Barney Hoskyns
Barney Hoskyns began writing about music for MELODY MAKER and NEW MUSICAL EXPRESS after leaving Oxford University in 1980. In 1985, he quit his job as staff writer at NME to research a book about soul music. The result was SAY IT ONE TIME FOR THE BROKENHEARTED (UK: Fontana, 1987; Bloomsbury reissue 1998).
Hoskyns’ other books include JAMES DEAN: SHOOTING STAR (UK: Bloomsbury/ US: Doubleday, 1989), MONTGOMERY CLIFT: BEAUTIFUL LOSER (UK: Bloomsbury/ US: Grove, 1992), ACROSS THE GREAT DIVIDE: THE BAND AND AMERICA (UK: Viking/US: Hyperion, 1993) and the novel THE LONELY PLANET BOY: A POP ROMANCE (UK/US: Serpent’s Tail, 1995). His WAITING FOR THE SUN: STRANGE DAYS, WEIRD SCENES & THE SOUND OF LOS ANGELES (UK: Viking/US: St. Martin’s Press, 1996) was nominated for a Ralph J. Gleason award in the U.S.
Aside from his books, Hoskyns has written regularly on pop culture and the arts for British VOGUE, where for five years he was a Contributing Editor, and for THE TIMES, THE GUARDIAN, THE INDEPENDENT, THE OBSERVER and ARENA. Between 1993 and 1999, Hoskyns worked as ASSOCIATE EDITOR and then U.S. BUREAU CHIEF of MOJO, simultaneously contributing to such American publications as HARPER'S BAZAAR, INTERVIEW, SPIN and ROLLING STONE, as well as to AMAZON and CDNOW. In 1998, Faber (UK) and Simon & Schuster (US) published his GLAM! BOWIE, BOLAN & THE GLITTER ROCK REVOLUTION, tying in with Todd Haynes’ VELVET GOLDMINE. Haynes provided an introduction. 1999 saw the publication of the bestselling THE MULLET: HAIRSTYLE OF THE GODS, written with Mark Larson and published by Bloomsbury.
After four years in America, Hoskyns returned to London, writing for GQ (U.S.), SPIN (U.S.), REVOLVER (U.S.), MOJO, THE GUARDIAN, THE INDEPENDENT and the TELEGRAPH magazine. He is a regular broadcaster and pundit on both radio and television, appearing on The TOP TEN series (CHANNEL 4), The I LOVE THE 80s/90s series (BBC 2), WALK ON BY (BBC 2), BEHIND THE MUSIC (VH1) and CLASSIC ALBUMS (BBC2).
In 2000 Barney became Senior Editor of CDNOW in London, leaving to set up Rock’s Backpages. RBP has been acclaimed as a major archival resource by MOJO, THE GUARDIAN, ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY and many others. Barney recently edited THE SOUND AND THE FURY: A ROCK’S BACKPAGES READER.
2003 saw updated reissues of WAITING FOR THE SUN (Bloomsbury) and ACROSS THE GREAT DIVIDE (Pimlico), together with the collection RAGGED GLORIES: CITY LIGHTS, COUNTRY FUNK, AMERICAN MUSIC (Pimlico). HOTEL CALIFORNIA: SINGER-SONGWRITERS & COCAINE COWBOYS IN THE L.A. CANYONS was published in the UK by Fourth Estate and in the US by John Wiley & Sons. An accompanying CD, BACK TO CALIFORNIA, was released on Rhino.
Hoskyns' acclaimed biography of Tom Waits, LOWSIDE OF THE ROAD (2009), was published by Faber in the UK and Broadway/Random House in the US. TRAMPLED UNDER FOOT: THE POWER & EXCESS OF LED ZEPPELIN was published by Faber in September 2012.
Hoskyns' SMALL TOWN TALK, about the music scene in and around Woodstock and Bearsville in the era of Bob Dylan's manager Albert Grossman, was published in March 2016 by Faber in the UK and by Da Capo in the US. He is also the author of NEVER ENOUGH: A WAY THROUGH ADDICTION (Constable, 2017) and GOD IS IN THE RADIO: UNBRIDLED ENTHUSIASMS, 1980-2020 (Omnibus, 2021).
976 articles
List of articles in the library
Gladys Knight & the Pips: Memories of the Way We Were (Buddah); 20 Golden Greats (Motown)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Melody Maker, 11 October 1979
GLADYS KNIGHT has been turned into the spinster of soul. Her generous face seems to invite desertion. Yet with almost maternal dignity, she translates this ...
Alan Vega: Collision Drive (Celluloid)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 1981
AS THE mercurial ‘Jukebox Babe’ starts to makes its steady impact as a 12-inch, here is an even grittier reinterpretation of The Great American Rock ...
James Chance: James White & the Contortions: Second Chance (PVC)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 1981
IT ALL depends how deranged you are to start with. James Chance – née White, née Black – makes impossibly futile, dead music, fit only ...
Meat Loaf: Wembley Arena, London
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 1981
THEY'VE ASKED me to make this as short as the Loaf in question is large – but there’s a painful amount to be said. The ...
The Saints: Paralytic Today, Paris Tonight: The Saints
Retrospective and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, unpublished, 1981
AT THIS TIME, A RETROSPECTIVE on the Saints could only be written by someone with a sense of great personal mission. Perhaps it's even a ...
Earth Wind and Fire: Maurice White: How the Black Man Bleached his Soul…
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, January 1981
... or how Earth, Wind & Fire guru Maurice White deserted Memphis to achieve Nirvana in Hollywood. ...
Marvin Gaye: In Our Lifetime (Motown)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 7 February 1981
SOMEHOW ONE forgives the sermonising in Marvin Gaye that irritates in other soul stars. Visually he fits the bill – he might almost be the ...
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 28 February 1981
SIOUXSIE AND The Banshees are now one of the great British bands. There is no way to conceive just how radically they have been transformed ...
Dynasty, Millie Jackson: Millie Jackson/Dynasty: Apollo Victoria, London
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 21 March 1981
MILLIE JACKSON was back at last, with the most uncompromising sex show I've ever seen. The Apollo tends to be a haven for flabby executives ...
Chaka Khan: What'cha Gonna Do For Me (Warner Bros)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 9 May 1981
Chaka gotta lotta ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 16 May 1981
CARL WILSON has been waiting years to do this. "I love to play good, straightforward rock'n'roll", he says, and since acid cured the Beach Boys ...
Teddy Pendergrass: Attractive — Moi? Sexy — Moi?
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 16 May 1981
Sex symbol Teddy Pendergrass shrugs off the impertinence of reporter Barney Hoskyns ...
AC/DC, Blue Öyster Cult, Whitesnake: Fantasy Castle: Monsters of Rock!
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, July 1981
BARNEY HOSKYNS straps on his breastplate, girds his loins and takes his sword to the HM Monsters Of Rock joust at Castle Donington. ...
Depeche Mode: Systems Muzak: Depeche Mode at The Venue, London
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 1 August 1981
THOSE ARBITERS of modern taste who would wish on you the indecencies of things like Spandau Ballet are generally the same people who can be ...
The Pointer Sisters: Look! Slow hands…
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Smash Hits, 17 September 1981
WITH THE sultry ‘Slow Hand’ firmly placed at No. 2 in the US and showing every sign of going Top Ten over here, The Pointer ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 10 October 1981
WHEN U2 first hit England in the twilight of 1980, a dull cry of relief rose up from rock's murky depths. U2 were "just what ...
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 17 October 1981
IT'S A CHILL, exposed night in New York City. The East Coast has only just recovered from a week of torrential rains, and winds sweeping ...
The Clash, Stimulin: The Clash and Stimulin at The Lyceum: The Parody Lingers On
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 24 October 1981
THE PATH of Joe Strummer is, as we know, lined with well-intentioned, golden-hearted errors, and the first of tonight's was Stimulin, whose sound mix was ...
The Fall: Anti-Social Workers: The Fall at North London Poly
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 31 October 1981
UNLIKE MOST other Angry Young Singers, usually by proxy, Mark E. Smith is not a rhetorician. He does not reduce the obscenities of the English ...
Scritti Politti: Where Radical Meets Chic: Scritti Politti
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 31 October 1981
"SCRITTI POLITTI" – didn't you always wonder where their "political writings" were? I did. I always wondered whether their hearts were in their music or ...
Earth Wind and Fire: Raise! (CBS)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 14 November 1981
RAISE HIGH THE COSMIC BOOTY ...
The Fall: Hip Priest: The Mark Smith Interview
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 14 November 1981
"WE WILL FALL," sang Iggy Stooge to the accompaniment of John Cale's viola, but he might have continued, "When we dead awaken..." ...
The Only Ones, Original Mirrors: The Only Ones/Original Mirrors: Lyceum, London
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, Spring 1981
"YOU LITTLE London boys..." The last of this city’s great rock’n’roll junkies is parting company with his other ones. One can’t put your arms around ...
Black Sabbath: Prole Metal to Ozzy and Beyond
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, Creem, 1982
FROM THE first oafish gothic crash of 'Black Sabbath' it was clear this band was dumb. Really intensely dumb. Even in that first hearing there ...
Devo: New Traditionalists (Virgin)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 1982
NOW THAT Jerry Casale has seen the Devo concept actually take root in the California psyche – now that his theory of America has been ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 1982
QUITE WHY Fear have created such a stir on the L.A. punk scene is far from apparent from this Record. Smarter they may be than ...
Transistor Sisters: Alan Betrock's Girl Groups - The Story Of A Sound
Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 1982
"Conform to norm society; won't stand for impropriety; In the extreme of which you dream, you must always join the team . . . " ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 9 January 1982
AT THIS CRUCIAL moment in pop history, when everyone seems to be telling you that the ultimate cream of pop-soul is The Human League's slight ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 6 February 1982
AS GUN Clubs and Blasters abound and multiply from the original Slash stock of X’s and Flesh Eaters, the LA hard punk core gets back ...
J. Geils Band: Freeze Frame (EMI America)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 13 February 1982
THE AMERICAN rock show business appears to have discovered some uncanny knack of bringing wilderness-bound rock groups back into the limelight. No one could have ...
Echo & The Bunnymen: Echo And The Bunnymen: A Promise of Rock Re-Born
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 20 February 1982
THE DAY AFTER THIS venerable paper's hardcore readers have enjoyed their brief, communal moment of glory in the polls, all-round prize guys Echo And the ...
Killing Joke: The Hoax That Joke Built: Killing Joke
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 27 February 1982
"There was a place that wasn't a place,There was a race that wasn't a race..."– 'The Pandys Are Coming' ...
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 13 March 1982
WHEN The Birthday Party last desecrated this tabernacle of modern nightlife, a generally sloppy show produced the intemperate engorgement of Drunk On The Pope's Blood, ...
The Jam: Fair Deal, Brixton, London
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 20 March 1982
"See me walking around – I'm the boy about town that you've heard of..." ...
Maze: A Funk-Lite Labyrinth: Maze
Report and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 27 March 1982
FRANKIE BEVERLY’S eight-man Maze could have come to Europe at any time in the last two years and met with the same phenomenal response they ...
Imagination: The Imagination Master Class
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 17 April 1982
LEEE: YOUR NAME'S Barney Rubble. How long have you been interviewing? A year? So you're young, a spring chicken?BH: Why, do I look well-seasoned? ...
The Blasters: The Blasters (F-Beat)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 1 May 1982
THE BLUSTERERS ...
Flipper: Album Generic Flipper (Subterranean)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 15 May 1982
DOLPHINS IN ROCK (PART 6) ...
The Blue Orchids: University of London
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 15 May 1982
PETE WYLIE travelled the length of greater England to see them, so why weren't you there? ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 22 May 1982
Two of the original New York Dolls are in London. BARNEY HOSKYNS charts their destinies. ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 29 May 1982
ANYONE WHO is counting on Ji being our very own home-grown Off The Wall had better prepare for an anti-climax. That Junior (ne Giscombe) can ...
Funkapolitan: Shooting The Breeze
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 29 May 1982
As Britfunk fly-guys Funkapolitan tool up for a chart assault, six-gun Barney Hoskyns runs them to ground in Notting Hill. ...
23 Skidoo — Don't Play Funky For Me!
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 12 June 1982
"You see, the people who constantly listen to pop have their ears degraded by wrong style and reiteration, senseless reiteration..."– Unity Mitford, taped on 'Porno ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 12 June 1982
Various Artists: Lost Soul, Vols. 1-3 (Epic, import) ...
Rip Rig and Panic: Rip Rig & Panic: I Am Cold (Virgin)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 19 June 1982
RIP, RIG & PANIC definitely ARE a manifestation of something obscene: music as an expression of HEALTH. Like the kind of swarthy boor who practises ...
Television, Tom Verlaine: Tom Verlaine: The Venue, London
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 19 June 1982
WE YOUNG Rimbauds came for diamond spears and the licks of an icepick and went away with a few mangy cardboard boxes. I hope that ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 26 June 1982
TWO SOUL products from the mainstream, one of which, The Poet, has been on import since last year, the other being the latest album from ...
The Exploited: Troops Of Tomorrow
Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 26 June 1982
APART FROM its marvellous cover, which depicts "an Escape From New York vision of a desolated city where punk can express its essential nature of ...
The Rolling Stones: Tiers Are Not Enough
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 3 July 1982
The Rolling Stones: Wembley Stadium, London ...
X: Under The Big Black Sun (Elektra)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 3 July 1982
X ARE a southern Californian punk-style foursome who, since their debut album Los Angeles, have done everything within their power to show that they are ...
Billy Idol Is A Star: live at the Stone, San Francisco
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 4 September 1982
"BILLY IDOL IS A STAR": a startling revelation that emerged at The Stone in San Francisco last week. Sure, it's yer old Billy alright, but ...
Meat Puppets: Meat Puppets (SST/Thermidor)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 4 September 1982
PHOENIX, ARIZONA may or may not be the baking asshole of the universe, but one thing is certain: music of this almost otherworldly nature could ...
Sylvester: Woofers And Tweeters
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 25 September 1982
HAD I BEEN expecting some shimmering trans-sexual diva to sweep into the room like a hostess into her salon, the rotund, maternal figure who welcomed ...
The Beat, Fleetwood Mac: The US Festival: Us & Them
Report by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 25 September 1982
That Woz the Fest that Woz! Barney Hoskyns takes a bite of the rotten Apple and hangs his head in despair ...
Survivor: Progress and Survive: Survivor
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 2 October 1982
THE NEW ETHIC of survival in America, with its Survivalists and all, is enabling rock groups to get to the top by singing about what ...
Black Flag in the California Scum
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 20 November 1982
WHEN BLACK FLAG came to England last winter, they felt more than the ice and snow – they felt the cold studs on leather jackets, ...
Report and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 27 November 1982
"Only the mice and the great ones are happy when I arrive." ...
Donna Summer: From Sex Goddess to Superwoman
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 18 December 1982
Donna Summer, once the siren of the G-spot, has grown up to become a wholesome American woman with a religious conscience. Now she's searching for ...
Gladys Knight And The Pips: Visions
Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 1983
SEEMS LIKE everyone is going Solar. Light to the touch but good to the bone, it's the radio sound of now. The perfect pop-soul marriage, ...
Howard Devoto, Magazine: Howard Devoto: Jerky Versions Of The Dream (Virgin)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 1983
I NEVER CARED much for Magazine. They were a group without a style, or at least a group whose style consisted in a profound lack. ...
The Residents: George & James (Korova)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 1983
IT WOULD appear that the San Mateo four can't think of a way to end the Mole Trilogy they began in 1981. Instead, they've launched ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 5 January 1983
HOW TO follow The Birthday Party's The Bad Seed with Neil Young's Trans? How to link the electronic transmigration of Neil Young with the last ...
Soft Cell: The Art Of Falling Apart
Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 15 January 1983
YOUTH IS skin deep in a sleep... and out of work. Some pop stars accept this and let it go, some drone in statistics. Other ...
Echo & The Bunnymen: Porcupine (Korova)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 22 January 1983
PERHAPS IT WAS inevitable, even decreed in some heaven up "there". Maybe it’s just the third time unlucky. But if Porcupine isn’t good it isn’t ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 29 January 1983
TWO CREWS, two solo artistes, SOS and Skyy occupy the amorphous middle ground between Clinton and Kool — no coke psychosis on the one hand, ...
Black Sabbath: Live Evil (Vertigo)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 5 February 1983
THE ORIGINAL BLACK Sabbath was a primal slum punk band, a scummy brummie leather-and-crucifix reaction to middle-class flower power. Now they're just another Stateside stadium ...
The Birthday Party: The Bad Seed EP
Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 5 February 1983
"IF, LOVING a woman more than anything in the world, or anticipating the possibility of such a love, one were suddenly to see her chained ...
Earth Wind and Fire: Earth, Wind & Fire: Powerlight (CBS)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 12 February 1983
I SAY, let's not groove tonight. Sometimes Earth, Wind & Fire get down on a groove and flashily mess it around. Sometimes they just lie ...
John Cale: A Stronger Music to Die In: John Cale’s New Society
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 19 February 1983
"The great Welsh singer, pianist, guitarist, composer and arranger, who in 1967 was responsible for the most significant structural change in rock since Elvis's Sun ...
The Stray Cats: Cat People: The Stray Cats take Florida
Report and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 12 March 1983
IF HE'D LIVED, maybe Eddie Cochran would have been as big as the Stray Cats. ...
Prince: A Second Coming Thru Purple Haze
Report by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 2 April 1983
A MONTH ago, in Minneapolis, mecca of absence, I had time on my hands – all over my body, actually – to consider the idea ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 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. ...
Kim Fowley: Tycoon of Trash: The Life And Grimes Of Kim Fowley
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Los Angeles Reader, June 1983
"Only the mice and the great ones are happy when I arrive" ...
The Angry Samoans: The Angry Brigade: Angry Samoans
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 11 June 1983
ONE OF the singular charms of Back From Samoa by L.A.'s Angry Samoans is that it's over before you even realise you've put it on ...
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 16 July 1983
FEW THINGS in this amorphous and inchoate universe are so perfect as ‘I’m So Proud’ or ‘Woman’s Got Soul’ – or very nearly any of ...
Einsturzende Neubauten: Acklam Hall, Notting Hill
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, August 1983
IT IS THE professed aim of Einsturzende Neubauten to exhaust music, to drain it until it implodes into a single catastrophic moment. This, however, is ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, August 1983
SIMPLY FOR not being Kevin Rowland or Paul Weller or Martin Fry, Paul Young fully deserves his Number One. And 'Wherever' is more than a ...
Marc Almond: Give This Man An Oscar: The Wilde Side of Marc Almond
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 6 August 1983
MARC ALMOND is very screwed up about being a pop star, which is what comes of hanging around Nick Cave and Genesis P. Orridge. ...
Talking Heads: All Mouth and Trousers!
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 27 August 1983
TALKING HEADS ARE BURNING DOWN THE MOTIONS AND BEING WILLINGLY DRAGGED INTO THE ROCK MACHINE. A TONGUE-TIED DAVID BYRNE SQUEAKS UP FOR HIMSELF. BARNEY HOSKYNS ...
The Clark Sisters: Is The Lord Bored With Disco?
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 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 ...
Van Morrison: Odeon, Birmingham
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, September 1983
I LOST VAN Morrison's wavelength on the album of the same name, and my feelings about the last four are decidedly mixed. This misanthropic mystic ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 3 September 1983
FOR THOSE about to cry "Oh No Not AC/DC", I refute you. I'm really sorry about this, but they've made some fine records and remain ...
Suicide, Alan Vega: Alan Vega: '77 Suicide Strip
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 10 September 1983
A VEGA PERSPECTIVE ON GHOST RIDERS, KUNG-FU COWBOYS, AYLER WAILERS AND LIFE AFTER SUICIDE. ...
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 10 September 1983
BARNEY HOSKYNS GOES BARMY OVER THE MUSAK MONSTER AT BLENHEIM. ...
Michael Jackson: The Boy Who Would Fly: Michael Jackson
Profile by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 17 September 1983
I'VE BEEN feeling strange about Michael Jackson since I was 11 years old. I remember lying in bed with a transistor radio the size ...
Rick James: Cold Blooded (Motown)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 24 September 1983
IN THE freak funk stakes, high-livin’ devil-may-care Rick James rates as a bit of a clown. As you’ll know if you caught his Rockpalast TV ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, October 1983
Imperial Bedroom vs. Punch the Clock; Emerick vs. Lowe vs. Langer/Winstanley; reassessing his back catalogue and a whole lot more.
File format: mp3; file size: 88mb, total interview length: 1h 31' 39" sound quality: ***
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 1 October 1983
TWO STRANGELY jarring acts from Rough Trade, one increasingly abstruse, t'other ever more open, engaging. ...
Elvis Costello: Master Blaster
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 8 October 1983
WHEN IT COMES TO SOUL, THIS MAN BEATS ALL YOUR WELLERS AND ROWLANDS HANDS DOWN — BUT FOR ELVIS COSTELLO PASSION HAS NEVER BEEN JUST ...
The Three Johns: Johnnies Be Bad
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 8 October 1983
Blarney Haskyns Shoots The Apeshit With The Evolutionary Creators Of 'Men Like Monkeys' ...
Waylon Jennings: Hammersmith Odeon, London
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 29 October 1983
'Nylon' Jennings Sings Silky Jus' For You ...
Wham!: What Simon Says: Simon Napier-Bell
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 29 October 1983
MODESTY, TACT AND DISCRETION ARE NOT THE QUALITIES OF '60s POP ENTREPRENEUR SIMON NAPIER-BELL. BARNEY HOSKYNS FINDS OUT WHAT ARE. ...
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, November 1983
IF YE Smythes are anything to go by, rock's set-piece quartet of voice and guitar, bass and drums is making a decided comeback. Witnessing R.E.M.'s ...
Madonna, Oliver Cheatham: Cheek to Cheatham: Madonna/Oliver Cheatham
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 5 November 1983
FROM CHIC TO STREET: BARNEY HOSKYNS FINDS OUT HOW FAR MADONNA AND OLIVER CHEATHAM HAVE MOTORED SINCE QUITTING DETROIT VIA THE DANCE STUDIOS OF NEW ...
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 5 November 1983
AS A WARM-UP – or should I say boil-up – bash for an imminent global over-haul, the three cosmic-hillbilly stooges of ZZ Top last week ...
The Fleshtones, The Plimsouls: Trash on Delivery: The Plimsouls and The Fleshtones
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 12 November 1983
EVERYONE VISITS the ’60s, but who brings anything back? Who brings them up to date? LA’s Plimsouls do. ...
Elvis Costello: "Now is the time, and the time is as good as any": The Elvis Costello Interview
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, RAM, 25 November 1983
IF THE GREAT GREY they put the numb into number and the boot into beauty, then who, pray, puts the El into the element within? ...
Fela Kuti: He Who Has A Quiver In His Underpants
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 26 November 1983
Fela Kuti — also known as He Who Has Death In His Quiver (and a shiver in his Y-fronts) — last week descended on London ...
Cocteau Twins: Head Over Heels (4AD)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, Fall 1983
THE COCTEAU TWINS are innocents aboard the jolly roger of "positive-punk" specimens, blushing songbirds amidst the mascara'd goth macaws of Gene Loves Jezebel and Xmal ...
D.O.A. - Megadecibel Minstrels
Report and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 1984
BY MY RECKONING, Vancouver's D.O.A. is the best hard rock band in the world. I say this on the basis of their many excellent ...
Frankie Goes to Hollywood: Phenomenal: Frankie Goes To Hollywood
Report by Barney Hoskyns, New Statesman, 1984
THAT A GROUP should make the fourth-best selling British single of all time with their first release is remarkable; that they should follow it up ...
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 1984
IT HAS to be said that this plumpish, carrot-mopped bloke stomping around like a kid in a playpen hardly looks the part of STAR. And ...
Morrissey, The Smiths: The Year Of The Smiths
Comment by Barney Hoskyns, The Virgin Yearbook, 1984
GAY MEN PAVED pop’s way this year. With Boy George’s wardrobe fully open, all the closet cases came spilling forth: Burns and The Bronskis, Frankie ...
New Model Army: Top of the Antipops: New Model Army
Profile by Barney Hoskyns, New Statesman, 1984
PUNK IS DEAD in letter but not in spirit. That is the message from a new school of groups who do not make videos and ...
Viv Broughton: Black Gospel: An Illustrated History Of The Gospel Sound (Blandford Press)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 1984
IT’S ONLY TOO easy to take that vicarious pleasure in the religious antics of folk who are not of one's own race, nationality or (non-) ...
The Police: Nottingham City Hall
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 7 January 1984
RICHARD COOK’S extraordinary vision of The Police (NME, 2nd Dec.) prompts one to reconsider the profound difference between The Police – those awful sing-a-long-a-suicides ‘So ...
Hüsker Dü: Iron Tamers: Hüsker Dü send out distress signals
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 14 January 1984
HÜSKER DÜ, signed to Black Flag’s SST label, are one of America’s mightiest hardcore trios. From Minneapolis, aching heart of the Midwest, they’ve sent out ...
Ronald Shannon Jackson & the Decoding Society: Barbecue Dog (Antilles)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 14 January 1984
GOOD ROASTIN' TONIGHT ...
Aswad: Conquering Lions Of The Concrete Jungle
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 28 January 1984
IF REGGAE is dying, how curious that my interest in it is just coming to life. Years of comparative indifference (and ignorance) pass and suddenly ...
The Smiths: These Disarming Men: The Smiths
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 4 February 1984
"...the touching and bewitching songs that open hearts and purses. Art. Great Art." – Jean Genet, Funeral Rites ...
Julian Cope: World Shut Your Mouth (Mercury)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 18 February 1984
I FEAR WE might shut our collective gob for the rest of time and we still wouldn’t get a good Julian Cope album. I didn’t ...
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 ...
The Gun Club: The Birth, The Death, The Ghost (ABC)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 25 February 1984
BLOOD, BOOZE, and Host: midway through a mess of ‘Preachin’ The Blues’ on this sub-bootleg memento of pre-Fire Of Love Gun Club, Jeffrey Lee Pierce, ...
Prefab Sprout: Couldn’t Bear To Be Precious: Prefab Sprout
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 17 March 1984
THE BOY'S a natural born charmer. ...
Hugh Masekela: Blazing In The Bush
Report and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 31 March 1984
AT A TIME when Western attention is once more turned on the evil and cunning of the South African government, it couldn't be more appropriate ...
Barry Manilow: Opium of the Missus
Essay by Barney Hoskyns, Marxism Today, April 1984
IF BARRY Manilow’s career is on the wane, you’d never have guessed it from last summer’s grandiose Concert At Blenheim Palace, when 40,000-odd pilgrims, preponderantly ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 14 April 1984
MOST EVERY year now Ms Jamesetta Hawkins – Etta to you – will at the behest of Dingwalls Boss (Goodman, that is) fly over ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 14 April 1984
BARNEY HOSKYNS dials a late night dateline to RICK JAMES at Motown's LA offices. ...
R.E.M.: Four Guys Bucking For The Sainthood
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 21 April 1984
"THERE'S TWO SCHOOLS OF MUSICIANS" argues guitarist Peter Buck. "One just digs playing and is in it for fun, the other wants to get rich ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, May 1984
All tres hombres on Mexico, Houston, TV Dinners and what they did on their holidays; then solo Billy Gibbons ("The Reverend Billy G"), on the black roots of the Top, his love of Eno and guitar playing.
File format: mp3; file size: 52.2mb, interview length: 54' 21" sound quality: **
Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 4 August 1984
NO-ONE SHOULD be too surprised that Victory is not a triumph. What's happened to the Jackson household since young Wacko came of age would screw ...
The Jacksons: Meadowlands Stadium, New Jersey
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 11 August 1984
SCARCELY HAD I touched down Stateside last week when I found myself bound in a bus for Meadowlands in a humid pocket of endless, endlessly ...
William Bell: Do Right Man (Charly)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 11 August 1984
‘YOU DON'T Miss Your Water’ was only the fifth single on Stax. That was 1961, and pipe-smoking William Bell was there not only to see ...
Michael Jackson: Out of His Life: Michael Jackson
Report by Barney Hoskyns, New Statesman, 17 August 1984
BY NOW, of course, you’ve been told more than you could possibly want to know about Michael Jackson. Such has been the media saturation of ...
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, Mat Snow, New Musical Express, 25 August 1984
I WAS A TEENAGE GRISTLEBURGER! Trampled underfoot: BARNEY HOSKYNS and MAT SNOW. ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, September 1984
The mega producer talks about his record company ZTT: how the frustrations of producing Dollar and ABC led to his setting up the label; Paul Morley's role in it; working with Frankie Goes to Hollywood and the Art of Noise; the company's ambitions; the advantages and pitfalls of high recording technology; and his role as a producer. Plus Horn answers his own question: Did video kill the radio star?
File format: mp3; file size: 51.7mb, interview length: 53' 50" sound quality: ***
Shriekback: Beyond Care, Thank God: Shriekback
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 1 September 1984
Are Shriekback’s polyrhythms just polytechnic or is their dance stance entrancing? ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 1 September 1984
PETER HAMMILL is one of our stranger voyagers. Alone at a piano last month, he put most of the music we cover to shame. He ...
Report by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 1 September 1984
Earlier this year, BARNEY HOSKYNS visited Prague to find out if Czechoslovakia's heavily repressed rock scene could have any effect on loosening the European blocs. ...
The Clark Sisters: Dominion Theatre, London
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, The Guardian, 3 September 1984
GUIDING GOSPEL music into the Eighties has not been without its hazards for Detroit's Five Clark Sisters. When last year their gorgeous 'You Brought The ...
Wah!: The Mighty Wah!: Waaaugh!
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 8 September 1984
WHAM! The door opens and it's Wah! The mighty WAH! There he is! ...
Robert Cray Band: Bad Influence (Demon)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 15 September 1984
LOOKS LIKE a blues album, but this is some of the tightest, earthiest soul music of the '80s. A beautiful record, originally out on the ...
The Clark Sisters: Dominion Theatre, London
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 15 September 1984
WE WATCHED two of London's larger choirs and remained cold. Mattie Moss Clark, the sister's mama and musical director of the huge Church of God ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 20 September 1984
The great soul man looks back at his illustrious career: the Valentinos; his mentor Sam Cooke; playing gospel and on the gospel greats; his own recordings and being in the studios with many others; songwriting and much more.
File format: mp3; file size: 58.7mb, interview length: 1h 04' 04" sound quality: **/***
Davitt Sigerson: AOR? Write On! An Interview with Davitt Sigerson
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 22 September 1984
DAVITT SIGERSON insists he isn’t smarting from the NME review which described Falling In Love Again as ‘The Worst Record I’ve Ever Heard." ...
The Blow Monkeys: Blow Monkeys: Do The Atom Drum Bop
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 29 September 1984
I KNOW the dismay and disgust with pop music is getting a mite predictable round these parts, but it does seem that new nadirs are ...
Bobby Womack: The Last Great Soul Man
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 6 October 1984
Who's that stepping briefly into the limo – and life of – Bobby Womack? Why, it's blushing Barney Hoskyns, who, in the next 5,000 words, ...
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 ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, November 1984
MARY CHRISTINE BROCKERT is a tiny white California gal who makes big, beautiful black music. Her speciality is exuberantly sassy and happy music for the ...
Big Country, U2: Epic Affirmation: U2 and Big Country
Essay by Barney Hoskyns, New Statesman, 9 November 1984
WITH ALL THE hype of chart pop proving more contagious that ever, what chance does the passionate old dream of rock now stand? If Jon ...
Duran Duran: Arena (Parlophone)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 17 November 1984
AND THE APHIDS CRIED/THROUGH THE DRIFTING HAZE/"NAFF LP, LADS!" ...
ZZ Top: The Cats' Whiskers: Down Home with Z.Z. Top
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 17 November 1984
HOUSTON, OCTOBER: THE MONSOON SEASON in this blandly corporate boomtown. I descend through hot storms over a chrome metropolis built on flat sand and oil ...
Diamanda Galás: Diamanda Galás (Metalanguage)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 1 December 1984
PEOPLE KEEP bursting in looking pained, which must have something to do with this record. Admittedly at a distance it could be mistaken for a ...
John Martyn: Tha Man Who Put The Sap In Sapphire
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 22 December 1984
COSMIC JOHN MARTYN at the Dominion a fortnight ago was the first time I’d seen this beer-swilling beat hippie since I snuck in the back ...
Van Halen: Monsters of Rock, Castle Donington
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, Summer 1984
I'D BEST COME clean, 'fess up that the Edward Van Halen Four were the sole reason I schlepped up to this denim'n'leather version of Dante's ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 1985
The legendary New Orleans studio owner and producer talks about Crescent City race relations; NOLA vs. Memphis; the indie record business and, at length, about Aaron Neville, Professor Longhair, and the inability of the city's artists to sustain careers.
File format: mp3; file size: 44.7mb, interview length: 48' 47" sound quality: ****
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 1985
The man who co-wrote all those great hits with Isaac Hayes remembers Memphis, and Stax, from back in the day.
File format: mp3; file size: 82.2mb, interview length: 1h 25' 36" sound quality: ***
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 1985
A languid, laid-back chat with the man who was always there: at the start of southern soul in Memphis with the Mar-Keys, on the road with Leon Russell, in L.A. with J.J. Cale and on. On the musicians he knew, scenes he was part of, and on that thorny subject, race.
File format: mp3; file size: 85.1mb, interview length: 1h 28' 39" sound quality: ****
John Fogerty: Centerfield (Warner Bros.)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 1985
TIME STANDS still in Fogertyville. It’s ten years since the old Creedence leader made a record and nothing much has changed. There’s a few syndrums ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 1985
Growing up in New Orleans, gospel roots, the country music connection and much more.
File format: mp3; file size: 59.8mb, total interview length: 1h 02' 15" sound quality: ***
Michael McDonald: Hammersmith Odeon, London
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, The Guardian, 1985
THIS SHOW proved one thing and proved it triumphantly: you can be a paunchy, greying white Californian with a supremely uncool-looking band and still have ...
James Carr, O.V. Wright: Roosevelt Jamison on James Carr (1985)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 1985
Roosevelt Jamison – friend, mentor and sometime manager – remembers deep soul greats James Carr and O.V. Wright.
File format: mp3; file size: 49.6mb, total interview length: 51' 37" sound quality: ***
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 1985
Rufus Thomas, between mouthfuls, talks about his youth in segregated Memphis, Minstrelsy, Ike and Tina Turner and his long involvement with Stax Records.
File format: mp3; file size: 73.4meg, interview length: 1h 16' 25" sound quality: **
Overview by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 12 January 1985
From the raw to the pure, from the sublime to the meticulous — BARNEY HOSKYNS sings the praises of 24 of music's most glorious voices. ...
The Sid Presley Experience: Going Cold Turkey with the Sid Presley Experience
Report and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 19 January 1985
Why reheat ‘Cold Turkey’? BARNEY HOSKYNS TALKS TO THE SID PRESLEY EXPERIENCE about their protest against council block smack. ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Mat Snow, Rock's Backpages Audio, February 1985
Joey and Dee Dee talk about life for da brudders is the mid-'80s; Hardcore; chart success (or not); drugs; playing fast; New York City, and where they come from musically.
File format: mp3; file size: 45.3mb, interview length: 1h 02' 53" sound quality: ***
The Ramones: Ain’t No Stoppin’ The Cretins From Boppin’!
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Mat Snow, New Musical Express, 16 February 1985
ONE! Joey...TWO! Dee Dee... FREE! Mat... FOUR! Barney... THE RAMONES revisited in a teenage tag-match ‘tween two of the scuzziest pairs of sneakers in the ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 5 March 1985
Little Richard on the demonic nature of Rock'n'Roll of which, nonetheless, he is King; on how he came out of the American South; on Otis Redding and much more. Hear him sing!
File format: mp3 File size: 50.3mb Interview length: 52' 23", sound quality: ****
Little Richard: The King and Queen of Rock 'n' Roll
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 23 March 1985
YOU CATCH sight of him across the Hilton's gaudy foyer, an ordinary enough black man in track-suit top, tuxedo pants, and matted wet-look coiffure. ...
Luther Vandross: The Night I Fell In Love
Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 30 March 1985
[2004 note: It makes me wince to look back and see my jejune critical self dismissing ‘The Other Side of the World’ as "tediously soupy". ...
Bronski Beat: What Is Bronski Beat?
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Spin, May 1985
MEET WHAT IS perhaps the first real gay group in the history of pop. They’re not drag queens, not even sure they want to be ...
Lone Justice: A Tale Of The New West
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 18 May 1985
EIGHT YEARS on and it's official — we are no longer bored with the USA. ...
Tom Waits: Marlowe Of The Ivories
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 25 May 1985
DID HIS wife die in the fire? ...
U2: Flags And Penance: U2'S American Dream
Report and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 22 June 1985
IT IS SOME WAY into a U2 set at the vast Veterans' Coliseum in Hartford, Connecticut, and the place is strewn and bedecked with the ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, September 1985
"I never did feel like a soul singer": from his youth in Texas to Nashville success, Dobie Gray talks about his crossover from R&B to country.
File format: mp3; file size: 46mb, total interview length: 47' 54" sound quality: ****
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 16 September 1985
A short chat with the country-soul legend, talkin' about writing 'Cry Like A Baby', producing the Box Tops and the sadly MIA Eddie Hinton. (Chipping in with occasional comments: Dan's wife Linda...)
File format: mp3 File size: 9.2mb Interview length: 10 minutes Sound quality: ****
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, October 1985
The New Orleans master talks about the music of his youth; the Second Line; the piano and Professor Longhair; black music in the south; the musicians he worked with, and what makes New Orleans music different.
File format: mp3; file size: 36.3mb, interview length: 39' 36" sound quality: ***
The Nightingales, The Prefects: Anti-Pop Songbirds: The Nightingales
Report and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Spin, October 1985
THE NIGHTINGALES ARE seasoned figures on the English independent scene, epitomizing the doggedly patient and uncompromising outsider. Five years old, they still play tiny clubs-above-pubs ...
James: From An English Village: James
Report and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Spin, October 1985
"WHEN PUNK HAPPENED," says Tim Booth, "there was a big explosion of energy, but eventually the energy was dissipated, and in the last few years ...
Stax Records' Estelle Axton (1985)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, October 1985
From Satellite Records to 'Disco Duck': Stax Records' Estelle Axton on the "recording bidness" - pre-Stax Memphis and Sun and Elvis, Rufus Thomas, the Mar-Keys, 'Last Night', Otis, Hayes and Porter, the record shop, and through to Al Bell and the downfall.
File format: mp3; file size: 86.3meg, interview length: 1h 29' 54" sound quality: ***
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, October 1985
The legendary Memphis producer talks about the rise of Southern Soul and the Memphis Sound, meeting and producing Al Green and making all those fabulous hits for Hi Records
File format: mp3; file size: 48.5mb, interview length: 50' 30" sound quality: ****
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, November 1985
Speaking at the Friars Club in midtown Manhattan, the great Atlantic producer recalls the black bands he loved as a kid and talks about Louis Jordan, Tiny Bradshaw and the birth of R&B. "Wex" also holds forth on the growth of urban black America; the influence of gospel on black pop; the importance of Western Swing; the other labels and white entrepreneurs involved in black music; discovering Stax and Muscle Shoals in the dog days of the early '60s; tying the knot with Stax... and getting back in the studio with Wilson Pickett.
ile format: mp3; file size: 43.7mb, interview length: 45' 30" sound quality: ****
Fine Young Cannibals: Wedged Down The Throat: Fine Young Cannibals
Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 14 December 1985
ONE OF THE truly Great Bores Of Today is the "politicised" pop star who remarks that what was really bad about the riots (or whatever) ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, uncredited writer, Rock's Backpages Audio, Spring 1985
The two-thirds Glaswegian trio talk about their relationship with the press: homophobia, and the fixation with their sexuality; not being a conventional band, and the developments in electro pop; Jimmy Sommerville discovering his voice; 'Small Town Boy'; on being a trio, and their stage show; the US release of album The Age of Consent; being gay in Glasgow, and on the London gay scene; the importance of Tom Robinson; Jimmy's lyrics, and on looking forward to their US visit.
File format: mp3; total file size: 37.2mb, total interview length: 38' 46" sound quality: ****
The Associates, The Smiths: The Smiths: Meat Is Murder; The Associates: Perhaps
Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Statesman, Spring 1985
MORRISSEY OF The Smiths is still the unlikeliest pop star of all. Watching him jerk and flounder about on Top Of The Pops last week, ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, Summer 1985
The legendary producer gives a history of Memphis R&B, touching on (in no particular order) Stax, James Carr, Dan Penn, Elvis, the fading of the Memphis light and the perils of Nashville.
File format: mp3; file size: 82.2mb, total interview length: 1h 25' 35" sound quality: ***
ZZ Top: David Sinclair: Tres Hombres - The Story Of ZZ Top
Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 1986
YOUR HUMBLE reviewer is quoted in Tres Hombres as stating that ZZ Top are "the only hip boogie band in the entire universe", and it's ...
Deep Soul Mecca: Muscle Shoals, Alabama
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, unpublished, 1986
MUSCLE SHOALS: the very name suggests some grotesque image dreamt up by a surrealist painter. Shouldn't it be Mussel, you wonder... and yet this North ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 1986
The ex-Doobies/Dan man looks back at his career, discusses his art and ruminates on the meaning of "white soul".
File format: mp3; file size: 52.2mb, total interview length: 54' 24" sound quality: ****
The Soul Stirrers: Various Artists: Father And Sons (Spirit Feel)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 1986
IF YOU'VE any interest in gospel music at all, this should be an essential purchase. Compiled by Anthony Heilbut, author of seminal tome The ...
Tommy Tate: Singing For The Soul Of It
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 11 January 1986
BARNEY HOSKYNS meets Mississippi soulman TOMMY TATE, whose 'What gives You The Right' is one of the "Sweetest, saddest black pop records of all time". ...
Prince: Parade (Original Soundtrack - Under The Cherry Moon)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 12 April 1986
I TOOK 'Kiss' as a signal that we were being ushered back into the compressed, airtight funkworld of Dirty Mind. Didn't flip over the song ...
George Clinton, Parliament: Parliament: Uncut Funk — The Bomb
Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 6 September 1986
GEORGE CLINTON is one of the great people of the 20th century. Probably you know this already. He took the funk legacy of James Brown ...
Steve Earle, George Strait: Steve Earle: Guitar Town (MCA); George Strait: #7 (MCA)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 13 September 1986
FOLLOWING HOT on the heels of Mr Yoakam, here is another applicant for the position of '80s country-rock messiah. ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 25 October 1986
BACK IN the bleak wastes of the early ‘70s – when, of course, things were really no more bleak than they are now – there ...
Suicide: Camden Palace, London
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 8 November 1986
A LITTLE hipper than they were when Clash fans bottled them a decade ago, the cult New York duo Suicide have reformed for some select ...
Alexander O'Neal: Hammersmith Odeon
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 29 November 1986
IT SEEMS TO be ladykiller month in the UK. Luther Vandross and Freddie Jackson both have releases, while big Alex O'Neal's 1985 Epic album is ...
Bob Geldof: Deep In The Heart Of Nowhere
Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 29 November 1986
WELL, SAINT Bob, here we are again. Doubtless you're expecting a right royal slagging in these pages, but that's not what I want to do. ...
Dexter Gordon: Bertrand Tavernier on Round Midnight
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 6 December 1986
THE DIRECTOR of Round Midnight is extremely un-Bebop in appearance. His supine bearing and serene features suggest a cross between Roland Barthes and Claude Chabrol, ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 6 December 1986
BOBBY WOMACK's second album for MCA sees him reunited with Chips Moman, the Memphis producer who has spent the last decade cutting country records in ...
Michael McDonald: I Survived The Doobies
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 6 December 1986
ON THE FACE of it, Michael McDonald is the kind of West Coast AOR "artist" who has been reviled in NME circles since time – ...
John Richbourg: The Grandaddy Of Soul
Retrospective and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Soul Survivor, Summer 1986
OF THE MANY white disc jockeys who pioneered the airplay of black rhythm 'n' blues through the 1950s and 60s, perhaps the most influential in ...
Percy Sledge: 501 Ways to Leave Your Lover
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 1987
Percy Sledge: Town & Country Club, London ...
Hank Ballard and the Midnighters: Hank Ballard (1987)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, 1987
From Alabama to Detroit, from The Royals to The Midnighters, the great Hank Ballard tells of Clyde McPhatter, Billy Ward, King Records and 'The Twist' and 'Work With Me Annie'
File format: mp3; file size: 44.2meg, interview length: 46' 05" sound quality: ***
James Carr: At The Dark End Of The Street (Blue Side, import)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 1987
"THE WORLD'S Greatest Soul Singer", boasts the cover of this magnificent album, and I ain't about to argue. In fact I have long regarded the ...
Johnny Adams: The Tan Nightingale (Charly)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 1987
CHARLY FOLLOW-UP their 1978 reissue of Johnny's Heart And Soul album with a wider-ranging retrospective on the man also known as the Tan Canary. (Given ...
Michael McDonald: LA's hi-tech soul singer: Michael McDonald
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, The Times, 1987
THE PREVIEW in Thursday's Independent said it all: "Placid white soul-funker, conservative stuff even by Los Angeles standards." You could not hope to find a ...
Nelson George: The Death of Rhythm & Blues (Omnibus)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, The Wire, 1987
NELSON GEORGE, self-described "B-Boy intellectual" and one of pop culture's few black writers of note, has written a book which (sort of) argues that the ...
Patti LaBelle: On Her Own: Patti Labelle
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Vogue, 1987
PATTI LABELLE HAS seen it all – lived through every phase of black American pop from the doo-woppy girl groups of the early 1960s to ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 1987
The gal with the Big Hair talks about hitting with 'On My Own', the making of her Winner In You album, and fondly remembers the old package-tour days and her time with LaBelle.
File format: mp3 File size: 16.1mb Interview length: 17 minutes 32 seconds Sound quality: ***
Aaron Neville, ZZ Hill: Stateside Booty: ZZ Hill, Aaron Neville, Jimmy Holiday and Early Motown
Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 1987
THE FLOOD of soul reissues and compilations continues with four more from the vaults of EMI's Stateside subsidiary. First off, an album of mid-period (early ...
Terence Trent D'Arby: Terence Trent D’Arby
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, The Sunday Times, 1987
WHEN Terence Trent D’Arby’s very first single was released four months ago, it became difficult to open a magazine or turn on the television without ...
The Neville Brothers: Treacherous - A History Of The Neville Brothers 1955-1985 (Rhino)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 1987
WHAT a nice surprise: a double album of material from what is virtually a one-family history of New Orleans R&B, tastefully packaged and annotated by ...
Eddie Hinton: The Strange Story of Eddie Hinton
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Soul Survivor, 1987
"EDDIE HINTON", says ex-Atlantic honcho Jerry Wexler, "was always the guy who would be next year's big thing. He'd sit out on the back porch ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 1987
SUBTITLED "Un Operachi Romantico In Two Acts", Frank's Wild Years is effectively the final part of a trilogy that began in 1983 with the extraordinary ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Vogue, 1987
WENDY Melvoin and Lisa Coleman go back a long way. Years before they were members of Prince's group, The Revolution, they were growing up as ...
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 17 January 1987
Before disco there was Philadelphia International Records, the Soul label of the '70s. Now it's been documented in a boxed set of albums. BARNEY HOSKYNS ...
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 14 February 1987
ONLY COUNTRY, as glitzy and airbrushed as it’s become, could give us something as apple-pie downhome as a mother-daughter harmony duo. A Nashville fairy tale ...
Tom Verlaine: Words from the Front
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 28 February 1987
TOM VERLAINE, the blank generation’s very own Neil Young, is sitting on the floor of a Phonogram press suite devouring a croissant. I’d expected someone ...
Report by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 14 March 1987
The only definite sighting of PERCY SLEDGE in recent weeks has been in the UK Top Ten. BARNEY HOSKYNS reviews the career of the elusive ...
Suzanne Vega: Solitude Standing (A&M)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 2 May 1987
SUZANNE VEGA's first album I found promising but irritating: the Joni/Rickie Lee persona presented with a knowing, sickly coyness. As a harbinger of the singer-songwriter ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 16 July 1987
The Girl Bros. talk about their time as part of Prince's Revolution, and their then-new career as recording artists in their own right.
File format: mp3; file size: 28.6mb; Interview length: 31' 15"; sound quality: **
Michael Jackson: The Madness of Michael
Profile by Barney Hoskyns, Vogue, December 1987
"A LOT OF PEOPLE misunderstand me," says Michael Jackson in the spoken intro to his number one hit 'I Just Can't Stop Loving You'. "That's ...
Everything But the Girl: Shining Bright
Profile by Barney Hoskyns, unpublished, 1988
ONE OF THE few good things about the British pop scene in 1988 is that the subtle and reflective music of boy-girl duo Everything But ...
Willie Mitchell: From Hi to Waylo: the Spirit of Memphis Soul
Report by Barney Hoskyns, unpublished, 1988
LOVERS OF authentic southern American soul are in for a major treat this weekend when a "Memphis Soul Revue" holds court at London's Town & ...
Scritti Politti: Making Provision: Green speaks
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Virgin Records press release, 1988
THREE YEARS of silence are finally broken this week as Scritti Politti release the first single off a new album. Featuring the inimitable trumpet of ...
Book Excerpt by Barney Hoskyns, 'Imp of the Perverse' (Virgin Books), 1988
1987 WAS A comparatively low-profile year for Prince, a year that saw some of his greatest music on the double Sign 'O' The Times album ...
Prefab Sprout: The Enchanter: Paddy McAloon
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Vogue, 1988
PADDY McALOON is an anomalous figure in the British Pop climate of the late '80s. One of our precious few songwriters of any worth, he ...
Prefab Sprout's Paddy McAloon (1988)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, January 1988
King Sprout McAloon on the state of songwriting and production in 1988, Bruce Springsteen and Robert De Niro, Newcastle, fame, breaking America, and... Issac Hayes!
File format: mp3; file size: 18mb, interview length: 19' 40" sound quality: ***
Scritti Politti's Green (1988)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, January 1988
Scritti's Green talks about making Provision, meeting Jacques Derrida, working with Miles Davis, Roger Troutman and Chaka Khan, hanging out with Kraftwerk and struggling to come up with an album title...
File format: mp3; file size: 57.7meg, total interview length: 1h 00' 06" sound quality: ****
Joe Tex: The Clown Prince of Soul
Sleeve notes by Barney Hoskyns, 'The Very Best of Joe Tex' (Charly Records), May 1988
WHEN NASHVILLE publisher-producer Buddy Killen first met Joe Tex in 1961, the singer already had six years of recording and performing under his belt. They ...
Michael Jackson, Prince: Match of the Fey: Prince and Michael Jackson
Essay by Barney Hoskyns, The Times, 13 July 1988
PRINCE BEGGED an interviewer seven years ago: "Just don’t compare me to Michael Jackson." Few could then have guessed there would ever be a need ...
Sleeve notes by Barney Hoskyns, Charly Records, August 1988
JOE SIMON IS one of soul’s great deepies, possessor of a richly mellow voice that puts him up there with such deep-throated greats as Jerry ...
Bobby Womack: Doin’ It His Own Way: Bobby Womack
Sleeve notes by Barney Hoskyns, 'Womack Winners', 1989
WHEN BOBBY WOMACK called his seventeenth solo album The Last Soul Man and set out on 1987’s quasi-missionary tour of the same name, he was ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, March 1989
Luther Vandross talks about growing up in the Bronx and his early bands; his big break working on Bowie's Young Americans; meeting Marcus Miller; hanging out with Chic; and on producing, recording and singing... and his privacy and sense of self.
File format: mp3, file size: 70.8mb, interview length: 1h 13' 42", sound quality: ****
Luther Vandross: What A World For The Lonely Kind: Luther Vandross
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, The Times, 28 March 1989
LUTHER VANDROSS is the pre-eminent mainstream soul performer of the 1980s. As a singer, songwriter and producer he is – with the possible exception of ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 8 July 1989
Bobby Bland talks about his influences, including MOR men like Perry Como and Andy Williams, and about the ups and downs of his career. Oh, and how C.L. Franklin gave him "the squall".
File format: mp3 File size: 15.8mb Interview length: 17 minutes 12 seconds Sound quality: ****
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 8 July 1989
Soul legend Johnnie Taylor tells Barney Hoskyns about his background in gospel with the Highway QCs and the Soul Stirrers, Sam Cooke, Stax Records, having hits in the disco era, and finding a new home at Malaco.
File format: mp3 File size: 20.8mb Interview length: 22 minutes 45 seconds Sound quality: ****
Bobby "Blue" Bland: Malaco: Soul’s Retirement Home
Report and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, The Times, 10 July 1989
"BLUES SINGERS don't retire", said the late Howlin' Wolf, and Bobby "Blue" Bland might well agree with him. After thirty seven years virtually nonstop on ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 13 July 1989
Etta James tells Barney Hoskyns about her struggles with addiction, meeting Billie Holiday, making Seven Year Itch and staying contemporary.
File format: mp3 File size: 40.4mb; Interview length: 44 minutes 5 seconds Sound quality: **
Etta James: Mama tells us all about it
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, The Times, 26 July 1989
WHEN ETTA JAMES was a 17-year old glamour puss with drug-store-peroxide blonde hair and a lewd rock 'n' roll hit called 'Roll With Me Henry' ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 1 August 1989
New York great Dion DiMucci talks about the golden years, the sound of NYC, and addiction and recovery.
File format: mp3; file size: 33.8mb, interview length: 36' 57" sound quality: ***
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Sunday Correspondent, September 1989
AARON NEVILLE has to be one of black music's more extraordinary characters. There can be few experiences as disarming as hearing the voice of an ...
Dion: The King of the Noo Yawk Streets Comes Home
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Sunday Correspondent, September 1989
WHEN DION DiMucci made his major comeback at New York's Radio City Music Hall two years ago, he was joined onstage by an all-star quartet ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 12 September 1989
Paul Buchanan and Robert Bell on the lengthy process of recording their second album, Hats, and about musical purity versus commercial acceptance.
File format: mp3; file size: 33.8mb, interview length: 36' 56" sound quality: ***
The Blue Nile, Danny Wilson: The Soul of Scotland: Danny Wilson/The Blue Nile
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Sunday Correspondent, October 1989
"THE WHOLE Scottish scene is getting a little out of hand", admits Ronnie Gurr, an affable, affluent-looking Scotsman who, in his capacity as a roving ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 5 October 1989
The giant of New Orleans singers looks back at his roots in the Crescent City: the hard times and the good times, being a Neville Brother, key vocal influences and more.
File format: mp3 File size: 29.2mb Interview length: 31 minutes 55 seconds Sound quality: ***
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 28 October 1989
The Memphis belle, accompanied by fellow R&B singer David Hudson, talks about producer Willie Mitchell; her roots in gospel and R&B; 'I Can't Stand the Rain'... and the John Lennon Kotex incident at the Troubadour!
File format: mp3; file size: 26.2mb, interview length: 28' 35" sound quality: ***
Anita Baker, Aretha Franklin, Patti LaBelle: Women Soul Singers
Essay by Barney Hoskyns, Vogue, 1990
FOR ALL THE LEGENDARY kings of soul music, the Sam Cookes and Otis Reddings and Marvin Gayes, the true spirit of this great black American ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 24 May 1990
Lenny on being away from home, his family background, the truth about the '60s copyist accusations, Prince, his band, and his Romeo Blue persona
File format: mp3; file size: 47.4meg, interview length: 49' 20" sound quality: ***
Madonna: The Empress' New Clothes
Essay by Barney Hoskyns, Sunday Correspondent, 26 May 1990
As Britain limbers up for her Blonde Ambition tour and Dick Tracy movie, Barney Hoskyns casts a sceptical eye over the talents of Madonna Louise ...
Anita Baker: Live at Wembley Arena
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, The Times, June 1990
ANITA BAKER remains a remarkable phenomenon: an intimate, improvisatory jazz-soul songstress who gigs in vast, impersonal hangars such as Wembley Arena. She should be appearing ...
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, The Times, July 1990
VOGUE once said of Frank Sinatra that "the Voice is leading cool moderns back to emotion". Looking around at the well-heeled sentimentalists and legend-seekers at ...
Esther Phillips: 'Little' Esther Phillips: Better Beware
Sleeve notes by Barney Hoskyns, Charly, July 1990
OF ALL the blues-shouting earth mamas who dominated the distaff side of R&B in the early '50s, easily the most disarming was Little Esther, born ...
Sleeve notes by Barney Hoskyns, Charly, July 1990
LITTLE WILLIE JOHN's is one of the saddest stories in the book of soul. A pintsized hipster from the Motor City, he notched up 14 ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, The Times, 2 July 1990
WHEN QUINCY JONES gathered together his USA For Africa superstars to record 'We are the World' five years ago, he pinned a sign outside the ...
John Hiatt: Bottom Line, New York
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, The Times, August 1990
A SKINNY troubadour with a throaty, abrasive growl of a voice, John Hiatt slides in to the American rock dream somewhere between Ry Cooder at ...
Burt Bacharach: Back to the Brilliance of Bacharach
Profile by Barney Hoskyns, The Times, 22 August 1990
Anyone who has a heart, including a new generation of British youngsters, is still falling for the magical Sixties music of Burt Bacharach, says Barney ...
Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis: Jimmy Jam (1990)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 3 September 1990
The Flyte Tyme production man talks about working with Alexander O'Neal and Janet Jackson; about his and Terry Lewis' production approach and methods, and lists some of his favourite producers.
File format: mp3; file size: 18.6mb, interview length: 20' 20" sound quality: ***
The Pixies: Hammersmith Odeon, London
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, The Times, October 1990
WATCHING THE Pixies in a rock venue as mainstream as the Hammersmith Odeon seemed wrong, and they were as surprised to be there as anyone ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Vox, November 1990
Barney Hoskyns talks to Fredric Dannen, author of a chilling study of the American record industry. ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Vogue, November 1990
OF ALL THE survivors from the heady early-'80s days of LA’s "Paisley Underground", Mazzy Star’s David Roeback appears to command the most respect in rock’s ...
The Beach Boys: Smiley Smile/Wild Honey; Beach Boys Concert/Live In London
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Record Hunter, December 1990
WHEN I FIRST BOUGHT Smiley Smile (1967) as a spotty 15-year-old in the mid-'70s, I was pretty astounded by how radically wacko it was. I'd ...
The dB's, Peter Holsapple, Chris Stamey: A Crafty Couple: Chris Stamey and Peter Holsapple
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, The Times, 1991
AN INEVITABLE side effect of any domestic pop explosion in Britain is that the best American rock should be overlooked by radio stations and the ...
Babes in Toyland: Angry Young Women
Essay by Barney Hoskyns, Vogue, 1991
ROCK AND ROLL is being hijacked by angry girls with electric guitars. Tired of playing airbrushed pop dollies for salivating male voyeurs, women on ...
O.V. Wright: Beautiful Screamer: O.V. Wright
Book Excerpt by Barney Hoskyns, 'From a Whisper to a Scream' (Fontana), 1991
IF JAMES CARR and the (predominantly baritonal) country balladeers were one side of the southern Soul Man coin, the gritty, gravelly tenor voices of singers ...
George Jones, Hank Williams, Lefty Frizzell: Redneck Soul: George Jones and the White Man's Blues
Book Excerpt by Barney Hoskyns, 'From a Whisper to a Scream' (Fontana), 1991
NO ONE IS FONDER of saying that country music is "the white man's blues" than black artists like B.B. King, Etta James and Bobby Womack. ...
Bobby "Blue" Bland: Two Steps from the Blues: The Gospel According to Bobby 'Blue' Bland
Book Excerpt by Barney Hoskyns, From a Whisper to a Scream (Fontana Books), 1991
WHEN HOWLIN' WOLF left Memphis for Chicago in late 1952, Sun Records' Sam Phillips was left with a crop of younger blues singers who in ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, City Limits, February 1991
Be My Baby: Ronnie Spector with Vince Waldron ...
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 ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 13 February 1991
On marriage to, and escape from, Phil Spector; on being fancied by John Lennon, being a Ronette, being in Swinging London, being hit on by hero Frankie Lymon... and writing her autobiography.
File format: mp3 File size: 50.6mb, interview length: 52' 41", sound quality: ***
Ronnie Spector: Exorcising Phil's Spectre: Ronnie's Return
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, The Times, 16 February 1991
THE SNOWBOUND metropolis of London holds many memories for Ronnie Spector. When she was riding high in the mid-'60s with The Ronettes, that vampy girl ...
Alexander O'Neal: Alexander O’Neal
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Vox, March 1991
WHATEVER happened to the black ladykiller, that oversized teddy bear in a Versace suit serenading womankind with a cordless microphone in one hand and a ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Vogue, March 1991
CHRIS ISAAK IS almost too perfect a package. With his iconic, Elvis-meets-Jimmy Dean looks immortalised on an album cover by Bruce Weber, he is a ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, The Guardian, March 1991
AS ANY OF the fans who have helped to sell out her shows in London and Glasgow this weekend will know, Rickie Lee Jones likes ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 17 April 1991
Mr McManus on new album Mighty Like A Rose: the songs, the production and the musicians; his split from the Attractions; new music, and his admiration for The Band.
File format: mp3; file size: 83.2mb, interview length: 1h 30' 53" sound quality: ***
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 ...
The Band, Ronnie Hawkins: Ronnie Hawkins (1991)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 9 July 1991
The Hawk recalls rockin' out of Canada with his teenage Hawks - road stories, show business sharks and wild times, taking in Roulette's Morris Levy, Bob Dylan, John Lennon and, of course, ex-Hawks The Band.
File format: mp3; file size: 84.9mb, interview length: 1h 28' 23" sound quality: ***
The Band, Bob Dylan: Al Aronowitz (1991)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 10 August 1991
Hired and fired by the New York Post; having "total phoney" Andy Warhol steal the Velvets from him; running with Dylan and, extensively, his dealings with The Band – "blacklisted journalist" Al Aronowitz vents his not-inconsiderable spleen.
File format: mp3; total file sizes: 73.8meg, interview length: 1h 16' 53" sound quality: ***
The Band: Elliott Landy (1991)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 13 August 1991
The great rock photographer remembers his time working with The Band, from Woodstock and Big Pink to Los Angeles and The Band sessions.
File format: mp3; file size: 48.9mb, interview length: 50' 57" sound quality: ****
The Band: Bill Graham on The Band (1991)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 18 August 1991
Über-promoter Bill Graham talks about his relationship with The Band, from their Winterland debut to The Last Waltz, via Watkins Glen and the 1974 Dylan mega-tour
File format: mp3 File size: 28.3mb Interview length: 30 minutes 56 seconds Sound quality: ****
Report and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Vogue, October 1991
THERE IS NOTHING quite like Momus in British pop. The alter ego of one Nicholas Currie, right, a pale Scotsman of Presbyterian origin who dwells ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 23 October 1991
The boho queen talks about her covers album Pop Pop, songwriting and song choices, working with Don Was and her unlikely friendship with Scotland's The Blue Nile
File format: mp3; file size: 30.5mb; Interview length: 33' 16"; sound quality: **
The Band, Robbie Robertson: Robbing America for a storyline thread
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, The Times, 28 October 1991
ROBBIE ROBERTSON should be used to jetlag. He spent 16 years on the road as a member of The Band and knows only too well ...
Madonna: The Billion Dollar Lady's New Deal
Comment by Barney Hoskyns, The Times, 13 November 1991
THE NEWS THAT Madonna has just clinched a deal making her the highest-paid performer in the history of the pop industry only confirms what we ...
Lou Reed: Cool Hand Lou: The Transformations of Lou Reed
Comment by Barney Hoskyns, Vogue, February 1992
SINCE THE RELEASE of Growing up in Public in 1980, Lou Reed has pretty much grown up in private. In 1981 he not only ...
Keith Richards, The Rolling Stones: Keef: Exile just a shot away from Main Street
Book Review by Barney Hoskyns, The European, 24 September 1992
IT HAS become something of a cliche to say that Keith Richards is the Rolling Stones. ...
Dwight Yoakam, Joe Ely: The Other Country
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, Vogue, October 1992
YOU KNOW THE country boom has gone too far when stadium-busting hat acts like Garth Brooks start wearing those clamp-on microphones sported by Madonna and ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Vogue, November 1992
ONE IS swayed by Suede. For all their foppish airs and graces, their teasing glam-rock quotes, there is a real meat to their music which ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 1993
Mojo Navigator and Bomp founder Greg Shaw on his early days in psychedelic San Francisco, L.A. Garage Punk, The Doors, Love and Los Angeles rock.
File format: mp3; file size: 86.5mb, interview length: 1h 30' 08" sound quality: ***
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 1993
A brief history of Hollywood (the Fowley version); growing up in L.A., and growing up fast; getting into the music biz, and the calamity that was The Beatles. The King of the Hollyweird Night tells all.
File format: mp3; file size: 110.3mb, interview length: 1h 54' 55" sound quality: ***
The GTOs: Pamela Des Barres (1993)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 1993
The Girl Together Outrageously looks back with fondness at her time as L.A.'s Queen of the Groupies: the people — Captain Beefheart, Zappa, Gram Parsons, Lowell George, Led Zep; the scenes from the '60s Sunset Strip to Rodney's English Disco, and the transition from free love to corruption and abuse.
File format: mp3 File size: 60.3mb Interview length: 1h 05' 53" seconds Sound quality: ***
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Vogue, 1993
IF THERE WERE any justice in the world, Robyn Hitchcock would be an English cult hero. But it's the very English middle-class-ness of the man ...
Arrested Development: Rural Revolution: Arrested Development
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Vogue, February 1993
THE NAME suggests a grungy Midwest punk band, but Arrested Development is actually a black rap family based in Atlanta. Like the "Native Tongue" groups ...
Transvision Vamp, Wendy James: Wendy In Neverland: Life After Vamping
Report and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Vogue, March 1993
IT WAS ALL looking so good for Wendy James in the spring in 1991: endless magazine covers, review copies of The Little Magnets Versus the ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 5 March 1993
On making Kamakiriad, NYC versus LA, favourite grooves and favourite rhythm sections, working by himself and looking back on Steely Dan
File format: mp3; file size: 78.5meg, interview length: 1h 21' 44" sound quality: ***
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 30 March 1993
Smokin' weed in the MOMA courtyard: growing up in NYC and the people he grew up with; meeting the Erteguns; writing for Billboard; the early days at Atlantic and working with Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin and more...
File format: mp3; file size: 46.7mb, interview length: 48' 38" sound quality: ***
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Vogue, May 1993
ANYONE WHO remembers Maria McKee whooping it up with her country-rock band Lone Justice back in the ‘80s will concur with Deacon Blue's verdict that ...
Jerry Wexler: Crossing The Divide
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Independent on Sunday, 30 May 1993
GET JERRY WEXLER started on the big bands of the Thirties and Forties and you'll never hear the back of it. Most ageing music moguls ...
Buffalo Springfield, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young: AUDIO: Elliot Roberts (1993)
Audio transcript of interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, June 1993
This is a transcript of Barney's interview with Neil Young's manager Roberts, conducted in Santa Monica in 1993 as part of the interviewer's research for ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, June 1993
The L.A. deal-maker on first finding Joni Mitchell in NYC and becoming her manager; on moving to L.A. and into David Crosby's orbit; on getting Joni signed to Warners; on meeting Neil Young and the end of Buffalo Springfield; on the L.A. music scene; on David Geffen; on the Eagles; on cocaine; on Tom Waits and Warren Zevon... and the end of his partnership with Geffen.
File format: mp3; file size: 48.1mb, interview length: 50' 07" sound quality: ****
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, June 1993
The genius behind The Simpsons talks about the central part that music has played in his life, from his love of Zappa and Beefheart to his immersion in L.A.'s punk underground.
File format: mp3; file size: 76.1mb, interview length: 1h 19' 16" sound quality: ***
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, June 1993
The director of The Decline of Western Civilization parts I, II and III and Wayne's World talks about her recent Beverly Hillbillies flick; her southern carnival roots; starting out in film; getting into punk and making the (first two) Decline films.
File format: mp3; file size: 44.2mb, interview length: 48' 13" sound quality: ****
Three Dog Night's Danny Hutton (1993)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, June 1993
First Dog Hutton takes us back to the heady '60s days on the Sunset Strip, hanging out with Van Dyke Parks, Brian Wilson and Lowell George, and Three Dog Night.
File format: mp3; file size: 80.1mb, interview length: 1h 27' 31" sound quality: ***
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 16 June 1993
Van Dyke Parks talks of his early days in Los Angeles; the folk scene; the deaths of both his brother and John F. Kennedy; on becoming an arranger and songwriter; the effects of the '60s British Invasion; the counterculture and the death of the hippie dream; being in the studio with Brian Wilson; the legendary Smile project; his own Song Cycle and much more.
File format: mp3, file size: 97.5mb, interview length: 1h 41' 36", sound quality: ****
Arthur Lee, Love: Arthur Lee in LA (1993)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 24 June 1993
The sometime Love leader talks about growing up in Memphis and South-Central L.A. and recalls his dreams of being a musician. He also describes a gay near-miss with Jimi Hendrix, rants about hip-hop, and spouts a lot of New Age gibberish.
File format: mp3 File size: 91mb Interview length: 1h 34 minutes 45 seconds Sound quality: **
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, July 1993
His arrival in Los Angeles in 1965; hanging out with the Beatles and the Stones; his legendary English Disco; the groupies — Lori, Sable and Queenie... the Mayor of the Sunset Strip looks back.
File format: mp3; file size: 29.9mb, interview length: 32' 39" sound quality: ***
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 7 October 1993
The 'Louie Louie' man looks back at his youth in Los Angeles, cutting his first records, the crooks and the rip-offs, and his battle to regain the rights to his most famous song.
File format: mp3; file size: 42.1mb; Interview length: 45' 56"; sound quality: ****
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 18 October 1993
On songwriting – the political versus the personal – and the making of his album I'm Alive; his brushes with movie soundtrack songwriting and his love of pop music; on the rise of country rock; the Ash Grove and Troubadour scenes; David Geffen; the notorious Elektra Ranch and the singer songwriter movement.
File format: mp3 File size: 70.9mb Interview length: 1h 13' 51'; sound quality: **** (first 10 minutes slightly noisy)
Afghan Whigs: The Afghan Whigs
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, November 1993
"The perfect cv: liquor, pugnacity, political incorrectness, Catholic guilt and incorrigible horndoggery..." ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, December 1993
BH: Looking back, John, was the Little Village experience – you, Ry Cooder, Nick Lowe, Jim Keltner – as much of an anti-climax for you ...
Penelope Spheeris: See You at the Bank, Dude!
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Vogue, December 1993
Like the subjects of her forthcoming film The Beverly Hillbillies, she went from a poor Southern background to become a Hollywood hotshot. Barney Hoskyns meets ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 20 December 1993
The erstwhile Gordon Sumner talks about his place in the pop world; on Paul Gascoigne and being a Geordie; being solo, in a band and the end of the Police; his relationship with Copelands père et fils; the nature of celebrity and the State of the World.
File format: mp3; file size: 57.5mb, interview length: 1h 02' 45" sound quality: ****
Donald Fagen, Steely Dan: Donald Fagen: The Man Who Came In From The Cool
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Arena, Spring 1993
Steely Dan were the muso's band. As icily astute chroniclers of the Seventies, Donald Fagen and Walter Becker recorded a series of virtuoso albums of ...
The Beach Boys, Linda Ronstadt: Nik Venet (1993)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, Summer 1993
From his youth in '50s Baltimore to involvement with Linda Ronstadt and the Canyon Cowboys in '70s L.A., via Kim Fowley, his time at World Pacific and Capitol including producing the Beach Boys and much more: the music biz veteran tells the whole story.
File format: mp3; file size: 108.6mb, interview length: 1h 53' 09" sound quality: ***
Elvis Presley: Memphis Blues Again: Elvis ’69
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, Aspects of Elvis (Sidgwick & Jackson), 1994
ELVIS PRESLEY must have sensed that his credibility was on the line when he made the decision, in early January 1969, to cancel a Nashville ...
Boulevard of Broken Dreams: A Trip Down the Sunset Strip
Guide by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, January 1994
SUNSET BOULEVARD: the very name is synonymous with dreams, unrealities, tableaux of palm trees and convertibles in the golden light of southern California. Billy ...
Elastica's Justine Frischmann (1994)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, January 1994
The Full Frischmann: Starting Suede! Leaving Suede! Not much liking Suede these days! And then the excitement of being in Elastica at the height of Britpop, anticipating recording the first album...
File format: mp3 File size: 34.9mb Interview length: 38 minutes 10 seconds Sound quality: ***
The Band: Heart & Soul: The Band
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, January 1994
MENTION THE BAND TO PEOPLE IN 1993 and the chances are they'll say: "What band?" So much for the enduring legacy of the finest group ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, The Observer, January 1994
ON THE DRIZZLY Monday morning before Christmas, I'm sitting in an oak-panelled room in deepest Wiltshire, awaiting the entrance of the owner of a Jacobean ...
Report by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, January 1994
Barney Hoskyns visits the idyllic Catskill mountain retreat colonized by The Band, Bob Dylan, Van Morrison and fellow bohemians. ...
James Carr, Dan Penn: Cheatin' Meeting of Minds: 'The Dark End of the Street'
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, Independent on Sunday, 9 January 1994
"THIS IS probably one of the greatest songs that's ever come out of black American music," announces Ricky Ross over the piano intro to Deacon ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Vogue, February 1994
BRITISH POP remains supremely unvexed by the anxieties of influence. Just as Suede brazenly lifted their pouting nuances from the right Glam heroes, so 24-year-old ...
Lester Bangs: Rock 'n' roll as literature, literature as rock 'n' roll.
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, March 1994
Whither Rock Gomorrah, the great gonzo hack's unpublished swansong? ...
Lyle Lovett: Lone Star: Lyle Lovett
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Vogue, March 1994
IT'S HARD to believe, but this is Julia Roberts’s first ever appearance on The Tonight Show, the live American chat show to end all chat ...
Nick Kent: The Write Stuff: Nick Kent
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Vogue, June 1994
FOR ANY CALLOW, maladjusted youth growing up in the early-to-mid-‘70s with the New Musical Express as his bible, Nick Kent was unquestionably the coolest rock ...
The Factory, Little Feat: Little Feat: The One That Got Away
Retrospective and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, July 1994
OK, SO THERE aren't many of them, but Little Feat's 1975 show at the Rainbow Theatre was one LEGENDARY GIG EVERYONE SAYS THEY SAW that ...
Neil Young: A Conversation with Elliot Roberts
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, September 1994
FEW OTHER artist/manager relationships have endured as long as the one between Neil Young and Elliot Roberts. It is nearly 30 years since the lanky, ...
Essay by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, September 1994
TWENTY-FIVE YEARS after it was recorded at Sunset Sound in Los Angeles, 'Cinnamon Girl' sounds like it was cut the day before yesterday on a ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, September 1994
OK, PREPARE YOURSELVES FOR A SHOCK. PRINCE'S new album – a last gasp from his 16-year career on Warner Brothers – is about sex. It ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 14 September 1994
The First Lady of the Canyon looks at her past and present, from her Canadian youth through the Canyon days, the nightmare of the '80s and to her place in 1994. Songs, places, lovers, friends, gender and politics. Oh, and Bob Dylan's bad breath.
File format: mp3; file size: 116.9mb, total interview length: 2h 1' 46" sound quality: ***
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Vogue, October 1994
FEW ROCK artists making their debuts have been greeted with such an avalanche of acclaim as thundered down on Liz Phair last year. Her double-album-length ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 18 October 1994
Willie Nelson – on tour in Sweden – on leaving Columbia for Liberty, his tussle with the IRS, Cowboy movies, songwriting and more...
File format: mp3 File size: 30mb Interview length: 32 minutes 43 seconds Sound quality: ****
Liz Phair: Fresh outta Guyville
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, November 1994
NO-ONE WAS MORE SURPRISED THAN LIZ PHAIR when her precocious double-album debut became the alternative-rock succès d'estime of 1993. "I was just a neighbourhood kid ...
Randy Newman: London, Theatre Royal
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, The Observer, 20 November 1994
IT'S HARD to believe that in 1968 Randy Newman claimed he was "very rarely propelled by any great desire to perform live". Especially hard when ...
Joni Mitchell: Our Lady of Sorrows
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, December 1994
SHE ALMOST bounds into the room, this dowager duchess of American rock, fresh from whooping it up for Mojo's photographer on the street outside manager ...
Prefab Sprout: Phone Home: Paddy McAloon
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, December 1994
"I'M ACTUALLY going for the record of being the longest hold-out character on the face of the earth. I'm trying to evaporate into a realm ...
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, The Independent, 1995
IT'S RARE enough these days that you find two decent bands on the same bill, let alone four. So hats off to the New Musical ...
Sam Dees: Whaddya Mean, You've Never Heard Of... Sam Dees?
Guide by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, 1995
AT SIX FOOT FOUR and two-hundred-plus pounds, Sam Dees is a soul giant in more ways than one. One of black America’s premier songsmiths, he ...
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, January 1995
The deep and enduring influence of Mr Soul. ...
Randy Newman: Theatre Royal, Drury Lane
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, January 1995
HE IS TEN SECONDS into his second song, 'Yellow Man', when a bank of spots from Miss Saigon bathes him in a hepatic yellow light. ...
Retrospective and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, January 1995
SAR was Sam Cooke's dream of an R&B empire. It nearly came true. ...
Sam Cooke: The Soul Stirrer: Sam Cooke
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, January 1995
FEW ENTERTAINERS have fallen quite so far from grace as Sam Cooke did when he died, 30 years ago, at the Hacienda Motel in south-central ...
Willie Nelson: The Buddha of Texas
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, January 1995
He is both The Great Elder of his tribe — a man of fabled serenity — and country music's most celebrated outsider; fond of the ...
The Black Crowes: Not Shaven But Raven: The Black Crowes at Newport Centre
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, The Independent, 15 January 1995
WHEN THEY emerged in 1990, it was difficult not to hate the Black Crowes: they were too retro for their own damn good. Led by ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 7 February 1995
The First Lady of Counry Rock on a life in music: from Tuscon to LA; the Troubadour scene; hanging out with Jim Morrison and Gram Parsons; exploring standards and Mexican music; singing, production and producers.
File format: mp3; file size: 152.1mb, interview length: 2h 28' 27" sound quality: ***
Bob Marley & the Wailers: Burnin': Bob Marley and the Wailers take Britain
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, March 1995
Babylon is freezing. The Wailers arrive on a mission to ignite below-zero Britain. Thus begins the demise of the original band and the rise of ...
The Blue Nile: Paul Buchanan Phones Home
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, March 1995
WE'VE BEEN IN ALL sorts of places for a couple of years, just meandering around the world on a fairly frugal basis – America, Italy, ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, March 1995
Rock 'n' roll treated her mean, but Ruth Brown is back with a vengeance. ...
Janet Jackson: Behind Those Sphinx-like Eyes: Janet Jackson
Profile by Barney Hoskyns, The Observer, April 1995
"THIS IS A STORY ABOUT CONTROL," whispered the 19-year-old Janet Jackson at the start of her breakthrough album, Control, in 1986. "It’s all about control, ...
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 ...
Des'ree: Hitting the Unexpected Note
Report and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Musician, May 1995
AT A TIME WHEN British pop is struggling to make inroads into the American charts, the stateside success of a South London girl named Des'ree ...
Rod Stewart: Soddy In Gomorrah
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, May 1995
"The '90s saw a new rock piety rise up against Rod Stewart and his 10 gallons of come." (Stephen J Malkmus, 'Vedder As Merton: 2001', ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, June 1995
POP IS BACK, rock is dead (again). That, at any rate, is one conclusion we could draw from the success of Bjork Gudmundsdottir. ...
Pavement: Mojo Rising: Pavement
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, June 1995
WE SHOULD HAVE seen it coming, really. While other leading practitioners of lo-fi American rock – Beck, Sebadoh, Royal Trux, The Grifters, Guided By Voices ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 4 July 1995
The erstwhile Mac Rebennack goes through a lifetime in music from New Orleans, via Los Angeles, to the world: the music, the drugs and the whole cast of characters, including James Booker, Doc Pomus, Phil Spector, Allen Toussaint and Sam Cooke.
File format: mp3; file size: 73.5mb, interview length: 1h 20' 15" sound quality: **½
Dr. John: Doctor John: An Incantation to the Jollamallawalla Gods
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, September 1995
A QUARTER OF A CENTURY HAS PASSED SINCE MALCOLM Rebennack, trading under the sinisterly exotic stage name "Dr John The Night Tripper", descended the steps ...
The Beach Boys, Brian Wilson: 'Brian Wilson is a Genius': The Birth of a Cult
Essay by Barney Hoskyns, The Independent, 1 September 1995
ONE OF THE key moments in I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times, record producer Don Was’s black-and-white film about Brian Wilson of the Beach ...
Neil Young, Pearl Jam: Neil Young: The Reading Festival
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, October 1995
IT'S THE END OF SUMMER, and the temperature is plummeting. A vicious wind whips up the dustbowl that the Reading Festival site has become over ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, October 1995
IT’S BEEN A LONG TIME coming, but Newman’s Faust is finally here. Complete with choirs, orchestras, and stellar rock’n’roll guests, it’s surely the most ambitious ...
Big Star, Alex Chilton, Jim Dickinson: Robert Gordon: It Came From Memphis (Secker & Warburg)
Book Review by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, October 1995
"WE HAD poetic furor," says Memphis scenester Randall Lyon, a key figure in Robert Gordon's new book about the music of his home town. "I ...
George Jones, Tammy Wynette: George Jones & Tammy Wynette: Hammersmith Apollo, London
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, November 1995
LONG AGO, in the days before hats and hi-tech rednecks, country music was a soap opera and George Jones and Tammy Wynette were its Dirty ...
The Stylistics: In Praise of the Falsetto
Essay by Barney Hoskyns, The Independent, 3 November 1995
The castrato may be dead, if temporarily exhumed in the film Farinelli, but men continue to sing like women. Barney Hoskyns reaches for the high ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 6 November 1995
The Great American Songwriter talks about his childhood, being a perennial outsider, life on Warners, the American South, racism, Los Angeles, Faust and much more
File format: mp3; in 2 parts, total file sizes: 69.8meg, total interview length: 1h 16' 17", sound quality: ***
The Band, Rick Danko: AUDIO: The Band's Rick Danko (1995)
Audio transcript of interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 21 November 1995
This is a transcript of Barney's audio interview with Rick. Listen to the audio of this interview. ...
The Band, Rick Danko: The Band's Rick Danko (1995)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 21 November 1995
A fascinating interview with Rick Danko about living in Woodstock, the Big Pink ("actually magenta") , and working in the Basement with Bob Dylan.
File format: mp3 File size: 28.5mb Interview length: 31 minutes 13 seconds Sound quality: ****
Review by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, December 1995
GOT LIVE If You Want It... ...so bragged The Rolling Stones of their first live album, recorded at the ...
The Beach Boys: Brian Wilson and the Legend of Smile
Book Excerpt by Barney Hoskyns, 'Waiting For The Sun', 1996
BY THE TIME ‘Good Vibrations’ had hit No.1 at the end of 1966, Brian was firmly committed to extending pop's boundaries as far as he ...
Teenage Fanclub: The Forum, London
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, February 1996
ONE HESITATES TO USE the word "heartwarming" about the endurance of the unassuming Scotsmen who go by the name of Teenage Fanclub, but at a ...
The Ramones: Gabba Gabba Sniffle: The Ramones at Brixton Academy, London
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, The Independent, 9 February 1996
PUNK MAY not be dead, but the Ramones, it would seem, have finally bitten the dust – like the spaghetti western mercenaries to whom they ...
Lou Reed, The Velvet Underground: A Dark Prince at Twilight: Lou Reed
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, March 1996
THE DAY DOES not begin auspiciously. The first flakes of a snowstorm descend as I open the curtains in my hotel room, adding yet another ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, March 1996
The 'After Midnight' Man takes us back to Tulsa, and on to L.A.: how he's stayed a step outside the music business, how Clapton's 'After Midnight' cover saved his ass, and on the changes he's seen in his many years as a musician
File format: mp3; file size: 43.2meg, interview length: 44' 59" sound quality: ***
J.J. Cale: 25 Years From Tulsa: J.J. Cale
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, The Independent, April 1996
FIFTEEN MINUTES before J.J. Cale is due to take the famous stage of Manhattan’s Carnegie Hall, a wiry, hobo-ish figure can be seen wandering across ...
Jeff Buckley, Esquivel: Jeff Buckley interviews Esquivel (1996)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 15 April 1996
Jeff Buckley asks the questions, and Esquivel gives us a glimpse of his happy half-century of music making.
File format: mp3; file size: 42.6meg, interview length: 44' 20" sound quality: **
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 24 April 1996
The Rashomon interview: all four Metallicas sit down, separately, to talk about the making of Load.
File format: mp3; in 5 parts, total file sizes: 104.6mb, total interview length: 1h 54' 21" sound quality: ***
Cocteau Twins: Milk And Kisses (Fontana)
Review and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, May 1996
AN UNFORGIVABLE THING happened in 1994. The Cocteau Twins released arguably their finest album to date, Four Calendar Cafe, only to have it roundly ignored ...
The High Llamas, Stereolab: The High Llamas: Hawaii; Stereolab: Emperor Tomato Ketchup
Review by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, May 1996
UPON OBSERVING A SMALL dog walking on its hind legs, Doctor Johnson famously noted that it was less remarkable how well the cur in question ...
Palace Music, Will Oldham: Will Oldham's Palace
Comment by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, May 1996
THERE IS A STRANGE subcurrent in the American rock music of the mid-'90s: a subcurrent of lo-fi, willfully inept, not-quite-country rock that stretches from the ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, The Observer, June 1996
WHEN THE Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia died last year, a whole era of rock’n’roll seemed to be drawing to a close. Many people assumed this ...
Report and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, June 1996
ON A STARRY SUMMER NIGHT at Bearsville Studios, New York, the four members of Phish are bracing themselves for the inevitable Grateful Dead question. ...
The Byrds: Mr Tambourine Man, Turn! Turn! Turn!, Fifth Dimension, Younger Than Yesterday
Review by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, June 1996
ROCK HISTORY IS striated by the influence of the Byrds. Theirs is one of the great stylistic lineages, forever shadowing those of the Fabs and ...
The Blue Nile: Peace with Honour: The Blue Nile
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, The Independent, 7 June 1996
WHEN PAUL Buchanan opens the new Blue Nile album with the question "Now that I’ve found peace at last/Tell me, Jesus, will it last?", his ...
The Gospel according to Anthony Heilbut
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, The Independent, 24 June 1996
From Mahalia Jackson to Death in Venice might seem a long journey. But for Anthony Heilbut, the renowned gospel expert and author of a new ...
Metallica: The Alternative Metallica
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, July 1996
THEY MAKE THE ODDEST OF rock couples, James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich. Watching them at work in Manhattan’s Right Track Studios, it’s hard to imagine ...
The Third Invasion: Britpop Strikes!
Overview by Barney Hoskyns, Musician, July 1996
"Oasis must die. Do not buy Oasis records. They will come to rape and pillage our women and invade America."(Courtney Love on the Net, early ...
Al Green, Ann Peebles, Willie Mitchell: Various Artists: Royal Memphis Soul – Hi Records
Review by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, July 1996
When Muscle Shoals went flabby and Stax couldn't pay their taxes, Hi Records took up the soul baton. Barney Hoskyns says hello to a collection ...
Electronic: Raise the Pressure
Review by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, August 1996
FIVE YEARS after cementing their partnership as the coolest Mancunians on the planet, Messrs Marr and Sumner return with a dreadfully disappointing album. Raise The ...
Crazy Horse, Neil Young: Neil Young with Crazy Horse: Broken Arrow
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Request, August 1996
NINE MONTHS AGO, I stood in a field in England watching Neil Young close the Reading Festival and realized the following: If you can play ...
Report by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, August 1996
Last year's Monster tour almost killed them. They have dispensed with the services of their "fifth" member. They now live time zones apart. On the ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 9 August 1996
RBP takes a drive around Los Angeles with Arthur Lee's second-in-command, hearing all about the madness, the drugs and the whole Sunset Scene vibe - and the making of the first two, classic, Love albums.
File format: mp3; file size: 96.5meg, interview length: 1hr 40' 34" sound quality: **
The Lemonheads' Evan Dando (1996)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 13 August 1996
Car Button Cloth-era Evan Dando sings 'Don't Fear The Reaper', talks rather a lot about drugs and name-drops remorselessly, to highly entertaining effect.
File format: mp3; file size: 71.5mb, interview length: 1h 14' 30" sound quality: ****
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 30 August 1996
Ed Sanders – Fug, poet, agitator and all round rebel-about-town talks about his life from the early '60s Lower East Side Bohemia to the late '60s LA of Charlie Manson
File format: mp3; file size: 50.7meg, interview length: 52' 48" sound quality: ****
Evan Dando, The Lemonheads: Evan Dando and the Pop Walkabout
Essay by Barney Hoskyns, The Independent, September 1996
IN DON DeLillo’s 1973 novel Great Jones Street, a rock star named Bucky Wunderlick decides to quit his band and disappear from the music industry. ...
Marshall Crenshaw: Miracle Of Science (Razor & Tie)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rolling Stone, 19 September 1996
MARSHALL CRENSHAW occupies a small but special niche in modern American rock: He's a power-pop singer/songwriter. Unfortunately, with one foot in the cultish dBs/Mitch Easter ...
Evan Dando, The Lemonheads: Evan Dando: The Smoker You Drink, The Player You Get
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, October 1996
DRIVING THROUGH the sheeting rain from the miniature airport that serves Martha’s Vineyard, the guy at the wheel informs me that we’re heading towards the ...
Audio transcript of interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 14 October 1996
This is a transcript of Barney's audio interview with Johnny. Listen to the audio of this interview. ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 14 October 1996
Johnny Cash talks to Barney Hoskyns about his health, his religion, his revival with Rick Rubin, and the myth of the Million Dollar Quartet
File format: mp3; file size: 50.5mb, interview length: 55' 07" sound quality: ****
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rolling Stone, 31 October 1996
PET SHOP BOYS have become an institution. The quintessential '80s act, Chris Lowe and Neil Tennant have stuck to their guns and refused to defer ...
Joni Mitchell: Both Sides Now: Joni Mitchell's Hits and Misses
Review by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, November 1996
• First-ever attempt to compile a "best of" the former Roberta Joan Anderson.• Simultaneously released albums of "hits" - songs successful either for Mitchell or ...
The Lemonheads: Car Button Cloth (TAG/Atlantic) ****
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rolling Stone, 28 November 1996
THE NEWS that Evan Dando was working on another Lemonheads album was originally greeted with, among other things, skepticism. Anyone familiar with the lanky Bostonian's ...
Curtis Mayfield: New World Order
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Request, December 1996
SIX YEARS AFTER the freak onstage accident that paralyzed him from the neck down, Curtis Mayfield, one of soul music's true titans, makes his debut ...
Ed Sanders, The Fugs: Ed Sanders and the Fugs
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, December 1996
Lester Bangs called The Fugs "the first truly underground band in America". 30 years later, their leader is waging war against Newt Gingrich... ...
Johnny Cash: A Law Unto Himself
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, December 1996
WE'RE PASSING through Andover, Kansas, scene of one of the worst tornadoes in American history: a monstrous twister that levelled the little town and took ...
Amy Rigby, Marshall Crenshaw: Marshall Crenshaw/Amy Rigby: Park West, Albany, NY
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, December 1996
ON THE first date of an East Coast mini-tour, Marshall Crenshaw and Amy Rigby are playing things semi-safe: Park West is a club sandwiched between ...
Essay by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, December 1996
"WHAT IS Soul?" sang Ben E. King in 1967, a year that began with Aretha Franklin’s first Atlantic session and ended with the death of ...
Gillian Welch and David Rawlings (1996)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 4 December 1996
The Queen of nouveau bluegrass, Gillian Welch, and her guitar pickin' sidekick David Rawlings, talk about meeting at Berklee, making the fabulous Revival album, living in Nashville and more.
File format: mp3; file size: 33.2meg; Interview length: 38' 18"; sound quality: ***
Bjork: Love Her or Loathe Her?
Comment by Barney Hoskyns, New Woman, Spring 1996
THERE SEEMS TO be a bit of a backlash against Bjork Gudmundsdottir, but God knows why. From every angle she strikes me as a thrilling ...
Esquivel, Jeff Buckley: Conference Call: Jeff Buckley interviews Esquivel
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, Summer 1996
Take a ride on the mood music elevator as MOJO’s favourite young lion Jeff Buckley enjoys a transcontinental chinwag with space-age septuagenarian Esquivel. ...
Bread: Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread
Sleeve notes by Barney Hoskyns, Elektra Records, Summer 1996
IN SO MANY ways, Bread’s is a quintessentially L.A. pop story. An Oklahoman and a Tennessean make their separate ways to Hollywood in the early ...
Radiohead: Can Radiohead Take America?
Report by Barney Hoskyns, unpublished, 1997
"THERE ARE lots of double standards with British bands when they talk about America," says Jonny Greenwood. "They like to talk badly about it, yet ...
Elvis Presley, Leiber and Stoller: Elvis & Leiber & Stoller
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, Die Welt Woche, 1997
WHEN JERRY Leiber and Mike Stoller submitted the sickly ballad 'Love Me' to Elvis Presley in the late summer of 1956, they thought the boy ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, 1997
JOHNNY THUNDERS'S principal solo claim to fame, So Alone consists of Dollsy covers (the Shangri-Las' ‘Give Him a Great Big Kiss,’ the Chantays' surf chestnut ...
Bon Jovi: Jon Bon Jovi on the Beach
Report and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, New Woman, 1997
THE ROCKAWAY BEACH housewives can’t quite believe their eyes. Leaning moodily against a lamp-post on this faded seaside street is the drop-dead-handsome rock star they ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, 1997
FEW WOMEN HAVE expanded the vocabulary of rock as bewitchingly as Kate Bush; among male stars, only Prince may have taken as many risks. Hounds ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, 1997
WITH THE swaggering chords of the opening ‘Rock'N'Roll Star,’ Oasis announced that big, brash Brit rock was here to stay--at least for a few years. ...
Sam Cooke: Live at the Harlem Square Club
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, 1997
MOST OF SAM Cooke's pop hits were sugary, blanched affairs. This album was the real deal, giving us the church-reared R&B singer who liked to ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, 1997
NEXT TO CBGBS peers like the Ramones and the Voidoids, Talking Heads barely sounded like a punk band. After the startlingly non-conformist ‘Love Building on ...
The Cramps: Songs the Lord Taught Us
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, 1997
THE CRAMPS GOT away with their Z-movie, zombie-rock schtick because they were so intense in their conviction that it had more value than middlebrow humanist ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, unpublished, 1997
THERE IS nothing quite like the High Llamas, even at a time when symphonic "mood music" is all the rage and neo-easy listening has become ...
Whose Alt.Country Is It Anyway?
Essay by Barney Hoskyns, unpublished, 1997
THEY CALL it Alternative Country, a generous umbrella of a category that makes room for acts as different as Steve Earle, Son Volt and Slobberbone; ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 19 January 1997
Beck talks to Barney Hoskyns about hip hop, folk, blues and the making and success of Odelay, and about country music, Los Angeles, his artist grandfather, Tom Waits and more.
File format: mp3 File size: 72.9mb, interview length: 1h 15' 57", sound quality ****
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 24 January 1997
How the band came together; touring with Smashing Pumpkins; songwriting and melodies; ...and mullets!
File format: mp3; file size: 68.8mb, interview length: 1h 15' 09" sound quality: ***
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, February 1997
DETACH YOURSELF for a moment, and this here is a pretty rum scene. ...
Profile by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, February 1997
"I am not a woman, I am not a man/I am something that you’ll never understand..." ...
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, February 1997
AFTER A great deal of wandering throughout the 40 years of her life - from smalltown South Dakota to Ontario to San Francisco to New ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, March 1997
ON A WARM January afternoon of the kind that’s almost unique to Los Angeles, an enormous lime-green 1969 Chevrolet pickup is lumbering noisily up a ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rolling Stone, 6 March 1997
SOMETIMES YOU JUST feel like telling the '60s to go away. As if all those gleefully plagiarizing Brit-pop bands weren't enough, now we have a ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 6 March 1997
Speaking from a Singapore hotel room, the Suede frontman talks about new album Coming Up; the band's popularity abroad; what London means to him, and looks back at Britpop.
File format: mp3; file size: 22.5mb, interview length: 24' 37" sound quality: ** (phoner)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rolling Stone, 20 March 1997
IT IS HARD to believe we’re a whole decade away from The Joshua Tree – U2’s very own Born In The USA, its Purple Rain, ...
Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young: Fred Goodman: The Mansion on the Hill (Times Books)
Book Review by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, April 1997
Deny it all we might, the truth is that music is a business. And its richest players have made billions without ever striking a single ...
Jennifer Lopez, Selena: Jennifer Lopez on Selena
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Interview, April 1997
In the new movie Selena, Jennifer Lopez had the coveted - yet unenviable - task of playing the most adored Latina singer ever, the late ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, April 1997
The Human Riff talks about his solo excursion with the X-Pensive Winos and making Talk is Cheap: sorting out the crack band with Steve Jordan, working with Bootsy and Maceo, and on being a frontman.
File format: mp3; file size: 19.2mb, interview length: 21' sound quality: *
Retrospective and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, May 1997
KEITH RICHARDS says he’d never thought of making a solo album until Mick Jagger announced that he didn’t want to tour to promote the Rolling ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Request, May 1997
"DOCTOR" ALEX Patterson, overlord of the Orb and revered godfather of the genus Ambient Techno, would like another brandy and ginger, if you don’t mind. ...
Suede: Brett Anderson interviewed
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Interview, May 1997
WHEN, NEARLY three years ago, Bernard Butler walked out of Suede - or the London Suede, as they are unhappily obliged to call themselves in ...
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 ...
Love Story: Alone Again, or Arthur Lee
Retrospective and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, June 1997
HIGH UP in Laurel Canyon, with all of Los Angeles spread out around him, Arthur Lee would sit and stare and contemplate death – "sitting ...
Neil Young: The Year Of The Horse
Review by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, July 1997
2-CD, 13-track live document of last year's Broken Arrow tour, recorded mainly in America but featuring tracks from Berlin, Toronto…and downtown Saskatchewan. ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, July 1997
ONCE UPON a time, Papas Fritas were just another dweebish lo-fi band from Massachusetts, growing up in the shadows of Sebadoh and Dinosaur Jr.. But ...
The Dandy Warhols: Dandy Warhols, The: …The Dandy Warhols Come Down (Capitol)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rolling Stone, 10 July 1997
IT'S A SILLY NAME, of course, one guaranteed to discourage people from taking them seriously. And maybe seriousness isn't the issue anyway. ...
Profile by Barney Hoskyns, The Boston Phoenix, 11 July 1997
IT USED to be easy to dismiss Tindersticks - to deride them as boho poseurs, as wannabe Nick Caves, as provincial boys who came to ...
The Prodigy: Prodigy: The Fat Of The Land
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rolling Stone, 7 August 1997
RARELY HAS a pop trend been so shamelessly spoon-fed to America as the hold-all genre dubbed "electronica". Rarely, indeed, has the music industry tried so ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 9 August 1997
On Todd's childhood and early musical adventures, culminating in the formation of The Nazz and a sudden immersion in the teen pop world; getting involved with Albert Grossman and the Woodstock scene, recording The Band and dressing up and taking acid: meeting the Sayles Brothers; working on Ritalin; the Concept for A Wizard, A True Star; building Secret Sound Studio in NYC and developing his recording techniques.
File format: mp3 File size: 116.6mb, interview length: 2h 01' 29", sound quality: ****
Aretha Franklin: The Rockport Rhythm and Blues Festival, Fort Adams State Park, Newport RI
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, The Observer, 10 August 1997
Aretha's having a bad hair day. But she's got some very good wings ...
Review and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, September 1997
“Unplugged” versions of ten Webb staples, performed at the grand piano by The Man Himself. Vocal cameos by Shawn Colvin (Didn’t We), Marc Cohn (If ...
The Jayhawks: Riviera Theatre, Chicago
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, September 1997
DESPITE SERIOUS competition from an important Chicago Bulls game, the gilded relic that is the Riviera is close to packed tonight for a double-header by ...
Shaggy: Midnite Lover (Virgin) ***
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rolling Stone, 18 September 1997
WHEN SHAGGY had a global smash with his irresistible version of the Folkes Brothers' 'Oh Carolina', in 1993, and followed it up with the U.S. ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rolling Stone, 2 October 1997
PITY THE cerebral technicians of Stereolab, whose coolly subversive fusion of muzak and krautrock has for too long condemned them to the Critics’ Darling ghetto. ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rolling Stone, 30 October 1997
ON WHAT IS something of a transitional album, the recently separated Mariah Carey moves still further away from the warmed-over Whitney Houston of Carey's early ...
Audio transcript of interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, November 1997
This is a transcript of Barney's audio interview with Keith. Listen to the audio of this interview. ...
Keith Richards, The Rolling Stones: Keith Richards (1997)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, November 1997
The Human Riff on Exile on Main Street, Gram Parsons, rastamen in the hills and his loathing of Oasis.
File format: mp3 File size: 27.7mb Interview length: 30 minutes 13 seconds Sound quality: ****
Keith Richards, The Rolling Stones: Keith Richards: How Do You Stop?
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, November 1997
"DON’T BE MISLED!" shouts the faded 8" x 8" flyer propped up on a baby grand piano in the mansion Keith Richards is renting in ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, November 1997
RICHARD DAVIES is cooped up in the Turtle Creek barn, a hallowed old recording studio haunted by ghosts of Woodstock past and present. (A picture ...
Todd Rundgren: With A Twist (Emi/Guardian)
Review and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, November 1997
Challenged to re-record a number of his 'greatest hits' – by a label which has tried the same experiment with Jimmy Webb and Alice Cooper ...
Burt Bacharach: The Look Of Love
Review by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, December 1997
Three-CD box packing 75 examples of highly-crafted pop magic and spanning four decades. The gang’s all here — Dionne, Dusty, Cilla — with only Aretha’s ...
Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane: Haight-Ashbury
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, Independent on Sunday, December 1997
The times they have a-changed, but not without a certain irony. Or a certain continuity, come to that. ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, December 1997
Luscious five-CD box of gospel/country/blues/soul classics spanning five decades and thirteen labels in the genre-busting career of Brother Ray. ...
Essay by Barney Hoskyns, Request, December 1997
AT THE end of the day, all they really, really wanted was to "zigazig ha". ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, December 1997
4-CD grab-bag of rarities, outtakes, live recordings and fave tracks selected by the surviving Doors ...
David Bowie, Marc Bolan, T. Rex: 10 Great Glam Rock Albums
Guide by Barney Hoskyns, Harpers & Queen, 1998
TEN GREAT GLAM ROCK ALBUMS you cannot afford to live without... ...
Chic: Hammersmith Odeon, October 1979
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, unpublished, 1998
SO FEW AND FAR between are the live performances that have made any real impression on me that they stick out in the memory like ...
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, unpublished, 1998
MERCURY REV, one of the great if most overlooked American groups of the 1990s, are finally releasing a new album, their first for V2 Records. ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, unpublished, 1998
JARVIS COCKER is that most British of pop creatures, the Nerd-as-Superstar. Like the young Morrissey, he’s the spindly misfit, the scrawny mis-shape who outwitted the ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 1998
On Otis and the making of 'Dock of the Bay', the disputed history of 'Green Onions', and on touring with Neil Young: the Memphis guitar-slinger gives the lowdown.
File format: mp3; total file size: 31.4mb, total interview length: 34' 16" sound quality: * (phone interview)
The Band, Levon Helm: The Weight on Levon Helm
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, unpublished, 1998
LEVON HELM is perched on the arm of a carved wooden chair in his large house-cum-recording studio in Woodstock, N.Y., and he’s cackling his head ...
New York Dolls: Too Much, Too Soon: The Dolls take New York
Book Excerpt by Barney Hoskyns, 'Glam!' (Faber), 1998
Note: this is a piece adapted in edited form from Glam! Bowie, Bolan & the Glitter-Rock Revolution (Faber, 1998) ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, January 1998
The complete JD story, from Warsaw to 'Atmosphere', compiled by the band’s surviving members with Jon Savage and including dozens of outtakes, unreleased demos, and ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 13 January 1998
Eno talks about the early days of Roxy Music; the band's intersection with Glam; the impact of David Bowie; androgyny and flamboyance; leaving Roxy, and setting out on his solo career.
File format: mp3; file size: 33.5mb, interview length: 36' 36" sound quality: ** (phoner)
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 ...
Todd Rundgren: "Go Ahead, Ignore Me!"
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, February 1998
HELLO, it’s him. ...
Bert Berns: The Soul Man with a Huckster's Heart
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, March 1998
HE WAS, said Jerry Wexler, "a paunchy, nervous cat with a shock of unruly black hair". He looked like a vaguely disreputable cross between Gene ...
Profile by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, March 1998
FIRMLY IN the tradition of orch-pop mavericks like Scott Walker and Jimmy Webb, Plush caused a minor commotion three years ago with the Drag City ...
Prefab Sprout: Interview: Prefab Sprout's Paddy McAloon
Audio transcript of interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, April 1998
This is a transcription of Barney's audio interview with Paddy. Listen to the audio of this interview. ...
Review and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, April 1998
2-CD set coupling the electro-duo’s 1977 debut with the infamous 23 Minutes Over Brussels flexi-disc and an unreleased 1978 live set from CBGBs. ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 30 April 1998
Elliott Smith on discomfort, vocal styles, solo vs. electric bands, more discomfort, playing waltzes and Art, Capital A.
File format: mp3 File size: 39.3mb Interview length: 42 minutes 57 seconds Sound quality: ***
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, May 1998
On the eve of the album's release and success, Jonathan Donahue and Sean "Grasshopper" Mackowiak talk about it's creation, and look back at their struggles since the band's formation.
File format: mp3; file size: 57mb, interview length: 59' 20" sound quality: ***
Massive Attack: Mezzanine (Virgin)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rolling Stone, 28 May 1998
ELDER STATESMEN of the moody dance genre that used to be called trip-hop, Massive Attack like to take their time making albums. So long, indeed, ...
Sean Lennon: Into the Sun (Grand Royal)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Request, June 1998
AFTER THE DAMP SQUIB that half-bro Jules' career turned out to be – and considering the band IMA's collaboration with Yoko Ono on Rising – ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, June 1998
BILLY CORGAN certainly had his work cut out for him after 1995’s Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. ...
Gram Parsons: The Good Ol’ Boy
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, July 1998
ON A WARM fall night in the tie-dyed rock’n’roll town of Woodstock, with the maple leaves turning to gold and purple on the mountains that ...
Elliott Smith: Mojo Rising: Elliott Smith
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, July 1998
IS THIS a fairy tale or a corporate rock nightmare? Taciturn 28-year-old indie songster is taken up by maverick movie director and wakes to find ...
The Beastie Boys: Beastie Boys: Hello Nasty (Grand Royal/Capitol)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, August 1998
Partying rights might not be at the top of their list of priorities these days. So how exactly does a Beastie Boy grow up? ...
The Beach Boys, Brian Wilson: Brian Wilson: Imagination (Giant)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Spin, August 1998
IT IS HARD NOT TO harbour mixed feelings about Brian Wilson in the late '90s. While it’s great that he’s up and about (and not ...
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, August 1998
"How do you stop... before it’s too late?" ...
Profile by Barney Hoskyns, The Independent, August 1998
I’LL CONFESS I’m shocked that Michael Jackson has reached the ripe old age of 40. More shocked, indeed, than by the fact that Keith Richards ...
Randy Newman: "I Love You, You C**t!"
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, August 1998
THE FOLK singer Dave Van Ronk called him "the Hoagy Carmichael of the ’60s". His boyhood friend and longtime producer Lenny Waronker tagged him "King ...
All The Young Dudes: The Return of Glam Rock
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, Vogue, September 1998
YOU COULD argue that glam – glamour, from an old Scottish word meaning "a haze in the air" – was always intrinsic to pop music. ...
Beck, Al Hansen, and the new Art Rock
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, World Art, September 1998
LAST MAY, "Beck and Al Hansen: Playing With Matches" opened at the Santa Monica Museum of Art. This fall and winter the exhibition can be ...
David Bowie, T. Rex: Glad to be Glam!
Retrospective and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, The Independent, 12 September 1998
What do the original devotees think of Ziggy, Bolan, platform boots and glitter 25 years on? Will the latest revival of '70s androgyny take off? ...
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 ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, November 1998
On her last proper album, 1995’s very fabulous To Bring You My Love, P.J. Harvey slipped on a slinky red dress and covered up the ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 2 November 1998
Ms Williams talks about the often-torturous gestation of her magnificent Car Wheels On A Gravel Road album, and about her roots and influences, musical and literary.
File format: mp3; file size: 29.8mb, interview length: 32' 29" sound quality: ** (phoner)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 12 November 1998
The Band's drummer takes us from West Memphis nightclubs to The Hawks to Dylan to Big Pink to Muddy Waters, and along the way touches on his break with Robbie Robertson and the death of Richard Manuel
File format: mp3; file size: 85.1meg, interview length: 1h 28' 40" sound quality: **
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 29 November 1998
Messrs. Malkmus, Kannberg and Ibold on the making of the Terror Twilight album, working with Nigel Godrich, the ins-and-outs of the band... and the future of rock!
File format: mp3; file size: 60.7mb, interview length: 1h 06' 13" sound quality: **
Neutral Milk Hotel's Jeff Mangum (1998)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, December 1998
Mr. Mangum on the journey from Ruston, LA, to Athens, GA; Elephant Six Records, and his wider musical community; art and literature projects; and his lo-fi and psychedelic influences.
File format: mp3; file size: 39mb, interview length: 42' 37" sound quality: ***
Beck: The Shock of the Old: Beck and the New Roots Explosion
Report and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, December 1998
"...to be an American (unlike English or French or whatever) is precisely to imagine a destiny rather than to inherit one; since we have always ...
The Beastie Boys: There's Something about the Beastie Boys
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, Request, December 1998
I CAN STILL REMEMBER the morning, way back in the sweaty London summer of 1983, when three skinny New York wiseasses burst into the New ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 1 December 1998
This lengthy interview roams back and forth from Wyatt's childhood to the present day, taking in politics, Jimi Hendrix, Soft Machine, his voice and his music. Fascinating stuff.
File format: mp3; file size: 95.8mb, interview length: 1h 44' 35" sound quality: ***
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Request, Spring 1998
MODULAR FRENCHMEN Nicolas Godin and Jean Benoit Dunckel need no reminding that French pop has always been a bit of a joke. With the brilliant ...
Elliott Smith: An Interview in NYC, 30th April, 1998
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, unpublished, Spring 1998
BH: From Kill Rock Stars to DreamWorks – it sounds like some kind of fairy tale. Does it feel like one? ...
The Rolling Stones: Anita Pallenberg (1998)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, Summer 1998
The one-time consort to Keith Richards talks about the place of the women behind the men in rock'n'roll: the blondes the men went and still go for; the lack of equality in the relationships; feelings of uselessness and lack of support systems, and about Marianne Faithfull, Courtney Love and Yoko Ono.
File format: mp3; file size: 17.8mb, interview length: 18' 30" sound quality: ** (phoner)
Marianne Faithfull, Courtney Love, Oasis, The Rolling Stones: AUDIO: Anita Pallenberg (1998)
Audio transcript of interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, Summer 1998
This is a transcription of a phone interview. Listen to the audio of this interview. ...
Macy Gray, Shelby Lynne: Blue-Eyed Soul and Brown-Eyed Rock: Macy Gray and Shelby Lynne
Comment by Barney Hoskyns, Dig, The (Japan), 1999
TEN YEARS AGO I found myself sitting in a London hotel with Tommy Couch, boss of Malaco Records, a Mississippi label which was busy resuscitating ...
Big Star: Jim Dickinson on Big Star (1999)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 1999
The legendary Memphis musician and producer looks back at the making of Big Star's Third/Sister Lovers. It's all here: the characters and the chaos, the fun and the frustrations. Great story-telling.
File format: mp3; file size: 56.3mb, interview length: 58' 38" sound quality: * (phoner)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, January 1999
THE WAY Lucinda Williams sighs "Hi" down the phoneline from Florida instantly communicates a deep fatigue. She and her band have just motored up from ...
Roy Orbison: The Lonely Blue Dream of Roy Orbison
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, January 1999
HE STANDS stock-still, or nearly so. His right hand mechanically strums a black Gretsch, and his left leg slightly trembles. He could be a waxwork ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 25 January 1999
From Arizona and Duane Eddy to L.A. and Nancy Sinatra: three hours of yarns and reminiscences from the irascible Lee Hazlewood
File format: mp3; file size: 178.4meg, total interview length: 3h 5' 50" sound quality: ***
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 28 January 1999
On his new album, Mule Variations; on changing labels; on his formative influences... and on edible slugs! On Beatniks, recording, songwriting, Frank Zappa and L.A.... and his first tattoos!
File format: mp3 File size: 71.4mb, interview length: 1h 14' 23", sound quality: **
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, February 1999
WITH THE MTV Unplugged era now firmly behind us, Beck is at some pains to explain that tonight’s show – one of only two in ...
Retrospective and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, February 1999
"And you don’t stop/Do the punk rock..." ...
Profile by Barney Hoskyns, The Independent, February 1999
“Observe how a queen do...” ('Final Hour') ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Request, February 1999
AS MICK Jagger’s girlfriend she was among the great - and most tragic - consorts of rock’s decadent heyday. But then this Sister Morphine forced ...
Robert Wyatt: Nothing Can Stop Robert Wyatt: An Interview
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, March 1999
THE DAY before I drive up to Lincolnshire to interview Robert Wyatt, there is a march through the streets of Santiago - a procession of ...
Review and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, April 1999
Seventh album from Lou Barlow and chums, following up 1996’s Harmacy and featuring new drummer Russ Pollard. ...
Tom Waits: What's He Building In There? An Interview with Tom Waits
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, April 1999
TOM WAITS squats down on the fender of his blue Coupe de Ville and tells a joke. ...
Lee Hazlewood: The Ol' Sonofabitch
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, May 1999
ON A PERFECT Florida afternoon in late February, Lee Hazlewood is wedging himself into a large grey couch and eyeing a rather sad plate of ...
New Radicals: Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too (MCA)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, May 1999
Gangling Grosse Pointe wunderbrat finds commercial footing by reviving Utopian white soul. ...
Tom Waits: Variations on Tom Waits
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, The Independent, May 1999
FEW OF the patrons of the China Light diner in Santa Rosa look up when Tom Waits shuffles through the door. Attired in coarse indigo ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, The Independent, June 1999
"Thirty years upon the stage/ I hear the people say, ‘Why won’t he go away?’" ...
Lauryn Hill: Theatre at Madison Square Garden, NY
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, June 1999
DID SOMEONE say breakout hit? Anyone who doubts the massive crossover impact of The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill need only cast an eye across the ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, June 1999
NOBODY COULD accuse Pavement of being rock archetypes. Take the group’s frontman Stephen Malkmus, who spends much of his spare time flyfishing virgin rivers and ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Rolling Stone, 10 June 1999
THAT THE TERM "singer-songwriter" is no longer one of abuse is at least partly because of the excellent Ron Sexsmith. A thirtysomething Canadian who sounds ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, 24 June 1999
File format: MP3 ; File size: 20.9mb; Interview length: 45 minutes; Sound quality: ***
Flaming Lips: The Flaming Lips: The Soft Bulletin
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Spin, July 1999
"PSYCHEDELIA" has undergone some curious convolutions since its Haight-Ashbury heyday. For the most part, though, the hallucinogens have gone, leaving a purely musical residue - ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, August 1999
What impact did the breakup of your marriage have on Avenue B? Curiously, once my back was up against the wall and I was really ...
Profile by Barney Hoskyns, The Independent, August 1999
"WHY DO people always have a go at Belgium?" These are the first words uttered by John Peel on the night of Tuesday 24th August, ...
Scritti Politti: This Week I am Mostly Wearing Soren Kierkegaard: Scritti Politti
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, August 1999
GREEN STROHMEYER-GARTSIDE, to give him his full and slightly fantastical name, is feeling decidedly below-par on this muggy Manhattan afternoon. Clasping a Rolling Rock in ...
Beck: Being For the Benefit of Mr. Hansen
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, The Observer, September 1999
THE GANG’S all here: Yoko Ono and Gwyneth Paltrow, Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson, Kate Moss and Evan Dando. All have ventured out on a ...
Simon Reynolds: Energy Flash: A Journey Through Rave Music and Dance Culture
Book Review by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, September 1999
IT SAYS MUCH about our compulsive pre-millenial navel-gazing that several tomes about the past decade's "ecstacy culture" - Matthew Collin's Altered State, Jane Bussman's Once ...
Stereolab: Cobra and Phases Group Play Voltage In the Milky Night (Duophonic)
Review and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, September 1999
Double-vinyl-length opus from the enduring and indefatigable South-east Londoners, half of it co-produced by Tortoise’s John McEntire, half by ex-Gastr del Sol member Jim O’Rourke. ...
Funkapolitan: Bish, Bash, Posh: Class and British Pop
Essay by Barney Hoskyns, The Guardian, 1 October 1999
As Tony Blair calls for a classless society, he might be surprised to learn that the world of pop music is riddled with toffs. Self-confessed ...
Alex Chilton, Big Star: The Man Who Preferred Not To: Alex Chilton
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, Dig, The (Japan), November 1999
IF EVERYONE who heard the Velvet Underground in the ’60s formed a band – so the joke goes – then everyone who heard Big Star ...
Review and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, December 1999
AFICIONADOS OF clean, clever, honed American pop have had to make do with meagre rations of late. Thank God that 1999 has at least produced ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 9 December 1999
The dynamic duo on their comeback album, Two Against Nature; their isolation from the rock mainstream in the '70s; being a "band" in the early years; their audience, and those who don't "get" them; William Burroughs; the Katy Lied technical disaster; their collective identity and collaboration; how they view their early records, and Steely Dan's place in the modern pop world.
File format: mp3; file size: 53.7mb, interview length: 58' 40" sound quality: ***
Black Box Recorder: The Facts of Life
Review by Barney Hoskyns, CDNOW.com, 2000
TIRED OF Brit guitar bands? Luke Haines of British trio Black Box Recorder is. Which is why he’s finally disbanded his old (guitar) group the ...
Brits Go Home! The End of the Invasion
Overview by Barney Hoskyns, The Observer, 2000
AMID ALL the self-congratulatory hubbub over the British successes at the Oscars, few people stopped to reflect that luvvie wonderboy Sam Mendes hadn't actually made ...
Clinic: Internal Wrangler (Domino)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, CDNOW.com, 2000
THE SGT. PEPPER outfits are one thing – like the Beatles, Clinic hail from Liverpool – but the surgical masks are something else again. (According ...
Blondie, Debbie Harry: Debbie Harry: A Chat with the Punk Pop Queen!
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Daily Express, 2000
WHAT A difference a year makes. The last time I spoke with Debbie Harry she was gearing up for the release of the first Blondie ...
Elastica: An Interview with Justine Frischmann
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, CDNOW.com, 2000
FEW SECOND albums have taken quite as long to materialise as Elastica’s The Menace, follow-up to the band’s eponymous 1995 debut – a collection of ...
Bryan Ferry, Roxy Music: Glam’s Great Melancholic: Bryan Ferry
Profile by Barney Hoskyns, The Independent, 2000
BY HIS OWN slightly shamefaced admission, the first thought that raced through Bryan Ferry’s mind as he came within a hair’s breadth of plunging to ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Revolver, 2000
AIR'S ADORABLE Moon Safari proved if nothing else that the pop universe had become a less xenophobic place. Now comes the first album by Phoenix, ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, CDNOW.com, 2000
THE BAND THAT helped kick-start the alterna-country sound over a decade ago has undergone a major transformation since the departure of co-founder Mark Olson following ...
XTC: A Chat with Andy Partridge
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, CDNOW.com, 2000
HAILING FROM unglamorous Swindon, 70 miles west of London, XTC were clever-clever new-wavers who quickly outgrew the late 70s punk scene and matured into purveyors ...
Steely Dan: Librarians on Acid
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, The Guardian, January 2000
STEELY DAN have always split people down the middle. On one side sit major dudes like William Gibson, who delight in the apparent disjunction between ...
Big Star, Alex Chilton: Wayward Sons: The Ballad of Big Star
Retrospective and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, February 2000
THE SUN IS going down on Memphis, site of rock’n’roll’s immaculate conception and explosive birth. On a warm spring evening, the Mississippi’s purplish-brown waters are ...
Prince: An Interview with the Prince formerly known as The Artist
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, March 2000
FIRST, A CAVEAT. This is probably not the first piece you’ve ever started reading about FINALLY MEETING THE ARTIST FORMERLY KNOWN AS SHHH-YOU-KNOW-WHO. In fact, ...
Crosby Stills Nash & Young, Neil Young, Stephen Stills: CSNY: Love The Ones You're With
Profile by Barney Hoskyns, GQ, April 2000
Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young - the ultimate rock supergroup - have been through the wars since first teaming up in 1969. Now the Woodstock ...
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" ...
Coldplay, Muse, Radiohead, Six By Seven: No Surprises: Radiohead And Their Kind
Report by Barney Hoskyns, The Guardian, 14 April 2000
After the success of OK Computer, Radiohead's next album is one of the most eagerly awaited records ever. Perhaps, says BARNEY HOSKYNS, that's why copycat ...
Matthew Sweet: In Reverse (Zomba)
Review and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, The Guardian, May 2000
MATTHEW SWEET began the '90s with the much-feted Girlfriend, an album of angular, bittersweet power pop markedly different from the meaty rage of Nirvana and ...
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, CDNOW.com, 12 May 2000
NAMED AFTER a legendary 1976 EP by Sonic’s Rendezvous Band, the German label City Slang has been home to some of the best and most ...
James Carr: Lost Soul: James Carr
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, June 2000
THE SETTING is not a promising one. It’s late on a muggy Friday night, a "blues" club on Bleecker Street, NYC, June of 1996. A ...
Prefab Sprout: Shepherd's Bush Empire, London
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, June 2000
A THIRD of the way through this rare Sprout outing to the capital, Paddy McAloon dedicates the lovely, little-known 'Dragons' to the spouse of his ...
Radiohead: Stormy Return: Radiohead live in Arles
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, CDNOW.com, June 2000
RADIOHEAD'S DECISION to embark on a low-key, off-the-beaten-track summer tour of Europe nearly backfired from the kickoff last night when a cataclysmic downpour threatened to ...
Cocteau Twins' Liz Fraser (2000)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 18 July 2000
Ms. Fraser on singing and singers; on being a Cocteau Twin; on her relationship with Robin Guthrie; on friends and co-conspirators like Peter Gabriel, Damon Albarn and sometime beau Jeff Buckley.
File format: mp3; file size: 72.9mb, interview length: 1 h 19' 38" sound quality: ***
Robbie Williams: The Unlikely Lad: Robbie Williams
Profile by Barney Hoskyns, The Independent, September 2000
THE FIRST TIME I saw Robbie Williams in the flesh was backstage at an Oasis show at Earl’s Court in 1995. At that point the ...
Radiohead: Exit Music: Can Radiohead save rock music as we (don’t) know it?
Profile by Barney Hoskyns, GQ, October 2000
THE POSTERS on the ancient streets of Arles give little away. Sting is playing soon in Marseille, and coming up is a "Super Big Reggae ...
Sleeve notes by Barney Hoskyns, Capitol Records, October 2000
IRONICALLY, after the release of Stage Fright in September 1970, The Band spent the ensuing three months touring America. "We had it set up pretty ...
Sleeve notes by Barney Hoskyns, Capitol Records, October 2000
IT ALL BEGAN with a house. An unremarkable ranch house sitting at the end of a long dirt driveway in the shadow of a mountain ...
Sleeve notes by Barney Hoskyns, Capitol Records, October 2000
THE BAND had good reason to call their third album Stage Fright. On the eve of their live debut at Bill Graham’s Winterland theater in ...
Sleeve notes by Barney Hoskyns, Capitol Records, October 2000
'TWAS IN the early summer of 1968 that legendary rock promoter Bill Graham drove up to the Catskill mountains to propose that The Band make ...
Cocteau Twins: The Cocteau Twins: We Are Not Amused
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, October 2000
"FUCKING HELL," says the tiny, tortured woman as she shakes her birdlike head. "I just wish I knew what the fucking hell happened. ’Cause everyone’s ...
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 ...
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 ...
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. ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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. ...
Eminem: Hip Hop’s Trailer-Trash Wunderkind
Profile by Barney Hoskyns, The Independent, 16 December 2000
FIRST CAME Elvis – America’s worst nightmare, the white-trash negro. Then came Mick Jagger and Marilyn Manson, Johnny Rotten and Kurt Cobain, Tupac Shakur and ...
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 ...
Fatboy Slim, Norman Cook: Fatboy Slim Must Die: A Night with Norman Cook
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Revolver, Winter 2000
ON THE stroke of midnight, at an uber-groovy establishment in lower midtown Manhattan, an elongated 37-year-old Englishman is heading off to work. Or rather: easing ...
Badly Drawn Boy: The Hour of Bewilderbeast (XL/Twisted Nerve)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Spin, Summer 2000
ENGLAND’S SEARCH for post-Britpop heroes goes on. Following the Oasis implosion, everyone’s looking to the bedsit mavericks to save the day: Summer 2000 saw indie ...
Primal Scream: The Bobby Gillespie Interview
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, CDNOW.com, Summer 2000
WHEN PRIMAL SCREAM released Screamadelica in 1991, they forged an indissoluble link between Brit indie-rock and underground dance culture that led directly to the sound ...
Cocteau Twins: The Cocteau Twins
Retrospective and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Dig, The (Japan), Fall 2000
ONE OF the hardest jobs I’ve ever had as a music writer – as a music fan – is defending the Cocteau Twins against people ...
Book Review by Barney Hoskyns, The Village Voice, 2001
IT'S KINDA IRONIC that the untold story of the Los Angeles punk scene should be officially told (tolled?) at a time when New York City ...
Book Excerpt by Barney Hoskyns, What'd I Say, 2001
"UNFORTUNATELY, we’re running a big business here now," Ahmet Ertegun confessed to author Gerri Hirshey in 1982. "And it sort of ... well, it drives ...
Dave Godin's Deep Soul Treasures Volume 3
Review and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, January 2001
"DEEP SOUL Records will be just what their name implies," the manifesto for Dave Godin's Deep Soul label declared when it launched in 1969. "Non-commercial ...
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 ...
Guide by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, 18 January 2001
From Radio Ethiopia to Dread Zeppelin...20 classics of Cod-Reggae ...
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 ...
Gram Parsons: Another Side of This Life (Sundazed)
Review and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, February 2001
Unheard mid-’60s folk recordings taped in Florida by Gram’s pal Jim Carlton. ...
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 ...
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 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 ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 3 March 2001
The ex-Whiskeytown man on his solo albums Heartbreaker and Gold; singing with Emmylou Harris and on the ghost of Gram Parsons; recording in Woodstock; the end of Whiskeytown and going solo; living in Los Angeles and Nashville; side project the Pink Hearts; the Lost Highway label... and his hair!
File format: mp3; file size: 54.8mb, interview length: 59' 26" sound quality: ***
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 24 May 2001
The young poseur talks at length about his new album, Poses, and about its songs; about the effect of his musical education, his childhood and his occasional brush with homophobia.
File format: mp3; file size: 59.5mb, interview length: 1h 04' 58" sound quality: ***
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. ...
Rufus Wainwright: "My Parents the Folk Heroes"
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, The Guardian, 15 June 2001
THE WITTIEST REQUEST from the crowd at Rufus Wainwright's New York show last week was for ‘Rufus is a Tit Man’, a song written aeons ...
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 ...
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 ...
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) ...
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 ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, The Guardian, August 2001
ON MAY 28, 1998, Jonathan Donahue and Sean "Grasshopper" of Mercury Rev sat rather dejectedly in a diner in Woodstock, New York, and talked about ...
Booker T & The MGs: The Backroom Boys: Booker T & the MGs
Retrospective and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, August 2001
IF EVER THERE WAS a piece of music that deserved the epithet "timeless", it’s Booker T. & the MGs’ ‘Green Onions’. The most basic of ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 6 August 2001
Jonathan Donahue and Jeff Mercel talk about band members past and present, and working with producers and arrangers such as Jack Nitzsche and Tony Visconti, plus their very own Dave Fridmann
File format: mp3; in 2 parts, total file sizes: 50mb, total interview length: 51' 19" sound quality: ***
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 ...
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. ...
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. ...
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 ...
Hope Sandoval, Mazzy Star: Hope Sandoval & the Warm Inventions: Bavarian Fruit Bread (Rough Trade)
Review and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, October 2001
Former Mazzy Star star buddies up with MBV drummer Colm O'Ciosoig for full-length follow-up to last year's EP At the Doorway Again. ...
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 ...
Van Morrison: Nothin' But A Stranger In This World: Van Morrison and Astral Weeks
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, November 2001
THE FITFUL BRITISH SUMMER of 2001 is ending not with a whimper but a bang – a burst of Bank Holiday heat that's got everyone ...
The Chambers Brothers: Time for The Chambers Brothers!
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, Mojo Collections, December 2001
IN THE STANDARD ANNALS OF "black rock", the acknowledged progenitors tend to be the usual suspects – Hendrix, Sly, Love. But there was another act ...
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, AnOther Magazine, Fall 2001
ON THE TOP floor of a Georgian townhouse, a punt away from the Lansdowne Road rugby stadium, one of rock's greatest female icons bends down ...
Various Artists: The Folk Years – Blowin' in the Wind
Sleeve notes by Barney Hoskyns, Time-Life Music, 2002
THERE WAS A TIME when the notion of the "folk singer-songwriter" was all but a contradiction in terms. "Folk" music was the ür-sound of the ...
Various Artists: The Folk Years – Yesterday's Gone
Sleeve notes by Barney Hoskyns, Time-Life Music, 2002
THE 18 TRACKS on this album whisk us back to the hopeful, happy days of America's Hootenanny boom. From the Caribbean lilt of Harry Belafonte's ...
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 ...
Ike Turner, Jackie Brenston: 'Rocket "88"' and the Birth of Rock & Roll
Retrospective and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, James Maycock, MOJO, February 2002
AND GOD SAID, Let There Be Rock'n'Roll... ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, February 2002
Barney Hoskyns quizzes the pop goddess about power-ballad stardom, Phil Spector and seeing the sun rise over Sonny Bono's ass. ...
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. ...
Marianne Faithfull: Rock Steady
Report and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Vogue, March 2002
ON A DAMP December afternoon in bucolic Buckinghamshire, a legendary female icon of the '60s is leading her Noughties counterpart down the garden path. Literally. ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Mark Pringle, Rock's Backpages Audio, 13 March 2002
High Fidelity author Hornby picks his Top Ten tracks, from Bruce Springsteen's 'Thunder Road' to Steve Earle's 'Telephone Road'.
File format: mp3; file size: 54.9mb, interview length: 59' 59" sound quality: ***
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 ...
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, ...
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 ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, May 2002
SIXTEEN YEARS, man.....Five years backing the Hawk; two more backing Bob Dylan, for Chrissakes. And then almost a decade on their own, a Band with ...
Allman Brothers Band: The Allman Brothers Band's Butch Trucks (2002)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 27 May 2002
The white half of the Allman's drum duo looks back at the formation of the band, including the recruitment of a tricky Greg Allman; the marvellous two years that followed; the deaths, succesively, of Duane Allman and Berry Oakley; the crumbling of the band between '73 and '76, and its recent revival of fortunes following the departure of Dickey Betts.
File format: mp3; file size: 42.5mb, interview length: 46' 27" sound quality: ** (phoner)
Allman Brothers Band: The Allman Brothers Band's Gregg Allman (2002)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 27 May 2002
The other Allman Brother looks back at growing up with Duane; starting to play, and their influences; early bands, and the travails of the Allman Joys; rejoining his bro in Florida and forming the Brothers Band; being multi-racial and long haired in the South; the '70s and the post-Duane band; and solo albums, addiction and recovery.
File format: mp3; file size: 43.5mb, interview length: 47' 31" sound quality: ** (phoner)
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 ...
Stan Cornyn with Paul Scanlon: Exploding (Harper Entertainment)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, June 2002
"THE REALLY important factor was that we were a younger company than Columbia," Warners insider Stan Cornyn said in 1993. "We weren't structured so tightly ...
Kurt Cobain, Nirvana: The Last Star: Kurt Cobain
Essay by Barney Hoskyns, Observer Music Monthly, June 2002
Why Kurt Cobain's legacy is worth fighting – or at least waiting – for ...
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 ...
David Bowie: Ziggy Stardust, now a man of wealth and taste
Essay by Barney Hoskyns, The Independent, 15 June 2002
IT IS NO COINCIDENCE that June 2002 is turning out to be David Bowie month. This time 30 years ago, trading under the plastic-fantastic moniker ...
Audio transcript of interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, July 2002
This is a transcription of Barney's audio interview with B.B., conducted on a cold summer's evening in Liverpool. Listen to the audio of this interview. ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, July 2002
The Chairman of the Board of Blues Singers looks back at his early days in Memphis, and on the observational nature of his songs, and their universal subject matter.
File format: mp3; file size: 10mb, interview length: 10' 55" sound quality: ****
B.B. King: A Monarch on Merseyside: BB King
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, The Independent, 12 July 2002
"MY BAND tells me I’ve earned the right to siddown if I wanna," says the vast man with the twinkly eyes. "I wanna." ...
Flaming Lips: The Flaming Lips: Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots (WEA)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, August 2002
BACK IN February 1999, Wayne Coyne wrote of the soon-to-be-released The Soft Bulletin that, "in a strange reversal of musical universes, the more indulgent and ...
Marc Bolan, T. Rex: Marc Bolan 25 Years On
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, Daily Mirror, September 2002
A MONTH before the tragic car crash that killed him on September 16, 1977, a 29-year-old Marc Bolan told fellow pop star Steve Harley: "I'd ...
Allman Brothers Band: Southern Men: The Long Tall Saga of the Allman Brothers Band
Retrospective and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, December 2002
"THIS AIN’T NO fashion show," Duane Allman liked to say. "We came here to play." It was a mission statement that summed up what his ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Q, Summer 2002
SINCE IT WAS to l’il old me that a strangely sober Liam Gallagher first whispered the title of the fifth Oasis album – yes, folks, ...
Joni Mitchell: Back Catalog: Joni Mitchell
Guide by Barney Hoskyns, Blender, Fall 2002
IF ANY WOMAN has kept up with the big boys (Dylan, Young and co.) in the obstacle race that is folk-based singer-songwriter rock, that woman ...
Elvis Presley: Elvis 30 # 1 Hits (RCA)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Blender, Fall 2002
The King is gone, but he's not forgotten: Thirty classics from the best singer who ever lived. Period. ...
Goldfrapp: Black Cherry (Mute)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, 2003
JUST WHEN WE thought there was nothing left in the moribund corpse of trip-hopping soundtrack Euromuzak, along came Alison Goldfrapp and Will Gregory to breathe ...
Robert Plant: Mountain Man: Robert Plant Goes Back to his Welsh Roots
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Tracks, 2003
WHEN YOU'RE TOLD that Robert Plant will meet you on the platform of Machynlleth station in southern Snowdonia, you figure, "Sure, some hapless lackey will ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, 2003
AH MANHATTAN, so much to answer for – and so in vogue as a rock metropolis after decades as a Hip Hop Mecca. Yes New ...
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 ...
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 ...
Phil Spector's Ghosts: The Spooky World Of The Greatest Producer In Pop Music
Comment by Barney Hoskyns, Slate, February 2003
FOR OBSERVERS of Hollywood, it's been irresistible: life imitating the movies once again. The death of B-movie actress Lana Clarkson in Phil Spector's Alhambra chateau ...
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 ...
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 ...
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', ...
Led Zeppelin's Robert Plant (2003)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 15 April 2003
Percy himself on Led Zep's annus mirabilis 1970 - from conquering America and playing the Royal Albert Hall, to "getting it together in the country" at Bron-Y-Aur, and the gestation of Led Zep, then fast forward to 1979, and family tragedy, recording In Through the Out Door, and playing Knebworth
File format: mp3; file size: 68.3mb, interview length: 1h11'08", sound quality: ****
John Paul Jones, Led Zeppelin: Led Zeppelin's John Paul Jones (2003)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 16 April 2003
Led Zep's bass player takes us back to the riotous days of 1970, and the joys of playing with Bonzo, the folk and R&B influences, and forward to 1979, and Knebworth and In Through The Out Door
File format: mp3; file size: 67.3meg, interview length: 1h 10' 08", sound quality: ***
Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page (2003)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 17 April 2003
Jimmy Page on going through the archives to assemble the monumental Led Zeppelin DVD, and on the early days of the band, on the road and in the studio, through to Knebworth in 1979
File format: mp3; file size: 47.4meg, interview length: 49' 22", sound quality: ***
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 ...
Jane Birkin, Serge Gainsbourg: Creme Anglaise: Jane Birkin
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Vogue, May 2003
THE REMAINS of an English breakfast stand on a table, and several bags are strewn around the room – one of them a well-worn example ...
Fleetwood Mac: Say You Will (Reprise)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, May 2003
MORE THAN most bands, Fleetwood Mac elicit complex, unresolved feelings. On the one hand they're the ultimate mainstream soft-rock dinosaur, pass masters of glossy emotions ...
Lucinda Williams: World Without Tears (Lost Highway)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, May 2003
IT STARTS WITH A shivery vibrato guitar, straight off one of those '60s New York soul ballads – Betty Harris' 'Cry To Me', perhaps, or ...
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, May 2003
A concise guide to the Williams oeuvre before World Without Tears ...
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 ...
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 ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 30 May 2003
A somewhat wind-blown Guy Garvey and pals on the making of Cast of Thousands, prog rock, Manchester, religion and being stalked by Cameron Diaz
File format: mp3; in 3 parts, total file sizes: 88.1meg, total interview length: 1h 36' 09" sound quality: **
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 ...
Led Zeppelin: Been A Long Time: Led Zeppelin
Retrospective and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, June 2003
EVEN NOW, after all these years of hairtree wannabes and idiot tribute bands, there's something so fierce and coruscating about Led Zeppelin in their prime ...
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 ...
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 ...
Ian MacDonald: The People's Music - Selected Journalism (Pimlico)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, The Observer, July 2003
BROADLY SPEAKING there are three kinds of British rock writers: boring ones, brash ones, and genuinely bright ones. Somehow it's typical of our anti-intellectual culture ...
The Thrills: MOJO Rising: The Thrills
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, July 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. ...
Sleeve notes by Barney Hoskyns, 'Country Got Soul' (Casual Records), July 2003
THERE WAS SOMETHING funky happening in the American South in the late ‘60s and you didn’t know what it was, did you, Mr Jones? ...
Steely Dan: Curbing Their Enthusiasm: Steely Dan
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, August 2003
THIS IS TOO, TOO PERFECT: Steely Dan strolling into a sleek hotel suite in Santa Monica, the Pacific Ocean sparkling through the window behind them. ...
Gillian Welch: Soul Journey (Acony)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, August 2003
GILLIAN WELCH, with her hard 'G', is indisputably a Good Thing. Tall and gawky, decidedly non-photogenic, Gillian gives hope to all of us who contend ...
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 ...
Super Furry Animals: Phantom Power
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, August 2003
IT MAKES some kind of super furry sense that Phantom Power - coming after the homegrown, lo-fi Mwng and the big-budget, all-bells-and-whistles Rings Around The ...
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 ...
Neil Young: Hammersmith Apollo, London
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, September 2003
SO HE hasn't made a truly compelling record since 1994's Sleeps With Angels. So he's been treading water with sleepy albums like Silver and Gold ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 18 September 2003
A somewhat wind-blown interview: on digging back into his pre-Zep archives for Sixty Six to Timbuktu; discovering his voice as a young singer; life and career post-Zeppelin.
File format: mp3; file size: 67mb, interview length: 1h 9' 44" sound quality: **
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 ...
Elbow: Angels of The North: Elbow
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, October 2003
CAN THIS REALLY be Manchester? Two days have passed since thousands of Italian footie fans flooded the city for the Champs' League Final and the ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, October 2003
SOMEHOW IT WAS inevitable that the Chemical Brothers – those High Priests of the rock/dance interface – would one day work with Oklahoma City's Finest. ...
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 ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 2 October 2003
The Warner Bros., Elektra/Asylum and Capitol Records boss remembers the great days of the West Coast music industry: the Laurel Canyon scene and the Troubadour; the Eagles, James Taylor, Little Feat and others; his relationships with Steve Ross, David Geffen and Irving Azoff; Joni Mitchell and the power of the artists; and the difference in his later period at Capitol...
File format: mp3; file size: 28mb, interview length: 29' 12" sound quality: ***
Peter and Gordon, Linda Ronstadt, James Taylor: Peter Asher (2003)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 18 October 2003
The singer-turned-producer talks about returning to Los Angeles with client James Taylor; the Troubadour scene; the people: Jackson Browne, Joni Mitchell, J.D. Souther; meeting Linda Ronstadt and being turned on to C&W; fellow businessmen David Geffen and Elliot Roberts, and the rise of the Eagles.
File format: mp3; file size: 59.1mb, interview length: 1h 01' 31" sound quality: ***
Big Star: Big Star Story (Rykodisc)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, November 2003
Mildly unsatisfactory smattering of tracks by genius Memphis quartet/trio – the acme of twisted '70s power pop. ...
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. ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, November 2003
RANDY NEWMAN, pop music's blackest humourist tells us why he's similar to Eminem, why make-up girls don't "get" him, and why he's just re-recorded a batch ...
Television: Marquee Moon (Expanded); Adventure (Expanded) (Rhino)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, November 2003
BEFORE THE Sex Pistols there was New York's Lower East Side: trash aesthetes with short hair, kinky vixens in B-movie stilettos. Kids with minor drug ...
Gram Parsons: Phil Kaufman on Gram Parsons (2003)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 7 November 2003
From Mick'n'Keef to Emmylou; from Topanga Canyon to the Joshua Tree: Executive Nanny Phil Kaufman looks back on low lives and high times with Gram Parsons.
File format: mp3; file size: 51.9.mb, interview length: 54' 02" sound quality: ***
Love: The Forever Changes Concert
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, December 2003
FOREVER CHANGES is one of those "classic" albums that should have dated but miraculously hasn't. Heavy-handedly paranoid, the product of a strange rock/soul miscegenation, quaintly ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 1 December 2003
James Brown talks about survival, mistrust, the Internal Revenue Service, and the Invention of Funk.
File format: mp3 File size: 28.5mb Interview length: 31 minutes 8 seconds Sound quality: ***
The Band, Bob Dylan: Million Dollar Bash: Dylan and The Band
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, Fall 2003
A LOT OF MUSICIANS have played with Bob Dylan over the last forty-odd years, but none of them has quite had the special relationship with ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, 2004
SUSAN (The Trip) Strasberg is a deaf Carole Chaplin döppelganger at large in Haight-Ashbury in this hilariously inept 1968 "look" at the counterculture. Jack Nicholson, ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, 2004
BEFORE THE TRIP starts, an earnest middle-aged voice warns us that we’re about to witness "a shocking commentary on a prevalent trend of our time". ...
Bob Dylan: Blonde on Blonde (CBS, 1966)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, 2004
RADICAL AND then some: a double album in ‘66, with a blurred vertical Bob running horizontally across the sleeve and Nashville sessionmen playing behind a ...
Courtney Love: America’s Sweetheart
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, 2004
Lady Cobain emerges from rehab to release her debut solo album. ...
Hüsker Dü: Zen Arcade (SST, 1984)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, 2004
IF PUNK WAS inherently anti-double-album, early ‘80s hardcore had no such qualms about going into extra time. When mighty Minneapolitans Hüsker Dü journeyed to the ...
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 ...
OutKast: Speakboxxx/The Love Below (Arista)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, 2004
THE YIN AND YANG of epicene dandy André 3000 and straight-up, pit-bull-ownin’ Big Boi may yet prove OutKast’s undoing. If so, the duo at least ...
Stevie Wonder: Songs in the Key of Life (Motown, 1976)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, 2004
BERRY GORDY’S former boy genius already had a string of single-album masterpieces under his belt when he put his signature on summer ‘76 with this ...
Charlatans, The (US): The Charlatans: San Francisco 1969
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, 2004
Reissue of the trailblazing Haight-Ashbury band’s official but very belated debut. ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, 2004
The "Prefab Four" star in self-deconstructing Help!-on-acid, scripted by joker Jack Nicholson. ...
Wasn’t Born to Follow: Easy Rider
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, 2004
THE COUNTERCULTURE B-movie that went overground and kick-started the rebellious auteurism of ‘70s Hollywood, Easy Rider is at once mildly dated and compellingly authentic. ...
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 ...
Moby Grape: Crosstalk: The Best of Moby Grape (Sony Music UK)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, March 2004
YOU COULD SAY it was all there in the name: Melville’s white whale meets Dionysus, with suitably catastrophic results. But Californian quintet Moby Grape, the ...
James Brown: Super Bad: James Brown
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, March 2004
JAMES BROWN’S road manager Charles Bobbitt takes me to one side and places a friendly paw on my forearm. ...
Gram Parsons: In His Hour Of Darkness: Gram Theft Auto and the Road Mangler Deluxe
Retrospective and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, The Times, 6 March 2004
IT IS THE midsummer of 1973. Two men stand together amidst a throng of mourners at the graveside of Clarence White, former Byrd and the ...
Lambchop: Tracks of His Tears: Kurt Wagner and Lambchop
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, April 2004
IT’S KURT Wagner who spots The Nipple. ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 14 April 2004
Peej on making Uh Huh Her, songwriting, minimalism, her rock'n'roll bohemian upbringing, working with Marianne Faithfull and meeting Kurt Cobain
File format: mp3; file size: 53.9mb, interview length: 58' 49" sound quality: ***
Kaleidoscope: Pulsating Dream – The Epic Recordings (Acadia/Evangeline)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, June 2004
The complete ‘66-’70 works of insanely eclectic LA ensemble beloved of Jimmy Page. ...
Nick Drake: Bryter Later (Island, 1970)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, The Observer, June 2004
THE CULT OF Nick Drake, posh Lost Boy of post-folk singer-songwriting, shows little sign of abating. That’s because his mellow, Colin Blunstone-ish burr of a ...
The Rolling Stones: Sticky Fingers and Exile On Main St.
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, The Observer, June 2004
STICKY FINGERS has always been taken for granted. Fans and critics alike have drooled for decades over Let It Bleed and Exile on Main St., ...
Talk Talk: Spirit Of Eden: Talk Talk
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Observer Music Monthly, 20 June 2004
THE SELF-REINVENTION of Mark Hollis was one of the more startling musical events of the late '80s. ...
The Blue Nile: High (Sanctuary)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, The Observer, July 2004
ANYONE WHO loves the Blue Nile as much as I do will know there is something profoundly holy about their music. Twenty years after the ...
The Chi-Lites: The Complete Chi-Lites on Brunswick, Vols. 1 and 2 (Edsel)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, July 2004
Definitive comp of Windy City vocal-group soulsters beloved of Tony Soprano. ...
The Faces: Last Orders: The Faces’ Five Guys Walk Into a Bar… (Rhino)
Review and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, August 2004
Ian McLagan-compiled 4-CD box of scattered odds/sods from ultimate ‘70s boogie’n’ballads lad-band fronted by Rod the (Ex-)Mod. Dedicated to the late Ronnie Lane. ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 11 August 2004
The Bad Seeds frontman talks in depth about, among many things, his art; the departure of Blixa Bargeld; his relationship with Mick Harvey; the degree of biography in his songs; heroin and God, and the Australian-ness of himself and his work.
File format: mp3; file size: 61.5mb, interview length: 1h 07' 12" sound quality: ****
The Incredible String Band: The Incredible String Band/The 5000 Spirits or the Layers of the Onion
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, September 2004
THE FIRST ISB albums in a two-fer-one release. The ISB (1966) is a more-or-less conventional Scots-trad folk effort by the original trio of Robin Williamson, ...
The Associates: Boys Keep Swinging: The Associates’ Singles
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, September 2004
All the 45s from the sublime Scottish duo who briefly threatened to run away with the ‘80s pop circus. ...
Burrito Deluxe: The Whole Enchilada
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, September 2004
Inoffensive country rock featuring original Burrito Brother Sneaky Pete Kleinow plus Band deity Garth Hudson on keyboards. ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, September 2004
PRE-"YOU’RE SO Vain" and pre-marriage-to-James-Taylor, the leggy and large-mouthed Park Avenue Jewess made two pleasant 1971 albums of melodiously laid-back adult pop. LA-flavoured and sprinkled ...
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, ...
Earth Opera: Earth Opera/The Great American Eagle Tragedy
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, September 2004
THE NAME suggested some frightful prog entity, but Earth Opera were essentially Boston bluegrassers Peter Rowan and David Grisman, a pair intent on chucking tradition ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, September 2004
Third set from Sussex singer-songwriter and follow-up to last year’s acclaimed From Every Sphere. ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, September 2004
Two-CD set of mainly live jazz-folk genius from the early ‘70s to the mid-‘90s, with bonus DVD interview from last year. ...
Judy Collins: Judy Collins 3/In Concert
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, September 2004
ARGUABLY THE best female folk voice of the age, Judy Collins brought a fresh commercial edge to the early ‘60s East Coast folk revival. Her ...
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? ...
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, September 2004
JUST HOW SERIOUSLY can you take the Red Hot Chili Peppers? Or am I missing the point? ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, September 2004
THE 1967 departure of BB Band axedude Mike Bloomfield provided fellow Windy City man Elvin Bishop with the chance to come in and revamp Paul ...
The Dillards: Pickin’ and Fiddlin’/Wheatstraw Suite/Copperfields
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, September 2004
WHEN DOUGLAS and Rodney Dillard’s quartet hit Los Angeles in 1963 they blew everyone’s minds. Playing bluegrass with fuck-you rock’n’roll attitude, they wasted the competition ...
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? ...
The Saints: All Times Through Paradise (EMI)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, September 2004
4-CD box set of bolshy Ozpunks' three late '70s albums and unreleased Live in London set from late '77, plus numerous out/alternate takes, B-sides and ...
Teenage Fanclub: Various Artists: What a Concept! A Salute to Teenage Fanclub
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, September 2004
HOW DO WE love Teenage Fanclub? Let us count the ways on this fine tribute album, which consists of 24 mainly Yank versions of Fannies ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 10 September 2004
The besweatbanded guitar wrangler talks about his new album Shangri-La; looks back at that dirty old town Newcastle; about Dylan, Donegan and his influences; surviving the dire straits of stardom, and on what it means to play guitar.
File format: mp3; file size: 51.8mb, interview length: 56' 32" sound quality: ****
Jeff Buckley: Grace (Legacy Edition) (Columbia)
Review and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, October 2004
Remastered version of the original 1994 album with second CD of outtakes/rarities and DVD of Grace vids and footage of Buckley in Bearsville, New York. ...
Nick Cave, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds: Old Saint Nick: Nick Cave
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Dazed & Confused, October 2004
ON ABATTOIR BLUES, the cheerily-titled first half of the new double album by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, there is a song called ‘There ...
Elliott Smith: From a Basement on the Hill (Domino)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, November 2004
WHEN ELLIOTT SMITH died last year, he left behind a large number of tracks from which he was assembling the follow-up to 2000's Figure 8. ...
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? ...
Elliott Smith: Shooting Star: Elliott Smith
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, November 2004
A YEAR AGO I was sitting in the Los Angeles living room of Mr. Roger Steffens, curator of a huge Bob Marley archive that was ...
Tom Waits: Real Gone (Anti/Epitaph)
Review and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, November 2004
SINCE IT’S HARD and possibly verboten to say a bad word about Tom Waits, unholy shaman of whacked-out Americana, I’ll content myself with expressing a ...
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Tracks, December 2004
Mark Knopfler was once world-famous. He's happier now. ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 5 December 2004
The mogul of Laurel Canyon on Asylum Records, managing artists and his close relationships with the likes of JD Souther, Laura Nyro, David Crosby and Joni Mitchell.
File format: mp3; file size: 25.1mb, interview length: 26' 07" sound quality: * (phoner)
Judee Sill: Heart Food and Dark Peace: Judee Sill
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, The Observer, 12 December 2004
This is an expanded version of "The Lost Child", published in The Observer Music Monthly. ...
Review and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, unpublished, Spring 2004
FRANK ZAPPA was an irrelevant, redundant figure by the late ‘70s. The object of dorkish devotion, Ol’ Silly Beard had meandered off into cul de ...
PJ Harvey: Love in All the Wrong Places: PJ Harvey
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Tracks, Summer 2004
POLLY HARVEY reclines in regal splendour at the end of the very long and pompous Promenade Room of London’s legendary Dorchester Hotel. Buffed Eurotrash couples ...
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. ...
Mick Jagger, The Rolling Stones: The Achievement of Madness: Performance
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, Summer 2004
PERFORMANCE only gets better with the passing years. A key late ‘60s text, Donald Cammell and Nic Roeg’s film brings two Swinging London worlds together ...
Joni Mitchell: Andy Wickham: A House Hippie at Warner-Reprise
Book Excerpt by Barney Hoskyns, 'Hotel California' (4th Estate), 2005
The news just came in that Wickham, the "company freak" who brought Joni Mitchell and others to the attention of Reprise boss Mo Ostin, died ...
Carole King in the Canyon: The Weaving of Tapestry
Book Excerpt by Barney Hoskyns, 'Hotel California' (Fourth Estate), 2005
UNLIKE MOST of her Brill Building contemporaries, Carole King was keen to keep pace with the changing times. Having scored as an artist in her ...
Book Excerpt by Barney Hoskyns, 'Hotel California' (4th Estate), 2005
Five adapted excerpts from Barney Hoskyns' 2005 book Hotel California that chart the rise of Warner-Reprise Records during the reign of its revered chief Mo ...
Book Excerpt by Barney Hoskyns, 'Hotel California' (4th Estate), 2005
This is an excerpt from Barney Hoskyns' Hotel California: Singer-Songwriters & Cocaine Cowboys in the L.A. Canyons (Fourth Estate, 2005) ...
Marvin Gaye, The Supremes, The Temptations, Mary Wilson, Stevie Wonder: Soul Deep: Motown
Retrospective and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Radio Times, 2005
FOR SOME PEOPLE, the terms "Soul" and "Motown" are almost synonymous. When they think of soul music, timeless sounds and images of the Supremes and ...
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? ...
Bob Marley & the Wailers, The Wailers: The Wailers: Burnin’ (Deluxe Edition) (Tuff Gong/Island)
Review and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, January 2005
CATCH A FIRE set the world alight but Burnin’ got it blazing. By the time Eric Clapton took the album’s ‘I Shot the Sheriff’ to ...
Mercury Rev: The Secret Migration (V2)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, February 2005
Follow-up to 2001's All Is Dream, recorded in the band's own Kingston studio by the core Rev trio of Jonathan Donahue, Grasshopper and Jeff Mercel. ...
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 ...
Tom Waits: Hammersmith Apollo, London
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, February 2005
SO MANY desperate, disappointed people loitered without hope outside the Apollo for this show that one felt vaguely ashamed being in possession of a ticket. ...
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 ...
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 ...
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? ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 23 March 2005
The Great American Songwriter looks back at his strict Baptist upbringing; the catastrophe of his mother's death; his love of complex chords, and how that has gone missing today; his love of Burt Bacharach and the Beatles; his early LA experiences and becoming a music copyist; the importance of Pet Sounds; his nostalgia for grace, and on his fabulous luck as a songwriter.
File format: mp3; file size: 87.5mb, interview length: 1h 31' 10" sound quality: ****
Audio transcript of interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, 26 March 2005
This is a transcript of Barney's audio interview with Stevie. Listen to the audio of this interview. ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 26 March 2005
From 'Fingertips' to the 21st Century, and everything in between: his classic albums; Ray Charles, Marvin Gaye and Prince; race, religion and blindness; recording and technology then and now... and he sings! he preaches! he does your horoscope!
File format: mp3; file size: 105.1mb, interview length: 1h 49' 31" sound quality: ***
Review and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, April 2005
Funky-go-lucky yin to the mournful Drake-meets-Gainsbourg yang of Sea Change. ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, April 2005
LATE LAST YEAR Rufus Wainwright was a guest on Tom Robinson's BBC6 radio show, answering questions about music, life and celebrity while pointedly avoiding allusion ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Paste, April 2005
JIMI GOODWIN, the affable and bearded bassist-singer with Mancunian trio Doves, leans forward in his seat for an endearing moment of honesty. ...
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 ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 9 May 2005
From his youth in Santa Monica via the Ash Grove scene through to movie soundtracks and his explorations of world musics: Ry on the music business, his fellow musicians and his politically progressive background and instincts.
File format: mp3; file size: 81.6mb, total interview length: 1h 25' 03" sound quality: ***
Jimmy Webb: Almost Blue: Jimmy Webb
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, June 2005
JIMMY WEBB is sad. He looks around him at the world we inhabit and sees culture nose-diving everywhere. Subtlety is squeezed, ambiguity flattened. People don’t ...
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, June 2005
BY THE SMALL HOURS of Saturday morning, L.A.'s Koreatown district is hushed and still. The odd car rattles along Western Avenue, but most of the ...
Jim Ford, Bobby Womack: Bobby Womack on Jim Ford (2005)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 6 June 2005
The Last Soul Man talks about his friend and collaborator Jim Ford: being introduced by Ford to Sly Stone, such great songs as 'Harry Hippie' and 'Point Of No Return', and writing songs with the man.
File format: mp3; file size: 19.8mb, interview length: 21' 35" sound quality: * (phoner)
Ry Cooder: Chavez Ravine (Nonesuch)
Review and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, July 2005
AFTER A DECADE of travels that's taken him from Timbuktu to Cuba, Ry Cooder has come home to shine a light on a shameful episode ...
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? ...
Review and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, August 2005
MUCH HAS changed in the world of Chester Thompson, aka Frank Black, in the last two years. He's parted company from trusty sidekicks the Catholics, ...
Brian Jackson, Gil Scott-Heron: Gil Scott-Heron/Brian Jackson: Winter in America (Charly)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, August 2005
A MASTERWORK of ghetto melancholia and stark political gravitas, Winter in America showcases Scott-Heron and Jackson at their most witheringly unsentimental but also their most ...
Ry Cooder: Man of the World: Ry Cooder
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, August 2005
RYLAND PETER COODER is a man out of time – at the very least a fish out of water. In London to promote his superb ...
Super Furry Animals: Love Kraft
Review by Barney Hoskyns, The Observer, August 2005
THE FIRST SOUND on Love Kraft is a splash caused by Super Furry Animals guitarist Huw "Bunf" Bunford plunging into a Spanish swimming pool. An ...
Bettye LaVette: Betty LaVette: I've Got My Own Hell to Raise (Anti)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, The Observer, September 2005
PREVIOUSLY KNOWN only to fanatical followers of obscure deep soul, the legendary Ms LaVette belatedly comes in for a Joe Henry tune-up on this feisty, ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, September 2005
GOLDFRAPP took a big chance when they abandoned the swoonsome muzak of 2001's Felt Mountain for the kinky machinery of 2003's glamtastic Black Cherry. Few ...
Elbow: Leaders of the Free World (V2)
Review and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, October 2005
Third album from Mancunian quintet, self-produced at the city's Blueprint studio. ...
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. ...
Mary J. Blige: The Drama of Being Mary J. Blige
Profile by Barney Hoskyns, The Observer, November 2005
"WE LOVE YOU, MARY!" The shouts float up from isolated pockets in the plush auditorium housed within Columbus Circle's glitzy Time Warner building. Mary J. ...
Led Zeppelin: Richard Cole on Led Zeppelin (2005)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 19 November 2005
The legendary Zep tour manager remembers meeting the band, the first US tour, the curious friendship between Bonham and Plant, all things Bron-Y-Aur, life on the road, making Led Zeppelin IV, and Girls Girls Girls!
File format: mp3; file size: 64.3mb; Interview length: 1h 10' 15"; sound quality: ***
Scott Walker: Classics and Collectibles
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, December 2005
THE SCOTT WALKER of the '60s and '70s - of Classics and Collectibles - is all about tragic grandeur colliding with Easy Listening: Bergman movies ...
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? ...
Elvis Presley: Elvis and the Songsmiths
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut Legends, Spring 2005
CLYDE OTIS and Ivory Joe Hunter had just returned from a day's duck-hunting when the phone rang. It was the song publishers Hill and Range ...
Neil Young: Canyon of the Mind: Tall Tales of Topanga Rock
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, Calabasas, Summer 2005
REMOVE THE WORD "Canyon" from the glossary of Southern California rock and you're left with a gaping hole. Canyons have been inseparable from LA's music ...
Jim Ford: White Soul from the Black Hills: Whatever Happened to Jim Ford?
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, Oxford American, Fall 2005
TWENTY YEARS AGO I drove around the American South in pursuit of something I called "country soul." By that term I meant the late '60s/early ...
Book Excerpt by Barney Hoskyns, 'Hotel California', 2006
UP ON THE Sunset Strip, the live scene was hurting. Name bands were now too big to play small clubs like the Whisky: they'd be ...
Bill Withers: The Very Best of Bill Withers (Sony/BMG)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, 2006
19-track mixed-bag from funky L.A.-based singer-songwriter, beloved of Dr Evil and Mini-Me. ...
Sleeve notes by Barney Hoskyns, Rhino Records, 2006
WHO, HAVING HEARD IT, could forget the creepy line that opens the title track of the Doors’ second album? Recorded at the height of the ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 25 January 2006
The gospel-soul songthrush talks about her new album, His Hands; on her move from gospel to soul in the '60s; her memories of ex-husband Clarence Carter; how 'Young Hearts Run Free' was so personal to her; on her struggle with alcohol and return to the church, and on her surprise hit 'You Got The Love'.
File format: mp3; File size: 36.2mb, interview length: 37' 42" sound quality: ** (phoner)
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 ...
Prince: The Special One: The Return of Prince
Profile by Barney Hoskyns, Observer Music Monthly, February 2006
This is a previously unpublished version of a cover story for the Observer Music Monthly. ...
Candi Staton Comes Home to Country Soul
Sleeve notes 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 ...
Crosby Stills and Nash: Crosby, Stills & Nash: Crosby, Stills & Nash/Daylight Again
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, March 2006
CSN WAS BORN of dissolution, the fruit of fragmenting times. They kicked off a second wave of post-Sunset Strip/British Invasion music, loose affiliations of longhairs ...
Sly & the Family Stone: Looking at the Devil: Sly Stone and There's a Riot Goin' On
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, Observer Music Monthly, March 2006
DICK CAVETT didn't know what had hit him. The mild-mannered, impeccably liberal TV host had had some far-out guests on his ABC talk show, but ...
Herb Alpert: The House that Herb and Jerry Built: A&M Records
Retrospective and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, March 2006
THE HISTORY of American pop music is filled with great partnerships. Most of them, from Rodgers & Hart to Jam & Lewis, are songwriting teams ...
The Lovin' Spoonful: Singles As and Bs
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, March 2006
DO YOU BELIEVE in the magic of a great pop song? The Lovin' Spoonful did. On 1965's jaunty 'Do You Believe In Magic', their first ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 17 March 2006
Raconteurs Jack White, Brendan Benson, Patrick Keeler and Jack Lawrence on how they got together, making the first album, and their shared love of Led Zeppelin
File format: mp3; file size: 41.3mb, interview length: 43' 04" sound quality: ***
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 ...
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 ...
Led Zeppelin: Stairwell to Headley: Led Zeppelin's Fourth Album
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, July 2006
THE SCENE IS Atlantic Records' HQ in New York City, the date early September 1971. The event is a tense standoff between, on the one ...
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 ...
Judee Sill: The Stars That Fame Forgot: Judee Sill
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, July 2006
LA's doomed lady of the canyon who lost her genius to drugs ...
Dusty Springfield: Complete As and Bs
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, August 2006
OF ALL THE overused terms that blight today’s pop culture, "icon" surely grates the most. In these inane post-Warhol times, everybody is an icon and ...
Review and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, September 2006
THERE WAS a time when Kurt Wagner’s Lambchop dwelled in the very eye of the alt.Americana hurricane: a folksy but literate Nashville troupe making highbrow ...
Iggy Pop: Where the Debris Meets the Sea: Iggy Pop and James Williamson in Kill City
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, eMusic.com, September 2006
IGGY POP remains rock’s ultimate protopunk – the "world’s forgotten boy" who took the menace of the MC5 and the demonic danger of the Rolling ...
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 ...
The Raconteurs and the making of 'Steady, as She Goes'
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, December 2006
IF EVER A record begged to be released on 7" vinyl it was the Raconteurs' 'Steady, as She Goes'. Redolent of an era when people ...
Tom Verlaine: Songs and Other Things/Around (Thrill Jockey)
Review and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, Spring 2006
Dual release of vocal and instrumental albums: the Television leader's long-overdue solo return. ...
Read All About It: Rock Books to Live By
Book Excerpt by Barney Hoskyns, Time Out's 1000 Books To Save Your Life, 2007
YOU'D THINK I'd be able to write about rock books in my sleep. But of course the task is dreadfully daunting, "rock" now being an ...
Free: "Your Average Bloke Chatting Up Your Average Chick": Free's 'All Right Now'
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, January 2007
'ALL RIGHT NOW' is one of the quintessential cock-rockers – a cruder, more pub-rockish 'Whole Lotta Love'. It's the sound of the longhaired male predator ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, January 2007
BARTON LEE Hazlewood remains the cult artist's cult artist, an American maverick who's operated by his own supremely offbeat rules ever since producing Sanford Clark's ...
Neil Young: Live at the Fillmore East
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, January 2007
IN THE CONTINUING absence of his Archives we clutch at any morsels dispensed from Neil Young's table. Long a live bootleg classic - as well ...
Tinariwen: Aman: Water Is Life
Review and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, February 2007
WHEN THEY FIRST formed in the Libyan guerilla camps of the late ‘70s, Tinariwen referred to their music simply as "guitar". And no wonder. Electric ...
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 ...
Basement Jaxx: Itchy and Scratchy: In Praise of the Basement Boys
Comment by Barney Hoskyns, eMusic.com, March 2007
BEING OF a certain (old) age, I’ve pretty much grown out of dance culture. If I’m really honest, I was already semi-alienated before the rave era ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, March 2007
MUCH IS MADE of Lucinda Williams the writer, the poet of southern aches and pains. Time magazine called her "America's Best Songwriter" and the New ...
Nick Cave, Grinderman: Grinderman: Grinderman
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, April 2007
THE NEW NAME – the alter ego, the Bad Seeds doppelganger – sounds like some hideous Saw-style horror flick: Nick Cave recasts The Hitcher in ...
Arif Mardin: Groovin': The Genius of Arif Mardin
Sleeve notes by Barney Hoskyns, Rhino Records, April 2007
ATLANTIC'S JERRY WEXLER called him The Pasha, aka "His Soulful Turkish Eminence". It was a typically Wexleresque reference to Arif Mardin's aristocratic background and manner. ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, June 2007
SO HIP THEY'RE passé, sexy geekboys Air continue to mine the seam of elegiac futurism wowed ten thousand ad executives back in '98. After 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 ...
Warren Zevon: Keep Him In Your Heart: Swan Songs of the Late Great Warren Zevon
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, eMusic.com, July 2007
LIFE'LL KILL YA, Warren Zevon sang in one of his most grimly humorous songs - and it did. The grotesque multiplication of cells we know ...
Björk: Losing My Origin: Björk's 20-Year Voyage Into the Musical Unknown
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, eMusic.com, July 2007
I HAVE A ten-year-old son who loves OutKast and Kanye West but recoils in horror when I play favourite albums by Kate Bush or Mary ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, July 2007
LISTEN TO NICK DRAKE with one ear and you'll hear a (self-)parody of the Sensitive Young Troubadour – the posh Poor Boy, long ways from ...
Queens of the Stone Age: Era Vulgaris
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, August 2007
Fifth studio platter from QOTSA, boasting cameos from Julian Casablancas et al. ...
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 ...
PJ Harvey: White Chalk (Island)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, October 2007
IN THE AGE of Amy Winehouse it's worth remembering the shock that was Polly Jean Harvey when she blasted out of the West Country 15 ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, eMusic.com, November 2007
BACK IN THE protopunk wars of the early '70s, we were all supposed to revile James Taylor and his kind. "James Taylor Marked For Death," ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, eMusic.com, November 2007
JONI MITCHELL declared in 2002 that she was done with the music biz and would never, ever, make another album. I can't have been the ...
Lucinda Williams: Car Wheels On A Gravel Road
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, November 2007
Poetic, Eclectic, Atmospheric: A Grammy-Winning Snapshot Of The South. ...
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 ...
Patrick Adams: Disco's Secret Master: Patrick Adams
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, eMusic.com, December 2007
NOTWITHSTANDING the splendid Hercules & Love Affair, Disco has precious few cult heroes. That once-reviled dilution of funk boasts its share of cult DJs and ...
The Band, Levon Helm: Levon Helm: Dirt Farmer
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, December 2007
LEVON HELM was the southern heart of that essentially Canadian group The Band, the drummer/singer/mandolinist who gave Robbie Robertson's songs their corn-starch authenticity. Helm it ...
Black Flag and All That: Joe Carducci's Enter Naomi
Memoir by Barney Hoskyns, eMusic.com, Winter 2007
THE RECENT PUBLICATION of Joe Carducci's moving and fascinating Enter Naomi: SST, L.A. and All That... (Wyoming: Redoubt Press) takes me back 25 years to ...
Sly & the Family Stone: Sly and the Family Stone: Stand!
Sleeve notes by Barney Hoskyns, Sony Legacy, Spring 2007
IT'S A MEASURE of our fascination with the darker side of pop culture that Stand! now tends to take second stage to 1971's claustrophobic, coke-fuelled ...
Guide by Barney Hoskyns, iTunes, 2008
BETWEEN 1966 and 1970, there was a seismic change in British and American pop. Within a few short years "pop" became "rock", and teenagers who'd ...
Underworld: Dubnobasswithmyheadman
Review by Barney Hoskyns, eMusic.com, 2008
NOT FOR NOTHING is the first track on this almost unpronounceable album called 'Dark & Long'. Almost all the tracks by this UK techno trio ...
Goldfrapp Get It Together In The Country: Seventh Tree
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Observer Music Monthly, February 2008
The duo Goldfrapp, huge in their native Britain, have confounded fans of their staple glam-disco sound with the "psychedelic folk" of their new album. ...
The Beach Boys: Mister Optimism: Mike Love Talks
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, March 2008
OVER 45 YEARS have passed since three Californian brothers and their first cousin formed a rocking little combo that harmonized angelically on classic songs about ...
Adele: The Great White Hype: Adele's 19
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, March 2008
SOME DAYS it feels like we've time-traveled back to the early Eighties, when every other month coughed up a new BEST WHITE SOUL VOICE YOU'VE ...
Little Feat's Bill Payne and Paul Barrere (2008)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 26 April 2008
Messrs. Payne and Barrere look back at their time in the great Little Feat, album by album.
File format: mp3; in 2 parts, total file sizes: 64.6mb, total interview length: 1h 10' 38" sound quality: * (phone)
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 ...
Scarlett Johansson, Tom Waits: Scarlett Johansson: Anywhere I Lay My Head (Atco)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Observer Music Monthly, May 2008
WHEN TOM WAITS started his musical apprenticeship in the LA of the early 1970s, he harbored secret Tin Pan Alley fantasies of having his work ...
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 ...
Mudcrutch: Mudcrutch (Reprise)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, July 2008
Tom Petty's glorified Florida bar band gets around to cutting its debut album after 35 years. ...
Little Feat: Album By Album: Little Feat
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, August 2008
Lowell George was a Hollywood one-off: a swarthy movie-brat beatnik with a white-negro larynx and a keeningly sensual slide-guitar style. In late '69 he formed ...
Ry Cooder: I, Flathead (Nonesuch)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, August 2008
Final instalment of Cooder's "trilogy" time-traveling back to '40's/'50s California, here exploring a lost world of steel guitarists and salt-flat drag racers. Comes complete with ...
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 ...
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 ...
Creedence Clearwater Revival: Reissues
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, November 2008
40th Anniversary editions of the first six platters by John Fogerty's Bay Area swamp-billies, complete with bonus tracks and authoritative liners. ...
Profile by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut Legends, December 2008
REGGIE YOUNG is a southern institution: the session guitarist's session guitarist. His inimitable licks and fills, at once clipped and fluid, have graced a zillion ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, Fall 2008
WHEN JERRY Wexler convinced the young Aretha Franklin to defect from Columbia to Atlantic in late 1966, few grasped that the signing was in fact ...
Gillian Welch: Gilllian Welch: Revival/Hell Among the Yearlings/Time (the Revelator)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, March 2009
Reissues of first three albums by the high priestess of "American Primitive" and partner David Rawlings. ...
Jimi Hendrix: The Jimi Hendrix Experience: Electric Ladyland 40th Anniversary Collectors Edition
Film/DVD/TV Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, March 2009
CHAS CHANDLER, whose avuncular Geordie tones weave in and out of this absorbing "Making Of" doc, recalled the sessions for Electric Ladyland as "a long-drawn-out ...
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 ...
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 * ...
Santana's Michael Shrieve (2009)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, June 2009
The Santana drummer remembers the glory days — Abraxas, Woodstock etc. — and the coke, Coke Escovedo and the crumbling of the band.
File format: mp3; file size: 42.1mb, interview length: 45' 56" sound quality: * (phoner)
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 ...
U2: Remembering The Unforgettable Fire
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, June 2009
YOU TOO COULD love U2, if you could only transport yourself back to a time when their fundamental pomposity and crusading bad faith weren't such ...
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 ...
Various Artists: Woodstock 40 (Rhino)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Observer Music Monthly, July 2009
WE ARE ALL so inured these days to the business of rock festivals – sponsored, multi-generational, beamed into our living rooms – that it's difficult ...
Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace and Music
Film/DVD/TV Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, July 2009
4-DVD, 2-Blue-Ray set comprising the original 1970 documentary of the ultimate rock festival, with two hours of new footage plus a new 50-minute documentary about ...
Michael Jackson: Blame it On the Good Times: The Life and Living Death of Michael Jackson
Essay by Barney Hoskyns, New Statesman, 6 July 2009
IN SEPTEMBER 1979, my friend Davitt Sigerson – then a very good white writer on black music; later the chairman of Island Records in America; ...
The White Stripes: Jack White (2009)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 18 August 2009
Jack White goes way back to his Detroit childhood, the evolution of the White Stripes, and through to his current workaholic agenda as the Dead Weather's drummer.
File format: mp3; file size: 53.6mb, interview length: 55' 49" sound quality: ***
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. ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, bbc.co.uk, September 2009
A ghastly collection that might as well have been written by a computer ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, September 2009
Together with his co-conspiritor Larry Campbell, the great Band drummer looks back over his recent solo activities, the people he works with, and his unique take on American music.
File format: mp3; file size: 31.5mb, interview length: 34' 27" sound quality: ****
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, September 2009
Ms. Jones goes album-by-album, from her eponymous debut in 1979 to 2009's Balm in Gilead. The songs, the players and producers, and the whys and wherefores of each.
File format: mp3; file size: 65.5mb, interview length: 1h 11' 34" sound quality: * (phoner)
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 ...
The Band, Levon Helm: The Shape I'm In: Levon Helm
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, October 2009
IF LEVON HELM'S studios have a Green Room, then this must be it. A ramshackle den leading off a homely wooden kitchen, it's currently crawling ...
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. ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 6 October 2009
On the release of his solo debut, A Friend of a Friend, the man who (usually) accompanies Gillian Welch talks about discovering his own voice; assembling the material, including his co-write with Ryan Adams, 'To Be Young (...)'; recording the album, and the state of acoustic roots music today.
File format: mp3; file size: 33.6mb, interview length: 36' 39" sound quality: ** (phoner)
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, November 2009
WE'RE COMING to the end of a punishingly intense set by the Dead Weather, the second side-project band formed by Jack White of the White ...
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 ...
Rickie Lee Jones: Album by Album: Rickie Lee Jones
Retrospective and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, December 2009
THOUGH SHE will always carry the pop albatross that was her Top 5 hit 'Chuck E's in Love' (1979), Rickie Lee Jones remains one of ...
David Rawlings, Gillian Welch: Dave Rawlings Machine: A Friend of a Friend
Review and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, December 2009
ANYONE WHO EVER felt that David Rawlings hid his light under Gillian Welch's bushel – never getting the full credit he merited as her partner ...
Tom Waits: Take It With Me When I Go: Tom Waits Turns 60
Book Excerpt by Barney Hoskyns, 'Lowside of the Road: A Life of Tom Waits' (Faber), December 2009
To celebrate Tom Waits' 60th birthday (December 9), I hereby offer the coda to my biography Lowside of the Road. An account of seeing the ...
Percy Sledge: Out Of Left Cotton Field: The Brokenhearted Country Soul Of Percy Sledge
Sleeve notes by Barney Hoskyns, 'The Complete Atlantic Recordings' (Rhino), 2010
PERCY SLEDGE IS as prone to romanticizing Muscle Shoals as the many music writers who rhapsodize about the area in pieces about local luminaries like ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 2010
The late, great Percy Sledge looks back at his Alabama youth; cutting the classic 'When a Man Loves a Woman'; the great songwriters and musicians – Dan Penn, Spooner Oldham et al; and talks about his favourite singers and his love of country music.
File format: mp3; file size: 65mb, interview length: 1h 11' 01" sound quality: ** (phoner)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, bbc.co.uk, 2010
ROBERT PLANT entered the new millennium with an album that looked defiantly backward – not to Led Zeppelin, mind you, but to a round-up of ...
Laura Nyro — Tender is the Nyro
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, January 2010
With her sophisticated, soulful lullabies of Broadway, Laura Nyro was an incongruous figure at the late-'60s hippy love-in. Eventually, though, she would be acclaimed as ...
Tom Waits: Glitter and Doom Live
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, January 2010
Nighthawks at the arena: potent two-disc set of The Mule's onstage artistry, drawn from his 2008 tours of America and Europe. ...
The Edge, Jimmy Page, Jack White: Davis Guggenheim's It Might Get Loud
Film/DVD/TV Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, February 2010
Riveting doc about the magical powers of the electric guitar, starring Jack White, Jimmy Page and the Edge. ...
Marc Bolan, T. Rex, Tyrannosaurus Rex: Reborn to Boogie: Marc Bolan
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, February 2010
THERE IS ONLY one Starman in the room right now and his name is David Bowie. Flying high after his Top 5 astral novelty hit ...
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 ...
The Nazz, 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 ...
The Who: Long Live Rock: The Who
Comment by Barney Hoskyns, Independent on Sunday, 2 February 2010
ARGUABLY THE MOST famous line The Who's Pete Townshend ever wrote was "Hope I die before I get old" on 1965's angry young anthem 'My ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 13 May 2010
The great engineer/producer takes us from the "Surrey Delta" at the turn of the '60s through to recording Led Zeppelin and its aftermath: meeting Jimmy Page when still a kid; getting into engineering; meeting the Stones; Page and John Paul Jones as sessionmen...
File format: mp3; file size: 91.3mb, interview length: 1h 35' 05" sound quality: ***
Led Zeppelin: Let's Get Physical: The Story of Led Zeppelin's Physical Graffiti
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, Classic Rock, September 2010
SOMETHING IS ROTTEN in the state of rock. The heady euphoria of the late Sixties has degenerated into decadence and self-satisfaction. Working-class guitar heroes have ...
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 ...
Bobby "Blue" Bland: For Members Only: Bobby Bland on Malaco
Sleeve notes by Barney Hoskyns, Malaco Records, October 2010
TWENTY-FIVE years ago, searching for the extant spirit of southern soul, I made my way to a former Pepsi-Cola warehouse in a decidedly unlovely industrial ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, November 2010
In conversation at Rough Trade East – the legendary record man on all things Elektra: folk to folk-rock; signing Love and the Doors, Paul Rothchild, the lunacy of Paxton Lodge, the MC5 and the Stooges, and through to leaving the business...
File format: mp3; file size: 61.8mb, interview length: 1h 04' 20" sound quality: ****
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 2011
The Canadian singer-songwriter talks about being underrated and about the disillusion and "creeping pessimism" in his lyrics for Long Player Late Bloomer; about Love Shines, Doug Arrowsmith's film about him; about getting signed at the ripe old age of 31; about working on Long Player with producer Bob Rock; about how he wrote songs such as 'Strawberry Blonde'; about 'God Loves Everyone' and Westboro Baptist Church; and about repeatedly watching a live DVD by Neil Diamond.
File format: mp3; file size: 64.3mb, interview length: 1h 6' 57" sound quality: ** (phoner)
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 ...
Led Zeppelin: Nick Kent on Led Zeppelin (2011)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 14 May 2011
Legendary NME journalist Nick Kent remembers his days in the orbit of Led Zeppelin: the many highs, and quite a few lows; Peter Grant; Zep v journalists; the sleaze and the gangsters.
File format: mp3; file size: 132.8mb, interview length: 2h 25' 03" sound quality: ****
Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks: Mirror Traffic
Review by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, August 2011
Steve's fifth post-Pavement platter, produced in LA by pal Beck Hansen. ...
Jonathan Wilson: Gentle Spirit (Bella Union)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, The Word, September 2011
OVER A DECADE AGO, a very nice man named Simon Raymonde – son of cult '60s arranger Ivor – came to my house to answer ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, The Word, November 2011
IT SHOULDN'T NEED to be said but I'll say it anyway: Tom Waits' career is one of the more extraordinary examples of mutation in the ...
Kevin Avery: Everything is an Afterthought: The Life and Writings of Paul Nelson (Fantagraphics)
Book Review by Barney Hoskyns, The Word, December 2011
NOTE: This is a slightly expanded version of the review that ran in The Word. ...
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, 'Blondie: Panic of Girls' (Future Publishing), Summer 2011
MOST OF THE BOYS were there to watch Television. It was Saturday night, 28 May 1977, and the Hammersmith Odeon was packed with chaps who ...
Led Zeppelin: In the Misty Mountains: Led Zeppelin Get It Together in the Country
Book Excerpt by Barney Hoskyns, 'Trampled Under Foot' (Faber & Faber), 2012
JIMMY PAGE: It wasn't until the spring of 1970 that we actually had a real break. That break was only probably a couple of months, ...
Todd Rundgren: The MOJO Interview: Todd Rundgren
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, January 2012
TWO DAYS AFTER a throat-shredding three-night stand at London's Jazz Café, Todd Harry Rundgren seems relieved merely to be talking. Still sporting multi-coloured – black ...
The Doors: Cars Hiss By My Window: The Doors' L.A. Woman landmarks
Retrospective and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, unpublished, February 2012
Sunset Sound Recorders, 6650 Sunset Blvd.The Doors had made their first two albums in this celebrated Hollywood studio, but it was also here that L.A. ...
Tim Hardin: The Unforgiven: Tim Hardin
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, February 2012
AS CONCEPT ALBUMS go it was one of the more eccentric creations of the late 1960s. The mouthful of a title alone (Suite for Susan ...
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 ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 14 February 2012
Messrs Brian Wilson, Mike Love, Al Jardine, Bruce Johnston and David Marks look back at the old days, from the Surf era through Pet Sounds and into the '70s: the songs, the sounds, the good times and bad.
File format: mp3; file size: 64.8mb, interview length: 1h 10' 48" sound quality: ****
Johnny Cash: Out Of The Blue and Into The Black: Johnny Cash
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, April 2012
IT'S NOT EXACTLY boom-chicka-boom, but the twangy guitar part that kicks off Johnny Cash's 1971 album Man In Black is the same minimal single-string picking ...
Allman Brothers Band, Lynyrd Skynyrd: Alabama Shakes: The Saga of Southern Rock
Comment by Barney Hoskyns, The Guardian, 6 April 2012
IT WAS ONLY a matter of time before BBC4 green-lit a Friday night documentary about the sub-genre Southern Rock. The subject is irresistible to connoisseurs ...
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 ...
Essay by Barney Hoskyns, Catalog for Doug Aitken's Song 1 exhibition, June 2012
I WAS FOURTEEN YEARS OLD – a glam-rock brat awakening to the golden innocence of pre-Beatles American pop – when I shelled out for the ...
The Beach Boys: Hang On To Your Egos: The Beach Boys at 50
Retrospective and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, June 2012
NOTE: With a few minor differences, this was the piece that ran as a MOJO cover story. ...
The Band, Garth Hudson, Levon Helm: Garth Hudson on Levon Helm
Memoir by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, July 2012
"THE FIRST TIME I saw Levon in action was in Woodstock, Ontario, about thirty-five miles from London, where I grew up. Ronnie and the Hawks ...
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 ...
Book Excerpt by Barney Hoskyns, 'Trampled Under Foot' (Faber & Faber), September 2012
In this excerpt from his oral history Trampled Under Foot: The Power and Excess of Led Zeppelin, Barney Hoskyns charts the formation and ascent of ...
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 ...
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 ...
Led Zeppelin: Their Satanic Majesties Request: When Led Zeppelin Ruled The World
Book Excerpt by Barney Hoskyns, 'Trampled Under Foot' (Faber & Faber), September 2012
By 1973, Led Zeppelin was the biggest rock band on the planet. In this excerpt from Trampled Under Foot, Barney Hoskyns' new oral history of ...
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, The Times, 3 September 2012
RIPLEY... EPSOM... WALLINGTON. The names hardly resonate in the way that Clarksdale or Greenville or Natchez do. Yet in their way these Surrey towns are ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 6 November 2012
The Canadian singer-songwriter on his latest album Forever Endeavour: being reunited with producer Mitchell Froom; its contrast with his previous album, the Bob Rock-produced Long Player Late Bloomer; the recording process, Froom's production and the musicians involved, and the songs... where they came from; the moods that informed them, and how they were realised.
File format: mp3; file size: 65.8mb, interview length: 1h 8' 31" sound quality: *** (Skype)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, December 2012
Ms Harris talks about her latest album (a collaboration with old associate Rodney Crowell) Old Yellow Moon; looks at how she fits into the current country/folk/Americana scene, and looks back at length at her early years and her work with the legendary Gram Parsons.
File format: mp3; file size: 25.5mb, interview length: 55' 45" sound quality: * (phoner)
The Rolling Stones: A Sweet Tooth for the Stones: 'Brown Sugar'
Comment by Barney Hoskyns, Sabotage Times, Summer 2012
GOD IT'S TEDIOUS when ancient hacks wax nostalgic about formative pop memories – memories sacred to them but rarely to their readers. So stop reading ...
Essay by Barney Hoskyns, unpublished, Fall 2012
FOR TRAMPLED UNDER FOOT, my oral history of Led Zeppelin, one of the interviews I conducted was with Dave Bates, an almost-famous A&R man from ...
Ron Sexsmith: Forever Endeavour
Press Release by Barney Hoskyns, Cooking Vinyl Records, February 2013
IN A WORLD of workaday singer-songwriters mired in vacuous self-regard, news of a new Ron Sexsmith record can only gladden the heart of those who ...
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 – ...
Emmylou Harris, Gram Parsons: Heartaches and Hangovers: Gram Parsons' GP
Retrospective and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, March 2013
IT IS A FINE irony of her long career as the Queen of Country Rock that, on the night when Gram Parsons stopped by to ...
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 ...
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 ...
Tom Waits: Tom's Wild Year: The Story of Swordfishtrombones
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, Classic Rock, June 2013
HAVE I GOT NEWS FOR YOU it was not. Tom Waits did, however, have news for fellow guest Ian Hislop, rounding on the latter after ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 9 October 2013
The man who produced the Woodstock festival talks about the importance of its name; moving to the town in 1968; the major figures around town: The Band, Bob Dylan and Albert Grossman; the notable people and places in the vicinity, including Jimi Hendrix, Tim Hardin and Fred Neil; the relationship between town and festival; his Just Sunshine label and its abiding cult signing Karen Dalton; the town's incestuousness; the Bearsville label and studio, and Todd Rundgren; the 1994 festival... and Woodstock today.
File format: mp3; file size: 65.2mb, interview length: 1h 07' 55" sound quality: ***
Another Day, Another Time: The Inside Llewyn Davis Concert Town Hall, New York City
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, December 2013
IT'S LIKE A bunch of Midnight Cowboys (and Cowgirls) just stumbled into venerable old Town Hall from Times Square. Hats and braces and denim are ...
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 ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, Fall 2013
Stellar first offering from maverick former contributor to the Village Voice and Creative Loafing ...
David Bowie: Me and David: An Interview with Photographer Mick Rock
Book Excerpt by Barney Hoskyns, 'The Rise of David Bowie' (Taschen), February 2014
YOU COULDN'T make the name up: as the man himself says in the interview that follows, "Mick Rock" sounds like a cartoon character, a distillation ...
The Band, Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, Otis Redding: D.A. Pennebaker (2014)
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, April 2014
The film director revisits making Bob Dylan movie Dont Look Back; working with Albert and Sally Grossman; Dylan's wife Sara; the post-motorcycle accident Dylan in Woodstock; the 1966 tour film; shooting Otis Redding at Monterey... and playing Billie Holiday to Janis Joplin.
File format: mp3; file size: 69.9mb, interview length: 1h 12' 50" sound quality: ****
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.] ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, 23 June 2014
Van talks about his escape to Woodstock after Bert Berns and Bang records: the Band, Albert Grossman, not recognising Bob Dylan; the making of the Moondance and Street Choir albums, and not buying into the Woodstock mythology.
File format: mp3; file size: 41mb, interview length: 44' 48" sound quality: *****
Book Review by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, July 2014
IF EVERYBODY WHO heard the Velvet Underground in the late 1960s went on to form a punk group, it could be argued that everybody who ...
The Fall: Steve Hanley and Olivia Piekarski: The Big Midweek: Life Inside The Fall
Book Review by Barney Hoskyns, The Guardian, 1 October 2014
(This is the original – and very slightly different – version of the review that appeared in the Guardian...) IN HER BLURB for this compelling memoir, ...
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 ...
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. ...
Sandy Denny: Mick Houghton: I've Always Kept a Unicorn – The Biography of Sandy Denny
Book Review by Barney Hoskyns, The Guardian, 21 February 2015
WHAT, HYPOTHETICALLY, would have happened if Sandy Denny had tried out for The Voice UK? Would Rita and Ricky and Will.i.am and Sir Tom have ...
Nick Cave: The SICK BAG Song (Canongate)
Book Review by Barney Hoskyns, The Guardian, 28 March 2015
WHEN YOU'VE personally witnessed Nick Cave nodding out on heroin and slowly lowering his head into a candle flame – his mass of dyed black ...
Gram Parsons: The Read: Mr Gram Parsons
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, Mr. Porter, April 2015
Narcotics, Nudie Cohn suits, and the Rolling Stones – we pay homage to the fiercely talented founder of alternative country, whose untimely demise was as ...
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 ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, May 2015
The Hag tells all about signing to Capitol Records: producer Ken Nelson; the Bakersfield Sound; Glen Campbell... and having the Rat Pack as fans.
File format: mp3; file size: 17.2mb, interview length: 18' 44" sound quality: ** (phoner)
Book Review by Barney Hoskyns, The Guardian, 23 May 2015
WHEN RICHARD GOLDSTEIN got married, Murray "the K" Kaufman – the famous New York disc jockey who'd anointed himself "the Fifth Beatle" in 1964 – ...
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 ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages Audio, September 2015
The veteran rocker talks about his long relationship with Capitol Records: the wonderful building and studios; the many people who have been so supportive of him over the four decades he was on the label, and what Los Angeles came to mean to him.
File format: mp3; file size: 24.4mb, interview length: 25' 24" sound quality: ** (phoner)
Capitol's Bhaskar Menon: An Interview
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, unpublished, September 2015
"I WAS INFORMED on a Thursday that they'd like me to be on the Friday Pan Am flight. There were three of us on the ...
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 ...
Big Brother & The Holding Company, Janis Joplin: Big Brother: John Simon in Woodstock and Bearsville
Book Excerpt by Barney Hoskyns, 'Small Town Talk' (Faber & Faber), 2016
Two excerpts from Small Town Talk that tell part of the story of John Simon, producer of The Band and Janis Joplin… plus one excerpt ...
Book Excerpt by Barney Hoskyns, 'Capitol 75' (Taschen), 2016
NOTE: Herewith the full "director's cut" version of the historical essay I contributed to the spectacularly lavish Taschen book marking the 75th anniversary of West ...
John Cale: "Danger: Depressing": John Cale's Music for a New Society
Sleeve notes by Barney Hoskyns, Domino Records, January 2016
JOHN CALE'S Music for a New Society startled in 1982 and it startles in 2016. It was markedly at odds not only with the synthetic ...
Obituary by Barney Hoskyns, Billboard, 28 January 2016
THE DEATH OF Glenn Frey has robbed the world of half the partnership at the heart of the Eagles, whose Greatest Hits 1971-1975 remains the ...
Book Excerpt by Barney Hoskyns, 'Small Town Talk' (Faber), February 2016
BY THE TIME Bob Dylan's 'Blowin' In The Wind' was turbo-charging the folk-protest movement in the summer of 1963, his manger Albert Grossman had become ...
Bob Dylan: Going Up the Country: Woodstock's Post-Dylan influx
Book Excerpt by Barney Hoskyns, 'Small Town Talk' (Faber), February 2016
BOB DYLAN WASN'T the only artistic giant to seek sanctuary in the Catskill Mountains in the 1960s. Just as the singer had fled controversy and ...
The Last Shadow Puppets: Everything You've Come to Expect
Press Release by Barney Hoskyns, Domino Records, March 2016
WHETHER OR NOT we expected it, Everything You've Come to Expect has been a long time coming: to be exact, eight whole years since the ...
Thin Lizzy: Graeme Thomson: Cowboy Song: The Authorised Biography of Philip Lynott
Book Review by Barney Hoskyns, The Guardian, 9 March 2016
THIS FINE TELLING of the messy life of Thin Lizzy's charismatic frontman is studded with moments of bathos, but one sticks particularly in the mind. ...
Memoir by Barney Hoskyns, The Observer, 24 April 2016
I'D SAY IT was all there in 1979's 'I Wanna Be Your Lover', Prince's first hit: the falsetto pout, the swivelling guitar riff, the effortless ...
David Bowie: Paul Morley: The Age of Bowie – How David Bowie Made a World of Difference
Book Review by Barney Hoskyns, The Observer, 17 July 2016
"EVERYONE HAS THEIR own Bowie," Paul Morley writes in this discursive, free-associating ride across the life and work of the Starman Who Changed the World. ...
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 ...
Led Zeppelin: The Complete BBC Sessions
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Classic Rock, October 2016
JUST HOW MUCH more juice is there to be squeezed out of the Led Zeppelin lemon? It's a question you may well ask yourself by ...
John Cale: Fragments of a Rainy Season
Sleeve notes by Barney Hoskyns, Domino Records, December 2016
THOUGH FRAGMENTS of a Rainy Season is the fourth live album released by John Cale in his post-Velvet Underground career, it's the first to feature ...
Book Review by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, December 2016
THE BAND'S STORY continues to beguile: how did a group so rich in talent and promise implode so hopelessly, only to pull the rabbit out ...
Karen Dalton: Are You Leaving for the Country? Karen Dalton in Woodstock
Book Excerpt by Barney Hoskyns, 'Small Town Talk' (Da Capo), Spring 2016
FRED NEIL had returned to his beloved Florida by the early '70s, but from 1970 onwards Karen Dalton spent much of her time in Woodstock. ...
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 ...
Prince: My Name Is Prince: O2, London
Review by Barney Hoskyns, The Times, 27 October 2017
I HADN'T anticipated the sudden pang of sadness as I walked in and saw all those gaudy, gloriously naff outfits. My eyes went straight to ...
The Band: John Niven's Music from Big Pink: A Foreword
Book Excerpt by Barney Hoskyns, 'Music from Big Pink' (Bloomsbury), July 2018
THE FACT THAT John Niven was just two years old in 1968 – the year in which The Band's Music from Big Pink was released ...
Radiohead: Present Tense: A Radiohead introduction
Book Excerpt by Barney Hoskyns, 'Present Tense' (Constable), February 2019
IN THE FINE essay included in Present Tense on Radiohead's 2000 album Kid A, Simon Reynolds asks why we shouldn't consider its predecessor – 1997's ...
The Doors: Rock is Dead: The Doors' Soft Parade
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, unpublished, May 2019
NOTE: When Rhino asked me to write liner notes for their upcoming reissue of the Doors' worst album, they must have known they might not ...
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. ...
Book Review by Barney Hoskyns, Financial Times, 15 February 2022
AS INELEGANT acronyms go, NWOBHM was at least onomatopoeic: an approximation of metal's thudding, bludgeoning bass registers. Certainly the "New Wave Of British Heavy Metal", ...
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 ...
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