Rock's Backpages: Search Results

PJ Harvey: Sex and Bile and Rock and Roll

Interview by Jim Arundel, Melody Maker, 8 February 1992

IT'S SUNDAY AFTERNOON, grey and bitter and it looks like rain. Your flatmate, Lisa, and her gangly boyfriend, Ben, are in her room. They're burning ...

Fiona Apple: Hard Core Pawn

Interview by Phil Sutcliffe, Q, March 2000

Therapised and raped by the age 12, famous and alienated by the music industry at 19, Fiona Apple is feeling better, thank you. She's got ...

Sting: "I think I am the edge": Sting faces 50 and the millennium

Interview by Bob Spitz, Delta Sky, December 1999

FROM THE MOMENT the Police made their debut in 1978, it was clear that Sting wasn't about to go away. It wasn't so much that ...

Prince's Around the World in a Day at 30

Retrospective by Michael A. Gonzales, soulhead, 22 April 2015

IN THE SPRING of 1985, there were two types of Prince fans – those who boarded the violet-hued bandwagon years before Purple Rain (both the ...

Simon & Garfunkel Reunite: It's Paul, But Is It Art?

Report and Interview by Wayne Robins, Rolling Stone, 18 December 1975

NEW YORK – Comedian Richard Belzer was warming up the studio audience for NBC's Saturday Night program, October 18th. This, he was saying, was an ...

James Bay

Profile and Interview by Laura Barton, Q, July 2015

IN TWO YEARS, THE YOUNG BRIT SINGER-SONGWRITER JAMES BAY HAS GONE FROM BARMAN TO CHART-TOPPING, AWARD-WINNING HEARTTHROB AND IS MOBBED WHEREVER HE TRAVELS. NO WONDER ...

Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers: Tom Petty: Animus Americus Unpoliticus

Interview by Stephen Demorest, Creem, August 1978

[L — Fair-haired, guitar-playing carnivore indigenous to America; leaves characteristic trail of Coke bottles.] ...

Michael Kiwanuka: Move on Up

Profile and Interview by Stevie Chick, MOJO, November 2016

Two years ago, in crisis, doubting his worth and dismissed by his own label. Then he started to sing about that uncertainty, and everything changed. ...

Dave Alvin: From An Old Guitar – Rare and Unreleased Recordings

Review by Wayne Robins, Copper, 14 January 2020

YOU'RE DRIVING through the New Mexico desert in the dark. Your teeth are grinding, though the buzz of the blue meth or whatever you were ...

Delines, The : The Delines: Two If By Sea

Report and Interview by Steven R Rosen, Rock & Roll Globe, 12 March 2022

Willy Vlautin and Amy Boone overcome the odds to create their best album with The Sea Drift. ...

Beatles, The, Drifters, The, Kenny Lynch: Kenny Lynch: Nothing But The Real Thing

Sleeve notes by Kieron Tyler, RPM Records, September 2004

KENNY LYNCH HAS been at the heart of British showbusiness over 40 years. Whether he's acting, writing for light entertainment or drama, singing, performing comedy ...

Prince: How Prince's Androgynous Genius Changed the Way We Think About Music and Gender

Essay by Simon Reynolds, Pitchfork, 22 April 2016

His clothes, songwriting, and production prowess all played a part in breaking through any and every type of convention. ...

Ian Tyson: Cowboy troubadour: Ian Tyson is riding high again

Profile and Interview by Nicholas Jennings, Maclean's, 13 February 1989

THE AUDITORIUM was a sea of cowboy hats in a variety of styles – High Sierra, Ridgetop and Cattleman. The ranchers, cowhands and wives were ...

Fleet Foxes: How Fleet Foxes are handling high expectations

Profile and Interview by Laura Barton, The Guardian, 16 June 2011

Huge success began a steep learning curve for the Seattle band. Bandleader Robin Pecknold explains how the second album put the band in a "dark ...

Patti Smith's Journey to Horses: A Timeline

Retrospective by Caryn Rose, Vulture, 13 November 2015

PATTI SMITH'S Horses, which turned 40 this week, is such a perfectly formed rock-and-roll artifact that it's difficult to imagine that Patti didn't just wake up ...

Lee Hazlewood: "Compared To My Dad, I'm A Soprano"

Retrospective and Interview by Spencer Leigh, Now Dig This, February 2005

"I don't have to run if I want to stay, I don't have to do what the people say, I found my place ...

ABBA: Really Doing Something: The Making of the ABBA album

Sleeve notes by Carl Magnus Palm, Polar Music, November 2012

WHAT WOULD you do if you were a Swedish band who had just won the Eurovision Song Contest, a victory that resulted in the first ...

Paul Simon (1993) [transcript]

Audio transcript of interview by Adam Sweeting, Rock's Backpages transcripts, 1993

This is a transcript of Adam Sweeting's interview. Listen to the audio of this interview. ...

Scott Walker, The Walker Brothers: Scott Walker: “That Francis Bacon, In-The-Face Whoops Factor...”

Retrospective and Interview by Jim Irvin, MOJO, May 1995

TWENTY-TWO YEAR OLD Noel Scott Engel was on the run from Uncle Sam. He was fleeing from a country that would never connect with his ...