Foreword to Outlaw Blues by Paul Williams
Book Excerpt by Michael Lydon, Rolling Stone, April 1969
[For the 21st-century edition of this book, Michael Lydon, a founding editor of Rolling Stone magazine and the author of Rock Folk, Boogie Lightning and Ray ...

Nik Cohn: Pop; Paul Oliver: The Story of The Blues
Book Review by Charlie Gillett, Record Mirror, August 1969
Charlie Gillett reviews two books on music: Pop by Nik Cohn, and The Story of The Blues by Paul Oliver ...

Electric Kool-Aid: On & Off the Bus
Essay by Michael Lydon, Fusion, March 1970
The last words of Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test are "WE BLEW IT". In caps, naturally. ...

Dylan’s Tarantula
Review by David G. Walley, Zygote, 1971
TARANTULA: twenty-five year-old visions of reality/letters to himself and posterity, now here in some other form from miracle xerox. Tarantula--visions of Aretha, soul singer in 78 ...

Music Magazines: The Real Rock ‘n’ Roll Underground
Overview by Greg Shaw, Creem, June 1971
Do you ever get so sick of the latest Leon Russell or Ten Years After album that you switch off the FM radio in disgust and ...

So You Wanna Be a Rock'n'Roll Writer (Keep a Carbon!)
Guide by Charlie Gillett, Rock File 1, 1972
My favourite music magazine is called Creem. It's published in Detroit, Michigan, and every month the first thing I see is a statement next to the ...

The Rock & Roll Press
Overview by Metal Mike Saunders, The Rag, January 1972
MOST PEOPLE LISTEN to rock and roll. Yet others read about it, and some actually have the lunacy to write about it! Where there’s money to ...

Nik Cohn: My Book is Rubbish but it’s the Best
Interview by Steve Turner, Beat Instrumental, May 1972
"There is only one decent book that has ever been written on pop," said Nik Cohn from beneath his wide brimmed hat, "and that's Awopbopaloobopalopbamboom After ...

RockFile: Where The Writing Ends, The Memory Game Begins
Review by Mick Houghton, Let It Rock, February 1973
ROCK FILE is one of the current crop of books on music which has moved away from the more historical analysis, and deals with the contemporary ...

Bob Dylan: Left Hand of God?
Essay by Greil Marcus, Let It Rock, March 1973
In the November issue of Let It Rock, Tony White offered some rather hysterical opinions in his Dylan bootleg discography, and Tony Scaduto, author of the ...

Rock Critics Rule... and other startling musical revelations!
Special Feature by J. Montague Fitzpatrick, Coast, April 1973
Or: how Lester Bangs, Dave Marsh, Chet Flippo, Nick Tosches, Robot A. Hull, Lenny Kaye, Richard Meltzer, Mike Saunders, Gene Sculatti, Ed Ward and 26 other ...

Jon Landau: It’s Too Late To Stop Now
Review by Simon Frith, Let It Rock, May 1973
I FEEL UNEASY, confronting Landau. If a rock critic is a parasite, what is the critic of a rock critic? Landau is a rock critic pure ...

Exile in Detroit City: A Imaginary Conversation with Lester Bangs
Comment by Metal Mike Saunders, Brain Damage, June 1974
SO WE FINALLY decided it was time to come to terms with Lester ...

Epistle to a Young Critic: A Letter from Lester Bangs, February 1975
Letters by Lester Bangs, unpublished, February 1975
Thirty years ago, RBP contributor Susan (then Suzan) Compo was an apprentice punkette and aspiring rock scribe living in Tustin, California. An avid reader of CREEM ...

Robert Greenfield: A Journey through America with the Rolling Stones
Book Review by Mick Farren, NME, September 1975
I FEAR THIS book may be the one that could finally O.D. the reader on rock writing, particularly that flat, conscientious, detailed, post-Truman Capote style that ...

Ian Hunter: Reflections Of A Rock Star
Review by Lester Bangs, Phonograph Record, September 1976
Ian Hunter: Coping With Modern Day Rock Stardom ...

Lenny Kaye: New York Nuggets
Interview by Kris Needs, ZigZag, May 1977
"The greatest rock'n'roll audience in the world"...Glasgow?...Detroit?...hell no, it's Lenny Kaye, rock critic, and guitarist with the Patti Smith Band. ...

Elvis Presley: Junk, junk food junk prose (pulpitations for all)
Book Review by Mick Farren, NME, October 1977
Red West, Sonny West, Dave Hebler, as told to Steve Dunleavy: Elvis – What Happened?
...

Bruce Springsteen: Proceedings of Discovery
Comment by Bruce Pollock, Gannett Westchester Newspapers, 1978
WE ROCK PUNDITS, critics and reviewers, Rockwells of good taste, O'Neills of moral fervor, are in reality no better than the average slob on the street, ...

Fanzines: Pure Pop Art For Now People
Overview by Jon Savage, Sounds, January 1978
'THEY are vital, audacious, reckless insofar as they represent an extreme view adopted in a broad popular m way, and they have a curious brave spirit...valuable ...

The Bush Fire That Ate Bogville, Arizona
Overview by Paul Rambali, NME, April 1978
Oh-no-not-another-fanzine-survey (goes West) ...

Mick Farren: London
Live Review by Peter Silverton, Sounds, September 1978
"HELLO, MY name's Mick Farren...I wanna drink!" ...

The Bard Of Beasley Street At The Seat Of Learning
Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Sounds, May 1980
THE OXFORD University Union porter peered at us fish-eyed. "Are you members?" he said. "Er, no - we're with the poet." ...

I Knew Emmett Grogan
Memoir by Al Aronowitz, The Blacklisted Masterpieces of Al Aronowitz, 1981
YEAH, I KNEW Emmett Grogan, knew him well enough to've gone on a half-ass caper with him in behalf of a coke dealer who thought he ...

The Almost Legendary Nick Kent Story
Interview by Chris Salewicz, NME, January 1981
The modest (if a mite incestuous) tale of the celebrated NME writer who is now on the threshold of becoming a bona fide rock star with ...

Springsteen Forged Passports To A Promised Land
Comment by Nick Kent, NME, July 1981
"What my band and I are about is a sense of responsibility. If you accept it, that makes you responsible for everything that happens. People tend ...

Goldman Ain't Nothin' But A Hound Dog!
Book Review by Bill Holdship, Creem, February 1982
Elvis by Albert Goldman (McGraw-Hill) ...

Lester Bangs: Ballad of a Loudhearted Man
Obituary by Nick Kent, NME, May 1982
"Lester Bangs is the rock critic's rock critic, a man gifted verbally in much the same way that James Brown is gifted as a dancer. As ...

AOR? Write On! An Interview with Davitt Sigerson
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, NME, September 1984
DAVITT SIGERSON insists he isn’t smarting from the NME review which described Falling In Love Again as ‘The Worst Record I’ve Ever ...

Hit The Road, Jack: A Man Called Kerouac
Retrospective by Biba Kopf, NME, July 1985
AMERICAN RHAPSODISTS come thick and fast, frenziedly spurtspraying words across the broad continental canvas by way of leaving traces, eager to fill in every dingly dell ...

Divided Soul: The Life of Marvin Gaye by David Ritz
Review by Chris Salewicz, Time Out, July 1985
The anguished life of Marvin Gaye ended on April 1, 1984, at the home in Los Angeles he had bought for his parents, when a bullet ...

A Nod Of Approval: The music and poetry of Jim Carroll
Interview by Gerrie Lim, Orange County Review, June 1986
"I'VE ALWAYS CONSIDERED myself a poet first," Jim Carroll says, his slightly cracked voice resounding clearly over the phone from New York. "That's what brings tears ...

Rock Magazines: Why They're So Good
Overview by John Mendelsohn, Creem, July 1986
YOU KNOW WHAT'S interesting about the rock print medium nearly two-thirds of the way through the '80s? That so much of it is aimed at what ...

Nelson George: The Death of Rhythm & Blues (Omnibus)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, The Wire, 1987
NELSON GEORGE, self-described "B-Boy intellectual" and one of pop culture's few black writers of note, has written a book which (sort of) argues that the rhythm ...

Stanley Booth: Myth and Misquotation
Essay by Greil Marcus, Threepenny Review, Fall 1988
This was originally the address at the commencement ceremonies of the Department of History, University of California at Berkeley, on 20th May 1988. Greil Marcus here ...

Jimi Hendrix: Far Out
Book Review by Richard Williams, Q, December 1989
Charles Shaar Murray: Crosstown Traffic: Jimi Hendrix And Post-War Pop (Faber) ...

The Mythmaking of Jack Kerouac: The Jack Kerouac Collection (Rhino)
Review by Tom Graves, Rock and Roll Disc, September 1990
TRUMAN CAPOTE very nearly sank Jack Kerouac’s literary reputation with five well-chosen words that exploded like cigarette loads in the public ...

Rock And The Tabloids: Publish And Be Damned
Report by Tom Hibbert, Q, March 1991
The pop columnists of Britain's tabloid papers had a high old time of it in the 1980s. Then they woke up to an unpleasant lesson – ...

AUDIO: Al Aronowitz (1991)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, August 1991
Hired and fired by the New York Post, having that "total phoney" Andy Warhol steal the Velvets from him, running with Dylan and, extensively, his dealings ...

AUDIO: Greg Shaw (1993)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 1993
Mojo Naviagator and Bomp founder Greg Shaw on his early days in psychedelic San Francisco, L.A. Garage Punk, The Doors, Love and Los Angeles rock. ...

Elvis: The Goldman Factor
Essay by John Tobler, 'Aspects of Elvis', 1994
ELVIS PRESLEY WAS THE UNKNOWING centre of controversy in his quite short life: only being screened from the waist upwards on TV so that his suggestive ...

Lester Bangs: Rock 'n' roll as literature, literature as rock 'n' roll.
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, Mojo, March 1994
Whither Rock Gomorrah, the great gonzo hack's unpublished swansong? ...

The Write Stuff: Nick Kent
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Vogue, June 1994
FOR ANY CALLOW, maladjusted youth growing up in the early-to-mid-‘70s with the New Musical Express as his bible, Nick Kent was unquestionably the coolest rock scribe ...

Strange New Ways To Kill A Rock Critic
Overview by Paul Gorman, Mojo, September 1994
PREHENSILE Monkey-Tailed Skink? Screeching Weasel? PopDefect? Anus The ...

East Coast Lives: The Rockin' Chiropodist
Profile by Michael Gray, Livewire, October 1994
IT'S IMPOSSIBLE to interview Charles White if you walk alongside him around the streets of his adopted hometown, Scarborough: too many people are greeting him and ...

Elvis Presley: Love Him Tender, Love Him True
Book Review by Jon Savage, Mojo, December 1994
Peter Guralnick: Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley ...

Lester Bangs: Jook Savages
Memoir by Nick Tosches, The Nick Tosches Reader, 1995
LESTER BANGS, with whom I had drunk but whose writing I had never read, had died not long after Hellfire came out, in the spring of ...

She’s Got Control
Interview by Len Brown, Q, 1995
Fifteen years after he hanged himself in their Macclesfield kitchen, Joy Division leader Ian Curtis has been "outed" by his widow, Deborah, as an ill-tempered, two-timing, ...

Deborah Curtis: Touching From A Distance: Ian Curtis And Joy Division (Faber & Faber)
Review by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, 1995
AS THE JOURNALIST and pop historian Jon Savage Suggests in his foreword, for one narrowly defined sub-generation, Ian Curtis's suicide was a first personal encounter with ...

Leroi Jones: Blues People
Review by Tony Russell, Mojo, July 1995
WHEN BLUES PEOPLE WAS PUBLISHED in 1963, LeRoi Jones became the first black American to have written a book about the blues. It did not lead ...

Strolling Down Punk-Rock Lane: Legs McNeil
Profile and Interview by Ira Robbins, New York Times, July 1996
THE CLASS OF 1976 held a reunion in the lobby of the Gershwin Hotel late last month. While inspecting a photography exhibition documenting their youth, several ...

Ray Coleman: The Man Behind the Maker
Obituary by Chris Charlesworth, Daily Telegraph, September 1996
RAY COLEMAN, who has died from cancer aged 59, played a leading role in the growth of the British music press in the Sixties and Seventies. ...

Trouser Press: The Story Behind The Legendary Zine
Retrospective by Ira Robbins, Perfect Sound Forever, June 1997
EDITOR’S NOTE: One of the reasons that our zine started up was because there were other music nuts before us who wanted to tell the world ...

Allen Ginsberg 1926-1997
Obituary by Miles, Mojo, June 1997
Allen Ginsberg and I were friends for over 30 years, and even though I am his ‘official’ biographer, it is hard to sum up so full ...

William Burroughs: Ghost Of Chance
Essay by Biba Kopf, The Wire, October 1997
"The Subliminal Kid moved in and took over bars cafes and juke boxes of the worlds cities and installed radio transmitters and microphones in each bar ...

Derek Taylor: Obituary
Obituary by Richard Williams, Mojo, November 1997
IN 1963, WHEN BRIAN EPSTEIN INVITED HIM TO HANDLE the Beatles' PR, Derek Taylor was a 31-year-old national newspaper reporter with a suit and tie. The ...

Robert Palmer
Obituary by Michael Gray, The Guardian, December 1997
ROBERT PALMER, THE distinguished American music journalist and blues expert, has died in New York aged 52. ...

Rock Criticism and the Rocker: A Conversation With Peter Buck
Book Excerpt by Anthony DeCurtis, Rocking My Life Away, 1998
IN SEPTEMBER 1994 R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck kindly took time off from promoting R.E.M.'s Monster to do an interview with
Anthony DeCurtis, who wanted an artist's ...

Kinky Friedman: God Bless John Wayne (Faber and Faber)
Review and Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, 1999
Kinky Friedman is full of himself. He always was in his ’70s singing days with provocateur country & western outfit The Texas Jewboys. And now he’s ...

Music Journalists: Why They Have To Write
Report and Interview by uncredited writer, Music Biz, 1999
MOST MUSIC industry professionals will argue that receiving press is more a matter of business than it is a desire to be in the limelight, but ...

Rock 100: Um, What Was It We Wanted To Say?
Book Excerpt by David Dalton, Lenny Kaye, Cooper Square (reissue), 1999
Rock's Backpages will, over the coming weeks, be presenting selected chapters from the 1999 re-issue of Lenny Kaye and David Dalton's classic 1977 book Rock 100. ...

Mojo Navigator: Memories of Mojo
Retrospective by Gene Sculatti, Scram, 2000
SAN FRANCISCO, 1966. This was a long time ago. The Grateful Dead swung hard, fast and scary, and Peter Albin's demented LSD-preacher stalked stages as Big ...

Almost Famous: 1973 and all that
Essay by Charles Shaar Murray, The Guardian, 2000
1973 AS A rock and roll annus mirabilis? Six thousand miles away from the old Rolling Stone office in San Francisco, it felt more like a ...

Bill Drummond: 45
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, The Independent, 2000
"POP MUSIC," writes Bill Drummond, "has become like a cancer that has spread through my whole body and is now affecting my brain." Having been responsible ...

Did Lester Bangs Die In Vain?
Book Review by Ira Robbins, salon.com, April 2000
Let It Blurt: The Life and Times of Lester Bangs, America's Greatest Rock Critic By Jim DeRogatis, Broadway, 256 Pages ...

Lester Bangs: Rock 'n' Roll was the Big Bang
Retrospective by David Dalton, Gadfly, July 2000
For a long time, its shockwaves obliterated thought altogether. That was the great thing about it: it was anti-matter, it vaporized everything that wasn’t immediate, sensual ...

Satanic Majesties' Bequest
Book Review by Charles Shaar Murray, The Independent, July 2000
I'm a Man: Sex, Gods And Rock'n'roll by Ruth Padel (Faber & Faber, £12.99, 409pp) ...

Sniffin' Glue: The Essential Punk Accessory
Retrospective and Interview by Jon Savage, Mojo, August 2000
WHEN THE FIRST Ramones album appeared in London, during the spring of 1976, it changed everything: not only the tempo and the look of rock, not ...

Greil Marcus: Top Spin Service!!
Profile and Interview by Charlie Gillett, Rock's Backpages, November 2000
Charlie Gillett, broadcaster and author of The Sound of the City, regularly invites guests to play radio "ping-pong" on his Saturday night show on London Live. ...

Melody Maker, 1926 - 2000, RIP
Obituary by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, December 2000
An era came to an end on 14th December when IPC Magazines announced the closure of its oldest music title, Melody Maker. ...

Jim DeRogatis: Let it Blurt: The Life and Times of Lester Bangs (Broadway Books/Bloomsbury)
Book Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Revolver, Spring 2000
WHO WAS Lester Bangs? He was a rock critic. To be more precise, he was a rock critic like Muhammad Ali was a boxer or Jimi ...

Dear Charlie... Love, Lester
Letters by Charlie Gillett, Rock's Backpages, 2001
Excerpts from letters supplied by Charlie Gillett to Rock's Backspages ...

Almost Infamous
Report by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, January 2001
Anticipating the February 9 UK release of Cameron Crowe’s film Almost Famous, about a callow young scribe hitting the road with a mid-’70s rock band, the ...

So, what do Q know? RBP’s 50 favourite music books
Guide by Mat Snow, Rock's Backpages, February 2001
"Genius!" trumpets the cover of this month’s Q magazine: "The 50 Best Music Books Ever Written." Naturally, we wuz hooked and forked over our three quid. ...
To see an illustrated version of this article, click here

In His Own Right: Ian MacDonald
Interview by Paul Gorman, unpublished, March 2001
I INTERVIEWED Ian MacDonald for my music press history In Their Own Write in March 2001. As charming, tolerant and insightful as the first-class prose on ...

Confessions of a Grammy Nom
Report by Bud Scoppa, Rock's Backpages, March 2001
"I Was Robbed," A Loser Whines, Then Delivers An Acceptance Speech That Never Was ...

Ian MacDonald: Revolution In the Head - The Beatles' Records And The Sixties (1994, revised 1995, Pimlico)
Review and Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, April 2001
IAN MACDONALD, now 52, was enraptured by The Beatles as a teenager, then generally disappointed by pop music from 1980 onwards. His attempt "to bring the ...

Remembering Alan Betrock
Obituary by Andy Schwartz, Village Voice, April 2001
Alan Betrock was the passionate fanatic who founded the groundbreaking New York Rocker. Andy Schwartz, who succeeded him as the magazine’s publisher and editor, here salutes ...

Irwin Silber of Sing Out!
Interview by Richie Unterberger, Perfect Sound Forever, July 2001
IN THE mid-1960's Irwin Silber was editor of Sing Out! magazine, the leading folk periodical in the United States. Here he talks about his personal roles ...

The New Rolling Stone is... The New Yorker?!
Report by Michael Goldberg, Neumu, August 2001
Who would expect to find this year's best offline writing about music in The New Yorker? ...

Know Your NME!
Book Excerpt by Paul Gorman, Sanctuary Press, 2001, November 2001
Paul Gorman's In Their Own Write: Adventures in the Music Press (Sanctuary Press) is an oral history of rock journalism in Britain and America – the ...

In Their Own Write: Adventures in the Music Press
Book Excerpt by Paul Gorman, Sanctuary Press, November 2001
Introduction

THIS BOOK TELLS THE STORY of the golden age of the rock and pop press, which lasted from the late Fifties, when teen magazines and Tin ...

Remembering Lester
Book Excerpt by Paul Gorman, In Their Own Write: Adventures in the Music Press, November 2001
"Everybody's a rock critic."
– Lester ...

Turning the Stone: The Adventures of Jann Wenner and Cameron Crowe in the sick, slick '70s
Book Excerpt by Paul Gorman, In Their Own Write, November 2001
In our second excerpt from In Their Own Write: Adventures in the Music Press (published this week by Sanctuary), Paul Gorman goes back to the '70s ...

Thoughts of a Rock Critic
Comment by Michael Goldberg, Neumu, November 2001
Four decades on, rock criticism is still (though barely) alive ...

Mick Farren on The Deviants, Fantasy Fiction and Blowing Things Up
Profile and Interview by Erik Himmelsbach, L.A. Weekly, November 2001
PUBLISHING MOGUL Felix Dennis was staring at the Caribbean Sea a few months ago, sucking down cocktails with fellow gazillionaires at Basil's Bar on the beach ...

The Rolling Stones: Old Gods Almost Dead
Interview by David Dalton, Gadfly, December 2001
David Dalton Talks to Stephen Davis, Author of the First Full-Dress Biography of the Rolling Stones in Twenty ...

In Memoriam: Meet Your Maker
Memoir by Chris Charlesworth, Rock's Backpages, December 2001
It is a year since IPC shut down Melody Maker, the oldest of all popular music magazines. In this affectionate memoir, former MM staffer and editor ...

Mick Farren: Devout Deviant Takes A Trip Down Memory Lane
Book Review by Charles Shaar Murray, The Independent, December 2001
Mick Farren: Give the Anarchist a ...

Another Badass Blue-Gum White Man: Essays Honoring STANLEY BOOTH On The Occasion Of His 60th Birthday
Essay by Kandia Crazy Horse, Rock's Backpages, January 2002
"What matters most is how well you walk through the fire." - Charles Bukowski ...

Being My Almost Absolutely True Adventures with Stanley Booth
Essay by David Dalton, Rock's Backpages, January 2002
The South, sir, is no more than the Creation viewed by a crocodile.
– Rev. Sydney Smith

I ADMIT I don't know what the ...

Rolling Away the Stones: Stanley and I
Essay by Michael Lydon, Rock's Backpages, January 2002
Michael Lydon was the other reporter on the infamous Rolling Stones' 1969 tour of America. This is his recollection of meeting Stanley Booth, and the friendship ...

The True Adventures of Stanley Booth
Interview by Steven Ward, rockcritics.com, January 2002
STANLEY BOOTH is one hell of a writer. The evidence is clear once you pick up his book on the world's greatest rock 'n' roll band, ...

The Last of the Voodoos: A Rock & Roll Retrospective
Essay by Kandia Crazy Horse, Black Renaissance Noire, January 2002
This essay was originally published in NYU Africanist Manthia Diawara’s Black Renaissance/Renaissance Noire [Vol.3, No.2, Spring 2001]. Since the very weird period when I wrote the ...

If You Want To Know Anything, Ask Stanley: A Memoir
Memoir by Tina McElroy Ansa, David Sandison, Chris Wohlwend, Rock's Backpages, January 2002
David Sandison handled PR for the Rolling Stones when Stanley Booth went on the road with them in 1969. ...

Almost Unknown: How Lloyd Cole Knew My Father, the British counterpart to Almost Famous, came into being
Report by David Quantick, Rock's Backpages, March 2002
THERE ARE many differences between Britain and America – they like Hootie and the Blowfish, for example, and we like Chas and Dave; their milk tastes ...

What is Rock Criticism?
Comment by Michael Goldberg, Neumu, April 2002
Why do writers pursue this often-thankless "profession"? ...

Give Up The Day Job!: Scribes turned Stars, Poachers Turned Gamekeepers!
Guide by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, April 2002
This week, a propos of nothing in particular – the new Pet Shop Boys album, perhaps? – we consider the careers of the many brave ...

Lester Bangs: Pills And Thrills
Retrospective by Nick Kent, The Guardian, April 2002
ALTHOUGH HIS NAME is already starting to be listed among the ranks of the elite late 20th-century literary trailblazers, Lester Bangs – the fragile-hearted, drunken bozo ...

Bio Warfare: Why did Neil Young try to squelch Shakey?
Comment by Marc Weingarten, salon.com, May 2002
SHAKEY, A 786-PAGE biography of Neil Young that's just been published, almost wasn't. For that reason, it serves as an apt metaphor for the way Neil ...

Robert Gordon: Can't Be Satisfied: The Life and Times of Muddy Waters (Jonathan Cape)
Book Review by Sean O'Hagan, The Observer, 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 years ...

Timothy White 1952-2002
Obituary by Chris Charlesworth, The Guardian, July 2002
IN HIS POLKA-DOT bow tie, cream chinos and white buckskin shoes, Timothy White, who has died aged 50, cut a stylish figure in a profession not ...

Ginsberg's Flannel And Other Stories
Book Review by Ian Penman, The Guardian, October 2002
In the Sixties, Barry Miles, 322pp, Jonathan Cape, £17.99 ...

Pop and the Press
Book Review by Simon Warner, Rock's Backpages, November 2002
Simon Warner peruses a fresh academic take on rock journalism ...

Birthdays of the Cool?
Essay by Simon Warner, Rock's Backpages, December 2002
Simon Warner on Dazed & Confused at 10 – and The Wire at ...

Publish and be Damned: The Decline and Fall of the UK Music Press
Overview by Paul Gorman, slantmagazine.com, Summer 2002
WHAT’S UP WITH the music press? The once proud sector of the British media, created from the unholy union of the 60s underground and the traditional ...

Penny Valentine 1943 - 2003
Obituary by Richard Williams, The Guardian, January 2003
Richard Williams mourns "probably the first woman to write about pop music as though it really mattered". Below, some examples of what made Valentine such a ...

On Lloyd Cole Knew My Father
Review by Simon Warner, Rock's Backpages, February 2003
"WHAT WOULD entice social misfits from provincial hellholes like, say, Northampton, Wigan and Exmouth to join the world of sex, drugs, travel and free records that ...

Rock's Future Pages
Overview by Simon Warner, Rock's Backpages, March 2003
Why new music titles keep coming despite uncertain ...

Paul Williams On Jimi Hendrix
Interview by Mike Mettler, UniVibes, April 2003
WHO'S YOUR Daddy? Think Rolling Stone magazine invented rock criticism? Think again. ...

Hail, Hail, Rock'n'Roll Writing!
Comment by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, May 2003
This month, Bloomsbury – the home of rockin' Harry Potter – publishes The Sound & the Fury: A Rock's Backpages Reader, a selection of seminal pieces ...

Ian MacDonald: The People's Music - Selected Journalism (Pimlico)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, The Observer, July 2003
BROADLY SPEAKING there are three kinds of British rock writers: boring ones, brash ones, and genuinely bright ones. Somehow it's typical of our anti-intellectual culture that ...

My Black Pages: Lester Bangs' Mainlines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste
Book Review by Don Waller, LA CityBeat, August 2003
BACK FROM THE dead and bigger than ever! As a writer – hell, more importantly, as a reader – the Editorial We wuz turnin' cataleptic cartwheels ...

Lester Bangs: Joy And Rage Of A Dishevelled Rock Critic
Book Review by Charles Shaar Murray, The Independent, September 2003
Mainlines, Blood Feasts And Bad Taste: A Lester Bangs Reader Lester Bangs; ed. John Morthland (Serpent's Tail; £9.99) ...

Revelations In The Head: Ian MacDonald 1948-2003
Obituary by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, September 2003
THE NEWS THAT Ian MacDonald has taken his own life comes as a terrible shock, both to the colleagues who knew him and to the admirers ...

Gathering Moss: The Fossilisation of Rolling Stone
Comment by Tim Footman, Rock's Backpages, November 2003
BILLY JOEL? Billy fucking Joel??? ...

Lydon and I
Book Excerpt by Paul Wellings, 'I'm a Journalist...Get Me Out of Here!', 2004
I BLUFFED my way into journalism and am still bluffing in the PR world. If the truth were told, most journalists are bluffers to some degree. ...

David Bowie and the Media
Retrospective by Chris Charlesworth, Rock's Backpages, 2004
A WHIFF OF hedonism lingered amid the dense fog of cigarette smoke inside the top floor suite of Detroit's luxurious Ponchartrain hotel. David Bowie sighed, dismissing ...

This Is Rebel Music: The Harvey Kubernik InnerView: Part One
Interview by Gary Pig Gold, fufkin.com, September 2004
"If there is a secret history of LA's music scene – the real dirt, the telling minutiae, the diseased spirit of the place – then it ...

This Is Rebel Music: The Harvey Kubernik InnerView: Part Two
Interview by Gary Pig Gold, fufkin.com, October 2004
"THIS EXTRAORDINARY ASSEMBLAGE of interviews by journalist and record producer Harvey Kubernik is, as Brian Wilson's blurb on the back cover says, "inside stuff." It's deep ...

Who Put The Bomp? Why, Greg Shaw, Of Course!
Obituary by Gary Pig Gold, torpedopop.com, October 2004
ACCOLADES AND AWARDS are being tossed around far too indiscriminately these days, wouldn’t you agree? Especially within the, uh, Wonderful World of Entertainment. I mean, I ...

Children In The Mire: A Reading Of Bangs, Marcus And The Sex Pistols, part 1
Essay by Michael Baker, Perfect Sound Forever, January 2005
"THE DOMAIN OF the theater is not psychological but plastic and physical. And it is not a question of whether the physical language of theater is ...

Children in the Mire: Bangs, Marcus, and the Sex Pistols, Part II – Polly
Essay by Michael Baker, Perfect Sound Forever, January 2005
The hot night makes us keep our bedroom windows open.
Our magnolia blossoms. Life begins to happen.
My hopped up husband drops his home disputes,
and hits ...

An Interview With The Blacklisted Journalist Al Aronowitz
Profile and Interview by Gary Pig Gold, inmusicwetrust.com, February 2005
Gary "Pig" Gold meets the Man Who Invented the Sixties ...

Hunter S Thompson: Rock of Rages
Comment by Andrew Mueller, The Guardian, February 2005
FOLLOWING HUNTER S THOMPSON'S suicide, many obituarists, looking for a representative snippet of the Doctor's bug-eyed vitriol, served up the following trenchant assessment of the record ...

An Interview With Dominic Priore: Good Things Come To Those Who SmiLE, part 1
Interview by Gary Pig Gold, fufkin.com, August 2005
Gary Pig Gold climbs into the Virtual Sandbox ...

John Einarson: Mr. Tambourine Man – The Life and Legacy of the Byrds' Gene Clark by John Einarson (Backbeat)
Book Review by Bill Wasserzieher, Ugly Things, Summer 2005
GENE CLARK of the Byrds was many things - a charismatic stage presence in a '60s band that became an American icon; a gifted and perhaps ...

Jimmy McDonough: Shakey - Neil Young's Biography
Book Review by Craig W. Thomas, Rock's Backpages, Fall 2005
INTO MY HOLIDAY knapsack this year I tucked a biography of Lowell George that a friend had lent me, and I picked it up on day ...

The Adventures Of The Imagination: Allen Ginsberg's 'Kaddish'
Sleevenotes by Harvey Kubernik, Water Records, 2006
IN A PARIS CAFÉ in November 1957, Allen Ginsberg began the initial notations for Kaddish. In Ginsberg: A Biography, by longtime friend and author Barry Miles, ...

The Great Lig in the Sky: The Legendary Rock Writers Convention of May 1973
Retrospective and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, June 2006
ON MEMORIAL DAY weekend in May 1973, over a hundred of the leading rock writers of the day flew into Memphis, Tennessee, for 72 hours of ...

Al Aronowitz: Bob Dylan And The Beatles: Volume One Of The Best Of The Blacklisted Journalist (1st Books Library)
Book Review by Christine Natanael, crushermagazine.com, August 2006
THIS IS A review that has been very, very hard to write. Not because the 600-page collection of columns, essays, random thoughts and photos is bad. ...

Read All About It: Rock Books to Live By
Book Excerpt by Barney Hoskyns, Time Out's 1000 Books To Save Your Life, 2007
YOU'D THINK I'd be able to write about rock books in my sleep. But of course the task is dreadfully daunting, "rock" now being an engulfing ...

Crystal Zevon's Story: Warren from A to Z
Interview by Fred Schruers, Los Angeles Times, May 2007
Through interviews and diaries, the musician's ex-wife chronicles the hedonistic life of one of the genre's bad boys. ...

Richard Cook (1957-2007)
Obituary by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, August 2007
THE DEATH of Richard Cook at the age of 49 robs us of one of the finest writers UK music journalism has produced. He was probably ...

Richard Cook 1957-2007: Friends and Colleagues Pay Tribute
Obituary by Various Writers, Rock's Backpages, September 2007
The great jazz and rock writer, who died on August 25, 2007, is remembered by those who worked with him at NME and ...

Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads? Ten Years After The Repetitive Beat Generation
Essay by Steve Redhead, Rock's Backpages, July 2008
OVER A decade ago I researched the rise and fall of a British publishing phenomenon – the so called 'cult fiction' of writers like Nicholas Blincoe, ...

Rob Partridge (1948-2008)
Special Feature by Various Writers, Rock's Backpages, December 2008
Rob Partridge was a true music man – a witty, loyal, and deeply knowledgeable fan whose loss will be felt throughout the UK music ...

Flirtations with Chaos: The Life and Work of Robert Palmer
Essay by Anthony DeCurtis, 'Blues & Chaos', 2009
NOTE: This is Anthony DeCurtis' introduction to Blues & Chaos, his 2009 anthology of Bob Palmer's ...

Janis Ian: Society's Child (Tarcher/Penguin)
Review by Roy Trakin, Rock's Backpages, March 2009
I ADMITTEDLY hadn't thought much about Janis Ian lately, even as my good friend Andy Schwartz kept recommending this surprisingly compelling, always-candid autobiography, going so far ...

Sympathy for the Devil – A Kind Word for Albert Goldman
Essay by Tom Graves, Rock's Backpages, April 2009
ALBERT HARRY GOLDMAN is inarguably the most controversial music biographer of the last generation. His biographies of first Elvis, then John Lennon, have been spit on ...

Lester Bangs at Home
Memoir by Richard Riegel, unpublished, May 2009
NOTE: I wrote this mini-memoir for one of the neo-Creem projects of recent years, but it wasn't ...

Rage Against the Machine: Steven Wells, 1960-2009
Special Feature by Various Writers, Rock's Backpages, June 2009
An august bunch of RBP contributors – friends, colleagues, and plain admirers of the man – pay tribute to an inspired rent-a-gob who died bravely and ...

The NME'n'Me
Memoir by John Pidgeon, Rock's Backpages, June 2009
IT'S THURSDAY, 6th July 1972. The Guardian lies on the doormat, its front page torn, as usual. I've questioned the paperboy. He says the slot's too ...

Ever-So-Slightly Wacko: The Day I Interviewed Michael Jackson (via little sister Janet)
Memoir by John Pidgeon, Rock's Backpages, June 2009
IN JANUARY 1980, the gates of 4641 Hayvenhurst Avenue in Encino were open, unguarded. As I parked, an Alsatian bounded to the car and bared his ...