Mitchell Cohen
Grew up in the Bronx, NY, fixated as a child on NYC top 40 radio in the early '60s: the WMCA Good Guys, the WABC All-Americans, and Murray the K's Swingin' Soiree on WINS. Fast-forward to NYU grad school (Cinema Studies); began writing about music and film for various publications, including Creem, Film Comment, Take One, Fusion, Phonograph Record Magazine. Wrote books on Carole King and Simon & Garfunkel for Sire/Chappell Books. While still writing regularly on music (for Creem, mostly, but also frequently for High Fidelity, Let It Rock, Who Put The Bomp, Country Music, Musician etc.), got a job in the publicity department at Arista Records, writing artist bios, press releases, that sort of thing. Which led to a position in the Creative Services department, writing print ads, producing radio spots (won a Clio Award for a Monty Python radio ad). Then made transition into Arista A&R, signed The Church, The Jeff Healey Band, made a pop-rock "comeback" album with Dion (‘Yo, Frankie’). Compiled and/or annotated reissues for Arista (The Monkees, Lee Dorsey, The Kinks, The Everly Brothers, lots of others) and Rhino (The Shirelles, Gene Pitney). Moved over to Columbia Records in 1993 and became Senior VP of A&R. Among Columbia projects: Maxwell, Nellie McKay, The Raveonettes, Savage Garden. Nominated for a Grammy Award as one of the producers of Sony 100 years multi-CD set. Voting member of NARAS and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Mitchell Cohen's Rock's Backpages blog
List of articles in the library by artist
Review by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, December 1982
DESIRE SOMETIMES goes unreciprocated. Sad, but it happens. Martin Fry, the leader of ABC, does not accept this with equanimity. He stares at his blueprint ...
Review by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, January 1983
CLARE GROGAN has this itsy little boop-be-doop of a voice, and she twists phrases into odd curlicues while her four-piece band plays zesty, danceable (mustn't ...
Laurie Anderson: Big Science (Warner Bros.)
Review by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, August 1982
‘I NO LONGER love the way you hold your pens and pencils’ is a line that any one of a thousand writers might write. But ...
Average White Band: Winterland, San Francisco
Live Review by Mitchell Cohen, Phonograph Record, June 1975
THERE ARE THOSE who have had Average White Band pegged from the start as the best blue-eyed soul band since the Young Rascals, and these ...
B-52s, The: The B-52s: Climate Control In The Land Of 16 Dances
Interview by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, December 1979
MOST PEOPLE, when discussing/remembering the beach party movies, don't take Jody McCrea into account. There was a nerd in the surf. This relates to The ...
Bananarama: Bananarama (London)
Review by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, August 1984
BANANARAMA CAN'T BE bothered to raise their voices; it's just not worth it. The attitude is cool deadpan, the image is ye'-ye' girls with a ...
Bay City Rollers, The: Bay City Rollers: Once Upon A Star
Review by Mitchell Cohen, Phonograph Record, September 1975
THE BAY CITY Rollers campaign is underway, and its components are familiar: screaming female fans in Great Britain, Sid Bernstein masterminding tour plans, back-to-back appearances ...
Beach Boys, The: The Beach Boys
Comment by Mitchell Cohen, Phonograph Record, July 1975
"THIS IS A SERIOUS surfing song," Mike Love announces from the stage of Madison Square Garden and the Beach Boys launch into a lively rendition ...
Beach Boys, The: The Beach Boys: The Beach Boys
Review by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, October 1985
SAY YOU'RE AT your high school reunion – a far-fetched thought, but bear with me for a moment – and some creep corners you by ...
Beach Boys, The: The Beach Boys: The Beach Boys Love You
Review by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, July 1977
There is no TM song, no music-is-swell song, or "unfolding enveloping missiles of soul," or political/ecological commentary. Instead, what we have here is a collection ...
Beatles, The, Wings: Wings: The Band On The Road
Report by Mitchell Cohen, Phonograph Record, May 1976
THE WINGS LIVE show has been evolving over the past three years, and McCartney deliberately kept a low profile during its earliest stages, a university ...
Belle Stars, The: The Belle Stars: The Belle Stars
Review by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, August 1983
THERE'S NO LACK of traumatic incident on The Belle Stars' first album: lovers treat each other abominably, separate, commit crimes of passion. ...
Big Country : Big Country: The Crossing
Review by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, December 1983
EVERYTHING'S AN "ANTHEM" these days, every song that asserts the simplest preference, celebrates any individual or social identity or activity (oh, "Flashdance...What A Feeling," or ...
Review by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, February 1981
FOR A FEW YEARS, roughly coinciding with the campaign and administration of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, rock 'n' roll was the music of an era on ...
Boston: Don't Look Back (Epic)
Review by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, November 1978
SHE'S THE ONE dreams were invented for, and you've had her. The pursuit was long and arduous, the affair sudden and turbulent. You've gone madly ...
Bonnie Bramlett: The Bottom Line, NYC
Live Review by Mitchell Cohen, Phonograph Record, March 1975
THE PRESSURE is on Bonnie Bramlett now, in a way that it's never been before. As part of a group that served as a way-station ...
Interview by Mitchell Cohen, Phonograph Record, November 1976
JACKSON BROWNE sat in a locker room beneath a domed hall at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. It had been a particularly successful college ...
Review by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, October 1979
Candy-O Is Peggy Sue's daughter. Candy-O is this year's model. (Is the band furious that such an obvious title for their second had already been ...
Cheap Trick: Heaven Tonight (Epic)
Review by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, August 1978
DANIEL AND GLORIA met at a rock flea market when their hands reached for the one over-priced copy of Hackamore Brick's One Kiss ...
Alex Chilton: The Big Star of New York's Underground
Report by Mitchell Cohen, Phonograph Record, June 1977
CHAPTER THREE in the adventures of a bona-fide, under-acknowledged rock hero is currently in progress. At the moment, the story is mostly taking place in ...
Review by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, October 1978
WHAT'S MISSING on these LPs is the quality of delight. Nobody would consider the early records of The Zombies or The Hollies particularly well-crafted, but ...
Elvis Costello and the Attractions: Goodbye Cruel World (Columbia)
Review by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, September 1984
IT'S ALMOST Elvis Costello and the Distractions this time out. Goodbye Cruel World, LP #10 (here in America, at least), has such a desperate busyness ...
Elvis Costello: My Aim Is True (Columbia)
Review by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, February 1978
THIS BANDIT SUMMER, this snatcher of heroes, loved ones and possibilities, will be remembered also for leaving behind intoxicating rock and roll, with this album ...
Review by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, September 1983
MARSHALL CRENSHAW'S first album was like a tuneful adaptation of an ad from the Voice's personal/classified columns: Lookin' for a brand new lover, a cynical ...
Review by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, February 1985
CENSUS-TAKERS have determined that there is a core audience of 19,422 citizens with a susceptibility toward charmingly weird, clever, and sensitive pop-rock with a foundation ...
Rick Derringer: The New Derringer: Rick Derringer & Cynthia Weil
Interview by Mitchell Cohen, Phonograph Record, June 1976
DERRINGER: ANOTHER PUNK INCORPORATES ...
Dexy's Midnight Runners: Searching For The Young Soul Rebels
Review by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, May 1981
WHAT A GASEOUS hoot this album is. Such a conglomeration of goofy pretentions, cornball horn charts and blowsy singing hasn't been heard since the pre-War ...
Doors, The: The Doors: Alive, She Cried
Review by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, January 1984
WHAT WAS that he said? "No time to wallow in the mire." Tell that to the folks who have somehow managed to turn a band ...
Review by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, November 1981
BOB DYLAN AND Lenny Bruce once shared a taxi for about a mile and a half. According to Dylan, the ride felt as though it ...
Review by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, July 1984
JOE ELY'S Hi-Res has a feverish, jittery seediness, a buzz you can't shake off. Remember the first episode of Cheers, where the guys argued about ...
Marianne Faithfull: Broken English
Review by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, March 1980
"I never lied to my lover/But if I did I would admit it/If I could get away with murder/I'd take my gun and I'd commit ...
Marianne Faithfull: Ses Liaisons Dangereuses
Interview by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, February 1982
"I'VE ALWAYS KNOWN who I was," she says in a raspy, Bette Davis voice. "Whether I could achieve to express that to everyone else was ...
Fleetwood Mac: Tusk: From Shining Platinum To Dull Ivory
Review by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, January 1980
WHITE ELEPHANT is more like it, heffalumping into the thick four-sided forest, stomping on moby grapes, swatting at the metaphysical graffiti carved into the tree ...
Review by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, April 1985
I have a better title, except Malamud already claimed it: The Natural. John Fogerty's sound could never be pinned down to time or ...
Review by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, June 1981
THESE ALBUMS are blueprints for romantic strategies. Hearing them together is like eavesdropping on both halves of a double date, comparing style of seduction. ...
George Harrison: Somewhere In England
Review by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, September 1981
"SHE'S A DRAG. A well-known drag. We turn the sound down on her and say rude things." – George Harrison, A Hard Day's Night, 1964. ...
Review by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, November 1982
SAY YOU AND these other guys used to hang out in this neighborhood, and you all had pretty much the same goals, the same diversions, ...
Human League, The: The Human League: Dare
Review by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, June 1982
IF THE GUY who built a pinochle-playing computer for his Science Techniques Lab in high school married the gal who wrote poems called "alien/nation" for ...
Joe Jackson's Jumpin' Jive: Joe Jackson's Jumpin' Jive
Review by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, October 1981
JUMPIN' JIVE IS about a musician with an attitude messing with music that is about style. ...
Rick James: Throwin' Down (Gordy)
Review by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, September 1982
HE HAS A VOICE that's like a Looney Tunes imitation of Edward G. Robinson. His priorities (or those of the character he's created) are getting ...
Jefferson Starship: Central Park, NYC
Live Review by Mitchell Cohen, Phonograph Record, June 1975
THEY MAY HAVE changed their surname, but Jefferson Starship have arrived at a conciliatory relationship with their past, and with mixed results. With Marty Balin ...
Joan Jett: I Love Rock 'N' Roll (Boardwalk)
Review by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, March 1982
IF ANY OF rock's male marauders (say Triumph, or Rush) opened up an LP with a stop 'n' start thumper about spotting a 17-year-old number ...
David Johansen: Position Of A Vagabond Missionary
Interview by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, December 1982
IN AN OFFICE that overlooks Central Park, David Johansen finds the videotape he's looking for, a recording of his New Year's morning show at the ...
Rickie Lee Jones: Girl At Her Volcano
Review by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, October 1983
IT SEEMS APT that Rickie Lee Jones's Girl At Her Volcano begins at a point near the end of her live set ("We love you!" ...
Carole King: On This Side Of Goodbye
Retrospective by Mitchell Cohen, Phonograph Record, January 1976
HE COMES HOME from a night of petting heavily in the back row of the RKO Fordham. Aching from the pains of halted passion, he ...
Kokomo: Wollman Rink, New York NY
Live Review by Mitchell Cohen, Phonograph Record, October 1975
IF THERE'S ONE thing we don't need it's a group composed of exiles from second-line British boogie bands that has a tendency toward disco-oriented soul. ...
Review by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, March 1985
GIVE MY REGARDS To Broad Street, a motion picture written by, and starring, Paul McCartney, opens across America in October, closes across America by November. ...
Review by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, April 1984
MITCH EASTER is like a kid who only has a box of eight Crayolas – the basic set, no burnt sienna, no vermillion, no cornflower ...
Huey Lewis and the News: Huey Lewis: Picture This
Review by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, May 1982
HO HUM, you might say. One more slick-surfaced pop rock band with hooks to spare (many made out of spare parts), sax breaks, high-pitched harmonies ...
Review by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, June 1977
MAYBE NILS LOFGREN always was sort of a dummy. But his heart was in the right place (on his sleeve), he was capable of inventing ...
Review by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, September 1985
LONE JUSTICE'S Maria McKee is one tough cookie. Barely out of her teens, she comes on with a spitfire defiance and a repertoire of yelps, ...
Bob Marley & the Wailers: Bob Marley et al: Jamaica
Overview by Mitchell Cohen, Phonograph Record, October 1975
FIRST DAY, RAIN. Thick clouds and then more rain. It is, I'm told, the wetter of Jamaica's two wet seasons. ...
Bob Marley & the Wailers: Bob Marley: Wollman Skating Rink, New York NY
Live Review by Mitchell Cohen, Phonograph Record, July 1975
IT WAS THE first one of those muggy nights this season, when the air is so close it cuts down your breathing, that Bob Marley ...
McGuinn, Clark & Hillman: McGuinn, Clark & Hillman
Review by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, May 1979
HAD RECORDS LIKE 'The World Turns All Around Her', 'She Don't Care About Time', and 'I Feel A Whole Lot Better' been products of your ...
Review by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, December 1981
MEAT 'ANYWHERE he wants to' Loaf is waxing rhapsodic once more. Who among us has not missed the grandiloquent sound of the corpuscles in his ...
Van Morrison: A Sense Of Wonder
Review by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, June 1985
ONE OF THE SMARTEST things Martin Scorsese did in The King Of Comedy was bracket it with songs by Ray Charles and Van Morrison. The ...
Review by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, December 1980
ANYONE WHO CAN make the phrase "William Blake and the eternals" sound like the evocation of a metaphysical doo-wop group, as Van Morrison did on ...
Maria Muldaur, Emmylou Harris: Maria Muldaur & Emmylou Harris Live
Live Review by Mitchell Cohen, Phonograph Record, July 1975
Maria Muldaur: Carnegie Hall, New York Emmylou Harris: Schaefer Music Festival, Central park, New York ...
Review by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, December 1979
AFTER FIVE ALBUMS and almost ten years of intermittent brilliance, Randy Newman achieves a number one single with a nastily amusing ditty. ...
Interview by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, December 1983
THINK OF NRBQ as a diner somewhere off the main highway, serving up Tex-Mex chili, Kansas City barbeque, Philadelphia cheese steaks, New England clam chowder, ...
Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers: Tom Petty: Damn the Torpedoes (Backstreet/MCA)
Review by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, February 1980
DAMN THE TORPEDOES takes the American Stand: "Don't tread on me" When you've been ‘raised on promises’ like the heroine of Tom Petty's bicentennial debut, ...
Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers: Tom Petty: Southern Accents
Review by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, July 1985
PRETTY SOON, it will be an established practice for earnest rockers to start off albums by announcing the circumstances of their birth. ...
Police, The: The Police: Ghost In The Machine
Review by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, January 1982
GARRY AHRENBERG couldn't get into the Police, an esthetic predeliction that caused him no small amount of derisive peer pressure. ...
Review by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, March 1979
FOR A FEW weeks in 1978, an FM radio station in New York City was trying, earnestly and imaginatively, to create rock 'n' roll counter-programming. ...
Queen: The New British Invasion
Interview by Mitchell Cohen, Phonograph Record, March 1976
"YOU'RE NOT going to ask me to interpret ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, are you?" ...
Ramones, The: Ramones: Road To Ruin (Sire)
Review by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, December 1978
"Sometimes timing is everything, you know?""How do you mean?" ...
Ramones, The: What Price Glory? The Ramones Soldier On
Interview by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, June 1980
"Survival of the fittest. And besides, it's fun." – Daffy Duck, helping a wabbit-hunting Elmer corner Bugs in Rabbit Fire ...
Records, The: The Records: The Records
Review by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, November 1979
MEMORANDUMFrom: Carraway LP Analysts, Inc.To: CREEM MagazineRe: THE RECORDS ...
Nile Rodgers: Adventures In The Land Of The Good Groove
Review by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, July 1983
SINCE NILE RODGERS (A) is democratic enough to include Wall Street within the borders of good-groove land (see the map on the album cover), and ...
Rolling Stones, The: The Rolling Stones: Metamorphosis
Review by Mitchell Cohen, Phonograph Record, July 1975
THE FASCINATION of Metamorphosis, basically a collection of outtakes, oddities and alternate versions, lies in what it adds to our experience and knowledge of the ...
Romantics, The: The Romantics: The Romantics
Review by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, April 1980
I CAN'T ACCEPT Shelley Hack as a Charlie's Angel (Spelling-Goldberg should burn in Nielsen purgatory for rejecting Claudia Jennings, who proceeded to smash up her ...
Review by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, October 1980
Voices: "NBC, proud as a peacock!"Announcer: "Fred Silverman presents The Roxy Music Flesh and Blood Comedy Hour starring Bryan Ferry. With The Doomdiggers, Brian Eno ...
Rubinoos, The: Rubinoos: Theoretical Boys In Search Of The Summer Single
Interview by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, August 1979
IT IS A PERFECT world: the date is anywhere between May 15 and June 28; you are fourteen years old, and the days are getting ...
Review by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, April 1983
THERE'S A NEW furrowed-brow earnestness now emerging in American rock 'n' roll, a grainy neo-realism that depicts workaday lives in ways that were once the ...
Shangri-Las, The: Shangri Las: A Teenage Melodrama
Retrospective by Mitchell Cohen, Let It Rock, December 1974
SHALL WE DANCE? ...
Del Shannon: Fugitive Kind of Love: Del Shannon
Interview by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, June 1982
"THERE WAS A girl I thought was really in love with me. I mean, my heart would pound when she came around. She gave me ...
Review by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, February 1984
ON HEARTS AND BONES, Paul Simon turns the basic philosophical pop question inside out. Instead of "Why do fools fall in love?" (or its variation, ...
Slade: Keep Your Hands Off My Power Supply
Review by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, June 1984
HERE IS NODDY HOLDER, raspy lead singer of Slade, putting a move on a member of the opposite sex: "You want equality/You won't get none ...
Small Faces, The: Small Faces: Playmates
Review by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, December 1977
ONE SOLO CAREER going nowhere, two sidemen left in the, lurch, and a convenient reconciliation. The Faces have gotten Small again, with their original lead ...
Patti Smith: Avery Fisher Hall, NYC
Live Review by Mitchell Cohen, Phonograph Record, May 1976
FOR SOME OF US, Patti Smith is the girl of our rock and roll dreams. As a performer she doesn't merely flirt with danger, she ...
Patty Smyth, Scandal featuring Patty Smyth: Scandal Featuring Patty Smyth: Warrior
Review by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, November 1984
THIS RECORD SHOULD come in a plain white package, like generic elbow macaroni; it has every 1984 mainstream (AORMTV) rock mannerism so down pat that ...
Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes: This Time It's For Real
Review by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, June 1977
The songs of Miami Steve Van Zandt are like found objects; he zeroes in on particular species of East Coast rhythm and blues, mixes together ...
Bruce Springsteen: Darkness On The Edge Of Town (Columbia)
Review by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, September 1978
If I walk away from this, he thought, I'll be an old man – all ghosts and hangovers and mellow recollections. Fuck it, he thought, ...
Squeeze: East Side Story (A&M)
Review by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, August 1981
CONSIDER. A band with decidedly bent pop bearings (and more than a light touch merseybeat croon-a-toon McCartneyatrics), associated with John Cale in the founding phase ...
Review by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, November 1983
WE'VE HEARD THIS before, and the Fleshtones know it: "Your scene isn't really so strange/Some things never really change." Hornet-nest guitar. Gnarly vocals. Lyrics that ...
Review by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, March 1981
SHE STOMPED into the living room, as much as one can stomp in pink slippers and an extra-large Close Encounters t-shirt, and conspicuously clicked the ...
Donna Summer: Bad Girls (Casablanca)
Review by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, August 1979
‘HOT STUFF’ just isn't that terrific a record, no matter what the charts or current critical backlash dogma say, and it doesn't do any good ...
Talking Heads: Remain In Light (Sire)
Review by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, January 1981
Play That Funky Music White Boy ...
Review by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, August 1980
"Heroin" does not rhyme with "mellowing." ...
Tremblers, The: The Tremblers: Twice Nightly
Review by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, November 1980
YOU DON'T HEAR much about "personality crises" any more. But people still have them. People like Peter Blair Dennis Bernard Noone. ...
Review by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, April 1978
TUFF DARTS ARE closer to the eleven-year old (male) state of mind than Shaun Cassidy. Pre-teen boys say things like, "Fran-ceen? I'd rather chew bubble ...
Review by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, October 1984
IT'S BEEN ONE Old Timers Day after another for Hall of Fame axe-handler Jeff Beck over the past year or so. ...
Muddy Waters: I'm Ready (Blue Sky)
Review by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, May 1978
IT ISN'T JUST the natural process of attribution and the creative stagnation afflicting his competitors that have made Muddy Waters the premier master of his ...
Dennis Wilson: Pacific Ocean Blue (Caribou)
Review by Mitchell Cohen, Phonograph Record, August 1977
"WE DO SOLO projects for ourselves," Dennis Wilson said during an interview eighteen months ago. "There are hundreds of tunes that we've recorded, a tremendous ...
Wings: Back To The Egg (Columbia)
Review by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, September 1979
FOR ME, the most pertinent phrase on Back To The Egg comes in the second half of ‘The Broadcast’, a piece near the end of ...
Review by Mitchell Cohen, Creem, March 1978
First off, I'm only Canadian on my mother's side. ...
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