Mark Paytress
Mark Paytress is a journalist, author and broadcaster. A regular contributor to MOJO magazine, his work has also appeared in numerous publications including The Guardian, Radio Times, Q, Rolling Stone, Crawdaddy, Maxim, La Repubblica and Record Collector.
His books include Bolan: The Rise & Fall Of A 20th Century Superstar (Omnibus Press), Break It Up: Patti Smith’s Horses And The Remaking Of Rock’n’Roll (Piatkus), I Was There: The Gigs That Changed The World (Cassell), BowieStyle (Omnibus Press), The Rolling Stones Files (Quadrillion), The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust & The Spiders From Mars (Schirmer), Siouxsie & The Banshees: The Authorised Biography, Vicious: The Art Of Dying Young and critical guides to the work of The Rolling Stones, Radiohead, Nirvana and the Sex Pistols.
Mark has contributed to various television and radio programmes (Night Waves, Front Row), and in winter 2008/09, researched and presented two documentaries for BBC Radio 4, Here’s Kenny (about DJ Kenny Everett) and Stash: The Dandy Aesthete Of Swinging London.
20th Century Album: Trout Mask Replica by Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band
20th Century Artist: Jimi Hendrix
20th Century Cult Hero: Scott Walker
21st Century Saviour: Joanna Newsom
List of articles in the library by artist
Syd Barrett, Pink Floyd: Syd Barrett
Retrospective by Mark Paytress, Record Collector, 1993
IN COMMON with Brian Wilson, Captain Beefheart and Phil Spector, Syd Barrett is a musician whose work is often overshadowed by the myths that surround ...
David Bowie: Ziggy Stardust: The Album That Killed The Sixties
Retrospective by Mark Paytress, Record Collector, June 1998
Bowie's Ziggy Stardust redefined the meaning of rock artistry ...
Jeff Buckley: Keeper of the Flame
Report and Interview by Mark Paytress, Guardian, The, October 2002
IT IS FIVE YEARS since Jeff Buckley took his final, mid-evening stroll into the Wolf River, a sleepy tourist spot on the outskirts of Memphis, ...
Butthole Surfers: The Butthole Surfers
Guide by Mark Paytress, Record Collector, February 1989
Mark Paytress Unravels the Career of the Cult American Band ...
Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band: Trout Mask Replica (Straight, 1969)
Retrospective and Interview by Mark Paytress, MOJO, March 2005
A disciplinarian visionary and his inspired acolytes create genuine Outsider Art. ...
Smiley Culture: Mark Paytress Meets Smiley Culture On The Cusp Of Fame, 1984.
Interview by Mark Paytress, Rock's Backpages, March 2011
AS BRITAIN'S first successful MC, whose fast, fluid style had more in common with rap than reggae, Smiley Culture's place in history is assured. He ...
Jefferson Airplane: High Priestess: Grace Slick and ‘White Rabbit’
Retrospective and Interview by Mark Paytress, Guardian, The, November 2002
White Rabbit has just come out top in a poll to find the finest drug song ever. Mark Paytress discovers that its writer/singer Grace Slick ...
Review by Mark Paytress, MOJO, November 2001
THERE ARE winners and losers in the shifting sands of rock fashion and, much as it hurts to write it, Jefferson Airplane seem like losers. ...
John's Children, Marc Bolan: John's Children
Retrospective and Interview by Mark Paytress, MOJO, September 2002
IT'S BEEN SAID THAT IN 1967 MANAGER SIMON Napier-Bell served Marc Bolan with an ultimatum: join The Yardbirds or John's Children. The very idea of ...
Profile and Interview by Mark Paytress, Record Collector, March 1994
KIRSTY MACCOLL first came to prominence as a solo artist during the early 80s, scoring Top 20 hits with 'There's a Guy Works Down The ...
Retrospective and Interview by Mark Paytress, Record Collector, August 1989
MANY OF THE ACTS at Woodstock were already well established names, but if anyone can claim to have been broken by the festival, it must ...
Elvis Presley: Live In Las Vegas
Review by Mark Paytress, MOJO, August 2001
ELVIS PRESLEY wasn't always the Clown Prince of Las Vegas. Back in 1956, he secured a two-week booking at the Venus Room in the city's ...
Elvis Presley: Today Tomorrow & Forever
Review by Mark Paytress, MOJO, July 2002
LET'S BE honest: this, once again, is Elvis Presley '56-'77 squeezed into five exhilarating, and at times exasperating hours. There are two major differences this ...
Interview by Mark Paytress, Guardian, The, October 2006
WHEN PSYCHIC TV's Genesis P-Orridge walks out on stage at the Astoria this evening, on a rare visit to London, those who've followed the career ...
Sex Pistols, The, Sid Vicious: Sid Vicious: Threw a Glass Darkly
Book Excerpt by Mark Paytress, 'Vicious: The Art of Dying Young', Sanctuary Books, 2004
SID did it. Didn’t he? ...
Siouxsie & The Banshees, Creatures, The: The Creatures
Interview by Mark Paytress, Record Collector, August 1999
SIOUXSIE AND THE Banshees have carried the can for all manner of goth-related crimes, from walking-corpse fashions to minor chord musical misanthropy. It's a wonder ...
Patti Smith: The Lady's For Returning
Interview by Mark Paytress, Guardian, The, September 2006
PATTI SMITH knows a thing or two about rock'n'roll heroes. Emerging in a blaze of controversy with her epochal 1975 debut album, Horses, she wrapped ...
Book Excerpt by Mark Paytress, Omnibus Books, 2002
An extract from Bolan: The Rise And Fall Of A 20th Century Superstar by Mark Paytress, first published by Omnibus Press in 2002. (378pp, currently ...
Scott Walker: It Don't Come Easy: Scott Walker’s Five Easy Pieces (Universal)
Review by Mark Paytress, MOJO, 2004
Idiosyncratic. Inspired. Perplexing. Well, how else would you want your multi-disc "Godlike Genius" retrospective served? ...
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