The Story Of Tommy Boyce And Bobby Hart
Report by Derek Taylor, World Countdown News, 1967
THE HOTEL CHESTERFIELD is not one of New York’s most majestic hotels, but it has a virtue prized by lyricists and tunesmiths for it is minutes ...

Jimmy Webb Writes For The Lonely
Profile and Interview by Keith Altham, NME Annual, 1969
IT IS VERY difficult for me to be objective about Jim Webb because there are some composers or artists who hit a chord of sympathy so ...

Tony Joe, Elvis, and Polk Salad Annie
Report by Charles Shaar Murray, NME, 1970
TONY JOE WHITE was one of the first of the new school of Southern singer/songwriters – along with Jerry Reed, Joe South, Leon Russell, Dough Kershaw, ...

Joni Mitchell
Report by uncredited writer, Beat Instrumental, July 1970
JONI MITCHELL is a beautiful lady, one who write and sings songs born from the depths of her experience, a word painter who shows us the ...

Did Jim Webb Really Need Richard Harris?
Report and Interview by uncredited writer, Beat Instrumental, October 1970
WORK ON the theory that ‘talent will out’ – and Jim Webb, fantastically consistent young American composer, would have made it anyway. In fact, though, he ...

Randy Newman: In Praise of the Ten Second Song
Comment by Charlie Gillett, Record Mirror, December 1970
THE MOST influential record of 1970 was the Edwin Hawkins' Singers' 'Oh Happy Day', which came out in 1969. It takes a while for people to ...

Judee Sill: Judee Sill (Asylum)
Review by Chris Welch, Melody Maker, 1971
JUDEE SILL IS one of those breed of American girls who’ve taken to singing who one supposes were previously engaged in quietly knitting at home and ...

Carole King
Comment by Charlie Gillett, Record Mirror, January 1971
THERE must be about four generations of pop music fans reading this paper, and to each of them Carole King means something different. ...

A Tale of Loudon Wainwright III
Interview by Lenny Kaye, Rolling Stone, April 1971
NEW YORK – The word was out, carried by the wind and a few strategic newspaper clippings, and everybody, everybody was making it on down to ...

John Prine: The Troubadour, Los Angeles CA
Live Review by Lester Bangs, Phonograph Record, January 1972
EVERYBODY'D BEEN talking about this guy Prine, how he was Kris Kristofferson's boozin' buddy or something, and since I like Kristofferson's Kerouacian American romanticism I decided ...

Gilbert O'Sullivan: Himself
Review by John Mendelsohn, Rolling Stone, February 1972
DON'T BE MISLED: however extraordinary Gilbert O'Sullivan may look in his imbecile haircut, knickers, and other things Thirties Irish schoolboy, he sounds sufficiently like your run-of-the-mill ...

Tom Rapp: Beautiful Lies You Could Live In
Review by Richard Cromelin, Rolling Stone, February 1972
IT'S PAINFULLY OBVIOUS that Tom Rapp has some serious obstacles littering his path to musical/ poetic fulfillment. ...

Ian Matthews: Tigers Will Survive
Review by Metal Mike Saunders, Rolling Stone, February 1972
ONCE UPON A time Ian Matthews was a member of Fairport Convention. Fairport Convention then decided they wanted to head in the direction of traditional folk ...

Nilsson: Nilsson Schmilsson (RCA)
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, February 1972
IS NILSSON just an old-school crooner in modern dress? Is he a writer of children's songs who wants to broaden his appeal? And why does a ...

Bernie Taupin: Bernie Taupin (Elektra)
Review by Lester Bangs, Phonograph Record, March 1972
ON NEW YEAR'S EVE of 1972 I attended a great party thrown by someone I didn't know and inadvertently fell into a protracted conversation with this ...

Carly Simon: Carly
Interview by Phil Symes, Disc and Music Echo, March 1972
CARLY SIMON has been compared to a lot of people. She admits: "I'm told I sound like Judy Collins and my style of writing is like ...

Judee Sill: Lunch And Judee
Interview by Chris Welch, Melody Maker, March 1972
SHE HAS JUST been discoursing on her past activities as lerpatologist when her attention was distracted. "That's the same man who was lying on the floor ...

Harry Chapin Takes 'Taxi' Wherever He Can
Interview by David Rensin, Rolling Stone, July 1972
"I NEVER REALLY drove a cab," said Harry Chapin, the filmmaker-turned folkstar, "But I do have a hack license in case of emergencies – like no ...

Eric Andersen: Blue River
Review by Lenny Kaye, Rolling Stone, August 1972
ERIC ANDERSEN is not one who has been graced with the best of luck. ...

Tim Hardin: Painted Heads
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, November 1972
TIM HARDIN GOT so close to the top of the heap that it's hard to imagine how he could've blown it. ...

Joni Mitchell: For The Roses
Review by Richard Williams, Melody Maker, December 1972
MORE SONGS OF transient euphoria and stabbing loss, played out against an ambiguous background of relentless fatalism and constant hope, mingled in approximately equal proportions, from ...

Albert Hammond: Free Electric Band
Review by Ken Barnes, Phonograph Record, July 1973
ALBERT HAMMOND, despite his recent ascension to the pop limelight, is no overnight phenom. ...

Ellie Greenwich: Let It Be Written Let It Be Sung
Review by Ken Barnes, Rolling Stone, July 1973
A NEW ELLIE GREENWICH album won't provoke Pavlovian ecstasy among the masses, but the news will intrigue a certain hard corps of faithful girl-group fanatics. ...

David Ackles: Just A Handful Of Songs
Interview by John Tobler, Melody Maker, February 1974
DAVID ACKLES has got a great house in Pacific Palisades, a few miles west of Los Angeles, and thereby close to the ocean, although the imminent ...

Gallagher and Lyle: Music For The People
Profile and Interview by Dave Laing, Let It Rock, April 1974
BENNY GALLAGHER and Graham Lyle aren't singer-songwriters, they're songwriters who sing. They are not really interested in the idea of baring their souls before the record ...

Leiber And Stoller Part One: The Blues (1950-1953)
Retrospective by Bill Millar, Let It Rock, May 1974
JERRY LEIBER AND MIKE STOLLER. They rank alongside Berry as rock ‘n’ roll’s wittiest composers and their influence as record producers has been immeasurable. ...

Short Stories of Harry Chapin
Report and Interview by Chris Charlesworth, Melody Maker, May 1974
SHORT STORIES is the most apt title for Harry Chapin's new album, for Chapin is not so much a singer as a storyteller, an artist who ...

Leiber And Stoller Part One: Part Two: The rock ‘n’ roll years
Retrospective by Bill Millar, Let It Rock, June 1974
THE SWITCH from blues to rock ‘n’ roll was gradual and, as far as Leiber and Stoller were concerned, never total. ...

Paul Simon: Not So Simple Simon
Essay by Dave Laing, Let It Rock, June 1974
Dave Laing surveys Paul Simon's ten years in music ...

Tom Jans: Tom Jans
Press Release by uncredited writer, A&M Records, October 1974
TOM JANS is a native Californian with a life-long love for music and language. He crammed his adolescence full of books, sports, and music, playing in ...

Neil Sedaka: The Tra-La Days Are Back
Profile by Greg Shaw, Phonograph Record, December 1974
I DON'T NEED to refer to any books or charts to tell you that Neil Sedaka's ‘Breaking Up is Hard to Do’ was one of the ...

Randy Newman
Book Excerpt by Bruce Pollock, In Their Own Words (Collier Books), 1975
SLOWLY BUT SURELY, almost against his will, Randy Newman has become a legend in his own time although not too many people know it, or his ...

John Prine
Book Excerpt by Bruce Pollock, 'In Their Own Words' (Collier Books), 1975
ALTHOUGH AT FIRST he may sound like an early incarnation of Bob Dylan, lyrically John Prine has a voice all his own. Fusing his country and ...

Loudon Wainwright
Book Excerpt by Bruce Pollock, 'In Their Own Words' (Collier Books), 1975
ANOTHER OF THE new breed of songwriters – sharp, witty, terse, incisive – Loudon Wainwright III arrived on the Greenwich Village scene just as it was ...

Philly’s Lyric Queen: Linda Creed
Book Excerpt by Bruce Pollock, 'In Their Own Words' (Collier Books), 1975
IN THE ‘70S THE most popular form of music is, once again, R&B, also known as Soul. Emanating primarily from Philadelphia, it is a laid-back vision, ...

Felice and Boudleaux Bryant
Book Excerpt by Bruce Pollock, 'In Their Own Words' (Collier Books), 1975
THIS HUSBAND-AND-WIFE country songwriting team have been at it for more than twenty-five years, proving the old adage, the family that plays together, stays together. Their ...

Melanie Safka
Book Excerpt by Bruce Pollock, 'In Their Own Words' (Collier Books), 1975
MELANIE EMERGED on the music scene, a tiny figure in the rain at Woodstock in 1969, alone onstage with her guitar and her songs. She has ...

John Sebastian
Book Excerpt by Bruce Pollock, 'In Their Own Words' (Collier Books), 1975
IT IS IMPOSSIBLE to describe the feeling, being away from the Village for the first time, living in San Francisco in the summer of 1965, hearing ...

Doc Pomus
Book Excerpt by Bruce Pollock, 'In Their Own Words' (Collier Books), 1975
DOC POMUS (with Mort Shuman), Jerry Leiber (with Mike Stoller), Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, and a handful of others were the seminal figures during the transition ...

Gerry Goffin
Book Excerpt by Bruce Pollock, 'In Their Own Words' (Collier Books) , 1975
ALONG WITH HIS first wife, composer Carole King, Gerry Goffin has been responsible for some of the most memorable and enduring music of the early sixties. ...

Tim Rice
Book Excerpt by Bruce Pollock, 'In Their Own Words' (Collier Books), 1975
FIRST TOM SANKEY brought The Golden Screw to off-off Broadway. Then, summarizing rapidly, Al Carmines applied his lyric touch to the outrageous Home Movies and Promenade ...

Robert Hunter
Book Excerpt by Bruce Pollock, 'In Their Own Words' (Collier Books), 1975
ROBERT HUNTER is the resident lyricist for the Grateful Dead, rock eminences of the San Francisco scene. An underground poet with a solo album, Tales of ...

Lou Reed Does Not Want Anyone To Know How He Writes His Songs
Interview by Bruce Pollock, Modern Hi-Fi and Music, 1975
LOU REED THINKS he's gone as deep as he wants to go for his own mental health. If he got any deeper, he'd wind up disappearing. ...

Harry Chapin
Book Excerpt by Bruce Pollock, 'In Their Own Words' (Collier Books), 1975
HARRY CHAPIN IS probably the most novelistic of our songwriters. Using techniques most often found in prose, he has created a series of story songs, all ...

Neil Sedaka: Packing Up Is Hard To Do
Profile and Interview by John Pidgeon, Let It Rock, January 1975
1. A Stairway To Heaven
As a Brooklyn-born Jewish boy of Spanish descent, Neil Sedaka may have been a typical New Yorker, but he wasn't a typical ...

Elton John: Greatest Hits; Randy Newman: Good Old Boys; Pete Atkin: Secret Drinker
Review by Simon Frith, Let It Rock, January 1975
Randy Newman’s album starts:
‘Last night I saw Lester Maddox on a TV show
with some smartass New York Jew
and the Jew laughed at Lester Maddox
And the audience ...

Joni Mitchell: Miles Of Aisles
Review by Tom Nolan, Phonograph Record, January 1975
THE TWO MOST annoying things (to me) about Joni Mitchell in the early years of her career were her songs, which often seemed impersonal, shallow and ...

Richie Havens: Mixed Bag II
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, NME, January 1975
ONE DAY WHEN it was raining, I swore a great and terrible ...

Jerry Leiber And Mike Stoller: By Royal Appointment
Interview by Roger St. Pierre, NME, February 1975
THE SCENE IS the Dorchester Hotel, one of the last vestiges of Britain's Imperial splendour and we've just been refused admission to the restaurant for not ...

Tom Rush - Ladies Love Outlaws
Review by Max Bell, NME, February 1975
IN THE PAST Tom Rush has been hailed as a great interpreter, someone who can lift a number by nuance and feeling. His latest album Ladies ...

Leonard Cohen: The Romantic in a Ragpicker's Trade
Interview by Paul Williams, Crawdaddy!, March 1975
"I THINK MARRIAGE is the hottest furnace of the spirit today," Leonard Cohen said on the phone from Mexico. "Much more difficult than solitude, much more ...

Pete Atkin And Clive James: From Little Atkins Great Oak Trees Grow
Interview by Ian MacDonald, NME, April 1975
A fearsome encounter between two of the foremost minds of a Generation...uh...two of the most cerebral Rock Critics afloat...um, two of the most Accomplished Raconteurs...the most ...

Carly Simon: Attitude Dancing
Interview by Tom Nolan, Phonograph Record, May 1975
THE HOUSE WAS set back behind a stone wall, at the end of a cul-de-sac off Coldwater Canyon between Beverly Hills and the San Fernando Valley. ...

John Prine: Common Sense
Review by Tom Nolan, Phonograph Record, May 1975
FLESHED OUT WITH such guest performers as Jackson Browne, J.D. Souther, Glenn Frey and Steve Goodman, Common Sense comes on like Prine's ultimate supersession production; yet ...

Gordon Lightfoot: Cold on the Shoulder (Reprise)
Review by Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, May 1975
FOR A DECADE NOW, Gordon Lightfoot has been a neo-folk hero in Canada. His early records and performances were distinguished by a rugged romanticism that charmed ...

Singer-Songwriters: Back To The Roots!
Overview by Dave Laing, Melody Maker, June 1975
In this exclusive extract from a major new rock book, The Electric Muse, Dave Laing investigates the post-Woodstock singer/songwriter syndrome, and charts the rise in popularity ...

Barry Mann: Rock & Roll Survivor
Profile and Interview by Greg Shaw, Phonograph Record, July 1975
Who put the bomp in the bomp-a-bomp-a-bomp?
Who put the ram in the rama-lama-ding-dong?
Who put the bop in the bop-shoobop-shoobop?
Who put the dit in the dit-didit-didit?
Who was ...

Bob Dylan: Plymouth Memorial Hall, Mass. USA
Live Review by Charles Shaar Murray, NME, November 1975
BOB DYLAN'S ROLLING Thunder Revue hit the Plymouth Memorial Hall at 8.20 p.m. on Tuesday November 4.That's Plymouth, Massachusetts, USA, by the way, and it was ...

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 undresses ...

Steve Goodman: Jessie's Jig And Other Favourites
Review by John Tobler, ZigZag, February 1976
I HAVE an uncomfortable feeling that this is almost exactly the sort of record that the great majority of the critics on the weeklies have begun ...

Jackson Browne These Days…
Interview by Colin Irwin, Melody Maker, February 1976
The American singer/songwriter – currently touring Britain – who has made his name by writing constantly demanding, complex and mysterious songs, talks to COLIN IRWIN ...

Dory Previn: Children Of Coincidence And Harpo Marx (Warner Bros.) ****
Review by Barbara Charone, Sounds, April 1976
OF THE RANDY Newman/Harry Nilsson school of absurdist, black comedy, Dory Previn unleashes her cryptic wit and dry tongue once again. Hallelujah! Dory Previn albums are ...

Janis Ian: Society's Child Grows Up
Interview by Caroline Coon, Melody Maker, June 1976
ONE JOURNALIST WHO knew Janis Ian in 1969 thought she was the snottiest kid he'd ever met, "the cocky, pretentious product of an 'old Lefty' political ...

Neil Diamond: Ace Of Diamonds
Interview by Chris Charlesworth, Melody Maker, August 1976
WHAT'S A MIDDLE-of-the-road singer like Neil Diamond doing with the Band's Robbie Robertson? Making a hit album, Beautiful Noise, that's what. The two first met at ...

Warren Zevon: Palace Theatre, Manchester
Live Review by Barbara Charone, Sounds, December 1976
LOOKING like a university student with a major in English Lit, Warren Zevon walked onstage at the Manchester Palace Theatre, greeted warmly by an audience of ...

Elvis Costello: My Aim Is True
Review by Chas de Whalley, Sounds, 1977
ELVIS COSTELLO is a cagey sort of fellow. You can talk to him for hours and still not discover quite what makes him ...

Elvis Costello: My Aim Is True (Columbia)
Review by Jeffrey Morgan, Stage Life, February 1978
LIKE IT OR NOT, you’d better watch out 'cause talent will out, which is exactly why you’re hearing so much about Elvis Costello these days. He’s ...

Randy Newman: Born Again
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. ...

John Prine: A Non Philosophical Singer/Songwriter?
Profile and Interview by Martin Hawkins, Country Music People, June 1981
WHEN I SPOKE to John Prine during a recent visit he made to Britain, he was searching, in this order, for his girlfriend (who plays bass ...

Jeff Barry & Ellie Greenwich: Weavers Of Dreams
Retrospective by Greg Shaw, The History of Rock, 1982
THE THIRD GREAT husband and wife team of the Brill Building era, Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich hit the scene late. ...

The Singer Or The Song
Retrospective by Greg Shaw, The History of Rock, 1982
BEFORE 1960, rock ‘n’ roll had inevitably been seen as a rough-edged, spontaneous invention of teenagers. By that year, however, the teenage performers — and the ...

Barry Mann & Cynthia Weil
Retrospective by Greg Shaw, The History of Rock, 1982
MANN AND WEIL were the hipsters of the Brill building set. While Carole King and her friends were basically square, middle-class types who wrote things like ...

Sheet Music
Essay by Ian Penman, NME, July 1982
IS EVERYTHING AS wonderful as it seems in the current reiteration of the ...

Joni Mitchell: Jones Beach Theater, New York
Live Review by Wayne Robins, Newsday, July 1983
DURING THE COURSE of her unpredictable but resilient career, Joni Mitchell has been the dewy-eyed sophomore, the slit-eyed hipster, the clear-eyed visionary. Her songs of innocence ...

John Hiatt: Half Moon, Putney, London
Live Review by Richard Cook, NME, September 1983
FOR THE SECOND time in a matter of weeks this body-choked backroom played host to a mislaid American master. In John Hiatt’s territory he has no ...

"Now is the time, and the time is as good as any": The Elvis Costello Interview
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, RAM, November 1983
IF THE GREAT GREY they put the numb into number and the boot into beauty, then who, pray, puts the El into the element within? ...

Rickie Lee Jones: The Magazine (Warner Bros)
Review by Ian Penman, NME, October 1984
For song, as sung by you, is ... not
Wooing of something finally attained.
Far other is the breath of real singing.
An aimless breath. A stirring in the ...

Gates of Eden Revisited: A Conversation with Bob Dylan
Interview by Toby Creswell, Rolling Stone (Australia), January 1986
IT DOESN'T REALLY matter now whether Bob Dylan is a fundamentalist Christian, anymore than it mattered whether he was going to the Synagogue when he recorded ...

Warren Zevon: Rugged Individualism
Interview by Mark Cooper, Q, July 1987
The return of Warren Zevon (with a little help from Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Don Henley, George Clinton, REM...) ...

Warren Zevon
Interview by Sylvie Simmons, Creem, October 1987
WARREN ZEVON has perfected the art of squirming without perceptible movement. Crumpled on a couch in a windowless record company boxroom, the man with the best ...

John Hiatt : Have A Little Faith
Interview by Bill Holdship, Creem, October 1987
JOHN HIATT IS onstage at the Roxy in L.A.; just him and a piano. It's part of this international convention A&M Records is holding to celebrate ...

Warren Zevon: Sentimental Hygiene
Review by Bud Scoppa, Creem, October 1987
AS A HARD-BOILED confessional work, Sentimental Hygiene (Zevon's seventh album and his first in five years) has less in common with current rock than it does ...

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 ...

Randy Newman: A Nightmare on Main Street
Interview by Dave Zimmer, BAM, October 1988
RANDY NEWMAN was sitting in the Forum Arena in Inglewood a while ago, watching the Lakers put on yet another basketball clinic at the expense of ...

Melanie
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 be ...

Paul Simon: Spirit Voices Vol. I
Interview by Paul Zollo, SongTalk, 1990
"There is a girl in New York City
Who calls herself the human trampoline
And sometimes when I'm falling, flying
or tumbling in turmoil I say ...

Paul Simon: Spirit Voices Vol. II
Interview by Paul Zollo, SongTalk, 1990
"Some stories are magical
Meant to be sung
Songs from the mouth of the river
When the world was young
And all of these spirit voices ...

Do Not Disturb: Tanita Tikaram
Interview by Robert Sandall, Q, February 1990
Bookish, Studious, unsurprisingly naïve, Tanita Tikaram sidestepped university at the age of 18 when her darkly sonorous vocals and "sixth-form poetry" suddenly found an international audience. ...

Joni Mitchell: Lookin' Good, Sister
Interview by Mick Brown, Daily Telegraph, February 1991
Woodstock days: Joni Mitchell's early songs depicted her as a restless free spirit; men loved her for it and women envied or identified with her. Warren ...

Have Mersey: An Interview with The La’s’ Driving Force and Angriest Member Lee Mavers
Interview by Tom Graves, Rock and Roll Disc, September 1991
JUST WHEN YOU think you’ve seen or heard everything that could happen in the music business, something like the La’s imbroglio comes along. The La’s ...

Suzanne Vega's Book of Dreams, Pt. 1
Interview by Paul Zollo, SongTalk, Winter 1991
"ALL THE MYSTERIES of life come in A minor," Suzanne Vega said, curled up on a couch in ...

Leonard Cohen On Songwriting
Interview by Paul Zollo, from 'Songwriters On Songwriting', 1992
WE ARE SITTING Indian-style on the second floor of Leonard Cohen’s home in Los Angeles. On his bookshelf are many books that he’s written himself, including ...

Bernie Taupin: Him Indoors
Interview by Robert Sandall, Q, July 1992
The 25-year You-wash-I'll-dry relationship between Elton John and lyric-writing househusband Bernie Taupin has never been ...

Elvis Costello: Can I Be Frank…?
Essay by Mark Sinker, The Wire, September 1992
2005 note: The original manuscript began and ended with some kind of lyrical gibberish swansong for the song as a music-form (in the age of techno ...

Heavy Cohen
Interview by Cliff Jones, Rock CD, December 1992
WRINKLED, GREY, HUMOROUS and urbane, wearing a crumpled suit and a huge pair of coke bottle specs that magnify his lacquered brown eyeballs to an impressive ...

Up The Junction With Difford & Tilbrook
Interview by Paul Zollo, SongTalk, Spring 1992
WHEN YOU TALK to Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook of Squeeze, unlike other collaborators who finish each other's thoughts, they sit at opposite ends of the ...

Leonard Cohen: Inside the Tower of Song
Profile and Interview by Paul Zollo, SongTalk, April 1993
I said to Hank Williams, "How lonely does it get?"
Hank Williams hasn't answered yet.
but I hear him coughing all night long,
a hundred floors above me in ...

AUDIO: Jimmy Webb (1993)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, November 1993
The legendary songwriter on his early years: L.A. cruisin', high school jazz, getting odd jobs in the music biz, playing piano for Johnny Rivers and starting ...

Jackson Browne: I'm Alive
Review by Mick Houghton, Mojo, December 1993
HAS TIME STOOD STILL? Fifteen years on and Jackson Browne's running on empty again. He's out of love yet surviving, holding himself together but now full ...

Kip Winger With A Protein Shake: The Punknology According to Beck
Interview by Gerrie Lim, Big O, April 1994
THOSE OPENING NOTES attempt to warn you: a slinky salvo of slide guitar and then some hip-hop percussion, and then some dude starts rapping, wending up ...

Richard Thompson
Interview by David Sinclair, Mojo, April 1994
THEY SAY THERE'S ONE IN EVERY CROWD. BUT HE'S ALWAYS hard to spot because he looks so normal. Quiet, polite, a little shy even. You know ...

Thunderclap Newman: Randy, Poet Laureate of New Orleans
Interview by Chris Bourke, Real Groove (New Zealand), July 1994
I'VE ALWAYS WONDERED what Southerners think of Randy Newman's Good Old Boys, his 1974 concept album about the American Deep South. With its sardonic but sympathetic ...

AUDIO: Joni Mitchell at 50 (1994)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, September 1994
The First Lady of the Canyon looks at her past and present, from her Canadian youth through the Canyon days, the nightmare of the '80s and ...

Robyn Hitchcock Rocks Groovily On
Retrospective and Interview by Dave Thompson, B-Side, 1995
ROBYN HITCHCOCK is confused. At least, he's as confused as anyone who's been told they'll be called by a writer in America, with all the transatlantic ...

Causing a Commotion: Lloyd Cole
Retrospective and Interview by Dave Thompson, Alternative Press, 1995
AT THE BEGINNING, he seemed tailor-made for rock stardom. Young, good-looking and menacingly literate, Lloyd Cole exploded out of nowhere (well, Scotland actually) in 1984, ...

Dan Penn: Once More With Feeling
Interview by Robert Gordon, Mojo, March 1995
Otis. Janis. Aretha. Gram. Each cut classic songs by the hallowed Dan Penn. Coaxed out of retirement, he recorded last year’s universally acclaimed Do Right Man. ...

Jerry Leiber And Mike Stoller: By Royal Appointment
Interview by Harvey Kubernik, Mojo, March 1995
Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, the greatest rock 'n' roll songwriting team of all time, have their songs celebrated in the musical Smokey Joe's Cafe – ...

Scott Walker: “That Francis Bacon, In-The-Face Whoops Factor...”
Retrospective and Interview by Jim Irvin, Mojo, May 1995
TWENTY-TWO YEAR OLD Noel Scott Engel was on the run from Uncle Sam. He was fleeing from a country that would never connect with his mordant ...

Professional Confessions: Loudon Wainwright
Review and Interview by Johnny Black, Mojo, November 1995
INTELLECTUAL SINGER-songwriters, doncha jus' luv 'em? LW3 has been at it for 20 years, spilling his guts, sharing his fears and generally earning a living by ...

John Denver: Reflections (Songs Of Love & Life)
Sleevenotes by Colin Escott, RCA Records, 1996
NO ONE WAS ever less ashamed of wearing their heart on their sleeve than John Denver. No one was ever less afraid to share moments of ...

Jeff Buckley: Grace under Fire
Interview by Toby Creswell, Juice, February 1996
"THE RECORD IS FANTASTIC, you and I know that. The band is really great and, let's face it, all the women want to get into his ...

A Dark Prince at Twilight: Lou Reed
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Mojo, March 1996
THE DAY DOES not begin auspiciously. The first flakes of a snowstorm descend as I open the curtains in my hotel room, adding yet another layer ...

Jimmy Webb: An Interview
Interview by Jim Irvin, unpublished, 1997
What first made you want to write a ...

What's It All About, Bacharach?
Special Feature by Bill DeMain, Switch, June 1997
"WHERE IS that whistling coming from?" ...

Elvis, homoeroticism and 'Jailhouse Rock'
Essay by Peter Silverton, The Observer, August 1997
'Oh yes,' said Stanley, a builder - though not a man known ever to have displayed his bum cleavage beyond the privacy of his own happily ...

Fountains Of Wayne: A Tossed Off Masterpiece
Interview by Bill DeMain, In Natural, September 1997
JAMES THURBER once said that what he strived for most in his humor pieces was a "tossed off quality." ...

Neil Young at Heart
Essay by Mick Gold, unpublished, 1998
IT MUST HAVE been 1969 or 1970. There was a rave review of Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere in Rolling Stone and I bought it from ...

The Ever-Changing World of Paul Brady
Interview by Chris Smith, The Performing Songwriter, March 1998
A MENTOR ONCE told me there were two rules to writing about other people's lives: First, always remember that as the journalist, you're not the story. ...

Brian Kennedy
Interview by Chris Smith, The Performing Songwriter, March 1998
BRIAN KENNEDY is caught between a pillow and a soft place. On the one hand, he's an emerging solo artist whose debut album in 1990 knocked ...

Donnie Fritts: Leanin' Man from Alabam'
Interview by Chris Bourke, Real Groove (New Zealand), April 1998
DONNIE FRITTS MAY be one of the unsung heroes of American music, but a peek inside his address book shows how his talents are appreciated. Among ...

Sinatra's 'My Way'
Essay by Peter Silverton, The Observer, May 1998
As songs go, 'My Way' doesn't so much wear its heart on its sleeve as rip it from its chest, throw it down and shout: "See. ...

Randy Newman: Here Comes The Rain
Retrospective by Ian MacDonald, Uncut, August 1998
Ian MacDonald salutes Randy Newman's first solo album as a flawless masterpiece ...

Elliott Smith: An Interview in NYC, 30th April, 1998
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, unpublished, Spring 1998
BH: From Kill Rock Stars to DreamWorks – it sounds like some kind of fairy tale. Does it feel like one? ...

Silent Partners: Writers, Producers, Players
Report and Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, 1999
Phil Sutcliffe looks at the men who helped midwife albums by Sheryl Crow, Joan Osborne and Alanis Morissette ...

Elvis Goes Mellow?
Interview by Tim Footman, Flipside, 1999
IT'S A TOUGH JOB, but someone's gotta do it. Declan Patrick 'Aloysius' McManus, aka Napoleon Dynamite, aka The Imposter, aka Tiny Hands Of Concrete; a man ...

Andy Partridge: Lemons And Lemonade
Interview by Bill DeMain, unpublished, 1999
"I'M A LUDICROUS optimist," says Andy Partridge. "I'm in front of the firing squad and I've got the clown's makeup on and I'm telling gags to ...

Andrew Gold
Interview by Joe Matera, International Songwriter, 2000
Joe Matera: Tell me a bit about your background. You started writing songs at 13?
Andrew Gold: Yeah, I started around then (13). My first song was ...

Mary Gauthier: The Darker Side of Dixie
Interview by Chris Smith, Rockrgrl, January 2000
MIDNIGHT HAS LONG since passed, and we're sitting in the dim alley behind the legendary Club Passim in Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The fire escape ...

Warren Zevon: Pictures From Life's Other Side
Interview by Nick Hasted, The Independent, February 2000
'Death doesn't scare me. I have the impression that life is the lobby and death is the apartment – maybe it's OK' ...

We're In Love With This Guy: Hal David
Interview by Terry Staunton, music365.com, May 2000
Lyrical legend HAL DAVID has just become the first non-Briton to be honoured with a prestigious Ivor Novello Award by the British Academy Of Composers And ...

The Rueful Master Wainwright
Interview by j. poet, Stereotype, 2001
"A LOT OF SONGWRITING is revenge," Rufus Wainwright quipped, from his New York City hotel room. ...

Rufus Wainwright: "My Parents the Folk Heroes"
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, The Guardian, June 2001
THE WITTIEST REQUEST from the crowd at Rufus Wainwright's New York show last week was for ‘Rufus is a Tit Man’, a song written aeons ago ...

The Backpages Interview: Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller
Interview by Cleothus Hardcastle, Rock's Backpages, June 2001
The names Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller are inseparable from the stories of rhythm’n’blues and rock’n’roll. They were two Jewish teenagers who felt black and wrote ...

Elvis Costello: Elvis Gets His Groove Back
Interview by Roy Trakin, Hits, 2002
THE ONCE-ANGRY young man of punk-rock is now practically a pop music singer-songwriting icon. It's been more than 25 years since a bespectacled nerd with the ...

One Part Genius...The Trail to October Road
Essay by Craig W. Thomas, unpublished, 2002
WHEN I WAS 14 years old the person I most wanted to be was James Taylor. It's a long time ago now. 1971. I remember clearly ...

His Turn to Testify: An Exclusive HITS dialogue with Phil Collins
Interview by Roy Trakin, Hits, 2002
JUST WHEN IT SEEMED like Phil Collins was ready to kick back and relax with his new wife Orianne and his 14-month-old son Nicholas in his ...

Otis Blackwell 1932 - 2002
Obituary by Tony Russell, The Guardian, May 2002
Prolific writer behind some of Elvis’s greatest hits ...

I'm a Muso, Baby: Beck
Interview by Paul Lester, The Guardian, September 2002
Beck's new album, written after a nasty split with his fiancee, is so forlorn that the music press is afraid for his health. But, he tells ...

Songwriters: Musical Chairs
Special Feature by Pete Paphides, The Guardian, September 2002
Today's pop stars, say their critics, aren't half as talented as their predecessors because they have little or nothing to do with writing their songs. But ...

Keeper of the Flame
Report and Interview by Mark Paytress, The Guardian, 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, Tennessee. ...

Confessions of a Populist Mind
Report and Interview by Steven R Rosen, Rock's Backpages, March 2003
Steven Rosen talks to self-confessed CIA assassin Chuck Barris – inspiration to George Clooney – about the pop classic he penned back in ...
To see an illustrated version of this article, click here

Chuck Barris: Confessions of a Populist Mind
Interview by Steven R Rosen, Rock's Backpages, March 2003
Steven Rosen talks to self-confessed CIA assassin Chuck Barris – inspiration to George Clooney – about the pop classic he penned back in ...

Felice Bryant 1925-2003
Obituary by Phast Phreddie Patterson, Rock's Backpages, April 2003
SONGWRITER FELICE BRYANT (77) died of cancer at her home in Gatlinburg, Tennessee on April 22. She and her husband Boudleaux Bryant were very successful ...

Vic Chesnutt: Dark Side of The Tune
Interview by Nick Hasted, The Independent, April 2003
IN 1983, VIC CHESNUTT, an obscure country misfit, was 18, drunk again, and crashing his car in America's southern state of Georgia. When he woke from ...

The Grim Reporter May 2003
Obituary by Phast Phreddie Patterson, Rock's Backpages, May 2003
Phast Phreddie Patterson on those gone but not forgotten ...

Is Randy Newman the Old Eminem?
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, September 2003
The funniest and least sentimental songwriter in America has revisited his back pages on The Randy Newman Songbook, Volume 1. BARNEY HOSKYNS asks him about his ...

Chelsea Mourning: Wanting Rufus Wainwright
Comment by Kandia Crazy Horse, Rock's Backpages, September 2003
YOU’RE WALKING, you’re virtually running, exhilarated, exultant, across West 23rd Street, away from Chelsea where you’ve tripped the Apocalypse of Rufus Wainwright and at once viscerally ...

Legends of Songwriting: David Gates of Bread
Profile and Interview by Bill DeMain, Performing Songwriter, December 2003
REMEMBER "soft rock?" You don't hear the term much anymore, but in the early 1970s, this musical genre floated onto the AM airwaves in the form ...

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 ...

Ed Harcourt: Strangers
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, September 2004
Third set from Sussex singer-songwriter and follow-up to last year’s acclaimed From Every ...

The Rock’s Backpages Interview: Mark Knopfler
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, September 2004
RBP: You recorded your new album Shangri-La at the studio of the same name in Malibu. When was the studio ...

Old Saint Nick: Nick Cave
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Dazed & Confused, October 2004
ON ABATTOIR BLUES, the cheerily-titled first half of the new double album by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, there is a song called ‘There She ...

Shawn Colvin: A Conversation
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, November 2004
RBP: 15 years into your recording career, how do you look back on it? Are you content with what you’ve ...

Shooting Star: Elliott Smith
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, November 2004
A YEAR AGO I was sitting in the Los Angeles living room of Mr. Roger Steffens, curator of a huge Bob Marley archive that was in ...

Tom Waits: Real Gone (Anti/Epitaph)
Review and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, November 2004
SINCE IT’S HARD and possibly verboten to say a bad word about Tom Waits, unholy shaman of whacked-out Americana, I’ll content myself with expressing a few ...

Jim Croce: The Way We Used To Be (Sanctuary)
Review by Terry Staunton, Record Collector, November 2004
KILLED IN A PLANE crash in 1973, just weeks after his first US Number One single, Jim Croce was a master of tender beauty and deceptive ...

Various Artists: Enjoy Every Sandwich - The Songs Of Warren Zevon
Review by Terry Staunton, Record Collector, November 2004
LONG BEFORE his death last year from inoperable lung cancer, Warren Zevon knew his time was almost up. Undeterred, he carried on making records bulging with ...

Anne McCue: Roll
Review by Terry Staunton, Record Collector, December 2004
ALREADY FAMILIAR to fans of Lucinda Williams after a lengthy stint as an opening act, Australian-born McCue has effortlessly mastered the bluesy drawl of her mentor, ...

Love in All the Wrong Places: PJ Harvey
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Tracks, Summer 2004
POLLY HARVEY reclines in regal splendour at the end of the very long and pompous Promenade Room of London’s legendary Dorchester Hotel. Buffed Eurotrash couples wander ...

PJ Harvey: An Interview
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, Summer 2004
RBP: Not to suggest that Uh Huh Her must be entirely autobiographical – or "confessional" – but you don’t sound terribly happy in these ...

David Byrne Looks Forward...and Back
Interview by Carol Cooper, unpublished, Summer 2004
Q: AS A SOLO ARTIST you have worked with horn sections and now with string sections to color and embellish your songs. Aside from ...

The Backpages Interview: Rufus Wainwright
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, March 2005
RBP: Is Want Two in any way the flipside to, or a contrast to, Want One? Or is it just a companion ...

Beck, Guero and Scientology
Interview by Stephen Dalton, Scotland on Sunday, March 2005
ON THE SURFACE, nothing is wrong with Beck Hansen. No wires protrude from his dirty-blond moptop. No glazed expressions, no shifty answers, no sense of humour ...

Going Her Own Way: Martha Wainwright Makes Her Musical Mark
Report and Interview by Erik Himmelsbach, LA CityBeat, March 2005
MARTHA WAINWRIGHT almost didn't bother to pursue music. Because of her parents, singer-songwriters Kate McGarrigle and Loudon Wainwright III, who occupy certain esteemed places in the ...

Rufus Wainwright: Want Two
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, April 2005
LATE LAST YEAR Rufus Wainwright was a guest on Tom Robinson's BBC6 radio show, answering questions about music, life and celebrity while pointedly avoiding allusion to ...

The Backpages Interview: Jimmy Webb
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, May 2005
RBP: Bones Howe remembered you as being very shy when he first met you circa 1967. Is that how you remember ...

Aimee Mann: The Forgotten Arm
Review by Terry Staunton, Record Collector, June 2005
FILM DIRECTOR Paul Thomas Anderson used Aimee Mann's music as the starting point and inspiration for his Oscar-nominated Magnolia, about the intertwining, desperate lives of LA ...

Almost Blue: Jimmy Webb
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, June 2005
JIMMY WEBB is sad. He looks around him at the world we inhabit and sees culture nose-diving everywhere. Subtlety is squeezed, ambiguity flattened. People don’t read ...

James Blunt: Strange Life Of An Army Dreamer
Interview by Ludovic Hunter-Tilney, Financial Times, July 2005
James Blunt came to pop stardom the hard way, via Harrow, Sandhurst and the Household Cavalry. ...

Nick Cave: The Songwriter Speaks
Interview by Debbie Kruger, Weekend Australian, July 2005
Writer Debbie Kruger spoke to the biggest names in Australian music for her new book Songwriters Speak. In this exclusive extract, Nick Cave explains why he ...

Interview: Jimmy Webb
Interview by Graham Reid, New Zealand Herald, August 2005
BEFORE HE WAS 21 Jimmy Webb had already written some of pop's most enduring songs, including 'By The Time I Get To Phoenix' (which Frank Sinatra ...

The Backpages Interview: Burt Bacharach
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, October 2005
RBP: What exactly did Sony BMG's Rob Stringer say that prompted you to try something so different with At This ...

Elvis and the Songsmiths
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut Legends, Spring 2005
CLYDE OTIS and Ivory Joe Hunter had just returned from a day's duck-hunting when the phone rang. It was the song publishers Hill and Range calling ...

The Golden Horse Is In Hell: David Ackles' Theatre of Melancholy
Retrospective by Michael Baker, Perfect Sound Forever, May 2006
To be born is to be wrecked on an island.
J.M.Barrie, in a review of Coral Island ...

P.F. Sloan
Interview by Jeff Tamarkin, Harp, September 2006
PF SLOAN was a 19-year-old bearing the weight of the world on his shoulders when he wrote the protest classic 'Eve of Destruction' back in 1965. ...

Legends of Songwriting : Jimmy Webb
Profile and Interview by Bill DeMain, Performing Songwriter, March 2007
"SOMEONE LEFT the cake out in the rain." No single lyric is more infamous in pop music than the one Jimmy Webb wrote forty years ago, ...

Lee Hazlewood: Cake or Death
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, March 2007
BARTON LEE Hazlewood remains the cult artist's cult artist, an American maverick who's operated by his own supremely offbeat rules ever since producing Sanford Clark's Top ...

Elliott Smith: New Moon
Review by Dan Gennoe, dotmusic.co.uk, May 2007
IT'S A TESTAMENT to the immense songwriting genius of Elliott Smith that even his decade old cast-offs are worth hearing. It's also a massive relief. During ...

Keep Him In Your Heart: Swan Songs of the Late Great Warren Zevon
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, eMusic.com, July 2007
LIFE'LL KILL YA, Warren Zevon sang in one of his most grimly humorous songs - and it did. The grotesque multiplication of cells we know as ...

Legends of Songwriting: Diane Warren
Interview by Bill DeMain, Performing Songwriter, September 2007
ASKED WHETHER she could ever love a person as much as she loves songwriting, Diane Warren doesn't miss a beat in answering an emphatic "No." ...

The Vulnerable Beatle: John Lennon's Narrative-like Solo Catalog Tailor-made for Digital Delivery
Retrospective by Mark Kemp, Paste, October 2007
ONE OF THE MORE telling songs in John Lennon's solo catalog is the tender 'Look at Me.' Not the well-scrubbed version on his first album, but ...

Leiber and Stoller
Retrospective and Interview by Harvey Kubernik, Rock's Backpages, November 2007
THE LEGENDARY songwriting team of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller will be honored in person at the 2007 Gala Benefit Concert of the Lauri Strauss Leukemia ...

Joni Mitchell: Shine
Review by Barney Hoskyns, eMusic.com, November 2007
JONI MITCHELL declared in 2002 that she was done with the music biz and would never, ever, make another album. I can't have been the only ...

James Taylor: One Man Band
Review by Barney Hoskyns, eMusic.com, November 2007
BACK IN THE protopunk wars of the early '70s, we were all supposed to revile James Taylor and his kind. "James Taylor Marked For Death," proclaimed ...

Carole King's Monumental 1971 Tapestry Returns In 2 CD Deluxe Edition
Special Feature by Harvey Kubernik, Rock's Backpages, May 2008
Harvey Kubernik tells the story of the making of this epochal album, and interviews producer Lou Adler ...

Randy Newman: Harps For Harps' Sake
Interview by Terry Staunton, Record Collector, August 2008
The new record is in the shops, but RANDY NEWMAN admits he has no excuses for his "ridiculous" output of three albums in 20 years. "Sorry ...

Hallelujah, We Love Him So: Leonard Cohen's Comeback
Report by Johnny Black, Audience, September 2008
How the world's pre-eminent septuagenarian Jewish Buddhist singer-poet staged 2008's most remarkable ...

Hoyt Axton: My Griffin Is Gone
Review by Steven R Rosen, blurt-online.com, October 2008
HOYT AXTON'S 1969 LP My Griffin Is Gone, originally released to little notice on Columbia, belongs to that group of orchestrated baroque pop albums that folk-oriented ...

Elliott Murphy at the Hotel Café, L.A.
Review by Roy Trakin, Rock's Backpages, January 2009
BACK IN 1973, this celebrated Long Island singer/songwriter and the New York Dolls were the twin toasts of the town's still-nascent rock-crit ...

Hound Dog: The Leiber & Stoller Autobiography
Press Release by Harvey Kubernik, promotional interview, May 2009
LEGENDARY SONGWRITERS Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller were in the delivery room for the birth of rock and roll, yet as Stoller said the day they ...