Ry Cooder
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Review by Andy Childs, ZigZag, November 1976
I'VE BEEN LOOKING forward to this one for ages, same as I do every Ry Cooder album. Apart from the obvious quality of his music, ...
Audio interviews
Interview by John Tobler, Rock's Backpages Audio, Fall 1976
The great guitar player talks about the musicians who influenced him; his friendship with John Fahey; the Rising Sons, and Ed Cassidy and Taj Mahal; his encounter with Captain Beefheart; film scores (and more) with Jack Nitzsche; other things he did and didn't do; his early Warner Bros. albums, and Depression-era songs; his unique album covers; Paradise and Lunch, and not being a songwriter; getting into Hawaiian and Tex-Mex music, and his latest album, Chicken Skin Music.
File format: mp3; file size: 51.1mb, interview length: 53' 14" sound quality: ****
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 9 May 2005
From his youth in Santa Monica via the Ash Grove scene through to movie soundtracks and his explorations of world musics: Ry on the music business, his fellow musicians and his politically progressive background and instincts.
File format: mp3; file size: 81.6mb, total interview length: 1h 25' 03" sound quality: ***
Interview by Joel Selvin, Selvin On The City, KSAN 107.7, 23 November 2008
The meastro of roots and Americana talks about his recent work - I, Flathead, Chávez Ravine - and looks back to the making of his first album and subsequent career.
File format: mp3 File size: 32.4mb Interview length: 35' 27"; Sound quality: *****
List of articles in the library
Various Artists: Performance (Warner Bros.)
Review by Mike Gormley, Detroit Free Press, 9 August 1970
PERFORMANCE IS the movie starring Mick Jagger. Don't get it mixed up with Ned Kelly, the other Jagger starrer. Performance unlike Ned Kelly is supposed ...
Ry Cooder: The Name To Watch In 71...
Interview by Jacoba Atlas, Melody Maker, 19 December 1970
Jacoba Atlas talks to the States' hottest new guitarist ...
Ry Cooder: Into The Purple Valley (Reprise)
Review by Richard Williams, Melody Maker, 12 February 1972
THE COVER of Ry Cooder's second album features the guitarist and his lady posed in and out of a mid-Forties model Dodge convertible. It's straight ...
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 9 December 1972
On himself, BEEFHEART and RANDY NEWMAN — and backing JAGGER by remote control. ...
Ry Cooder: Paradise & Lunch (Reprise); Rita Coolidge: Fall Into Spring (A&M)
Review by Loraine Alterman, The New York Times, 2 June 1974
Setting a Scene for Rock ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Phonograph Record, July 1974
RY COODER has a corner of the rock & roll world all to himself. Like the folk traditionalists, he draws on dead or dying idioms ...
Singer-Songwriters: Back To The Roots!
Overview by Dave Laing, Melody Maker, 21 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 ...
Interview by Chris Charlesworth, Melody Maker, 1976
Ry Cooder, cult figure and esoteric guitarist, tells CHRIS CHARLESWORTH in New York why he's now into Tex-Mex music ...
Ry Cooder: Chicken-Skin Music (Reprise)
Review by Nick Kent, New Musical Express, 23 October 1976
With the pound tottering, Kissinger's Rhodesian settlement crumbling, and Revie's team a complete shambles... it's nice to know there are still things you can rely ...
Review by John Morthland, Creem, November 1976
BY NOW, Ry Cooder has established his niche so conclusively that you already know whether you like him or not. His curiously pinched vocals. His ...
Profile and Interview by Richard Harrington, Unicorn Times, November 1976
IF YOU know Ry Cooder's music for its own brilliance, then you can be considered lucky. If you don't know it specifically, then chances are ...
Profile and Interview by Giovanni Dadomo, Sounds, 15 January 1977
Mr & Mrs Dadomo of North London present the moving tale of Ryland P Cooder, guitar hero to the rock-gentry and one of Giovanni's personal ...
Ry Cooder Part 1: Into The Purple Valley Of Romance And Adventure
Interview by John Tobler, ZigZag, February 1977
"Everything I know, I know from records. I don't live in a place where the neighbours are playing fiddles, I live in the city." ...
Live Review by Vivien Goldman, Sounds, 5 February 1977
IT WAS like seeing three movies on one screen. On your right, you have this three-man gospel-style streetcorner vocal section – Bobby and Eldridge King, ...
Flaco Jimenez: In Search Of The Polka-Rock Fusion
Interview by Joe Nick Patoski, Rolling Stone, 10 February 1977
IF THE ACCORDION ever manages to rise from the underground of ethnic music as rock's undiscovered lead instrument, Flaco Jimenez will at long last be ...
Flaco Jimenez: Viva los Accordion
Interview by Karl Dallas, Melody Maker, 12 February 1977
THE DIATONIC accordion is basically a fairly rudimentary instrument. Like a mouth organ, it plays one note as you pull it out and another as ...
Ry Cooder Part 2: The Prospect Before Us
Interview by John Tobler, ZigZag, March 1977
SINCE THE first half of this interview was written, there's been an opportunity to see Ry and the Chicken Skin Band in action, which was ...
Ry Cooder: Show Time (Warner Bros. BS 3059)
Review by Dave Marsh, Rolling Stone, 11 August 1977
IT OUGHT to be surprising that Ry Cooder opens his new album with a rock & roll song, Gary "U.S." Bonds' 'School Is Out'. If ...
Ry Cooder & The Chicken Skin Revue: Show Time (Warner Bros.)
Review by Nick Kent, New Musical Express, 13 August 1977
Cooder tat no Coup d'etat (geddit?) ...
Ry Cooder: Bop Till You Drop (Warner Bros.)*****
Review by Peter Silverton, Sounds, 21 July 1979
THERE'S PROBABLY a whole bunch of enormous ironies knocking around this world but right now I can't think of a bigger or more slap-happy one ...
Ry Cooder: Bop Till You Drop (Warners Import)
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 21 July 1979
RYLAND P. Cooder is a most reliable fellow. Ever since the days when he was laying down that stinging bottleneck guitar behind the likes of ...
Ry Cooder: Bop Til You Drop (Warner Brothers Records 3358)
Review by Joel Selvin, San Francisco Chronicle, 29 July 1979
An Astonishing Digital Bop ...
Ry Cooder: Ry And Related Stuff
Interview by Paul Rambali, New Musical Express, 11 August 1979
"Me and my wife, Went all over town, And everywhere we went, The people turned us down, Lord, in a bourgeois town, In a bourgeois ...
Interview by Mick Brown, The Sunday Times Magazine, November 1980
RY COODER was once described as a "curator of American music". A fair assessment, but it hardly captures the joy and affection of his modern ...
Ry Cooder's Search For The Lost Chord
Interview by Noe Gold, Guitar Works, March 1981
Cooder gesticulates in much the same way as he articulates musically – with an emphasis that lets you know he's earned the insight. ...
Ry Cooder: The Slide Area (Warner Bros.)/The Border – Original Soundtrack (MCA)
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 24 April 1982
THE MORE things remain the same, the more they change: after more than a decade of recording as a featured artist, Ry Cooder has finally ...
All-American Music Man: Ry Cooder
Profile and Interview by Mick Brown, The Sunday Times, May 1982
IT WAS THE MEXICANS that did it. The violent hue of his shirt notwithstanding, the tall, taciturn figure in the centre of the stage looked ...
Interview by John Hutchinson, In Dublin, June 1982
WITHIN HOURS of arriving from Glasgow, Ry Cooder walked into a room in Jury's Hotel wearing a black track suit, with a towel bundled under ...
Ry Cooder: Hammersmith Odeon, London
Live Review by Gavin Martin, New Musical Express, 12 June 1982
RY COODER spent the '70s with his shoulder to the grindstone and his heart in the right place delivering a series of albums which spanned ...
Ry Cooder: The Slide Area (Warner Bros.) **
Review by Fred Schruers, Rolling Stone, 24 June 1982
RY COODER HAS made ten albums (excluding soundtracks) since his 1970 debut LP, and with the exception of one overly precious stiff (Jazz), each new ...
Interview by Paul Rambali, The Face, July 1982
Ry Cooder is tall, like a Texan, and dry, very dry, like a Margarita; tall in both physical height and musical standing, dry in both ...
Interview by John Tobler, Stuart Grundy, 'The Guitar Greats', BBC Books, 1983
IT MAY BE that American readers of this book may wonder ‘Why?’ And even perhaps, ‘Who?’ It is an unfortunate fact that Ry Cooder, a ...
Profile and Interview by Don Snowden, Los Angeles Times, 16 December 1984
"PARIS, TEXAS IS like a perfect career job," reflects Ry Cooder, the composer of the film's haunting score. "It's the kind of film that if ...
Interview by Don Snowden, Musician, 28 February 1985
"A MOVIE SCORE is probably the last refuge of abstract music," remarks Ry Cooder in the spartan foyer of a Hollywood sound studio. "You can't ...
Ry Cooder's Mood Indigo Meditations: Paris, Texas
Review by Don Snowden, The Boston Phoenix, 4 April 1985
SOUNDTRACK ALBUMS – the genuine article, not song collections assembled in executive suites with an eye for tapping the teen demographic – are inherently strange ...
Report and Interview by Don Snowden, Philadelphia Inquirer, 17 May 1985
ARMS FOLDED across his chest, Louis Malle stares stoically across the Hollywood soundstage as the last scene of Alamo Bay, his new film set against ...
Report and Interview by Tony Scherman, Rolling Stone, 10 October 1985
THERE'S NO MONEY IN BEING A ROOTS-MUSIC VIRTUOSO, BUT THIS GUITARIST'S CAREER TURNED THE CORNER WHEN HE STARTED WRITING SOUNDTRACKS. ...
Review by Andy Gill, New Musical Express, 6 September 1986
DURING THE early/mid-'70s, Warner Brothers were the envy of their major corporate rivals for their unparalleled hip-act market-share. Partly, one suspects, for the way their ...
Ry Cooder Charts His Own Course
Interview by Richard Cromelin, Los Angeles Times, 28 October 1987
RY COODER'S atmospheric film scores, eclectic albums and collaborations with prestige performers like Randy Newman and John Hiatt have created an image of the musician ...
Jim Dickinson and the New Low-Fi
Interview by Tony Scherman, Musician, November 1987
Wherein a dangerous redneck weirdo becomes studio godfather to post-punk's finest. ...
Ry Cooder: Get Rhythm (Warner Bros.)
Review by Dave DiMartino, Musician, January 1988
SO RY COODER gives us his first non-soundtrack album in five years, and it's great, rock-solid, a worthy companion to John Hiatt's Bring the Family, ...
Ry Cooder: Fascinatin' Rhythms
Interview by Dave Zimmer, BAM, 12 February 1988
FIVE YEARS may have passed since Ry Cooder last put together an album of non-movie music, but it's not as if the guy has been ...
Profile and Interview by Mark Cooper, Q, March 1988
FIVE YEARS AGO Ry Cooder packed out the Hammersmith Odeon for eight consecutive nights, the culmination of a triumphant European tour. ...
Interview by David Sinclair, The Times, 13 May 1988
David Sinclair meets American guitarist Ry Cooder, in London to prepare for a six-city British tour ...
Profile and Interview by Mark Cooper, The Guardian, 20 May 1988
Ry Cooder is on the road again. He talks to Mark Cooper ...
Live Review by Hugh Fielder, Sounds, 28 May 1988
SLOW BURNING PERFECTION ...
Ry Cooder & David Lindley: Hammersmith Odeon, London
Live Review by Robert Sandall, The Sunday Times, 15 July 1990
A backroom Stone slides into town ...
Ry Cooder: At Home In The Village
Profile and Interview by Robert Sandall, The Sunday Times, 16 February 1992
Robert Sandall talks to Ry Cooder about the band that has given his guitar-playing a new sense of pleasure and purpose ...
Ali Farka Touré with Ry Cooder: Talking Timbuktu (Hannibal)
Review by Richard Gehr, Spin, May 1994
DE BLUES is a harsh mistress. So what a pleasure when someone like Mali guitar giant Ali Farka Touré comes along to let us off ...
Lenny Waronker: A Record Executive's Pride and Joy
Profile and Interview by Joel Selvin, San Francisco Chronicle, 4 June 1995
Warner Bros. re-releases Lenny Waronker's early masterpieces ...
Some Cuban Sizzle: Ry Cooder turns up the musical heat in Havana
Report and Interview by Nicholas Jennings, Maclean's, 13 October 1997
RY COODER'S RESUMÉ is one of the most impressive in popular music. He has lent his guitar skills to recordings by the Rolling Stones, Van ...
Guide by Fred Dellar, MOJO, August 1998
BETTER KNOWN for bottleneck than even the M25, Ryland Cooder remains a cult figure despite appearing on records by the Rolling Stones, the Monkees, Johnny ...
Film/DVD/TV Review by Gavin Martin, New Musical Express, 18 September 1999
RY COODER'S tireless musical explorations hit unexpected paydirt when he visited Cuba in 1996 and recorded the sessions for the brilliant Buena Vista Social Club ...
Buena Vista Brings Back Old Cuban Sound
Report and Interview by Joel Selvin, San Francisco Chronicle, 19 September 1999
WHEN CUBAN music finally returned to the United States, it picked up where it left off. ...
Interview by Fred Schruers, Rolling Stone, 11 November 1999
JOACHIM COODER was four years old when he decided he wanted to be a drummer, after watching his father, Ry, and drummer Jim Keltner record ...
Interview by Joss Hutton, Perfect Sound Forever, January 2002
THIS MAIN COURSE is a hearty southern dish, marinated in worldly wisdom and good humour, matured slowly in honky-tonks, recording studios and bars the world ...
Ry Cooder and Manuel Galbán: Mambo Sinuendo (Nonesuch/Perro Verde)
Review by Martin Colyer, Rock's Backpages, February 2003
THE WHOLE BUENA Vista Social Club never really pushed my buttons – I liked the film well enough but always drifted off when listening to ...
Ry Cooder & Manuel Gálban: Mambo Sinuendo; Kinky: Kinky
Review by Andy Gill, The Word, March 2003
Perfuming Each Moment ...
Profile and Interview by Robert Sandall, The Sunday Times, 17 August 2003
TO MOST VISITORS and residents, Santa Monica is Los Angeles-on-sea, a breezy, oceanside reprieve from the bad air, nose-to-tail buildings and car-choked "boulevards" that sprawl ...
The Backpages Interview: Ry Cooder
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, May 2005
RBP: Do you remember the folk scene of the early '60s as being polarized on more or less political/commercial grounds? How do you recall the ...
Ry Cooder: Ode to a lost shangri-la
Report and Interview by Robert Sandall, Daily Telegraph, 11 June 2005
After the Buena Vista phenomenon, Ry Cooder has made an album about his home town of LA. He talks to Robert Sandall. ...
Ry Cooder: Chavez Ravine (Nonesuch)
Review and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, July 2005
AFTER A DECADE of travels that's taken him from Timbuktu to Cuba, Ry Cooder has come home to shine a light on a shameful episode ...
Interview by Alan Light, Mother Jones, July 2005
Ry Cooder's new album tunes into L.A.'s Chavez Ravine and the dawn of Chicano consciousness. ...
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, August 2005
RYLAND PETER COODER is a man out of time – at the very least a fish out of water. In London to promote his superb ...
Ry Cooder: Chávez Ravine (Nonesuch)
Review by John L. Walters, TuneTribe, Summer 2005
CHÁVEZ RAVINE is Ry Cooder's What A Carve Up, a multilayered song-cycle about the way a Hispanic neighbourhood of Los Angeles was cleared to make ...
Interview by Jeff Tamarkin, Harp, March 2007
WHEN RY Cooder received a doctored photo in the mail, of a red cat in the guise of Leadbelly, he knew he had found a ...
His Name is Flathead: An Interview with Ry Cooder
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, June 2008
With his new album, Ry Cooder completes the trilogy of records about 1940s/50s California that began with Chavez Ravine and continued with My Name Is ...
Ry Cooder: I, Flathead (Nonesuch)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, August 2008
Final instalment of Cooder's "trilogy" time-traveling back to '40's/'50s California, here exploring a lost world of steel guitarists and salt-flat drag racers. Comes complete with ...
Audio transcript of interview by Holger Petersen, Rock's Backpages Audio, 7 August 2010
This is a transcript of Holger's audio interview with Van Dyke. Hear the interview here ...
Ry Cooder: Bop Until You Drop Vinyl Icon
Retrospective by Johnny Black, Hi-Fi News & Record Review, September 2010
GUITAR GURU Ry Cooder's eighth album, Bop Till You Drop, released at the very end of July 1979, gave him his first British chart entry, ...
Ry Cooder: Pull Up Some Dust And Sit Down
Review by Andy Gill, The Independent, 2 September 2011
SINCE THE MIGHTY CHAVEZ RAVINE, Ry Cooder's albums have struggled to reach equivalent heights, as if their themes — and with Cooder, there is always ...
Review and Interview by Bud Scoppa, Uncut, September 2012
IN A RECORDING career that stretches back more than four decades, Ry Cooder has never before made an album as immediate as Election Special. And ...
Ry Cooder: Cooder Been A Contender
Interview by Rob Hughes, Record Collector, April 2014
He had the option of becoming a major star and grabbing his couple of years of glory. Instead he took the long, slow, dusty road. ...
Review by Terry Staunton, Record Collector, April 2018
FOR AN ALBUM on which he takes stock of a 21st century US riddled with crises and uncertainty, Cooder astutely plunders the grammar of the ...
see also John Hiatt
see also Little Village
see also Rising Sons, The
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