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The Barracudas, New Race, The Saints: The Saints: Out In The Jungle (Flicknife)/The Barracudas: Mean Time (Closer)/New Race: The First And The Last

Review by Barney Hoskyns, NME, 16 April 1983

I MUST applaud the mysterious Tony D for his live review of The Barracudas (12/2/83) – the gig excited me in exactly the same way. ...

Fountains of Wayne: The Fountains of Wayne: Mojo Rising

Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, May 1997

CHRIS COLLINGWOOD and Adam Schlesinger have waited a long time to see their pure-pop/power-pop dreams realised. The duo were penning addictively hummable songs as long ...

The Clark Sisters: Is The Lord Bored With Disco?

Interview by Barney Hoskyns, NME, 27 August 1983

GOD MUST be tired of pop music. The most popular female gospel act in America, Detroit's Clark Sisters, have the first gospel record in a ...

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. ...

Tom Waits: The Piano Has Been Drinking: Tom Waits in London Town

Book Excerpt by Barney Hoskyns, Lowside of the Road: A Life of Tom Waits (Faber), March 2009

In this excerpt from Lowside of the Road: A Life of Tom Waits, the barfly bard of the Hollywood sidewalks visits London for the first ...

Eric Clapton: Blues God Without An Axe To Grind

Profile by Barney Hoskyns, The Times, 2 February 1991

WHEN THAT crazed blues fanatic scrawled the words "CLAPTON IS GOD" on a London wall in 1966, he ushered in the cult of the guitar ...

Candi Staton Comes Home to Country Soul

Sleevenotes by Barney Hoskyns, Honest Jon's Records, March 2006

THERE ARE southern soul voices and there are southern soul voices. Raw and ravaged, Candi Staton's is one of the signature sounds of that particular ...

Did Video Kill The Radio Star? MTV 20 Years On

Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, The Observer, 28 July 2001

"MTV makes me want to smoke crack..." (Beck, 1992) ...

The Band, Levon Helm: Oh Brother Where Art Thou? The Night They Drove Ole Levon Down

Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, July 2012

IN THE BACKWOODS gang that was The Band, Levon Helm was the lean and wiry chancer with one eye on the ladies and a voice ...

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 ...

Chic, Donna Summer: Your Booty, My 12-Inch: Disco Revisited

Guide by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, October 1998

YOWSAH, YOWSAH, YOWSAH. Twenty years after the dizzy heights of Discomania, the monster is back in our midst – in movies like Paul Thomas Anderson’s ...

Spiritualized: The Mile High Club: Spiritualized in the Sky

Report and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, February 1998

SPIRITUALIZED: a concoction of the cosmological and the pharmaceutical enjoying high times in Britain. Now Jason Pierce is spending two months turning on America. Barney ...

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 ...

Elvis Costello: El Hath No Fury: Elvis Costello

Interview by Barney Hoskyns, The Wire, June 1991

"WHEN YOU GET OLD IT'S LIKE they go to the file for the opinions on you," said Elvis Costello last time he was on the ...

Joan Armatrading, Jackson Browne, Tim Buckley, Harry Chapin, Leonard Cohen, John Denver, Neil Diamond, Bob Dylan, Billy Joel, Rickie Lee Jones, Carole King, Kris Kristofferson, Gordon Lightfoot, Don McLean, Joni Mitchell, Randy Newman, Laura Nyro, John Prine, Carly Simon, Paul Simon, Cat Stevens, James Taylor, Tom Waits, Neil Young, Warren Zevon: School of Rock Study Guide: Singer-Songwriters

Guide by Barney Hoskyns, iTunes, October 2008

"WHERE DO YOU have left to go but in?" It was a question posed by Joni Mitchell, the brilliant Canadian blonde who specialized in intensely ...

Subbed Culture: The Meaning of Bile

Essay by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 18 February 1984

Should the rock press only reflect what's happening, or has it the power to make things happen? With the proliferation of teen pop glossies, which ...

Linda Ronstadt: Homecoming Queen: Linda Ronstadt

Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, April 1995

Thirty years ago Linda Ronstadt left Tucson for the folk-rock Mecca of Los Angeles. Now the first lady of softly streamlined country returns to the ...

Nazz, The, Todd Rundgren: Todd Rundgren: Album By Album

Guide by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, February 2010

TODD RUNDGREN IS the Philadelphia-born whizzkid who could and should have been the biggest star of the '70s. Next month, the man John Lennon referred ...

Art of Noise, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Propaganda: ZTT: The Morley & Horn Show present How To Make A Spectacle of Yourself

Report and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 13 October 1984

The first year of ZTT has been a spectacular success, with Frankie Goes To Hollywood singles 'Relax' and 'Two Tribes' becoming respectively the fourth and ...

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 ...