Sean O'Hagan
Sean O'Hagan started his career on the NME and is an award-winning contributor to THE OBSERVER.
List of articles in the library by artist
Beach Boys, The: The Beach Boys: The Beach Boys (Caribou)
Review by Sean O'Hagan, NME, June 1985
ON THE back cover Brian Wilson looks genuinely happy, his eyes are clear, his smile is contented one. To some degree the music echoes this ...
Big Country : Big Country: The Seer
Review by Sean O'Hagan, NME, June 1986
MORE "BIG MUSIC". More heroics. Another call-to-arms for the down to earth drummers who landscape their adolescence via Bono, Jim Kerr, Mike Scott and Stuart ...
Big Daddy Kane: Raw Like Sushi
Interview by Sean O'Hagan, NME, May 1989
Christened The Grasshopper Of Rap for his black belt lyrics, Big Daddy Kane is a hero to rap's hard core followers. With hits for Roxanne ...
Profile by Sean O'Hagan, Observer, The, January 2000
From drifting astronaut to Ziggy Stardust to Thin White Duke and actor...the Brixton boy worth £500 million and with his own Internet bank is bringing ...
Lester Bowie's Brass Fantasy: Lester Bowie: Miles Davis Meets Donald Duck
Interview by Sean O'Hagan, NME, November 1986
LESTER BOWIE'S white lab coat and mischievous trumpet have fronted The Art Ensemble Of Chicago's ironic jazz, From The Roots To The Source's revivalist gospel ...
Chuck Brown & the Soul Searchers: Chuck Brown: Take The Money And Go-Go
Interview by Sean O'Hagan, NME, April 1987
CHUCK BROWN'S in Britain to stick up the go-go scene with his pioneering blast of bum-pin'. But as SEAN O'HAGAN finds out, he didn't get ...
Profile by Sean O'Hagan, Observer, The, February 1998
(THE OBSERVER PROFILE James Brown – same song, different keys – by Sean O'Hagan ...
Nick Cave: Rage Has Not Withered Him
Interview by Sean O'Hagan, Observer, The, March 2001
Nick Cave never thought he'd get past 40, but heroin and self-hate are behind him now. Married and "reborn", he writes nine to five in ...
Interview by James Brown, Sean O'Hagan, NME, February 1989
For its second pop summit of the year, NME lent SEAN O'HAGAN and JAMES BROWN £10 each to buy SHANE MACGOWAN, MARK E SMITH and ...
Elvis Costello: King Of America
Review by Sean O'Hagan, NME, February 1986
IN BROCADE and jewelled crown, Declan Patrick Aloysius MacManus stares out from the sleeve of King Of America, his beard and spectacles framing an unsmiling ...
Elvis Costello: And So To Bedlam
Interview by Sean O'Hagan, NME, February 1989
If 'you're nobody 'til everybody thinks you're a bastard' then, logically, the universal acclaim received by ELVIS COSTELLO's Spike LP must make him one of ...
De La Soul: Three Feet High And Rising (Big Life LP/Cassette/CD)
Review by Sean O'Hagan, NME, March 1989
ARE YOU ready for Martian hip-hop? Can you handle the new nutty boys of rap, the maddest, baddest bunch on the block? Can you imagine ...
De La Soul: Brothers From Another Planet
Interview by Sean O'Hagan, NME, October 1989
HIPPIES!?! Never! No sirree! Ignore the paisley, the peace signs, the flowers, the speccy Lennonisms, DE LA SOUL are truly brothers from another planet, extra ...
Dexy's Midnight Runners: Don't Stand Me Down (Mercury)
Review by Sean O'Hagan, NME, September 1985
YOU'D THINK three years silence might have dimmed the man's burning rage, but no, Kevin Rowland is back with a resharpened axe to grind. Chapter ...
Bob Dylan: Vicar St, Dublin *****
Live Review by Sean O'Hagan, Guardian, The, September 2000
THE 800 TICKETS for this suddenly announced "intimate" show supposedly sold out in 15 seconds. For the select multitude, then, this was a night of ...
Bob Dylan: Well, How Does It Feel?
Profile by Sean O'Hagan, Observer, The, March 2001
There's only one person in pop who is not fascinated by the myth of Bob Dylan – and that's Bob Dylan. Now approaching sixty and ...
Fine Young Cannibals: The Raw And The Cooked (London LP/Cassette/CD)
Review by Sean O'Hagan, NME, February 1989
WHERE'S THE BEEF? ...
Doug E. Fresh & The Get Fresh Crew: Show Stoppers
Interview by Sean O'Hagan, NME, November 1985
A show? Well, DOUG E. FRESH and The Get Fresh Crew ain't got the energy to do much more than nod off in the company ...
Mantronix: Will Hip Hop Eat Itself?
Report and Interview by Sean O'Hagan, NME, November 1986
Where is it? New York city. How is it? Bloody hot in here. Why is it? Because MATRONIX, pure-steel technologists of studio and vox, have ...
Men They Couldn’t Hang, The: The Men They Couldn't Hang: Noose On The Loose
Interview by Sean O'Hagan, NME, March 1985
A FEW YEARS BACK if someone had told me that an English pop group would record Eric Bogie's 'The Green Fields Of France', That it ...
Joni Mitchell: Idol Talk: Joni Mitchell
Interview by Sean O'Hagan, NME, June 1988
"THE POET is the vainest of the vain, even before the ugliest of water buffalo doth he fan his tail." ...
Review by Sean O'Hagan, Observer, The, June 2004
RECORDED in New York over two days in 1968, Astral Weeks still sounds like nothing before or since. Unlike other classic albums, Pet Sounds, say, ...
Van Morrison: No Guru, No Method, No Teacher
Review by Sean O'Hagan, NME, July 1986
ALTHOUGH VAN Morrison has long since ceased to surprise, there have been enough scattered moments throughout his recent work to point to a singer content ...
My Bloody Valentine: Daydream Believers: My Bloody Valentine
Retrospective and Interview by Sean O'Hagan, Observer Music Monthly, May 2008
BACK IN DECEMBER 1991, when My Bloody Valentine embarked on a British tour to promote Loveless, their "difficult" second album and sonic masterpiece, the four-piece ...
New York Dolls: The New York Dolls: Fast and Louche
Live Review by Sean O'Hagan, Observer, The, June 2004
The New York Dolls: Royal Festival Hall, London ...
Nirvana, Sid Vicious: Kurt Cobain and Sid Vicious: Death and Glory
Essay by Sean O'Hagan, Observer, The, February 2004
"Thank you all from the pit of my burning nauseous stomach." – Extract from Kurt Cobain's suicide note ...
Sinead O'Connor: Mother Superior
Interview by Sean O'Hagan, Observer, The, October 2002
A mellow Sinead O'Connor, who describes herself as 'a regular housewife', talks about ordination, her flair for getting into trouble – and why she's more ...
Will Oldham: Still Voice, Distant Life: Will Oldham
Profile and Interview by Sean O'Hagan, Observer, The, November 2002
He’s the finest songwriter to come out of America in the past decade. Just ask Johnny Cash. But Will Oldham doesn’t play the fame game. ...
Will Oldham: The Prince Of Darkness
Interview by Sean O'Hagan, Observer, The, March 2001
"I created Billy and let him take care of the performing. It's not me, Will Oldham, who gets up on stage." ...
Pere Ubu, David Thomas: David Thomas: Monster Walks The Winter Lake
Review by Sean O'Hagan, NME, April 1986
DAVID THOMAS sees things differently. He sings things differently too. Sometimes he sees/sings things like a child, other times like a Martian. Often he'll submerge ...
Pogues, The: The Pogues: For A Few Ciders More
Interview by David Quantick, Sean O'Hagan, NME, August 1984
A TABLE littered with the debris of an early evening's drinking, three Pogues attempt to justify their existence. ...
Prince: Lovesexy (Paisley Park)
Review by Sean O'Hagan, NME, May 1988
"The best pop music does not reflect events so much as it absorbs them".– Greil Marcus on Sly Stone's There's A Riot Goin' On ...
Profile by Sean O'Hagan, Observer, The, April 2004
LAST WEEKEND, tickets for the opening show of Prince's American arena tour, his first in nearly a decade, were changing hands over the internet for ...
Pulp: Pulp: Je Suis Un Rock Star...
Interview by Sean O'Hagan, Observer, The, December 2002
IN THE BBC CANTEEN, where passing celebrity chefs must recoil before a menu that has stubbornly resisted the onward march of culinary ponciness, Jarvis Cocker ...
Pulp: In a Class of His Own: Jarvis Cocker
Live Review by Sean O'Hagan, Observer, The, December 2001
Jarvis Cocker could have been trapped in his role of English eccentric, a blend of Morrissey, Ray Davies and Alan Bennett. But he has found ...
Sly & The Family Stone: Sly Stone: I Want To Take You... Lower
Report by Sean O'Hagan, Observer, The, July 2007
Sly Stone was the funkadelic pioneer who made the world dance, broke racial boundaries, raised hell and set Woodstock alight. Last week, in Italy, after ...
Profile and Interview by Sean O'Hagan, Observer, The, June 2003
THERE ARE TEARS in Patti Smith's eyes. She is midway through a performance that has been, by turns, sombre and joyous, intense and ecstatic, when ...
Soul II Soul: Funki Bold Demeanour
Interview by Sean O'Hagan, NME, September 1989
• Current king of British clubs JAZZIE B is preparing to launch SOUL II SOUL even further ahead of the opposition-the summer soundtrack on both ...
Ronnie Spector: Ronnie's Spectre
Interview by Sean O'Hagan, Observer, The, March 2006
RONNIE SPECTOR Greenfield strolls into the nondescript foyer of the Sheraton hotel in Danbury, Connecticut, a few paces behind her husband, Jonathan. ...
Interview by Sean O'Hagan, NME, November 1988
TODD TERRY, the name if not the face of 1988, is possibly the ultimate producer, refusing to become a performer or even enter a "proper" ...
That Petrol Emotion: The Petrol Emotion: Oil On Troubled Waters
Interview by Sean O'Hagan, NME, May 1986
WHAT'S IN A NAME?(1) ...
Report and Interview by Sean O'Hagan, Details, September 1992
With Achtung Babyand their Zoo TV tour, U2 have found a way to be the biggest band in the world and still have fun. Sean ...
Profile by Sean O'Hagan, Guardian, The, November 1991
All but canonised in Ireland, U2's lead singer preaches redemption through rock 'n' roll. But now he's learning to write about girls. Sean O'Hagan profiles ...
Report and Interview by Sean O'Hagan, Face, The, April 1992
IT'S EARLY evening in a Russian restaurant somewhere in west London, a place that specializes in vodka – chili vodka, lemon vodka, brandy vodka, even ...
Report and Interview by Sean O'Hagan, NME, December 1986
"My life is like a joke but to me it isn't funny..." ('All I Want To Do') ...
Luther Vandross: Forever, For Always, For Love (Epic)
Review by Sean O'Hagan, NME, June 1987
ON THE soft focus cover shot, the transformation is complete: Luther the beige mannequin with compulsory wet look is a world away from the roly ...
Tom Waits: I Just Tell Stories For Money: Tom Waits
Interview by Sean O'Hagan, NME, November 1987
SOMETIMES YOU CAN get a pretty good idea about someone's music just by checking out their appearance. If clothes maketh the man, they also speak ...
Interview by Sean O'Hagan, Rock's Backpages, November 2006
An edited version of this interview appeared in The Observer, October 29, 2006 ...
Interview by Sean O'Hagan, Observer, The, November 2008
In the sixties, he was part of the celebrated pop group the Walker Brothers – known as America's Beatles – but he rebelled against stardom ...
Muddy Waters: Robert Gordon: Can't Be Satisfied: The Life and Times of Muddy Waters (Jonathan Cape)
Book Review by Sean O'Hagan, Observer, The, July 2002
The ONE-ROOM shack where Muddy Waters grew up originally stood on the edge of Stovall's plantation in Coahoma County in the Mississippi Delta. A few ...
Review by Sean O'Hagan, Observer, The, September 2004
The piano in the sand pit, the orchestra decked out in fireman's helmets, the kilos of grade A hashish, the master tapes that were destroyed, ...
Interview by Sean O'Hagan, NME, April 1984
"Jamaica jus' an island in the Caribbean, and Jamaica produce a lotta champion, like Bob Marley and I Yellowman." — 'Jamaica Nice' ...
List of genre pieces
Punk and Reggae: Rip Bam Bam Bye Yeah
Retrospective by Sean O'Hagan, NME, February 1986
"Black and white, unite and fight" was the call; The Clash sang of 'Police And Thieves', Johnny Rotten found he was 'Born For A Purpose'. ...
Wear Your Heart on Your Sleeves: The Lost Art of the Mix Tape
Memoir by Sean O'Hagan, Observer, The, January 2007
LAST WEEK, while preparing to write this piece, I did something I have not done for a long time. I made a compilation tape. Back ...
back to LIBRARY
Best Databases: RBP is Runner-up in Best Niche category
Video: Johnny Marr talks about Rock's Backpages
download eBooks and audio interviews
RBP on Spotify: The Very Best of 40-year-old Virgin
RBP Album Club, June 13th: Miki Berenyi and Lucy O'Brien celebrate a Blondie classic
Essential Listening: Green Day grilled by Roy Trakin
RBP Album Club, July 11th: Nick Hornby and Nick Coleman celebrate Southside Johnny's debut
Essential Reading: Bud Scoppa's 1971 Byrds classic