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Stereolab's Lætitia Sadier (1997)

Interview by Jim Sullivan, Rock's Backpages, 5 November 1997

Ms. Sadier talks about the difference between what Elektra releases and what Stereolab issue on their own Duophonic label; about their latest album Emperor Tomato Ketchup; the band's development and their exploration of multiple genres; their oblique lyrics; resisting commercial pressures and the nature of Stereolab's audience.

File format: mp3; file size: 16.1mb, interview length: 16' 45" sound quality: ** (phoner)

Elvis Presley: Scotty Moore's Classic Axe Goes Under The Hammer

Report by Mark Pringle, Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, April 2000

Former Elvis Presley producer weeps after auctioning off "the most important guitar in rock and roll history" ...

Jack Nitzsche: Legendary Music Arranger and Composer, Jack Nitzsche Dies

Obituary by Harvey Kubernik, Rock's Backpages, September 2000

Legendary arranger and award-winning composer Jack Nitzsche died at Queen Of Angels hospital in Los Angeles, Calif. , on August 25, 2000. Nitzsche’s death was ...

Al Green: Take Me to the River: Al Green with Davin Seay

Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, November 2000

"Gen’lmen, we just havin’ church here." Six words which - directed at me and a fellow soul buff at the Full Gospel Tabernacle church by ...

Lee "Scratch" Perry: Into the Heart of the Ark: An Audience with Lee

Book Excerpt by Chris Salewicz, Rock's Backpages, November 2000

In an excerpt from his book Rude Boy: Once Upon a Time in Jamaica, Chris Salewicz recounts his February 1978 meeting with legendary reggae producer ...

Fatboy Slim: The BACKPAGES interview: Fatboy Slim

Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, 12 November 2000

When Norman ‘Fatboy Slim’ Cook exploded on the world’s dancefloors with ‘The Rockafeller Skank’ and ‘Praise You’, he brought a sense of brash, manic fun ...

Greil Marcus: Top Spin Service!!

Profile and Interview by Charlie Gillett, Rock's Backpages, 17 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 ...

Swamp Dogg: Cover Story: A Dogg with Attitude

Special Feature by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, 22 November 2000

How a pint-sized pooch danced for his record label. ...

Björk, PJ Harvey: Bjork: Selmasongs; PJ Harvey: Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea

Review by Djuna Parnes, Rock's Backpages, December 2000

OUTSIDE OF Kid A, Thom Yorke made two significant cameo appearances in A.D. 2000. Both were on albums by dark, "difficult" women who’ve spearheaded change ...

Coldplay: Parachutes

Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, December 2000

A KEY STRAIN of early aughties rock is a school of bands desperately emulating the whiteboy guitar angst of Jeff Buckley and Thom Yorke. First ...

D'Angelo, Erykah Badu, Kelis: D’Angelo: Voodoo/Erykah Badu: Mama’s Gun/Kelis: Kaleidoscope

Review by Cleothus Hardcastle, Rock's Backpages, December 2000

SOMEHOW "SOUL" music lives on, clinging to life in the midst of the coldest, meanest materialism. Straight outta Brooklyn came two of the heirs to ...

Grandaddy: The Sophtware Slump

Review by Ed Doheny, Rock's Backpages, December 2000

"SHOULD NEVER have left the crystal lake/For parties full of folks who flake." There’s something irresistible about gnarly American guys going back to the land, ...

Radiohead: Here Are The Young Men: Radiohead’s Kid A

Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, December 2000

2000 WAS PARTLY about waiting for Yorko: waiting for the follow-up to the huge, incandescent, panoramic, faux-pomp OK Computer. And when Kid A finally arrived ...

Johnny Cash: American III: Solitary Man

Review by Ed Doheny, Rock's Backpages, December 2000

ONE OF THE bullet-point discussions of this album – on which the mythopoeic Man in Black does the Rick Rubin thang a third time, thus ...

Lambchop: Nixon

Review by Ed Doheny, Rock's Backpages, December 2000

A NEW KIND of backwoodsiness comes courtesy of lugubrious Nashvillians Lambchop, whose Kurt Wagner sounds like (prime influence/collaborator) Vic Chesnutt seasoned with shadings of Al ...

Clinic, David Holmes, Primal Scream: Primal Scream: Xtrmntor/David Holmes: Bow Down to the Exit Sign/Clinic: Internal Wrangler

Review by Djuna Parnes, Rock's Backpages, December 2000

1997’S FRACTURED, fundamentally bogus Vanishing Point laid the ground for the much more focused Xtrmntor, Bobby Gillespie’s first true manifesto of an album since the ...

...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead, At the Drive-In, Queens Of The Stone Age: Queens of the Stone Age/At the Drive-In/...And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead

Review by The Rev. Al Friston, Rock's Backpages, December 2000

...

Revue/Re-View 2000: Lists? We've got ’em

Guide by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, December 2000

RBP’s 20 Best Albums of 2000 ...

Revue/Re-View 2000: RBP’s Goodest, Baddest and Ugliest of The Year – Part 1

Guide by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, December 2000

HERE ARE THE YOUNG MEN... ...

Revue/Re-View 2000: RBP’s Goodest, Baddest and Ugliest of The Year – Part 2

Guide by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, December 2000

THE WAY THEY ARE ...

Revue/Re-View 2000: RBP’s Goodest, Baddest and Ugliest of The Year – Part 3

Guide by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, December 2000

....AND YE SHALL KNOW THEM BY THE ECHOES OF BLUDGEONING PUNK-METAL RIFFOLOGY ...

Revue/Re-View 2000: RBP’s Goodest, Baddest and Ugliest of The Year – Part 4

Guide by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, December 2000

LET’S GET WRANGLED ...

Smog: Dongs of Sevotion

Review by Ed Doheny, Rock's Backpages, December 2000

COMPARED TO Lambchop’s Nixon – elliptical sketches of humanity from an alt.country porch – Smog’s Dongs of Sevotion gives us the music of a man ...

Steely Dan: Two Against Nature

Review by Ed Doheny, Rock's Backpages, December 2000

TWO AGAINST NATURE could have been horrible, as so many of these returns by grizzled ’70s vets are; as it was, the album was merely ...

Gorky's Zygotic Mynci, Super Furry Animals: Super Furry Animals: Mwng/Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci: The Blue Trees

Review by Art Sperl, Rock's Backpages, December 2000

THE DREARY Stereophonics notwithstanding – isn’t Kelly Jones just the alt.britrock Bryan Adams? – there’s definitely something in the Welsh water that’s, well, different: a ...

Saint Etienne: Synth’s Up

Review by Melody Nelson, Rock's Backpages, December 2000

Saint Etienne: The Sound of WaterBent: Programmed to Love ...

Badly Drawn Boy, Stephin Merritt: The Hour Of The Nouvel Troubadour

Review by Art Sperl, Rock's Backpages, December 2000

Badly Drawn Boy: The Hour of BewilderbeastMagnetic Fields: 69 Love Songs ...

Cosmic Rough Riders, Kingsbury Manx, Teenage Fanclub: The Retro Grade: Welcome To Calibernia

Review by Ed Doheny, Rock's Backpages, December 2000

Teenage Fanclub: Howdy! Cosmic Rough Riders: Enjoy the Melodic SunshineKingsbury Manx: Kingsbury ManxPhoenix: United ...

Eminem, Outkast, Wu-Tang Clan: The Way They Are: Eminem and Friends

Review by Cleothus Hardcastle, Rock's Backpages, December 2000

HIP HOP, you don’t stop. Whatever it is that this hybrid of street poetics and processed beats represents for modern culture, it ain’t going away. ...

The Dandy Warhols, The Webb Brothers: The Webb Brothers: Maroon; Dandy Warhols: Thirteen Tales from Urban Bohemia

Review by Art Sperl, Rock's Backpages, December 2000

IF IT WAS NO Utopia Parkway, Maroon was sufficiently quirky and humorous to hold the attention. There were crunchy hooks and pining sad-boy harmonies aplenty, ...

Richard Ashcroft, U2: U2: All That You Can’t Leave Behind Richard Ashcroft: Alone with Everybody

Review by The Rev. Al Friston, Rock's Backpages, December 2000

WE WERE assured that Dublin’s finest would be going back to basics on All That You Can’t Leave Behind; that they’d dispensed with the electro-trappings ...

Warren Zevon: Life'll Kill Ya

Review by Ed Doheny, Rock's Backpages, December 2000

WHEN IT COMES to matters Californian, Warren is even more jaundiced than Steely Dan: if the Becker/Fagen take on El Lay was Elmore Leonard meets ...

Melody Maker, 1926 - 2000, RIP

Obituary by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, 15 December 2000

An era came to an end on 14th December when IPC Magazines announced the closure of its oldest music title, Melody Maker. ...

Tim Buckley: The Multi-media Musings of an All American Ego

Retrospective by Heather Harris, Rock's Backpages, 15 December 2000

L.A.-based photographer/writer Heather Harris was the last journalist ever to interview Tim Buckley. This is her account of the meeting she had with him in ...

Pop Staples, The Staple Singers: It's All Over Now: A Farewell to Pops

Obituary by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, 22 December 2000

Roebuck ‘Pops’ Staples, patriarch of gospel-soul family group the Staple Singers, died on Tuesday, December 19. Possessor of a light, understated harmony voice and distinctive ...

Morning Becomes Harcourt

Interview by Marc Weingarten, Rock's Backpages, 23 December 2000

How a Brummie came to host the most respected public radio show in L.A. ...

Bob Dylan: Bobquest: In Search of Zimmerman

Book Excerpt by Jill Furmanovsky, Rock's Backpages, 2001

Quest: a search, especially an arduous one, for something that is greatly desired. Example: quest for life's meaning. ...

Electric Light Orchestra: I Love That ELO! A Jeff Lynne interview

Interview by Erik Himmelsbach, Rock's Backpages, 2001

IT IS JEFF LYNNE'S DIVINE RIGHT to wear women's clothing. British rockers d'un certain âge are afforded no-questions-asked lifetime passes for ambiguous sartorial choices simply ...

John Lennon: Memories Of John Lennon

Memoir by Chris Charlesworth, Rock's Backpages, 2001

THE FIRST TIME I heard John Lennon’s voice was in mid-January 1963 in my father’s white Triumph Vitesse car, travelling from Skipton to York, going ...

Lynyrd Skynyrd: Memories Of Lynyrd Skynyrd and Peter Rudge

Retrospective by Chris Charlesworth, Rock's Backpages, 2001

LYNYRD SKYNYRD WAS MANAGED BY my friend Peter Rudge from late 1973. Rudge’s main pre-occupation at this time was The Who, for whom he’d worked ...

The Eagles: Hotel Roberto

Comment by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, January 2001

Fans of European football (soccer to all you Americanos out there) will already know that Italian maestro Roberto Baggio – he of the Buddhist beliefs ...

Andrew Loog Oldham, The Rolling Stones: The Backpages Interview: Andrew Loog Oldham

Interview by Harvey Kubernik, Rock's Backpages, January 2001

Last year saw the UK publication of Stoned, a wonderfully insightful film/fashion/music overview of the first Britpop era (1960-1964) by Andrew Loog Oldham, perhaps best ...

Stephen Malkmus: The Backpages interview: Stephen Malkmus

Interview by Edward Helmore, Rock's Backpages, 13 January 2001

After a decade working the streets with Pavement, lo-fi pin-up king Stephen Malkmus has cut himself free from the band to wander free. ...

Fishy Riddims!

Guide by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, 18 January 2001

From Radio Ethiopia to Dread Zeppelin...20 classics of Cod-Reggae ...

The Band: Rock’n’Roll Academy: Revisiting The Band’s Rock of Ages

Review by Martin Colyer, Rock's Backpages, 18 January 2001

TWO OF MY favourite live albums were recorded at either end of 1971. In February Taj Mahal added a horn section of four Tuba players ...

Phoenix: Mean Fiddler 2, London

Live Review by Etienne Petit, Rock's Backpages, 25 January 2001

WOULD LONDON BE rocking tonight to Phoenix if they weren’t French? I ask only as a fellow countryman of this very fine group. If Thomas ...

Almost Infamous

Report by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, 26 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 La's: The La’s: The La’s (Go! Discs)

Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, 26 January 2001

WHO REMEMBERS the La’s when they first popped out of the Liverpool woodwork? A cherubic quartet of scallies, they were pure cutesy retro, ’60s revisitors ...

Dig This! February 2001

Review by Various Writers, Rock's Backpages, February 2001

RBP's recent faves... ...

On the Guest List: Almost Famous

Review by Ed Doheny, Rock's Backpages, February 2001

Ed Doheny on Cameron Crowe’s almost-good Almost Famous – the first movie with a rock journalist for a hero. ...

The Strokes: Monarch, London, February 7

Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, February 2001

U2 WERE rocking the Astoria across town, but the hotter ticket by far was this New York five-piece who sound like pure 1969 Live Velvets ...

The Fist of Pure Emotion

Essay by Victoria Sandler, Rock's Backpages, 2 February 2001

The estate of the demised Take That has bequeathed us so much: pretty boy bands aplenty, fashionably camp(er) covers of otherwise hideous unclassics – ‘Could ...

David Johansen’s Journey Through the Past

Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, 10 February 2001

Between songs the occasional, almost plaintive, yelp can be heard: "‘Subway Train’!" "‘Funky But Chic’!" One particularly persistent voice calls for ‘Babylon’, of all things, ...

The Mighty Imperials: Keepers of the Flame, or a Retro-step too far?

Review and Interview by Mark Pringle, Rock's Backpages, 10 February 2001

The Mighty Imperials: Jazz Café, London The Mighty Imperials – four white 18-year-olds from New York – blew into town this week ...

Eminem: In the Audience with Eminem

Live Review by Mark Pringle, Rock's Backpages, 16 February 2001

Eminem: The London Arena, Docklands ...

Chrissie Hynde, The Pretenders: The Backpages Interview: Chrissie Hynde

Interview by Harvey Kubernik, Rock's Backpages, 23 February 2001

Chrissie Hynde and The Pretenders have just finished a fall 2000 U.S. tour opening for Neil Young. Hynde and her group included versions of Young's ...

So, what do Q know? RBP’s 50 favourite music books

Guide by Mat Snow, Rock's Backpages, 25 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 ...

DIG THIS! March 2001

Review by Various Writers, Rock's Backpages, March 2001

The Rock’s Backpages Top 10 ...

Air, Daft Punk: En Garde! Le Pop Nouveau Français, C’est Arrivé!

Profile by Etienne Petit, Rock's Backpages, March 2001

The late ’90s saw the flowering of a nouveau French techno-pop. Now Air, Daft Punk and friends are conquering the world. RBP’s Paris correspondent explains ...

Like A Hurricane: The 100 Most Intense Records Ever Made

Guide by Various Writers, Rock's Backpages, March 2001

One way or another, all music is about emotion, even when it’s about lack of emotion. But some records reach the parts others never can, ...

Rough Trade 25 Years On...

Retrospective by Mat Snow, Rock's Backpages, March 2001

ROUGH TRADE is 25 years old. In its early days, you wouldn’t have got odds on the firm lasting another 25 weeks. And like so ...

Confessions of a Grammy Nom

Report by Bud Scoppa, Rock's Backpages, 1 March 2001

"I Was Robbed," A Loser Whines, Then Delivers An Acceptance Speech That Never Was ...

Leonard Cohen: Field Commander Cohen: Tour of 1979 (Columbia)

Review by Martin Colyer, Rock's Backpages, 3 March 2001

COMING OFF the extraordinary experience of making Death of a Ladies Man in 1977 with Phil Spector (being locked up in the studio, having a ...

The Beach Boys, Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones: Rockumentaries on the Biography Channel

Film/DVD/TV Review by Mark Pringle, Mat Snow, Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, 3 March 2001

Not long ago, any glimpse on the box of a great musician was like catching sight of the lesser spotted grebe – all the lovelier ...

John Fahey: The Outsider: John Fahey 1939 - 2001

Obituary by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, 3 March 2001

AMERICA LOST of one of its most fascinating musical mavericks on Thursday, February 22, when guitarist John Fahey died after sextuple heart bypass surgery at ...

From the Dawn of Creation to the Birth of Poptones: A Walk Thru’ Joe Foster’s Vaults

Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, 10 March 2001

Barney Hoskyns meets Alan McGee’s right-hand man and hears about his ongoing mission to bring lost classics back to life ...

Robbie Fulks: Country Music is Not Pretty: A User’s Guide to Robbie Fulks

Review and Interview by Martin Colyer, Rock's Backpages, 24 March 2001

Prologue Anyway, before long the room has filled with people, and I grab my beloved Martin 00028 and take the stage. The show is one of ...

John Phillips, The Mamas and The Papas: John Phillips — 1935-2001

Obituary by Ed Doheny, Rock's Backpages, 24 March 2001

Ed Doheny remembers the head Papa. ...

DIG THIS! April 2001

Review by Various Writers, Rock's Backpages, April 2001

The Rock’s Backpages Top 10 ...

Big Brother & The Holding Company, Janis Joplin: Love, Sam

Retrospective and Interview by Ernesto De Pascale, Rock's Backpages, April 2001

On the eve of the premiere of off-Broadway show Love, Janis, Big Brother’s Sam Andrew remembers his friend and musical soulmate. ...

North Mississippi Allstars: Shake Hands with Cody: North Mississippi Allstars

Interview by Josh Rinkoff, Rock's Backpages, 7 April 2001

Josh Rinkoff meets one o’ the Dickinson boys ...

Howard Tate: The Unearthing of Howard Tate

Report by Cleothus Hardcastle, Rock's Backpages, 14 April 2001

"They had a thing in MOJO, like, Whatever happened to Howard Tate? He’s gotta be fuckin’ dead, man!"– David Johansen, talking to Rock’s Backpages, January ...

Grateful Dead: Ladies and Gentlemen, The Grateful Dead

Review by Mark Pringle, Rock's Backpages, 21 April 2001

This week sees the 30th anniversary of the Dead's final run at the New York's Fillmore East. RBP's resident Deadhead Mark Pringle reviews the 4 ...

Television: Gimme Friction: Television at Shepherd’s Bush Empire, London

Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, 21 April 2001

ONE MOMENT, more than any other during this one-off London show on Easter Sunday, summed up the nature of the curious rock beast that is ...

The Ramones: Hey Ho, He’s Gone: Farewell Joey Ramone — 1951-2001

Obituary by Nicky Parade, Rock's Backpages, 21 April 2001

The true heroes of rock and roll are always the freaks and the geeks. Joey Ramone, born Jeffrey Hyman on May 19, 1951, was both. ...

The Ramones: In-a-Gadda-da-Gabba-Gabba-Hey: Remembering the Ramones

Obituary by Phast Phreddie Patterson, Rock's Backpages, 21 April 2001

The former leader of Thee Precisions and editor of Back Door Man pays personal tribute... ...

Mark Eitzel: The Soul Disappears Like A Hairline

Interview by William Higham, Rock's Backpages, 28 April 2001

Mark Eitzel is most famous as the lead singer and songwriter of American Music Club, the influential godfathers of emotive lo-fi. They recorded seven harrowing ...

DIG THIS! May 2001

Review by Various Writers, Rock's Backpages, May 2001

Fave Raves and Rabid Enthusiasms ...

The Black Crowes: Lions (V2)

Review by The Rev. Al Friston, Rock's Backpages, 5 May 2001

FOLKS, I'M AS big an enemy of hoary old "rock" and all its many cousins as most anyone I know. I can’t abide Oasis and ...

We Have the Power: A novice’s passport to the glorious sonic world of Power Pop

Guide by William Higham, Rock's Backpages, 5 May 2001

"Power pop is what we play. What the Small Faces used to play and the kind of pop the Beach Boys played in the days ...

Ryan Adams: Country Music and its Alternatives

Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, 12 May 2001

Ryan Adams was alt.country’s brightest hope – the new Gram Parsons, no less – till his band Whiskeytown unravelled. Then he veered off the No ...

Brian Eno, Roxy Music: Another Glam World: Brian Eno’s Adventures in Roxy Music

Interview by Djuna Parnes, Rock's Backpages, June 2001

DP: What does the phrase "Glam Rock" mean to you? ...

Bryan Ferry, Roxy Music: Another Time, Another Place: Bryan Ferry relives the early Roxy years

Interview by Nicky Parade, Rock's Backpages, June 2001

NP: I know that you didn’t particularly care for the term Glam. Is that because you felt it reduced Roxy to the level of, say, ...

The Doors: Asbolutely Dead: How the Jim Morrison Industry lives on

Essay by The Rev. Al Friston, Rock's Backpages, June 2001

"Well, we’re all in the cosmic movie, you know that! That means the day you die, you gotta watch your whole life recurring eternally forever, ...

DIG THIS! Special: 2001 at the Halfway Mark...

Review by Various Writers, Rock's Backpages, June 2001

Folks, this month we’ve decided to forego our usual playlist format and instead give y’all the lowdown on the discs which have rocked our world ...

Git Down!! The 50 Funkiest Records Ever Made!!

Guide by Various Writers, Rock's Backpages, June 2001

ONCE UPON a time there was Funk. THE Funk. The Rhythm of the One. Now it's all four-on-the-floor hard-house and techy trance, dance-muzik devoid of ...

The White Stripes: De Stijl (Sympathy for the Record Industry)

Review by The Rev. Al Friston, Rock's Backpages, June 2001

JACK AND MEG White are the future of the very industry for which their label espouses such compassion. These Detroit-based guitar/drum siblings strip Jon Spencer-style ...

The White Stripes (2001)

Interview by Ira Robbins, Rock's Backpages, 1 June 2001

Backstage at the Bowery Ballroom, the Stripes talk about their stage show: what they play; what can go wrong; having Ray Davies in the audience; great shows, and disasters; hating corporate sponsorship; being in the sights of major labels; their support acts; Jack's complicated relationship with the blues; his dislike of the rock press; dealing with hecklers; rock in Detroit, and Meg's drum kit!

File format: mp3; file size: 29.7mb, interview length: 30' 57" sound quality: ** (background noise)

Rufus Wainwright: The Backpages Interview: Rufus Wainwright

Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, 2 June 2001

When Rufus Wainwright’s eponymous debut album appeared three years ago, it was as though the golden age of maverick American singer-songwriters had never ended. ...

Black Sabbath, Papa Roach, Slipknot, Tool: They Have Come For Your Parents: Ozzfest 2001, National Bowl, Milton Keynes, 26th May

Live Review by The Rev. Al Friston, Rock's Backpages, 2 June 2001

My my, hey hey, hard rock will never die. OK, it doesn’t scan quite as well as ol’ Neil’s line, but you get my drift. ...

Prefab Sprout: The Backpages Interview: Paddy McAloon

Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, 16 June 2001

Fans of Prefab Sprout’s Paddy McAloon – the Gershwin of Tyneside – are used to defending him against the barbarians of Britrock and other genres ...

John Lee Hooker: Goodbye Boogie Man

Obituary by Cleothus Hardcastle, Rock's Backpages, 23 June 2001

"Woke up this morning..." ...

Blind Boys of Alabama: The Backpages Interview: Clarence Fountain of the Blind Boys of Alabama

Interview by Jason Gross, Rock's Backpages, 23 June 2001

A sixty-plus-year-old gospel group that covers Tom Waits and the Rolling Stones songs for Peter Gabriel’s label? Is it possible? When most groups struggle to ...

Leiber and Stoller: The Backpages Interview: Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller

Interview by Cleothus Hardcastle, Rock's Backpages, 30 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 ...

All Access: Front Row. Backstage. LIVE!

Film/DVD/TV Review by Martin Colyer, Rock's Backpages, July 2001

"ROCK 'N' ROLL! PHEW!" It’s tempting to speculate what Jeff Bridges would say when faced with a B.B. King the size of a house, ...

DIG THIS! July 2001

Review by Various Writers, Rock's Backpages, July 2001

RBP's Raves and Faves ...

Hot House: Headin' South: Muscle Shoals '87

Memoir by Martin Colyer, Rock's Backpages, July 2001

Martin Colyer was a member of Hot House, the Brit deep-soul trio who ventured down to Muscle Shoals in 1987 to cut their first album ...

Beck, Radiohead, Sigur Rós, Supergrass: Radiohead/Beck/Supergrass/Sigur Ros/Humphrey Lyttelton/Rock Of Travolta/Hester Thrale: South Park, Oxford, Saturday 7th July

Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, July 2001

IF IT WASN'T quite the summer garden party it should have been, Radiohead's big homecoming bash at Oxford's South Park was mostly (or at least ...

Marianne Faithfull: The Backpages Interview: Marianne Faithfull

Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, 28 July 2001

ON A SUNNY evening in the fair city of Dublin, Marianne Faithfull pads about her kitchen, barefoot in a denim skirt, preparing a rack of ...

DIG THIS! August 2001

Review by Various Writers, Rock's Backpages, August 2001

RBP's Faves and Raves ...

Skinny Tie Heaven! The RBP Power Pop Top 100, Part One (100-51)

Guide by William Higham, Rock's Backpages, August 2001

Chiming and choogling, winsomely pretty and archly melodic, freshfaced and faux-naif... yep, it's that formidable sub-genre POWER POP, a blissful marriage of melody and energy ...

The Rolling Stones: Imaging The Stones: John Van Hamersveld

Book Excerpt by John Van Hamersveld, Rock's Backpages, 11 August 2001

John Van Hamersveld was one of the key poster artists of the psychedelic rock era in Los Angeles. He was also the man to whom ...

Mercury Rev: Jonathan Donahue's Dark Dream

Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, 11 August 2001

TWO AND A half years ago, American mavericks Mercury Rev thought their career was pretty much over. For the band's two Catskills-based mainstays – singer/guitarist ...

Big Star, Posies, Arnold: Mean Fiddler, London

Live Review by Josh Rinkoff, Rock's Backpages, 25 August 2001

A GOOD FRIEND OF MINE told me about an amazing group called Big Star. He said I should go out and buy a copy of ...

Bob Dylan: Love And Theft (Columbia/Sony)

Review by Martin Colyer, Rock's Backpages, September 2001

BOB DYLAN turned up unannounced at the Mariposa Folk Festival in Toronto in 1972, looking for Leon Redbone. Redbone was a singer and guitarist who ...

DIG THIS! September 2001

Review by Various Writers, Rock's Backpages, September 2001

AT THE RISK OF BANALITY AND REDUNDANCY – not to mention just plain inadequacy – suffice it to say that the apocalyptic horror of 11.09.01 ...

Aimee Mann: Key Largo: A Catchup Chat with Aimee Mann

Interview by Alvaro Costa, Rock's Backpages, September 2001

AC: So you haven't become a "Lady of The Canyon" after all... ...

Skinny Tie Heaven! The RBP Power Pop Top 100, Part Two! (50 - 1)

Guide by William Higham, Rock's Backpages, September 2001

William Higham concludes his epic list by nominating the Top 50 PP classix of all time... ...

Johnny Marr, The Smiths: The Backpages Interview: Johnny Marr

Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, September 2001

Rock's eternal sideman steps into the spotlight with The Healers – and talks to Barney Hoskyns about life as an ex-Smith. ...

Marc Bolan, T. Rex: The Cosmic Dancer: The Short, Brilliant Ride of Marc Bolan

Retrospective by Nicky Parade, Rock's Backpages, September 2001

IT IS LONDON, JANUARY 1970. A new pop decade has begun, and two of its budding stars are huddled together at the Trident recording studio, ...

Morrissey, The Smiths: This Disarming Man: In Defence of Morrissey

Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, September 2001

NOTE: These were liner notes for a Rhino compilation of solo Morrissey songs. The singer rejected them. ...

Nina Simone, Peter Green, Van Morrison: Bishopstock 2001: Nina Simone and Van Morrison

Live Review by The Rev. Al Friston, Rock's Backpages, 1 September 2001

Two cantankerous legends hold court in the Devon sunshine ONE FESTIVAL, THREE DAYS, four major cancellations... and two obstreperous veterans doing their thang on Bank ...

The Black Crowes: The Pride of Lions

Report and Interview by Ernesto De Pascale, Rock's Backpages, 8 September 2001

Their "funky gospel rock" may be out-of-fashion, but the Black Crowes' Chris Robinson is unrepentant. Ernesto de Pascale meets him as he entertains the faithful ...

Ryan Adams Strikes Gold

Interview by The Rev. Al Friston, Rock's Backpages, 22 September 2001

Leaving the South behind for La-la land, Ryan Adams makes a bid for rock stardom. And why shouldn't he, asks the Reverend Al Friston? ...

Phil Spector: Back to Monomania! The Legend of Phil Spector

Retrospective by Ed Doheny, Rock's Backpages, October 2001

THE WORD IS THAT Cameron Crowe and Tom Cruise are set to make a movie about Phillip Harvey Spector, the greatest record producer in the ...

DIG THIS! October 2001

Review by Various Writers, Rock's Backpages, October 2001

RBP's Raves and Faves ...

Aphex Twin: Don't Fear The Aphex: The Weird Genius of Richard James

Profile by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, October 2001

WHEN APHEX TWIN released his groundbreaking Selected Ambient Works 85-92 almost a decade ago, the record arrived as a godsend to anyone who loved Kraftwerk ...

Bob Dylan: Life and Life Only: Bob Dylan at 60

Retrospective by Mick Gold, Rock's Backpages, October 2001

HE'S BEEN RECORDING FOR 40 years, 43 albums, never-ending tours. There’s something Shakespearean about the complexity of his work: so many points of view expressed ...

PJ Harvey: Big Exit: P.J. Harvey's Last Night

Live Review by Djuna Parnes, Rock's Backpages, 6 October 2001

IT IS THE SECOND OF TWO SOLD-NIGHTS in Sarf London, and the last date of a very long tour – much of it spent supporting ...

Spiritualized: Let It Shine Down: Mr Spaceman's Stroboscopic Pomp Gospel

Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, 20 October 2001

Spiritualized: Hammersmith Apollo, 12th October ...

George Harrison 1943-2001

Obituary by Mat Snow, Rock's Backpages, 1 November 2001

"Friendly. Grouchy. Kind. Grudging. Selfless. Resentful. Materialistic. Unworldy." ...

North Mississippi Allstars: The North Mississippi Allstars: Water Rats, London

Review and Interview by Josh Rinkoff, Rock's Backpages, 1 November 2001

SHAKE HANDS WITH SHORTY, the first album from Memphis band the North Mississippi Allstars, was possibly one of the best releases of last year. ...

Dave Matthews Band: The Backpages Interview: Dave Matthews

Interview by Ed Doheny, Rock's Backpages, 10 November 2001

IT'S A MEASURE OF the marked disparity between Dave Matthews' superstar status in America and his almost total obscurity in Europe that the marketing campaign ...

Cher: The Backpages Interview: Cher

Interview by Melody Nelson, Rock's Backpages, 17 November 2001

SHE IS ONE of the supreme pop divas, the half-native-American goddess formerly known as Cherilyn Sarkarsian LaPier. Her rollercoaster ride of a career has taken ...

Ooooh Las Vegas! 37 Stories, and It's All Out There…

Essay by Holly Gleason, Rock's Backpages, 24 November 2001

Country music publicist Holly Gleason spends a night in Sin City – and comes to terms with the celebrity frenzy that is pop's new American ...

The White Stripes: Astoria Theatre, London, 21st November

Live Review by The Rev. Al Friston, Rock's Backpages, 24 November 2001

THE MOTOR CITY IS BURNING – on London's Charing Cross Road. An hilariously heraldic "City Of Detroit" flag – with a Latin inscription translating as ...

Best of the Year: RBP's Albums of 2001

Guide by Various Writers, Rock's Backpages, December 2001

2001 WAS a bewildering mix of Gallic kitsch, hip Americana, Britpop residue and ghetto-fabulous hip hop. Limeys fell in love with the Strokes and the ...

Cry Me A River! The 100 Most Heartbreaking Records of All Time… (50-1)

Guide by Various Writers, Rock's Backpages, December 2001

Last week we gave you the first 50 of our all-time gut-wrenching love songs. This week we complete a ton of tearjerkers with our Top ...

Cry Me A River! The 100 Most Heartbreaking Records of All Time…(100-51)

Guide by Various Writers, Rock's Backpages, December 2001

Hands up who's never been reduced to tears by a love song. There can't be many of you out there. ...

DIG THIS! Fave Raves and Rabid Enthusiasms – RBP's 20 Best of the Month…

Guide by Various Writers, Rock's Backpages, December 2001

1 The Congos: 'Fisherman', from Dread Meets Punk Rockers Uptown (Selected by Don Letts) (Heavenly)Dread Meets Punk Rockers is a fabulous collection of mid-'70s roots ...

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 ...

Lucinda Williams: Essence (Lost Highway)

Review by Martin Colyer, Rock's Backpages, December 2001

HOW D'YOU follow up a Grammy-winning, plaudit-garnering album that took three years and as many producers to make? Well, you go to Minneapolis and get ...

Over to YOU: RBP Readers Vote!!

Guide by Various Writers, Rock's Backpages, December 2001

RBP's TWO-PART epic "Cry Me A River: The 100 Most Heartbreaking Records Ever Made" feature sparked a torrent – well, a stream, anyway – of ...

R.E.M.: REM: Reveal (Warner Bros.)

Review by The Rev. Al Friston, Rock's Backpages, December 2001

REVEAL IS, well, a revelation — especially for anyone as weary of the bogus and posturing Michael Stipe as this writer is. After the band’s ...

Sparklehorse: It’s a Wonderful Life (Parlophone)

Review by Djuna Parnes, Rock's Backpages, December 2001

A GANGLY Virginian whispering fractured Victrola lullabies in the soft falsetto of a geeky angel, Mark Linkous occasionally borders on greatness. The third ’horse album ...

Jim O'Rourke: The Backpages Interview: Jim O’Rourke

Interview by Djuna Parnes, Rock's Backpages, 8 December 2001

IS HE THE Ryan Adams of the alternative-to-the-alternative axis? Or just the Beck of the avant-avant-garde? For ten years, Jim O'Rourke has worked with everyone ...

The Dictators: live at El Sol, Madrid 24th November

Live Review by Lindsay Hutton, Rock's Backpages, 15 December 2001

HEY ANDY SHERNOFF! You tell us that your generation ain't the salvation of this R'n'R beastie but I beg to differ. ...

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 ...

DIG THIS! Fave Raves and Rabid Enthusiasms

Review by Various Writers, Rock's Backpages, January 2002

RBP's 10 Best of the Month of January 2002 ...

The Rolling Stones: 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. ...

The Rolling Stones: 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 ...

The Beach Boys, Van Dyke Parks: Wouldn't It Have Been Nice: An Interview with Van Dyke Parks

Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, January 2002

VAN DYKE PARKS was the intellectual southerner who penned the baroque, cryptic lyrics for 'Surf's Up', 'Heroes and Villains' and other Brian Wilson masterpieces. He ...

The Beach Boys, Brian Wilson: Brian Wilson: Royal Festival Hall, London

Live Review by Tim Clifford, Rock's Backpages, February 2002

NOT ONLY did my spine tingle during the third night of Brian Wilson's sell-out four-night stand in London, but I also cried with joy. The ...

David Holmes: Ocean's 11 original soundtrack (Warner Sunset)

Review by Tim Clifford, Rock's Backpages, February 2002

WHEN IT COMES to the soundtrack too often a compilation of old tunes represents the limit of Hollywood ambitions. Director Steven Soderbergh and DJ David ...

DIG THIS! Fave Raves and Rabid Enthusiasms for February 2002

Review by Various Writers, Rock's Backpages, February 2002

GIG OF THE MONTH ...

John Medeski, North Mississippi Allstars: John Medeski, The North Mississippi Allstars, Robert Randolph: The Word (ropeadope/Rykodisc)

Review by Martin Colyer, Rock's Backpages, February 2002

IF YOU DIG the pulsating sound of a fully revved-up Hammond B3, the headlong rush of a low-down bar-band playing the blues and the close-to-heaven ...

Norah Jones: Come Away With Me (EMI Capitol)

Review by Tim Clifford, Rock's Backpages, February 2002

NORAH JONES may not be up there with Wolf J Flywheel in the memorable moniker stakes, but mark it well. Produced by Arif Mardin, this ...

Quincy Jones: Q - The Autobiography Of… (Hodder & Stoughton)

Review by Tim Clifford, Rock's Backpages, February 2002

WHAT AN extraordinary life the multi-talented Mr Jones has led. He's worked with everyone from Count Basie to Melle Mel, Frank Sinatra to Michael Jackson ...

Sam Moore: Plenty Good Lovin’ (Swing Café)

Review by Tim Clifford, Rock's Backpages, February 2002

TOO OFTEN great "lost" albums went AWOL for a very good reason – they weren’t very good. But 30 seconds into what should have been ...

Various Artists: Good Rockin' Tonight - The Legacy of Sun Records (Sire)

Review by Martin Colyer, Rock's Backpages, February 2002

ANOTHER WEEK, another tribute album, but this one is pretty successful. Beautifully packaged, with only one obvious clunker (Johnny Halliday's 'Blue Suede Shoes'? He don't ...

Marianne Faithfull: Tears Gone By: the Rebirth of Marianne Faithfull

Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, 16 February 2002

The former Sister Morphine talks about her remarkable new album Kissin Time. ...

Rufus Wainwright: Acting Casanova: Rufus Wainwright at the Town Hall, New York City

Live Review by Kandia Crazy Horse, Rock's Backpages, 23 February 2002

LIKE MEMPHIS crooner Al Green before him, Rufus Wainwright is L.O.V.E. To see him in concert, as we did last week in Manhattan, is to ...

DIG THIS! Fave Raves and Rabid Enthusiasms for March 2002

Review by Various Writers, Rock's Backpages, March 2002

ALBUMS OF THE MONTH ...

KISS: Gene Simmons: Kiss and Make-up - The Autobiography of Gene Simmons (Century)

Review by Tim Clifford, Rock's Backpages, March 2002

THEY WANTED to dress like comic-book superheroes and write football-terrace anthems like Slade. Out of such dumb genius, vast fortunes are made. Kiss were also ...

Indigo Girls: Become You (Epic)

Review by Tim Clifford, Rock's Backpages, March 2002

STEPPING BACK from the rockier edge of their last two albums, the Indigo Girls have opted for a rootsier feel on their latest offering. It’s ...

N.E.R.D.: N*E*R*D*: In Search Of… (Virgin)

Review by Josh Rinkoff, Rock's Backpages, March 2002

MY JOURNEY to this album started about a year ago, when I realised that my knowledge of hip-hop barely extended beyond Snow and Vanilla Ice. ...

Average White Band, Sweet: Unmasked: "Mick Tucker" and Other Rock Impostors

Report by Chris Charlesworth, Rock's Backpages, March 2002

I NEVER knew Mick Tucker, Sweet’s drummer, who died last week, but I once met a man who impersonated him, or at least pretended he ...

Almost Unknown: How Lloyd Cole Knew My Father, the British counterpart to Almost Famous, came into being

Report by David Quantick, Rock's Backpages, 9 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 ...

Jon Spencer Blues Explosion: The Backpages Interview: Jon Spencer

Interview by The Rev. Al Friston, Rock's Backpages, 9 March 2002

The world's most incendiary blues-punk noisemeisters return this month with a full-on, balls-out rock'n'roll album. ...

Richard Hell: The Backpages Interview: Richard Hell

Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, 16 March 2002

The original Bowery ripped-shirt nihilist – born plain Richard Meyers in Kentucky – is back with two collections of odds'n'ends: the two-CD Time (Matador) and ...

About a Bloke: The 10 Tracks Nick Hornby Couldn't Live Without

Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Mark Pringle, Rock's Backpages, 29 March 2002

WELCOME TO a new if occasional treat: AURAL SURVIVAL, a sit-down with a much-loved CELEBRITY FAN in order to ascertain the 10 recorded performances he ...

Bob Dylan, Joan Baez: David Hajdu: Positively Fourth Street (Bloomsbury)

Review by Tim Clifford, Rock's Backpages, April 2002

NOW OUT in paperback, this engrossing account of the intertwined lives of Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Mimi Baez Fariña and Richard Fariña from the late ...

Dig This! Fave Raves and Rabid Enthusiasms for April 2002

Review by Various Writers, Rock's Backpages, April 2002

ALBUM OF THE MONTH! ...

Neil Young: Are You Passionate? (Reprise)

Review by Bud Scoppa, Rock's Backpages, April 2002

NEIL YOUNG'S new studio opus opens with a quintessentially sultry Stax/Volt groove, courtesy of the Booker T. & the MGs rhythm section, over which Young’s ...

The Be Good Tanyas: Borderline, London, 19th March

Live Review by Tim Clifford, Rock's Backpages, April 2002

TO DISPLAY delight at making music might sound an obvious and easy thing to do. This show by the Canadian trio of Frazey Ford, Samantha ...

Various Artists: Electric (Telstar)

Review by Tim Clifford, Rock's Backpages, April 2002

THE OLDEST track on this 34-track compilation dates from 1974 – and Sparks’ 'This Town Ain’t Big Enough For The Both of Us' still sounds ...

Give Up The Day Job!: Scribes turned Stars, Poachers Turned Gamekeepers!

Guide by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, 12 April 2002

This week, a propos of nothing in particular – the new Pet Shop Boys album, perhaps? – we consider the careers of the many ...

Tom Waits: The Backpages Interview: Tom Waits

Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, 26 April 2002

Thomas Alan Waits is about to release two albums simultaneously – Alice and Blood Money. In this previously unpublished interview from the spring of 1985, ...

The Band: The Night They Put The Band To Rest: The Last Waltz Revisited

Review by The Rev. Al Friston, Rock's Backpages, 26 April 2002

"THE LAST WALTZ" was The Band's star-studded swansong, staged on Thanksgiving Day, 1976. Martin Scorsese made a timeless rockumentary about it, inspiring a hundred alt.roots-rockers ...

Joy Division: 24 Hour Party People: directed by Michael Winterbottom

Review by Djuna Parnes, Rock's Backpages, May 2002

MUCH TO MY surprise, this self-serving cinematic essay about and around Anthony H. Wilson of Factory and Haçienda fame is a resounding success. It's extremely ...

Aretha Franklin: The Queen's Greatest Tracks

Review by Martin Colyer, Barney Hoskyns, Mark Pringle, Rock's Backpages, May 2002

"THEY USED to call me a jazz singer," Aretha told Val Wilmer in 1968. "Now I think what I sing is closer to R&B and ...

David Bowie: The Dame's New Clothes

Essay by Nicky Parade, Rock's Backpages, May 2002

How David Bowie became Mr. Respectable ...

David Bowie: How I alienated David Bowie!

Comment by John Mendelsohn, Rock's Backpages, May 2002

IN THE AUTUMN of 2000, I had gone from being a very well paid Web designer to being an out-of-work former Web designer. ...

John Hammond and his Wicked Grin Band: The Borderline, London, 27th April

Live Review by Tim Clifford, Rock's Backpages, May 2002

BY INJECTING a dose of blues into a collection of Tom Waits tunes, John Hammond created his most satisfying and critically acclaimed album in years, ...

Bob Dylan: Revisiting Dylan's Highway

Book Review by Tim Clifford, Rock's Backpages, May 2002

Down the Highway: The Life of Bob Dylan (Black Swan)Isis: A Bob Dylan Anthology, edited by Derek Barker (Helter Skelter) ...

The Yeah Yeah Yeahs: The Garage, London, 28th April

Live Review by The Rev. Al Friston, Rock's Backpages, May 2002

I HAVE seen rock and roll future and it goes YEAH YEAH YEAH!!! Or, more cautiously: I have mostly been blown away by the latest ...

Wishbone Ash: A Tribute to Heroes! Ashbone U Wish do Wishbone Ash

Live Review by John Mendelssohn, Rock's Backpages, 10 May 2002

I WILL NOT feign objectivity. When Wishbone Ash dissolved in 1977 because of the usual "creative differences" (Nigel and Steve wanted to be creative, while ...

Fontella Bass: The Backpages Interview: Fontella Bass

Interview by Ernesto De Pascale, Rock's Backpages, 10 May 2002

With a series of gospel albums released in the last few years, Fontella 'Rescue Me' Bass is more alive than ever. Now she's on her ...

Bob Dylan: Me and Lozza… and Bob too!

Live Review by Richard English, Rock's Backpages, 17 May 2002

Bob Dylan: Brighton Entertainment Centre 4th May LOZZA AND I are in the Standing Area in front of the Brighton Conference Centre ...

Biggie and Tupac: directed by Nick Broomfield

Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, June 2002

WHATEVER your take on Broomfield and his bumbling public school fecklessness, there's no denying the bloke makes riveting documentaries. Following up the chilling Kurt and ...

Dig This! Fave Raves and Rabid Enthusiasms for June 2002

Review by Various Writers, Rock's Backpages, June 2002

GIG O' THE MONTH! ...

Gary Wilson: You Think You Really Know Me (Motel Records)

Review by Yancey Strickler, Rock's Backpages, June 2002

ROUGHLY 3,000 people named Gary Wilson currently live in the United States. Gary Wilson coaches the University of Minnesota's track team. Gary Wilson breeds bearded ...

Neil Young: Brixton Academy, London, 21st May

Live Review by Tim Clifford, Rock's Backpages, June 2002

NEIL YOUNG'S in a pretty unassailable position these days: revered by everyone from fresh-faced teens to grizzled pensioners of the Woodstock generation, and free to ...

Solomon Burke: An interview with Joe Henry

Interview by Dave Schulps, Rock's Backpages, June 2002

This brief interview with Joe Henry was conducted on the "red carpet" arrival line at the ASCAP pop music awards in May. Henry received an ...

Solomon Burke: The Bishop of Soul returns

Special Feature by Dave Schulps, Rock's Backpages, June 2002

MICK JAGGER may have insisted once upon a time that "it’s the singer not the song," but that doesn’t necessarily mean that even the greatest ...

Allman Brothers Band: Song O' The South: How the Allman Brothers made a Redneck Negress out of me

Special Feature by Kandia Crazy Horse, Rock's Backpages, June 2002

AN UNORTHODOX daughter of Dixie, born in the year of their classic Fillmore East live album, my life truly began when I heard the exotic, ...

The Meeting of the ‘Twain: Monterey Pop and the Great California Divide

Special Feature by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, June 2002

"TRAVELING UP the Coast from the ruins of the Sunset Strip to the Haight is a Dante-esque ascent," New Yorker Richard Goldstein could write of ...

Sons of the Pioneers: The Sons of the Pioneers: The Ultimate Collection (Hip-O/MCA Nashville)

Review by Jason Gross, Rock's Backpages, June 2002

IN THE WAKE of the success of the Coen Brothers'/T-Bone Burnette's O Brother, Where Art Thou, you'd surely hope that some people would be curious ...

Like Rock Never Happened: Pop Idols for Tibet... or Greenpeace... or whatever

Comment by John Mendelsohn, Rock's Backpages, 14 June 2002

WELL, I HOPE everybody's satisfied. Back in the early '80s (you can look it up!), I was railing in Creem about the institutionalisation of surliness ...

Lenny Kravitz: A Man Called Sex

Live Review by Richard English, Rock's Backpages, 28 June 2002

Lenny Kravitz: Wembley Arena, 17th June ...

John Lennon: How I Almost Met the Late John Lennon

Memoir by John Mendelsohn, Rock's Backpages, 28 June 2002

LEGEND AND VH1 have it that when Elton John made his Los Angeles debut at the Troubadour in August 1970, he blew everyone away, and ...

David Bowie: Royal Festival Hall, London, 29th June

Live Review by William Higham, Rock's Backpages, July 2002

IT SEEMS LIKE some of the old guard are rediscovering their form over the last eighteen months: Brian Wilson, Bryan Ferry, Roger Waters and now ...

David Byrne: Leicester De Montfort Hall, 7th July

Live Review by Andy Farquarson, Rock's Backpages, July 2002

AN INCONGRUOUSLY large stage dominates the tiny park which is the setting for a one-day festival at Leicester's De Montfort Hall. As two risers are ...

DIG THIS! Fave Raves and Rabid Enthusiasms for July 2002

Review by Various Writers, Rock's Backpages, July 2002

GIGS O' THE MONTH! ...

Radiohead: Live in Porto

Live Review by Alvaro Costa, Rock's Backpages, July 2002

EVERYTHING WAS in its right place during Radiohead's intense Portuguese tour: sunny skies, five sold-out nights in Porto and Lisbon Coliseums, an adoring and ...

John Entwistle, The Who: Thunderfingers' Last Stand: Remembering John Entwistle

Memoir by Keith Altham, Rock's Backpages, 5 July 2002

THE NEWS OF John Entwistle's death reached me by email from LA via Pete Townshend's PA Nicola Joss in Las Vegas on Thursday night. ...

Elvis Presley: Memphis: Visions of a Bluff City

Special Feature by Joss Hutton, Rock's Backpages, August 2002

Click here to see Joss Hutton's evocative images of Memphis, 25 years after Elvis's death ...

The Birthday Party, The Boys Next Door, Nick Cave: Nick Cave: A Boy Next Door

Retrospective and Interview by Michel Faber, Rock's Backpages, August 2002

Novelist Michel Faber remembers the Young Nick Cave. ...

Rory Gallagher: When The Good Guys Die: Remembering Rory Gallagher

Memoir by Harry Doherty, Rock's Backpages, August 2002

I REMEMBER IT WELL, the day Rory Gallagher died. It was brought back to me the other week when news of George Best and his ...

DIG THIS! Fave Raves and Rabid Enthusiasms for September 2002

Review by Various Writers, Rock's Backpages, September 2002

ALBUM O' THE MONTH! ...

Queens of the Stone Age: Songs For The Deaf (Polydor)

Review by The Rev. Al Friston, Rock's Backpages, September 2002

ONCE IN A BLUE MOON an album happens along that relights your fire – that brings moribund rock back to life. The odd quasi-supergroup that ...

Ray Charles: Thanks for Bringing Love Around Again (Crossover)

Review by Michael Lydon, Rock's Backpages, September 2002

RAY CHARLES' NEW CD, Thanks for Bringing Love Around Again – his first since Strong Love Affair in 1995 – opens with 'What'd I Say', ...

Muddy Waters: Robert Gordon: Can't Be Satisfied: The Life and Times of Muddy Waters (Jonathan Cape)

Review by Tim Clifford, Rock's Backpages, September 2002

MUDDY WATERS STANDING at a mike hollering "I’m a man", giving those three simple words a world of meaning – invitation, warning, primal statement and ...

Ron Sexsmith: Cobblestone Runway (Nettwerk America)

Review by Djuna Parnes, Rock's Backpages, September 2002

DISMAYINGLY DROPPED by Capitol, the moon-faced Canadian troubadour has fetched up on one of those last-chance-saloon indies, hopefully not an indication that his career's in ...

Soft Cell: Cruelty Without Beauty (Cooking Vinyl)

Review by Djuna Parnes, Rock's Backpages, September 2002

THE GOD-UNCLES of electroclash make a long-overdue comeback with a fascinatingly reflective album – "We've gotta keep dancing through the years/We've gotta keep smiling through ...

Alison Krauss: Let Me Touch You For A While: Alison Krauss Creates Intimacy Amongst the Disenfranchised

Essay by Holly Gleason, Rock's Backpages, 16 September 2002

THERE IT WAS ONE DAY – propped against my doorway in West Hollywood – a plain brown cardboard box like so many others. Anonymous. Almost ...

Erma Franklin: A Tribute to Erma Franklin

Obituary by David Nathan, Rock's Backpages, October 2002

I DID THE FIRST of my two interviews with Erma Franklin and although it’s been twenty-nine years since, I can remember with vivid detail. ...

Aerosmith: Starwood Amphitheatre, Tennessee

Live Review by Holly Gleason, Rock's Backpages, October 2002

"EVERY DAY, I LOOK in the mirror/ All these lines in my face gettin' clearer/ The past is gone..." It is a benediction, an acceptance, ...

DIG THIS! Fave Raves and Rabid Enthusiasms for October 2002

Review by Various Writers, Rock's Backpages, October 2002

ALBUMS O' THE MONTH! ...

David Bowie: Fifty Ways To Love Your Bowie: Half a Ton of Fave Daves

Guide by William Higham, Rock's Backpages, October 2002

WITH THE Bard of Beckenham on a critical high right now (and yes, new album Heathen IS his best in years), it seems an opportune ...

The Datsuns: The Big Noise from Down Under: The Datsuns

Interview by Joss Hutton, Rock's Backpages, October 2002

THE UK SEEMS to be going underground rock ‘n’ roll ker-razy at the moment, what with the success of The White Stripes and The Hives, ...

Warren Zevon: The French Inhaler Hastens Down The Wind: Warren Zevon Learns To Let Go

Essay by Holly Gleason, Rock's Backpages, October 2002

THERE'S THAT THING called friend-of-a-friend, where you're "in" even before you know about the other person. And so it was with Warren Zevon, produced by ...

MC5: MC5 - A True Testimonal (Future/Now Films)

Review by Lindsay Hutton, Rock's Backpages, November 2002

SEVEN YEARS in the making, this is a multi-dimensional boot up the jacksy to the increasing legion of lazy tosspots that compares anything with a ...

DIG THIS! Fave Raves and Rabid Enthusiasms for November 2002

Review by Various Writers, Rock's Backpages, November 2002

ALBUM OF THE MONTH ...

Steve Earle: Lauren St John: Hardcore Troubadour: the Life and Near Death of Steve Earle (Fourth Estate)

Review by Tim Clifford, Rock's Backpages, November 2002

STEVE EARLE’S life is a gift for biographers, a rock'n'roll fuck-up who came back from the dead with his intelligence and integrity intact. Most ...

Paul Du Noyer : Liverpool - Wondrous Place (Virgin Books)

Review by Tim Clifford, Rock's Backpages, November 2002

THE FORMER EDITOR of Q magazine 's history of music in Liverpool hangs his tale on three venues – the Cavern, Eric's and Cream. In ...

Pop and the Press

Book Review by Simon Warner, Rock's Backpages, November 2002

Simon Warner peruses a fresh academic take on rock journalism ...

Richard Harris: The Grim Reporter

Obituary by Phast Phreddie Patterson, Rock's Backpages, November 2002

Phast Phreddie Patterson on those gone but not forgotten. ...

Little Johnny Taylor, Tim Rose: The Grim Reporter November 2002

Obituary by Phast Phreddie Patterson, Rock's Backpages, November 2002

Phast Phreddie Patterson on those gone but not forgotten ...

Phil Ochs: There But for Phil

Memoir by Chris Charlesworth, Rock's Backpages, November 2002

BACK IN AUGUST 1973, Melody Maker sent me to Los Angeles to become their US correspondent, the third in line after Roy Hollingworth and Michael ...

Birthdays of the Cool?

Essay by Simon Warner, Rock's Backpages, December 2002

Simon Warner on Dazed & Confused at 10 – and The Wire at 20! ...

Queens Of The Stone Age: Cometh the Age, Cometh l’Homme

Interview by Alvaro Costa, Rock's Backpages, December 2002

To pay homage to Songs For The Deaf, RBP’s Album Of The Year, Alvaro Costa is granted an audience with the chief Queen of the ...

DIG THIS! Fave Raves and Rabid Enthusiasms for December, and the best of 2002!

Review by Various Writers, Rock's Backpages, December 2002

ROCK DOC OF THE MONTH! ...

Joe Strummer 1952-2002

Obituary by Phast Phreddie Patterson, Holly Gleason, Rock's Backpages, December 2002

PHAST PHREDDIE PATTERSON and HOLLY GLEASON pay tribute ...

Nirvana: Kurt’s Chronicler: An Chat With Charles R. Cross

Interview by Alvaro Costa, Rock's Backpages, December 2002

Alvaro Costa checks in with the author of the acclaimed Heavier Than Heaven. ...

The Clovers, The Coasters, Lonnie Donegan, Run-DMC: The Grim Reporter December 2002

Obituary by Phast Phreddie Patterson, Rock's Backpages, December 2002

Phast Phreddie Patterson on those gone but not forgotten ...

Can's Irmin Schmidt (2003)

Interview by Andy Gill, Rock's Backpages, 2003

The Can keyboard player on the recording of Future Days: The mood of the band at the time; the difference between singers Malcolm Mooney and Damo Suzuki; recording ‘Bel Air Suite’, and the meaning of the cover artwork, the I-Ching hexagram for Ting (The Cauldron).

File format: mp3; file size: 13mb, interview length: 13' 31" sound quality: * (phoner)

Joe Strummer, The Lovin' Spoonful, Stereolab: The Grim Reporter January 2003

Obituary by Phast Phreddie Patterson, Rock's Backpages, January 2003

Phast Phreddie Patterson on those gone but not forgotten ...

Jane Birkin, Serge Gainsbourg: Jane Birkin: Je T’Aime… Moi Aussi!

Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, 24 January 2003

FOR THOSE of you who missed it, the general premise of the current TV ad for Kronenberg 1664 lager is as follows: If Britain were ...

DIG THIS! Fave Raves and Rabid Enthusiasms for February 2003

Review by Various Writers, Rock's Backpages, February 2003

RADIO SHOW OF THE MONTH ...

Hold Your Head Up: In Praise of Bi-Level Rock!

Comment by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, February 2003

Barney Hoskyns, co-author of The Mullet: Hairstyle of the Gods, hails Mullet Rocks!, a new compilation of bodacious bi-level hard rockers. Below we feature cool ...

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 ...

Manuel Galbán, Ry Cooder: 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 ...

The Bee Gees, T. Rex: The Grim Reporter February 2003

Obituary by Phast Phreddie Patterson, Rock's Backpages, February 2003

Phast Phreddie Patterson on those gone but not forgotten ...

Adam Faith 1940-2003

Obituary by Phast Phreddie Patterson, Rock's Backpages, March 2003

BRITISH POP STAR and actor Adam Faith (Terrence Nelhams, 62) died of a heart attack on March 8 in Stoke-on-Trent, England, where he was appearing ...

Jimmy Page, Led Zeppelin: An Interview with Jimmy Page

Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, March 2003

BH: About ten years ago you talked about the footage that's in the DVD. Robert said he didn't want to go back there while you ...

Calexico: Bowery Ballroom, New York City

Live Review by Kandia Crazy Horse, Rock's Backpages, March 2003

IN MY OLD AGE, I am trying to get hip. So I have temporarily relinquished my inner redneck. Left that twang-and-trash loving gal on the ...

Chuck Barris: 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 1962. ...

Hank Ballard and the Midnighters: Hank Ballard 1927-2003

Obituary by Phast Phreddie Patterson, Rock's Backpages, March 2003

RHYTHM & BLUES singer Hank Ballard (76) died of throat cancer on March 2 at his home in Los Angeles. His chief claim to ...

Todd Rundgren: He Put A Spell On Me: The True Stardom of Todd Rundgren

Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, March 2003

It is 30 years since TODD RUNDGREN released the spellbinding A Wizard, A True Star. BARNEY HOSKYNS makes a case for it as The Best ...

Jesse Malin: Troubadour, Los Angeles, March 6th

Live Review by Kandia Crazy Horse, Rock's Backpages, March 2003

GOTHAM HAS BEEN re-christened New Rock City due to its current vogue of garage rock acts and assorted weirdo ensembles straight outta Brooklyn, to incongruously ...

Sid Vicious: John Mendelsohn catches up with the late Sid Vicious

Interview by John Mendelsohn, Rock's Backpages, March 2003

TWENTY-FIVE YEARS after the fact, it appears less and less likely that Elvis's death was a hoax. Not so that of punk rock icon Sid ...

Othar Turner 1907-2003

Obituary by Phast Phreddie Patterson, Rock's Backpages, March 2003

BAMBOO CANE FIFE player and drummer Othar Turner (94) died of a heart condition on February 27 at one of his daughters’ home in Gravel ...

Rock's Future Pages

Overview by Simon Warner, Rock's Backpages, March 2003

Why new music titles keep coming despite uncertain times. ...

Adam Faith: The Chancer

Obituary by Keith Altham, Rock's Backpages, March 2003

Keith Altham remembers his good friend – not to mention his teen idol – Adam Faith. ...

Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers: The Grim Reporter March 2003

Obituary by Phast Phreddie Patterson, Rock's Backpages, March 2003

Phast Phreddie Patterson on those gone but not forgotten ...

Har Mar Superstar, The Kills, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs: Yeah Yeah Yeahs/The Kills/Har Mar Superstar: Astoria, London March 3rd

Live Review by Josh Rinkoff, Rock's Backpages, March 2003

Last week I went to the Astoria to see hip-pop miracle-workers-cum-funkmeisters N*E*R*D get down with their bad selves. This week is the turn of New ...

DIG THIS! Fave Raves and Rabid Enthusiasms for April 2003

Review by Various Writers, Rock's Backpages, April 2003

GIG OF THE MONTH ...

Earl King, 1934-2003

Obituary by Phast Phreddie Patterson, Rock's Backpages, April 2003

NEW ORLEANS bluesman Earl King (69) died from diabetes related complications on April 17 at St. Charles General Hospital in New Orleans. He was a ...

Edwin Starr 1942-2003

Obituary by Phast Phreddie Patterson, Rock's Backpages, April 2003

SOUL SINGER Edwin Starr (61) died of a heart attack at his home in central England on April 2. Edwin Starr was one of Soul ...

Felice and Boudleaux Bryant: 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 ...

Homer Banks 1941-2003

Obituary by Phast Phreddie Patterson, Rock's Backpages, April 2003

SOUL SINGER and songwriter Homer Banks (61) died of cancer in Memphis on April 4. Banks achieved most of his fame from writing songs ...

Little Eva 1943-2003

Obituary by Phast Phreddie Patterson, Rock's Backpages, April 2003

SINGER LITTLE EVA (59) died of cervical cancer at a hospital in Kinston, North Carolina on April 10. She was born Eva Narcissus Boyd on ...

Nina Simone 1933-2003

Obituary by David Nathan, Rock's Backpages, April 2003

FOR PEOPLE THE world over, the passing of the great, legendary Dr. Nina Simone on April 20, 2003 will be met with much sadness. ...

Now Ain't The Time For Your Tears

Comment by Mick Farren, Rock's Backpages, April 2003

Where are the dissident voices in Bush's gung-ho Amerika? MICK FARREN writes in fury not sorrow. ...

The Beatles, Paul McCartney: Paul McCartney: Back In The World, Earls Court, London April 21st

Live Review by Richard English, Rock's Backpages, April 2003

ALL MY LIFE I’d wanted to see the Beatles. My sister saw them at Hammersmith in the ‘60s and screamed. This was my ...

Goldfrapp: Popping The Cherry: Goldfrapp's Glam Adventure

Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, April 2003

AFTER THE post-triphop, Shirley-Bassey-meets-Stereolab masterpiece that was 2001's Felt Mountain, Alison Goldfrapp and Will Gregory have bravely opted to change direction. Their new single 'Train', ...

Teddy Edwards 1924-2003

Obituary by Phast Phreddie Patterson, Rock's Backpages, April 2003

BEBOP SAXOPHONIST Teddy Edwards (78) died of prostate cancer on April 20 in Los Angeles. During the '40s, he was a top draw on ...

Adam Faith, Hank Ballard and the Midnighters: The Grim Reporter April 2003

Obituary by Phast Phreddie Patterson, Rock's Backpages, April 2003

Phast Phreddie Patterson on those gone but not forgotten ...

Led Zeppelin: All Loud On The Western Front: How Zep Conquered The World

Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, May 2003

With the release of the sensational DVD and the fearsome live How The West Was Won, LED ZEPPELIN are back in our midst as purveyors ...

Don & Dewey: Dewey Terry 1937-2003

Obituary by Phast Phreddie Patterson, Rock's Backpages, May 2003

ROCK’N’ROLL PIONEER Dewey Terry (65) died of a brain tumor on May 11 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California. He had been ...

DIG THIS! Fave Raves and Rabid Enthusiasms for May 2003

Review by Various Writers, Rock's Backpages, May 2003

SOUNDTRACK OF THE MONTH ...

Jimi Hendrix, Noel Redding: He Don't Live Today (Sorry): My Noel Redding Experience

Memoir by Gary Pig Gold, Rock's Backpages, May 2003

LET ME TELL YOU: The very first "real" concert I was ever allowed to attend as a wee Canadian tyke just so happened to be ...

Hot Hot Heat: ULU, London

Live Review by William Higham, Rock's Backpages, May 2003

FOR AN OLD XTC fan it doesn't get any better than this (well, not until Andy Partridge loses his stage fright anyway). And when I ...

June Carter Cash 1929-2003

Obituary by Phast Phreddie Patterson, Rock's Backpages, May 2003

COUNTRY SINGER June Carter Cash (73) died in Nashville on May 15 of complications from heart surgery. She was the daughter of country legend ...

Lucinda Williams: Shepherd's Bush Empire, London

Live Review by Martin Colyer, Rock's Backpages, May 2003

I LAST SAW Lucinda Williams live about ten years ago when she supported Mary Chapin Carpenter in London – not an auspicious show. She seemed ...

Mars' Sumner Crane 1946-2003

Obituary by Phast Phreddie Patterson, Rock's Backpages, May 2003

NEW YORK ART rocker Sumner Crane (56) died of lymphoma at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Manhattan on April 14. He was a member the ...

Jimi Hendrix, Noel Redding: Noel Redding 1945-2003

Obituary by Phast Phreddie Patterson, Rock's Backpages, May 2003

NOEL REDDING (57) was found dead at his home in Clonakity, Ireland on May 11. No cause of death has been reported. He ...

Elbow, Radiohead: Radiohead: Hail To The Thief (Parlophone); Elbow: Cast Of Thousands (V2)

Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, May 2003

AS YOU'LL KNOW by now, rock's favourite Oxonians have hauled their guitars out of the deep freeze and put the Warp(ed) electronica of Kid A ...

Jimi Hendrix, Noel Redding: The Angels Did Sing: Noel Redding 1945-2003

Memoir by Keith Altham, Rock's Backpages, May 2003

MY FIRST TRIP to the U.S. for the New Musical Express was with The Jimi Hendrix Experience for the Monterey Festival. So the sad death ...

Earl King, Edwin Starr, Homer Banks, Little Eva, Nina Simone: The Grim Reporter May 2003

Obituary by Phast Phreddie Patterson, Rock's Backpages, May 2003

Phast Phreddie Patterson on those gone but not forgotten ...

Bob Marley & the Wailers: The Night Bob Marley Didn't Play the Bouncing Ball

Memoir by Penny Reel, Rock's Backpages, May 2003

IT IS 1973, around the time of the release of Catch A Fire, that Bob Marley And The Wailers are booked to play at Admiral ...

Hail, Hail, Rock'n'Roll Writing!

Comment by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, 9 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 ...

The Thrills: Can Buy The Thrills!

Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, June 2003

IRISH BOYS HAVE always gone off to the promised land in search of girls and gold, but Dublin's Thrills did more than that. They spent ...

Grandaddy: Sumday (V2)

Review by Bud Scoppa, Rock's Backpages, June 2003

IN JASON LYTLE’S WORLD – one that should be readily recognisable to the rest of us in this troubling decade – things are breaking down, ...

Radiohead: Hail to the Thief (Capitol)

Review by Bud Scoppa, Rock's Backpages, June 2003

"IS THAT BACKWARDS?" a colleague asked of the music I was playing as he passed by my office. "That's not backwards," I replied; "it's Radiohead." ...

Steely Dan: The Backpages Interview: Steely Dan

Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, June 2003

This week sees the release of Everything Must Go, the follow-up to Steely Dan's Grammy-grabbing Two Against Nature. BARNEY HOSKYNS discusses war, economics and online ...

Don & Dewey, June Carter Cash, Mars, Noel Redding: The Grim Reporter

Obituary by Phast Phreddie Patterson, Rock's Backpages, June 2003

Phast Phreddie Patterson on those gone but not forgotten ...

Super Furry Animals: Power To The Furries! Gruff Rhys Speaks

Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, July 2003

Welsh wunderkinder the Super Furry Animals return this week with the fabulous Phantom Power. Cardiff’s furriest bard talks to Barney Hoskyns about love, war and ...

The Animals: Grim Reporter - July 2003

Obituary by Phast Phreddie Patterson, Rock's Backpages, July 2003

Phast Phreddie Patterson on those gone but not forgotten ...

Elbow: Given The Elbow: The Confessions Of Guy Garvey

Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, August 2003

Two years ago, Elbow released Asleep In The Back, an intense suite of prog-inflected songs that stands as one of the finest albums ever to ...

Victoria Beckham: Keepin’ It Real

Review by John Mendelsohn, Rock's Backpages, August 2003

YOU COULD HARDLY blame the ridicule-mongers for nearly swooning with delight a couple of months ago when Victoria Beckham revealed that she would soon begin ...

Rufus Wainwright: 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 ...

Dig This! Fave Raves and Rabid Enthusiasms for September 2003

Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, September 2003

Stuff that’s floating Barney Hoskyns’ boat this month... ...

Randy Newman: 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 ...

Good Charlotte: American Candyass, or: Why Good Charlotte Must Die

Comment by Metal Mike Saunders, Rock's Backpages, 22 September 2003

ARE YOU PEOPLE not understanding? Doesn't anyone learn anything from the lessons of the past? The tail end of poof metal's monstrous commercial ...

Revelations In The Head: Ian MacDonald 1948-2003

Obituary by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, 24 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 ...

Led Zeppelin, Robert Plant: Stairway to Snowdonia: Rapping with Robert Plant

Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, October 2003

For Robert Plant, life after Led Zeppelin has been anything but predictable. Resisting attempts to coast on the Zep legend, Percy has trodden his own ...

Grand Wizard Theodore: Yes Yes Y'all and it don't stop, to the beat y'all and it don't stop

Comment by Mark Pringle, Rock's Backpages, October 2003

RBP's very own Mark Pringle got invited to curate the inaugural exhibition – Yes Yes Y'all: hip hop from scratch – at the Hospital in ...

David Olney: Borderline, London

Live Review by Tim Clifford, Rock's Backpages, 1 October 2003

THE QUALITY OF his writing has earned him namechecks from the late Townes Van Zandt and Steve Earle, and the likes of Emmylou Harris and ...

Gathering Moss: The Fossilisation of Rolling Stone

Comment by Tim Footman, Rock's Backpages, November 2003

BILLY JOEL? Billy fucking Joel??? ...

Headless Heroes Of The Apocalypse (Slight Return), Part One

Essay by Kandia Crazy Horse, Rock's Backpages, November 2003

Welcome to Rock City, where voodoo economics and soul providers shadowbox at the Crossroads. Kandia Crazy Horse on The Band, Big Star and white boys ...

Headless Heroes of the Apocalypse Pt 2

Essay by Kandia Crazy Horse, Rock's Backpages, November 2003

KANDIA CRAZY HORSE continues her scintillating sermon on the curious relationship between White Boys and Black Soul. This week: from Traffic thru’ Eddie Hinton on ...

N.E.R.D., Justin Timberlake: Justin Timberlake joins N.E.R.D.: Brixton Academy, London

Live Review by Josh Rinkoff, Rock's Backpages, November 2003

WHITE, BLACK, Jewish, Muslim. Butcher, baker, candlestick maker. They are all here tonight. Where I hear you ask? Babylon? Brent Cross? No. Tonight I ...

Kalifornia Über Alles

Report by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, November 2003

On wildfires, Schwarzenegger and the suicide of a troubled genius – Barney Hoskyns’ diary of a month in Hollywood Babylon. ...

Johnny Dowd: The Spitz, London

Live Review by Tim Clifford, Rock's Backpages, 13 November 2003

BECAUSE THEY SHARE a dark gothic sensibility and a preoccupation with biblical notions of sin, Johnny Dowd is often bracketed with Nick Cave. ...

Keith Richards, The Rolling Stones: And Sitteth At The Right Hand Of God…

Retrospective by Jonh Ingham, Rock's Backpages, December 2003

Jonh Ingham recalls a night in the presence of Keith Richards, April 1976. ...

Dig This! Barney Hoskyns fillets his Fave Raves and Rabid Enthusiasms for December 2003

Guide by Various Writers, Rock's Backpages, December 2003

1 Basement Jaxx feat. Siouxsie Sioux: ‘Cish Cash’, from Kish Kash (XL Recordings)The most consistently playful – no, make that joyful – duo in electronic ...

Humble Pie, Steve Marriott: Very ‘Eavy: Remembering Steve Marriott and 'Umble Pie

Retrospective by Paul Gorman, Rock's Backpages, December 2003

IT SEEMS inconceivable now, but Humble Pie were once very, very big, albeit for a short while. In recent years – post-Loaded, post-Britpop, post-lad, post-PC ...

An Interview with Dick Clark

Interview by Harvey Kubernik, Rock's Backpages, 2004

DICK CLARK IS ONE of the most recognized personalities in entertainment in America: He hosts two nationally syndicated radio shows ("Rock, Roll and Remember" ...

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, ...

Isaac Hayes: Hot Buttered Soul

Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, 2004

BY 1969 BLACK artists were following rock's lead and recording very long tracks. At the forefront of such experimentation was big bad Isaac Hayes, co-author ...

Dig This!

Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, January 2004

Barney Hoskyns takes stock of 2003 – from André 3000 to Warren Zevon ...

Joni Mitchell: Queen Joni Approximately

Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, January 2004

Raised in Canada, Joni Mitchell found her way to California in 1968. Barney Hoskyns on the crowning of a canyon princess. ...

The Beach Boys, Brian Wilson: Brian Wilson Smiles Again: Live at the Royal Festival Hall, London

Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, March 2004

WE STILL HAVE so much invested in the idea of Brian Wilson’s genius. Three decades since he last wrote a genuinely great song, we continue ...

Grateful Dead: The Grateful Dead: Rockin' the Rhein with the Grateful Dead (Rhino triple CD)

Review by Mark Pringle, Rock's Backpages, 30 May 2004

DO I DETECT the dead hand of Phil Lesh lurking here? Is there some kind of agenda, to portray the Dead as much more than ...

The Band, Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin: Choo Choo Ch’Boogie: Festival Express 1970

Retrospective and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, September 2004

IT WAS THE Lollapalooza of its day – a week-long, three-date circus of a rock and roll tour featuring The Band, Buddy Guy, Janis Joplin, ...

Tom Waits: Long Gone: Tom Waits Talks

Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, September 2004

RBP: Is it true you cut Real Gone in an old schoolhouse in the Mississippi delta? ...

The Birthday Party, Nick Cave: The Lyre of Cave: An Interview

Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, September 2004

RBP: Could you have imagined, all those years ago, that you’d have this amazingly even and consistent career? ...

Dire Straits, Mark Knopfler: 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 refurbished? ...

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 achieved? ...

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 songs. ...

Mercury Rev: A Long Strange Migration: Jonathan Donahue Talks

Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, January 2005

RBP: What difference did it make working in your own studio for the first time? ...

Debbie Harry: Encounter with a Stiletto: Debbie Harry in 1974

Memoir by Chris Charlesworth, Rock's Backpages, February 2005

EVERY TIME Bob Gruen called me he’d open the conversation with "What’s happening, man?" Of course it was me who should have been posing the ...

Doves, Sub Sub: The Backpages Interview: Jimi Goodwin

Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, February 2005

RBP: I was interested to read that you holed up in various remote parts of Britain for Some Cities. I seem to recall Elbow did ...

Sandy Denny: Like an Old-Fashioned Waltz

Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, March 2005

BEGUN IN LA and finished in London, Like an Old-Fashioned Waltz may be Denny's finest hour. Kicking off with 'Solo', one of her trademark piano ...

Sandy Denny: Rendezvous

Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, March 2005

FOLLOWING the Fairport Convention reunion that produced 1975's Rising For The Moon, Rendezvous was Denny's last LP before her death from a brain haemorrhage in ...

Sandy Denny: Sandy

Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, March 2005

DENNY'S SECOND solo set, produced by boyfriend and Fotheringay graduate Trevor Lucas, was a decided improvement on her great but scattered debut. Evenly balanced between ...

Sandy Denny: The North Star Grassman and the Ravens

Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, March 2005

TO BILLY CONNOLLY she was "one of the angriest women I ever met", while Island press officer David Sandison recalled her as a "belligerent and ...

Rufus Wainwright: 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 collection? ...

Stevie Wonder: The Backpages Interview: Stevie Wonder

Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, March 2005

RBP: You're working these long all-night stretches in the studio. How different is it from when you worked in the early '70s? ...

Walter Yetnikoff with David Ritz: Howling at the Moon (Abacus Books)

Review by Mark Pringle, Rock's Backpages, 4 March 2005

THERE IS AN immutable law of Recovery that states that the man with the loudest voice (and it usually is a man) will consume great ...

9 Songs (Dir. Mike Winterbottom)

Review by Mark Pringle, Rock's Backpages, 20 March 2005

OK, SO BASICALLY what happens is this: a saturnine, monosyllabic bloke meets a self-obsessed, vacuous girl at a Black Rebel Motorcycle Club gig at the ...

Coldplay Mesmerises Madrid

Report and Interview by Alvaro Costa, Luis Oliveira, Rock's Backpages, April 2005

AN EVENING IN MADRID - "blessed" by los galacticos Ronaldo and Luis Figo - kicked off Coldplay's world domination plan for 2005. Real Madrid's ...

Cream: Royal Albert Hall, London, 5 May 2005

Live Review by Richard English, Rock's Backpages, May 2005

THIRTY SEVEN YEARS ago my Mum wouldn't let me go to the Cream Farewell Concert. She didn't want me to mix with all those ...

Jimmy Webb: 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 it? ...

Ry Cooder: 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 ...

LL Cool J, Faith Evans: Grant Park, Chicago

Live Review by Mark Pringle, Rock's Backpages, July 2005

NOW WE KNOW why the Ladies Love Cool James: it’s not for his remarkably buff 40-something body (though they do love that); not even for ...

Frank Black: The Backpages Interview: Frank Black

Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, July 2005

RBP: Where did the idea of going down south to record Honeycomb come from? ...

Burt Bacharach: 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 Time? ...

The Band, Robbie Robertson: The Backpages Interview: Robbie Robertson

Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, October 2005

RBP: A Musical History seems like a formidable undertaking. ...

Herb Alpert: The Backpages Interview: Jerry Moss and A&M Records

Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, December 2005

RBP: Is it true you and Herb Alpert first met in New York? Was he still working with Lou Adler at the time? ...

Neil Young: 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 ...

XTC: The Great XTC Problem

Essay by Craig W. Thomas, Rock's Backpages, 2006

Back at the start of 2002 I wrote this essay for XTC and their management, partly because I wanted to do a book on the ...

Bob Dylan: The Last Supper Club: On Bob Dylan’s Late Style

Essay by Steve Redhead, Rock's Backpages, 2006

"GOOD EVENING, ladies and gentlemen. Would you please welcome Columbia recording artist, Bob Dylan." ...

Beth Orton: Comfort of Strangers (EMI)

Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, February 2006

HAS EMPTY become the new full? Every month we read of another singer-songstress who's stripped down her sound, kept things "spare and minimal". Now it's ...

Santana: All That He Is: Santana at Wembley Arena, London

Live Review by Richard English, Rock's Backpages, May 2006

IN A PANAMA HAT, Hawaiian shirt, baggy jeans, trainers, shades, pallid complexion, and bristly moustache that he was careful not to get his chewing gum ...

Eric Clapton: EC Is PC: Eric Clapton at the Royal Albert Hall, 25 May 2006

Live Review by Richard English, Rock's Backpages, May 2006

ON A SUNNY SPRING evening Eric Clapton gave his sixth of seven gigs at the Royal Albert Hall, the "nation's village hall" as Queen Victoria ...

The Go-Betweens, Grant McLennan: Goodbye Fireboy: Grant McLennan 1958 - 2006

Obituary by Toby Creswell, Rock's Backpages, May 2006

GRANT MCLENNAN, who died in his sleep on MAY 6, 2006, was one of the outstanding songwriters of his generation. He was acknowledged an artist ...

The Raconteurs, The White Stripes: Jack White's Side Dish: The Raconteurs

Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, May 2006

THE BUSMAN'S holiday has a long if mixed history in rock. From makeshift supergroups to one-off time-killers to impromptu jam sessions, sideline moonlightings are part ...

Scott Walker: An Interview

Interview by Graham Reid, Rock's Backpages, May 2006

NO ONE COULD accuse reclusive songwriter and singer Scott Walker of haste. In the time between Walker's last album Tilt and his latest The Drift, ...

Lester Bangs, Big Star: Great Lig in the Sky: The 1973 Rock Writers Convention

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 ...

Allen Toussaint, Elvis Costello, Paul Simon: Paul Simon: Bloomsbury Theatre, London; Allen Toussaint: Bush Hall, London

Live Review by Mark Pringle, Rock's Backpages, 3 June 2006

LET'S LOOK at what Paul Simon and Allen Toussaint share. They both wrote songs that helped shape this thing of ours, this culture we've shared ...

RIP Top Of The Pops, 1964-2006

Retrospective by Mark Pringle, Rock's Backpages, 26 June 2006

THE FACT IS, Top Of The Pops, the "iconic" British pop TV show, whose closure after 42 years was announced last week, was really never ...

Led Zeppelin: The Power and the Glory: Led Zeppelin and the making of IV

Retrospective and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, July 2006

Author’s note: This is the full, unexpurgated version of a piece for Uncut magazine. It is itself a very truncated distillation of the full-length study ...

John Scofield, Punk-Funk All Stars: Punk-Funk All Stars/Trio Beyond: Barbican, London

Live Review by Mark Pringle, Rock's Backpages, 17 July 2006

GIG OF THE YEAR, without a doubt. To see a stage-full of musicians embrace the possibility of total chaos, of absolute failure is, in these ...

Crosby Stills Nash & Young: Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young: Auburn, Washington, July 27th 2006

Live Review by Charles Bermant, Rock's Backpages, 15 August 2006

"Do you think there are any Republicans here?" We are on the queue for Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young's Freedom of Speech show, and the ...

The Killers: A Wrock Riter's Guilty Pleasure: The Killers

Comment by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, October 2006

IN LIMEYLAND we're obsessed with Guilty Pleasures, thanks not least to the doughty efforts of DJ Sean Rowley, who revels on his radio show in ...

Herman's Hermits, The Monkees, The Turtles: Wheelchair Legends: How Some Rockers Grow Old Gracefully and Others Do Not

Essay by Charles Bermant, Rock's Backpages, October 2006

PUYALLUP, WA – Are there gatherings like this anywhere outside of the modern American West? A million people come to a converted dusty field over ...

Move Over 1976 – The Revolution Is Here And Now

Comment by Mark Pringle, Rock's Backpages, 4 October 2006

ANYONE UNDER 30 reading this can piss off right now. This is for your mum and dad. You don't need the help, they do. The ...

Buddy Holly, John Lennon: Learning The Game: How John Lennon Learned to Stop Worrying and Love His Inner Geek

Essay by Tim Riley, Rock's Backpages, November 2006

LONG BEFORE "POST-MODERN" became pure jargon, Buddy Holly put quotes around his "normalcy" to disarm rock machismo. Holly, the "King of the Sixth Grade," hiccupped ...

Tom Waits: Sean O'Hagan Meets Tom Waits, The Little Amsterdam Oyster Bar, near Petaluma, California, 21 September 2006

Interview by Sean O'Hagan, Rock's Backpages, November 2006

An edited version of this interview appeared in The Observer, October 29, 2006 ...

The Cultural Politics Of 'Pop': Hanif Kureishi's Life In Popular Culture

Essay by Steve Redhead, Rock's Backpages, 13 November 2006

THIS ESSAY IS on the cultural politics of Pop. It situates an emblematic writer, Hanif Kureishi, in the context of post-war Pop art and culture ...

Morrissey: Gmex, Manchester

Live Review by Len Brown, Rock's Backpages, 22 December 2006

A DICKENSIAN SMOG shrouds the city centre and the increasingly familiar ghost of Manchester's Christmas' past shuffles onto the stage. "Well, they look friendly," he ...

Scott Walker: The Drift

Review by Brendan O'Keeffe, Rock's Backpages, Spring 2006

SCOTT WALKER, mid-'60s pop star turned cult artist, makes Steely Dan look prolific and is about as visible as Syd Barrett. Recluse or not, Walker's ...

They Think It's All Over? The Slight Return Of Football Hooligan Subcultures

Essay by Steve Redhead, Rock's Backpages, 2007

ONCE AGAIN the book shelves are heaving, a few weeks before a new season, with football hooligan memoirs. One of the best of these 'histories' ...

The Bee Gees: Bee Gees' Generations

Report by Charles Bermant, Rock's Backpages, January 2007

PORTLAND, OREGON USA – Last year, self-proclaimed pop music geek Ellen Osborn was tooling around town when she got an idea: "There should be an ...

Lewis Taylor: Lost and Found: Lewis Taylor's Pop-Rock Masterpiece

Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, March 2007

IF LOS ANGELES is the perfect place to fall in love with an album-as-road-soundtrack – as aural companion to the zen ebb and flow of ...

Blackpool Rocks!

Essay by Steve Redhead, Rock's Backpages, March 2007

BACKPOOL ROX II, issue 9, price £2, came out at the end of last year. You won't find it referred to in Babylon's Burning, the ...

Amy Winehouse: Somerset House, London

Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, July 2007

THE LAST TIME I had a ticket for Amy Winehouse was back in March, at Spaceland in LA. She'd played the Roxy the night before ...

The Hold Steady: Shepherd's Bush Empire, London, July 2, 2007

Live Review by Jonh Ingham, Rock's Backpages, July 2007

I FORGET WHICH sexy mega rock god said it, but it was someone suitably svelte and saturnine who said, "Anyone who tells you they got ...

Dusty Springfield: The Real Dusty Springfield

Memoir by Keith Altham, Rock's Backpages, July 2007

THE DUSTY I knew as a music journalist for the NME in the Sixties and interviewed a dozen times was a wondrously talented loveable mess ...

Richard Thompson: The Dust Of History: Forty Years Of Richard Thompson's Guitar/Vocal

Essay by Steve Redhead, Rock's Backpages, 23 July 2007

'But I'll be a friend and tell you what's in storeThere's nothing at the end of the rainbowThere's nothing to grow up for anymore''The End ...

Happy Mondays: Salford Lads Club

Essay by Steve Redhead, Rock's Backpages, August 2007

'YOU SALFORD NANCY Boy!' was a regular insult hurled from the wings at the late Anthony H. Wilson, educated at De La Salle College in ...

Richard Cook (1957-2007)

Obituary by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, 27 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 ...

Pete Doherty: A Dandy In Alto Minho

Interview by Alvaro Costa, Jose Manuel Simoes, Rock's Backpages, September 2007

PAREDES DE COURA, Portugal: a sleepy, lush village, somewhere northwest of Porto. Every summer, for five days, Coura moonlights as the sunnier, less muddy and ...

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 Sounds. ...

Peter Green: Sleep Easy Jeff Beck

Essay by Tom Graves, Rock's Backpages, September 2007

ON TOP OF the indignity of coping with a severed digit (which is coming along quite nicely, thank you very much) I learned last week ...

CPR, David Crosby: CPR: David Crosby/James Raymond

Interview by Steven Rosen, Rock's Backpages, 7 September 2007

UP ON THE fifth floor of Warner Brothers Records, David Crosby and James Raymond are embracing each other as if they haven't seen each other ...

Jimi Hendrix: The Jimi Hendrix Experience Live At Monterey DVD, CD

Report and Interview by Harvey Kubernik, Rock's Backpages, October 2007

The Jimi Hendrix Experience Live At Monterey for the first time ever on October 16th was released by Experience Hendrix/Geffen/Ume on DVD. The legendary U.S. ...

The Band, Garth Hudson: Garth and Maud Hudson playing 'Blind Willie McTell': 100 Club, London, September 26

Live Review by Martin Colyer, Rock's Backpages, October 2007

SO THE CROWD parts to let Garth Hudson wheel his wife Maud to the stage, and Maud's dressed for a Woodstock winter, hat, scarves and ...

Big Brother & The Holding Company, Jefferson Starship: Revisiting the Summer of Love

Report by Charles Bermant, Rock's Backpages, October 2007

Things aren't what they used to be, but they never were in the first place ...

Booker T & The MGs, Otis Redding: Dreams To Remember: The Legacy of Otis Redding DVD; Stax/Volt Revue Live In Norway 1967 DVD

Report and Interview by Harvey Kubernik, Rock's Backpages, November 2007

REELIN' IN THE Years Productions and Stax Records (a division of Concord Music Group) has issued Dreams To Remember: The Legacy of Otis Redding on ...

Bob Dylan, The Who: From Dylan to The Who: Film-maker Murray Lerner

Profile and Interview by Harvey Kubernik, Rock's Backpages, November 2007

Murray Lerner on his new The Other Side Of The Mirror – Bob Dylan Live At The Newport Folk Festival 1963-1965 DVD and the just ...

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 ...

The Stylistics, Thom Bell: Sweet Soul Symphonics: Thom Bell and the Stylistics

Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, November 2007

THE STYLISTICS were a permanent fixture on the British pop charts of the early '70s. Every tenth record that came out of my tinny transistor ...

Harry Nilsson: A Roundhead in a Pointy-Head World: The Tragedy of Harry Nilsson

Retrospective by Erik Himmelsbach, Rock's Backpages, December 2007

IT WAS A brisk fall day in 1978 when the stretch limo appeared like a sore thumb onto a tenement block of Brooklyn's downtrodden Bushwick ...

Bob Dylan's John Wesley Harding

Retrospective by Harvey Kubernik, Rock's Backpages, December 2007

ON DECEMBER 27, 1967, Columbia Records released the Bob Johnston-produced Bob Dylan John Wesley Harding long player. In January of 1968 it was one of ...

Bob Dylan: He's Not There: Todd Haynes' Dylan

Essay by Mick Gold, Rock's Backpages, 2 December 2007

"THE MINUTE you try to grab hold of Dylan, he's no longer where he was. He's like a flame: If you try to hold him ...

Glasvegas: Glasvegas

Review by Roy Trakin, Rock's Backpages, 2008

THE INITIAL, BOOMING Wall of Sound strains of 'Flowers and Football Tops' on this Scotland foursome’s promising debut are like the opening of Martin Scorsese’s ...

Leonard Cohen

Overview by Harvey Kubernik, Rock's Backpages, February 2008

FOR DECADES, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Leonard Cohen has been a global poetic force and influential songwriter. ...

Miley Cyrus: Hannah Montana & Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert

Film/DVD/TV Review by Wayne Robins, Rock's Backpages, 20 February 2008

LAST WEEKEND J and I went to see Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus: The Best of Both Worlds Concert in the local multiplex. It was ...

The Beatles: Two Encounters With Neil Aspinall

Memoir by Chris Charlesworth, Rock's Backpages, March 2008

RBP REGULARS will doubtless have read last week's obituaries for Neil Aspinall, who worked for the Beatles from 1961 until shortly before he died. He ...

Culture's Coming Home? Liverpool And Pop

Essay by Steve Redhead, Rock's Backpages, April 2008

LIVERPOOL ONE! The slogan for a new regenerated port city, European Capital of Culture, 2008. Liverpool One is the name for a retail project in ...

Keith Moon: Over The Moon

Retrospective by Keith Altham, Rock's Backpages, April 2008

MY FIRST experience of trying to interview Keith Moon in June '65 as a music journalist should have alerted me to the problems yet to ...

The Rolling Stones Shine A Light Concert Film Opens April 4th

Report by Harvey Kubernik, Rock's Backpages, April 2008

ON APRIL 4th director Martin Scorsese's concert documentary on the Rolling Stones, Shine A Light, was released and distributed in the U.S. by Paramount Classics ...

Steve Lukather, Toto: Toto's Eclipse of the Art

Interview by Mike Mettler, Rock's Backpages, April 2008

HAVE WE PERHAPS witnessed the last hurrah for the mega-selling studio-musos-cum-touring-phenoms Toto? According to guitarist/vocalist/co-founder Steve Lukather, "we're winding it down. This DVD [Falling in ...

Karen Dalton: In Her Own Time and Ours: The Cult of Karen Dalton

Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, May 2008

THERE ARE VOICES and then there are voices. Sometimes the ones that move us most are those most on the edge: the ones racked with ...

Pet Shop Boys: Pop Into Art: Post-Punk Aesthetics Revisited

Essay by Steve Redhead, Rock's Backpages, May 2008

"Girls, Boys, Art, Pleasure"– Chris Lowe, Pet Shop Boys, 'Paninaro 95' ...

Carole King's monumental 1971 Tapestry Returns In 2 CD Deluxe Edition

Special Feature by Harvey Kubernik, Rock's Backpages, 12 May 2008

Harvey Kubernik tells the story of the making of this epochal album, and interviews producer Lou Adler ...

Ry Cooder: 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 ...

Bruce Springsteen: Got Live If You Want It? Bruce Springsteen On Stage, 1968-2005

Essay by Rod Tootell, Rock's Backpages, July 2008

Rod Tootell asks how well-served the Boss has been by his official live recordings – and nominates his Top 20 tracks. ...

David Bowie: Virgin/EMI To Issue David Bowie: Live Santa Monica '72 On July 8th

Report by Harvey Kubernik, Rock's Backpages, July 2008

VIRGIN/EMI Records on July 8th will release David Bowie: Live Santa Monica '72 in limited edition CD and numbered 180-gram double vinyl LP packages culled ...

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 ...

Elvis Presley: The Return of the King: Elvis and the Making Of The '68 Comeback Special

Retrospective by Harvey Kubernik, Rock's Backpages, August 2008

When Elvis Presley donned a black leather suit and stepped in front of NBC's cameras for his 1968 TV special, he changed the historical perception ...

Elbow: The Seldom Seen Kid (Fiction/Geffen)

Review by Roy Trakin, Rock's Backpages, September 2008

THIS IS THE FOURTH album from the most recent winners of the U.K.'s prestigious Mercury Music Prize and, after three releases on V2, the first ...

The Incredible String Band: A Goat of Many Colours: The Incredible String Band

Retrospective and Interview by Pete Paphides, Rock's Backpages, October 2008

Forty years ago this month, The Incredible String Band released their benchmark double album Wee Tam & The Big Huge, just one of many milestones ...

ABBA

Essay by Chris Charlesworth, Rock's Backpages, October 2008

FOR MANY years now I have been a closet Abba fan. This was not always the case. ...

Picture This: 10 Years of Rock Archive

Essay by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, October 2008

PRIDE OF PLACE on my office wall belongs to a photograph by Jill Furmanovsky. It's an image that takes me back almost 30 years to ...

Wilco: Ahead of the Curve: Jeff Tweedy on Barack Obama, 9 May 2005

Interview by Bud Scoppa, Rock's Backpages, 5 November 2008

I FIRST POSTED the following in February, but the occasion demands that I pull it out of the archives and put it up again. What ...

Life in the Old Dog Yet: The Finest 50 Tracks of the Year – Plus the Rock's Backpages Awards!

Special Feature by Various Writers, Rock's Backpages, December 2008

RBP's very own Seldom Seen Kids – make that Wrinklies – present their aural highlights of A.D. 2008. Awards MC'd by Martin Colyer. ...

Annika Norlin, Hello Saferide: Modern Stories from Östersund: Annika Norlin

Interview by Lindsay Hutton, Rock's Backpages, December 2008

YOU MAY NOT be familiar with Annika Norlin's name yet but I hope that one of these days you will be. The organic rise of ...

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 ...

Merry Clayton, The Rolling Stones: Merry Clayton on the Rolling Stones' 'Gimme Shelter' Session

Retrospective and Interview by Harvey Kubernik, Rock's Backpages, 2009

MERRY CLAYTON was born on Christmas Day and a graduate of Jefferson High School's music department then under renowned instructor Sam Browne, in Los Angeles, ...

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 community. ...

Van Morrison: Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl (Listen to the Lion/EMI)

Review by Roy Trakin, Rock's Backpages, January 2009

FAR INTO THE post-apocalyptic future, long after people have holed up in their fallout shelters, emerging only to forage for what little edible green foodstuff ...

Animal Collective: Merriweather Post Pavilion (Domino)

Review by Roy Trakin, Rock's Backpages, 23 January 2009

ACTUALLY, IF YOU haven't picked up on these guys by now, you haven't been surfing the online music blogosphere, which has been blathering about this ...

Mel Tormé, Nina Simone: Gus Wildi's Bebopping Jazz Baby: Bethlehem Records

Retrospective by Fred Dellar, Rock's Backpages, March 2009

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 17, 1953. American TV companies were gearing up for
the first programmes in colour, Playboy was cock-a-hoop about featuring
Marilyn Monroe on the cover and ...

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 ...

The iPod and iTunes: Buy Three Get Nine You Don't Want

Comment by Johnny Black, Rock's Backpages, March 2009

IT STARTED — the slow realisation — when my wife bought me an iPod for my birthday. ...

Sounds Of The Harlem Globetrotters

Retrospective and Interview by Fred Dellar, Rock's Backpages, 3 March 2009

JOHNNY DEPP WAS once asked if, in his early days, he really wanted to be a Harlem Globetrotter. "It's absolutely true," he mused "I went ...

Van Morrison: Astral Regrets

Comment by Rob Steen, Rock's Backpages, 4 March 2009

"DON'T BOTHER." The owner of Octave in Lewes High Street, my ever-so-friendly local record store (sincere apologies if that sounds as if I'm gloating over ...

Journalistic Gaffes

Memoir by Leyla Sanai, Rock's Backpages, 5 March 2009

OK, SO ROCK CRITICS are meant to be the epitome of cool, but all writers have embarrassing moments, don't they? What have been the most ...

Mario Panciera: 45 Revolutions

Book Review by Alex Ogg, Rock's Backpages, 20 March 2009

DISCUSSING MUSICAL encyclopaedias recently reminded me of what is probably the ultimate reference work I have ever encountered: Mario Panciera's completely mind-boggling 45 Revolutions. I ...

Van Morrison: Into the Mystic Again: Van Morrison, Them and Now

Comment by Archie Patterson, Rock's Backpages, 22 March 2009

"You've made a very happy man feel very old" – Van Morrison, November 2008 ...

Amanda Ambrose: Remembering Amanda Ambrose

Retrospective by Fred Dellar, Rock's Backpages, 23 March 2009

BECAUSE I'D BEEN an Amanda Ambrose fan since the '60s, during 2007 I nudged Poker Records into releasing an Ambrose album. ...

Steely Dan's Pretzel Logic Revisited

Retrospective by Rob Steen, Rock's Backpages, 27 March 2009

THIRTY-FIVE YEARS ago this month, Pretzel Logic, the album that alerted the world beyond L.A. and NYC to the thrillingly unpigeonholeable sound of Steely Dan, ...

Prince: Purple Drain: Is It Time to Give Up on the Prince We All Want?

Comment by Paul Yamada, Rock's Backpages, April 2009

ON THE FINAL Sunday of March 2009, Prince released a 3-CD set. Two of the albums are his music with his band; the other is ...

Elvis Presley, John Lennon: 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 ...

The Fields Of Annie Road: Song For The 96

Comment by Steve Redhead, Rock's Backpages, April 2009

ANFIELD ROAD, or 'Annie Road' (Allt, 2005), is the opposite 'end' to Liverpool's Kop at their world famous football stadium of Anfield. ...

The Move at the Fillmore West, October 1969

Retrospective by Archie Patterson, Rock's Backpages, April 2009

THE PAST COUPLE years have been like heaven for those in the Move musical fandom community. Rob Caiger of Face the Music spent years searching ...

Cyril Davies, The Rolling Stones: The Rolling Stones at the Ricky-Tick, January 1963

Memoir by John Pidgeon, Rock's Backpages, April 2009

THE FIRST TIME I hear Cyril Davies blow his harmonica is January 1963 at Leo's Jazz Club in Windsor. As I approach, shoulders hunched against ...

Aerosmith: Unexpected Encounters With Rock Stars

Retrospective by Chris Charlesworth, Rock's Backpages, April 2009

THIS doesn't happen often, though I've actually bumped into Paul Weller once or twice unexpectedly (in Holland Park and also in the Surrey village of ...

Liner Notes: Recollections of a Dying Art

Retrospective by Fred Dellar, Rock's Backpages, 17 April 2009

DURING THE LATE '60s I received a fee of seven pounds for supplying my first sleeve note – one that adorned Dizzy Gillespie's Jambo Caribe. ...

New Music News: My Part in IPC's Downfall

Memoir by Mark Williams, Rock's Backpages, 21 April 2009

IN RESPONSE TO an earlier blog, a generous comment from Johnny Black resurrected the ghost of a magazine I thought I'd laid to rest some ...

Creem: Censored by a Futurist!

Memoir by Richard Riegel, Rock's Backpages, 24 April 2009

CREEM SUFFERED ITS first bankruptcy in August 1985, a little over ten years after I'd begun writing regularly for the magazine.   ...

Sepian Thoughts: The Other Side of Copyright

Report and Interview by Fred Dellar, Rock's Backpages, 27 April 2009

RICHARD TAY'S OFFICE is an aural museum of the impressive kind. Many hundreds of old 78 rpm shellac discs plus vinyl long-players from the '50s ...

Albert Ayler

Retrospective by Kris Needs, Rock's Backpages, May 2009

'I must play music that is beyond this world' – Albert Ayler ...

Big Stars In Their Eyes

Retrospective by Bud Scoppa, Rock's Backpages, May 2009

Note: I was assigned this piece in the Spring of 2000 by Revolver, but the mag was recast as a metal monthly while I was ...

Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan: Bob Johnston on Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, and Nashville Skyline

Interview by Harvey Kubernik, Rock's Backpages, May 2009

JUNE 17th MARKS the 40th anniversary of the original Columbia Records release of Bob Dylan's Nashville Skyline album, produced by Bob Johnston. ...

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band: Izod Center, East Rutherford, New Jersey

Live Review by Kris DiLorenzo, Rock's Backpages, May 2009

A SPRINGSTEEN HOMECOMING is always a big deal, and this time there were only two shows, in a smaller arena than last summer’s Giants Stadium ...

Keith Moon: Moonie On The Pull

Retrospective by Chris Charlesworth, Rock's Backpages, May 2009

IT IS THE prerogative of rock stars to enjoy the attentions of beautiful women to a greater degree than most other men, and among those ...

Neil Young: Monumental: Neil Young's Archives, Vol. 1

Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, May 2009

NOTE: This is an extended version of a review written in a Belfast hotel room for the Observer Music Monthly. BH * ...

The Last Days of a Great Guitar Shop: RIP Manny's Music Store

Retrospective by Binky Philips, Rock's Backpages, May 2009

AFTER 75 YEARS, Manny's Music Store on West 48th St in Manhattan will close its doors forever at the end of this month. Obviously, this ...

Little Richard's Look

Memoir by John Pidgeon, Rock's Backpages, 5 May 2009

I AM NINE years old, watching Don't Knock The Rock in High Wycombe's Rex cinema, when I make a connection between music and the way ...

Janis Joplin: "That night I was in England making a ham sandwich for Mama Cass"

Retrospective by Mike Jahn, Rock's Backpages, 12 May 2009

EVERY NEWSPAPERMAN gets interesting letters. For example, the one dated April 26, 1971: ...

Quintessence: The Manager of Quintessence

Memoir by Chris Charlesworth, Rock's Backpages, 15 May 2009

IT'S NOT OFTEN I come across the name Quintessence these days but the give-away CD on the most recent MOJO is an Island folk compilation ...

Morrissey: Unhappy Birthday, Morrissey

Retrospective by Len Brown, Rock's Backpages, 22 May 2009

N.B. This is the full, unedited version of a piece published in The Guardian on 22 May 2009 ...

Recession Rock: How the credit crunch will make Britannia cool again

Comment by Dan Gennoe, Rock's Backpages, 26 May 2009

MONEY. IT'S NOT everything. It's a lot. But not everything. In music, it's actually more curse than blessing. Commerce is an essential element in any ...

Another Look at the Nashville Skyline

Report by Bill Wasserzieher, Rock's Backpages, June 2009

NASHVILLE IS a town of serene churches and raucous honky tonks. ...

Manchester Studies: Reading John Robb's The North Will Rise Again

Essay by Steve Redhead, Rock's Backpages, June 2009

The North Will Rise Again: Manchester Music City 1976-1996 John Robb (Aurum, 2009, £16.99) ...

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 ...

The Seeds: Sky Saxon 1937-2009: A Belated Tribute to an Acid-Punk Icon

Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, June 2009

Lost in the the shock and hysteria of Michael Jackson's death was the scant reportage of another pop passing: that of crazed LA garage-pop ...

Barry Beckett: Soul Provider: Muscle Shoals keyboard legend Barry Beckett in His Own Words

Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, June 2009

NOTE: This is a pretty straight transcript of what the late Barry Beckett said to me in his new Warner Brothers office in Nashville in ...

The Slits: A Thousand Nights Of Confusion

Comment by Zoë Street Howe, Alex Ogg, Rock's Backpages, June 2009

Zoë Street Howe's new biography of punk's original bad girls, The Slits, is released in July through Omnibus. Alex Ogg tried to find out more about ...

The NME'n'Me

Memoir by John Pidgeon, Rock's Backpages, 5 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 ...

Michael Jackson: Ever-So-Slightly Wacko: The Day I Interviewed Michael Jackson (via little sister Janet)

Memoir by John Pidgeon, Rock's Backpages, 15 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 ...

Michael Jackson: The Thriller Is Gone: Michael Jackson

Comment by Kandia Crazy Horse, Rock's Backpages, 26 June 2009

I LACK ANYTHING profound to say about the passing of Michael Jackson. ...

Michael Jackson on the roof of Woolco in Memphis, 1977

Retrospective by Robot A. Hull, Rock's Backpages, 29 June 2009

WHEN MICHAEL JACKSON appeared on the roof of Woolco in Southgate Shopping Center in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1977, he had no idea that one day ...

Memories of the Flamingo Club

Memoir by John Pidgeon, Rock's Backpages, July 2009

ONE WARM SPRING Friday night in 1964, cooling off between sets outside the Ricky Tick club in Windsor, I share a match flame with a ...

Boston, Chicago, Journey, REO Speedwagon, Toto: More Than a Feeling: The 20 Greatest AOR Tracks of All Time!

Guide by Matthew Hamilton, Rock's Backpages, July 2009

Author's Note: I have found that most discussions of AOR get easily sidetracked unless it's made clear which definition of the AOR acronym we're using. ...

The Faces, Ronnie Lane: Remembering Ronnie Lane

Retrospective by John Pidgeon, Rock's Backpages, July 2009

IT MAY WELL have been his 'Song Of A Baker' on the Small Faces' Ogden's Nut Gone Flake that first had me believing that Ronnie ...

Rufus Wainwright: Prima Donna: The Palace Theatre, Manchester

Live Review by Simon Warner, Rock's Backpages, July 2009

Wainwright or wrong? No rock in Rufus opera ...

Tom Wilkes, 1939-2009: Legendary Designer of Posters and Album Covers

Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, July 2009

Tom Wilkes, legendary poster and album cover designer (Monterey Pop, the Rolling Stones' original Beggars Banquet, Neil Young's Harvest, Janis Joplin's Pearl, George Harrison's All ...

The Jackson 5: I Want You Black: How Jacko's debut still has the power to thrill

Memoir by Simon Warner, Rock's Backpages, 1 July 2009

OVER A LIFE-TIME, there are a number of those stop-you-in-your-tracks musical moments that seem to tattoo your soul. And, in a sense, those ear-turning songs ...

James Brown, Jimi Hendrix, Engelbert Humperdinck, Robert Plant: Backstage in the '60s

Memoir by Chris Welch, Rock's Backpages, 25 July 2009

LIFE BACKSTAGE AT pop shows in the Swinging '60s was always a hoot. Looking back, it's fun to recall how casual and relaxed it all was ...

10 LPs You Probably Don't Have (But Should)

Comment by Tom Graves, Rock's Backpages, August 2009

WE ALL HAVE seen the lists of the absolutely greatest LPs, singles, movies, TV shows, books, etc. OF ALL TIME. I've done them myself and ...

R.E.M.: A Great Southern Voice Revisited

Retrospective by Robot A. Hull, Rock's Backpages, August 2009

THE MUSIC OF R.E.M. speaks in many voices, swirling voices searching for a new language through the words of mythology, literature, and Holy Scripture. Like ...

Undisputed Heavyweight Champions of the Mix Tape: 30 Years of Transatlantic Friendship on Cassette!

Memoir by Mark Leviton, Rock's Backpages, August 2009

MY ENGLISH FRIEND Neil and I have one of the longest, strangest, and most voluminous correspondences in the history of the world – a correspondence ...

The Grand Story Of Beach Music

Retrospective by Robot A. Hull, Rock's Backpages, 5 August 2009

IT IS WITH much trepidation that I write of "beach music", a phenomenon that has consistently been making waves across America and the world (yes, ...

Laura Nyro: Dark Angel: The Stone Soul Genius of Laura Nyro

Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, September 2009

Author's note: This is a "director's cut" version of the feature that ran in the January 2010 issue of Uncut. ...

Music Go Music: ICA, London, 22 September 2009

Live Review by Tim Clifford, Rock's Backpages, September 2009

A FIVE-FOOT-TALL hourglass stood on stage, its sands unmoving, when Music Go Music made their London debut at the ICA last night. The prop seemed ...

Nick Cave: The Death of Bunny Munro (Canongate Books)

Book Review by Leyla Sanai, Rock's Backpages, September 2009

NICK CAVE was never going to settle for "just" being a rock star. Right back from when I was first aware of him, in the ...

Captain Beefheart, Frank Zappa: Post-Modern Rock 'N' Roll Musings: Step One

Retrospective by Robot A. Hull, Rock's Backpages, 4 September 2009

IT BEGAN AS a dream in the minds of two teenage companions, Don Van Vliet and Frank Zappa, isolated in the barren town of Lancaster. ...

Crosby Stills and Nash: CSN live: Let us now (finally) Praise Stephen Stills

Live Review by Charles Bermant, Rock's Backpages, 15 September 2009

I'VE SEEN Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young five times between 1969 and 2006, with the interplay between Stephen Stills and Neil Young always leaving behind ...

Leonard Cohen: This story about Leonard Cohen has sex in it

Memoir by Mike Jahn, Rock's Backpages, 22 September 2009

I REMEMBER Leonard Cohen well from the Chelsea Hotel. This story has sex in it. ...

Alexis Korner, Blues Incorporated, Cyril Davies: Blues Incorporated: How British R&B Trashed Trad

Retrospective by John Pidgeon, Rock's Backpages, 24 September 2009

ALEXIS KORNER'S Parisian birthplace, Austro-Greek parentage, noble features and languid growl endowed him with an aura of exoticism unreflected in his musical partner Cyril "Squirrel" ...

Chris Barber: Father of British R&B

Retrospective by John Pidgeon, Rock's Backpages, 28 September 2009

BY 1963, EVERYONE I knew had a TV. Two black-and-white channels: the one that was on and "the other side". So when the Rolling Stones ...

Bruce Springsteen: Giants Stadium, New Jersey

Live Review by Kris DiLorenzo, Rock's Backpages, October 2009

BY NOW everyone knows that Springsteen's Giants Stadium gigs were the last hurrah for the stadium that's due to be razed. ...

Flailing and Railing: Brendan Mullen, 1949-2009

Memoir by Don Snowden, Rock's Backpages, October 2009

BEST KNOWN as a catalyst and chronicler of the late '70s L.A. punk scene centred around the Masque club, Brendan Mullen died suddenly of a ...

Gimme Some Truth: Music reference works in the digital age

Comment by Alex Ogg, Rock's Backpages, October 2009

REMEMBER WHEN content was king? It was one of the enduring myths of the tech bubble alongside stratospheric growth projections, the paperless office, etc. But ...

The Feelies: Crazy Rhythms/The Good Earth

Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, October 2009

THE FACT THAT the Feelies came from New Jersey – and complained that driving to Manhattan through the Holland Tunnel gave them headaches – didn't ...

Miles Davis: The Miles Davis Quintet: Live In Europe 1967

Film/DVD/TV Review by Michael Azerrad, Rock's Backpages, October 2009

LIKE ANY credible person, I dig Miles Davis. But I particularly dig his quintet with saxophonist Wayne Shorter, pianist Herbie Hancock, bassist Ron Carter and ...

Various Artists: Where The Action Is! Los Angeles Nuggets 1965-1968 (Rhino)

Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, October 2009

LENNY KAYE CAN'T have had any idea what he was starting when he compiled his original Nuggets double album of psychedelic "artyfacts" back in 1972. ...

Blues Incorporated, The Rolling Stones: More British R&B: The Stones Start, Blues Incorporated Stumble

Retrospective and Interview by John Pidgeon, Rock's Backpages, 2 October 2009

THE FIRST PUBLIC appearance of what would one day be touted as "the greatest rock and roll band in the world" was hardly headline news, ...

Rowland S. Howard: Oxford Art Factory, Sydney

Live Review by Mark Mordue, Rock's Backpages, 26 October 2009

WHAT COST? When the former Birthday Party guitarist Rowland S. Howard walks into his song 'Pop Crimes', the title track to his new solo album, ...

The Dead Weather, The Raconteurs, The White Stripes: The Backpages Interview: Jack White

Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, November 2009

ON THE 18TH of August 2009, in Salt Lake City, I was privileged enough to sit down with Jack White – variously a White Stripe, ...

The Raincoats: The Raincoats (We ThRee)

Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, November 2009

THIS 1979 ROUGH TRADE album is a period piece and a sacred artefact, not least because of its subsequent endorsement by an "extremely unhappy, lonely ...

Imperial Dogs: They Wanna Get Their Poodles In Your Noodles: Imperial Dogs

Retrospective and Interview by Dave Laing (Australia), Rock's Backpages, November 2009

IN RECENT YEARS, as I've hit an age where time fucking flies by, and an entire decade has passed by in what feels like ...

Robyn Hitchcock in Nowhere-Land: I Often Dream of Trains in New York

Film/DVD/TV Review by Michael Azerrad, Rock's Backpages, 14 November 2009

IT WAS FITTING that a Robyn Hitchcock DVD arrived in the mail the same week as the Monty Python documentary debuted on the IFC channel ...

The Rolling Stones: The Gimme Shelter You Didn't See

Review by Michael Azerrad, Rock's Backpages, 24 November 2009

GIMME SHELTER is generally considered one of the best rock documentaries ever made, perhaps one of the best documentaries on any topic. ...

Best of the Noughties: RBP Writers' Top Twenties, 2000-2009

Special Feature by Various Writers, Rock's Backpages, December 2009

NOTE: Some of these lists are ordered but many writers opted simply to provide lists in either alphabetical or no particular order. Some couldn't think ...

Bob Dylan: Good As He's Been To You: Bob Dylan's Best Albums

Guide by Mick Gold, Rock's Backpages, December 2009

Mick Gold makes a personal selection of Dylan's Finest Works. A slightly modified version of an article for the Bobzine Isis. ...

Miles Davis: Mapping the Sonic Future: Miles Davis' In a Silent Way

Retrospective by Don Snowden, Rock's Backpages, December 2009

IN THE MIDST of all this full-blown industry overkill of the 40th anniversary of this or the expanded deluxe-edition commemorating 25 years of that, one ...

Very Noughtie: RBP's Best Albums, 2000-2009

Special Feature by Various Writers, Rock's Backpages, December 2009

WHILST CONCEDING that we are all "listed out" after a solid decade of anniversary-fixated list-o-mania – lists of lists of lists! – we at RBP ...

John Fogerty: Beacon Theatre, NYC

Live Review by Hank Bordowitz, Rock's Backpages, 1 December 2009

I'M NOT SURE what John Fogerty went through internally after (and even during) the fall of CCR. I have my educated guesses, but they're just ...

Journey's trend: Why this band don't stop believin'

Comment by Simon Warner, Rock's Backpages, 16 December 2009

IN THE CLOSING moments of Glee, the newest US smash to creep on to our TV screens, an ensemble of high school singers and musicians ...

The 1973 Let It Rock Critics Poll

Retrospective by John Pidgeon, Rock's Backpages, 16 December 2009

THIRTY-SIX YEARS AGO, I polled contributors to and friends of Let It Rock, the monthly magazine I edited: what, I wanted to know, were their ...

Elliott Murphy (2009)

Interview by Archie Patterson, Rock's Backpages, 23 December 2009

The man who bore the weight of being the "New Dylan" in the mid-'70s looks back at his early days, his move to Europe, and brings us up to date with where he's at in the 21st century

File format: mp3; file size: 20.9mb; Interview length: 22' 52"; sound quality: ***

John Cale: Cold, Black Style: The John Cale Interview

Interview by Mark Mordue, Rock's Backpages, January 2010

N.B. An edited version of this story appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald Spectrum on January 2, 2010. ...

Lady Gaga: Transvision Vamp: Lady Gaga

Comment by Simon Warner, Rock's Backpages, January 2010

THE POWER OF Lady Gaga has been one of the most scintillating features of 2009: three number one UK singles, a sprawling debut album and ...

Wendy And Lisa: Wendy & Lisa's impressive post-Prince parade

Comment by Simon Warner, Rock's Backpages, 8 January 2010

TWO US TELEVISION shows with little in common beyond the fact that they have made their mark on the viewing public and garnered critical warmth, ...

Vampire Weekend: Contra

Review by Roy Trakin, Rock's Backpages, 14 January 2010

THERE'S NOTHING more gratifying for a rock music fan than to witness an act suddenly seize the moment, feel its oats and begin to break ...

Patti Smith, Television: The Mapplethorpe Effect: Patti, Polaroids and Punk

Retrospective by Simon Warner, Rock's Backpages, 15 January 2010

IT WOULD NOT BE outrageous to propose that the two greatest albums of the punk tsunami featured cover images by arguably the most important post-war ...

Roger Daltrey: Nokia Theatre, NYC

Live Review by Kris DiLorenzo, Rock's Backpages, 25 January 2010

FIRST OFF: this is one of the most horribly run and uncomfortable venues I've ever visited. You couldn't pay me to go back there. And ...

Gil Scott-Heron: The Vulture

Book Review by Leyla Sanai, Rock's Backpages, 26 January 2010

FATHER OF hip–hop, granddaddy of rap, articulate polemicist and early pioneer of the fusion of black politics with poetry and music, Gil Scott–Heron has been ...

Jimi Hendrix: Valley of Neptune Album Released In March; Experience Hendrix Tour 2010 Embarks in Spring

Report and Interview by Harvey Kubernik, Rock's Backpages, February 2010

JANIE HENDRIX, the CEO of Experience Hendrix LLC, and Sony Music Entertainment's Legacy Recordings will launch their monumental 2010 Jimi Hendrix Catalog Project on Tuesday, ...

MGMT: Congratulations (Columbia)

Review by Roy Trakin, Rock's Backpages, February 2010

THESE BRAINY Wesleyan alums remain just as ironical about their rock star dreams than ever, despite a year in which they garnered a Grammy nod ...

Todd Rundgren: The Dream Goes on Forever: Todd Rundgren Plays A Wizard, A True Star Live

Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, February 2010

OUT INTO THE damp chill of a February night we came, the scattered legions of Toddheads – crossing fingers for transcendence, willing to settle for ...

"You want blowjob?": Ageing (dis)gracefully

Comment by Mat Snow, Rock's Backpages, 1 February 2010

LAST YEAR I had an appointment at my local hospital with the orthopaedic consultant to have a look at my wonky knee. So there I ...

Crosby Stills Nash & Young: CSN&Y '74: A Long Long Time Ago

Film/DVD/TV Review by Simon Warner, Rock's Backpages, 12 February 2010

TO USE THE phrase deja vu in the opening sentence of a reflection on Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young runs the serious risk of incarceration ...

Joni Mitchell, Neil Young: The Heart of Joel Bernstein

Report by Charles Bermant, Rock's Backpages, 12 February 2010

IN 1970, 16-year-old me was following Neil Young around; learning his songs, going to his concerts (two identical sets on one night!), and counting the ...

Spoon: Rough Draft: Spoon's Transference

Review and Interview by Bud Scoppa, Rock's Backpages, 19 February 2010

WHEN I WAS doing A&R late in the previous century, a musician in one of my bands – it might have been Jolene guitarist Dave ...

Man of the World: A Rock's Backpages Tribute to Charlie Gillett, 1942-2010

Special Feature by Various Writers, Rock's Backpages, March 2010

CHARLIE GILLETT'S contributions to music are far too numerous to be listed here. Briefly, he was the author of the seminal history The Sound Of ...

Jack Nitzsche, James Brown, The Rolling Stones: The Greatest (Pop TV) Show on Earth: The T.A.M.I. Show, October 1964

Retrospective and Interview by Johnny Black, Rock's Backpages, March 2010

ON 28 OCTOBER, 1964, the T.A.M.I. Show was recorded at the Civic Auditorium in Santa Monica, California. T.A.M.I. stood for Television Audience Measurement Index, though ...

The Rolling Stones: Andy Johns on recording Exile On Main St.

Interview by Harvey Kubernik, Rock's Backpages, March 2010

ANDY JOHNS is a world class sound engineer and record producer. On May 18th his work with the Rolling Stones on their 1972 Exile On ...

The xx: xx (Young Turks/XL Recordings)

Review by Roy Trakin, Rock's Backpages, March 2010

THIS LONDON-BASED QUARTET-turned-trio is fronted by a pair of precocious 20-year-olds in Romy Madley Croft and Oliver Sims, who share vocals with an intimacy that’s ...

Bobby Darin, Bobby Vee: Was 1960 Really The Worst Pop Year Ever?

Retrospective by Gene Sculatti, Rock's Backpages, March 2010

KIDS TODAY. And the music they listen to! As I write, Billboard's (U.S.) Top 10 features three songs with the F-word in their title, one ...

Bow Wow Wow, Malcolm McLaren, The Sex Pistols: Malcolm McLaren 1946-2010

Obituary by Alex Ogg, Rock's Backpages, 12 April 2010

MALCOLM MCLAREN, who died on April 8 aged 64 after a protracted battle with cancer, was punk's self-mythologised circus barker. His custodianship of the musical ...

Thom Yorke: Santa Barbara County Bowl

Live Review by Bud Scoppa, Rock's Backpages, 24 April 2010

ALTHOUGH NOBODY thinks of Radiohead as a dance band, Thom Yorke and his mates have spent the last decade developing an intoxicating rhythmic feel. ...

Bobby Keys, The Rolling Stones: Bobby Keys: Sax Sideman Extraordinaire

Profile and Interview by Tarquin Campbell, Rock's Backpages, May 2010

LYON, FRANCE. It's the morning after another night of revelry on the Rolling Stones tour of Europe in 1982. The band and entourage convene ...

The Ramones: Gabba Gabba Hey: 25 Songs Mentioning Da Brudders Ramone

Guide by Alex Ogg, Rock's Backpages, May 2010

...

Blind Faith, Eric Clapton, Steve Winwood: The Eye That Sees Aright: Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood, Wembley Arena, London

Live Review by Richard English, Rock's Backpages, May 2010

IT'S RARE THAT ONE mixes Aristotle with rock, but it was impossible to ignore a giant eye rolling on the back projection screen during 'Voodoo ...

Paul Edwards: How To Rap – The Art & Science of the Hip-Hop MC (Virgin)

Book Review by Alex Ogg, Rock's Backpages, 17 May 2010

"You want to be able to stand out from the others and just be distinct, period. A lot of shit sounds the same, so when ...

Delbert McClinton: Tarrytown Music Hall, New York

Live Review by Kris DiLorenzo, Rock's Backpages, 21 May 2010

IT'S BEEN A WAAAY too long time, but I'd be stupidly remiss if I didn't rave about Delbert McClinton's show at the Tarrytown Music Hall ...

Band of Horses: Infinite Arms (Fat Possum/Columbia) *****

Review and Interview by Bud Scoppa, Rock's Backpages, June 2010

N.B. A revised version of the following review appeared in the June 2010 issue of Uncut. ...

Joy Division: Torn Apart: The Life of Ian Curtis by Mick Middles and Lindsay Reade

Book Review by Leyla Sanai, Rock's Backpages, June 2010

WITH THE thirtieth anniversary of Ian Curtis's suicide (he killed himself on May 18th 1980) just gone, enough time had passed for me to want ...

Swamp Dogg and the Revelations: City Winery, NYC

Live Review by Andy Schwartz, Rock's Backpages, 4 June 2010

IT WAS EARLY May, the gig was two weeks away, and things weren't looking good for the star of the show, Jerry Williams Jr. a/k/a ...

Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton: Jeff Beck/Eric Clapton: Madison Square Garden, NYC

Live Review by Kris DiLorenzo, Rock's Backpages, 29 June 2010

I DON'T KNOW who started that "Clapton is God" business. God is clearly Jeff Beck. ...

The Who: How Not to Review the Who

Memoir by John Pidgeon, Rock's Backpages, 8 July 2010

THE WHO WEREN'T mods, they were groomed to look that way by Peter Meaden, a pill-popping publicist with so many ideas in his unnaturally active ...

Phil Spector: The Agony Of Phil Spector

Comment by Mitchell Cohen, Rock's Backpages, 8 July 2010

I CAN LISTEN to six hours of Phil Spector recording sessions, some of which amount to take after take of Spector instructing the lead singer ...

Beyoncé Does Not Write Her Own Songs. Really?

Comment by Johnny Black, Rock's Backpages, 15 July 2010

MY GAST WAS unutterably flabbered earlier this week when record producer Bangladesh "revealed" that Beyoncé does not write her own songs. ...

Little Feat: Feats Don't Fail: Richie Hayward R.I.P.

Obituary by Don Snowden, Rock's Backpages, August 2010

If you like country with a boogie beat / He's the man to meet... ...

Phil Collins Goes Back to his Soul-Music Roots

Interview by Johnny Black, Rock's Backpages, August 2010

JB: Your new album, Going Back, quite literally goes back to your musical roots. So where did you first start to become interested in music? ...

Big Brother & The Holding Company, Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Steve Miller, Moby Grape, Santana: Frisco, Where Art Thou: Reassessing the Musical Legacy of the '60s Psychedelic Capital

Retrospective by Gene Sculatti, Rock's Backpages, September 2010

LAST SATURDAY, paging through an article on Robert Plant in the September issue of MOJO, I learned that, upon their initial meeting in a Dublin ...

Robert Plant: Band of Joy (Decca)

Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, September 2010

NOTE: Herewith an expanded version of a review written for Classic Rock magazine... BH ...

John Fogerty: Beacon Theatre, NYC (Nov. 24, 2009)

Live Review by Kris DiLorenzo, Rock's Backpages, 6 September 2010

LONG-OVERDUE review of one of the best shows I've seen all year, by the American singer/songwriter I'd consider second only to Springsteen. (There – that ...

Al Kooper, Bob Dylan: Al Kooper on Bob Dylan's record producers Tom Wilson and Bob Johnston

Interview by Harvey Kubernik, Rock's Backpages, October 2010

"In 1966 Dylan went down to Nashville for Blonde On Blonde He stayed out in the studio 10 or 12 hours. Bob never left it. ...

Kings of Leon: Good Old Boys: Kings of Leon: Come Around Sundown (RCA)

Review by Bud Scoppa, Rock's Backpages, October 2010

WHEN THE Followill brothers and their cousin Matthew first busted out of Tennessee in 2003 with the colorfully titled EP Holy Roller Novocaine, they were ...

Odetta: 1930 — 2008

Profile by Michael Gray, Rock's Backpages, December 2010

N.B. This profile is an updated version based on Odetta's entry in The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia ...

Ornette Coleman and Outrage

Retrospective by Don Snowden, Rock's Backpages, December 2010

AMAZING, ABSOLUTELY AMAZING. At 80 years old, Ornette Coleman is still capable of generating overt displays of outrage without doing anything more than playing his ...

Captain Beefheart: The Cap'n & His Magic Mutant Boogie Band

Retrospective by Don Snowden, Rock's Backpages, 21 December 2010

FUNNY, I HAD IT in mind to write something on Captain Beefheart for a few months, probably because I happened to be listening to his ...

The Bee Gees: In the Bee Gees' Time – A New Documentary on THAT Band

Film/DVD/TV Review by Gary Pig Gold, Rock's Backpages, 7 January 2011

2010 MARKED the 50th (!!) anniversary of the Bee Gees' career as fully professional all-singing, all-playing musicians, songwriters, and performers. ...

Ron Sexsmith: Long Player: In Praise of Ron Sexsmith

Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, February 2011

"We have had a gutful of fast art and fast food. What we need more of is slow art: art that holds time as a ...

The Slits: Memories Of Ari Up

Memoir by Adam Blake, Rock's Backpages, February 2011

AT THE START OF September 2005 I moved into a new place: a rather Agatha Christie-esque 1930s apartment block at the posh end of Ladbroke ...

Sam Cooke: Portrait Of A Legend 1951-1964 (ABKCO Records)

Review by Gary Pig Gold, Rock's Backpages, February 2011

MOST EVERY single time the 20th century's greatest singer-songwriters find themselves getting lionized or even litanized, it seems one towering figure is strangely, sorrowfully AWOL. ...

Junior Kimbrough, Ali Farka Toure: African Connections

Comment by Don Snowden, Rock's Backpages, 16 February 2011

LISTENING TO Junior Kimbrough again recently brought it all back home—how much that guitar tone had nagged and nagged at me, so damn familiar you ...

Smiley Culture: Mark Paytress Meets Smiley Culture On The Cusp Of Fame, 1984

Interview by Mark Paytress, Rock's Backpages, March 2011

AS BRITAIN'S first successful MC, whose fast, fluid style had more in common with rap than reggae, Smiley Culture's place in history is assured. He ...

Belated Props: Arhoolie Records at 50

Comment by Don Snowden, Rock's Backpages, 20 March 2011

DON'T IT FIGURE that Arhoolie's 50th anniversary just happened to overlap with the publication of John Szwed's biography of Alan Lomax? An unfortunate but appropriate ...

John Storm Roberts: An Appreciation

Memoir by Don Snowden, Rock's Backpages, April 2011

I'VE ALWAYS BEEN more than a bit ambivalent about the whole concept of mentoring, at least when it applies to the music world we run ...

John Mellencamp: McCaw Hall at Seattle Center

Live Review by Charles Bermant, Rock's Backpages, 25 April 2011

SEATTLE—John Mellencamp played only one song from when he was known only as "Cougar", and even that was only to fulfill an obligation to people ...

Bruce Springsteen, Clarence Clemons: Clarence Clemons: The Big Man Down For The Count

Comment by Don Snowden, Rock's Backpages, 20 June 2011

LET'S JUST SAY I'm hoping the "always comes in threes" death trinity principle doesn't hold true this time because with Clarence Clemons moving on to ...

Band Names? Welcome to the Jungle

Comment by Wayne Robins, Rock's Backpages, 28 June 2011

TALKING ABOUT rock bands these days sometimes resembles a walk through a mammoth petting zoo. ...

George Harrison, Ravi Shankar: With a Little Help from His Friends: George Harrison and the Concert for Bangla Desh

Retrospective by Harvey Kubernik, Rock's Backpages, July 2011

STEVE VAN ZANDT, May 2011, Lillehammer, Norway: "The anti-apartheid Sun City project (single, album, video, documentary, book, teaching guide) was a high point and a ...

Amy Winehouse: A Rock Star Dead Again at 27

Comment by Wayne Robins, Rock's Backpages, 23 July 2011

THE OTHER DAY I was listening to Amy Winehouse sing "You Know I'm No Good" on WFUV, and thought about how authentic she sounded. Not ...

Pop and its Past

Essay by Steve Redhead, Rock's Backpages, September 2011

POP HISTORY seemed, for some commentators at least, to have stopped sometime in the late 1980s. This was the 'postmodern' moment for many critics and ...

Nirvana: Smells Like a Sellout: Nirvana and the Death of Alternative Rock

Essay by Toby Creswell, Rock's Backpages, September 2011

NOWADAYS EVERYBODY ascribes the collapse of the recording industry to illegal downloading. But as Bob Dylan recently observed, "Remember when that Napster guy came up ...

It's Tom Hibbert's World, And We'll Miss It

Memoir by Mark Williams, Rock's Backpages, 13 September 2011

SOMETIMES IT'S impossible not to write in clichés, and this is one of them: There have been too many deaths in my life recently and ...

The Tubes: B.B. King's, NYC

Live Review by Kris DiLorenzo, Rock's Backpages, 22 September 2011

THE INTRODUCTORY MUSIC was samba, then Fee Waybill came out and busted up 'This is a Man's World' ─ in English and Italian. He knocked ...

The Beach Boys, Brian Wilson: Brian Wilson and SMiLE

Retrospective and Interview by Harvey Kubernik, Rock's Backpages, October 2011

NOTE: A small portion of this interview appeared in the 2011 MOJO '60s issue. ...

The Beach Boys, Brian Wilson: The SMiLE You Send Out Returns to You: The Story of Brian Wilson's Great Lost Masterpiece

Retrospective by Tim Meade, Rock's Backpages, October 2011

WE ALL KNOW THE STORY of the Beach Boys' SMiLE. After Pet Sounds, Brian set out to make a "teenage symphony to God" that ...

The Horrors: The Roundhouse, London

Live Review by John Robb, Rock's Backpages, October 2011

ONLY THOSE WITH tin ears have been "surprised" by The Horrorssonic muscle. On account of their youth and subscription to textbook Goth aesthetics, they were ...

Crosby and Nash: The Rejuvenating Effect of Grandpa Rock: Crosby and Nash at the Royal Albert Hall, London, 8th October 2011

Live Review by Richard English, Rock's Backpages, October 2011

I PARKED MY ZIMMER FRAME, tuned my hearing aid, munched a senna pod and shuffled into the Albert Hall with the other boomers. A man ...

Adam & The Ants: Adam Ant: Seawick Park, Clacton-on-Sea

Live Review by John Robb, Rock's Backpages, 9 October 2011

THERE HAVE BEEN a lot of comebacks recently, some great, some not so. They've ranged from the "oh not them again" to the more exciting ...

Bryan Ferry, Roxy Music: Bryan Ferry: Beacon Theatre, New York

Live Review by Larry Jaffee, Rock's Backpages, 9 October 2011

SITTING IN THE audience prior to Bryan Ferry's solo gig at the Beacon Theatre – his first show in New York since the 2003 Roxy ...

The Specials: Apollo, Manchester

Live Review by John Robb, Rock's Backpages, 16 October 2011

THE SPECIALS, of course, not only sound great, they look great. They hit the stage in matching suits. Razor stitched threads that are cut from ...

Glen Campbell, Cliff Richard: Sir Cliff and Glen Campbell live in Newcastle

Live Review by Elaine Cusack, Rock's Backpages, 30 October 2011

IF SOMEONE HAD told the 15-year-old Elaine that one weekend in the future she'd see both Cliff Richard and Glen Campbell in concert, she'd have ...

Pat Metheny (2011)

Interview by Hank Bordowitz, Rock's Backpages, November 2011

Ensconsed in his Brooklyn rehearsal space, the master guitarist demonstrates his 19th Century-meets-21st Century one-man-band Orchestrion, along the way discussing issues such as performing for children, soundproofing his apartment, and the difficulties in negotiating Canadian border posts.

File format: mp3; file size: 55.2mb, interview length: 57' 30" sound quality: ***

Rickie Lee Jones: Royal Festival Hall, London

Live Review by Rob Steen, Rock's Backpages, November 2011

FIRST, A HEALTH WARNING: if you are prone to cringe, foam or rage at reviews that put emotion first and last, and make no attempt ...

Gillian Welch: Brighton Dome

Live Review by Chris Charlesworth, Rock's Backpages, 14 November 2011

THE ACHING melancholia of Gillian Welch's songs about struggle is only partially balanced by the sprightly, lyrical playing of her immensely skilled guitarist and partner ...

Garth Hudson: The World According to Garth Hudson

Report and Interview by Charles Bermant, Rock's Backpages, 16 November 2011

IN A PREVIOUS LIFE you went to several concerts a month, when those who are now rock and roll dinosaurs walked the earth. Today you ...

The Hollies: They Ain't Heavy…

Retrospective by Gary Pig Gold, Rock's Backpages, 18 November 2011

NEVER AS NAUGHTY as the Rolling Stones, nor as pin-up perfect as Herman's Hermits; seldom as musically adventurous as the Yardbirds, nitty-gritty as the Animals, ...

Bob Dylan: HMV Apollo, London

Live Review by Mick Gold, Rock's Backpages, 21 November 2011

BOB-CATS PUSHED relentlessly forward against the bar at the front of the former Hammersmith Odeon, hats on their heads. Mark Knopfler was caressing liquid guitar ...

Nico: Chelsea Mädchen: The Funny Side of Nico

Review by Larry Jaffee, Rock's Backpages, 25 November 2011

NICO NEVER STRUCK me as funny. Some of her more morose material, such as her even more gothic take on the Doors' 'The End', or the ...

Bon Iver: Bon Iver, Bon Iver (Jagjaguwar)

Review by Bud Scoppa, Rock's Backpages, December 2011

ADOPTING THE nom de plume Bon Iver, Justin Vernon made the leap from unknown to major artist in the few seconds between the strummed acoustic ...

Senior Moments: 2011's Best Albums by Artists Over 50

Special Feature by Steven R Rosen, Rock's Backpages, December 2011

IN AN EFFORT TO SHOW the world – or at least its readers – that rock music continues, and often even improves, when its practitioners ...

Wilco: The Whole Love (dBpm)

Review by Bud Scoppa, Rock's Backpages, December 2011

WILCO FANS ARE AS polarized as the US congress. Some revel in the band's eardrum-pulverizing forays into the sonic unknown, introduced on 2000's art-damaged Yankee ...

Marianne Faithfull: City Winery, NYC

Live Review by Larry Jaffee, Rock's Backpages, 25 December 2011

MARIANNE FAITHFULL'S welcome return to the New York concert stage reminded one of that funky old aunt in everyone's family. You know, the one who ...

Cesária Évora, 1941–2011

Obituary by Carol Cooper, Rock's Backpages, 3 January 2012

BURIED ON HER home island of São Vicente the Tuesday before Christmas amid nationwide mourning in her native Cape Verde,  singer Cesária Évora enjoyed more ...

The Beach Boys: Jeffrey Foskett on the Beach Boys

Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, February 2012

NOTE: This is a transcript of the phone conversation I had with Jeffrey after interviewing Brian Wilson, Mike Love, Al Jardine, Bruce Johnston and David ...

Paul McCartney: Macca's Ration Book Romance: 'We Three'

Comment by Fred Dellar, Rock's Backpages, February 2012

PAUL MCCARTNEY'S latest album, Kisses On The Bottom, is, to a great extent, based around a number of songs his father once loved: age-old standards ...

Dory Previn: Remembering Dory Previn

Memoir by Loraine Alterman, Rock's Backpages, February 2012

MY DEAR FRIEND of nearly 40 years, Dory Previn, died last week. She was a great songwriter who exposed her deep feelings about love ...

Adele, Whitney Houston, Taylor Swift: The Girls Most Likely

Comment by Mitchell Cohen, Rock's Backpages, February 2012

SHE WAS ANOINTED, for sure. Behind the curtain, all the machinery was being cranked up for her debut, all the fanfare that was possible back ...

Tim Hardin: The Unforgiven: Tim Hardin and the Shock of Grace

Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, February 2012

NOTE: This is the "director's cut" version – at almost twice the length – of a piece written for MOJO and subsequently used as the ...

Bunky & Jake, Jake and the Rest of the Jewels: Everything's Jake on A Lick and a Promise

Review by Gene Sculatti, Rock's Backpages, 8 February 2012

THE SUBTITLE of a recently published book on Manhattan's Seventies punk scene is Five Years in New York That Changed Music Forever. It's a sure ...

Loudon Wainwright III: Loudon & I

Comment by Mark Leviton, Rock's Backpages, 14 February 2012

I'VE WRITTEN BEFORE about the parallels I continue to find between my own life and Loudon Wainwright III's, as he expresses events and feelings in ...

The Doors: When the music's never over: L.A. Woman and the Doors (or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Wasps)

Retrospective by Rob Steen, Rock's Backpages, 28 February 2012

BY NOW, they said, I would have outgrown it. When imagining myself plunged deep into the darkest inner recesses of middle age, I, too, once ...

Neneh Cherry: Unsung Hero/ine

Retrospective by Don Snowden, Rock's Backpages, March 2012

THE ORIGINAL TITLE for this piece was "Ticked Off at a Tick". The reason being that I spent more than a few years operating under ...

Davy Jones, The Monkees: The day I performed for Davy Jones

Memoir by Beverley Glick, Rock's Backpages, 12 March 2012

IN HONOUR OF the late Monkee, I feel compelled to share with you this vignette from my sadly-still-unpublished memoir, Hit Girl: My Bizarre Double Life ...

Seona Dancing: The Day I Met A Sensitive Artiste Called Ricky Gervais…

Retrospective by Beverley Glick, Rock's Backpages, 19 March 2012

IN MAY 1983, when I was assistant editor of Record Mirror, my good friend (the late) Gill Smith asked if I would interview a new ...

Remembering Greg Shaw

Memoir by Mark Shipper, Rock's Backpages, April 2012

WELL, I CAN'T STAND IT ANYMORE. Deep in the back of my head I have this Karmic debt I owe to Greg Shaw for setting ...

Duran Duran: The Day I discussed the meaning of life with Simon Le Bon

Memoir by Beverley Glick, Rock's Backpages, 13 April 2012

MY RELATIONSHIP with Simon Le Bon began back in December 1980, when I was a rookie writer for Sounds and visited the Rum Runner club ...

Where Did (My) Zeitgeist Go?: A Life in Rock Writing

Comment by Richard Riegel, Rock's Backpages, 18 April 2012

I'VE JUST FINISHED reading Rock and Roll Always Forgets: A Quarter Century of Music Criticism, by my old friend and former Village Voice editor Chuck Eddy, ...

Chuck Brown & the Soul Searchers: Chuck Brown And The Out-Of-Air Go-Go Experience

Comment by Don Snowden, Rock's Backpages, May 2012

THE ONLY TIME I saw Chuck Brown live made a deep, deep, indelible impression on me in an altogether unexpected way. ...

Donna Summer: Thoughts on Donna Summer

Comment by Mark Shipper, Rock's Backpages, May 2012

BY NOW YOU'VE HEARD about the sad passing of Donna Summer or, as she's always referred to, "Disco Queen Donna Summer" – she hated that ...

Booker T & The MGs: Duck Dunn and the Stax Attack

Comment by Don Snowden, Rock's Backpages, 15 May 2012

DUCK DUNN was one of the lucky ones – he had a name right from the start. ...

Donna Summer: 
Last Dance... and Gone

Memoir by Holly Gleason, Rock's Backpages, 17 May 2012

IN THAT FLOOD of ebony hair, there was always that one gardenia. Floating on top of the satiny waves of almost-porn star mane, it spoke ...

Black Sabbath: 02, Birmingham

Live Review by Pete Makowski, Rock's Backpages, 19 May 2012

ALMOST A WEEK LATER and my ears are still ringing – and I don't know if it's due to the rousing response of the audience ...

Big Star: Big Star Third at London's Barbican

Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, 29 May 2012

I WENT TO LONDON'S BARBICAN last night, fully prepared to be underwhelmed and unsatisfied: so many of these album recreations are too ramshackle for their ...

Delaney & Bonnie: A Tribute To Delaney & Bonnie: Highline Ballroom, New York City

Live Review by Kris DiLorenzo, Rock's Backpages, June 2012

Appearing: Denny Laine (Wings, Moody Blues), James Maddock (Wood), John Leventhal (Rosanne Cash, Shawn Colvin), Jeff Kievit (Darius Rucker), Amy Helm (Ollabelle), Clifford Carter (James ...

Justin Bieber: Overcovering Pop: Are We There Yet?

Comment by Gene Sculatti, Rock's Backpages, June 2012

WHAT have we wrought, us guys and gals who write about pop music? ...

The Beach Boys: Verizon Wireless Amphitheater, Orange County

Live Review by Gene Sculatti, Rock's Backpages, June 2012

"THERE'S SOMETHING RIDICULOUS about a 70-year-old man going out there and singing 'Fun, Fun, Fun.'" So said my wife last week when I told her ...

Louise holds a handful of rain...

Retrospective by Richard Riegel, Rock's Backpages, 6 June 2012

VERY GLAD TO see Louise Criscione as the featured rockwriter in the "Almost Famous" spot on RBP's front page this week, as I'd meant to ...

The Flamingo Club Revisited

Memoir by John Pidgeon, Rock's Backpages, 8 June 2012

I'M IDLING ALONG the High Street in my tan sit-up-and-beg Ford Pop, when 'Whatcha Gonna Do About It' comes on the radio. ...

Fiona Apple: The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do

Review by Mitchell Cohen, Rock's Backpages, 21 June 2012

THE AUDACITY of the new Fiona Apple album makes me so happy, because I can imagine what went on over at her record company when ...

Neil Young's Visible Republic: Americana

Review by Wayne Robins, Rock's Backpages, 29 June 2012

THERE'S ALWAYS a method to Neil Young's madness, even on his most prosaic projects. Who would have thought that the eardrum-puncturing solo guitar project Le ...

The Seeds: 22420 Pacific Coast Highway: Tales of Tim Hudson, Sky Saxon… and Ian Botham

Memoir by Mick Middles, Rock's Backpages, July 2012

STICK-THIN, clad in purple and black. Leather trousers, knee-length boots. Boney, bug-eyed, skank hair, dead face, white cheeks. This strange man was telling me to ...

Van der Graaf Generator: LIVE @ Metropolis Studios, London

Film/DVD/TV Review by Archie Patterson, Rock's Backpages, 29 July 2012

OF ALL THE original UK progressive bands, VDGG was perhaps the least pop-conscious of the lot. No matter how out-there most prog bands got, they ...

Bill Nelson & the Gentlemen Rockateers: Recorded live at Metropolis Studios, London

Film/DVD/TV Review by Archie Patterson, Rock's Backpages, 4 August 2012

I MAINLY REMEMBER Bill Nelson from the Be-Bop Deluxe days of Axe Victim, Futurama and Sunburst Finish back in the mid 1970s. During that period, ...

Rodney Crowell's Melodic Literacy

Interview by Charles Bermant, Rock's Backpages, 6 August 2012

RODNEY CROWELL, who turns 62 on August 7, has been on our radar since the 1970s, when he was the freshest horse in Emmylou Harris' ...

Elvis Presley, Orion: Not Elvis, BUT….

Retrospective by Gary Pig Gold, Rock's Backpages, 11 August 2012

FIRST, THERE WAS you-know-who. Or at least up until thirty-five years ago there was. ...

EuroRock In Opposition

Retrospective by Archie Patterson, Rock's Backpages, 12 August 2012

ROCK BEGAN in opposition to mainstream culture. The metamorphosis from (black) race music into white rock 'n' roll shook the very foundations of society. It ...

The Beatles: Where Were You In '62? Pop's last pre-Beatle year flowed with undercurrents and hinted at the future

Memoir by Gene Sculatti, Rock's Backpages, 29 August 2012

IT WAS 50 YEARS ago today, more or less. I was in the car with my parents, somewhere in Oregon, en route from our home ...

Steely Dan: Any Major Dude Will Tell You: The Funked-Up Muzak and Cerebral Genius of Steely Dan

Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, September 2012

NOTE: This is an updated version of a piece written for the short-lived biannual Faber/Domino publication Loops. I've revived it to commemorate the 40th anniversary ...

The Avengers: Avengers Summer

Retrospective by Don Snowden, Rock's Backpages, September 2012

GOD, THE AVENGERS were a great little band. And I say little band only because time and geography conspired against any possibility of them being ...

Led Zeppelin: No Stairway! The Real Best of Led Zeppelin

Guide by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, September 2012

Forget 'Stairway to Heaven'. In fact, forget 'Heartbreaker' and 'Rock and Roll' and (yikes!) even 'Dazed and Confused' and 'When the Levee Breaks'. (Definitely forget ...

Aimee Mann: The Discreet Charm of Aimee Mann: An Interview

Interview by Martin Colyer, Rock's Backpages, September 2012

A freewheeling chat, taking in Mann's new Charmer, her talented collaborators, reality TV, turning up the treble, Laura Linney's focus, Jack Kerouac's drying-out and women's ...

John Kay, Steppenwolf: John Kay & Steppenwolf: Theatre at Westbury, NY

Live Review by Larry Jaffee, Rock's Backpages, 2 September 2012

IT'S NEARLY A certainty that globally two Steppenwolf songs will be played every day on terrestrial radio or Internet-based stations or music sharing services. Yes, ...

David Cassidy: Puppy Love

Memoir by Ann Moses, Rock's Backpages, 7 September 2012

DAVID CASSIDY WAS first introduced to Tiger Beat readers in the June 1970 issue. He had appeared on TV on Marcus Welby, MD, The F.B.I ...

Madonna: Thoughts On Madonna's MDNA Tour in America

Live Review by Carol Cooper, Rock's Backpages, 9 September 2012

AS I WRITE THIS Thursday night, I can hear Madonna singing from Yankee Stadium through the window of my Harlem apartment. In fact, the sound ...

Afrika Bambaataa, Terry Farley, Larry Levan, David Mancuso: How Clubbing Changed The World

Essay by Greg Wilson, Rock's Backpages, 14 September 2012

LAST MONTH I was over in Chicago chilling out in my hotel room ahead of my first gig in the city, at Smart Bar, a ...

Steely Dan: Dawn of the Dan: Can't Buy a Thrill Turns 40

Retrospective by Gene Sculatti, Rock's Backpages, 20 September 2012

AT THE TIME, Steely Dan's Can't Buy a Thrill hardly appeared as a serious contender for the most-likely-to-succeed debut of the Class of '72. The ...

Michael Jackson: When Michael Was Bad: Michael Jackson: Bad 25

Review by Kate Allen, Rock's Backpages, 24 September 2012

MONDAY 18TH SEPTEMBER marked the 25th anniversary of the release of Michael Jackson's Bad. ...

Hold the Middle Page, or: My Short Career as Melody Maker's Singles Reviewer

Memoir by John Pidgeon, Rock's Backpages, 26 September 2012

WITH THREE MONTHS of 1978 – the year in which UK singles sales hit an all-time peak – still to go, perhaps the regular writer ...

Joni Mitchell Memories

Comment by Ellen Sander, Rock's Backpages, October 2012

I WAS driving Stephen Stills to a CSN recording session, it must've been 1969, and the subject of Joni Mitchell came up. ...

ZZ Top: An Interview

Interview by Pete Makowski, Rock's Backpages, October 2012

"TWO FLAT TIRES on a muddy road. Thick and Throbbing. The rhythm section from Hell and holding on strong." ...

Jimmy Savile: DJ Originator Or More Smoke And Mirrors?

Comment by Greg Wilson, Rock's Backpages, November 2012

JUST OVER 12 MONTHS AGO, on October 29th 2011, the TV and radio personality Sir Jimmy Savile died two days before his 85th birthday (he ...

Crazy Horse, Neil Young: Neil Young: Waging Heavy Peace/Journeys/Psychedelic Pill/live in Seattle

Review by Charles Bermant, Rock's Backpages, 12 November 2012

SIX YEARS AGO, Neil Young brought his CSN buddies through town imploring the country to impeach the president for lying. This week he began the ...

The Who: Barclays Centre, Brooklyn

Live Review by Ira Robbins, Rock's Backpages, 15 November 2012

I'VE BEEN AFFECTED in many ways by the thousand-plus rock concerts I've attended over the years. Not all of my reactions have been pleasant, and ...

Beauty In Two Dimensions: It's A Spongebob Christmas!

Review by Gene Sculatti, Rock's Backpages, 21 November 2012

I'M A FOOL FOR Christmas records. Good ones, that is: Spector's list-topper, sure, and the Beach Boys' album that starts with 'Little St. Nick' and ...

Elvis Presley: Yes, I was in an Elvis Movie!

Memoir by Ann Moses, Rock's Backpages, 23 November 2012

THE FIRST QUESTION whenever I tell someone I was in an Elvis movie is "Which one?" And my answer is usually "Not one of his ...

Donald Fagen: Nostalgia and The Nightfly: Good Times Never Seemed So Good (or Real) as on Donald Fagen's First Solo Set

Retrospective by Gene Sculatti, Rock's Backpages, 27 November 2012

ITEM: A recent Los Angeles Times article reported that the city's Wende Museum, which houses more than 100,000 Cold War artifacts, had outgrown its present ...

Nico: Nico Icon: Directed by Susanne Ofteringer

Film/DVD/TV Review by Archie Patterson, Rock's Backpages, December 2012

NICO DIED ALMOST 25 years ago yet the impact of her music lives on. Her work has influenced countless other people's music. The film Nico ...

David Sancious, Bruce Springsteen: E Street Serenade: Bruce Springsteen, David Sancious and the E Street Shuffle

Retrospective and Interview by Rod Tootell, Rock's Backpages, December 2012

IN SEPTEMBER 1974, a Swedish journalist was interviewing a rock singer pretty much unknown in Sweden. His name was Bruce Springsteen. ...

The Rolling Stones: Everybody Must Get Stoned: Andrew Loog Oldham Speaks

Interview by Paul Trynka, Rock's Backpages, December 2012

ANDREW OLDHAM'S two books of memoirs, Stoned and 2Stoned, are not only vital, entertaining works on the genesis and growth of the Rolling Stones; they ...

Old Ideas and Wrecking Balls: Rock's Top Senior Moments of 2012

Essay by Steven R Rosen, Rock's Backpages, 10 December 2012

THE 84 ROCK'S BACKPAGES contributors – and other invited music aficionados – who participated in our second Senior Moments poll had a heap of fun ...

Senior Moments: The Best 30 Albums of 2012 by Artists 50 and Over

Special Feature by Steven R Rosen, Rock's Backpages, 10 December 2012

As voted by over 80 of RBP's leading lights, here are the year's 30 best long-players made by artists of a certain vintage – those ...

The Origins Of The Tits Tee

Retrospective by Paul Gorman, Rock's Backpages, February 2013

MALCOLM MCLAREN'S adaptation of the infamous Tits t-shirt is one of punk's most familiar designs, as applied by he and Vivienne Westwood to shirts sold ...

The Beatles, Buddy Holly: The Day the Music Died? Feb. 3, 1959 – Feb. 7, 1964

Comment by Mitchell Cohen, Rock's Backpages, 4 February 2013

THE WHOLE "Day The Music Died" mythology is a crackpot idea of rock history. Buddy Holly died for somebody's sins, but not to become a ...

Frank Zappa: Gail Zappa: Mother of Re-Invention

Comment by Mark Leviton, Rock's Backpages, 8 February 2013

I'M A HUGE admirer of Frank Zappa, and have been since the mid-'60s. As a music critic I've written about him extensively, and during my ...

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds: Her Majesty's Theatre, London

Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, 11 February 2013

AT 55 NICK CAVE remains an impressive advert for the dissolute life. Squint at the guy on the stage of Her Majesty's Theatre and – ...

Paul Williams: Paul Williams: Still Alive directed by Stephen Kessler

Film/DVD/TV Review by Gary Pig Gold, Rock's Backpages, March 2013

I FIRST became aware of the man in 1970, as composer of what to this very day remains my absolute favourite Three Dog Night tune, ...

Alvin Lee: Finally Going Home: Alvin Lee

Interview by Roy Trakin, Rock's Backpages, March 2013

This tribute piece is based on an interview conducted on the release of Alvin's 2012 album Still on the Road to Freedom, a sequel of ...

New Order: Lost Years in Original Modernity? On Listening to New Order's Lost Sirens

Retrospective by Steve Redhead, Rock's Backpages, March 2013

THIRTY SEVEN Year Party People! Since Ian Curtis, Stephen Morris, Bernard Sumner and Peter Hook began playing regularly as Joy Division in 1978, that's effectively ...

Procol Harum: A Bit Of 'A Rum Tale': Procol Harum, Grand Hotel and the Timeless Allure of Lovestruckness

Retrospective by Rob Steen, Rock's Backpages, 19 March 2013

"IT'S A TRICKY one to play." Were my ears deceiving me? Here was the voice behind one of the most frequently heard-and-covered songs of all ...

David Bowie: Highlights of David Bowie Is: V&A, London

Review by Kate Allen, Rock's Backpages, 25 March 2013

I'VE NEVER been a Bowie-phile, but after visiting the David Bowie is exhibition at the V&A last week, it's difficult not to feel as though such ...

Music Journalism at 50

Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, April 2013

MOST PEOPLE WHO KNOW ANYTHING about music journalism know that the late Frank Zappa defined it, in 1977, as "people who can't write interviewing people ...

Yip Harburg and the Story of 'Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead'

Retrospective by Fred Dellar, Rock's Backpages, April 2013

THOUGH I HAVE tremendous sympathy for those who lost their jobs, their dignity and sometimes their lives, following the pit closures and ensuing strike of ...

Mike Bloomfield, Muddy Waters, Paul Butterfield Blues Band, The Rolling Stones: Born in Chicago: Butterfield, Bloomfield & the Sixties' Young Turks

Comment by Gene Sculatti, Rock's Backpages, 18 April 2013

IS IT JUST ME? Or has anyone else who's seen the PBS special Muddy Waters and the Rolling Stones Live found the whole affair cringe-worthy ...

David Bowie, Todd Rundgren: The Dame and The Runt: A Tale of Two Chameleons

Comment by Rob Steen, Rock's Backpages, 24 April 2013

A COUPLE OF pensioners have been popping in for sleepovers lately, fitter than fiddles and bouncing with frankly disgraceful enthusiasm. Judging by their latest recorded ...

Burt Bacharach: "He writes in hat sizes. Seven and three-fourths." Frank Sinatra on Burt Bacharach

Comment by Mitchell Cohen, Rock's Backpages, 27 April 2013

IF THE DETAILS of Burt Bacharach's romantic escapades — and there were many, since as Sammy Cahn once said, Burt was the only songwriter who ...

The Cowsills: 45 Things I Bet You NEVER Knew about The Cowsills...

Retrospective by Gary Pig Gold, Rock's Backpages, 27 April 2013

…even after watching Louise Palanker's absolutely riveting Family Band documentary. ...

The Eagles: Where Eagles Dared: California's Signature Rock Band Comes to London

Report by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, 29 April 2013

Messrs. Schmit, Henley, Frey and Walsh (photo: Debbie Kruger) WELCOME TO the Hotel Connaught, the plush old Mayfair institution where Glenn Frey, Don Henley, Joe Walsh ...

The Rolling Stones: No Expectations: The Stones at the Staples Center

Live Review by Mitchell Cohen, Rock's Backpages, 5 May 2013

PEOPLE AT THE Staples Center in L.A. this week spent a considerable chunk of cash to be in the same room as the Rolling Stones. ...

The Rascals On Broadway

Live Review by Mark Leviton, Rock's Backpages, 17 May 2013

BEFORE THE LIGHTS dimmed at the Richard Rodgers Theatre on 46th Street in Manhattan to signal the start of The Rascals: Once Upon a Dream, ...

Daft Punk, Giorgio Moroder: Daft Punk: Random Access Moroder

Comment by Greg Wilson, Rock's Backpages, 20 May 2013

THE MOST talked about album in many years, Daft Punk's Random Access Memories, is released in the UK today, and it's all set to blitz ...

The Doors, Ray Manzarek: What a shame about Ray

Comment by Rob Steen, Rock's Backpages, 21 May 2013

"RAY RIP", texted my long-time muso pal Graham at 7am. Since neither of us, to my almost certain knowledge, has ever befriended a Raymond, my ...

Fleetwood Mac: Jones Beach Theater, New York

Live Review by Larry Jaffee, Rock's Backpages, June 2013

THE LAST TIME I saw a Fleetwood Mac concert was in 1979 on the heels of the last album of theirs that really mattered to ...

Lez Zeppelin: How Many More Times? Many More, Please: Lez Zeppelin: The Garage, London

Live Review by Mat Snow, Rock's Backpages, June 2013

SIX DECADES into the rock era, we are in the epoch of the tribute act. Which is to say, every act still going is a ...

In Defence of Albert Goldman

Comment by Mark Shipper, Rock's Backpages, June 2013

ONLY FOUR YEARS too late, but I never looked for anything like this, since I never expected anyone to share my feelings for the work ...

Elton John: Don't Shoot the Piano Player: Elton's Croc-Rock Reconsidered

Retrospective by Gene Sculatti, Rock's Backpages, 17 June 2013

FOR SOME REASON — most likely the much-reported news of his participation in the new Queens of the Stone Age album — I've lately found ...

Merry Clayton: That Background Sound: Merry Clayton

Retrospective by Mitchell Cohen, Rock's Backpages, 30 June 2013

BY THE TIME Merry Clayton got the call one night that got her out of bed and into the studio to unleash her window-rattling voice ...

Mick Farren: Memories of Mick Farren: An entertaining afternoon in West Hollywood and a champagne-drenched night in Islington

Memoir by Paul Gorman, Rock's Backpages, 31 July 2013

GROWING UP IN London in the '60s and '70s with an interest in the counterculture, music and street politics meant that the shaggy-headed figure of ...

It's in the Mud: Muscle Shoals

Film/DVD/TV Review by Mitchell Cohen, Rock's Backpages, 2 August 2013

MUSCLE SHOALS, directed by Greg "Freddy" Camalier, is one of the latest in a loosely-linked series of music documentaries – Standing In The Shadows of Motown, The ...

The Band: Ageless: The Band at the Academy of Music, 1971

Retrospective and Interview by Harvey Kubernik, Rock's Backpages, September 2013

DURING THE FINAL week of 1971, the Band played four legendary concerts at New York City's Academy Of Music, ushering in the New Year with ...

Warren Zevon: Keep Him In Your Heart For a While: Remembering Warren Zevon

Retrospective by Jim Sullivan, Rock's Backpages, September 2013

IT WAS THE FALL of 1989 and I was having lunch with Warren Zevon at Musso & Frank's, the famous Old Hollywood restaurant where he ...

Sting: The Last Ship

Review by Rob Steen, Rock's Backpages, 28 September 2013

THE ARTIST Originally Known As Gordon Sumner is just about the only musician bar Justin Bieber who can be guaranteed bad notices for breathing. This, ...

Haim: Falling For Haim

Comment by Bud Scoppa, Rock's Backpages, October 2013

THIS HAS BEEN a bellwether year for young female artists, with the precocious Lorde and the irrepressible Miley Cyrus shaping their experiences into unfolding coming-of-age ...

Lou Reed: On The Wild Side

Retrospective by Jim Sullivan, Rock's Backpages, October 2013

I WAS TALKING with Lou Reed in his New York office, Sister Ray Enterprises, in 1996 and Reed was dressed, as usual, in a plain ...

Hackamore Brick: The Return of One of Rock's "Missing Links"

Retrospective and Interview by Steven R Rosen, Rock's Backpages, 11 October 2013

NOTE: This is an edited/excerpted version of a story that first appeared on http://www.blurtonline.com ...

HMV Revisited

Retrospective by Cliff White, Rock's Backpages, November 2013

AS THE HMV retail chain slowly unravels in the 21st Century multi-tech marketplace, I offer a few off-the-cuff memories of my time working at the ...

Roy Orbison: King of Hearts: Roy Orbison Revisited after 25 Years

Retrospective and Interview by Jim Sullivan, Rock's Backpages, November 2013

ROY ORBISON played what turned out to be his last concert, December 4, 1988 at the Front Row Theatre in Highland Heights, not far from ...

Lady Gaga: ARTPOP (Interscope)

Review by Kate Allen, Rock's Backpages, November 2013

LIKE THE REST of the world, I too have an opinion on Lady Gaga and her latest album/app/manifesto — ARTPOP. ...

The Birth Of The Blues and The Myth Of Authenticity

Essay by Mick Gold, Rock's Backpages, November 2013

Film-maker Mick Gold on the blues, authenticity and Blues America – broadcast by BBC4 on Friday 29 November and Friday 6 December at 9pm. ...

The Future of Rock Journalism

Comment by Ryan Carse, Rock's Backpages, November 2013

FRANK ZAPPA successfully offended an entire industry in 1977 during an interview with Bruce Kirkland for the Toronto Star newspaper. He said, "Most rock journalism ...

Sparks Are Getting Their Revenge on North America

Profile and Interview by Steven R Rosen, Rock's Backpages, 6 November 2013

NOTE: A different version of this story appeared at http://www.blurtonline.com. ...

Morrissey

Review and Interview by Jim Sullivan, Rock's Backpages, December 2013

N.B. This article combines a live review written in 2009 for the Boston Herald and an interview conducted in 1995 for the Boston Globe. ...

David Bowie: Mr. Bowie Changes Trains: Station to Station

Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, December 2013

NOTE: This essay on one of Bowie's greatest records was written for the artist Doug Aitken's (partially-Bowie-inspired) Station to Station exhibition, which travelled by train ...

Spinal Tap Redux

Interview by Jim Sullivan, Rock's Backpages, December 2013

I LISTENED to some of it in my youth, but spent most of my post-teenage years trying to avoid this crap: pandering, patronizing, mono-dimensional, unimaginative ...

Elvis Costello: This Year's Elvis Costello

Interview by Jim Sullivan, Rock's Backpages, January 2014

IT WAS 1983. Six years Elvis Costello had been in the public eye — but it had also been six years of antipathy toward the ...

Tina Turner

Interview by Jim Sullivan, Rock's Backpages, January 2014

"BABY, baby, baby you're out of time," sang Tina Turner near the end of a show in Boston back in 1981. ...

Top 10 Hits from the '60s: Who Played on 'Em

Retrospective by Harold Bronson, Rock's Backpages, 14 January 2014

THE WRECKING CREW, a much-needed documentary about the behind-the-scenes elite crop of studio musicians who provided the instrumentation for many of the hits of the ...

The Dave Clark Five: Dave Clark's Miscalculation

Retrospective by Harold Bronson, Rock's Backpages, March 2014

THE fiftieth anniversary of the Beatles' debut in America has occasioned a number of other anniversary TV specials linked to the British Invasion. With a ...

The Doors: Out there in Golden Square, there were plenty of stars

Memoir by Geoffrey Cannon, Rock's Backpages, March 2014

ALL COUPS have a context. Here is the story of The Doors are Open, and how this Granada Television hour-long show came to be made ...

Miriam Bienstock: The First Lady of Atlantic

Memoir by Loraine Alterman, Rock's Backpages, April 2014

FOR MONTHS I had noticed an immaculately coiffed and beautifully dressed older woman at my manicure place on Manhattan's Upper East Side.   ...

Bobby Womack: It's All Over Now: Remembering Bobby Womack

Memoir by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, June 2014

[This is the original – and very slightly different – version of a piece that appeared in the Observer on 29 June, 2014.] ...

Crosby Stills Nash & Young, Graham Nash: CSNY 1974: An Interview with Graham Nash

Interview by Harvey Kubernik, Rock's Backpages, July 2014

DAVID CROSBY, Stephen Stills, Graham Nash, and Neil Young release their CSNY 1974 boxed set from their historic 1974 tour on July 8th. The forty previously ...

Charlie Haden: Lifetime With Charlie Haden, R.I.P.

Retrospective by Don Snowden, Rock's Backpages, July 2014

THERE WAS NEVER any doubt I would write something about Charlie Haden moving on to the next phase but then a daunting thought struck me: ...

The Flesh Eaters, The Gun Club: Locals Only: The Flesh Eaters and The Gun Club

Retrospective by Don Snowden, Rock's Backpages, July 2014

NO ONE ON the L.A. scene in 1981 got enough of the version of the Flesh Eaters featured on A Minute to Pray, A Second ...

The Ramones: Touchstone Tommy Ramone

Comment by Don Snowden, Rock's Backpages, July 2014

MAKE NO MISTAKE, Tommy Ramone was the touchstone for all things Ramone. ...

Dos: Dos y Dos

Comment by Don Snowden, Rock's Backpages, August 2014

NO SURPRISE to anyone that Mike Watt's hard-working man advocacy for the brotherhood of the bass has placed him and his trusty thunderstick (one back-in-the-day ...

Led Zeppelin, Jimmy Page: Jimmy Page: A Life In Music

Report by Chris Charlesworth, Rock's Backpages, October 2014

TO CADOGAN HALL in Sloaney Knightsbridge where Jimmy Page has agreed to submit to a public interrogation by Guardian Music Editor Michael Hann, the exercise ...

Lady Gaga: ArtRave, O2 Arena, London

Live Review by Kate Allen, Rock's Backpages, October 2014

THE PAST YEAR or so has not been kind to Lady Gaga. Broken bones, cancelled tours, major management fall outs and furiously scrutinised falling music ...

Pharrell Williams: O2 Arena, London

Live Review by Kate Allen, Rock's Backpages, October 2014

AT THE AGE OF 41 and with an estimated net worth of $80 million, why would Pharrell Williams bother submitting himself to the rigours of ...

The Charts are Dead: Is the Top 40 still relevant in 2014?

Comment by Chiara Wilkinson, Rock's Backpages, 5 December 2014

"WHO'S NUMBER ONE in the charts?" Ask this question to a teenager in the '80s and you'll likely get a sharp, accurate response: the result ...

Hunter Thompson Pays a Visit to Babylon

Retrospective by Bill Wasserzieher, Rock's Backpages, 2015

HUNTER THOMPSON'S SUICIDE ten years ago this month should not have come as a surprise. His dark tales about riding with a biker gang, Mace-spraying ...

The Band, The Beach Boys, The Beatles, Glen Campbell, Merle Haggard, Buck Owens, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Candi Staton: Ken Mansfield on Capitol Records and the Beatles

Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, 2015

INTERVIEWER'S NOTE: Ken Mansfield is a former Capitol executive and was the U.S. Manager of Apple Records. He was on the rooftop at Savile Row ...

Edgar Froese, Tangerine Dream: Edgar Froese 1944-2015

Retrospective by Jim Sullivan, Rock's Backpages, January 2015

THE GUYS in Tangerine Dream — leader Edgar Froese, plus more than 20 others over the years — always gave us the silent treatment in ...

Ray Davies, The Kinks: Ray Davies: A Complicated Life by Johnny Rogan

Book Review by Chris Charlesworth, Rock's Backpages, February 2015

WELL RESPECTED certainly but hardly a flower to be looked at and most unlikely to laze around in the afternoon, sunny or otherwise. The life ...

Chris Bell: He was the Cosmos: The Tragedy of Chris Bell

Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, February 2015

NOTE: This article is comprised of adapted excerpts from my big MOJO story written about Big Star and published in February 2000 – BH.     ...

Britney Spears: Why Did Britney Spears Quietly Drop an Album then Take it Down?

Report by Kate Allen, Rock's Backpages, April 2015

ARE WE ALL sick of "surprise" music releases yet? Are we supposed to feign excitement over Beyoncé serenading Jay Z via a Tidal-exclusive video (the ...

Led Zeppelin, U2: Dennis Sheehan Talks About Led Zeppelin (and a little bit about U2)

Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, May 2015

NOTE: This is a transcription of an April 2010 phone interview with Dennis Sheehan – then tour manager for U2 –  for my oral history ...

Keith Richards with James Fox: Life

Book Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, June 2015

LIFE MAY BE a ghosted rock autobiography but it's much more than that. Credit to voracious reader Richards that in James Fox he hired no ...

The Dean of Rock Critics Schools Us On Himself: Robert Christgau's Going Into the City (Dey St.)

Book Review by Jason Gross, Rock's Backpages, June 2015

LET'S SAY THAT you're interested in New York City's mid-to-late 20th century history, plus journalism, plus music journalism, plus critical theory. You're not just in a pretty ...

Ginger Baker, Remi Kabaka, The Rolling Stones, Wings: Talking Drummer: An Interview with Remi Kabaka

Interview by Steve Roeser, Rock's Backpages, July 2015

ON A SATURDAY afternoon in late May, I arrive at a large outdoor sports facility on the west side of Los Angeles.  There are several playing fields ...

Grateful Dead: Fare Thee Well — The Grateful Dead: Levi's Stadium, Santa Clara CA, 27 and 28 June, 2015

Live Review by Cary J Martin, Rock's Backpages, 2 July 2015

THE LONG Strange Trip is coming to an end. In January the four surviving members of the Grateful Dead announced that they would reunite in ...

Sufjan Stevens: Royal Festival Hall, London

Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, 4 September 2015

IN AN INTERVIEW with The Quietus' Jeremy Allen in October 2010, with music streaming still in its relative infancy, Sufjan Stevens opined that technological change ...

"The Best Things in Life Are Free": Downloads, Streaming, You Tube and Mags

Comment by James Musker, Rock's Backpages, November 2015

THE AGE OF INSTANT access is upon us. We are currently living in a world where it's difficult to avoid sensory overload, as there seems ...

Elvis Presley: Next Train to Memphis: Peter Guralnick's Sam Phillips

Profile and Interview by Chris Campion, Rock's Backpages, 17 November 2015

AS THE PRE-EMINENT and passionate chronicler of music history, Peter Guralnick is in a league of his own, with a bibliography that not only — ...

The Dictators Play Paris

Report by Paul Rambali, Rock's Backpages, 19 November 2015

THE DICTATORS played in central Paris on Wednesday night and Handsome Dick Manitoba was in exhilarating Noo Yoik form. ...

The Beatles: Rubber Soul 50 Years On

Retrospective by Harvey Kubernik, Rock's Backpages, December 2015

"Rubber Soul was the album that changed the musical world we lived in then to the one we still live in today." (Andrew Loog Oldham) ...

This Heat: Head Birth In The Year Zero

Retrospective and Interview by Byron Coley, Rock's Backpages, December 2015

"IN MY MIND, the linearity is that we did Dolphin Logic. Then Gareth joined Dolphin Logic and we became This Heat. That's my version," says ...

Hawkwind, Lemmy, Motörhead: Everything Louder: Remembering Lemmy

Retrospective by Jim Sullivan, Rock's Backpages, 31 December 2015

EVERY MOTÖRHEAD concert I can recall began with these words from Lemmy: "We are Motörhead and we play rock 'n' roll." So simple, so succinct, ...

Ellen Foley, Joe Hurley & the Gents, Garland Jeffreys, Willie Nile: Irish Rock's Rich Tapestry Celebrated in NY All-Star Revue

Report by Larry Jaffee, Rock's Backpages, 18 March 2016

NEW YORK City's Irish-American community extended Saint Patrick's Day by two days this past Saturday night for the 18th Annual All-Star Irish Rock Revue at ...

Joanna Newsom: End of the Road festival, Wiltshire

Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, September 2016

THERE AREN'T MANY contemporary musicians I'd stand in the pissing Wiltshire rain at summer's end to hear: I'm too ancient to care too much about ...

Cory Henry's Funk Apostles: Jazz Café, London

Live Review by Mark Pringle, Rock's Backpages, 16 November 2016

I'M A FAN of Henry's. Like many, I fell in love with his extraordinary take on Hammond-driven gospel. He's the exemplary keyboard player for the ...

The Best Music Journalism Of 2016

Essay by Jason Gross, Rock's Backpages, December 2016

WE WANTED 2016 to end and we're getting our wish, but the fallout from this awful year will be haunting us for a while – ...

Nick Cave: One More Time with Nick Cave

Report and Interview by Toby Creswell, Rock's Backpages, January 2017

"NICK IS NAVIGATING a completely new world," says Andrew Dominik of his friend Nick Cave. That world began eighteen months ago when Cave's teenage son ...

Chuck Berry (1926-2017)

Obituary by Chris Charlesworth, Rock's Backpages, March 2017

THANKS TO HIS duck walk, the way he swung the neck of his guitar around and those nifty little bent-note licks that opened his songs, ...

Marty Wilde and the Wilde Cats: Epsom Playhouse

Live Review by Keith Altham, Rock's Backpages, March 2017

AN AVALANCHE of white hair and bald heads enthusiastically greeted the burly, bewigged figure of the genial Marty Wilde when he lumbered on stage at ...

The Beatles, The Beau Brummels, The Byrds, The Sir Douglas Quintet, The Turtles: America's Beatles

Retrospective by Harold Bronson, Rock's Backpages, April 2017

THIS YEAR THERE have been more events to celebrate the rock music of the 1960s than in any previous one, and it's still only April. ...

Elton John: Madmen Across the Water: How Elton John (and Bernie Taupin) stormed the USA

Retrospective by Harvey Kubernik, Rock's Backpages, April 2017

IN NOVEMBER 1970, Elton John performed an intimate concert at A&R Studios in New York, recorded for WABC FM. In front of 125 people, Elton ...

Harold Bronson: My British Invasion

Book Review by John Tobler, Rock's Backpages, June 2017

MY FIRST ENCOUNTER with Harold Bronson was at the Pasadena Rose Bowl Swapmeet in November, 1973. We have met subsequently on probably more than a ...

Bruce Springsteen: Live In Belfast 1996 – The Ghost Of Tom Joad Revisited

Review by Rod Tootell, Rock's Backpages, October 2017

RUNNING THROUGH October and November, Bruce Springsteen will play a series of solo shows at the Walter Kerr Theatre on Broadway. It seems a fitting ...

Grizzly Bear: Arnold Cottesloe Theatre, Kingston College

Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, October 2017

ON A DAMP Sunday night, in the unlovely London satellite town that is Kingston-upon-Thames – and for a paltry £12, moreover – I got to ...

The Eagles: Trouble in Paradise: The Eagles' Hotel California and mid-'70s Los Angeles

Retrospective by Ed Doheny, Rock's Backpages, November 2017

DON HENLEY once described the Eagles' 1976 album Hotel California as "our interpretation of the high life of Los Angeles", adding that the band had ...

Doobie Brothers, Michael McDonald, Steely Dan: Wide Open: An Interview with Michael McDonald

Interview by Gavin Martin, Rock's Backpages, November 2017

GM: I attended three Dylan shows in your hometown St. Louis in the noughties. Visiting the arch sculpture one day felt weirdly sad, a hopeful ...

Cecil Taylor: Culture Spinach and Chaos Theory

Comment by Don Snowden, Rock's Backpages, April 2018

ONCE I DECIDED to write something on Cecil Taylor moving on to the next phase, I went back and counted the number of his albums ...

The Byrds, Chris Hillman, Roger McGuinn, Gram Parsons: The Byrds' Sweetheart Of The Rodeo at 50

Retrospective and Interview by Harvey Kubernik, Rock's Backpages, June 2018

MARKING THE 50th anniversary of the groundbreaking Sweetheart of the Rodeo, Byrds co-founders Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman have been performing the album in its ...

Aretha Franklin: The First Lady: Aretha Franklin, 1942-2018

Obituary by Mark Kemp, Rock's Backpages, 16 August 2018

CHILDHOOD MEMORY: I'm ten years old and sitting on the floor in the living room of the family home in the early 1970s, vinyl albums ...

Paul Simon: The Final Concert

Review by Wayne Robins, Rock's Backpages, September 2018

THE FLUSHING Meadow Park concert area is a stout walk from both the Citi Field parking lots and subway stations. ...

Vulfpeck: O2 Academy, Brixton

Live Review by Jasper Murison-Bowie, Rock's Backpages, 4 October 2018

VULFPECK HAVE a lot of fans. And why shouldn't they? They are talented musicians who make tight records and they've shown themselves to be shrewd ...

A Top 40 Countdown & A Plea For a Mitzvah in the Streaming Age: The Best Music Journalism of 2018

Guide by Jason Gross, Rock's Backpages, December 2018

2018 WAS A really good year, just not politically, socially, psychologically and spiritually... well, there was plenty of good music, as Fader, Consequence of Sound ...

Anthony O'Grady R.I.P.

Obituary by Clinton Walker, Rock's Backpages, December 2018

ANTHONY O'GRADY, who died on 19 December, was the Godfather here in Australia. He was the writer/editor/publisher who transformed Australian rock journalism and music magazines, ...

Mick Jagger: Memo from Jagger: The Story of Performance

Book Excerpt by Jay Glennie, Rock's Backpages, December 2018

"DO YOU FANCY writing a book on Performance?" It was Sandy Lieberson on the phone, the producer of Performance, with the offer of a lifetime. ...

Stephen Bishop, Chicago, Rick Derringer, Electric Light Orchestra, Genesis, Steve Hackett, Lighthouse, Dave Mason, Alan Parsons, Procol Harum, Al Stewart, The Strawbs, Vanilla Fudge, The Zombies: Cruisin' with Justin & the Fudge: Five Days at Sea with the Rock Boomers

Report by Mark Leviton, Rock's Backpages, February 2019

"I've realized audiences aren't listening to the lyrics of my first song – they're too busy trying to figure out how old I look..." Al ...

The Whirligig of Time

Memoir by Geoffrey Cannon, Rock's Backpages, February 2019

"THE PAST is never dead. It is not even past" rightly said William Faulkner. My time as a regular writer on rock music was half ...

Joni Mitchell: Martyn Atkins (dir.): Joni 75 – A Birthday Celebration

Review by Simon Warner, Rock's Backpages, March 2019

IT WAS A little ironic that the only live breath that Joni Mitchell exuded at her own 75th birthday celebration extinguished a single candle on ...

Bob Dylan: A Subterranean Bicentennial Road Movie: Scorsese's Rolling Thunder Revue

Film/DVD/TV Review by Mick Gold, Rock's Backpages, 13 June 2019

WHEN ROLLING THUNDER REVUE: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese was posted on IMDb, I clicked on Full Cast & Crew and scanned the ...

Dr. John: Revisitation Rights: Some People Call Me "Professor Dr. John"

Retrospective by Don Snowden, Rock's Backpages, 21 June 2019

"SOME PEOPLE call me Professor Dr. John…" No, that doesn't work. ...

The Kinks' Arthur: Its genius and its fate

Retrospective by Geoffrey Cannon, Rock's Backpages, October 2019

Arthur (the Decline and Fall of the British Empire), the Kinks's second song-cycle, was released half a century ago, in October 1969. It is now ...

Caravan Palace: O2 Academy Brixton

Live Review by Jasper Murison-Bowie, Rock's Backpages, 30 January 2020

Wind them up and watch them go. ...

Sparks: Ron Mael discusses new Sparks album A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip

Profile and Interview by Steven R Rosen, Rock's Backpages, 15 May 2020

… and reveals details of two upcoming movies involving the duo – an unusual musical and a long-awaited documentary. ...

Area Code 615, Crosby Stills Nash & Young, Janis Joplin, Neil Young: Elliot Mazer, 1941-2021

Interview by Harvey Kubernik, Rock's Backpages, February 2021

ELLIOT MAZER, the recording engineer and record producer who worked with Kenny Burrell, Chubby Checker, Maynard Ferguson, Richie Havens, Janis Joplin, Neil Young, Linda Ronstadt, ...

The Byrds, David Crosby, Johnny Marr, Van Morrison, Morrissey, The Smiths: Johnny Rogan, 1953-2021

Obituary by Chris Charlesworth, Rock's Backpages, February 2021

MY GOOD FRIEND Johnny Rogan, who died unexpectedly in January aged 67, was among the most prolific and acclaimed music biographers of his generation. Much ...

"He was our Google": Fred Dellar, 1931-2021

Special Feature by Various Writers, Rock's Backpages, May 2021

I REMEMBER being slightly shocked when I heard that Fred Dellar was going to turn 80 years old. A decade later, he has died just ...

Keith Altham at 80: An Appreciation

Memoir by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, May 2021

TWENTY YEARS AGO, when I co-founded Rock's Backpages with Mark Pringle and Martin Colyer, one of the first names on our Wants List was Keith. ...

The Jesus & Mary Chain: Roundhouse, London

Live Review by Irina Shtreis, Rock's Backpages, 26 November 2021

THE PATH from the platform of Chalk Farm tube station to the Roundhouse inevitably summons the lyrics from'Hardest Walk': "The hardest walk you could ever ...

Sex Pistols, Johnny Thunders: Two Johnnies Get a Lift: Christmas Eve 1976

Memoir by Ed Jones, Rock's Backpages, December 2021

IT WAS 11.30 pm on Christmas Eve, 1976, at the height of the punk explosion. To the dismay of the entire nation, I had temporarily ...

Al Green, Willie Mitchell: Let's Stay Together: Willie Mitchell on Al Green and Hi Records

Interview by Harvey Kubernik, Rock's Backpages, January 2022

IT'S BEEN OVER a half a century since Al Greene & the Soulmates [sic], then based in Grand Rapids, Michigan, released their first album Back ...

Yes: Royal Albert Hall, London

Live Review by Richard English, Rock's Backpages, June 2022

THIS TOUR IS appropriately called "Close to the Edge". Alan White, drummer, who was due to perform, toppled over the edge on 26th May and ...

Arctic Monkeys: Drive My Car

Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, July 2022

Note: This was written as a bio at the behest of Domino Records' marvellous Colleen Maloney, at least three months before the release of the ...

Pharoah Sanders: Spirit Force and Truly Iconic

Memoir by Don Snowden, Rock's Backpages, 26 September 2022

OK, THIS is it, the first step... Pharoah has crossed over the rainbow bridge (and I bet his bridge was a real musical rainbow) and ...

Hawkwind: In Search Of Hawkwind

Retrospective by Adam Blake, Rock's Backpages, October 2022

SO, IN A FIT of nostalgia for my old Ladbroke Grove stomping ground, I spent rather more money than I anticipated picking up a first ...

The Beatles' Revolver: A report and five rave reviews

Retrospective by Various Writers, Rock's Backpages, October 2022

1: Revolver is Title for New Beatle LP Tony Barrow, KRLA Beat, 13 August 1966 ...

Ohio Express: The Saga of the Ohio Express's 'Beg, Borrow And Steal'

Retrospective by Harold Bronson, Rock's Backpages, November 2022

IN SEPTEMBER 1967 I was watching the Upbeat TV show and immediately connected with a rock band called the Ohio Express performing a song with an infectious ...

Syd Barrett's Stars

Memoir by Gary Lucas, Rock's Backpages, July 2023

THE NEW Syd Barrett doc Have You Got It Yet?, now playing at the Quad Cinema here in NYC, is quite good but very sad ...

The Who: Sussex County Cricket Club

Live Review by Richard English, Rock's Backpages, July 2023

IT'S HARD TO pin down how a great gig affects you. A young'un says, "Very fun, Mum, very fun!" Hippie: "Far ... out ... man!" ...

Bridget St John: Still Bridget St John

Retrospective by Mark Cooper, Rock's Backpages, November 2023

I CAN'T RECALL ever having seen Bridget St John before although I owned her first couple of albums as the '60s wobbled into the '70s. ...

Keef Hartley, John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers, Frank Zappa: Neil Slaven, 1944-2023

Obituary by Tony Burke, Rock's Backpages, January 2024

RECORD PRODUCER, researcher, author and discographer Neil Slaven, who died on December 23rd aged 79, was one of the leading lights of the 1960s British ...

The Beatles: It was 60 years ago today: the Beatles invade North America

Retrospective by Harvey Kubernik, Rock's Backpages, February 2024

I HAD SEEN and heard the Beatles mentioned in a Walter Cronkite CBS news television program in December 1963, one of the first times they ...

Tracy Chapman, Natalie Merchant: Tracy Chapman: I Could Be Someone

Retrospective by Mark Cooper, Rock's Backpages, February 2024

THE FIRST TIME I heard Tracy Chapman was in the office of an Elektra A&R man at 9229 Sunset Boulevard late in 1987. ...

Mojo Nixon: You Can't Kill Me: Mojo Nixon, Free, Drunk & Horny and Ready to Rumble

Memoir by Holly Gleason, Rock's Backpages, February 2024

MOJO NIXON was crazy. Walking on a razor edge, laughing into the wind like some kind of kamikaze "Hey, y'all! watch this!" good ole boy ...

Bob Marley & the Wailers: People Get Ready: Bucky Marshall, Claudie Massop and Bob Marley

Retrospective by James Fox, Rock's Backpages, 21 February 2024

A FEW DAYS ago, a friend sent me a photograph from Jamaica that hit me with a jolt: an image of myself 46 years ago, ...

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