pundit on both radio and television, appearing on The TOP TEN series (CHANNEL 4), The I LOVE THE 80s/90s series (BBC 2), WALK ON BY (BBC 2), BEHIND THE MUSIC (VH1) and CLASSIC ALBUMS (BBC2).
In 2000 Barney became Senior Editor of CDNOW in London, leaving to set up Rock’s Backpages. RBP has been acclaimed as a major archival resource by MOJO, THE GUARDIAN, ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY and many others. Barney recently edited THE SOUND AND THE FURY: A ROCK’S BACKPAGES READER.
2003 saw updated reissues of WAITING FOR THE SUN (Bloomsbury) and ACROSS THE GREAT DIVIDE (Pimlico), together with the collection RAGGED GLORIES: CITY LIGHTS, COUNTRY FUNK, AMERICAN MUSIC (Pimlico). Barney's latest book, HOTEL CALIFORNIA: SINGER-SONGWRITERS & COCAINE COWBOYS IN THE L.A. CANYONS, is published in the UK by Fourth Estate and in the US by John Wiley & Sons. An accompanying CD, BACK TO CALIFORNIA, is available on Rhino.
Hoskyns' acclaimed biography of Tom Waits, LOWSIDE OF THE ROAD (2009), is published by Faber in the UK and Broadway/Random House in the US. TRAMPLED UNDER FOOT: THE POWER & EXCESS OF LED ZEPPELIN is published by Faber in September 2012.
List of articles in the library by artist
23 Skidoo — Don't Play Funky For Me!
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, NME, June 1982
"You see, the people who constantly listen to pop have their ears degraded by wrong style and reiteration, senseless reiteration..."– Unity Mitford, taped on 'Porno ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, September 1983
FOR THOSE about to cry "Oh No Not AC/DC", I refute you. I'm really sorry about this, but they've made some fine records and remain ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 1985
Growing up in New Orleans, gospel roots, the country music connection and much more.
File format: mp3; in 2 parts, total file sizes: 57.1mb, total interview length: 1h 02' 15" sound quality: ***
Johnny Adams: The Tan Nightingale (Charly)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, 1987
CHARLY FOLLOW-UP their 1978 reissue of Johnny's Heart And Soul album with a wider-ranging retrospective on the man also known as the Tan Canary. (Given ...
Patrick Adams: Disco's Secret Master: Patrick Adams
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, eMusic.com, December 2007
NOTWITHSTANDING the splendid Hercules & Love Affair, Disco has precious few cult heroes. That once-reviled dilution of funk boasts its share of cult DJs and ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, August 2001
All about making Gold; rages against the (record company) machine; the Stones and Keef; plays new album tracks... and dreaming about Snoop Dogg's pig joke!
File format: mp3; file size: 84.7mb, interview length: 1h 32' 34" sound quality: ***
Ryan Adams: Country Music and its Alternatives
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, May 2001
Ryan Adams was alt.country’s brightest hope – the new Gram Parsons, no less – till his band Whiskeytown unravelled. Then he veered off the No ...
Adele: The Great White Hype: Adele's 19
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, March 2008
SOME DAYS it feels like we've time-traveled back to the early Eighties, when every other month coughed up a new BEST WHITE SOUL VOICE YOU'VE ...
Afghan Whigs: The Afghan Whigs
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, November 1993
"The perfect cv: liquor, pugnacity, political incorrectness, Catholic guilt and incorrigible horndoggery..." ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Request, Spring 1998
MODULAR FRENCHMEN Nicolas Godin and Jean Benoit Dunckel need no reminding that French pop has always been a bit of a joke. With the brilliant ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, June 2007
SO HIP THEY'RE passé, sexy geekboys Air continue to mine the seam of elegiac futurism wowed ten thousand ad executives back in '98. After the ...
Al Green, Ann Peebles, Willie Mitchell: Various Artists: Royal Memphis Soul – Hi Records
Review by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, July 1996
When Muscle Shoals went flabby and Stax couldn't pay their taxes, Hi Records took up the soul baton. Barney Hoskyns says hello to a collection ...
Allman Brothers Band: Southern Men: The Long Tall Saga of the Allman Brothers Band
Retrospective and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, December 2002
"THIS AIN’T NO fashion show," Duane Allman liked to say. "We came here to play." It was a mission statement that summed up what his ...
Marc Almond: Give This Man An Oscar: The Wilde Side of Marc Almond
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, NME, August 1983
MARC ALMOND is very screwed up about being a pop star, which is what comes of hanging around Nick Cave and Genesis P. Orridge. ...
Herb Alpert: The Backpages Interview: Jerry Moss and A&M Records
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, December 2005
RBP: Is it true you and Herb Alpert first met in New York? Was he still working with Lou Adler at the time? ...
Herb Alpert: The House that Herb and Jerry Built: A&M Records
Retrospective and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, March 2006
THE HISTORY of American pop music is filled with great partnerships. Most of them, from Rodgers & Hart to Jam & Lewis, are songwriting teams ...
Angry Samoans, The: The Angry Brigade: Angry Samoans
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, NME, June 1983
ONE OF the singular charms of Back From Samoa by L.A.'s Angry Samoans is that it's over before you even realise you've put it on ...
Aphex Twin: Don't Fear The Aphex: The Weird Genius of Richard James
Profile by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, October 2001
WHEN APHEX TWIN released his groundbreaking Selected Ambient Works 85-92 almost a decade ago, the record arrived as a godsend to anyone who loved Kraftwerk ...
Arrested Development: Rural Revolution: Arrested Development
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Vogue, February 1993
THE NAME suggests a grungy Midwest punk band, but Arrested Development is actually a black rap family based in Atlanta. Like the "Native Tongue" groups ...
Report and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, NME, October 1984
The first year of ZTT has been a spectacular success with Frankie Goes To Hollywood singles 'Relax' and 'Two Tribes' becoming respectively the fourth and ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, June 1982
TWO SOUL products from the mainstream, one of which, The Poet, has been on import since last year, the other being the latest album from ...
Associates, The: Boys Keep Swinging: The Associates’ Singles
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, September 2004
All the 45s from the sublime Scottish duo who briefly threatened to run away with the ‘80s pop circus. ...
Aswad: Conquering Lions Of The Concrete Jungle
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, NME, January 1984
IF REGGAE is dying, how curious that my interest in it is just coming to life. Years of comparative indifference (and ignorance) pass and suddenly ...
Babes in Toyland: Angry Young Women
Essay by Barney Hoskyns, Vogue, 1991
ROCK AND ROLL is being hijacked by angry girls with electric guitars. Tired of playing airbrushed pop dollies for salivating male voyeurs, women on ...
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, Independent, The, 1995
IT'S RARE enough these days that you find two decent bands on the same bill, let alone four. So hats off to the New Musical ...
Burt Bacharach: Back to the Brilliance of Bacharach
Profile by Barney Hoskyns, Times, The, August 1990
Anyone who has a heart, including a new generation of British youngsters, is still falling for the magical Sixties music of Burt Bacharach, says Barney ...
Burt Bacharach: The Look Of Love
Review by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, December 1997
Three-CD box packing 75 examples of highly-crafted pop magic and spanning four decades. The gang’s all here — Dionne, Dusty, Cilla — with only Aretha’s ...
Burt Bacharach: The Backpages Interview: Burt Bacharach
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, October 2005
RBP: What exactly did Sony BMG's Rob Stringer say that prompted you to try something so different with At This Time? ...
Badly Drawn Boy: The Hour of Bewilderbeast (XL/Twisted Nerve)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Spin, Summer 2000
ENGLAND’S SEARCH for post-Britpop heroes goes on. Following the Oasis implosion, everyone’s looking to the bedsit mavericks to save the day: Summer 2000 saw indie ...
Anita Baker: Live at Wembley Arena
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, Times, The, June 1990
ANITA BAKER remains a remarkable phenomenon: an intimate, improvisatory jazz-soul songstress who gigs in vast, impersonal hangars such as Wembley Arena. She should be appearing ...
Hank Ballard and the Midnighters: Hank Ballard (1987)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, 1987
From Alabama to Detroit, from The Royals to The Midnighters, the great Hank Ballard tells of Clyde McPhatter, Billy Ward, King Records and 'The Twist' and 'Work With Me Annie'
File format: mp3; in 2 parts, total file sizes: 42.2meg, total interview length: 46' 05" sound quality: ***
Band, The: AUDIO: Bill Graham on The Band (and Dylan) (1991)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, August 1991
Über-promoter Bill Graham talks about his relationship with The Band, from their Winterland debut to The Last Waltz, via Watkins Glen and the 1974 Dylan mega-tour
File format: mp3 File size: 28.3mb Interview length: 30 minutes 56 seconds Sound quality: ****
Band, The: AUDIO: Elliott Landy on Photographing The Band (1991)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, August 1991
The great rock photographer remembers his time working with The Band, from Woodstock and Big Pink to Los Angeles and The Band sessions.
File format: mp3; in 2 parts, total file sizes: 46.7mb, total interview length: 50' 57" sound quality: ****
Band, The: AUDIO: The Band's Levon Helm (1998)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, November 1998
The Band's drummer takes us from West Memphis nightclubs to The Hawks to Dylan to Big Pink to Muddy Waters, and along the way touches on his break with Robbie Robertson and the death of Richard Manuel
File format: mp3; in 3 parts, total file sizes: 81.1meg, total interview length: 1h 28' 37" sound quality: **
Band, The: AUDIO: The Band's Rick Danko (1995)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, November 1995
A fascinating interview with Rick Danko about living in Woodstock, the Big Pink ("actually magenta") , and working in the Basement with Bob Dylan.
File format: mp3 File size: 28.5mb Interview length: 31 minutes 13 seconds Sound quality: ****
Band, The: Heart & Soul: The Band
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, January 1994
MENTION THE BAND TO PEOPLE IN 1993 and the chances are they'll say: "What band?" So much for the enduring legacy of the finest group ...
Sleevenotes by Barney Hoskyns, Capitol Records, October 2000
IRONICALLY, after the release of Stage Fright in September 1970, The Band spent the ensuing three months touring America. "We had it set up pretty ...
Band, The: The Band: Music From Big Pink
Sleevenotes by Barney Hoskyns, Capitol Records, October 2000
IT ALL BEGAN with a house. An unremarkable ranch house sitting at the end of a long dirt driveway in the shadow of a mountain ...
Band, The: The Band: Stage Fright
Sleevenotes by Barney Hoskyns, Capitol Records, October 2000
THE BAND had good reason to call their third album Stage Fright. On the eve of their live debut at Bill Graham’s Winterland theater in ...
Sleevenotes by Barney Hoskyns, Capitol Records, October 2000
'TWAS IN the early summer of 1968 that legendary rock promoter Bill Graham drove up to the Catskill mountains to propose that The Band make ...
Band, The: The Band: The Last Waltz
Review by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, May 2002
SIXTEEN YEARS, man.....Five years backing the Hawk; two more backing Bob Dylan, for Chrissakes. And then almost a decade on their own, a Band with ...
Band, The, Levon Helm: Levon Helm: Dirt Farmer
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, November 2007
LEVON HELM was the southern heart of that essentially Canadian group The Band, the drummer/singer/mandolinist who gave Robbie Robertson's songs their corn-starch authenticity. Helm it ...
Band, The, Levon Helm: The Weight on Levon Helm
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, unpublished, 1998
LEVON HELM is perched on the arm of a carved wooden chair in his large house-cum-recording studio in Woodstock, N.Y., and he’s cackling his head ...
Band, The, Levon Helm, Garth Hudson: Garth Hudson on Levon Helm
Memoir by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, July 2012
"THE FIRST TIME I saw Levon in action was in Woodstock, Ontario, about thirty-five miles from London, where I grew up. Ronnie and the Hawks ...
Band, The, Robbie Robertson: Robbing America for a storyline thread
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Times, The, October 1991
ROBBIE ROBERTSON should be used to jetlag. He spent 16 years on the road as a member of The Band and knows only too well ...
Lester Bangs: Rock 'n' roll as literature, literature as rock 'n' roll.
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, March 1994
Whither Rock Gomorrah, the great gonzo hack's unpublished swansong? ...
Basement Jaxx: Itchy and Scratchy: In Praise of the Basement Boys
Comment by Barney Hoskyns, eMusic.com, March 2007
BEING OF A certain (old) age, dance culture is something I’ve pretty much grown out of. If I’m really honest, I was already semi-alienated before ...
Beach Boys, The: Brian Wilson and the Legend of Smile
Book Excerpt by Barney Hoskyns, 'Waiting For The Sun', 1996
BY THE TIME ‘Good Vibrations’ had hit No.1 at the end of 1966, Brian was firmly committed to extending pop's boundaries as far as he ...
Beach Boys, The: Hang On To Your Egos: The Beach Boys at 50
Retrospective and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, June 2012
NOTE: With a few minor differences, this was the piece that ran as a MOJO cover story in June 2012.* ...
Beach Boys, The: Mister Optimism: Mike Love Talks
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, March 2008
OVER 45 YEARS have passed since three Californian brothers and their first cousin formed a rocking little combo that harmonized angelically on classic songs about ...
Beach Boys, The: The Beach Boys (2012)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, February 2012
Messrs Brian Wilson, Mike Love, Al Jardine, Bruce Johnstone and David Marks look back at the old days, from the Surf era through Pet Sounds and into the '70s: the songs, the sounds, the good times and bad.
File format: mp3; file size: 64.8mb, interview length: 1h 10' 48" sound quality: ****
Beach Boys, The: The Beach Boys: Smiley Smile/Wild Honey; Beach Boys Concert/Live In London
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Vox, November 1990
WHEN I FIRST BOUGHT Smiley Smile (1967) as a spotty 15-year-old in the mid-'70s, I was pretty astounded by how radically wacko it was. I'd ...
Beach Boys, The, Linda Ronstadt: AUDIO: Nik Venet (1993)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, Summer 1993
From his youth in '50s Baltimore to involvement with Linda Ronstadt and the Canyon Cowboys in '70s L.A., via Kim Fowley, his time at World Pacific and Capitol including producing the Beach Boys and much more: the music biz veteran tells the whole story.
File format: mp3; in 3 parts, total file sizes: 103.6mb, total interview length: 1h 53' 08" sound quality: ***
Beach Boys, The, Brian Wilson: 'Brian Wilson is a Genius': The Birth of a Cult
Essay by Barney Hoskyns, Independent, The, September 1995
ONE OF THE key moments in I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times, record producer Don Was’s black-and-white film about Brian Wilson of the Beach ...
Beach Boys, The, Brian Wilson: Brian Wilson Smiles Again: Live at the Royal Festival Hall, London
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, March 2004
WE STILL HAVE so much invested in the idea of Brian Wilson’s genius. Three decades since he last wrote a genuinely great song, we continue ...
Beach Boys, The, Brian Wilson: Brian Wilson: Imagination (Giant)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Spin, August 1998
IT IS HARD NOT TO harbour mixed feelings about Brian Wilson in the late '90s. While it’s great that he’s up and about (and not ...
Beastie Boys, The: There's Something about the Beastie Boys
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, Request, December 1998
I CAN STILL REMEMBER the morning, way back in the sweaty London summer of 1983, when three skinny New York wiseasses burst into the New ...
Beat, The, Fleetwood Mac: The US Festival: Us & Them
Report by Barney Hoskyns, NME, September 1982
That Woz the Fest that Woz! Barney Hoskyns takes a bite of the rotten Apple and hangs his head in despair ...
AUDIO: Beck in Los Angeles, part 1 (1997)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, January 1997
Beck talks to Barney Hoskyns about hip hop, folk, blues and the making and success of Odelay.
File format: mp3 File size: 27.6mb Interview length: 40 minutes 18 seconds Sound quality: ****
AUDIO: Beck in Los Angeles, part 2 (1997)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, January 1997
Beck talks to Barney Hoskyns about country music, Los Angeles, his artist grandfather, Tom Waits and more.
File format: mp3 File size: 24.4mb Interview length: 35 minutes 39 seconds Sound quality: ****
Beck, Al Hansen, and the new Art Rock
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, World Art, September 1998
LAST MAY, "Beck and Al Hansen: Playing With Matches" opened at the Santa Monica Museum of Art. This fall and winter the exhibition can be ...
Review and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, March 2005
Funky-go-lucky yin to the mournful Drake-meets-Gainsbourg yang of Sea Change. ...
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, February 1999
With the MTV Unplugged era now firmly behind us, Beck is at some pains to explain that tonight’s show - one of only two in ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, March 1997
ON A WARM January afternoon of the kind that’s almost unique to Los Angeles, an enormous lime-green 1969 Chevrolet pickup is lumbering noisily up a ...
Beck: Being For the Benefit of Mr. Hansen
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, Observer, The, September 1999
THE GANG’S all here: Yoko Ono and Gwyneth Paltrow, Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson, Kate Moss and Evan Dando. All have ventured out on a ...
Beck: The Shock of the Old: Beck and the New Roots Explosion
Report and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, December 1998
"...to be an American (unlike English or French or whatever) is precisely to imagine a destiny rather than to inherit one; since we have always ...
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, Times, The, September 2012
RIPLEY... EPSOM... WALLINGTON. The names hardly resonate in the way that Clarksdale or Greenville or Natchez do. Yet in their way these Surrey towns are ...
Barry Beckett: Soul Provider: Muscle Shoals keyboard legend Barry Beckett in His Own Words
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, June 2009
NOTE: This is a pretty straight transcript of what the late Barry Beckett said to me in his new Warner Brothers office in Nashville in ...
William Bell: Do Right Man (Charly)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, August 1984
‘YOU DON'T Miss Your Water’ was only the fifth single on Stax. That was 1961, and pipe-smoking William Bell was there not only to see ...
Bert Berns: The Soul Man with a Huckster's Heart
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, March 1998
HE WAS, said Jerry Wexler, "a paunchy, nervous cat with a shock of unruly black hair". He looked like a vaguely disreputable cross between Gene ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, October 1993
The 'Louie Louie' man looks back at his youth in Los Angeles, cutting his first records, the crooks and the rip-offs, and his battle to regain the rights to his most famous song.
File format: mp3; file size: 42.1mb; Interview length: 45' 56"; sound quality: ****
Big Star: Big Star Third at London's Barbican
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, May 2012
I WENT TO LONDON'S BARBICAN last night, fully prepared to be underwhelmed and unsatisfied: so many of these album recreations are too ramshackle for their ...
Big Star: AUDIO: Jim Dickinson on the making of Big Star's Third/Sister Lovers (1999)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 1999
The legendary Memphis musician and producer looks back at the making of Big Star's Third/Sister Lovers. It's all here: the characters and the chaos, the fun and the frustrations. Great story-telling.
File format: mp3; in 2 parts, total file sizes: 53.6mb, total interview length: 58' 34" sound quality: * (phone interview)
Big Star: Big Star Story (Rykodisc)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, January 2004
Mildly unsatisfactory smattering of tracks by genius Memphis quartet/trio – the acme of twisted '70s power pop. ...
Big Star, Lester Bangs: The Great Lig in the Sky: The Legendary Rock Writers Convention of May 1973
Retrospective and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, June 2006
ON MEMORIAL DAY weekend in May 1973, over a hundred of the leading rock writers of the day flew into Memphis, Tennessee, for 72 hours ...
Big Star, Alex Chilton: The Man Who Preferred Not To: Alex Chilton
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, Dig, The (Japan), November 1999
IF EVERYONE who heard the Velvet Underground in the ’60s formed a band – so the joke goes – then everyone who heard Big Star ...
Big Star, Alex Chilton: Wayward Sons: The Ballad of Big Star
Retrospective and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, February 2000
THE SUN is going down on Memphis, site of rock’n’roll’s immaculate conception and explosive birth. On a warm spring evening, the Mississippi’s purplish-brown waters are ...
Jane Birkin, Serge Gainsbourg: Creme Anglaise: Jane Birkin
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Vogue, May 2003
THE REMAINS of an English breakfast stand on a table, and several bags are strewn around the room – one of them a well-worn example ...
Jane Birkin, Serge Gainsbourg: Jane Birkin: Je T’Aime… Moi Aussi!
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, January 2003
FOR THOSE of you who missed it, the general premise of the current TV ad for Kronenberg 1664 lager is as follows: If Britain were ...
Birthday Party, The: The Birthday Party: The Bad Seed EP
Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, February 1983
"IF, LOVING a woman more than anything in the world, or anticipating the possibility of such a love, one were suddenly to see her chained ...
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, NME, October 1981
IT'S A CHILL, exposed night in New York City. The East Coast has only just recovered from a week of torrential rains, and winds sweeping ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, June 1995
POP IS BACK, rock is dead (again). That, at any rate, is one conclusion we could draw from the success of Bjork Gudmundsdottir. ...
Björk: Bjork: Love Her or Loathe Her?
Comment by Barney Hoskyns, New Woman, Spring 1996
THERE SEEMS TO be a bit of a backlash against Bjork Gudmundsdottir, but God knows why. From every angle she strikes me as a thrilling ...
Björk: Losing My Origin: Björk's 20-Year Voyage Into the Musical Unknown
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, eMusic.com, July 2007
I HAVE A ten-year-old son who loves OutKast and Kanye West but recoils in horror when I play favourite albums by Kate Bush or Mary ...
Review and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, August 2005
MUCH HAS changed in the world of Chester Thompson, aka Frank Black, in the last two years. He's parted company from trusty sidekicks the Catholics, ...
Frank Black: The Backpages Interview: Frank Black
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, July 2005
RBP: Where did the idea of going down south to record Honeycomb come from? ...
Black Box Recorder: The Facts of Life
Review by Barney Hoskyns, cdnow.com, 2000
TIRED OF Brit guitar bands? Luke Haines of British trio Black Box Recorder is. Which is why he’s finally disbanded his old (guitar) group the ...
Black Crowes, The: Not Shaven But Raven: The Black Crowes at Newport Centre
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, Independent, The, January 1995
WHEN THEY emerged in 1990, it was difficult not to hate the Black Crowes: they were too retro for their own damn good. Led by ...
Memoir by Barney Hoskyns, eMusic.com, Winter 2007
THE RECENT PUBLICATION of Joe Carducci's moving and fascinating Enter Naomi: SST, L.A. and All That... (Wyoming: Redoubt Press) takes me back 25 years to ...
Black Flag in the California Scum
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, NME, November 1982
WHEN BLACK FLAG came to England last winter, they felt more than the ice and snow – they felt the cold studs on leather jackets, ...
Book Review by Barney Hoskyns, Village Voice, 2001
IT'S KINDA IRONIC that the untold story of the Los Angeles punk scene should be officially told (tolled?) at a time when New York City ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, February 1982
AS GUN Clubs and Blasters abound and multiply from the original Slash stock of X’s and Flesh Eaters, the LA hard punk core gets back ...
Black Sabbath: Live Evil (Vertigo)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, February 1983
THE ORIGINAL BLACK Sabbath was a primal slum punk band, a scummy brummie leather-and-crucifix reaction to middle-class flower power. Now they're just another Stateside stadium ...
Black Sabbath: Prole Metal to Ozzy and Beyond
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, Creem, 1982
FROM THE first oafish gothic crash of 'Black Sabbath' it was clear this band was dumb. Really intensely dumb. Even in that first hearing there ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, July 1989
Bobby Bland talks about his influences, including MOR men like Perry Como and Andy Williams, and about the ups and downs of his career. Oh, and how C.L. Franklin gave him "the squall".
File format: mp3 File size: 15.8mb Interview length: 17 minutes 12 seconds Sound quality: ****
Bobby 'Blue' Bland: For Members Only: Bobby Bland on Malaco
Sleevenotes by Barney Hoskyns, Malaco Records, October 2010
TWENTY-FIVE years ago, searching for the extant spirit of southern soul, I made my way to a former Pepsi-Cola warehouse in a decidedly unlovely industrial ...
Bobby 'Blue' Bland: Malaco: Soul’s Retirement Home
Report and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Times, The, July 1989
"BLUES SINGERS don't retire", said the late Howlin' Wolf, and Bobby "Blue" Bland might well agree with him. After thirty seven years virtually nonstop on ...
Bobby 'Blue' Bland: Two Steps from the Blues: The Gospel According to Bobby 'Blue' Bland
Book Excerpt by Barney Hoskyns, From a Whisper to a Scream (Fontana Books), 1991
WHEN HOWLIN' WOLF left Memphis for Chicago in late 1952, Sun Records' Sam Phillips was left with a crop of younger blues singers who in ...
Mary J. Blige: The Drama of Being Mary J. Blige
Profile by Barney Hoskyns, Observer, The, November 2005
"WE LOVE YOU, MARY!" The shouts float up from isolated pockets in the plush auditorium housed within Columbus Circle's glitzy Time Warner building. Mary J. ...
Retrospective and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, February 1999
"And you don’t stop/Do the punk rock..." ...
Blow Monkeys, The: Blow Monkeys: Do The Atom Drum Bop
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, NME, September 1984
I KNOW the dismay and disgust with pop music is getting a mite predictable round these parts, but it does seem that new nadirs are ...
Blue Nile, The: The Blue Nile (1989)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, September 1989
Paul Buchanan and Robert Bell on the lengthy process of recording their second album, Hats, and about musical purity versus commercial acceptance.
File format: mp3; file size: 33.8mb, interview length: 36' 56" sound quality: ***
Blue Nile, The: Paul Buchanan Phones Home
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, March 1995
WE'VE BEEN IN ALL sorts of places for a couple of years, just meandering around the world on a fairly frugal basis – America, Italy, ...
Blue Nile, The: Peace with Honour: The Blue Nile
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Independent, The, June 1996
WHEN PAUL Buchanan opens the new Blue Nile album with the question "Now that I’ve found peace at last/Tell me, Jesus, will it last?", his ...
Blue Nile, The: The Blue Nile: High (Sanctuary)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Observer, The, July 2004
ANYONE WHO loves the Blue Nile as much as I do will know there is something profoundly holy about their music. Twenty years after the ...
Blue Nile, The, Danny Wilson: The Soul of Scotland: Danny Wilson/The Blue Nile
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Sunday Correspondent, October 1989
"THE WHOLE Scottish scene is getting a little out of hand", admits Ronnie Gurr, an affable, affluent-looking Scotsman who, in his capacity as a roving ...
Blue Orchids, The: The Blue Orchids: University of London
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, May 1982
PETE WYLIE travelled the length of greater England to see them, so why weren't you there? ...
Blue Oyster Cult, AC/DC, Whitesnake: Fantasy Castle: Monsters of Rock!
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, July 1981
BARNEY HOSKYNS straps on his breastplate, girds his loins and takes his sword to the HM Monsters Of Rock joust at Castle Donington. ...
Marc Bolan, T. Rex: Marc Bolan 25 Years On
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, Daily Mirror, September 2002
A MONTH before the tragic car crash that killed him on September 16, 1977, a 29-year-old Marc Bolan told fellow pop star Steve Harley: "I'd ...
Bon Jovi: Jon Bon Jovi on the Beach
Report and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, New Woman, 1997
THE ROCKAWAY BEACH housewives can’t quite believe their eyes. Leaning moodily against a lamp-post on this faded seaside street is the drop-dead-handsome rock star they ...
Booker T & The MGs: The Backroom Boys: Booker T & the MGs
Retrospective and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, August 2001
IF EVER THERE WAS a piece of music that deserved the epithet "timeless", it’s Booker T. & the MGs’ ‘Green Onions’. The most basic of ...
David Bowie: Ziggy Stardust, now a man of wealth and taste
Essay by Barney Hoskyns, Independent, The, June 2002
IT IS NO COINCIDENCE that June 2002 is turning out to be David Bowie month. This time 30 years ago, trading under the plastic-fantastic moniker ...
Bread: Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread
Sleevenotes by Barney Hoskyns, Elektra Records, Summer 1996
IN SO MANY ways, Bread’s is a quintessentially L.A. pop story. An Oklahoman and a Tennessean make their separate ways to Hollywood in the early ...
Bronski Beat: What Is Bronski Beat?
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Spin, May 1985
MEET WHAT IS perhaps the first real gay group in the history of pop. They’re not drag queens, not even sure they want to be ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, December 2003
James Brown talks about survival, mistrust, the Internal Revenue Service, and the Invention of Funk.
File format: mp3 File size: 28.5mb Interview length: 31 minutes 8 seconds Sound quality: ***
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, August 1998
"How do you stop... before it’s too late?" ...
James Brown: Super Bad: James Brown
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, February 2004
JAMES BROWN’S road manager Charles Bobbitt takes me to one side and places a friendly paw on my forearm. ...
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, September 2004
JUST HOW SERIOUSLY can you take the Red Hot Chili Peppers? Or am I missing the point? ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, March 1995
Rock 'n' roll treated her mean, but Ruth Brown is back with a vengeance. ...
AUDIO: Jackson Browne in London, part 1 (1993)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, October 1993
On songwriting – the political versus the personal – and the making of his album I'm Alive, his brushes with movie soundtrack songwriting, and his love of pop music.
File format: mp3 File size: 28.9mb Interview length: 31 minutes 35 seconds Sound quality: ****
AUDIO: Jackson Browne in London, part 2 (1993)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, October 1993
JB on the rise of country rock, the Ash Grove and Troubadour scenes, David Geffen, the notorious Elektra Ranch and the singer songwriter movement.
File format: mp3 File size: 36.4mb Interview length: 39 minutes 46 seconds Sound quality: ****
Jeff Buckley: Grace (Legacy Edition) (Columbia)
Review and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, October 2004
Remastered version of the original 1994 album with second CD of outtakes/rarities and DVD of Grace vids and footage of Buckley in Bearsville, New York. ...
Jeff Buckley, Esquivel: AUDIO: Jeff Buckley interviews Esquivel (1996)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, April 1996
Jeff Buckley asks the questions, and Esquivel gives us a glimpse of his happy half-century of music making.
File format: mp3; in 2 parts, total file sizes: 40.6meg, total interview length: 44' 20" sound quality: **
Burial: Love Among the Ruins: Burial and the Poetics of Hoodie Dubstep
Comment by Barney Hoskyns, eMusic.com, December 2007
IF I'M WRITING about dubstep, then it's officially over as a trend. I don't even know what dubstep is, and I'm not sure I need ...
Burrito Deluxe: The Whole Enchilada
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, September 2004
Inoffensive country rock featuring original Burrito Brother Sneaky Pete Kleinow plus Band deity Garth Hudson on keyboards. ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, 1997
FEW WOMEN HAVE expanded the vocabulary of rock as bewitchingly as Kate Bush; among male stars, only Prince may have taken as many risks. Hounds ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, September 2004
THE 1967 departure of BB Band axedude Mike Bloomfield provided fellow Windy City man Elvin Bishop with the chance to come in and revamp Paul ...
Byrds, The: The Byrds: Mr Tambourine Man, Turn! Turn! Turn!, Fifth Dimension, Younger Than Yesterday
Review by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, June 1996
ROCK HISTORY IS STRIATED BY THE INFLUENCE OF The Byrds. Theirs is one of the great stylistic lineages, forever shadowing those of the Fabs and ...
J.J. Cale: 25 Years From Tulsa: J.J. Cale
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Independent, The, April 1996
FIFTEEN MINUTES before J.J. Cale is due to take the famous stage of Manhattan’s Carnegie Hall, a wiry, hobo-ish figure can be seen wandering across ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, March 1996
The 'After Midnight' Man takes us back to Tulsa, and on to L.A.: how he's stayed a step outside the music business, how Clapton's 'After Midnight' cover saved his ass, and on the changes he's seen in his many years as a musician
File format: mp3; in 2 parts, total file sizes: 41.2meg, total interview length: 44' 58" sound quality: ***
John Cale: A Stronger Music to Die In: John Cale’s New Society
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, NME, February 1983
"The great Welsh singer, pianist, guitarist, composer and arranger, who in 1967 was responsible for the most significant structural change in rock since Elvis's Sun ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rolling Stone, October 1999
ON WHAT IS something of a transitional album, the recently separated Mariah Carey moves still further away from the warmed-over Whitney Houston of Carey's early ...
James Carr: At The Dark End Of The Street (Blue Side, import)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, 1987
"THE WORLD'S Greatest Soul Singer", boasts the cover of this magnificent album, and I ain't about to argue. In fact I have long regarded the ...
James Carr: Lost Soul: James Carr
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, June 2000
THE SETTING is not a promising one. It’s late on a muggy Friday night, a "blues" club on Bleecker Street, NYC, June of 1996. A ...
James Carr, O.V. Wright: Roosevelt Jamison on James Carr (and O.V. Wright) (1985)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 1985
Roosevelt Jamison – friend, mentor and sometime manager – remembers deep soul greats James Carr and O.V. Wright.
File format: mp3; in 2 parts, total file sizes: 47.2mb, total interview length: 51' 37" sound quality: ***
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, October 1996
Johnny Cash talks to Barney Hoskyns about his health, his religion, his revival with Rick Rubin, and the myth of the Million Dollar Quartet
File format: MP3 File size: 31mb<br> Interview length: 45 minutes 14 seconds Sound quality: ***
Johnny Cash: A Law Unto Himself
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, December 1996
WE'RE PASSING through Andover, Kansas, scene of one of the worst tornadoes in American history: a monstrous twister that levelled the little town and took ...
Johnny Cash: Out Of The Blue and Into The Black: Johnny Cash
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, April 2012
IT'S NOT EXACTLY boom-chicka-boom, but the twangy guitar part that kicks off Johnny Cash's 1971 album Man In Black is the same minimal single-string picking ...
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, March 1982
WHEN The Birthday Party last desecrated this tabernacle of modern nightlife, a generally sloppy show produced the intemperate engorgement of Drunk On The Pope's Blood, ...
Nick Cave, Birthday Party, The: The Lyre of Cave: An Interview
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, September 2004
RBP: Could you have imagined, all those years ago, that you’d have this amazingly even and consistent career? ...
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds: Her Majesty's Theatre, London
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, February 2013
AT 55 NICK CAVE remains an impressive advert for the dissolute life. Squint at the guy on the stage of Her Majesty's Theatre and – ...
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Nick Cave: Old Saint Nick: Nick Cave
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Dazed & Confused, October 2004
ON ABATTOIR BLUES, the cheerily-titled first half of the new double album by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, there is a song called ‘There ...
Chambers Brothers, The: Time for The Chambers Brothers!
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, Mojo Collections, December 2001
IN THE STANDARD ANNALS OF "black rock", the acknowledged progenitors tend to be the usual suspects – Hendrix, Sly, Love. But there was another act ...
James Chance: James White & the Contortions: Second Chance (PVC)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, 1981
IT ALL depends how deranged you are to start with. James Chance – née White, née Black – makes impossibly futile, dead music, fit only ...
Charlatans, The (US): The Charlatans: San Francisco 1969
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, 2004
Reissue of the trailblazing Haight-Ashbury band’s official but very belated debut. ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, December 1997
Luscious five-CD box of gospel/country/blues/soul classics spanning five decades and thirteen labels in the genre-busting career of Brother Ray. ...
Chic: Hammersmith Odeon, October 1979
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, unpublished, 1998
So few and far between are the live performances that have made any real impression on me that they actually stick out in the memory ...
Chic, Donna Summer: Your Booty, My 12-Inch: Disco Revisited
Guide by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, October 1998
YOWSAH, YOWSAH, YOWSAH. Twenty years after the dizzy heights of Discomania, the monster is back in our midst – in movies like Paul Thomas Anderson’s ...
Chi-Lites, The: The Chi-Lites: The Complete Chi-Lites on Brunswick, Vols. 1 and 2 (Edsel)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, May 2004
Definitive comp of Windy City vocal-group soulsters beloved of Tony Soprano. ...
Eric Clapton: Blues God Without An Axe To Grind
Profile by Barney Hoskyns, Times, The, February 1991
WHEN THAT crazed blues fanatic scrawled the words "CLAPTON IS GOD" on a London wall in 1966, he ushered in the cult of the guitar ...
Clark Sisters, The: The Clark Sisters: Is The Lord Bored With Disco?
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, NME, August 1983
GOD MUST be tired of pop music. The most popular female gospel act in America, Detroit's Clark Sisters, have the first gospel record in a ...
Clash, The: The Clash and Stimulin at The Lyceum: The Parody Lingers On
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, 1981
THE PATH of Joe Strummer is, as we know, lined with well-intentioned, golden-hearted errors, and the first of tonight's was Stimulin, whose sound mix was ...
Clinic: Internal Wrangler (Domino)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, cdnow.com, 2000
THE SGT. PEPPER outfits are one thing – like the Beatles, Clinic hail from Liverpool – but the surgical masks are something else again. (According ...
George Clinton, Parliament: Parliament: Uncut Funk — The Bomb
Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, September 1986
GEORGE CLINTON is one of the great people of the 20th century. Probably you know this already. He took the funk legacy of James Brown ...
Kurt Cobain, Nirvana: The Last Star: Kurt Cobain
Essay by Barney Hoskyns, Observer Music Monthly, June 2002
Why Kurt Cobain's legacy is worth fighting – or at least waiting – for ...
AUDIO: Cocteau Twins' Liz Fraser (2000)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, July 2000
Ms Fraser on singing and singers; on being a Cocteau Twin; her relationship with Robin Guthrie; friends and conspiritors such as Peter Gabriel, Damon Albarn and Jeff Buckley.
File format: mp3; file size: 72.9mb, interview length: 1 h 19' 38" sound quality: ***
Cocteau Twins: Head Over Heels (4AD)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, Fall 1983
THE COCTEAU TWINS are innocents aboard the jolly roger of "positive-punk" specimens, blushing songbirds amidst the mascara'd goth macaws of Gene Loves Jezebel and Xmal ...
Cocteau Twins: Milk And Kisses (Fontana)
Review and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, May 1996
AN UNFORGIVABLE THING happened in 1994. The Cocteau Twins released arguably their finest album to date, Four Calendar Cafe, only to have it roundly ignored ...
Cocteau Twins: The Cocteau Twins
Retrospective and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Dig, The (Japan), Fall 2000
ONE OF the hardest jobs I’ve ever had as a music writer – as a music fan – is defending the Cocteau Twins against people ...
Cocteau Twins: The Cocteau Twins: We Are Not Amused
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, October 2000
"FUCKING HELL," says the tiny, tortured woman as she shakes her birdlike head. "I just wish I knew what the fucking hell happened. ’Cause everyone’s ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, December 2000
A KEY STRAIN of early aughties rock is a school of bands desperately emulating the whiteboy guitar angst of Jeff Buckley and Thom Yorke. First ...
Judy Collins: Judy Collins 3/In Concert
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, September 2004
ARGUABLY THE best female folk voice of the age, Judy Collins brought a fresh commercial edge to the early ‘60s East Coast folk revival. Her ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, November 2004
RBP: 15 years into your recording career, how do you look back on it? Are you content with what you’ve achieved? ...
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, February 1997
AFTER A great deal of wandering throughout the 40 years of her life - from smalltown South Dakota to Ontario to San Francisco to New ...
Ry Cooder: AUDIO: The Ry Cooder Interview, parts 1-3 (2005)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, May 2005
From his youth in Santa Monica via the Ash Grove scene through to movie soundtracks and his explorations of world musics: Ry on the music business, his fellow musicians and his politically progressive background and instincts.
File format: mp3; in 3 parts, total file sizes: 76.2meg, total interview length: 83' 11" sound quality: ***
Ry Cooder: His Name is Flathead: An Interview with Ry Cooder
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, June 2008
With his new album, Ry Cooder completes the trilogy of records about 1940s/50s California that began with Chavez Ravine and continued with My Name Is ...
Ry Cooder: Man of the World: Ry Cooder
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, July 2005
RYLAND PETER COODER is a man out of time – at the very least a fish out of water. In London to promote his superb ...
Ry Cooder: Chavez Ravine (Nonesuch)
Review and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, July 2005
AFTER A DECADE of travels that's taken him from Timbuktu to Cuba, Ry Cooder has come home to shine a light on a shameful episode ...
Ry Cooder: I, Flathead (Nonesuch)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, August 2008
Final instalment of Cooder's "trilogy" time-traveling back to '40's/'50s California, here exploring a lost world of steel guitarists and salt-flat drag racers. Comes complete with ...
Ry Cooder: The Backpages Interview: Ry Cooder
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, May 2005
RBP: Do you remember the folk scene of the early '60s as being polarized on more or less political/commercial grounds? How do you recall the ...
Sam Cooke: Live at the Harlem Square Club
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, 1997
MOST OF SAM Cooke's pop hits were sugary, blanched affairs. This album was the real deal, giving us the church-reared R&B singer who liked to ...
Sam Cooke: The Soul Stirrer: Sam Cooke
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, January 1995
FEW ENTERTAINERS have fallen quite so far from grace as Sam Cooke did when he died, 30 years ago, at the Hacienda Motel in south-central ...
Julian Cope: World Shut Your Mouth (Mercury)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, February 1984
I FEAR WE might shut our collective gob for the rest of time and we still wouldn’t get a good Julian Cope album. I didn’t ...
Elvis Costello: "Now is the time, and the time is as good as any": The Elvis Costello Interview
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, RAM, November 1983
IF THE GREAT GREY they put the numb into number and the boot into beauty, then who, pray, puts the El into the element within? ...
Elvis Costello: El Hath No Fury: Elvis Costello
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Wire, The, June 1991
"WHEN YOU GET OLD IT'S LIKE they go to the file for the opinions on you," said Elvis Costello last time he was on the ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, October 1983
Imperial Bedroom vs. Punch the Clock; Emerick vs. Lowe vs. Langer/Winstanley; reassessing his back catalogue and a whole lot more.
File format: mp3; in 3 parts, total file sizes: 83.9meg, total interview length: 1h 31' 41" sound quality: ***
Cramps, The: The Cramps: Songs the Lord Taught Us
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, 1997
THE CRAMPS GOT away with their Z-movie, zombie-rock schtick because they were so intense in their conviction that it had more value than middlebrow humanist ...
Crazy Horse, Neil Young: Neil Young with Crazy Horse: Broken Arrow
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Request, August 1996
NINE MONTHS AGO, I stood in a field in England watching Neil Young close the Reading Festival and realized the following: If you can play ...
Creedence Clearwater Revival: Reissues
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, October 2008
40th Anniversary editions of the first six platters by John Fogerty's Bay Area swamp-billies, complete with bonus tracks and authoritative liners. ...
Marshall Crenshaw, Amy Rigby: Marshall Crenshaw/Amy Rigby: Park West, Albany, NY
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, December 1996
ON THE first date of an East Coast mini-tour, Marshall Crenshaw and Amy Rigby are playing things semi-safe: Park West is a club sandwiched between ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 1998
On Otis and the making of 'Dock of the Bay', the disputed history of 'Green Onions', and on touring with Neil Young: the Memphis guitar-slinger gives the lowdown.
File format: mp3; total file size: 31.4mb, total interview length: 34' 16" sound quality: * (phone interview)
Crosby Stills and Nash: Crosby, Stills & Nash: Crosby, Stills & Nash/Daylight Again
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, March 2006
CSN WAS BORN of dissolution, the fruit of fragmenting times. They kicked off a second wave of post-Sunset Strip/British Invasion music, loose affiliations of longhairs ...
Crosby Stills Nash and Young, Stephen Stills, Neil Young: CSNY: Love The Ones You're With
Profile by Barney Hoskyns, GQ, April 2000
Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young - the ultimate rock supergroup - have been through the wars since first teaming up in 1969. Now the Woodstock ...
Karen Dalton: In Her Own Time and Ours: The Cult of Karen Dalton
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, May 2008
THERE ARE VOICES and then there are voices. Sometimes the ones that move us most are those most on the edge: the ones racked with ...
Terence Trent D'Arby: Terence Trent D’Arby
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Sunday Times, 1987
WHEN Terence Trent D’Arby’s very first single was released four months ago, it became difficult to open a magazine or turn on the television without ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, November 1997
RICHARD DAVIES is cooped up in the Turtle Creek barn, a hallowed old recording studio haunted by ghosts of Woodstock past and present. (A picture ...
dBs, The, Peter Holsapple, Chris Stamey: A Crafty Couple: Chris Stamey and Peter Holsapple
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Times, The, 1991
AN INEVITABLE side effect of any domestic pop explosion in Britain is that the best American rock should be overlooked by radio stations and the ...
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, November 2009
WE'RE COMING to the end of a punishingly intense set by the Dead Weather, the second side-project band formed by Jack White of the White ...
Sam Dees: Whaddya Mean, You've Never Heard Of... Sam Dees?
Guide by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, 1995
AT SIX FOOT FOUR and two-hundred-plus pounds, Sam Dees is a soul giant in more ways than one. One of black America’s premier songsmiths, he ...
Sandy Denny: Like an Old-Fashioned Waltz
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, March 2005
BEGUN IN LA and finished in London, Like an Old-Fashioned Waltz may be Denny's finest hour. Kicking off with 'Solo', one of her trademark piano ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, March 2005
FOLLOWING the Fairport Convention reunion that produced 1975's Rising For The Moon, Rendezvous was Denny's last LP before her death from a brain haemorrhage in ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, March 2005
DENNY'S SECOND solo set, produced by boyfriend and Fotheringay graduate Trevor Lucas, was a decided improvement on her great but scattered debut. Evenly balanced between ...
Sandy Denny: The North Star Grassman and the Ravens
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, March 2005
TO BILLY CONNOLLY she was "one of the angriest women I ever met", while Island press officer David Sandison recalled her as a "belligerent and ...
Depeche Mode: Systems Muzak: Depeche Mode at The Venue, London
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, February 1981
THOSE ARBITERS of modern taste who would wish on you the indecencies of things like Spandau Ballet are generally the same people who can be ...
Des'ree: Hitting the Unexpected Note
Report and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Musician, May 1995
AT A TIME WHEN British pop is struggling to make inroads into the American charts, the stateside success of a South London girl named Des'ree ...
Devo: New Traditionalists (Virgin)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, 1982
NOW THAT Jerry Casale has seen the Devo concept actually take root in the California psyche – now that his theory of America has been ...
Dillards, The: The Dillards: Pickin’ and Fiddlin’/Wheatstraw Suite/Copperfields
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, September 2004
WHEN DOUGLAS and Rodney Dillard’s quartet hit Los Angeles in 1963 they blew everyone’s minds. Playing bluegrass with fuck-you rock’n’roll attitude, they wasted the competition ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, August 1989
New York great Dion DiMucci talks about the golden years, the sound of NYC, and addiction and recovery.
File format: mp3; file size: 33.8mb, interview length: 36' 57" sound quality: ***
Dion: The King of the Noo Yawk Streets Comes Home
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Sunday Correspondent, September 1989
WHEN DION DiMucci made his major comeback at New York's Radio City Music Hall two years ago, he was joined onstage by an all-star quartet ...
D.O.A. - Megadecibel Minstrels
Report and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, NME, 1984
BY MY RECKONING, Vancouver's D.O.A. is the best hard rock band in the world. I say this on the basis of their many excellent ...
Doors, The: Cars Hiss By My Window: The Doors' L.A. Woman landmarks
Retrospective and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, unpublished, February 2012
Sunset Sound Recorders, 6650 Sunset Blvd.The Doors had made their first two albums in this celebrated Hollywood studio, but it was also here that L.A. ...
Doors, The: The Doors: Strange Days
Sleevenotes by Barney Hoskyns, Rhino Records, 2006
WHO, HAVING HEARD IT, could forget the creepy line that opens the title track of the Doors’ second album? Recorded at the height of the ...
Doors, The: The Doors: The Doors Box Set
Review by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, December 1997
4-CD grab-bag of rarities, outtakes, live recordings and fave tracks selected by the surviving Doors ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Paste, April 2005
JIMI GOODWIN, the affable and bearded bassist-singer with Mancunian trio Doves, leans forward in his seat for an endearing moment of honesty. ...
Doves, Sub Sub: The Backpages Interview: Jimi Goodwin
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, February 2005
RBP: I was interested to read that you holed up in various remote parts of Britain for Some Cities. I seem to recall Elbow did ...
Dr. John: Doctor John: An Incantation to the Jollamallawalla Gods
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, September 1995
A QUARTER OF A CENTURY HAS PASSED SINCE MALCOLM Rebennack, trading under the sinisterly exotic stage name "Dr John The Night Tripper", descended the steps ...
Nick Drake: Bryter Later (Island, 1970)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Observer, The, June 2004
THE CULT OF Nick Drake, posh Lost Boy of post-folk singer-songwriting, shows little sign of abating. That’s because his mellow, Colin Blunstone-ish burr of a ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, July 2007
LISTEN TO NICK DRAKE with one ear and you'll hear a (self-)parody of the Sensitive Young Troubadour – the posh Poor Boy, long ways from ...
Duran Duran: Arena (Parlophone)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, November 1984
AND THE APHIDS CRIED/THROUGH THE DRIFTING HAZE/"NAFF LP, LADS!" ...
Bob Dylan: Blonde on Blonde (CBS, 1966)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, 2004
RADICAL AND then some: a double album in ‘66, with a blurred vertical Bob running horizontally across the sleeve and Nashville sessionmen playing behind a ...
Bob Dylan, Band, The: Million Dollar Bash: Dylan and The Band
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, Fall 2003
A LOT OF MUSICIANS have played with Bob Dylan over the last forty-odd years, but none of them has quite had the special relationship with ...
Bob Dylan, Beach Boys, The, Rolling Stones, The: Rockumentaries on the Biography Channel
Film/DVD Review by Mark Pringle, Mat Snow, Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, March 2001
Not long ago, any glimpse on the box of a great musician was like catching sight of the lesser spotted grebe – all the lovelier ...
Comment by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, January 2001
Fans of European football (soccer to all you Americanos out there) will already know that Italian maestro Roberto Baggio – he of the Buddhist beliefs ...
Eagles, The: Where Eagles Dared: California's Signature Rock Band Comes to London
Report by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, April 2013
Messrs. Schmit, Henley, Frey and Walsh (photo: Debbie Kruger) WELCOME TO the Hotel Connaught, the plush old Mayfair institution where Glenn Frey, Don Henley, Joe Walsh ...
Book Excerpt by Barney Hoskyns, 'Hotel California', 2006
UP ON THE Sunset Strip, the live scene was hurting. Name bands were now too big to play small clubs like the Whisky: they'd be ...
Earth Opera: Earth Opera/The Great American Eagle Tragedy
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, September 2004
THE NAME suggested some frightful prog entity, but Earth Opera were essentially Boston bluegrassers Peter Rowan and David Grisman, a pair intent on chucking tradition ...
Earth Wind and Fire: Earth, Wind & Fire: Powerlight (CBS)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, February 1983
I SAY, let's not groove tonight. Sometimes Earth, Wind & Fire get down on a groove and flashily mess it around. Sometimes they just lie ...
Earth Wind and Fire: Maurice White: How the Black Man Bleached his Soul…
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, NME, January 1981
... or how Earth, Wind & Fire guru Maurice White deserted Memphis to achieve Nirvana in Hollywood. ...
Echo & The Bunnymen: Porcupine (Korova)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, January 1983
PERHAPS IT WAS inevitable, even decreed in some heaven up "there". Maybe it’s just the third time unlucky. But if Porcupine isn’t good it isn’t ...
Echo & The Bunnymen: Echo And The Bunnymen: A Promise of Rock Re-Born
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, NME, February 1982
THE DAY AFTER THIS venerable paper's hardcore readers have enjoyed their brief, communal moment of glory in the polls, all-round prize guys Echo And the ...
Einstürzende Neubauten: Einsturzende Neubauten: Acklam Hall, Notting Hill
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, August 1983
IT IS THE professed aim of Einsturzende Neubauten to exhaust music, to drain it until it implodes into a single catastrophic moment. This, however, is ...
AUDIO: Elastica's Justine Frischmann (1994)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, January 1994
The Full Frischmann: Starting Suede! Leaving Suede! Not much liking Suede these days! And then the excitement of being in Elastica at the height of Britpop, anticipating recording the first album...
File format: mp3 File size: 34.9mb Interview length: 38 minutes 10 seconds Sound quality: ***
Elastica: An Interview with Justine Frischmann
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, cdnow.com, 2000
FEW SECOND albums have taken quite as long to materialise as Elastica’s The Menace, follow-up to the band’s eponymous 1995 debut – a collection of ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Vogue, February 1994
BRITISH POP remains supremely unvexed by the anxieties of influence. Just as Suede brazenly lifted their pouting nuances from the right Glam heroes, so 24-year-old ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, May 2003
A somewhat wind-blown Guy Garvey and pals on the making of Cast of Thousands, prog rock, Manchester, religion and being stalked by Cameron Diaz
File format: mp3; in 3 parts, total file sizes: 88.1meg, total interview length: 1h 36' 09" sound quality: **
Elbow: Leaders of the Free World (V2)
Review and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, November 2005
Third album from Mancunian quintet, self-produced at the city's Blueprint studio. ...
Elbow: Given The Elbow: The Confessions Of Guy Garvey
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, August 2003
Two years ago, Elbow released Asleep In The Back, an intense suite of prog-inflected songs that stands as one of the finest albums ever to ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, September 2003
CAN THIS REALLY be Manchester? Two days have passed since thousands of Italian footie fans flooded the city for the Champs' League Final and the ...
Elbow, Radiohead: Radiohead: Hail To The Thief(Parlophone); Elbow: Cast Of Thousands (V2)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, May 2003
AS YOU'LL KNOW by now, rock's favourite Oxonians have hauled their guitars out of the deep freeze and put the Warp(ed) electronica of Kid A ...
Electronic: Raise the Pressure
Review by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, August 1996
FIVE YEARS after cementing their partnership as the coolest Mancunians on the planet, Messrs Marr and Sumner return with a dreadfully disappointing album. Raise The ...
Joe Ely, Dwight Yoakam: The Other Country
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, Vogue, October 1992
YOU KNOW THE country boom has gone too far when stadium-busting hat acts like Garth Brooks start wearing those clamp-on microphones sported by Madonna and ...
Eminem: Hip Hop’s Trailer-Trash Wunderkind
Profile by Barney Hoskyns, Independent, The, December 2000
FIRST CAME Elvis – America’s worst nightmare, the white-trash negro. Then came Mick Jagger and Marilyn Manson, Johnny Rotten and Kurt Cobain, Tupac Shakur and ...
Esquivel, Jeff Buckley: Conference Call: Jeff Buckley interviews Esquivel
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, Summer 1996
Take a ride on the mood music elevator as MOJO’s favourite young lion Jeff Buckley enjoys a transcontinental chinwag with space-age septuagenarian Esquivel. ...
Everything But The Girl: Everything But the Girl: Shining Bright
Profile by Barney Hoskyns, unpublished, 1988
ONE OF THE few good things about the British pop scene in 1988 is that the subtle and reflective music of boy-girl duo Everything But ...
Exploited, The: The Exploited: Troops Of Tomorrow
Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, June 1982
APART FROM its marvellous cover, which depicts "an Escape From New York vision of a desolated city where punk can express its essential nature of ...
Faces, The: Last Orders: The Faces’ Five Guys Walk Into a Bar… (Rhino)
Review and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, August 2004
Ian McLagan-compiled 4-CD box of scattered odds/sods from ultimate ‘70s boogie’n’ballads lad-band fronted by Rod the (Ex-)Mod. Dedicated to the late Ronnie Lane. ...
AUDIO: Donald Fagen, parts 1 & 2 (1993)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, March 1993
On making Kamakiriad, NYC versus LA, favourite grooves and favourite rhythm sections, working by himself and looking back on Steely Dan
File format: mp3; in 2 parts, total file sizes: 74.8meg, total interview length: 80' 36" sound quality: ***
Donald Fagen, Steely Dan: Donald Fagen: The Man Who Came In From The Cool
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Arena, Spring 1993
Steely Dan were the muso's band. As icily astute chroniclers of the Seventies, Donald Fagen and Walter Becker recorded a series of virtuoso albums of ...
John Fahey: The Outsider: John Fahey 1939 - 2001
Obituary by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, March 2001
America lost of one of its most fascinating musical mavericks on Thursday, February 22, when guitarist John Fahey died after sextuple heart bypass surgery at ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Request, February 1999
AS MICK Jagger’s girlfriend she was among the great - and most tragic - consorts of rock’s decadent heyday. But then this Sister Morphine forced ...
Marianne Faithfull: Tears Gone By: the Rebirth of Marianne Faithfull
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, February 2002
The former Sister Morphine talks about her remarkable new album Kissin Time. ...
Marianne Faithfull: The Backpages Interview: Marianne Faithfull
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, July 2001
ON A SUNNY evening in the fair city of Dublin, Marianne Faithfull pads about her kitchen, barefoot in a denim skirt, preparing a rack of ...
Fall, The: Anti-Social Workers: The Fall at North London Poly
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, October 1981
UNLIKE MOST other Angry Young Singers, usually by proxy, Mark E. Smith is not a rhetorician. He does not reduce the obscenities of the English ...
Fall, The: Hip Priest: The Mark Smith Interview
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, NME, November 1981
"WE WILL FALL," sang Iggy Stooge to the accompaniment of John Cale's viola, but he might have continued, "When we dead awaken..." ...
Fatboy Slim: The BACKPAGES interview: Fatboy Slim
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, November 2000
When Norman ‘Fatboy Slim’ Cook exploded on the world’s dancefloors with ‘The Rockafeller Skank’ and ‘Praise You’, he brought a sense of brash, manic fun ...
Fatboy Slim, Norman Cook: Fatboy Slim Must Die: A Night with Norman Cook
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Revolver, Winter 2000
ON THE stroke of midnight, at an uber-groovy establishment in lower midtown Manhattan, an elongated 37-year-old Englishman is heading off to work. Or rather: easing ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, 1982
QUITE WHY Fear have created such a stir on the L.A. punk scene is far from apparent from this Record. Smarter they may be than ...
Feelies, The: The Feelies: Crazy Rhythms/The Good Earth
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, October 2009
THE FACT THAT the Feelies came from New Jersey – and complained that driving to Manhattan through the Holland Tunnel gave them headaches – didn't ...
Bryan Ferry, Roxy Music: Glam’s Great Melancholic: Bryan Ferry
Profile by Barney Hoskyns, Independent, The, 2000
BY HIS OWN slightly shamefaced admission, the first thought that raced through Bryan Ferry’s mind as he came within a hair’s breadth of plunging to ...
Fine Young Cannibals: Wedged Down The Throat: Fine Young Cannibals
Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, December 1985
ONE OF THE truly Great Bores Of Today is the "politicised" pop star who remarks that what was really bad about the riots (or whatever) ...
Flaming Lips: The Flaming Lips: The Soft Bulletin
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Spin, June 1999
"PSYCHEDELIA" has undergone some curious convolutions since its Haight-Ashbury heyday. For the most part, though, the hallucinogens have gone, leaving a purely musical residue - ...
Flaming Lips: The Flaming Lips: Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots (WEA)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, August 2002
BACK IN February 1999, Wayne Coyne wrote of the soon-to-be-released The Soft Bulletin that, "in a strange reversal of musical universes, the more indulgent and ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, October 2003
SOMEHOW IT WAS inevitable that the Chemical Brothers – those High Priests of the rock/dance interface – would one day work with Oklahoma City's Finest. ...
Essay by Barney Hoskyns, Catalog for Doug Aitken's Song 1 exhibition, June 2012
I WAS FOURTEEN YEARS OLD – a glam-rock brat awakening to the golden innocence of pre-Beatles American pop – when I shelled out for the ...
Fleetwood Mac: Say You Will (Reprise)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, May 2003
MORE THAN most bands, Fleetwood Mac elicit complex, unresolved feelings. On the one hand they're the ultimate mainstream soft-rock dinosaur, pass masters of glossy emotions ...
Flipper: Album Generic Flipper (Subterranean)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, May 1982
A FIRST song, 'The Way Of The World', opens like Hawkwind's 'Silver Machine', and Album G.F. never really lets go from there on in. Flipper ...
John Fogerty: Centerfield (Warner Bros.)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, 1985
TIME STANDS still in Fogertyville. It’s ten years since the old Creedence leader made a record and nothing much has changed. There’s a few syndrums ...
Jim Ford: White Soul from the Black Hills: Whatever Happened to Jim Ford?
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, Oxford American, The, Fall 2005
TWENTY YEARS AGO I drove around the American South in pursuit of something I called "country soul." By that term I meant the late '60s/early ...
Jim Ford, Bobby Womack: Bobby Womack on Jim Ford (2005)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, June 2005
The Last Soul Man talks about his friend and collaborator Jim Ford: being introduced by Ford to Sly Stone, such great songs as 'Harry Hippie' and 'Point Of No Return', and writing songs with the man.
File format: mp3; file size: 19.8mb, interview length: 21' 35" sound quality: * (phoner)
AUDIO: Fountains of Wayne (1997)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, January 1997
How the band came together; touring with Smashing Pumpkins; songwriting and melodies; ...and mullets!
File format: mp3; file size: 68.8mb, interview length: 1h 15' 09" sound quality: ***
Fountains of Wayne: The Fountains of Wayne: Mojo Rising
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, May 1997
CHRIS COLLINGWOOD and Adam Schlesinger have waited a long time to see their pure-pop/power-pop dreams realised. The duo were penning addictively hummable songs as long ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 1993
A brief history of Hollywood (the Fowley version); growing up in L.A., and growing up fast; getting into the music biz, and the calamity that was The Beatles. The King of the Hollyweird Night tells all.
File format: mp3; in 4 parts, total file sizes: 105.2mb, total interview length: 1h 54' 48" sound quality: ***
Report and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, NME, November 1982
"Only the mice and the great ones are happy when I arrive." ...
Kim Fowley: Tycoon of Trash: The Life And Grimes Of Kim Fowley
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, LA Reader, June 1983
"Only the mice and the great ones are happy when I arrive" ...
Frankie Goes to Hollywood: Phenomenal: Frankie Goes To Hollywood
Report by Barney Hoskyns, New Statesman, 1984
THAT A GROUP should make the fourth-best selling British single of all time with their first release is remarkable; that they should follow it up ...
Aretha Franklin: Rockport Rhythm & Blues Festival, Newport, Rhode Island
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, unpublished, July 1997
"Summertime, and the living is easy..." So ring out the words of Aretha Franklin’s backing singers as they warm up the crowd for the entrance ...
Aretha Franklin: The Queen's Greatest Tracks
Review by Martin Colyer, Barney Hoskyns, Mark Pringle, Rock's Backpages, May 2002
"THEY USED to call me a jazz singer," Aretha told Val Wilmer in 1968. "Now I think what I sing is closer to R&B and ...
Free: "Your Average Bloke Chatting Up Your Average Chick": Free's 'All Right Now'
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, January 2007
'ALL RIGHT NOW' is one of the quintessential cock-rockers – a cruder, more pub-rockish 'Whole Lotta Love'. It's the sound of the longhaired male predator ...
Lefty Frizzell, George Jones, Hank Williams: Redneck Soul: George Jones and the White Man's Blues
Book Excerpt by Barney Hoskyns, 'From a Whisper to a Scream' (Fontana), 1991
NO ONE IS FONDER of saying that country music is "the white man's blues" than black artists like B.B. King, Etta James and Bobby Womack. ...
Fugs, The, Ed Sanders: Ed Sanders and the Fugs
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, December 1996
Lester Bangs called The Fugs "the first truly underground band in America". 30 years later, their leader is waging war against Newt Gingrich... ...
Funkapolitan: Bish, Bash, Posh: Class and British Pop
Essay by Barney Hoskyns, Guardian, The, October 1999
As Tony Blair calls for a classless society, he might be surprised to learn that the world of pop music is riddled with toffs. Self-confessed ...
Funkapolitan: Shooting The Breeze
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, NME, May 1982
As Britfunk fly-guys Funkapolitan tool up for a chart assault, six-gun Barney Hoskyns runs them to ground in Notting Hill. ...
Diamanda Galás: Diamanda Galás (Metalanguage)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, December 1984
PEOPLE KEEP bursting in looking pained, which must have something to do with this record. Admittedly at a distance it could be mistaken for a ...
Marvin Gaye: In Our Lifetime (Motown)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, February 1981
SOMEHOW ONE forgives the sermonising in Marvin Gaye that irritates in other soul stars. Visually he fits the bill – he might almost be the ...
J. Geils Band: Freeze Frame (EMI America)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, February 1982
THE AMERICAN rock show business appears to have discovered some uncanny knack of bringing wilderness-bound rock groups back into the limelight. No one could have ...
Bob Geldof: Deep In The Heart Of Nowhere
Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, November 1986
WELL, SAINT Bob, here we are again. Doubtless you're expecting a right royal slagging in these pages, but that's not what I want to do. ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, May 1982
ANYONE WHO is counting on Ji being our very own home-grown Off The Wall had better prepare for an anti-climax. That Junior (ne Giscombe) can ...
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, 1983
TWO STRANGELY jarring acts from Rough Trade, one increasingly abstruse, t'other ever more open, engaging. ...
Goldfrapp Get It Together In The Country: Seventh Tree
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Observer Music Monthly, February 2008
The duo Goldfrapp, huge in their native Britain, have confounded fans of their staple glam-disco sound with the "psychedelic folk" of their new album. ...
Goldfrapp: Black Cherry (Mute)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, 2003
JUST WHEN WE thought there was nothing left in the moribund corpse of trip-hopping soundtrack Euromuzak, along came Alison Goldfrapp and Will Gregory to breathe ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, September 2005
GOLDFRAPP took a big chance when they abandoned the swoonsome muzak of 2001's Felt Mountain for the kinky machinery of 2003's glamtastic Black Cherry. Few ...
Goldfrapp: Popping The Cherry: Goldfrapp's Glam Adventure
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, April 2003
AFTER THE post-triphop, Shirley-Bassey-meets-Stereolab masterpiece that was 2001's Felt Mountain, Alison Goldfrapp and Will Gregory have bravely opted to change direction. Their new single 'Train', ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, September 1985
"I never did feel like a soul singer": from his youth in Texas to Nashville success, Dobie Gray talks about his crossover from R&B to country.
File format: mp3; in 2 parts, total file sizes: 43.9mb, total interview length: 47' 54" sound quality: ****
Macy Gray, Shelby Lynne: Blue-Eyed Soul and Brown-Eyed Rock: Macy Gray and Shelby Lynne
Comment by Barney Hoskyns, Dig, The (Japan), 1999
TEN YEARS AGO I found myself sitting in a London hotel with Tommy Couch, boss of Malaco Records, a Mississippi label which was busy resuscitating ...
Al Green: Take Me to the River: Al Green with Davin Seay
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, November 2000
"Gen’lmen, we just havin’ church here." Six words which - directed at me and a fellow soul buff at the Full Gospel Tabernacle church by ...
Grinderman, Nick Cave: Grinderman: Grinderman
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, April 2007
THE NEW NAME - the alter ego, the Bad Seeds doppelganger - sounds like some hideous Saw-style horror flick. Nick Cave recasts The Hitcher in ...
The Gun Club: The Birth, The Death, The Ghost (ABC)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, February 1984
BLOOD BOOZE, and Host: midway through a mess of ‘Preachin’ The Blues’ on this sub-bootleg memento of pre-Fire Of Love Gun Club, Jeffrey Lee Pierce, ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, September 2004
Third set from Sussex singer-songwriter and follow-up to last year’s acclaimed From Every Sphere. ...
Tim Hardin: The Unforgiven: Tim Hardin
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, February 2012
AS CONCEPT ALBUMS go it was one of the more eccentric creations of the late 1960s. The mouthful of a title alone (Suite for Susan ...
Tim Hardin: The Unforgiven: Tim Hardin and the Shock of Grace
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, February 2012
NOTE: This is the "director's cut" version – at almost twice the length – of a piece written for MOJO and subsequently used as the ...
Emmylou Harris, Gram Parsons: Heartaches and Hangovers: Gram Parsons' GP
Retrospective and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, March 2013
IT IS A FINE irony of her long career as the Queen of Country Rock that, on the night when Gram Parsons stopped by to ...
Debbie Harry, Blondie: Debbie Harry: A Chat with the Punk Pop Queen!
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Daily Express, 2000
WHAT A difference a year makes. The last time I spoke with Debbie Harry she was gearing up for the release of the first Blondie ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, April 2004
Peej on making Uh Huh Her, songwriting, minimalism, her rock'n'roll bohemian upbringing, working with Marianne Faithfull and meeting Kurt Cobain
File format: mp3; file size: 53.9mb, interview length: 58' 49" sound quality: ***
PJ Harvey: Love in All the Wrong Places: PJ Harvey
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Tracks, Summer 2004
POLLY HARVEY reclines in regal splendour at the end of the very long and pompous Promenade Room of London’s legendary Dorchester Hotel. Buffed Eurotrash couples ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, November 1998
On her last proper album, 1995’s very fabulous To Bring You My Love, P.J. Harvey slipped on a slinky red dress and covered up the ...
PJ Harvey: White Chalk (Island)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, September 2007
IN THE AGE of Amy Winehouse it's worth remembering the shock that was Polly Jean Harvey when she blasted out of the West Country 15 ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, Summer 2004
RBP: Not to suggest that Uh Huh Her must be entirely autobiographical – or "confessional" – but you don’t sound terribly happy in these songs. ...
Ronnie Hawkins, Band, The: AUDIO: Ronnie Hawkins (1991)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, July 1991
The Hawk recalls rockin' out of Canada with his teenage Hawks - road stories, show business sharks and wild times, taking in Roulette's Morris Levy, Bob Dylan, John Lennon and, of course, ex-Hawks The Band.
File format: mp3; in 3 parts, total file sizes: 81mb, total interview length: 1h 18' 25" sound quality: ***
Isaac Hayes: Hot Buttered Soul
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, 2004
BY 1969 BLACK artists were following rock's lead and recording very long tracks. At the forefront of such experimentation was big bad Isaac Hayes, co-author ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, January 1999
From Arizona and Duane Eddy to L.A. and Nancy Sinatra: three hours of yarns and reminiscences from the irascible Lee Hazlewood
File format: mp3; in 6 parts, total file sizes: 169.7meg, total interview length: 3h 5' 39" sound quality: ***
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, March 2007
BARTON LEE Hazlewood remains the cult artist's cult artist, an American maverick who's operated by his own supremely offbeat rules ever since producing Sanford Clark's ...
Lee Hazlewood: The Ol' Sonofabitch
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, May 1999
ON A PERFECT Florida afternoon in late February, Lee Hazlewood is wedging himself into a large grey couch and eyeing a rather sad plate of ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, NME, June 1982
"There's a certain charisma about a guy that everybody thinks is about to drop dead. It's like when Daffy Duck blows up on stage and ...
Richard Hell: The Backpages Interview: Richard Hell
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, March 2002
The original Bowery ripped-shirt nihilist – born plain Richard Meyers in Kentucky – is back with two collections of odds'n'ends: the two-CD Time (Matador) and ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, September 2009
Together with his co-conspiritor Larry Campbell, the great Band drummer looks back over his recent solo activities, the people he works with, and his unique take on American music.
File format: mp3; file size: 31.5mb, interview length: 34' 27" sound quality: ****
Levon Helm, Band, The: Oh Brother Where Art Thou? The Night They Drove Ole Levon Down
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, July 2012
IN THE BACKWOODS gang that was The Band, Levon Helm was the lean and wiry chancer with one eye on the ladies and a voice ...
Levon Helm, Band, The: The Shape I'm In: Levon Helm
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, October 2009
IF LEVON HELM'S studios have a Green Room, then this must be it. A ramshackle den leading off a homely wooden kitchen, it's currently crawling ...
Jimi Hendrix: The Jimi Hendrix Experience: Electric Ladyland 40th Anniversary Collectors Edition
Film/DVD Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, March 2009
CHAS CHANDLER, whose avuncular Geordie tones weave in and out of this absorbing "Making Of" doc, recalled the sessions for Electric Ladyland as "a long-drawn-out ...
John Hiatt: Bottom Line, New York
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, Times, The, August 1990
A SKINNY troubadour with a throaty, abrasive growl of a voice, John Hiatt slides in to the American rock dream somewhere between Ry Cooder at ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, December 1993
BH: Looking back, John, was the Little Village experience – you, Ry Cooder, Nick Lowe, Jim Keltner – as much of an anti-climax for you ...
High Llamas, The: The High Llamas
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, unpublished, 1997
THERE IS nothing quite like the High Llamas, even at a time when symphonic "mood music" is all the rage and neo-easy listening has become ...
Profile by Barney Hoskyns, Independent, The, February 1999
“Observe how a queen do...”('Final Hour') ...
Lauryn Hill: Theatre at Madison Square Garden, NY
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, May 1999
DID SOMEONE say breakout hit? Anyone who doubts the massive crossover impact of The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill need only cast an eye across the ...
Eddie Hinton: The Strange Story of Eddie Hinton
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Soul Survivor, 1987
"EDDIE HINTON", says ex-Atlantic honcho Jerry Wexler, "was always the guy who would be next year's big thing. He'd sit out on the back porch ...
Sleevenotes by Barney Hoskyns, 'Country Got Soul' (Casual Records), July 2003
THERE WAS SOMETHING funky happening in the American South in the late ‘60s and you didn’t know what it was, did you, Mr Jones? ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Vogue, 1993
IF THERE WERE any justice in the world, Robyn Hitchcock would be an English cult hero. But it's the very English middle-class-ness of the man ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, NME, January 1982
AT THIS CRUCIAL moment in pop history, when everyone seems to be telling you that the ultimate cream of pop-soul is The Human League's slight ...
Hüsker Dü: Zen Arcade (SST, 1984)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, 2004
IF PUNK WAS inherently anti-double-album, early ‘80s hardcore had no such qualms about going into extra time. When mighty Minneapolitans Hüsker Dü journeyed to the ...
Hüsker Dü: Iron Tamers: Hüsker Dü send out distress signals
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, NME, January 1984
HÜSKER DÜ, signed to Black Flag’s SST label, are one of America’s mightiest hardcore trios. From Minneapolis, aching heart of the Midwest, they’ve sent out ...
Billy Idol Is A Star: live at the Stone, San Francisco
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, September 1982
"BILLY IDOL IS A STAR": a startling revelation that emerged at The Stone in San Francisco last week. Sure, it's yer old Billy alright, but ...
Imagination: The Imagination Master Class
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, NME, April 1982
LEEE: YOUR NAME'S Barney Rubble. How long have you been interviewing? A year? So you're young, a spring chicken?BH: Why, do I look well-seasoned? ...
Incredible String Band, The: The Incredible String Band/The 5000 Spirits or the Layers of the Onion
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, September 2004
THE FIRST ISB albums in a two-fer-one release. The ISB (1966) is a more-or-less conventional Scots-trad folk effort by the original trio of Robin Williamson, ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Vogue, March 1991
CHRIS ISAAK IS almost too perfect a package. With his iconic, Elvis-meets-Jimmy Dean looks immortalised on an album cover by Bruce Weber, he is a ...
Janet Jackson: Behind Those Sphinx-like Eyes: Janet Jackson
Profile by Barney Hoskyns, Observer, The, April 1995
"THIS IS A STORY ABOUT CONTROL," whispered the 19-year-old Janet Jackson at the start of her breakthrough album, Control, in 1986. "It’s all about control, ...
Michael Jackson: Blame it On the Good Times: The Life and Living Death of Michael Jackson
Essay by Barney Hoskyns, New Statesman, July 2009
IN SEPTEMBER 1979, my friend Davitt Sigerson – then a very good white writer on black music; later the chairman of Island Records in America; ...
Profile by Barney Hoskyns, Independent, The, August 1998
I’LL CONFESS I’m shocked that Michael Jackson has reached the ripe old age of 40. More shocked, indeed, than by the fact that Keith Richards ...
Michael Jackson: Out of His Life: Michael Jackson
Report by Barney Hoskyns, New Statesman, August 1984
BY NOW, of course, you’ve been told more than you could possibly want to know about Michael Jackson. Such has been the media saturation of ...
Michael Jackson: The Boy Who Would Fly: Michael Jackson
Profile by Barney Hoskyns, NME, September 1983
I'VE BEEN feeling strange about Michael Jackson since I was 11 years old. I remember lying in bed with a transistor radio the size ...
Michael Jackson: The Madness of Michael
Profile by Barney Hoskyns, Vogue, December 1987
"A LOT OF PEOPLE misunderstand me," says Michael Jackson in the spoken intro to his number one hit 'I Just Can't Stop Loving You'. "That's ...
Millie Jackson, Dynasty: Millie Jackson: Live! Live! Live!
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, March 1981
Millie Jackson/Dynasty: Apollo Victoria, London ...
Jacksons, The: The Jacksons: Victory (Epic)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, August 1984
NO-ONE SHOULD be too surprised that Victory is not a triumph. What's happened to the Jackson household since young Wacko came of age would screw ...
Jacksons, The: The Jacksons: Meadowlands Stadium, New Jersey
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, August 1984
SCARCELY HAD I touched down Stateside last week when I found myself bound in a bus for Meadowlands in a humid pocket of endless, endlessly ...
Mick Jagger, Rolling Stones, The: The Achievement of Madness: Performance
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, 2004
PERFORMANCE only gets better with the passing years. A key late ‘60s text, Donald Cammell and Nic Roeg’s film brings two Swinging London worlds together ...
Jam, The: The Jam: Fair Deal, Brixton, London
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, March 1982
"See me walking around – I'm the boy about town that you've heard of..." ...
James: From An English Village: James
Report and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Spin, October 1985
"WHEN PUNK HAPPENED," says Tim Booth, "there was a big explosion of energy, but eventually the energy was dissipated, and in the last few years ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, July 1989
Etta James tells Barney Hoskyns about her struggles with addiction, meeting Billie Holiday, making Seven Year Itch and staying contemporary.
File format: mp3 File size: 40.4mb; Interview length: 44 minutes 5 seconds Sound quality: **
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, NME, April 1984
MOST EVERY year now Ms Jamesetta Hawkins – Etta to you – will at the behest of Dingwalls Boss (Goodman, that is) fly over ...
Etta James: Mama tells us all about it
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Times, The, July 1989
WHEN ETTA JAMES was a 17-year old glamour puss with drug-store-peroxide blonde hair and a lewd rock 'n' roll hit called 'Roll With Me Henry' ...
Rick James: Cold Blooded (Motown)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, August 1983
IN THE freak funk stakes, high-livin’ devil-may-care Rick James rates as a bit of a clown. As you’ll know if you caught his Rockpalast ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, NME, April 1984
BARNEY HOSKYNS dials a late night dateline to RICK JAMES at Motown's LA offices. ...
Wendy James, Transvision Vamp: Wendy In Neverland: Life After Vamping
Report and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Vogue, March 1993
IT WAS ALL looking so good for Wendy James in the spring in 1991: endless magazine covers, review copies of The Little Magnets Versus the ...
Jayhawks, The: The Jayhawks: Smile
Review by Barney Hoskyns, cdnow.com, 2000
THE BAND THAT helped kick-start the alterna-country sound over a decade ago has undergone a major transformation since the departure of co-founder Mark Olson following ...
Jayhawks, The: The Jayhawks: Riviera Theatre, Chicago
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, September 1997
DESPITE SERIOUS competition from an important Chicago Bulls game, the gilded relic that is the Riviera is close to packed tonight for a double-header by ...
Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead: Haight-Ashbury
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, Independent on Sunday, December 1997
The times they have a-changed, but not without a certain irony. Or a certain continuity, come to that. ...
David Johansen’s Journey Through the Past
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, February 2001
Between songs the occasional, almost plaintive, yelp can be heard: "‘Subway Train’!" "‘Funky But Chic’!" One particularly persistent voice calls for ‘Babylon’, of all things, ...
Scarlett Johansson, Tom Waits: Scarlett Johansson: Anywhere I Lay My Head (Atco)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Observer Music Monthly, May 2008
WHEN TOM WAITS started his musical apprenticeship in the LA of the early 1970s, he harbored secret Tin Pan Alley fantasies of having his work ...
Sleevenotes by Barney Hoskyns, Charly, July 1990
LITTLE WILLIE JOHN's is one of the saddest stories in the book of soul. A pintsized hipster from the Motor City, he notched up 14 ...
George Jones, Tammy Wynette: George Jones & Tammy Wynette: Hammersmith Apollo, London
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, November 1995
LONG AGO, in the days before hats and hi-tech rednecks, country music was a soap opera and George Jones and Tammy Wynette were its Dirty ...
Rickie Lee Jones: Album by Album: Rickie Lee Jones
Retrospective and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, December 2009
THOUGH SHE will always carry the pop albatross that was her Top 5 hit 'Chuck E's in Love' (1979), Rickie Lee Jones remains one of ...
AUDIO: Rickie Lee Jones (1991)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, October 1991
The boho queen talks about her covers album Pop Pop, songwriting and song choices, working with Don Was and her unlikely friendship with Scotland's The Blue Nile
File format: mp3; file size: 30.5mb; Interview length: 33' 16"; sound quality: **
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Guardian, The, March 1991
AS ANY OF the fans who have helped to sell out her shows in London and Glasgow this weekend will know, Rickie Lee Jones likes ...
Janis Joplin, Band, The, Grateful Dead: Choo Choo Ch’Boogie: Festival Express 1970
Retrospective and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, September 2004
IT WAS THE Lollapalooza of its day – a week-long, three-date circus of a rock and roll tour featuring The Band, Buddy Guy, Janis Joplin, ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, January 1998
The complete JD story, from Warsaw to 'Atmosphere', compiled by the band’s surviving members with Jon Savage and including dozens of outtakes, unreleased demos, and ...
Judds, The: The Judds at the London Palladium
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, February 1987
ONLY COUNTRY, as glitzy and airbrushed as it’s become, could give us something as apple-pie downhome as a mother-daughter harmony duo. A Nashville fairy ...
Kaleidoscope: Pulsating Dream: The Epic Recordings (Acadia/Evangeline)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, May 2004
The complete ‘66-’70 works of insanely eclectic LA ensemble beloved of Jimmy Page. ...
Nick Kent: The Write Stuff: Nick Kent
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Vogue, June 1994
FOR ANY CALLOW, maladjusted youth growing up in the early-to-mid-‘70s with the New Musical Express as his bible, Nick Kent was unquestionably the coolest rock ...
Killers, The: A Wrock Riter's Guilty Pleasure: The Killers
Comment by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, October 2006
IN LIMEYLAND we're obsessed with Guilty Pleasures, thanks not least to the doughty efforts of DJ Sean Rowley, who revels on his radio show in ...
Killing Joke: The Hoax That Joke Built: Killing Joke
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, NME, February 1982
"There was a place that wasn't a place,There was a race that wasn't a race..."– 'The Pandys Are Coming' ...
B.B. King: A Monarch on Merseyside: BB King
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Independent, The, July 2002
"MY BAND tells me I’ve earned the right to siddown if I wanna," says the vast man with the twinkly eyes. "I wanna." ...
Gladys Knight & the Pips: Memories of the Way We Were (Buddah); 20 Golden Greats (Motown)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Melody Maker, October 1979
GLADYS KNIGHT has been turned into the spinster of soul. Her generous face seems to invite desertion. Yet with almost maternal dignity, she translates this ...
Gladys Knight And The Pips: Visions
Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, 1983
SEEMS LIKE everyone is going Solar. Light to the touch but good to the bone, it's the radio sound of now. The perfect pop-soul marriage, ...
Mark Knopfler, Dire Straits: The Rock’s Backpages Interview: Mark Knopfler
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, September 2004
RBP: You recorded your new album Shangri-La at the studio of the same name in Malibu. When was the studio refurbished? ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, May 1990
Lenny on being away from home, his family background, the truth about the '60s copyist accusations, Prince, his band, and his Romeo Blue persona
File format: mp3; in 2 parts, total file sizes: 45.2meg, total interview length: 49' 21" sound quality: ***
Fela Kuti: He Who Has A Quiver In His Underpants
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, NME, November 1983
Fela Kuti — also known as He Who Has Death In His Quiver (and a shiver in his Y-fronts) — last week descended on London ...
Patti LaBelle: On Her Own: Patti Labelle
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Vogue, 1987
PATTI LABELLE HAS seen it all – lived through every phase of black American pop from the doo-woppy girl groups of the early 1960s to ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 1987
The gal with the Big Hair talks about hitting with 'On My Own', the making of her Winner In You album, and fondly remembers the old package-tour days and her time with LaBelle.
File format: mp3 File size: 16.1mb Interview length: 17 minutes 32 seconds Sound quality: ***
Patti LaBelle, Anita Baker, Aretha Franklin: Women Soul Singers
Essay by Barney Hoskyns, Vogue, 1990
FOR ALL THE LEGENDARY kings of soul music, the Sam Cookes and Otis Reddings and Marvin Gayes, the true spirit of this great black American ...
Review and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, September 2006
THERE WAS a time when Kurt Wagner’s Lambchop dwelled in the very eye of the alt.Americana hurricane: a folksy but literate Nashville troupe making highbrow ...
Lambchop: Tracks of His Tears: Kurt Wagner and Lambchop
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, April 2004
IT’S KURT Wagner who spots The Nipple. ...
La's, The: The La’s: The La’s (Go! Discs)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, January 2001
WHO REMEMBERS the La’s when they first popped out of the Liverpool woodwork? A cherubic quartet of scallies, they were pure cutesy retro, ’60s revisitors ...
Bettye LaVette: Betty LaVette: I've Got My Own Hell to Raise (Anti)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Observer, The, September 2005
PREVIOUSLY KNOWN only to fanatical followers of obscure deep soul, the legendary Ms LaVette belatedly comes in for a Joe Henry tune-up on this feisty, ...
Led Zeppelin: Let's Get Physical: The Story of Led Zeppelin's Physical Graffiti
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, Classic Rock, September 2010
SOMETHING IS ROTTEN in the state of rock. The heady euphoria of the late Sixties has degenerated into decadence and self-satisfaction. Working-class guitar heroes have ...
Led Zeppelin: All Loud On The Western Front: How Zep Conquered The World
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, May 2003
With the release of the sensational DVD and the fearsome live How The West Was Won, LED ZEPPELIN are back in our midst as purveyors ...
AUDIO: Led Zeppelin Tour Manager Richard Cole (2005)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, November 2005
The legendary Zep tour manager remembers meeting the band, the first US tour, the curious friendship between Bonham and Plant, all things Bron-Y-Aur, life on the road, making Led Zeppelin IV, and Girls Girls Girls!
File format: mp3; file size: 64.3mb; Interview length: 1h 10' 15"; sound quality: ***
AUDIO: Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page (2003)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, April 2003
Jimmy Page on going through the archives to assemble the monumental Led Zeppelin DVD, and on the early days of the band, on the road and in the studio, through to Knebworth in 1979
File format: mp3; in 2 parts, total file sizes: 45.2meg, total interview length: 49'22", sound quality: ***
AUDIO: Led Zeppelin's John Paul Jones (2003)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, April 2003
Led Zep's bass player takes us back to the riotous days of 1970, and the joys of playing with Bonzo, the folk and R&B influences, and forward to 1979, and Knebworth and In Through The Out Door
File format: mp3; in 2 parts, total file sizes: 64.2meg, total interview length: 1h10'7", sound quality: ***
AUDIO: Led Zeppelin's Robert Plant (2003)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, April 2003
Percy himself on Led Zep's annus mirabilis 1970 - from conquering America and playing the Royal Albert Hall, to "getting it together in the country" at Bron-Y-Aur, and the gestation of Led Zep, then fast forward to 1979, and family tragedy, recording In Through the Out Door, and playing Knebworth
File format: mp3; in 2 parts, total file sizes: 65.2meg, total interview length: 1h11'08", sound quality: ****
Led Zeppelin: Been A Long Time: Led Zeppelin
Retrospective and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, June 2003
EVEN NOW, after all these years of hairtree wannabes and idiot tribute bands, there's something so fierce and coruscating about Led Zeppelin in their prime ...
Led Zeppelin: Nick Kent on Led Zeppelin (2011)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, May 2011
Legendary NME journalist Nick Kent remembers his days in the orbit of Led Zeppelin: the many highs, and quite a few lows; Peter Grant; Zep v journalists; the sleaze and the gangsters.
File format: mp3; file size: 132.8mb, interview length: 2h 25' 03" sound quality: ****
Led Zeppelin: No Stairway! The Real Best of Led Zeppelin
Guide by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, September 2012
Forget 'Stairway to Heaven'. In fact, forget 'Heartbreaker' and 'Rock and Roll' and (yikes!) even 'Dazed and Confused' and 'When the Levee Breaks'. (Definitely forget ...
Led Zeppelin: The Power and the Glory: Led Zeppelin and the making of IV
Retrospective and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, July 2006
Author’s note: This is the full, unexpurgated version of a piece for Uncut magazine. It is itself a very truncated distillation of the full-length study ...
Led Zeppelin: Their Satanic Majesties Request: When Led Zeppelin Ruled The World
Book Excerpt by Barney Hoskyns, 'Trampled Under Foot' (Faber & Faber), September 2012
By 1973, Led Zeppelin was the biggest rock band on the planet. In this excerpt from Trampled Under Foot, Barney Hoskyns' new oral history of ...
Led Zeppelin, Robert Plant: Stairway to Snowdonia: Rapping with Robert Plant
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, October 2003
For Robert Plant, life after Led Zeppelin has been anything but predictable. Resisting attempts to coast on the Zep legend, Percy has trodden his own ...
Leiber and Stoller, Elvis Presley: Elvis & Leiber & Stoller
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, Die Welt Woche, 1997
WHEN JERRY Leiber and Mike Stoller submitted the sickly ballad 'Love Me' to Elvis Presley in the late summer of 1956, they thought the boy ...
Lemonheads, The: AUDIO: The Lemonheads' Evan Dando (1996)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, August 1996
Car Button Cloth-era Evan Dando sings 'Don't Fear The Reaper', talks rather a lot about drugs and name-drops remorselessly, to highly entertaining effect.
File format: mp3; in 3 parts, total file sizes: 68.2meg, total interview length: 1h 14' 29" sound quality: ****
Lemonheads, The, Evan Dando: Evan Dando and the Pop Walkabout
Essay by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, September 1996
IN DON DeLillo’s 1973 novel Great Jones Street, a rock star named Bucky Wunderlick decides to quit his band and disappear from the music industry. ...
Lemonheads, The, Evan Dando: Evan Dando: The Smoker You Drink, The Player You Get
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, October 1996
DRIVING THROUGH the sheeting rain from the miniature airport that serves Martha’s Vineyard, the guy at the wheel informs me that we’re heading towards the ...
Sean Lennon: Into the Sun (Grand Royal)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Request, June 1998
AFTER THE DAMP SQUIB that half-bro Jules' career turned out to be – and considering the band IMA's collaboration with Yoko Ono on Rising – ...
Little Feat: Album By Album: Little Feat
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, August 2008
Lowell George was a Hollywood one-off: a swarthy movie-brat beatnik with a white-negro larynx and a keeningly sensual slide-guitar style. In late '69 he formed ...
AUDIO: Little Feat's Bill Payne and Paul Barrere (2008)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, April 2008
Messrs. Payne and Barrere look back at their time in the great Little Feat, album by album.
File format: mp3; in 2 parts, total file sizes: 64.6mb, total interview length: 1h 10' 38" sound quality: * (phone)
Little Feat: The One That Got Away
Retrospective and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, July 1994
OK, SO THERE aren't many of them, but Little Feat's 1975 show at the Rainbow Theatre was one LEGENDARY GIG EVERYONE SAYS THEY SAW that ...
Little Richard speaks, part 1 (1985)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, March 1985
Little Richard on the demonic nature of Rock'n'Roll of which, nonetheless, he is King; on how he came out of the American South; on Otis Redding and much more. Hear him sing!
File format: mp3 File size: 26.3mb Interview length: 28 minutes 47 seconds Sound quality: ****
Little Richard speaks, part 2 (1985)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, March 1985
Mr Penniman on God, Gospel, Sex, Drugs & Rock'n'Roll. Phew!
File format: mp3 File size: 21.5mb Interview length: 23 minutes 30 seconds Sound quality: ****
Little Richard: The King and Queen of Rock 'n' Roll
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, NME, March 1985
YOU CATCH sight of him across the Hilton's gaudy foyer, an ordinary enough black man in track-suit top, tuxedo pants, and matted wet-look coiffure. ...
Lone Justice: A Tale Of The New West
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, NME, May 1985
EIGHT YEARS on and it's official — we are no longer bored with the USA. ...
Jennifer Lopez, J-Lo: Jennifer Lopez on Selena
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Interview, April 1997
In the new movie Selena, Jennifer Lopez had the coveted - yet unenviable - task of playing the most adored Latina singer ever, the late ...
Love: AUDIO: Arthur Lee in LA, part 1 (1993)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, June 1993
Arthur Lee tells Barney Hoskyns about growing up in Memphis and Los Angeles and his dreams of being a musician. Some of the time.
File format: mp3 File size: 35.5mb Interview length: 39 minutes 54 seconds Sound quality: **
Love: AUDIO: Arthur Lee in LA, part 2 (1993)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, June 1993
An increasingly cantankerous Arthur Lee describes a gay near-miss with Jimi Hendrix, rants about hip-hop, and spouts New Age gibberish to a palpably startled Barney Hoskyns
File format: mp3 File size: 50.2mb Interview length: 54 minutes 51 seconds Sound quality: **
AUDIO: Love's Bryan MacLean (1996)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, August 1996
RBP takes a drive around Los Angeles with Arthur Lee's second-in-command, hearing all about the madness, the drugs and the whole Sunset Scene vibe - and the making of the first two, classic, Love albums.
File format: mp3; in 3 parts, total file sizes: 92meg, total interview length: 1hr 40' 34" sound quality: **
Love Story: Alone Again, or Arthur Lee
Retrospective and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, June 1997
HIGH UP in Laurel Canyon, with all of Los Angeles spread out around him, Arthur Lee would sit and stare and contemplate death - "sitting ...
Love: The Forever Changes Concert
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, December 2003
FOREVER CHANGES is one of those "classic" albums that should have dated but miraculously hasn't. Heavy-handedly paranoid, the product of a strange rock/soul miscegenation, quaintly ...
Courtney Love: America’s Sweetheart
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, 2004
Lady Cobain emerges from rehab to release her debut solo album. ...
Lyle Lovett: Lone Star: Lyle Lovett
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Vogue, March 1994
IT'S HARD to believe, but this is Julia Roberts’s first ever appearance on The Tonight Show, the live American chat show to end all chat ...
Lovin' Spoonful, The: The Lovin' Spoonful: Singles As and Bs
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, March 2006
DO YOU BELIEVE in the magic of a great pop song? The Lovin' Spoonful did. On 1965's jaunty 'Do You Believe In Magic', their first ...
Lynyrd Skynyrd, Allman Brothers Band: Alabama Shakes: The Saga of Southern Rock
Comment by Barney Hoskyns, Guardian, The, April 2012
IT WAS ONLY a matter of time before BBC4 green-lit a Friday night documentary about the sub-genre Southern Rock. The subject is irresistible to connoisseurs ...
Madonna: The Billion Dollar Lady's New Deal
Comment by Barney Hoskyns, Times, The, November 1991
THE NEWS THAT Madonna has just clinched a deal making her the highest-paid performer in the history of the pop industry only confirms what we ...
Madonna: The Empress' New Clothes
Essay by Barney Hoskyns, Sunday Correspondent, May 1990
As Britain limbers up for her Blonde Ambition tour and Dick Tracy movie, Barney Hoskyns casts a sceptical eye over the talents of Madonna Louise ...
Madonna, Oliver Cheatham: Cheek to Cheatham: Madonna/Oliver Cheatham
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, NME, November 1983
FROM CHIC TO STREET: BARNEY HOSKYNS FINDS OUT HOW FAR MADONNA AND OLIVER CHEATHAM HAVE MOTORED SINCE QUITTING DETROIT VIA THE DANCE STUDIOS OF NEW ...
Magazine, Howard Devoto: Howard Devoto: Jerky Versions Of The Dream (Virgin)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, 1983
I NEVER CARED much for Magazine. They were a group without a style, or at least a group whose style consisted in a profound lack. ...
Barry Manilow: Opium of the Missus
Essay by Barney Hoskyns, Marxism Today, April 1984
IF BARRY Manilow’s career is on the wane, you’d never have guessed it from last summer’s grandiose Concert At Blenheim Palace, when 40,000-odd pilgrims, preponderantly ...
Arif Mardin: Groovin': The Genius of Arif Mardin
Sleevenotes by Barney Hoskyns, Rhino Records, April 2007
ATLANTIC'S JERRY WEXLER called him The Pasha, aka "His Soulful Turkish Eminence". It was a typically Wexleresque reference to Arif Mardin's aristocratic background and manner. ...
Bob Marley & the Wailers: Burnin': Bob Marley and the Wailers take Britain
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, March 1995
Babylon's freezing. The Wailers arrive on a mission to ignite below-zero Britain. Thus begins the demise of the original band and the rise of a ...
Bob Marley & the Wailers, Wailers, The: The Wailers: Burnin’ (Deluxe Edition) (Tuff Gong/Island)
Review and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, January 2005
CATCH A FIRE set the world alight but Burnin’ got it blazing. By the time Eric Clapton took the album’s ‘I Shot the Sheriff’ to ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, September 2004
Two-CD set of mainly live jazz-folk genius from the early ‘70s to the mid-‘90s, with bonus DVD interview from last year. ...
John Martyn: Tha Man Who Put The Sap In Sapphire
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, NME, December 1984
COSMIC JOHN MARTYN at the Dominion a fortnight ago was the first time I’d seen this beer-swilling beat hippie since I snuck in the back ...
Hugh Masekela: Blazing In The Bush
Report and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, NME, March 1984
AT A TIME when Western attention is once more turned on the evil and cunning of the South African government, it couldn't be more appropriate ...
Massive Attack: Mezzanine (Virgin)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rolling Stone, May 1998
ELDER STATESMEN of the moody dance genre that used to be called trip-hop, Massive Attack like to take their time making albums. So long, indeed, ...
Curtis Mayfield: New World Order
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Request, December 1996
SIX YEARS AFTER the freak onstage accident that paralyzed him from the neck down, Curtis Mayfield, one of soul music's true titans, makes his debut ...
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, July 1983
FEW THINGS in this amorphous and inchoate universe are so perfect as ‘I’m So Proud’ or ‘Woman’s Got Soul’ – or very nearly any of ...
Maze: A Funk-Lite Labyrinth: Maze
Report and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, NME, March 1982
FRANKIE BEVERLY’S eight-man Maze could have come to Europe at any time in the last two years and met with the same phenomenal response they ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Vogue, November 1990
OF ALL THE survivors from the heady early-'80s days of LA’s "Paisley Underground", Mazzy Star’s David Roeback appears to command the most respect in rock’s ...
Michael McDonald: LA's hi-tech soul singer: Michael McDonald
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Times, The, 1987
The preview in Thursday's Independent said it all: "Placid white soul-funker, conservative stuff even by Los Angeles standards." You could not hope to find a ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 1986
The ex-Dan/Doobies man looks back at his career, discusses his art and ruminates on the meaning of "white soul".
File format: mp3; in 2 parts, total file sizes: 49.9mb, total interview length: 54' 25" sound quality: ****
Michael McDonald: Hammersmith Odeon, London
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, Guardian, The, 1985
THIS SHOW proved one thing and proved it triumphantly: you can be a paunchy, greying white Californian with a supremely uncool-looking band and still have ...
Michael McDonald: I Survived The Doobies
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, NME, December 1986
ON THE FACE of it, Michael McDonald is the kind of West Coast AOR "artist" who has been reviled in NME circles since time – ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Vogue, May 1993
ANYONE WHO remembers Maria McKee whooping it up with her country-rock band Lone Justice back in the ‘80s will concur with Deacon Blue's verdict that ...
Meat Loaf: Wembley Arena, London
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, 1981
THEY'VE ASKED me to make this as short as the Loaf in question is large – but there’s a painful amount to be said. The ...
Meat Puppets: Meat Puppets (SST/Thermidor)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, September 1982
PHOENIX, ARIZONA may or may not be the baking asshole of the universe, but one thing is certain: music of this almost otherworldly nature could ...
Mercury Rev: A Long Strange Migration: Jonathan Donahue Talks
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, January 2005
RBP: What difference did it make working in your own studio for the first time? ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, August 2001
Jonathan Donahue and Jeff Mercel talk about band members past and present, and working with producers and arrangers such as Jack Nitzsche and Tony Visconti, plus their very own Dave Fridmann
File format: mp3; in 2 parts, total file sizes: 50mb, total interview length: 51' 19" sound quality: ***
Mercury Rev: Jonathan Donahue's Dark Dream
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, August 2001
TWO AND A half years ago, American mavericks Mercury Rev thought their career was pretty much over. For the band's two Catskills-based mainstays – singer/guitarist ...
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, unpublished, 1998
MERCURY REV, one of the great if most overlooked American groups of the 1990s, are finally releasing a new album, their first for V2 Records. ...
Mercury Rev: The Secret Migration (V2)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, February 2005
Follow-up to 2001's All Is Dream, recorded in the band's own Kingston studio by the core Rev trio of Jonathan Donahue, Grasshopper and Jeff Mercel. ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Guardian, The, August 2001
ON MAY 28, 1998, Jonathan Donahue and Sean "Grasshopper" of Mercury Rev sat rather dejectedly in a diner in Woodstock, New York, and talked about ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, April 1996
The Rashomon interview: all four Metallicas sit down, separately, to talk about the making of Load.
File format: mp3; in 5 parts, total file sizes: 104.6mb, total interview length: 1h 54' 21" sound quality: ***
Metallica: The Alternative Metallica
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, July 1996
THEY MAKE THE ODDEST OF rock couples, James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich. Watching them at work in Manhattan’s Right Track Studios, it’s hard to imagine ...
AUDIO: Joni Mitchell at 50 (1994)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, September 1994
The First Lady of the Canyon looks at her past and present, from her Canadian youth through the Canyon days, the nightmare of the '80s and to her place in 1994. Songs, places, lovers, friends, gender and politics. Oh, and Bob Dylan's bad breath.
File format: mp3; in 4 parts, total file sizes: 111.4mb, total interview length: 2h 1' 41" sound quality: ***
Joni Mitchell: Both Sides Now: Joni Mitchell's Hits and Misses
Review by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, November 1996
* First-ever attempt to compile a "best of" the former Roberta Joan Anderson.* Simultaneously released albums of "hits" - songs successful either for Mitchell or ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, eMusic.com, November 2007
JONI MITCHELL declared in 2002 that she was done with the music biz and would never, ever, make another album. I can't have been the ...
Joni Mitchell: Our Lady of Sorrows
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, December 1994
SHE ALMOST bounds into the room, this dowager duchess of American rock, fresh from whooping it up for Mojo's photographer on the street outside manager ...
Joni Mitchell: Queen Joni Approximately
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, January 2004
Raised in Canada, Joni Mitchell found her way to California in 1968. Barney Hoskyns on the crowning of a canyon princess. ...
Willie Mitchell: From Hi to Waylo: the Spirit of Memphis Soul
Report by Barney Hoskyns, unpublished, 1988
LOVERS OF authentic southern American soul are in for a major treat this weekend when a "Memphis Soul Revue" holds court at London's Town & ...
Willie Mitchell, Memphis Magician (1985)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, October 1985
The legendary Memphis producer talks about the rise of Southern Soul and the Memphis Sound, meeting and producing Al Green and making all those fabulous hits for Hi Records
File format: mp3; in 2 parts, total file sizes: 46.2meg, total interview length: 50' 30" sound quality: ****
Moby Grape: Crosstalk: The Best of Moby Grape (Sony Music UK)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, February 2004
YOU COULD SAY it was all there in the name: Melville’s white whale meets Dionysus, with suitably catastrophic results. But Californian quintet Moby Grape, the ...
Report and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Vogue, October 1991
THERE IS NOTHING quite like Momus in British pop. The alter ego of one Nicholas Currie, right, a pale Scotsman of Presbyterian origin who dwells ...
Monkees, The: The Monkees: Head
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, 2004
The "Prefab Four" star in self-deconstructing Help!-on-acid, scripted by joker Jack Nicholson. ...
Van Morrison: Nothin' But A Stranger In This World: Van Morrison and Astral Weeks
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, November 2001
THE FITFUL BRITISH SUMMER of 2001 is ending not with a whimper but a bang – a burst of Bank Holiday heat that's got everyone ...
Van Morrison: Odeon, Birmingham
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, September 1983
I LOST VAN Morrison's wavelength on the album of the same name, and my feelings about the last four are decidedly mixed. This misanthropic mystic ...
Mudcrutch: Mudcrutch (Reprise)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, June 2008
Tom Petty's glorified Florida bar band gets around to cutting its debut album after 35 years. ...
Nazz, The, Todd Rundgren: Todd Rundgren: Album By Album
Guide by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, December 2009
TODD RUNDGREN IS the Philadelphia-born whizzkid who could and should have been the biggest star of the '70s. Next month the man John Lennon referred ...
AUDIO: Willie Nelson in Stockholm (1994)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, October 1994
Willie Nelson – on tour in Sweden – on leaving Columbia for Liberty, his tussle with the IRS, Cowboy movies, songwriting and more...
File format: mp3 File size: 30mb Interview length: 32 minutes 43 seconds Sound quality: ****
Neutral Milk Hotel's Jeff Mangum
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, December 1998
Mr. Mangum on the journey from Ruston, LA, to Athens, GA; Elephant Six Records, and his wider musical community; art and literature projects; and his lo-fi and psychedelic influences.
File format: mp3; file size: 39mb, interview length: 42' 37" sound quality: ***
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Sunday Correspondent, September 1989
AARON NEVILLE has to be one of black music's more extraordinary characters. There can be few experiences as disarming as hearing the voice of an ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, October 1989
The giant of New Orleans singers looks back at his roots in the Crescent City: the hard times and the good times, being a Neville Brother, key vocal influences and more.
File format: mp3 File size: 29.2mb Interview length: 31 minutes 55 seconds Sound quality: ***
Aaron Neville, ZZ Hill: Stateside Booty: ZZ Hill, Aaron Neville, Jimmy Holiday and Early Motown
Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, 1987
THE FLOOD of soul reissues and compilations continues with four more from the vaults of EMI's Stateside subsidiary. First off, an album of mid-period (early ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, 1987
WHAT a nice surprise: a double album of material from what is virtually a one-family history of New Orleans R&B, tastefully packaged and annotated by ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, November 1995
The Great American Songwriter talks about his childhood, being a perennial outsider, life on Warners, the American South, racism, Los Angeles, Faust and much more
File format: mp3; in 2 parts, total file sizes: 69.8meg, total interview length: 1h 16' 17", sound quality: ***
Randy Newman: Is Randy Newman the Old Eminem?
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, September 2003
The funniest and least sentimental songwriter in America has revisited his back pages on The Randy Newman Songbook, Volume 1. BARNEY HOSKYNS asks him about ...
Randy Newman: "I Love You, You C**t!"
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, August 1998
THE FOLK singer Dave Van Ronk called him "the Hoagy Carmichael of the ’60s". His boyhood friend and longtime producer Lenny Waronker tagged him "King ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, October 1995
IT’S BEEN A LONG TIME coming, but Newman’s Faust is finally here. Complete with choirs, orchestras, and stellar rock’n’roll guests, it’s surely the most ambitious ...
Randy Newman: London, Theatre Royal
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, Observer, The, November 1994
IT'S HARD to believe that in 1968 Randy Newman claimed he was "very rarely propelled by any great desire to perform live". Especially hard when ...
Randy Newman: Theatre Royal, Drury Lane
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, January 1995
HE IS TEN SECONDS into his second song, 'Yellow Man', when a bank of spots from Miss Saigon bathes him in a hepatic yellow light. ...
New Model Army: Top of the Antipops: New Model Army
Profile by Barney Hoskyns, New Statesman, 1984
PUNK IS DEAD in letter but not in spirit. That is the message from a new school of groups who do not make videos and ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, April 1983
I MUST applaud the mysterious Tony D for his live review of The Barracudas (12/2/83) – the gig excited me in exactly the same way. ...
Nightingales, The: Anti-Pop Songbirds: The Nightingales
Report and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Spin, October 1985
THE NIGHTINGALES ARE seasoned figures on the English independent scene, epitomizing the doggedly patient and uncompromising outsider. Five years old, they still play tiny clubs-above-pubs ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 1985
A languid, laid-back chat with the man who was always there: at the start of southern soul in Memphis with the Mar-Keys, on the road with Leon Russell, in L.A. with J.J. Cale and on. On the musicians he knew, scenes he was part of, and on that thorny subject, race.
File format: mp3; in 3 parts, total file sizes: 81.1meg, total interview length: 1h 28' 39" sound quality: ****
Laura Nyro: Dark Angel: The Stone Soul Genius of Laura Nyro
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, September 2009
I keep hearin' daddy through his grave:"Little girl, of all the daughters,You were born a woman,Not a slave."('The Confession', 1968) ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, 1997
WITH THE swaggering chords of the opening ‘Rock'N'Roll Star,’ Oasis announced that big, brash Brit rock was here to stay--at least for a few years. ...
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, ...
Will Oldham's Palace: Arise Therefore
Review by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, May 1996
THERE IS A strange subcurrent in American rock music of the '90s: a subcurrent of lo-fi, willfully inept, not-quite-country rock that stretches from the disbanded ...
Will Oldham, Palace Music: Will Oldham's Palace
Comment by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, May 1996
THERE IS A STRANGE subcurrent in the American rock music of the mid-'90s: a subcurrent of lo-fi, willfully inept, not-quite-country rock that stretches from the ...
Alexander O'Neal: Alexander O’Neal
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Vox, February 1991
WHATEVER happened to the black ladykiller, that oversized teddy bear in a Versace suit serenading womankind with a cordless microphone in one hand and a ...
Alexander O'Neal: Hammersmith Odeon
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, November 1986
IT SEEMS TO be ladykiller month in the UK. Luther Vandross and Freddie Jackson both have releases, while big Alex O'Neal's 1985 Epic album is ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Request, May 1997
"DOCTOR" ALEX Patterson, overlord of the Orb and revered godfather of the genus Ambient Techno, would like another brandy and ginger, if you don’t mind. ...
Roy Orbison: The Lonely Blue Dream of Roy Orbison
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, January 1999
HE STANDS stock-still, or nearly so. His right hand mechanically strums a black Gretsch, and his left leg slightly trembles. He could be a waxwork ...
Original Mirrors, Only Ones, The: The Only Ones/Original Mirrors: Lyceum, London
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, Spring 1981
"YOU LITTLE London boys..." The last of this city’s great rock’n’roll junkies is parting company with his other ones. One can’t put your arms around ...
Beth Orton: Comfort of Strangers (EMI)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, February 2006
HAS EMPTY become the new full? Every month we read of another singer-songstress who's stripped down her sound, kept things "spare and minimal". Now it's ...
Outkast: OutKast: Speakboxxx/The Love Below (Arista)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, 2004
THE YIN AND YANG of epicene dandy André 3000 and straight-up, pit-bull-ownin’ Big Boi may yet prove OutKast’s undoing. If so, the duo at least ...
Jimmy Page, Led Zeppelin: An Interview with Jimmy Page
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, March 2003
BH: About ten years ago you talked about the footage that's in the DVD. Robert said he didn't want to go back there while you ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, July 1997
ONCE UPON a time, Papas Fritas were just another dweebish lo-fi band from Massachusetts, growing up in the shadows of Sebadoh and Dinosaur Jr.. But ...
AUDIO: Van Dyke Parks, part 1 (1993)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, June 1993
Van Dyke Parks talks of his early days in Los Angeles, the folk scene, and the deaths of both his brother and John F. Kennedy
File format: mp3 File size: 32.4mb Interview length: 35 minutes 21 seconds Sound quality: ****
AUDIO: Van Dyke Parks, part 2 (1993)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, June 1993
On becoming an arranger and songwriter, the effects of the '60s British Invasion, the counterculture and the death of the hippie dream.
File format: mp3 File size: 25.9mb Interview length: 28 minutes 18 seconds Sound quality: ****
AUDIO: Van Dyke Parks, part 3 (1993)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, June 1993
Van Dyke Parks talks about being in the studio with Brian Wilson, the legendary Smile project, his own Song Cycle and much more
File format: mp3 File size: 34.7mb Interview length: 37 minutes 56 seconds Sound quality: ****
Van Dyke Parks, Beach Boys, The: Wouldn't It Have Been Nice: An Interview with Van Dyke Parks
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, January 2002
VAN DYKE PARKS was the intellectual southerner who penned the baroque, cryptic lyrics for 'Surf's Up', 'Heroes and Villains' and other Brian Wilson masterpieces. He ...
Gram Parsons: AUDIO: Phil Kaufman remembers Gram Parsons (2003)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, November 2003
From Mick'n'Keef to Emmylou; from Topanga Canyon to the Joshua Tree: Executive Nanny Phil Kaufman looks back on low lives and high times with Gram Parsons.
File format: mp3; in 2 parts, total file sizes: 49.4.mb, total interview length: 54' 01" sound quality: ***
Gram Parsons: Another Side of This Life (Sundazed)
Review and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, February 2001
Unheard mid-’60s folk recordings taped in Florida by Gram’s pal Jim Carlton. ...
Gram Parsons: The Good Ol’ Boy
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, July 1998
ON A WARM fall night in the tie-dyed rock’n’roll town of Woodstock, with the maple leaves turning to gold and purple on the mountains that ...
Gram Parsons: In His Hour Of Darkness: Gram Theft Auto and the Road Mangler Deluxe
Retrospective and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Times, The, March 2004
IT IS THE midsummer of 1973. Two men stand together amidst a throng of mourners at the graveside of Clarence White, former Byrd and the ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, November 1998
Messrs. Malkmus, Kannberg and Ibold on the making of the Terror Twilight album, working with Nigel Godrich, the ins-and-outs of the band... and the future of rock!
File format: mp3; file size: 60.7mb, interview length: 1h 06' 13" sound quality: **
Pavement: Mojo Rising: Pavement
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, June 1995
WE SHOULD HAVE seen it coming, really. While other leading practitioners of lo-fi American rock – Beck, Sebadoh, Royal Trux, The Grifters, Guided By Voices ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, June 1999
NOBODY COULD accuse Pavement of being rock archetypes. Take the group’s frontman Stephen Malkmus, who spends much of his spare time flyfishing virgin rivers and ...
Pearl Jam, Neil Young: Neil Young: The Reading Festival
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, October 1995
IT'S THE END OF SUMMER, and the temperature is plummeting. A vicious wind whips up the dustbowl that the Reading Festival site has become over ...
Profile by Barney Hoskyns, Independent, The, August 1999
"WHY DO people always have a go at Belgium?" ...
Teddy Pendergrass: Attractive — Moi? Sexy — Moi?
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, NME, May 1981
Sex symbol Teddy Pendergrass shrugs off the impertinence of reporter Barney Hoskyns ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, September 1985
A short chat with the country-soul legend, talking about writing 'Cry Like A Baby', producing the Box Tops, and on the sadly MIA Eddie Hinton
File format: mp3 File size: 9.2mb Interview length: 10 minutes Sound quality: ****
Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, September 1984
PETER HAMMILL is one of our stranger voyagers. Alone at a piano last month, he put most of the music we cover to shame. He ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Vogue, 1994
FEW ROCK artists making their debuts have been greeted with such an avalanche of acclaim as thundered down on Liz Phair last year. Her double-album-length ...
Liz Phair: Fresh outta Guyville
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, November 1994
NO-ONE WAS MORE SURPRISED THAN LIZ PHAIR when her precocious double-album debut became the alternative-rock succès d'estime of 1993. "I was just a neighbourhood kid ...
Esther Phillips: 'Little' Esther Phillips: Better Beware
Sleevenotes by Barney Hoskyns, Charly, July 1990
OF ALL the blues-shouting earth mamas who dominated the distaff side of R&B in the early '50s, easily the most disarming was Little Esther, born ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Observer, The, June 1996
WHEN THE Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia died last year, a whole era of rock’n’roll seemed to be drawing to a close. Many people assumed this ...
Report and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, June 1996
ON A STARRY SUMMER NIGHT at Bearsville Studios, New York, the four members of Phish are bracing themselves for the inevitable Grateful Dead question. You ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Revolver, 2000
AIR'S ADORABLE Moon Safari proved if nothing else that the pop universe had become a less xenophobic place. Now comes the first album by Phoenix, ...
Pixies, The: The Pixies: Hammersmith Odeon, London
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, Times, The, October 1990
WATCHING THE Pixies in a rock venue as mainstream as the Hammersmith Odeon seemed wrong, and they were as surprised to be there as anyone ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, September 2003
A somewhat wind-blown interview: on digging back into his pre-Zep archives for Sixty Six to Timbuktu; discovering his voice as a young singer; life and career post-Zeppelin.
File format: mp3; in 3 parts, total file sizes: 63.8mb, total interview length: 1h 9' 44" sound quality: **
Robert Plant: Mountain Man: Robert Plant Goes Back to his Welsh Roots
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Tracks, 2003
WHEN YOU'RE TOLD that Robert Plant will meet you on the platform of Machynlleth station in southern Snowdonia, you figure, "Sure, some hapless lackey will ...
Robert Plant: Band of Joy (Decca)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, September 2010
NOTE: Herewith an expanded version of a review written for Classic Rock magazine... BH ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Times, The, July 1990
WHEN QUINCY JONES gathered together his USA For Africa superstars to record 'We are the World' five years ago, he pinned a sign outside the ...
Plimsouls, The, Fleshtones, The: Trash on Delivery: The Plimsouls and The Fleshtones
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, NME, November 1983
EVERYONE VISITS the ’60s, but who brings anything back? Who brings them up to date? LA’s Plimsouls do. ...
Profile by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, March 1998
FIRMLY IN the tradition of orch-pop mavericks like Scott Walker and Jimmy Webb, Plush caused a minor commotion three years ago with the Drag City ...
Pointer Sisters, The: The Pointer Sisters: Look! Slow hands…
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Smash Hits, September 1981
WITH THE sultry ‘Slow Hand’ firmly placed at No. 2 in the US and showing every sign of going Top Ten over here, The Pointer ...
Police, The: The Police: Nottingham City Hall
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, January 1984
RICHARD COOK’S extraordinary vision of The Police (NME, 2nd Dec.) prompts one to reconsider the profound difference between The Police – those awful sing-a-long-a-suicides ‘So ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, June 1999
Barney Hoskyns talks to Iggy Pop, New York NY, 24 June 1999 File format: MP3 ; File size: 20.9mb; Interview length: 45 minutes; Sound quality: ***
Iggy Pop talks to Barney Hoskyns
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, August 1999
What impact did the breakup of your marriage have on Avenue B? Curiously, once my back was up against the wall and I was really ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, NME, October 1986
BACK IN the bleak wastes of the early ‘70s – when, of course, things were really no more bleak than they are now – there ...
Iggy Pop: Where the Debris Meets the Sea: Iggy Pop and James Williamson in Kill City
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, eMusic.com, September 2006
IGGY POP remains rock’s ultimate protopunk – the "world’s forgotten boy" who took the menace of the MC5 and the demonic danger of the Rolling ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 1985
The man who co-wrote all those great hits with Isaac Hayes remembers Memphis, and Stax, from back in the day.
File format: mp3; in 3 parts, total file sizes: 78.3mb, total interview length: 1h 25' 36" sound quality: ***
Prefab Sprout: Couldn’t Bear To Be Precious: Prefab Sprout
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, NME, March 1984
THE BOY'S a natural born charmer. ...
Prefab Sprout: Phone Home: Paddy McAloon
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, December 1994
"I'M ACTUALLY going for the record of being the longest hold-out character on the face of the earth. I'm trying to evaporate into a realm ...
Prefab Sprout: Shepherd's Bush Empire, London
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, June 2000
A THIRD of the way through this rare Sprout outing to the capital, Paddy McAloon dedicates the lovely, little-known 'Dragons' to the spouse of his ...
Prefab Sprout: The Backpages Interview: Paddy McAloon
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, June 2001
Fans of Prefab Sprout’s Paddy McAloon – the Gershwin of Tyneside – are used to defending him against the barbarians of Britrock and other genres ...
Prefab Sprout: The Enchanter: Paddy McAloon
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Vogue, 1988
PADDY McALOON is an anomalous figure in the British Pop climate of the late '80s. One of our precious few songwriters of any worth, he ...
Elvis Presley: Elvis and the Songsmiths
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut Legends, Spring 2005
CLYDE OTIS and Ivory Joe Hunter had just returned from a day's duck-hunting when the phone rang. It was the song publishers Hill and Range ...
Elvis Presley: Elvis 30 # 1 Hits (RCA)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Blender, Fall 2002
The King is gone, but he's not forgotten: Thirty classics from the best singer who ever lived. Period. ...
Elvis Presley: Memphis Blues Again: Elvis ’69
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, Aspects of Elvis (Sidgwick & Jackson), 1994
ELVIS PRESLEY must have sensed that his credibility was on the line when he made the decision, in early January 1969, to cancel a Nashville ...
Elvis Presley: Scotty Moore's Classic Axe Goes Under The Hammer
Report by Mark Pringle, Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, April 2000
Former Elvis Presley producer weeps after auctioning off "the most important guitar in rock and roll history" ...
Primal Scream: The Bobby Gillespie Interview
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, cdnow.com, Summer 2000
WHEN PRIMAL SCREAM released Screamadelica in 1991, they forged an indissoluble link between Brit indie-rock and underground dance culture that led directly to the sound ...
Prince: An Interview with the Prince formerly known as The Artist
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, March 2000
First, a caveat. ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, September 1994
OK, PREPARE YOURSELVES FOR A SHOCK. PRINCE'S new album – a last gasp from his 16-year career on Warner Brothers – is about sex. It ...
Prince: Parade (Original Soundtrack - Under The Cherry Moon)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, April 1986
I TOOK 'Kiss' as a signal that we were being ushered back into the compressed, airtight funkworld of Dirty Mind. Didn't flip over the song ...
Prince: A Second Coming Thru Purple Haze
Report by Barney Hoskyns, NME, April 1983
A MONTH ago, in Minneapolis, mecca of absence, I had time on my hands – all over my body, actually – to consider the idea ...
Profile by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, February 1997
"I am not a woman, I am not a man/I am something that you’ll never understand..." ...
Prince: The Special One: The Return of Prince
Profile by Barney Hoskyns, Observer Music Monthly, February 2006
This is a previously unpublished version of a cover story for the Observer Music Monthly. ...
Prince, Michael Jackson: Match of the Fey: Prince and Michael Jackson
Essay by Barney Hoskyns, Times, The, July 1988
PRINCE BEGGED an interviewer seven years ago: "Just don’t compare me to Michael Jackson." Few could then have guessed there would ever be a need ...
Prodigy, The: Prodigy: The Fat Of The Land
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rolling Stone, August 1997
RARELY HAS a pop trend been so shamelessly spoon-fed to America as the hold-all genre dubbed "electronica". Rarely, indeed, has the music industry tried so ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, unpublished, 1998
JARVIS COCKER is that most British of pop creatures, the Nerd-as-Superstar. Like the young Morrissey, he’s the spindly misfit, the scrawny mis-shape who outwitted the ...
Raconteurs, The: AUDIO: The Raconteurs (2006)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, March 2006
Raconteurs Jack White, Brendan Benson, Patrick Keeler and Jack Lawrence on how they got together, making the first album, and their shared love of Led Zeppelin
File format: mp3; in 2 parts, total file sizes: 39.5meg, total interview length: 43' 04" sound quality: ***
Raconteurs, The: The Raconteurs and the making of 'Steady, as She Goes'
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, December 2006
IF EVER A record begged to be released on 7" vinyl it was the Raconteurs' 'Steady, as She Goes'. Redolent of an era when people ...
Raconteurs, The, The Dead Weather, White Stripes, The: The Backpages Interview: Jack White
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, November 2009
ON THE 18TH of August 2009, in Salt Lake City, I was privileged enough to sit down with Jack White – variously a White Stripe, ...
Raconteurs, The, White Stripes, The: Jack White's Side Dish: The Raconteurs
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, May 2006
THE BUSMAN'S holiday has a long if mixed history in rock. From makeshift supergroups to one-off time-killers to impromptu jam sessions, sideline moonlightings are part ...
Radiohead: Can Radiohead Take America?
Report by Barney Hoskyns, unpublished, 1997
"THERE ARE lots of double standards with British bands when they talk about America," says Jonny Greenwood. "They like to talk badly about it, yet ...
Radiohead: Exit Music: Can Radiohead save rock music as we (don’t) know it?
Profile by Barney Hoskyns, GQ, October 2000
THE POSTERS on the ancient streets of Arles give little away. Sting is playing soon in Marseille, and coming up is a "Super Big Reggae ...
Radiohead: Here Are The Young Men: Radiohead’s Kid A
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, December 2000
2000 WAS PARTLY about waiting for Yorko: waiting for the follow-up to the huge, incandescent, panoramic, faux-pomp OK Computer. And when Kid A finally arrived ...
Radiohead: No Surprises: Radiohead And Their Kind
Report by Barney Hoskyns, Guardian, The, April 2000
After the success of OK Computer, Radiohead's next album is one of the most eagerly awaited records ever. Perhaps, says BARNEY HOSKYNS, that's why copycat ...
Radiohead: Stormy Return: Radiohead live in Arles
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, cdnow.com, Summer 2000
RADIOHEAD'S DECISION to embark on a low-key, off-the-beaten-track summer tour of Europe nearly backfired from the kickoff last night when a cataclysmic downpour threatened to ...
Raincoats, The: The Raincoats: The Raincoats (We ThRee)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, November 2009
THIS 1979 ROUGH TRADE album is a period piece and a sacred artefact, not least because of its subsequent endorsement by an "extremely unhappy, lonely ...
Ramones, The: Gabba Gabba Sniffle: The Ramones at Brixton Academy, London
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, Independent, The, February 1996
PUNK MAY not be dead, but the Ramones, it would seem, have finally bitten the dust – like the spaghetti western mercenaries to whom they ...
Ramones, The: The Ramones in London, part 1 (1985)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Mat Snow, Rock's Backpages Audio, February 1985
Joey and Dee Dee talk about life for da brudders is the mid-'80s, Hardcore, chart success (or not), and much more.
File format: mp3; File size: 30.6 mb Interview length: 44 minutes 36 seconds, sound quality: ***
Ramones, The: The Ramones in London, part 2 (1985)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Mat Snow, Rock's Backpages Audio, February 1985
Joey and Dee Dee talk about drugs, playing fast, New York City, and where they come from musically.
File format: mp3; File size: 12.5 mb Interview length: 18 minutes 16 seconds, sound quality: ***
Ramones, The: The Ramones: Ain’t No Stoppin’ The Cretins From Boppin’!
Interview by Mat Snow, Barney Hoskyns, NME, February 1985
ONE! Joey...TWO! Dee Dee... FREE! Mat... FOUR! Barney... THE RAMONES revisited in a teenage tag-match ‘tween two of the scuzziest pairs of sneakers in the ...
Lou Reed: Cool Hand Lou: The Transformations of Lou Reed
Comment by Barney Hoskyns, Vogue, February 1992
SINCE THE RELEASE of Growing up in Public in 1980, Lou Reed has pretty much grown up in private. In 1981 he not only ...
Lou Reed, Velvet Underground: A Dark Prince at Twilight: Lou Reed
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, March 1996
THE DAY DOES not begin auspiciously. The first flakes of a snowstorm descend as I open the curtains in my hotel room, adding yet another ...
R.E.M.: Four Guys Working For The Sainthood
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, NME, April 1984
"THERE'S TWO SCHOOLS OF MUSICIANS" argues guitarist Peter Buck. "One just digs playing and is in it for fun, the other wants to get rich ...
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, November 1983
IF YE Smythes are anything to go by, rock's set-piece quartet of voice and guitar, bass and drums is making a decided comeback. Witnessing R.E.M.'s ...
Residents, The: The Residents: George & James (Korova)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, 1983
IT WOULD appear that the San Mateo four can't think of a way to end the Mole Trilogy they began in 1981. Instead, they've launched ...
AUDIO: Keith Richards on Talk is Cheap (1997)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, April 1997
The Human Riff talks about his solo excursion with the X-Pensive Winos and making Talk is Cheap: sorting out the crack band with Steve Jordan, working with Bootsy and Maceo, and on being a frontman.
File format: mp3; file size: 19.2mb, interview length: 21' sound quality: *
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Independent, The, June 1999
"Thirty years upon the stage/ I hear the people say, ‘Why won’t he go away?’" ...
Retrospective and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, May 1997
KEITH RICHARDS says he’d never thought of making a solo album until Mick Jagger announced that he didn’t want to tour to promote the Rolling ...
Keith Richards, Rolling Stones, The: AUDIO: Keith Richards (1997)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, November 1997
The Human Riff on Exile on Main Street, Gram Parsons, rastamen in the hills and his loathing of Oasis
File format: mp3 File size: 27.7mb Interview length: 30 minutes 13 seconds Sound quality: ****
Keith Richards, Rolling Stones, The: Keef: Exile just a shot away from Main Street
Book Review by Barney Hoskyns, European, The, September 1992
IT HAS become something of a cliche to say that Keith Richards is the Rolling Stones. ...
Rip Rig and Panic: Rip Rig & Panic: I Am Cold (Virgin)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, June 1982
RIP, RIG & PANIC definitely ARE a manifestation of something obscene: music as an expression of HEALTH. Like the kind of swarthy boor who practises ...
Robbie Robertson, Band, The: The Backpages Interview: Robbie Robertson
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, October 2005
RBP: A Musical History seems like a formidable undertaking. ...
Rolling Stones, The: A Sweet Tooth for the Stones: 'Brown Sugar'
Comment by Barney Hoskyns, Sabotage Times, Summer 2012
GOD IT'S TEDIOUS when ancient hacks wax nostalgic about formative pop memories – memories sacred to them but rarely to their readers. So stop reading ...
Rolling Stones, The: The Rolling Stones: Sticky Fingers and Exile On Main St.
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, Observer, The, June 2004
STICKY FINGERS has always been taken for granted. Fans and critics alike have drooled for decades over Let It Bleed and Exile on Main St., ...
Rolling Stones, The: The Rolling Stones: Stripped
Review by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, December 1995
GOT LIVE If You Want It... ...so bragged The Rolling Stones of their first live album, recorded at the ...
Rolling Stones, The: The Rolling Stones: Tiers Are Not Enough
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, July 1982
The Rolling Stones: Wembley Stadium, London ...
Rolling Stones, The, Keith Richards: Keith Richards: How Do You Stop?
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, November 1997
"DON’T BE MISLED!" shouts the faded 8" x 8" flyer propped up on a baby grand piano in the mansion Keith Richards is renting in ...
Ron Sexsmith: Forever Endeavour
Press Release by Barney Hoskyns, Cooking Vinyl Records, February 2013
IN A WORLD of workaday singer-songwriters mired in vacuous self-regard, news of a new Ron Sexsmith record can only gladden the heart of those who ...
Linda Ronstadt: Homecoming Queen: Linda Ronstadt
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, April 1995
Thirty years ago Linda Ronstadt left Tucson for the folk-rock Mecca of Los Angeles. Now the first lady of softly streamlined country returns to the ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, February 1995
The First Lady of Counry Rock on a life in music: from Tuscon to LA; the Troubadour scene; hanging out with Jim Morrison and Gram Parsons; exploring standards and Mexican music; singing, production and producers.
File format: mp3; in 2 parts, total file sizes: 145mb, total interview length: 2h 28' 24" sound quality: **
Todd Rundgren: AUDIO: A Wizard, A True Star: Todd Rundgren, part 1 (1997)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, August 1997
On Todd's childhood and early musical adventures, culminating in the formation of The Naz and a sudden immersion in the teen pop world
File format: mp3 File size: 38.5mb Interview length: 42 minutes 06 seconds Sound quality: ****
Todd Rundgren: AUDIO: A Wizard, A True Star: Todd Rundgren, part 2 (1997)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, August 1997
On getting involved with Albert Goldman and the Woodstock scene, recording The Band and dressing up and taking acid
File format: mp3 File size: 39.6mb Interview length: 43 minutes 15 seconds Sound quality: ****
Todd Rundgren: AUDIO: A Wizard, A True Star: Todd Rundgren, part 3 (1997)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, August 1997
Meeting the Sayles Brothers, working on Ritalin, the Concept for A Wizard, A True Star, building Secret Sound Studio and developing his recording techniques
File format: mp3 File size: 33.1mb Interview length: 36 minutes 09 seconds Sound quality: ****
Todd Rundgren: He Put A Spell On Me: The True Stardom of Todd Rundgren
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, March 2003
It is 30 years since TODD RUNDGREN released the spellbinding A Wizard, A True Star. BARNEY HOSKYNS makes a case for it as The Best ...
Todd Rundgren: The Dream Goes on Forever: Todd Rundgren Plays A Wizard, A True Star Live
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, February 2010
OUT INTO THE damp chill of a February night we came, the scattered legions of Toddheads – crossing fingers for transcendence, willing to settle for ...
Todd Rundgren: The MOJO Interview: Todd Rundgren
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, January 2012
TWO DAYS AFTER a throat-shredding three-night stand at London's Jazz Café, Todd Harry Rundgren seems relieved merely to be talking. Still sporting multi-coloured – black ...
Todd Rundgren: With A Twist (Emi/Guardian)
Review and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, November 1997
Challenged to re-record a number of his 'greatest hits' – by a label which has tried the same experiment with Jimmy Webb and Alice Cooper ...
Todd Rundgren: 'Go Ahead, Ignore Me!'
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, February 1998
HELLO, it’s him. ...
Saints, The: Paralytic Today, Paris Tonight: The Saints
Retrospective and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, unpublished, 1981
AT THIS TIME, A RETROSPECTIVE on the Saints could only be written by someone with a sense of great personal mission. Perhaps it's even a ...
Saints, The: The Saints: All Times Through Paradise (EMI)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, September 2004
4-CD box set of bolshy Ozpunks' three late '70s albums and unreleased Live in London set from late '77, plus numerous out/alternate takes, B-sides and ...
AUDIO: Ed Sanders of The Fugs (1996)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, August 1996
Ed Sanders – Fug, poet, agitator and all round rebel-about-town talks about his life from the early '60s Lower East Side Bohemia to the late '60s LA of Charlie Manson
File format: mp3; in 2 parts, total file sizes: 48.4meg, total interview length: 52' 46" sound quality: ****
Hope Sandoval, Mazzy Star: Hope Sandoval & the Warm Inventions: Bavarian Fruit Bread (Rough Trade)
Review and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, October 2001
Former Mazzy Star star buddies up with MBV drummer Colm O'Ciosoig for full-length follow-up to last year's EP At the Doorway Again. ...
Santana's Michael Shrieve (2009)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, June 2009
The Santana drummer remembers the glory days — Abraxas, Woodstock etc. — and the coke, Coke Escovedo and the crumbling of the band.
File format: mp3; file size: 42.1mb, interview length: 45' 56" sound quality: * (phoner)
Gil Scott-Heron/Brian Jackson: Winter in America (Charly)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, July 2005
A MASTERWORK of ghetto melancholia and stark political gravitas, Winter in America showcases Scott-Heron and Jackson at their most witheringly unsentimental but also their most ...
Scritti Politti: Making Provision: Green speaks
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Virgin Records press release, 1988
THREE YEARS of silence are finally broken this week as Scritti Politti release the first single off a new album. Featuring the inimitable trumpet of ...
Scritti Politti's Green (1988)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, January 1988
Scritti's Green talks about making Provision, meeting Jacques Derrida, working with Miles Davis, Roger Troutman and Chaka Khan, hanging out with Kraftwerk and struggling to come up with an album title...
File format: mp3; in 2 parts, total file sizes: 55meg, total interview length: 1 hour, sound quality: ****
Scritti Politti: This Week I am Mostly Wearing Soren Kierkegaard: Scritti Politti
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, August 1999
GREEN STROHMEYER-GARTSIDE, to give him his full and slightly fantastical name, is feeling decidedly below-par on this muggy Manhattan afternoon. Clasping a Rolling Rock in ...
Scritti Politti: Where Radical Meets Chic: Scritti Politti
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, NME, October 1981
"SCRITTI POLITTI" – didn't you always wonder where their "political writings" were? I did. I always wondered whether their hearts were in their music or ...
Review and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, April 1999
Seventh album from Lou Barlow and chums, following up 1996’s Harmacy and featuring new drummer Russ Pollard. ...
Seeds, The: Sky Saxon 1937-2009: A Belated Tribute to an Acid-Punk Icon
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, June 2009
Lost in the the shock and hysteria of Michael Jackson's death was the scant reportage of another pop passing: that of crazed LA garage-pop ...
Ron Sexsmith: Long Player: In Praise of Ron Sexsmith
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, February 2011
"We have had a gutful of fast art and fast food. What we need more of is slow art: art that holds time as a ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rolling Stone, June 1999
THAT THE TERM "singer-songwriter" is no longer one of abuse is at least partly because of the excellent Ron Sexsmith. A thirtysomething Canadian who sounds ...
Shriekback: Beyond Care, Thank God: Shriekback
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, NME, September 1984
Are Shriekback’s polyrhythms just polytechnic or is their dance stance entrancing? ...
Sid Presley Experience, The: Going Cold Turkey with the Sid Presley Experience
Report and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, NME, January 1985
Why reheat ‘Cold Turkey’? BARNEY HOSKYNS TALKS TO THE SID PRESLEY EXPERIENCE about their protest against council block smack. ...
Davitt Sigerson: AOR? Write On! An Interview with Davitt Sigerson
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, NME, September 1984
DAVITT SIGERSON insists he isn’t smarting from the NME review which described Falling In Love Again as ‘The Worst Record I’ve Ever Heard." ...
Judee Sill: Heart Food and Dark Peace: Judee Sill
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, Observer, The, December 2004
This is an expanded version of "The Lost Child", published in The Observer Music Monthly. ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, September 2004
PRE-"YOU’RE SO Vain" and pre-marriage-to-James-Taylor, the leggy and large-mouthed Park Avenue Jewess made two pleasant 1971 albums of melodiously laid-back adult pop. LA-flavoured and sprinkled ...
Sleevenotes by Barney Hoskyns, Charly Records, August 1988
JOE SIMON IS one of soul’s great deepies, possessor of a richly mellow voice that puts him up there with such deep-throated greats as Jerry ...
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, 1984
IT HAS to be said that this plumpish, carrot-mopped bloke stomping around like a kid in a playpen hardly looks the part of STAR. And ...
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, Times, The, July 1990
VOGUE once said of Frank Sinatra that "the Voice is leading cool modems back to emotion". Looking around at the well- heeled sentimentalists and legend-seekers ...
Percy Sledge: 501 Ways to Leave Your Lover
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, 1987
Percy Sledge: Town & Country Club, London ...
Percy Sledge: Out Of Left Cotton Field: The Brokenhearted Country Soul Of Percy Sledge
Sleevenotes by Barney Hoskyns, 'The Complete Atlantic Recordings' (Rhino), 2010
PERCY SLEDGE IS as prone to romanticizing Muscle Shoals as the many music writers who rhapsodize about the area in pieces about local luminaries like ...
Report by Barney Hoskyns, NME, March 1987
The only definite sighting of PERCY SLEDGE in recent weeks has been in the UK Top Ten. BARNEY HOSKYNS reviews the career of the elusive ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rolling Stone, March 1997
SOMETIMES YOU JUST feel like telling the '60s to go away. As if all those gleefully plagiarizing Brit-pop bands weren't enough, now we have a ...
Sly & The Family Stone: Looking at the Devil: Sly Stone and There's a Riot Goin' On
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, Observer Music Monthly, March 2006
DICK CAVETT didn't know what had hit him. The mild-mannered, impeccably liberal TV host had had some far-out guests on his ABC talk show, but ...
Sly & The Family Stone: Sly and the Family Stone: Stand!
Sleevenotes by Barney Hoskyns, Sony Legacy, Spring 2007
IT'S A MEASURE of our fascination with the darker side of pop culture that Stand! now tends to take second stage to 1971's claustrophobic, coke-fuelled ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, June 1998
BILLY CORGAN certainly had his work cut out for him after 1995’s Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. That multi-multi-platinum double CD turned more than ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, April 1998
Elliott Smith on discomfort, vocal styles, solo vs. electric bands, more discomfort, playing waltzes and Art, Capital A.
File format: mp3 File size: 39.3mb Interview length: 42 minutes 57 seconds Sound quality: ***
Elliott Smith: From a Basement on the Hill (Domino)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, November 2004
WHEN ELLIOTT SMITH died last year, he left behind a large number of tracks from which he was assembling the follow-up to 2000's Figure 8. ...
Elliott Smith: An Interview in NYC, 30th April, 1998
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, unpublished, Spring 1998
BH: From Kill Rock Stars to DreamWorks – it sounds like some kind of fairy tale. Does it feel like one? ...
Elliott Smith: Mojo Rising: Elliott Smith
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, July 1998
IS THIS a fairy tale or a corporate rock nightmare? Taciturn 28-year-old indie songster is taken up by maverick movie director and wakes to find ...
Elliott Smith: Shooting Star: Elliott Smith
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, November 2004
A YEAR AGO I was sitting in the Los Angeles living room of Mr. Roger Steffens, curator of a huge Bob Marley archive that was ...
Smiths, The: These Disarming Men: The Smiths
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, NME, February 1984
"...the touching and bewitching songs that open hearts and purses. Art. Great Art." – Jean Genet, Funeral Rites ...
Smiths, The, Associates, The: The Smiths: Meat Is Murder; The Associates: Perhaps
Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Statesman, Spring 1985
MORRISSEY OF The Smiths is still the unlikeliest pop star of all. Watching him jerk and flounder about on Top Of The Pops last week, ...
Smiths, The, Johnny Marr: The Backpages Interview: Johnny Marr
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, September 2001
Rock's eternal sideman steps into the spotlight with The Healers – and talks to Barney Hoskyns about life as an ex-Smith. ...
Smiths, The, Morrissey: The Year Of The Smiths
Comment by Barney Hoskyns, The Virgin Yearbook, 1984
GAY MEN PAVED pop’s way this year. With Boy George’s wardrobe fully open, all the closet cases came spilling forth: Burns and The Bronskis, Frankie ...
Soft Cell: The Art Of Falling Apart
Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, January 1983
YOUTH IS skin deep in a sleep... and out of work. Some pop stars accept this and let it go, some drone in statistics. ...
Soul Stirrers, The: Various Artists: Father And Sons (Spirit Feel)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, 1986
IF YOU'VE any interest in gospel music at all, this should be an essential purchase. Compiled by Anthony Heilbut, author of seminal tome The ...
Phil Spector's Ghosts: The Spooky World Of The Greatest Producer In Pop Music
Comment by Barney Hoskyns, slate.com, February 2003
FOR OBSERVERS of Hollywood, it's been irresistible: life imitating the movies once again. The death of B-movie actress Lana Clarkson in Phil Spector's Alhambra chateau ...
AUDIO: Ronnie Spector, part 1 (1991)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, February 1991
On marriage to, and escape from, Phil Spector, being fancied by John Lennon and on being a Ronette - Ronnie Spector tells all.
File format: mp3 File size: 21.1mb Interview length: 23 minutes 6 seconds Sound quality: ***
AUDIO: Ronnie Spector, part 2 (1991)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, February 1991
Ronnie goes to Swinging London, gets hit on by hero Frankie Lymon, drinks rather a lot and writes a book. Top girl!
File format: mp3 File size: 27.1mb Interview length: 29 minutes 38 seconds Sound quality: ***
Ronnie Spector: Exorcising Phil's Spectre: Ronnie's Return
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Times, The, February 1991
THE SNOWBOUND metropolis of London holds many memories for Ronnie Spector. When she was riding high in the mid-'60s with The Ronettes, that vampy girl ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, City Limits, February 1991
Be My Baby: Ronnie Spector with Vince Waldron ...
Essay by Barney Hoskyns, Request, December 1997
AT THE end of the day, all they really, really wanted was to "zigazig ha". ...
Spiritualized: Let It Shine Down: Mr Spaceman's Stroboscopic Pomp Gospel
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, October 2001
Spiritualized: Hammersmith Apollo, 12th October ...
Spiritualized: The Mile High Club: Spiritualized in the Sky
Report and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, February 1998
SPIRITUALIZED: a concoction of the cosmological and the pharmaceutical enjoying high times in Britain. Now Jason Pierce is spending two months turning on America. Barney ...
Dusty Springfield: Complete As and Bs
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, August 2006
OF ALL THE overused terms that blight today’s pop culture, "icon" surely grates the most. In these inane post-Warhol times, everybody is an icon and ...
Pop Staples, Staple Singers, The: It's All Over Now: A Farewell to Pops
Obituary by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, December 2000
Roebuck ‘Pops’ Staples, patriarch of gospel-soul family group the Staple Singers, died on Tuesday, December 19. Possessor of a light, understated harmony voice and distinctive ...
Candi Staton Comes Home to Country Soul
Sleevenotes by Barney Hoskyns, Honest Jon's Records, March 2006
THERE ARE southern soul voices and there are southern soul voices. Raw and ravaged, Candi Staton's is one of the signature sounds of that particular ...
Steely Dan: Any Major Dude Will Tell You: The Funked-Up Muzak and Cerebral Genius of Steely Dan
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, September 2012
NOTE: This is an updated version of a piece written for the short-lived biannual Faber/Domino publication Loops. I've revived it to commemorate the 40th anniversary ...
Steely Dan: Curbing Their Enthusiasm: Steely Dan
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, June 2003
THIS IS TOO, TOO PERFECT: Steely Dan strolling into a sleek hotel suite in Santa Monica, the Pacific Ocean sparkling through the window behind them. ...
Steely Dan: Librarians on Acid
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Guardian, The, January 2000
STEELY DAN have always split people down the middle. On one side sit major dudes like William Gibson, who delight in the apparent disjunction between ...
Steely Dan: The Backpages Interview: Steely Dan
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, June 2003
This week sees the release of Everything Must Go, the follow-up to Steely Dan's Grammy-grabbing Two Against Nature. BARNEY HOSKYNS discusses war, economics and online ...
Stereolab: Cobra and Phases Group Play Voltage In the Milky Night (Duophonic)
Review and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, September 1999
Double-vinyl-length opus from the enduring and indefatigable South-east Londoners, half of it co-produced by Tortoise’s John McEntire, half by ex-Gastr del Sol member Jim O’Rourke. ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rolling Stone, October 1997
PITY THE cerebral technicians of Stereolab, whose coolly subversive fusion of muzak and krautrock has for too long condemned them to the Critics’ Darling ghetto. ...
Stereolab, High Llamas, The: The High Llamas: Hawaii; Stereolab: Emperor Tomato Ketchup
Review by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, May 1996
UPON OBSERVING A SMALL dog walking on its hind legs, Doctor Johnson famously noted that it was less remarkable how well the cur in question ...
Rod Stewart: Soddy In Gomorrah
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, May 1995
"The '90s saw a new rock piety rise up against Rod Stewart and his 10 gallons of come." (Stephen J Malkmus, 'Vedder As Merton: 2001', ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Observer, The, January 1994
ON THE DRIZZLY Monday morning before Christmas, I'm sitting in an oak-panelled room in deepest Wiltshire, awaiting the entrance of the owner of a Jacobean ...
Stray Cats, The: Cat People: The Stray Cats take Florida
Report and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, NME, March 1983
IF HE'D lived, maybe Eddie Cochran would have been as big as The Stray Cats. ...
Strokes, The: The Strokes: Monarch, London, February 7
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, February 2001
U2 WERE rocking the Astoria across town, but the hotter ticket by far was this New York five-piece who sound like pure 1969 Live Velvets ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, 2003
AH MANHATTAN, so much to answer for – and so in vogue as a rock metropolis after decades as a Hip Hop Mecca. Yes New ...
Stylistics, The: In Praise of the Falsetto
Essay by Barney Hoskyns, Independent, The, November 1995
The castrato may be dead, if temporarily exhumed in the film Farinelli, but men continue to sing like women. Barney Hoskyns reaches for the high ...
Stylistics, The, Thom Bell: Sweet Soul Symphonics: Thom Bell and the Stylistics
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, November 2007
THE STYLISTICS were a permanent fixture on the British pop charts of the early '70s. Every tenth record that came out of my tinny transistor ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Vogue, November 1992
ONE IS swayed by Suede. For all their foppish airs and graces, their teasing glam-rock quotes, there is a real meat to their music which ...
Suede: Brett Anderson interviewed
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Interview, May 1997
WHEN, NEARLY three years ago, Bernard Butler walked out of Suede - or the London Suede, as they are unhappily obliged to call themselves in ...
Review and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, April 1998
2-CD set coupling the electro-duo’s 1977 debut with the infamous 23 Minutes Over Brussels flexi-disc and an unreleased 1978 live set from CBGBs. ...
Donna Summer: From Sex Goddess to Superwoman
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, NME, December 1982
Donna Summer, once the siren of the G-spot, has grown up to become a wholesome American woman with a religious conscience. Now she's searching for ...
Super Furry Animals: Power To The Furries! Gruff Rhys Speaks
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, July 2003
Welsh wunderkinder the Super Furry Animals return this week with the fabulous Phantom Power. Cardiff’s furriest bard talks to Barney Hoskyns about love, war and ...
Super Furry Animals: Love Kraft
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Observer, The, August 2005
THE FIRST SOUND on Love Kraft is a splash caused by Super Furry Animals guitarist Huw "Bunf" Bunford plunging into a Spanish swimming pool. An ...
Super Furry Animals: Phantom Power
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, Summer 2003
IT MAKES some kind of super furry sense that Phantom Power - coming after the homegrown, lo-fi Mwng and the big-budget, all-bells-and-whistles Rings Around The ...
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, July 2001
IF IT WASN'T quite the summer garden party it should have been, Radiohead's big homecoming bash at Oxford's South Park was mostly (or at least ...
Survivor: Progress and Survive: Survivor
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, NME, October 1982
THE NEW ETHIC of survival in America, with its Survivalists and all, is enabling rock groups to get to the top by singing about what ...
Swamp Dogg: Cover Story: A Dogg with Attitude
Special Feature by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, November 2000
How a pint-sized pooch danced for his record label ...
Review and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, December 1999
AFICIONADOS OF clean, clever, honed American pop have had to make do with meagre rations of late. Thank God that 1999 has at least produced ...
Matthew Sweet: In Reverse (Zomba)
Review and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Guardian, The, May 2000
MATTHEW SWEET began the '90s with the much-feted Girlfriend, an album of angular, bittersweet power pop markedly different from the meaty rage of Nirvana and ...
Sylvester: Woofers And Tweeters
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, NME, September 1982
HAD I BEEN expecting some shimmering trans-sexual diva to sweep into the room like a hostess into her salon, the rotund, maternal figure who welcomed ...
Talking Heads ’83: All Trousers and No Mouth
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, NME, August 1983
ANOTHER YEAR, another album, and the Global Village Medicine Show that is Talking Heads is on another round of the American rock circuit. I am ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, 1997
NEXT TO CBGBS peers like the Ramones and the Voidoids, Talking Heads barely sounded like a punk band. After the startlingly non-conformist ‘Love Building on ...
Talk Talk: Spirit Of Eden: Talk Talk
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Observer Music Monthly, June 2004
THE SELF-REINVENTION of Mark Hollis was one of the more startling musical events of the late '80s. ...
Tommy Tate: Singing For The Soul Of It
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, NME, January 1986
BARNEY HOSKYNS meets Mississippi soulman TOMMY TATE, whose 'What gives You The Right' is one of the "Sweetest, saddest black pop records of all time". ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, eMusic.com, November 2007
BACK IN THE protopunk wars of the early '70s, we were all supposed to revile James Taylor and his kind. "James Taylor Marked For Death," ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, July 1989
Soul legend Johnnie Taylor tells Barney Hoskyns about his background in gospel with the Highway QCs and the Soul Stirrers, Sam Cooke, Stax Records, having hits in the disco era, and finding a new home at Malaco.
File format: mp3 File size: 20.8mb Interview length: 22 minutes 45 seconds Sound quality: ****
Teenage Fanclub: The Forum, London
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, February 1996
ONE HESITATES TO USE the word "heartwarming" about the endurance of the unassuming Scotsmen who go by the name of Teenage Fanclub, but at a ...
Teenage Fanclub: Various Artists: What a Concept! A Salute to Teenage Fanclub
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, September 2004
HOW DO WE love Teenage Fanclub? Let us count the ways on this fine tribute album, which consists of 24 mainly Yank versions of Fannies ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, November 1984
MARY CHRISTINE BROCKERT is a tiny white California gal who makes big, beautiful black music. Her speciality is exuberantly sassy and happy music for the ...
Television: Gimme Friction: Television at Shepherd’s Bush Empire, London
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, April 2001
ONE MOMENT, more than any other during this one-off London show on Easter Sunday, summed up the nature of the curious rock beast that is ...
Television: Marquee Moon (Expanded); Adventure (Expanded) (Rhino)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, January 2004
BEFORE THE Sex Pistols there was New York's Lower East Side: trash aesthetes with short hair, kinky vixens in B-movie stilettos. Kids with minor drug ...
Joe Tex: The Clown Prince of Soul
Sleevenotes by Barney Hoskyns, 'The Very Best of Joe Tex' (Charly Records), May 1988
WHEN NASHVILLE publisher-producer Buddy Killen first met Joe Tex in 1961, the singer already had six years of recording and performing under his belt. They ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 1985
Rufus Thomas, between mouthfuls, talks about his youth in segregated Memphis, Minstrelsy, Ike and Tina Turner and his long involvement with Stax Records.
File format: mp3; in 3 parts, total file sizes: 70meg, total interview length: 1h 16' 23" sound quality: **
AUDIO: Three Dog Night's Danny Hutton (1993)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, June 1993
First Dog Hutton takes us back to the heady '60s days on the Sunset Strip, hanging out with Van Dyke Parks, Brian Wilson and Lowell George, and Three Dog Night.
File format: mp3; file size: 80.1mb, interview length: 1h 27' 31" sound quality: ***
Three Johns, The: The Three Johns: Johnnies Be Bad
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, NME, October 1983
Blarney Haskyns Shoots The Apeshit With The Evolutionary Creators Of 'Men Like Monkeys' ...
Thrills, The: Can Buy The Thrills!
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, June 2003
IRISH BOYS HAVE always gone off to the promised land in search of girls and gold, but Dublin's Thrills did more than that. They spent ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, 1997
JOHNNY THUNDERS'S principal solo claim to fame, So Alone consists of Dollsy covers (the Shangri-Las' ‘Give Him a Great Big Kiss,’ the Chantays' surf chestnut ...
Tinariwen: Aman: Water Is Life
Review and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, February 2007
WHEN THEY FIRST formed in the Libyan guerilla camps of the late ‘70s, Tinariwen referred to their music simply as "guitar". And no wonder. Electric ...
Profile by Barney Hoskyns, Boston Phoenix, July 1997
IT USED to be easy to dismiss Tindersticks - to deride them as boho poseurs, as wannabe Nick Caves, as provincial boys who came to ...
T. Rex, Marc Bolan, David Bowie: 10 Great Glam Rock Albums
Guide by Barney Hoskyns, Harpers & Queen, 1998
TEN GREAT GLAM ROCK ALBUMS you cannot afford to live without... ...
Ike Turner, Jackie Brenston: 'Rocket "88"' and the Birth of Rock & Roll
Retrospective and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, James Maycock, MOJO, February 2002
AND GOD SAID, Let There Be Rock'n'Roll... ...
Tyrannosaurus Rex, T. Rex, Marc Bolan: Reborn to Boogie: Marc Bolan
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, February 2010
THERE IS ONLY one Starman in the room right now and his name is David Bowie. Flying high after his Top 5 astral novelty hit ...
U2: Flags And Penance: U2'S American Dream
Report and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, NME, June 1985
IT IS SOME WAY into a U2 set at the vast Veterans' Coliseum in Hartford, Connecticut, and the place is strewn and bedecked with the ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, October 1981
WHEN U2 first hit England in the twilight of 1980, a dull cry of relief rose up from rock's murky depths. U2 were "just what ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rolling Stone, March 1997
IT IS HARD to believe we’re a whole decade away from The Joshua Tree – U2’s very own Born In The USA, its Purple Rain, ...
U2: Remembering The Unforgettable Fire
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, June 2009
YOU TOO COULD love U2, if you could only transport yourself back to a time when their fundamental pomposity and crusading bad faith weren't such ...
U2, Big Country : Epic Affirmation: U2 and Big Country
Essay by Barney Hoskyns, New Statesman, November 1984
WITH ALL THE hype of chart pop proving more contagious that ever, what chance does the passionate old dream of rock now stand? If Jon ...
Underworld: Dubnobasswithmyheadman
Review by Barney Hoskyns, eMusic.com, 2008
NOT FOR NOTHING is the first track on this almost unpronounceable album called 'Dark & Long'. Almost all the tracks by this UK techno trio ...
Luther Vandross, part 1 (1989)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, March 1989
Luther Vandross talks about growing up in the Bronx and his early bands, his big break working on Bowie's 'Young Americans', meeting Marcus Miller and hanging out with Chic.
File format: mp3 File size: 33.6mb Interview length: 36 minutes 48 seconds Sound quality: ****
Luther Vandross, part 2 (1989)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, March 1989
A master at work: Vandross talks to Barney Hoskyns about producing, recording and singing... and his privacy and sense of self.
File format: mp3 File size: 33.7mb Interview length: 36 minutes 54 seconds Sound quality: ****
Luther Vandross: The Night I Fell In Love
Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, March 1985
[2004 note: It makes me wince to look back and see my jejune critical self dismissing ‘The Other Side of the World’ as "tediously soupy". ...
Luther Vandross: What A World For The Lonely Kind: Luther Vandross
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Times, The, March 1989
LUTHER VANDROSS is the pre-eminent mainstream soul performer of the 1980s. As a singer, songwriter and producer he is – with the possible exception of ...
Alan Vega: Collision Drive (Celluloid)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, 1981
AS THE mercurial ‘Jukebox Babe’ starts to makes its steady impact as a 12-inch, here is an even grittier reinterpretation of The Great American Rock ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, NME, February 1987
TOM VERLAINE, the blank generation’s very own Neil Young, is sitting on the floor of a Phonogram press suite devouring a croissant. I’d expected someone ...
Tom Verlaine, Television: Tom Verlaine: The Venue, London
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, June 1982
WE YOUNG Rimbauds came for diamond spears and the licks of an icepick and went away with a few mangy cardboard boxes. I hope that ...
Wah!: The Mighty Wah!: Waaaugh!
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, NME, September 1984
WHAM! The door opens and it's Wah! The mighty WAH! There he is! ...
Rufus Wainwright: "My Parents the Folk Heroes"
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Guardian, The, June 2001
THE WITTIEST REQUEST from the crowd at Rufus Wainwright's New York show last week was for ‘Rufus is a Tit Man’, a song written aeons ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, April 2005
LATE LAST YEAR Rufus Wainwright was a guest on Tom Robinson's BBC6 radio show, answering questions about music, life and celebrity while pointedly avoiding allusion ...
Rufus Wainwright: The Backpages Interview: Rufus Wainwright
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, June 2001
When Rufus Wainwright’s eponymous debut album appeared three years ago, it was as though the golden age of maverick American singer-songwriters had never ended. ...
Rufus Wainwright: The Backpages Interview: Rufus Wainwright
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, March 2005
RBP: Is Want Two in any way the flipside to, or a contrast to, Want One? Or is it just a companion collection? ...
AUDIO: Tom Waits part 2 (1999)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, January 1999
Beatniks, recording, songwriting, Frank Zappa and L.A.... and his first tattoos!
File format: mp3 File size: 24.3mb Interview length: 35 minutes 29 seconds Sound quality: **
AUDIO: Tom Waits, part 1 (1999)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, January 1999
On his new album, Mule Variations; on changing labels; on his formative influences... and on edible slugs!
File format: mp3 File size: 26.6mb Interview length: 38 minutes 52 seconds Sound quality: **
Tom Waits: Long Gone: Tom Waits Talks
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, September 2004
RBP: Is it true you cut Real Gone in an old schoolhouse in the Mississippi delta? ...
Tom Waits: Take It With Me When I Go: Tom Waits Turns 60
Book Excerpt by Barney Hoskyns, 'Lowside of the Road: A Life of Tom Waits' (Faber), December 2009
To celebrate Tom Waits' 60th birthday (December 9), I hereby offer the coda to my biography Lowside of the Road. An account of seeing the ...
Tom Waits: The Backpages Interview: Tom Waits
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, April 2002
Thomas Alan Waits is about to release two albums simultaneously – Alice and Blood Money. In this previously unpublished interview from the spring of 1985, ...
Tom Waits: The Piano Has Been Drinking: Tom Waits in London Town
Book Excerpt by Barney Hoskyns, Lowside of the Road: A Life of Tom Waits (Faber), March 2009
In this excerpt from Lowside of the Road: A Life of Tom Waits, the barfly bard of the Hollywood sidewalks visits London for the first ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Word, The, November 2011
IT SHOULDN'T NEED to be said but I'll say it anyway: Tom Waits' career is one of the more extraordinary examples of mutation in the ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, 1987
SUBTITLED "Un Operachi Romantico In Two Acts", Frank's Wild Years is effectively the final part of a trilogy that began in 1983 with the extraordinary ...
Tom Waits: Real Gone (Anti/Epitaph)
Review and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, November 2004
SINCE IT’S HARD and possibly verboten to say a bad word about Tom Waits, unholy shaman of whacked-out Americana, I’ll content myself with expressing a ...
Tom Waits: Hammersmith Apollo, London
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, February 2005
SO MANY desperate, disappointed people loitered without hope outside the Apollo for this show that one felt vaguely ashamed being in possession of a ticket. ...
Tom Waits: Marlowe Of The Ivories
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, NME, May 1985
DID HIS wife die in the fire? ...
Tom Waits: Variations on Tom Waits
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Independent, The, May 1999
FEW OF the patrons of the China Light diner in Santa Rosa look up when Tom Waits shuffles through the door. Attired in coarse indigo ...
Tom Waits: What's He Building In There? An Interview with Tom Waits
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, April 1999
TOM WAITS squats down on the fender of his blue Coupe de Ville and tells a joke. ...
Scott Walker: Classics and Collectibles
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, December 2005
THE SCOTT WALKER of the '60s and '70s - of Classics and Collectibles - is all about tragic grandeur colliding with Easy Listening: Bergman movies ...
Jimmy Webb: Almost Blue: Jimmy Webb
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, June 2005
JIMMY WEBB is sad. He looks around him at the world we inhabit and sees culture nose-diving everywhere. Subtlety is squeezed, ambiguity flattened. People don’t ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, November 1993
The legendary songwriter on his early years: L.A. cruisin', high school jazz, getting odd jobs in the music biz, playing piano for Johnny Rivers and starting to write songs, up to the breakthrough with the 5th Dimension and 'Up, Up And Away'.
File format: mp3; in 2 parts, total file sizes: 44.1mb, total interview length: 48' 08" sound quality: ****
Review and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, September 1997
“Unplugged” versions of ten Webb staples, performed at the grand piano by The Man Himself. Vocal cameos by Shawn Colvin (Didn’t We), Marc Cohn (If ...
Jimmy Webb: The Backpages Interview: Jimmy Webb
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, May 2005
RBP: Bones Howe remembered you as being very shy when he first met you circa 1967. Is that how you remember it? ...
AUDIO: Gillian Welch and David Rawlings (1996)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, December 1996
The Queen of nouveau bluegrass, Gillian Welch, and her guitar pickin' sidekick David Rawlings, talk about meeting at Berklee, making the fabulous Revival album, living in Nashville and more.
File format: mp3; file size: 33.2meg; Interview length: 38' 18"; sound quality: ***
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, February 1997
DETACH YOURSELF for a moment, and this here is a pretty rum scene. ...
Gillian Welch: Soul Journey (Acony)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, September 2003
GILLIAN WELCH, with her hard 'G', is indisputably a Good Thing. Tall and gawky, decidedly non-photogenic, Gillian gives hope to all of us who contend ...
Gillian Welch: Gilllian Welch: Revival/Hell Among the Yearlings/Time (the Revelator)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, March 2009
Reissues of first three albums by the high priestess of "American Primitive" and partner David Rawlings. ...
Gillian Welch, David Rawlings: Dave Rawlings Machine: A Friend of a Friend
Review and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, January 2010
ANYONE WHO EVER felt that David Rawlings hid his light under Gillian Welch's bushel – never getting the full credit he merited as her partner ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Vogue, 1987
WENDY Melvoin and Lisa Coleman go back a long way. Years before they were members of Prince's group, The Revolution, they were growing up as ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, July 1987
The Girl Bros. talk about their time as part of Prince's Revolution, and their then-new career as recording artists in their own right.
File format: mp3; file size: 28.6mb; Interview length: 31' 15"; sound quality: **
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, March 1993
Smokin' weed in the MOMA courtyard: growing up in NYC and the people he grew up with; meeting the Erteguns; writing for Billboard; the early days at Atlantic and working with the great Ray Charles
File format: mp3; in 2 parts, total file sizes: 44.5meg, total interview length: 48' 40" sound quality: ***
Jerry Wexler: Crossing The Divide
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Independent on Sunday, May 1993
GET JERRY WEXLER started on the big bands of the Thirties and Forties and you'll never hear the back of it. Most ageing music moguls ...
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, cdnow.com, May 2000
NAMED AFTER a legendary 1976 EP by Sonic’s Rendezvous Band, the German label City Slang has been home to some of the best and most ...
White Stripes, The: Jack White (2009)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, August 2009
Jack White goes way back to his Detroit childhood, the evolution of the White Stripes, and through to his current workaholic agenda
File format: mp3; in 2 parts, total file sizes: 51.1mb, total interview length: 55' 48" sound quality: ***
Who, The: Long Live Rock: The Who
Comment by Barney Hoskyns, Independent on Sunday, February 2010
ARGUABLY THE MOST famous line The Who's Pete Townshend ever wrote was "Hope I die before I get old" on 1965's angry young anthem 'My ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, January 1999
THE WAY Lucinda Williams sighs "Hi" down the phoneline from Florida instantly communicates a deep fatigue. She and her band have just motored up from ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, February 2007
MUCH IS MADE of Lucinda Williams the writer, the poet of southern aches and pains. Time magazine called her "America's Best Songwriter" and the New ...
Lucinda Williams: World Without Tears (Lost Highway)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, May 2003
IT STARTS WITH A shivery vibrato guitar, straight off one of those '60s New York soul ballads – Betty Harris' 'Cry To Me', perhaps, or ...
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, May 2003
A concise guide to the Williams oeuvre before World Without Tears ...
Robbie Williams: The Unlikely Lad: Robbie Williams
Profile by Barney Hoskyns, Independent, The, September 2000
THE FIRST TIME I saw Robbie Williams in the flesh was backstage at an Oasis show at Earl’s Court in 1995. At that point the ...
Jonathan Wilson: Gentle Spirit (Bella Union)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Word, The, October 2011
OVER A DECADE AGO, a very nice man named Simon Raymonde – son of cult '60s arranger Ivor – came to my house to answer ...
Amy Winehouse: Somerset House, London
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, July 2007
THE LAST TIME I had a ticket for Amy Winehouse was back in March, at Spaceland in LA. She'd played the Roxy the night before ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, December 1986
BOBBY WOMACK's second album for MCA sees him reunited with Chips Moman, the Memphis producer who has spent the last decade cutting country records in ...
Bobby Womack: The Last Great Soul Man
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, NME, October 1984
Who's that stepping briefly into the limo – and life of – Bobby Womack? Why, it's blushing Barney Hoskyns, who, in the next 5,000 words, ...
Bobby Womack: Doin’ It His Own Way: Bobby Womack
Sleevenotes by Barney Hoskyns, 'Womack Winners', 1989
WHEN BOBBY WOMACK called his seventeenth solo album The Last Soul Man and set out on 1987’s quasi-missionary tour of the same name, he was ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, March 2005
From 'Fingertips' to the 21st Century, and everything in between: his classic albums; Ray Charles, Marvin Gaye and Prince; race, religion and blindness; recording and technology then and now... and he sings! he preaches! he does your horoscope!
File format: mp3; in 4 parts, total file sizes: 100.3meg, total interview length: 1h 49' 29" sound quality: ***
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, June 2005
BY THE SMALL HOURS of Saturday morning, L.A.'s Koreatown district is hushed and still. The odd car rattles along Western Avenue, but most of the ...
Stevie Wonder: Songs in the Key of Life (Motown, 1976)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, 2004
BERRY GORDY’S former boy genius already had a string of single-album masterpieces under his belt when he put his signature on summer ‘76 with this ...
Stevie Wonder: The Backpages Interview: Stevie Wonder
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, March 2005
RBP: You're working these long all-night stretches in the studio. How different is it from when you worked in the early '70s? ...
Robert Wyatt: Nothing Can Stop Robert Wyatt: An Interview
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, March 1999
THE DAY before I drive up to Lincolnshire to interview Robert Wyatt, there is a march through the streets of Santiago - a procession of ...
X: Under The Big Black Sun (Elektra)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, July 1982
X ARE a southern Californian punk-style foursome who, since their debut album Los Angeles, have done everything within their power to show that they are ...
XTC: A Chat with Andy Partridge
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, cdnow.com, 2000
HAILING FROM unglamorous Swindon, 70 miles west of London, XTC were clever-clever new-wavers who quickly outgrew the late 70s punk scene and matured into purveyors ...
Neil Young: Canyon of the Mind: Tall Tales of Topanga Rock
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, Calabasas, Summer 2005
REMOVE THE WORD "Canyon" from the glossary of Southern California rock and you're left with a gaping hole. Canyons have been inseparable from LA's music ...
Neil Young: Monumental: Neil Young's Archives, Vol. 1
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, May 2009
NOTE: This is an extended version of a review written in a Belfast hotel room for the Observer Music Monthly. BH* ...
Neil Young: Live at the Fillmore East
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, January 2007
IN THE CONTINUING absence of his Archives we clutch at any morsels dispensed from Neil Young's table. Long a live bootleg classic - as well ...
Neil Young: The Year Of The Horse
Review by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, July 1997
2-CD, 13-track live document of last year's Broken Arrow tour, recorded mainly in America but featuring tracks from Berlin, Toronto…and downtown Saskatchewan. ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, January 1983
HOW TO follow The Birthday Party's The Bad Seed with Neil Young's Trans? How to link the electronic transmigration of Neil Young with the last ...
Neil Young: A Conversation with Elliot Roberts
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, September 1994
FEW OTHER artist/manager relationships have endured as long as the one between Neil Young and Elliot Roberts. It is nearly 30 years since the lanky, ...
Essay by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, September 1994
TWENTY-FIVE YEARS after it was recorded at Sunset Sound in Los Angeles, 'Cinnamon Girl' sounds like it was cut the day before yesterday on a ...
Neil Young: Hammersmith Apollo, London
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, September 2003
SO HE hasn't made a truly compelling record since 1994's Sleeps With Angels. So he's been treading water with sleepy albums like Silver and Gold ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, August 1983
SIMPLY FOR not being Kevin Rowland or Paul Weller or Martin Fry, Paul Young fully deserves his Number One. And 'Wherever' is more than a ...
Review and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, unpublished, Spring 2004
FRANK ZAPPA was an irrelevant, redundant figure by the late ‘70s. The object of dorkish devotion, Ol’ Silly Beard had meandered off into cul de ...
Warren Zevon: Keep Him In Your Heart: Swan Songs of the Late Great Warren Zevon
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, eMusic.com, July 2007
LIFE'LL KILL YA, Warren Zevon sang in one of his most grimly humorous songs - and it did. The grotesque multiplication of cells we know ...
ZZ Top: David Sinclair: Tres Hombres - The Story Of ZZ Top
Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, 1986
YOUR HUMBLE reviewer is quoted in Tres Hombres as stating that ZZ Top are "the only hip boogie band in the entire universe", and it's ...
ZZ Top: The Cats' Whiskers: Down Home with Z.Z. Top
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, NME, November 1984
HOUSTON, OCTOBER: THE MONSOON SEASON in this blandly corporate boomtown. I descend through hot storms over a chrome metropolis built on flat sand and oil ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, May 1984
A two parter: firstly, all tres hombres on Mexico, Houston, TV Dinners and what they did on their holidays; then solo Billy Gibbons ("The Reverend Billy G"), on the black roots of the Top, his love of Eno and guitar playing.
File format: mp3; in 2 parts, total file sizes: 49.8meg, total interview length: 54' 22" sound quality: **
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, 1983
AS A WARM-UP – or should I say boil-up – bash for an imminent global over-haul, the three cosmic-hillbilly stooges of ZZ Top last week ...
List of genre pieces
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, Summer 1985
The legendary producer gives a history of Memphis R&B, touching on (in no particular order) Stax, James Carr, Dan Penn, Elvis, the fading of the Memphis light and the perils of Nashville.
File format: mp3; in 3 parts, total file sizes: 78.3mb, total interview length: 1h 25' 33" sound quality: ***
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, November 2010
In conversation at Rough Trade East – the legendary record man on all things Elektra: folk to folk-rock; signing Love and the Doors, Paul Rothchild, the lunacy of Paxton Lodge, the MC5 and the Stooges, and through to leaving the business...
File format: mp3; in 2 parts, total file sizes: 58.9mb, total interview length: 1h 04' 21" sound quality: ****
Give Up The Day Job!: Scribes turned Stars, Poachers Turned Gamekeepers!
Guide by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, April 2002
This week, a propos of nothing in particular – the new Pet Shop Boys album, perhaps? – we consider the careers of the many ...
John Richbourg: The Grandaddy Of Soul
Retrospective and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Soul Survivor, Summer 1986
OF THE MANY white disc jockeys who pioneered the airplay of black rhythm 'n' blues through the 1950s and 60s, perhaps the most influential in ...
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, April 2013
MOST PEOPLE WHO KNOW ANYTHING about music journalism know that the late Frank Zappa defined it, in 1977, as "people who can't write interviewing people ...
Stax Records' Estelle Axton (1985)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, October 1985
From Satellite Records to 'Disco Duck': Stax Records' Estelle Axton on the "recording bidness" - pre-Stax Memphis and Sun and Elvis, Rufus Thomas, the Mar-Keys, 'Last Night', Otis, Hayes and Porter, the record shop, and through to Al Bell and the downfall.
File format: mp3; in 3 parts, total file sizes: 82.4meg, total interview length: 1h 29' 53" sound quality: ***
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, 2004
SUSAN (The Trip) Strasberg is a deaf Carole Chaplin döppelganger at large in Haight-Ashbury in this hilariously inept 1968 "look" at the counterculture. Jack Nicholson, ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, 2004
BEFORE THE TRIP starts, an earnest middle-aged voice warns us that we’re about to witness "a shocking commentary on a prevalent trend of our time". ...
About a Bloke: The 10 Tracks Nick Hornby Couldn't Live Without
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Mark Pringle, Rock's Backpages, March 2002
WELCOME TO a new if occasional treat: AURAL SURVIVAL, a sit-down with a much-loved CELEBRITY FAN in order to ascertain the 10 recorded performances he ...
All The Young Dudes: The Return of Glam Rock
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, Vogue, September 1998
YOU COULD argue that glam – glamour, from an old Scottish word meaning "a haze in the air" – was always intrinsic to pop music. ...
Report by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, January 2001
Anticipating the February 9 UK release of Cameron Crowe’s film Almost Famous, about a callow young scribe hitting the road with a mid-’70s rock band, ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, August 1991
Hired and fired by the New York Post, having that "total phoney" Andy Warhol steal the Velvets from him, running with Dylan and, extensively, his dealings with The Band – the "blacklisted journalist" Al Aronowitz vents his not-inconsiderable spleen.
File format: mp3; in 3 parts, total file sizes: 68.7meg, total interview length: 1h 16' 43" sound quality: ***
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, December 2004
The mogul of Laurel Canyon on Asylum Records, managing artists and his close relationships with the likes of JD Souther, Laura Nyro, David Crosby and Joni Mitchell.
File format: mp3; file size: 25.1mb, interview length: 26' 07" sound quality: * (phoner)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 1993
Mojo Naviagator and Bomp founder Greg Shaw on his early days in psychedelic San Francisco, L.A. Garage Punk, The Doors, Love and Los Angeles rock.
File format: mp3; in 3 parts, total file sizes: 82.6mb, total interview length: 1h 30' 07" sound quality: ***
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, June 1993
The genius behind The Simpsons talks about the central part that music has played in his life, from his love of Zappa and Beefheart to his immersion in L.A.'s punk underground.
File format: mp3; in 3 parts, total file sizes: 72.5mb, total interview length: 1h 19' 17" sound quality: ***
AUDIO: Rodney Bingenheimer (1993)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, July 1993
His arrival in Los Angeles in 1965; hanging out with the Beatles and the Stones; his legendary English Disco; the groupies — Lori, Sable and Queenie... the Mayor of the Sunset Strip looks back.
File format: mp3; file size: 29.9mb, interview length: 32' 39" sound quality: ***
Boulevard of Broken Dreams: A Trip Down the Sunset Strip
Guide by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, January 1994
SUNSET BOULEVARD: the very name is synonymous with dreams, unrealities, tableaux of palm trees and convertibles in the golden light of southern California. Billy ...
Brits Go Home! The End of the Invasion
Overview by Barney Hoskyns, Observer, The, 2000
AMID ALL the self-congratulatory hubbub over the British successes at the Oscars, few people stopped to reflect that luvvie wonderboy Sam Mendes hadn't actually made ...
Dave Godin's Deep Soul Treasures Volume 3
Review and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, January 2001
"DEEP SOUL Records will be just what their name implies," the manifesto for Dave Godin's Deep Soul label declared when it launched in 1969. "Non-commercial ...
Deep Soul Mecca: Muscle Shoals, Alabama
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, unpublished, 1986
MUSCLE SHOALS: the very name suggests some grotesque image dreamt up by a surrealist painter. Shouldn't it be Mussel, you wonder... and yet this North ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, January 2004
Barney Hoskyns takes stock of 2003 – from André 3000 to Warren Zevon ...
Dig This! Fave Raves and Rabid Enthusiasms for September 2003
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, September 2003
Stuff that’s floating Barney Hoskyns’ boat this month... ...
Guide by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, January 2001
From Radio Ethiopia to Dread Zeppelin...20 classics of Cod-Reggae ...
From the Dawn of Creation to the Birth of Poptones: A Walk Thru’ Joe Foster’s Vaults
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, March 2001
Barney Hoskyns meets Alan McGee’s right-hand man and hears about his ongoing mission to bring lost classics back to life ...
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, NME, January 1987
Before disco there was Philadelphia International Records, the Soul label of the '70s. Now it's been documented in a boxed set of albums. BARNEY HOSKYNS ...
Hail, Hail, Rock'n'Roll Writing!
Comment by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, May 2003
This month, Bloomsbury – the home of rockin' Harry Potter – publishes The Sound & the Fury: A Rock's Backpages Reader, a selection of seminal ...
Hold Your Head Up: In Praise of Bi-Level Rock!
Comment by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, February 2003
Barney Hoskyns, co-author of The Mullet: Hairstyle of the Gods, hails Mullet Rocks!, a new compilation of bodacious bi-level hard rockers. Below we feature cool ...
Ian MacDonald: The People's Music - Selected Journalism (Pimlico)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Observer, The, July 2003
BROADLY SPEAKING there are three kinds of British rock writers: boring ones, brash ones, and genuinely bright ones. Somehow it's typical of our anti-intellectual culture ...
Report by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, November 2003
On wildfires, Schwarzenegger and the suicide of a troubled genius – Barney Hoskyns’ diary of a month in Hollywood Babylon. ...
Kevin Avery: Everything is an Afterthought: The Life and Writings of Paul Nelson (Fantagraphics)
Book Review by Barney Hoskyns, Word, The, December 2011
NOTE: This is a slightly expanded version of the review that ran in The Word. ...
Melody Maker, 1926 - 2000, RIP
Obituary by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, December 2000
An era came to an end on 14th December when IPC Magazines announced the closure of its oldest music title, Melody Maker. ...
Nelson George: The Death of Rhythm & Blues (Omnibus)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Wire, The, 1987
NELSON GEORGE, self-described "B-Boy intellectual" and one of pop culture's few black writers of note, has written a book which (sort of) argues that the ...
Picture This: 10 Years of Rock Archive
Essay by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, October 2008
PRIDE OF PLACE on my office wall belongs to a photograph by Jill Furmanovsky. It's an image that takes me back almost 30 years to ...
Read All About It: Rock Books to Live By
Book Excerpt by Barney Hoskyns, Time Out's 1000 Books To Save Your Life, 2007
YOU'D THINK I'd be able to write about rock books in my sleep. But of course the task is dreadfully daunting, "rock" now being an ...
Revelations In The Head: Ian MacDonald 1948-2003
Obituary by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, September 2003
THE NEWS THAT Ian MacDonald has taken his own life comes as a terrible shock, both to the colleagues who knew him and to the ...
Revue/Re-View 2000: Lists? We've got ’em
Guide by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, December 2000
RBP’s 20 Best Albums of 2000 ...
Revue/Re-View 2000: RBP’s Goodest, Baddest and Ugliest of The Year – Part 1
Guide by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, December 2000
HERE ARE THE YOUNG MEN... ...
Revue/Re-View 2000: RBP’s Goodest, Baddest and Ugliest of The Year – Part 2
Guide by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, December 2000
THE WAY THEY ARE ...
Revue/Re-View 2000: RBP’s Goodest, Baddest and Ugliest of The Year – Part 3
Guide by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, December 2000
....AND YE SHALL KNOW THEM BY THE ECHOES OF BLUDGEONING PUNK-METAL RIFFOLOGY ...
Revue/Re-View 2000: RBP’s Goodest, Baddest and Ugliest of The Year – Part 4
Guide by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, December 2000
LET’S GET WRANGLED ...
Obituary by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, August 2007
THE DEATH of Richard Cook at the age of 49 robs us of one of the finest writers UK music journalism has produced. He was ...
Simon Reynolds: Energy Flash: A Journey Through Rave Music and Dance Culture
Book Review by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, September 1999
IT SAYS MUCH about our compulsive pre-millenial navel-gazing that several tomes about the past decade's "ecstacy culture" - Matthew Collin's Altered State, Jane Bussman's Once ...
Stan Cornyn with Paul Scanlon: Exploding (Harper Entertainment)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, June 2002
"THE REALLY important factor was that we were a younger company than Columbia," Warners insider Stan Cornyn said in 1993. "We weren't structured so tightly ...
The Gospel according to Anthony Heilbut
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Independent, The, June 1996
From Mahalia Jackson to Death in Venice might seem a long journey. But for Anthony Heilbut, the renowned gospel expert and author of a new ...
Profile by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut Legends, December 2008
REGGIE YOUNG is a southern institution: the session guitarist's session guitarist. His inimitable licks and fills, at once clipped and fluid, have graced a zillion ...
The Meeting of the ‘Twain: Monterey Pop and the Great California Divide
Special Feature by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, June 2002
"TRAVELING UP the Coast from the ruins of the Sunset Strip to the Haight is a Dante-esque ascent," New Yorker Richard Goldstein could write of ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, June 1982
Various Artists: Lost Soul, Vols. 1-3 (Epic, import) ...
Essay by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, December 1996
"WHAT IS Soul?" sang Ben E. King in 1967, a year that began with Aretha Franklin’s first Atlantic session and ended with the death of ...
The Soul in the Machine: Whatever Happened to Atlantic Records?
Book Excerpt by Barney Hoskyns, What'd I Say, 2001
"UNFORTUNATELY, we’re running a big business here now," Ahmet Ertegun confessed to author Gerri Hirshey in 1982. "And it sort of ... well, it drives ...
The Third Invasion: Britpop Strikes!
Overview by Barney Hoskyns, Musician, July 1996
"Oasis must die. Do not buy Oasis records. They will come to rape and pillage our women and invade America."(Courtney Love on the Net, early ...
Tom Wilkes, 1939-2009: Legendary Designer of Posters and Album Covers
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, July 2009
Tom Wilkes, legendary poster and album cover designer (Monterey Pop, the Rolling Stones' original Beggars Banquet, Neil Young's Harvest, Janis Joplin's Pearl, George Harrison's All ...
Transistor Sisters: Alan Betrock's Girl Groups - The Story Of A Sound
Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, 1982
"Conform to norm society; won't stand for impropriety; In the extreme of which you dream, you must always join the team . . . " ...
Various Artists: The Folk Years – Blowin' in the Wind
Sleevenotes by Barney Hoskyns, Time-Life Music, 2002
THERE WAS A TIME when the notion of the "folk singer-songwriter" was all but a contradiction in terms. "Folk" music was the ür-sound of the ...
Various Artists: The Folk Years – Yesterday's Gone
Sleevenotes by Barney Hoskyns, Time-Life Music, 2002
THE 18 TRACKS on this album whisk us back to the hopeful, happy days of America's Hootenanny boom. From the Caribbean lilt of Harry Belafonte's ...
Various Artists: Where The Action Is! Los Angeles Nuggets 1965-1968 (Rhino)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, October 2009
LENNY KAYE CAN'T have had any idea what he was starting when he compiled his original Nuggets double album of psychedelic "artyfacts" back in 1972. ...
Various Artists: Woodstock 40 (Rhino)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Observer Music Monthly, July 2009
WE ARE ALL so inured these days to the business of rock festivals – sponsored, multi-generational, beamed into our living rooms – that it's difficult ...
Viv Broughton: Black Gospel: An Illustrated History Of The Gospel Sound (Blandford Press)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, 1984
IT’S ONLY TOO easy to take that vicarious pleasure in the religious antics of folk who are not of one's own race, nationality or (non-) ...
Wasn’t Born to Follow: Easy Rider
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, 2004
THE COUNTERCULTURE B-movie that went overground and kick-started the rebellious auteurism of ‘70s Hollywood, Easy Rider is at once mildly dated and compellingly authentic. ...
What Simon Says: Simon Napier-Bell
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, NME, 1984
AS THE MANAGER of buddy-buddy superstars Wham!, Simon Napier-Bell is not modest about the role he’s played in their success. Without him, he suggests, they ...
Whose Alt.Country Is It Anyway?
Essay by Barney Hoskyns, unpublished, 1997
THEY CALL it Alternative Country, a generous umbrella of a category that makes room for acts as different as Steve Earle, Son Volt and Slobberbone; ...
Report by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, January 1994
Barney Hoskyns visits the idyllic Catskill mountain retreat colonized by The Band, Bob Dylan, Van Morrison and fellow bohemians. ...
Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace and Music
Film/DVD Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, June 2009
4-DVD, 2-Blue-Ray set comprising the original 1970 documentary of the ultimate rock festival, with two hours of new footage plus a new 50-minute documentary about ...
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