John Swenson
John Swenson has been writing about popular music since 1967. He edited the award-winning website jazze.com for Knit Media and has worked as an editor at Crawdaddy, Rolling Stone, Circus, Rock World, OffBeat magazine and been published in virtually every popular music magazine of note over that time. He was a syndicated music columnist for more than 20 years at United Press International and Reuters. Swenson has written 14 published books including biographies of Bill Haley, the Who, Stevie Wonder and the Eagles and co-edited the original Rolling Stone Record Guide with Dave Marsh. He is also the editor of The Rolling Stone Jazz and Blues Album Guide. In another role Swenson is a veteran sports writer who covered the New York Rangers for 30 years, writing pieces for outlets from Rolling Stone to the Associated Press. Swenson is also a veteran horseracing columnist and handicapper who covered the New York racing scene as a columnist for the New York Post and the New Orleans Fair Grounds meet for The Daily Racing Form. His profile on jockey Steve Cauthen, "Rise To Stardom, Fall From Grace" in Spur magazine was nominated for an Eclipse Award.
John Swenson on life in the <i>Circus</i>
John Swenson's 'Music on My Mind' blog
List of articles in the library by artist
Atlanta Rhythm Section, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Al Kooper, Mose Jones: Southern Rock: Gone With The Trend
Report and Interview by John Swenson, Crawdaddy!, July 1975
Al Kooper may not give a damn, but with Lynyrd Skynyrd hot and the Atlanta Rhythm Section burnin', Southern Music is rising again. ...
Bachman Turner Overdrive: BTO II (Mercury)
Review by John Swenson, Zoo World, August 1974
BACHMAN TURNER Overdrive emerged as one of the best new groups of 1973, and their debut album was the best work to come out of ...
Band, The, Bob Dylan: Dylan and The Band Return with Planet Waves
Report by John Swenson, Circus, April 1974
When Dylan took the lid off the box he was hiding in, he made the conditions for peeping in very difficult. Now Bob Dylan doesn't ...
Jerry Butler: Power Of Love (Mercury)
Review by John Swenson, Zoo World, May 1974
JERRY BUTLER is unquestionably the King of Chicago-style cool R&B (the name Ice Man didn't come for nothing – at a time when Pickett epitomized ...
Canned Heat: One More River To Cross
Review by John Swenson, Zoo World, March 1974
CANNED HEAT is one of those groups who hang on by the skin of their teeth, jumping over a spate of mediocre albums from success ...
Chicago: What Do You Think They'll Call Their Seventh Album?
Interview by John Swenson, Crawdaddy!, February 1973
It all began when, after my particularly scathing review of Chicago V appeared in the October Crawdaddy, I received the following telegram from Bobby Lamm, ...
Dr. John: Dr John: Finally In The Right Place
Interview by John Swenson, Crawdaddy!, June 1974
From Gris Gris to Gumbo to the Top of the Charts, with "goofer dust an' powders an' oils an' sachets an' lotions an' candles an' ...
Review by John Swenson, Rolling Stone, April 1977
ROCK & ROLL HAS this bad habit of being unpredictable. You never can tell when a band will undergo that alchemic transmigration from lead to ...
Peter Frampton Comes And Gets It
Report and Interview by John Swenson, Crawdaddy!, May 1976
NEW YORK – Peter Frampton seems an unlikely hero. Soft-spoken, he projects something of a folk ambiance, not the glitter/stud machismo characteristic of so many ...
Profile and Interview by John Swenson, Crawdaddy!, March 1974
Genesis combines surreal songwriting with an interesting instrumental and visual approach. Lead singer Peter Gabriel notes: "We all took courses in pretentiousness." ...
Tom T. Hall: For The People In The Last Hard Town (Mercury)
Review by John Swenson, Zoo World, April 1974
TOM T. HALL is unquestionably one of the finest country music songwriters ever to pick up a pen or belt down a double shot of ...
Keef Hartley: Lancashire Hustler (Deram)
Review by John Swenson, Zoo World, December 1973
THE BRITISH Blues Process is an ongoing phenomenon with its share of well publicized superstars, but for every Ten Years After and Savoy Brown are ...
Live Review by John Swenson, Rolling Stone, February 1977
THIRTEEN YEARS after the Beatles played their first American concert at Carnegie Hall, the Electric Light Orchestra pads a headlining set at Madison Square Garden ...
Review by John Swenson, Crawdaddy!, August 1972
THE NEW Tull package is clever, very, and complicated enough to sustain interest over an extended series of listenings. Most albums can be assimilated in ...
Mott The Hoople: Mott the Hoople: The Hoople (Columbia)
Review by John Swenson, Crawdaddy!, July 1974
IT'S TOUGH being a rock and roll star these days. Ask Ian Hunter, Mott the Hoople's lead singer and group dictator. After five years of ...
Ramones, The: The Ramones: Ramones (Sire)
Review by John Swenson, Crawdaddy!, August 1976
DA RAMONES: NO MERCYBEATS ...
Santana: The Ice Cream Man Cometh
Interview by John Swenson, Crawdaddy!, July 1976
LACROSSE, WISC – "Everything OK with the Dip?" ...
Boz Scaggs: Slow Dancer (Columbia)
Review by John Swenson, Crawdaddy!, June 1974
SLOW DANCER is Boz Scaggs' fifth album, and you have to wonder when he's going to start repeating himself, because none of them sound the ...
Live Review by John Swenson, Sounds, March 1976
YOU WON'T find a better textbook example of what's gone wrong with R&B over the past few years. Ticket prices, scaled from $10.00 down, were ...
Toots & The Maytals, Who, The: The Who, Toots & The Maytals: Summit Hockey Arena, Houston TX
Live Review by John Swenson, Sounds, November 1975
THE WHO began the American portion of their world tour in characteristic fashion – opening up Houston's Summit Hockey arena to rock 'n' roll. ...
Obituary by John Swenson, Rolling Stone, October 1990
STEVIE RAY VAUGHAN has died, and with him goes the spirit of Jimi Hendrix once again. Vaughan was linked to Hendrix throughout his playing life. ...
Who, The: The Who Plunge Into Madness With Quadrophenia
Profile and Interview by John Swenson, Circus Raves, March 1974
GIVEN THE SITUATION that the average life span of a successful rock group is less than two years, the Who have set some kind of ...
Who, The: The Who Puts the Bomp
Comment by John Swenson, Crawdaddy!, December 1971
WHO NIGHT. The crowd waits reverently, attention vaguely focused on the massive half-ton fortress of amplifiers looming in the shadows of the dimly lit stage. ...
Who, The: The Who: Madison Square Garden, New York NY
Live Review by John Swenson, Sounds, March 1976
IT'S AN old joke, but it's still happening so it must mean something. There we were eating the meat loaf special at the local watering ...
Frank Zappa: America's Weirdest Rock Star Comes Clean
Interview by John Swenson, High Times, March 1980
FRANK ZAPPA is probably the most misunderstood man in the history of popular music. ...
Frank Zappa: The Myth Of Joe's Garage
Interview by John Swenson, Rolling Stone, December 1979
I'M STANDING ON the loading platform at L.A. International Airport at 2:30 in the morning, listening to a prerecorded voice that keeps repeating "...the white ...
Frank Zappa: The Frank Zappa Interview
Interview by John Swenson, Guitar World, March 1982
FRANK ZAPPA was at the Palladium in New York for his perennial Pumpkin Day concert celebration with his most loyal fans. ...
List of genre pieces
Rock Dreams/Schemes: The History of Crawdaddy(!)
Retrospective by John Swenson, Crawdaddy!, March 1976
YOU ARE looking at the first issue of a magazine of rock and roll criticism. Crawdaddy! will feature neither pin-ups nor news briefs; the specialty ...
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