MC5: Rock & Roll Dope #4
Report by John Sinclair, The Fifth Estate, July 1968
IN THE past two weeks since the last issue of this paper a bunch of new developments have taken place: Almost every job for the MC5 ...

MC5: Rock & Roll Dope #5
Report by John Sinclair, The Fifth Estate, August 1968
Poet-MC5 manager John Sinclair and MC5 guitarist Fred Smith were brutally assaulted, beaten, MACEd, and arrested by members of the National Security Police, the Oakland County ...

Carry That Weight: Music In The ‘60s
Overview by Lenny Kaye, Fusion, January 1970
THE WAY IT WORKS is that someone picks up the torch and carries it for a while, and when they get tired, or irrelevant, or both, ...

Bob Dylan: How Does it Feel?
Essay by Dave Marsh, Creem, February 1972
PICKS OF THE WEEK: BOB DYLAN, 'GEORGE JACKSON' (Ram's Horn, BMI). Bringing it all back home, the ever-relevant Dylan, who watched the river flow for a ...

John McLaughlin and Carlos Santana: Cruisin' With The Guru
Interview by David Rensin, Creem, March 1974
The backseat revelations of Carlos Santana & Mahavishnu John McLaughlin ...

The Kids Are Not Necessarily Alright
Essay by Mick Farren, NME, March 1975
Or how the '70s has seen a limp-wristed sell-out of the ideals of the 60s. MICK FARREN discusses the way the Uncle Toms of Teendom have ...

God is Alive and Well and Living Off Rock'n'Roll...
Essay by Mick Farren, NME, March 1975
Unfurling his roadmaps for the soul, MICK FARREN, Bachelor of Divinity of this parish, slumps grimly over his flea-ridden Olivetti to bang out the sandwich-luncher's key ...

Frank Zappa: What Did You Do In The Revolution, Dada?
Essay by Karl Dallas, Let It Rock, June 1975
Karl Dallas asks the pertinent questions... ...

Victor Jara
Report and Interview by Andrew Tyler, NME, October 1975
VICTOR JARA sang songs for the people of Chile. In 1973, in the Santiago boxing stadium, a soldier cut off Jara's fingers before six thousand of ...

Sex, Drugs And Violence In Rock: The Sexual Language Of Rock Part 1
Essay by Charles Shaar Murray, NME, February 1976
"Eddie please write me one line,
Tell me your love is only mine,
Please Eddie, don't make me wait so long,
You left me last September,
To return to me ...

Sex, Drugs And Violence In Rock: The Sexual Language Of Rock Part 2
Essay by Charles Shaar Murray, NME, March 1976
"I'm gonna pick you up now
And carry you away,
So you'd better pack up now, baby,
Packin' up today,
Here I come, just a big bad man,
When I walk ...

The Clash: Who's In Love With Janie Jones?
Interview by Caroline Coon, Sounds, October 1977
DURING THE hot summer of 1976, a No. 31 bus jolts through Notting Hill Gate. On the top deck is Mick Jones, humming a riff. He ...

Sleaze: The '70s
Overview by Mick Farren, NME, October 1977
THE MUTANTS, the dwarfs and the all night girls (that's right, the ones who still brag about escapades out on the D train, despite the fact ...

Rock Against Racism Carnival: Victoria Park, Hackney, London
Report by Chris Salewicz, NME, May 1978
AS HE STOOD at the top of Whitehall at 10.35 last Sunday morning gazing impassively towards Nelson's Column, the optimism of Commander Walker of Scotland Yard's ...

Rock Against Racism's Carnival Of The North: Chaos & Concern
Report by Paul Morley, NME, July 1978
THE ANTI-NAZI LEAGUE and Rock Against Racism were formed specifically as a reaction against racism. ...

Mike Oldfield: This Is The Year Of The Expanding Man...
Interview by Karl Dallas, Melody Maker, November 1978
What Scientology did for Chick Corea (and John Travolta), Exegesis is doing for mild, retiring Mike Oldfield. He puts the stare on KARL DALLAS ...

The Black Music Association Movement Of Jah People
Report by Carol Cooper, Soho Weekly News, June 1979
DURING A DEFINITIVE rendition of ‘Exodus’ which capped an hour-long show by the Wailers, Stevie Wonder joined Bob Marley on stage and moved 2,000 members of ...

The Dilemmas of Sex and Romance in Fifties Rock
Essay by Cynthia Rose, The History of Rock, 1982
The screen door slams
Mary's dress waves
Like a vision she dances across the porch
As the radio plays
Roy Orbison singin' for the lonely
That's me and I love you ...

The Blank Generation — How Rock Moved From Political Opposition to Sheer Nihilism
Essay by Cynthia Rose, The History of Rock, 1982
Rock has always been about cultural and social conflict, ever since its birth in the Memphis-style boogie (over-amplified 'jump' tunes whose driving rhythms kept country time) ...

The Redskins, Attila the Stockbroker, Seething Wells: Right to Work March, Southwark, London
Live Review by Garry Bushell, Sounds, March 1982
RIGHT TO Work Marchers, like punks, skins and soccer herberts, are apparently fair game for any Old Bill trying to keep his 'nick-nick' quota up before ...

Bronski Beat: Bronski Beefs
Interview by Paolo Hewitt, NME, November 1984
SUNDAY, 'ROUND about lunchtime, and Jimi Bronski is scurrying around his small council flat in a vain attempt to clean up the mess. I stand by ...

Everything But The Girl: Take The Melancholy Strain
Interview by Paolo Hewitt, NME, December 1984
PUT SIMPLY, I wanted more than just a musical chit chat. ...

Red On Arrival: The Redskins
Report and Interview by Lynden Barber, Melody Maker, December 1984
"TUC LEADER Norman Willis tells Arthur Scargill a few home truths," they said on Channel 4 news last night (and this is the Left Wing station?!). ...

The Special AKA: Jerry Can
Interview by Jack Barron, Sounds, January 1985
JERRY DAMMERS cut himself with a razor this morning. A short tear of paper covers the wound just below his equally brief right sideburn. ...

Newtown Neurotics
Profile and Interview by Jack Barron, Sounds, January 1985
"LAYDEEZ AND gentlemen, will you please take your seats for Dick Whittington now, the show starts in five minutes," wheezes a voice from the Tannoy of ...

Solomon Burke, Willie Garcia, Johnny Otis, Little Richard: Four Souls – From Music To The Ministry
Profile and Interview by Don Snowden, Los Angeles Times, August 1985
SOLOMON BURKE looked more like Don Corleone surveying his domain in The Godfather than a preacher preparing to conduct a recent late-afternoon service. ...

Gil Scott-Heron: Word War Fighter
Report by Len Brown, NME, July 1986
Prophet, poet and rap pioneer GIL SCOTT-HERON was calling for sanctions against South Africa a decade ago in his hit ‘Johannesburg’. Currently due to appear at ...

The Margaret Thatcher Interview!!?
Interview by Tom Hibbert, Smash Hits, March 1987
Come with us, why don't you, inside the hallowed portals of Number 10 Downing Street where the so-called "Iron Lady" awaits your "pleasure"... ...

Veg Wedge
Overview by Steven Wells, NME, May 1987
With Crass, Poison Girls and Flux in either retirement or a state of change, and Conflict in trouble, the anarcho-punk movement is in tatters. STEVEN WELLS ...

Eastie Boys: Real Life in London's East End
Report by Paul Wellings, Evening Standard, July 1987
IT IS A HOT day in London’s East End. I’m sitting in my home of Stepney, sipping an ice-cool lager outside the infamous Blind Beggar ...

Rock On Commie: The Christians In East Berlin
Report and Interview by Len Brown, NME, August 1987
WHERE AM I? The hotel receptionist says, "Have a nice day". There's Gershwin muzak in the lift. There's Sade on the radio. There's no bugging device ...

AUDIO: Billy Bragg (1987)
Interview by Mat Snow, Rock's Backpages Audio, November 1987
Art vs. commerce; pop and politics; materialism; the Second World War – the Bard of Barking on all of that and more. ...

England: Look Back In Anguish
Essay by Mark Sinker, NME, January 1988
"Oh, grassy dale and lowland scene/Come see, come hear the English Scheme!" (The Fall)
"You might sleep, but you will never dream/Oh, Manchester! So much to answer ...

Scandal In The Wind: Dusty Springfield
Report and Interview by Len Brown, NME, 1989
As the sex-in-high-places Profumo Scandal returns to this nation's screens, Dusty Springfield (with the Pet Shop Boys) brings us the single soundtrack. Len Brown met the ...

Fundamentally Speaking: Cat Stevens vs. Salman Rushdie
Comment by Penny Reel, Sounds, March 1989
AN ASPECT of the Salman Rushdie episode that particularly intrigues is the way passions have been so readily aroused. It is as if the text in ...

Who The Hell Does Billy Bragg Think He Is?
Interview by Tom Hibbert, Q, October 1991
Here he comes again: "pop's political conscience" in his dilapidated trousers and sensible shoes, worthily correcting the unenlightened and uplifting the downtrodden with his unsubtle songs ...

The Bhundu Boys Take Up Whistle-Blowing
Interview by Len Brown, The Independent, November 1991
David Mankaba, of Africa's best-known band, decided to tell the whole continent he was dying of AIDS. It was his challenge to ignorance and apathy, say ...

Nazi Noises: Right-Wing Rock in Europe
Report by Dave Rimmer, Select, Fall 1992
NOTE: This piece about Nazi rock music in Germany was commissioned and published by UK music magazine Select in autumn (I think) of 1992. It ran ...

Revolution Rock
Essay by Stephen Dalton, Vox, June 1993
Ever since Woody Guthrie scratched 'This Guitar Kills Fascists' on his six-string, musicians have exploited rock's confrontational possibilities, from anti-racism to sexual revolution, in a non-stop ...

I Fought The Law…
Guide by Johnny Black, Mat Snow, Q, November 1993
... and the law, being an all-powerful customer, usually won. Johnny Black and Mat Snow investigate the link between the crazy, hot-headed outlaws of rock 'n' ...

Black Metal: Bloody Hell!
Report by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, April 1994
Of course, it's all a right old laugh, Death Metal, isn't it? But in the long Scandinavian nights, some people have failed to see the joke. ...

Red Wedge
Retrospective and Interview by Johnny Black, Q, March 1996
Only one thing could possibly save us from vicious '80s Conservatism: the assembly of pop pinkos that made up the Labour-supporting Red Wedge organisation. Johnny Black ...

Honk If You Love Jesus! The Saint John Coltrane African Orthodox Church
Report by James Maycock, Mojo, 1997
EVERY TUESDAY afternoon, Sister Deborah spreads Coltrane consciousness through the San Francisco airwaves. ...

Primal Scream: 'Star'
Interview by Angus Batey, Vox, June 1997
The song
THE SECOND single to be taked from Primal Scream's forthcoming Vanishing Point LP, 'Star' finds Bobby Gillespie drawing on his personal vocabulary of revolutionary socialism ...

Drop The Dread, Honky: Why White Artists Wanna Be Black
Essay by James Maycock, The Guardian, October 1997
IN 1959, JOHN Howard Griffin, a white journalist, dyed his skin black and travelled through the southern states of America. He found the experience so ...

Drop-kicked by Jesus: Bob Dylan's Conversion
Retrospective by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, December 1997
In which the eternal sceptic did a Damascus and managed an unlikely artistic rebirth. Phil Sutcliffe takes confession... ...

The Battle Of Grosvenor Square
Retrospective by James Maycock, The Independent, March 1998
Author's note: I interviewed Barry Miles for this look at the political side of London’s counterculture, with references to The Rolling Stones’ ‘Street Fighting Man’ and ...

Now That's What I Call Censorship!!
Essay by Phil Sutcliffe, The Big Issue, November 1998
WHAT DO THE SEX PISTOLS, ABBA AND FRANKIE GOES TO HOLLYWOOD HAVE IN COMMON? THEY’VE ALL BEEN BANNED IN BRITAIN, THAT’S WHAT. PHIL SUTCLIFFE FINDS OUT ...

Rock'n'religion
Report by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, 1999
There’s a knock at the front door. You open it. A slight young man standing there says, "Today I’m here to talk to you about God’s ...

Glad To Be Gay: Out in Rock
Report and Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, 1999
In this issue of Q, Michael Stipe, whose public utterances have crept closer to coming out of late, finally does the deed in a cool Cash ...

Carol Brightman: author of Sweet Chaos: The Grateful Dead's American Adventure
Interview by David Gans, Grateful Dead Hour, January 1999
Carol Brightman was an anti-war activist in the '60s and later the biographer of the writer Mary McCarthy. She sometimes wondered why so many of the ...

Kurt's Gone. So What?
Comment by Tom Cox, Guardian Unlimited, April 1999
ROCK KILLS. The list of victims is too long and depressing to print here. We still raise an eyebrow when another tortured Narcissus bites the dust, ...

The Rolling Stones and black American culture
Essay by James Maycock, The Independent, June 1999
A bitchy look at how the Rolling Stones’ career is excessively/artfully indebted to black American ...

Charles Manson: Rock Icon
Essay by Ben Myers, Kerrang!, July 1999
IT'S JULY 1999 in Milton Keynes and 50,000 rock fans are chanting the name of one man in unison. The self-styled 'God Of F**k' and new ...

Generation Ex: Some Get A Decade; We Get A Moment
Essay by Eric Weisbard, Village Voice, July 1999
THIS TIME IT'S personal. High school student Reese Witherspoon leaves teacher Matthew Broderick cursing his so-called life in Election. No shocker; couldn't be a teen film ...

Street Fighting: Jimi Hendrix
Essay by Charles Shaar Murray, Mojo, November 1999
Your starter for ten: what do Jimi Hendrix and George Orwell have in common? ...

Proxy Music: Electing the Pop Star in Chief
Essay by Eric Weisbard, Village Voice, October 2000
IN 1822, NOAH Ludlow dressed himself in a buckskin hunting shirt and leggings, donned moccasins and an old slouch hat, put a rifle on his shoulder, ...

Presley/Clinton: Bill Has Left The Building
Book Review by Charles Shaar Murray, The Independent, November 2000
Double Trouble: Bill Clinton and Elvis Presley in the land of no alternatives by Greil Marcus (Faber & Faber, £9.99, 248pp) ...

Hotel Roberto
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 and ...

Apocalypse Now
Comment by Michael Goldberg, Neumu, September 2001
Reeling from the terrorist attack on America ...

War Within War: Black Americans And The Vietnam Conflict
Retrospective by James Maycock, The Guardian, September 2001
The Vietnam war saw countless numbers of America's young men – both black and white – thrown into combat. They were there to fight the Vietcong ...

Phil Ochs: Bringing It All Back Home
Comment by Nick Hasted, The Independent, November 2001
"WHILE THE Movement died a natural death, the music died by hanging," Esquire's headline said when the protest singer Phil Ochs committed suicide in 1976. ...

Hey, It's OK To Think About Rock Too!
Comment by Michael Goldberg, Neumu, April 2002
When journalists and academics met in Seattle for a pop music conference, they learned that you can think about the music and and feel it ...

I Smell the Blood of a Half-Englishman: Billy Bragg
Interview by Geoffrey Himes, Harp, May 2002
What does it mean to be an Englishman? Billy Bragg explains it to Geoffrey ...

George Michael: Who's a Cheeky Boy?
Comment by Charles Shaar Murray, The Observer, July 2002
'WITH THE RELEASE of his George Bush and Cherie Blair-referencing new single,' snickers the Popbitch website, 'we would like to commiserate with George Michael on the ...

In Pursuit Of The Pimp Mobile
Essay by James Maycock, Nine, October 2002
A look at how black pimp culture has crossed into black popular culture, for which I interviewed Antonio Fargas. I refer to Miles Davis, the Ohio ...

Rock In The Dock
Comment by Andrew Mueller, The Guardian, January 2003
A FEW WEEKS ago, a nationwide leap in gun crime was lent grim focus by the murder of two young women at a party in Birmingham. ...

Rappers With A Cause: Asian Dub Foundation
Report and Interview by Paul Lester, The Guardian, January 2003
They helped secure the release of the warehouse worker Satpal Ram from prison. Now they're tackling domestic violence, asylum, the war on terror and the raid ...

Foundation Course
Report and Interview by Stephen Dalton, unpublished, February 2003
JOHN PANDIT is hopping mad. We were supposed to be discussing the latest album by Pandit's multi-cultural protest-pop collective Asian Dub Foundation, but our interview takes ...

Steve Earle: The Progressive Interview
Interview by Michael Simmons, The Progressive, February 2003
"LATELY I FEEL like the loneliest man in America," writes Steve Earle in the liner notes of his most recent album, Jerusalem (Artemis). ...

We're Not On The Same Trip
Comment by Michael Goldberg, Neumu, March 2003
Michael Goldberg finds comfort in music as the war ...

Why Great Footballers Like Really Crap Music
Essay by Steven Wells, Guardian Unlimited, March 2003
WITH ALL THE current hoo-hah about how all gun crime in the UK is obviously caused by listening to gangsta chaps rapping about ho's and that, ...

Now Ain't The Time For Your Tears
Comment by Mick Farren, Rock's Backpages, April 2003
Where are the dissident voices in Bush's gung-ho Amerika? MICK FARREN writes in fury not sorrow ...

I Shall Be Free: The Blacklisting of Dixie Chicks
Comment by Dave Marsh, Harp, June 2003
IN CHRIS BUHALIS'S 'Talkin' Sounds Just Like Joe McCarthy Blues', John Ashcroft declares questioning him un-American, to which the singer replies, "It's called a democracy. You ...

Death Or Glory: James Brown In Vietnam
Retrospective by James Maycock, Mojo, July 2003
JUNE, 1968. Seven US Army lieutenant colonels - six Afro-Americans and one Caucasian - are collected from Tan Son Nhut, Saigon’s international airport, and speedily ...

Charlie Don’t Surf
Retrospective by Jim Yoakum, unpublished, 2004
THE NIGHT THAT the four members of the infamous Manson Family drove out to a secluded Benedict Canyon mansion and brutally butchered Sharon Tate, Abigail Folger, ...

Rhyme and Punishment
Comment by Andrew Mueller, The Guardian, February 2004
YOU MAY HAVE heard this yarn – it's one of those things people email each other, that they might share a chuckle at the foibles of ...

Outkast: It's a Double Standard, Kemosabe
Comment by Kandia Crazy Horse, africana.com, February 2004
Whatever led André to think that even an inkling of "redface" would be any more acceptable than blackface minstrelsy has been to Americans of African descent? ...

Polyphonic Spew
Comment by Andrew Mueller, The Guardian, July 2004
THERE IS NO PERSON more deluded than he or she who has a song programmed into their mobile phone. ...

The Rise and Rise of the Casual: Football and Music
Book Excerpt by Paul Wellings, 'Spend it Like Beckham', 2005
THE BEST FANZINES in the mid 80’s were The End (from Liverpool, written by Pete Hooton, lead singer of The Farm, whose single ‘Altogether Now’ got ...

Casualties Of War
Comment by Pete Paphides, The Times, June 2005
Songs about conflict and warfare are guaranteed to destroy a musician's credibility ...

My Travels With Oxfam: Chris Martin's Ghana Diary
Report by Sheryl Garratt, GQ, August 2005
Day 1: Accra ...

Don't Mention The War – Unless You're Over 50
Comment by Andrew Purcell, The Guardian, June 2006
NEIL YOUNG'S latest album, Living With War, was supposed to be more than a collection of protest songs. To optimistic critics of the occupation of Iraq, ...

The Cultural Politics Of 'Pop': Hanif Kureishi's Life In Popular Culture
Essay by Steve Redhead, Rock's Backpages, November 2006
THIS ESSAY IS on the cultural politics of Pop. It situates an emblematic writer, Hanif Kureishi, in the context of post-war Pop art and culture and ...

Deja Viewed: Neil Young on CSNY and Living with War
Interview by Stephen Dalton, unpublished, June 2008
NEIL YOUNG IS in mischievous mood this morning. Sinking into his plush hotel armchair, the veteran Canadian rocker keeps his distance behind mirror shades and a ...

The Fields Of Annie Road: Song For The 96
Comment by Steve Redhead, Rock's Backpages, April 2009
ANFIELD ROAD, or 'Annie Road' (Allt, 2005), is the opposite 'end' to Liverpool's Kop at their world famous football stadium of Anfield. ...