Charles Shaar Murray
Charles Shaar Murray, "the rock critic's rock critic" (Q Magazine), "front-line cultural warrior" and "original gunslinger" (Independent on Sunday) is the Ralph J. Gleason Music Book Award-winning author of Crosstown Traffic: Jimi Hendrix And Post-war Pop, and Boogie Man: The Adventures of John Lee Hooker in the American Twentieth Century, short-listed for the same award. The first two decades of his journalism, criticism and vulgar abuse have been collected in Shots From The Hip (Penguin).
A founding contributor to Q and Mojo magazines, he made his print debut in 1970 in the notorious "Schoolkids Issue" of underground magazine OZ, and became a frequent contributor to IT and Cream magazines before going mainstream with NME in 1972. Since launching his freelance career in 1980, his work has appeared in newspapers like The Guardian, The Observer, The Independent, The Independent on Sunday, Evening Standard, and magazines including Word, Vogue, MacUser, Guitarist, Prospect and New Statesman. He has written and presented several shows for Radio 3 and BBC World Service Radio, and supplied TV punditry to Channel 4 News and Newsnight, as well as appearing on numerous rockumentary programmes, most recently as series consultant for BBC2's Seven Ages Of Rock. As a musician, he terrorised London gig-goers as singer/guitarist for blues band Crosstown Lightnin' , also featuring harmonica maestro Buffalo Bill Smith and the all-female New York rhythm section Queens Of Funk. His first novel, The Hellhound Sample, was published in 2011.
566 articles
List of articles in the library
Jaco Pastorius, Weather Report: Jaco Pastorius
Retrospective by Charles Shaar Murray, The Independent, 1998
AS JOHN LENNON proclaimed in the 1970 Rolling Stone interview which effectively announced his final break with the Beatles, "Genius is pain". What he neglected ...
Guide by Charles Shaar Murray, Guitar World, 1999
ARE YOU EXPERIENCED? (MCA) HENDRIX AS superstar-in-waiting, UK-style. Rough, raw, crunchy, funky and designed for maximum impact, this ...
Jimi Hendrix: Street Fighting: Jimi Hendrix
Essay by Charles Shaar Murray, MOJO, November 1999
Your starter for ten: what do Jimi Hendrix and George Orwell have in common? ...
Almost Famous: 1973 and all that
Essay by Charles Shaar Murray, The Guardian, 2000
1973 AS A rock and roll annus mirabilis? Six thousand miles away from the old Rolling Stone office in San Francisco, it felt more like ...
Obituary by Charles Shaar Murray, Daily Telegraph, December 1993
A FEW YEARS AGO, Gail Zappa, wife and business partner of the late Frank Zappa, was shopping for groceries in Los Angeles when the cashier ...
Eric Clapton: Rainbow Theatre, London
Live Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Cream, February 1973
SO THERE'S THIS cat in the white suit smiling diffidently through his beard at the cheering hordes on the other side of the lights. He's ...
Sly & Robbie: Sly ‘n’ Robbie on Drum ‘n’ Bass
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, The Independent, 1999
Drum ‘n’ bass: it’s the foundation of popular music, the engine which drives rock, pop, soul, funk, jazz, reggae and anything else you care to ...
Book Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Revolver, Spring 2000
WHO WAS Lester Bangs? He was a rock critic. To be more precise, he was a rock critic like Muhammad Ali was a boxer or ...
James Brown: Roots Of A Revolution
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 4 February 1984
YAAAOOWWW . . . Witchaw bad self! A few years ago Polydor issued a deluxe double album commemorating the first 21 years of James Brown's ...
John Coltrane, Miles Davis: Miles Davis: You’re Under Arrest (CBS)
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 15 June 1985
THIS YEAR, Miles Davis is 59 years old. However, if it’s round numbers that appeal to you, it’s worth mentioning that 1985 marks the 40th ...
Talking Heads: Cents and Sensibility: Talking Heads
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 8 December 1984
You may find yourself...the leader of a rock band (of sorts)! ...
B.B. King: There Must Be A Better World Somewhere
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 1981
IN 1966, B.B. King put out a live album entitled Blues Is King, and – as far as the major U.S. labels are concerned – ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 1978
"TAKE OUTCHA false teeth, mama...I wanna sssssssssuck on your gums!" ...
David Bowie: Sermon From The Savoy
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 29 September 1984
When David Bowie recently visited Britain he agreed to do one ‘official’ interview — with NME’s Charles Shaar Murray. In this exclusive story he gives ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, MOJO, August 1996
ALTERNATIVE TITLE: GROINHEAD GOES TO FLORIDA. A sort of musical honeymoon, one presumes: flushed with post-nuptial bliss after snatching mighty Mayte, the abdominal show-woman ...
The Sex Pistols and Friends: Finsbury Park, London
Live Review by Charles Shaar Murray, MOJO, August 1996
IS THERE ANYTHING WHICH THE RECONSTITUTED Sex Pistols – freeze-dried, just add money – could possibly have done at their "comeback" show which would have ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, MOJO, October 1995
"Fuck art, let's concept," suggests former Dame to his chrome-domed chum. "Umpteenth comeback is a corker!" cries a passing Charles Shaar Murray ...
Dr. Feelgood: Dr Feelgood: Looking Back
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, MOJO, November 1995
It is but one of life’s minor ironies that both Sid James and Lee Brilleaux, two of England’s best-loved and most sadly-missed postwar icons of ...
The Band: Live at Watkins Glen
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, MOJO, June 1995
"They got their own thing together that takes you to a certain place. Takes you where they want to go... they play their things on ...
Pete Townshend: The Lifehouse Chronicles
Review and Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, MOJO, December 1999
Some day all music will be made this way. In 1970 it seemed so barking mad the band asked him to drop it. Now, Pete’s ...
The Kinks: Low Budget (Arista)
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 8 September 1979
The Kinks and the ‘70s have not enjoyed the most harmonious of relationships. ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, MOJO, December 2000
Does The Fabs' 'Best Of' Add Up? Packed 27-track single-disc summary of pop's best-loved repertoire, but no Please Please Me? Strawberry Fields Forever? Hello-o-o-o-o? ...
The First Great Rock Festival Of The Seventies
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Ink, 5 October 1971
Isle of Wight/Atlanta — a CBS 3 record set ...
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, Oz, January 1971
MUDDY WATERS has been my favourite singer since I was twelve years old, and since that time one of my primary objectives has been to ...
A Short History of the Rock Guitar
Overview by Charles Shaar Murray, The History of Rock, 1981
BEFORE THE ADVENT OF ROCK, guitars were just guitars. Amplification made guitars more flexible, more assertive and more prominent, but even so the electric guitar ...
Book Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 10 August 1983
YES MI FRIEND, mi good friend, them set me free again... ...
The Knack: …But The Little Girls Understand
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 15 March 1980
When the little girls do understand, you boys have had it ...
Mott The Hoople: All The Young Dudes — The Anthology
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, MOJO, October 1998
Triple-decker sandwich of hot Mott. All the hits, all your faves and all the other stuff too. Odds’n sods included Bowie’s guide-vocal version of 'Dudes'. ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Oz, May 1972
FANNY'S previous album. Charity Ball, may not have been the best album of the last eight months, but it was probably the one I played ...
Curtis Mayfield, Isaac Hayes, Jimi Hendrix: Isaac Hayes' Black Moses and other albums
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Oz, 1972
TO CLAIM to have found a representative selection of black music on four records is patently absurd, but as a random cross-section of what’s approximately ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Oz, March 1971
"Well I'm sitting here in this womb/lookin' all around, I'm looking out my belly button window/and I see a whole world frowns, And I wonder ...
Emerson Lake And Palmer: Emerson, Lake and Palmer: Pictures at an Exhibition
Film/DVD/TV Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Cream, June 1972
ONCE again, rockanroll culture heroes hit the big screen, and, predictably enough, this week’s lucky winners are Emerson, Lake and Palmer. Like all other rock ...
MC5: Teenage Outrage in Croydon: the MC5
Review and Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, Cream, March 1972
THE Fox in Crydon, Surrey, is a very long way indeed from the Grande Ballroom in Dee-troit, Michigan, and the MC5 were a very long ...
Bob Dylan: Local Jew Boy Makes Good: Bob Dylan’s New Morning
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Oz, 1970
NEW MORNING is a breath of clean air in a darkly polluted musical environment. With the prevailing sound being the grinding urban paranoia of the ...
The Who, The Yardbirds: The Who, Yardbirds books
Book Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 7 January 1984
Before I Get Old: The Story Of The Who by Dave Marsh Yardbirds by John Platt, Chris Dreja and Jim McCarty ...
Edgar Winter's White Trash: Roadwork
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Cream, July 1972
EDGAR WINTER’S White Trash are advanced cases of the Live Album Syndrome. Their line-up allows them to tackle soul, gospel, blues and rock, depending on ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Guitar World, 1998
Let’s get the paradoxes out of the way right up front: the blues was a musical space to which Jimi Hendrix would always return in ...
Millie Jackson: Caught Up /Still Caught Up
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 12 October 1985
MILLIE JACKSON is an astonishingly powerful and resourceful singer. It is easy to overlook her immense vocal skills particularly in the light of her current ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Oz, July 1972
SINCE HIS LAST album, Beck has brought in an outside producer, Steve Cropper, no less. Unlike Rough and Ready, this one features some real songs, ...
David Bowie: David at the Dorchester: Bowie on Ziggy and other matters
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 22 July 1972
THREE CHANGES of dress and a kiss from Lou Reed. The waiters were horrified. ...
Report by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 16 June 1973
"I DON'T EVEN like Led Zeppelin," the girl in the black velvet jacket and hotpants said petulantly as she bummed a cigarette off an acquaintance ...
Dusty Springfield: Dusty In Memphis
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 1986
ONE OF THE pleasures of the recent rerun series of Ready Steady Go Starring The Dave Clark Five was the opportunity to be reminded that ...
Bill Drummond, The KLF: Bill Drummond: 45
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, The Independent, 2000
"POP MUSIC," writes Bill Drummond, "has become like a cancer that has spread through my whole body and is now affecting my brain." Having been ...
Michael Nesmith: Tantamount To Treason, Volume One
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Cream, November 1972
IN THE DAYS when he was the young generation with somethin' to say (though he was too busy singin' to put anybody down), Mike Nesmith ...
Chuck Berry: Big Red Cars, Little White Chicks And The Chuck Berry Lick
Live Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Cream, March 1972
It was singalong night at the Coventry Locarno. Difference was that it was Chuck Berry we were singing along with. The Brown Eyed Handsome Man ...
Obituary by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 7 December 1985
LAST WEEK we lost Big Joe Turner: he died in California at the age of 74 after decades of contributions to the popular music of ...
Stone The Crows: Ontinuous Performance
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Cream, November 1972
I STILL CAN'T BELIEVE that this album hasn't sold 87 million copies. The Crows are one of that select handful of red-hot live bands who ...
Jimi Hendrix: Experience – Original Soundtrack/Isle Of Wight/Rainbow Bridge – Original Soundtrack
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Cream, January 1972
A CONSIDERABLE amount of Hendrix material has surfaced over the last six months. In addition to these three albums, there’s a side each on Woodstock ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Guitar World, 1994
WHOEVER FIRST claimed that guitar, bass and drums are the "three primary colo(u)rs of rock and roll" ignored the possibility that some of us might ...
Danny Gatton, Reverend Horton Heat: Timelocked Moments: Danny Gatton and Rev. Horton Heat
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Guitar World, 1993
Danny Gatton: Cruisin’ Deuces (Elektra)Rev. Horton Heat: The Full Custom Gospel Sounds Of Rev. Horton Heat (Sub Pop) ...
Jeff Beck: The Jeff Beck Interview
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, MOJO, April 1999
WHEN JEFF BECK WALKS INTO A PUBLIC SPACE, PEOPLE TURN and stare. They're seeing a fit-looking 50-something with stubble and an archetypal rock'n'roll haircut, wearing ...
Buffy Sainte-Marie: Never Argue With A Pregnant Indian: Buffy Sainte-Marie
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 1 May 1976
CARL PERKINS looks glazed. Teeth, eyes, toupee, rhinestoned double-knit denim-look casuals: all veneered with the same hospital-tile finish as the off-white Tele-caster that Perkins is ...
Danny Gatton, Robert Gordon: Robert Gordon with Danny Gatton: The Humbler (NRG)
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, MOJO, 1997
Designer rockabilly ignited live by squat suicidal Telecaster virtuoso ...
Elton John: Step Right Up And Feel The Man’s Muscles: Honky Chateau
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Cream, June 1972
THESE DAYS you have to get fashionable before you get successful or else you get resented, and, if you get too successful without first being ...
Robert Johnson: Turning Points: Robert Johnson
Retrospective by Charles Shaar Murray, Daily Telegraph, November 1999
THE LEGEND OF Robert Johnson was a long time in the building, and it was forged by the fusion of his brilliance and his obscurity. ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Guitar World, March 1993
WHAT’S YOUR favourite colour? Between the death of Jimi Hendrix in 1970 and the arrival of Living Colour’s 1988 debut album Vivid, the hard rock ...
Essay by Charles Shaar Murray, The Guardian, July 1991
FASHIONS IN FOLK devils, like all other fashions, are subject both to painless expiry and to unexpected and possibly incongruous resurrections. ...
Dr. John, The Meters: Dr. John/The Meters: I Been Hoodood
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 18 August 1984
THERE ARE GROOVES and there are grooves: that which is laid down by the Meters is definitely one of the latter. ...
The Kinks: Kinks, Kinda Kinks, The Kinks Kontroversy and Face To Face
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 1984
NOT THAT any of this is actually important, but the kurrent kinks reissue programme abounds with small ironies. ...
Jimi Hendrix: South Saturn Delta
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, MOJO, December 1997
IN WHICH the new management of Planet Hendrix takes its first steps into the marginal, semi-canonical hinterlands of the Great Man's recorded legacy and returns ...
Supergrass: Supergrass (Parlophone)
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Daily Telegraph, September 1999
WE HEAR AN awful lot about how Oxford is still the gateway to eminence in thrusting new young Britain, but what about Wheatley Park Comprehensive? ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, MOJO, July 1994
AS FAR AS I KNOW, Smokey Robinson and Frank Zappa never met. However, if they had, five'll getcha ten they'd have ended up talking ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, MOJO, September 1997
WHAT ARE Oasis for? They were Built To Be Big. Their Long-Awaited-All-Important-Third-Album, Be Here Now, is about as big as a rock record can get. ...
Taj Mahal at Shepherd's Bush Empire, London
Live Review by Charles Shaar Murray, MOJO, September 1997
HENRY ST. CLAIR FREDERICKS named himself Taj Mahal with good reason: he's a monument who can dance with an easy grace and joyful lightness delightfully ...
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 15 December 1979
EYES RIGHT! Talking Heads are playing the Electric Ballroom tonight, and clearly visible above all the twitching cerebella is one head, as instantly noticeable as ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 6 January 1979
IN The Devil Finds Work, James Baldwin opined that white people's hatred of blacks is based on terror, while black people's hatred of whites is ...
Jeff Beck: Who wants to be a guitar hero?
Profile and Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, The Independent, 8 September 2002
WHEN FRANK ZAPPA'S son Dweezil showed up in London recently toting – or touting – the Fender Stratocaster torched by Jimi Hendrix at the 1968 ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 23 October 1982
AHEM. WHERE were we? Steely Dan go out on the worst album of their entire career, Walter Becker gets involved in one of those stupidly ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 6 October 1979
SUCCESS success success! (Does it matter?) ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 1982
CAN I TELL you something? I don't want to depress you by dumping my current state of mind on you, but I feel really awful ...
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, Summer 1981
WE ARE THE CHILDREN OF THE RAINBOW ...
Essay by Charles Shaar Murray, The Independent, 12 July 2003
IT USED to be said of performers like country legend Jimmie Rodgers and Delta bluesman Skip James that they had "that high lonesome sound". No ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 16 April 1983
"Put on your red shoes and dance the blues to the song they're playing on the radio..." ...
Grateful Dead - How the hell do ya play them five-hour sets without slinkin' off for a leak?
Report and Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 21 September 1974
Yes, it's an interesting one isn't it? I mean, five hours...that's a long time, and well...camels are different of course, so really it must be ...
Albert King: Truckload Of Lovin'
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 30 October 1976
HOT DAMN! Way it looks to this white boy, Albert King just has to be to the blues what John Wayne is to cowboy movies, ...
George Thorogood & The Destroyers: Ain't Nuthin' But The Blues Band
Report and Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 29 June 1978
LOOKED AT MY watch and it was almost one, and George Thorogood And The Destroyers are just sloping on stage for their third set of ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 3 February 1979
JOE JACKSON is a contender: he's fast, tough and he doesn't mess around. At a time when the orthodox powers-that-be in the rock business are ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 15 December 1979
"...the wit of the city's urchins is as sharp as the finest conversation of the rural lord; the vulgar speech of the street arabs is ...
Al Green: The Pre-Godlike Genius Of Green
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 10 August 1985
Let's Stay Together (Hi)I'm Still In Love With You (Hi)Call Me (Hi)Precious Lord (Hi) ...
Ian Hunter: Welcome To The Club
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 5 April 1980
THIS IS a double live album and as such is prone to all the problems that such vinyl is heir. Problem (1): the cover is ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 23 July 1983
A FEW years ago, B.B. King let it be known that there were three albums that he had always wanted to record: one album of ...
Retrospective and Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 5 June 1982
THE BLUES speaks haltingly at first, haltingly and quietly in a darkened room. The curtains are drawn to shut out whatever passes for daylight during ...
Linda Ronstadt: Living In The USA (Asylum)
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 30 September 1978
LINDA RONSTADT – oh my God, she's so hunky. Those long, bronzed legs, that Ms Piggy face, those capable fingers – is it any wonder ...
Buddy Holly: Never Mind The Lubbocks, Here’s Buddy Holly & The Crickets : 20 Greatest Hits
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 1975
THE ROCK and roll of the ‘50s produced three incomparable all-rounders equally adept and influential as signers, composers and guitarists. ...
Country Joe & The Fish: Country Joe McDonald: Incredible! Live! Country Joe! (Vanguard)
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Cream, June 1972
I like the coffee and I like tea,I like the sweetness that you give to me, Hey woman set your mind at rest,Home cookin' still ...
Albert Collins: Blue Guitarist, Singer, Iceman, 1932-1993
Obituary by Charles Shaar Murray, MOJO, January 1994
ALBERT COLLINS WAS ROUGH. THAT'S ROUGH AS IN 'NICE 'N' rough', as opposed to 'mean 'n' rough'. He demonstrated the difference to perfection a couple ...
Tony Joe White: Tony Joe, Elvis, and Polk Salad Annie
Report by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 1970
TONY JOE WHITE was one of the first of the new school of Southern singer/songwriters – along with Jerry Reed, Joe South, Leon Russell, Dough ...
John Lennon, Yoko Ono: John Lennon & Yoko Ono: Double Fantasy (Geffen)
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 22 November 1980
IN THE cocoon, something stirs. John Lennon – one of the people who used to be in The Beatles, a group reckoned to be hot ...
Tom Robinson Band: Across Our Grey And Troubled Land
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 24 March 1979
HERE HE COMES now just-a-walkin' down the street. From street-level upwards: white plimsolls, faded levis, fawn sweater with the collar-points of a white shirt peeking ...
Universal Exhibition: The Bickershaw Festival
Report by Charles Shaar Murray, Oz, May 1972
"FESTIVALS," SAID Tommy Chong, leaning up against the RCA caravan at Bickershaw, "are just camping out with a light show." ...
Michael Chapman: The Body In The Lake and Other Stories
Report and Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 19 June 1976
SO THERE we were sitting in the studio drinking wine and talking rock and roll talk when Rick Kemp shouldered in, slammed the door and ...
David Bowie: Scary Monsters (RCA)
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 20 September 1980
LEARNING to live with somebody's depression: the man in the clown suit stops running, finds self in back-against-wall situation, attempts to deal with same. Scary ...
The Kinks: The Rise And Decline Of The Kinks
Profile and Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 6 October 1979
A CUT PRICE PERSON IN A LOW BUDGET LAND ...
Live Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 1979
Are you ready for the fiiinal soluuuuuuuuuuuuuushun (oh yeah)? ...
Be-Bop Deluxe: 1974 was Last Year’s Thing
Report and Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 3 August 1974
...so what about the Sound of ‘75, man? Could it even be BE-BOP DELUXE, already? (We knock ‘em down and then we build ‘em up ...
MC5: Kick Out The Jams (Elektra)
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 4 June 1977
‘BROTHERS AND sisters...the time has come for each and every one of you to decide whether you are going to be the problem or whether ...
James Brown: Sweat, Power And Expensive Perfume
Live Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 15 September 1979
TALKIN' 'BOUT The Venue...and people, it's bad. There is no way that something the size of a small theatre can pretend to be an intimate ...
The Sensational Alex Harvey Band: The Faith Healer
Obituary by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 13 February 1982
"Good evening, boys and girls. My name is Harvey..." ...
Eminem: Mean, Moody And Magnificent: Eminem
Profile by Charles Shaar Murray, The Observer, 12 May 2002
IT'S BEEN too damn quiet, Carruthers. With the upper echelons of the pop scene currently dominated by the industry's endless cavalcade of squeaky-clean teen puppets, ...
Pete Townshend: All The Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 3 July 1982
HERE IS Pete Townshend: born again. And again, and again, and again, and again... ...
Michael Chapman: Savage Amusement (Decca)
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 26 June 1976
ABOUT THE only thing that Michael Chapman has in common with Laura Nyro, apart from vast merit, is that a lot of people find the ...
Third World: Third World (Island import)
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 17 April 1976
THIRD WORLD were the support act at Bob Marley and The Wailers' Lyceum concerts last summer, where they provided the kind of pleasant surprise that's ...
Live Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 23 May 1983
David Bowie: Brussels Voorst National, Belgium ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 11 December 1982
Various: Rapped Uptight (Sugarhill) ...
Bo Diddley, Ray Campi: This Here's The Review Of Bo Diddley
Live Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 14 July 1979
Bo Diddley/Ray Campi And The Rockabilly Rebels/Whirlwind: Lyceum, London ...
Maria Muldaur: The Effect Is Underwhelming
Live Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 2 August 1975
Maria Muldaur: Ronnie Scott's, London ...
Aswad, Linton Kwesi Johnson: Aswad/Linton Kwesi Johnson/New Regulars: Hammersmith Palais, London
Live Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 31 January 1981
MONDAY NIGHT in the Palais: forward and upful all the way. Aswad's 'Warrior Charge' as featured in Babylon and Brinsley Forde's performance in the principal ...
ZZ Top: Billy Gibbons: Texan Rabbi From Hell
Report and Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, MOJO, March 1994
QUICK! APART FROM long beards, grotesque guitars and cheap sunglasses, what do ZZ Top and our dearly beloved and highly respected Prime Minister have in ...
Wilko Johnson — To Hell And Back Via The M1 Caff
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 3 June 1978
THE MARQUEE'S jammed up jelly tight; foot on foot, elbow in kidney, spilled drinks and apologies – or not, as the case may be – ...
Ian Dury: Oi! Oi! Anchors Aweigh
Live Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 22 November 1980
Ian Dury And The Blockheads: Hope & Anchor, London ...
The Who: The Kids Are Alright (Polydor)
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 9 June 1979
"The whole thing about rock and roll dynamism, in many ways, is the fact that if it does slow down, if it does start to ...
Ian Dury: The Cuddly Cosy Comfort Of A Tame And Trusted Teddy
Live Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 18 August 1979
Ian Dury And The Blockheads: Hammersmith Odeon, London ...
Pete Townshend, The Who: Pete Townshend: Conversations With Pete
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 19 April 1980
On an up with britain's longest serving honest man of rock ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 14 April 1973
Bye-bye, Ziggy. It was nice seeing you, and I hope you'll keep in touch. Hello, Aladdin Sane, make yourself at home. David Bowie's new album ...
The Clash: Guy Stevens: “There Are Only Two Phil Spectors In The World And I Am One Of Them”
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 22 December 1979
Selected tableaux from The Guy Stevens Story. ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 29 September 1973
THE FIRST TIME I saw Slade I thought they were dreadful. It was that memorable night at the Lanchester Arts Festival when Chuck Berry cut ...
Led Zeppelin: Robert Plant — And That Below-The-Belt Surge
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 23 June 1973
A HOT AND sticky Friday afternoon in L.A. Nine stories over Sunset Boulevard, Robert Plant takes Roy Harper's Lifemask off the stereo in his hotel ...
Beck, Bogert and Appice: The Axeman Cometh
Report and Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 29 September 1973
IT JUST GOES to show that things ain't always what they seem. Bopping down Savile Row in the general direction of Apple Studios (ah, Apple! ...
David Bowie: Goodbye Ziggy And a big hello to Aladdin Sane
Review and Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 27 January 1973
Two days in the life of David Bowie - A rare interview and a preview of his new album... ...
Jimi Hendrix: First Rays Of The New Rising Sun/Are You Experienced?/Electric Ladyland
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, MOJO, June 1997
HAVE WE BEEN HERE BEFORE? WE CERTAINLY HAVE. In 1993, the dilapidated Hendrix CD catalogue was overhauled by Alan Douglas, then artistic director of the ...
Peter Green: Still got the Greens…
Review and Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, MOJO, June 1997
The Peter Green Splinter Group: Splinter Group Giant step back to the world for the best of the '60s Britbluesers.CSM meets Peter Green and ...
The Rolling Stones: Ol' Rubber Lips Isn't Telling...
Book Review by Charles Shaar Murray, The Independent, 15 August 2003
According to The Rolling Stones (Weidenfeld and Nicholson)The Rolling Stones' history is wild and controversial, full of sex, drugs, bust-ups, scandal and death. Disappointing, then, ...
Pete Townshend: Cooltalkingsmoothtalkingstraightsmokingfirestoking (Atlantic)
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, MOJO, June 1996
DEAR DEAR PETE, ROCK'S leading luvvie: it's been so temptingly easy to take the piss out of him for his earnestness, his artistic ambition and ...
Graham Parker: Journey To The Centre Of Your Spine
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 3 March 1979
A CONCRETE BARN with a stage at one end: cables, cases, dust. A hyper-active dog in the grip of irresistible sexual forces is scooting around ...
The Who: Exorcizing The Ghost of Mod
Review and Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, Creem, January 1974
The Who: Quadrophenia ...
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 13 October 1973
"WE GOT a great new single comin' out," says Suzi Quatro from the depths of a rather predatory-looking brown armchair in Mickie Most's office at ...
George Clinton: Some Of My Best Jokes Are Friends (Capitol)
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 1985
IF THERE'S nothing more pathetic than an ageing crazy person, then why is George Clinton still able to make music as passionate, ...
T. Rex, Tyrannosaurus Rex: T. Rex: Where Now, Elemental Child?
Comment by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 28 April 1973
ONCE UPON A time there was Tyrannosaurus Rex. In the days immediately following flower-power, rockanroll music was getting very sweaty around the edges. What with ...
David Bowie: The Bowie Experiment
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 9 June 1973
THIS IS ONE OF those restaurants where quiet good taste just screams its presence. You just know that they have pheasant under glass, and that ...
The Edgar Broughton Band: Edgar Broughton
Profile and Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 16 February 1974
SHED A TEAR or, if you will, a small sympathetic whimper, for The Edgar Broughton Band. ...
Jethro Tull: The House That Jethro Built
Comment by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 22 September 1973
IT NOW SEEMS rather incongruous to think back on Jethro Tull as veterans of the Great 1968 Blues Boom, right out of the same scene ...
Hot Chocolate: Chocolate Brown
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 25 August 1973
THERE IS absolutely no getting away from the fact that it was an excessively hot and sticky afternoon. Sweaterama incarnate. Clothing stuck unpleasantly to the ...
Jefferson Airplane: Just An Exercise At Being Repulsive?
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 23 June 1973
"WE ARE all outlaws in the eyes of America," sang Grace Slick from the stage at Woodstock. God, it must be fun to be a ...
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 26 January 1974
THERE WAS a curious smell in the Belle Vue Hall, Manchester. ...
Live Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 31 March 1979
AND THE STARS look very different today... For all practical rock purposes, we may as well own up that we are now living in the ...
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 25 August 1973
"ZAPPA'S IN TOWN," they said. "Wanna go along and talk to him?" Oh sure, sez I, always glad to have a chat with Frank. So ...
Ringo Starr, Wings: Paul McCartney: Band On The Run/Ringo Starr: Ringo
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 19 January 1974
RINGO STARR is a wonderful person. His new album proves it. ...
Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show: Dr Hook: Sylvia's Mother Meets Durty Cindy Lou…
Report and Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 14 July 1973
WE ALL KNOW the famous American rock venues, don't we? We've all heard of the Forum in L.A., the Academy of Music and Madison Square ...
The Faces: Rod Stewart & The Faces: Live Coast To Coast/Overture And Beginners (Mercury)
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 19 January 1974
LADIES AND gentlemen, a study in disintegration.When the Faces began their current incarnation, their boozy looseness helped to add some riotous vibes to a tight, ...
Steeleye Span: So Who ARE These Limeys Playing Folk Music?
Report and Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 26 May 1973
IT TAKES approximately 11 hours to fly from London to Los Angeles. You get off the 'plane, and the heat fills your lungs like a ...
Profile and Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, Rolling Stone, 23 May 1985
Sade's elegant look and cool sound have made her pop music's most stylish female star ...
Profile by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 26 May 1973
WHEN HE'S playing nice, you couldn't possibly hope to hear more creative or more exciting rock guitar playing than that of Jeff Beck. He was ...
Suzi Quatro : You Don't Have To Be A Dyke…
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 6 October 1973
I FIRST ran into Suzi Quatro late last year. She was a nice, bouncy little American chick who played bass, wrote songs, was forming a ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 6 July 1974
EVER SINCE the Allman Brothers came howling out of Macon, Gorgia, and Texas graciously gave Johnny Winter and Janis Joplin to the world, Southern rock ...
The Eagles: Desperado (Asylum)
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 26 May 1973
IT IS ARGUABLE that the test of a fine example of any genre is to consider the extent to which it transcends its category. Our ...
The Groundhogs: Groundhogs: Groundhogs Best 1969-1972
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 11 May 1974
FATHER, I HAVE sinned. Though the words may echo through my remaining days on this doomed planet, though I be haunted through eternity by these ...
Scritti Politti: Songs To Remember (Rough Trade)
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 4 September 1982
HERE IT IS: Scritti Politti's greatest hits. Let me assure you that this isn't a problem (I like albums with lots of singles on) and ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 16 February 1974
NEW LINE-UP time, folks. As all you well-informed young people will have been aware for nigh on a full season, Ian Gillan has left to ...
The Rolling Stones: Some Girls
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 10 June 1978
THESE LAST two or three years, the Stones haven't really been that important to rock and roll. ...
Ry Cooder: The Slide Area (Warner Bros.)/The Border – Original Soundtrack (MCA)
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 24 April 1982
THE MORE things remain the same, the more they change: after more than a decade of recording as a featured artist, Ry Cooder has finally ...
Review and Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 27 October 1973
TOWNSHEND'S Quadrophenia is a rather daunting proposition. Another Who double-album rock opera? About a kid called Jimmy? With a massive booklet of grainy monochrome tableaux ...
Captain Sensible, Gary Numan: Gary Numan: I, Assassin/Captain Sensible: Women And Captains First
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 11 September 1982
A PAIR OF FUNSTERS from the charts: Sensible in his new role as the nation's favourite lovable loony and Numan in his old one as ...
B.B. King: Love Me Tender (MCA)
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 5 June 1982
"HE HAS one musical ambition as yet unfulfilled: to make a series of classic albums. These consist of one album with a big band, one ...
Gil Scott-Heron: Moving Target (Arista)
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 18 September 1982
GIL SCOTT-HERON is one of the most quietly effective performers currently working in popular music: his cool, firm underplaying makes the listener want to move ...
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 19 January 1974
NEVER UNDERESTIMATE the importance of ritual.Most rock bands have a certain schtick that's always part of the show, something the audience knows that it's gonna ...
The Clash: Up The Hill Backwards
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 29 May 1982
HALF PAST ONE on Portobello Road. Past the chippy, opposite the bookshop, within earshot of a man with an amplified mouth-harp honking and scything through ...
Tony Joe White: Home Made Ice Cream
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 18 August 1973
I'VE HAD a healthy respect for the work of Tony Joe White for quite some time now, and it is because of the excellence of ...
Michael Jackson: Thrills Before The Spills
Comment by Charles Shaar Murray, The Independent, 12 December 2003
IT'S THAT PHOTO, the official police mugshot taken when Michael Jackson finally turned himself in to answer charges of child molestation, which looks so scary. ...
Babyshambles: Pete Doherty And The New Decadence
Comment by Charles Shaar Murray, Independent on Sunday, 6 February 2005
PERHAPS MARC ALMOND put it best: "To me a star is someone who has something extra, and something missing at the same time – ...
Last Night A DJ Saved My Life: Tale Of Turntable Wizards Misses Several Beats
Book Review by Charles Shaar Murray, The Independent, 5 January 2000
Last Night A DJ Saved My Life: the history of the disc jockey by Bill Brewster and Frank Broughton (Headline) ...
Overview by Charles Shaar Murray, Observer Music Monthly, 16 November 2003
In September 2002, the US Congress officially designated 2003 as 'The Year Of The Blues.' Why this year of all years? ...
Dr. Feelgood: Dr Feelgood: Meanwhile, Back At The Feelgoods
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 2 January 1982
MADE IT THROUGH another day and here we are! The students of the fair city of Leeds play host to the band that defined British ...
Rock Bottom: The Music Industry In Trouble
Comment by Charles Shaar Murray, The Independent, 9 April 2002
WHEN ROLLING STONES manager Andrew Loog Oldham founded his own company, Immediate Records, in the 1960s, the paper sleeve of each and every single bore ...
Film/DVD/TV Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Observer Music Monthly, 23 January 2005
THE NAME ACTUALLY rhymes with 'vogue,' but the incorrect phonetic pronunciation somehow seems more appropriate to the noises made by the eponymous instrument created in ...
Profile by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, June 1972
THE BEST NEWS of last week was that Johnny Winter, after a year in medical exile, was once again alive and functioning, and due to ...
The Rolling Stones: Mick Jagger: Sympathy for the Old Devil
Comment by Charles Shaar Murray, Independent on Sunday, 27 July 2003
"YOU'RE A FUNNY little fella," the gangster played by James Fox tells the reclusive rock star played by Mick Jagger in Donald Cammell and Nicolas ...
Ray Charles: Brother Ray in Vision
Comment by Charles Shaar Murray, Observer Music Monthly, 14 November 2004
AT A RECENT MOVIE screening, I bumped into a publisher friend who specialises in music biographies. Every so often, he told me, some film production ...
Paul McCartney: He Loves Her Yeah Yeah Yeah
Comment by Charles Shaar Murray, The Observer, 29 July 2001
PAUL McCARTNEY has always been known for his broad, boyish smile, but the ear-splitting grin he sported last week while announcing his engagement to Heather ...
David Bowie: Ziggy Played Guitar (But Never Took His Eyes Off The Business)
Profile by Charles Shaar Murray, The Independent, 9 June 2002
"TIME," AS DAVID BOWIE once sang. "is waiting in the wings." As far as Bowie himself, who turned 55 last January, is concerned, time seems ...
George Michael: Who's a Cheeky Boy?
Comment by Charles Shaar Murray, The Observer, 7 July 2002
'WITH THE RELEASE of his George Bush and Cherie Blair-referencing new single,' snickers the Popbitch website, 'we would like to commiserate with George Michael on ...
Jonathan King: Is Jonathan King A Monster, Or Is He Being Monstered?
Comment by Charles Shaar Murray, The Independent, 23 November 2001
PUBLIC MONSTER NUMBER ONE: the space in the media landscape currently occupied by Jonathan King effectively renders him the missing link between Osama bin Laden ...
Joe Cocker: Sheffield Steel (Island)
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 5 June 1982
LIFE IN THE upper echelons of Island Records would currently seem to be taking on a pleasingly surreal texture. One can just imagine the dialogue: ...
Dave Edmunds: "The Human League? Which Ones Are They?"
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 3 April 1982
"IT WAS a very weird thing that happened in 1954 or '55 or whenever it was. It was very special and I don't think I'll ...
Frank Zappa: The Mother Of All Reinventions
Comment by Charles Shaar Murray, The Independent, 21 November 2003
IF CIGARETTES AND COFFEE are available in the afterlife, the shade of Frank Zappa is probably allowing himself a wry smile from beneath his formidable ...
David Bowie: Gay Guerillas & Private Movies
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 24 February 1973
ALRIGHT, SO you're a rock singer out of Beckenham, Kent called David Bowie and you're hotter than a stolen atom bomb packed with pictures of ...
Film/DVD/TV Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Observer Music Monthly, 19 September 2004
Metallica: Some kind of Monster (Released: October 1) ...
Mick Farren: Devout Deviant Takes A Trip Down Memory Lane
Book Review by Charles Shaar Murray, The Independent, 7 December 2001
Mick Farren: Give the Anarchist a Cigarette ...
John Lee Hooker: The Boogie Man
Obituary by Charles Shaar Murray, MOJO, August 2001
JOHN LEE HOOKER DIED peacefully in his sleep on June 21, 2001, two months and one day short of what would have been his 84th ...
Patti Smith: Trampin' (Columbia)
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Observer Music Monthly, 21 March 2004
NINE ALBUMS IN just under thirty years: no-one can accuse Patti Smith of chronic overproduction or artistic profligacy. ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 13 April 1974
Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and Friends: Will The Circle Be Unbroken (United Artists)Dillards: Tribute To The American Duck (United Artists)Country Gazette: Don't Give Up Your ...
Book Review by Charles Shaar Murray, The Independent, 1 July 2000
I'm a Man: Sex, Gods And Rock'n'roll by Ruth Padel (Faber & Faber, £12.99, 409pp) ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 29 May 1982
IN A SENSE, it doesn't really matter whether one thinks of Eric Clapton as the man whose pioneering plagiarism helped black artists ranging from B.B. ...
Ray Charles: 'As Frank Sinatra Said, He Was The Only True Genius In Our Business'
Obituary by Charles Shaar Murray, The Independent, 11 June 2004
FOR ALL PRACTICAL purposes, Ray Charles invented modern soul music. By fusing the sensual and secular preoccupations of the blues and the galvanic fervour of ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 19 January 1974
WOWEE, that Alice Cooper is certainly a funny fellow an no mistake. ...
Music: The Key To Getting Rich, High And Laid
Book Review by Charles Shaar Murray, The Independent, 5 April 2001
Black Vinyl White Powder by Simon Napier-Bell (Ebury Press, £16.99) ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 24 March 1973
THERE ARE A large number of people in the music business who would be delighted to hear that Roxy Music had blown it. Their sudden ...
Jeff Beck, The White Stripes and friends: Royal Festival Hall, London
Live Review by Charles Shaar Murray, MOJO, November 2002
THE SHORT version: Jeff Beck is still the champ. The long version: American humorist Fran Lebowitz once wrote words to the effect that vegetables do ...
Steeleye Span Versus The Time Warp
Report and Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 10 March 1973
SOUND TECHNIQUES studios in Chelsea is not exactly the most luxurious of settings for musical activity. Boards, speakers and tape reels are scattered fairly haphazardly ...
Charley Patton: The Definitive Charley Patton
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, MOJO, June 2001
THERE'S 'DEFINITIVE', and then there's definitive. This complete collection – 58 performances on three CDs – of the recorded works of Charley Patton certainly earns ...
Alice Cooper: Madison Square Garden, NYC
Live Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 30 June 1973
LET'S ASSUME, just for the purpose of arguement, that you're a sensitive soul filled with love for your fellow humans, and that you really get ...
Lester Bangs: Joy And Rage Of A Dishevelled Rock Critic
Book Review by Charles Shaar Murray, The Independent, 23 September 2003
Mainlines, Blood Feasts And Bad Taste: A Lester Bangs Reader Lester Bangs; ed. John Morthland (Serpent's Tail; £9.99) ...
Elvis Costello: Elvis' Armed Forces
Comment by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 1979
ELVIS COSTELLO is Superman's fantasy of what Clark Kent should have been. He is Buddy Holly reincarnated as an axe-murderer. He is a nasty Woody ...
Nirvana: With the Lights Out (DGC)
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Observer Music Monthly, 12 December 2004
THE DOMINANT MOTIF of Nineties rock was backward time travel. In the UK, the likes of Supergrass and Oasis seemed to have discovered The Beatles ...
Adam Faith: The Singer and Showman
Obituary by Charles Shaar Murray, The Independent, 9 March 2003
LIKE MOST OF his 1950s contemporaries, Terry Nelhams from Acton, West London, received his first taste of the joys of music-making as a member of ...
The Kinks: Tales of Drunkenness and Cruelty
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, September 1989
REAL LIVE EARLY '60's beat combos don't just grow on trees. As the greenhouse summer of '89 wears on, The Who and The Rolling Stones ...
Purple Prose From The Many Voices Of The Blues
Book Review by Charles Shaar Murray, The Independent, 12 February 2001
David Dalton: Been Here And Gone: A Memoir Of The Blues (Methuen, 386pp; £10.99) ...
T. Rex: T.Rex: Electric Warrior
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, MOJO, October 2001
REMEMBER LITTLE Richard's immortal comment on the tragic trajectory of Elvis Presley? That wonderful epigram – "he got what he wanted, but he lost what ...
Graham Bond: The Death Of Graham Bond
Obituary by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 25 May 1974
TWENTY-FOUR HOURS before his death two weeks ago, Graham Bond phoned the NME offices. He sounded purposeful, optimistic, enthusiastic, and full of energy. ...
Patti Smith, Television: Down In The Scuzz With The Heavy Cult Figures
Report by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 7 June 1975
C.B.G.B. is a toilet. An impossibly scuzzy little club buried somewhere in the sections of the Village that the cab-drivers don't like to drive through. ...
Black Oak Arkansas, Black Sabbath: Black Sabbath/Black Oak Arkansas: Black Power
Report and Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 8 June 1974
IF JIM DANDY'S PANTS were any tighter they'd have hair growing out of them.Fringed suede jacket, fringed suede boots, and those white satin pants. Now, ...
Robert Palmer: Sneakin' Sally Through The Alley
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 31 August 1974
I ALWAYS felt more than a little sorry for Robert Palmer when he was in Vinegar Joe. ...
Elvis Presley: Presley/Clinton: Bill Has Left The Building
Book Review by Charles Shaar Murray, The Independent, 4 November 2000
Double Trouble: Bill Clinton and Elvis Presley in the land of no alternatives by Greil Marcus (Faber & Faber, £9.99, 248pp) ...
Frank Zappa: Relax, Frank. We Ain't No Liggers. A Few Of Us Just Came To Join In…
Report by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 5 October 1974
WHY IS Stephen Stills not smiling? To be more precise, why are those noble, rugged features sporting an expression roughly equivalent to that of a ...
Bob Marley & the Wailers: Hammersmith Odeon, London
Live Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 26 June 1976
RIOTS LAST NIGHT they said, marauding hordes of smart, mean kids swarming around getting illegal all over the place with property and the concession stands ...
Elvis Costello, Ian Dury, Dave Edmunds, Nick Lowe: The Stiff Tour: Stiffs Drugs And Rock 'N' Roll
Report by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 5 November 1977
"SEX AND drugs and rock and roll...sex and drugs and rock and roll...sex and drugs and rock and roll..." Hot damn, m'man, Leicester University is ...
Profile and Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, March 1987
NEW YORK CITY 1985. The Rolling Stones are holed up in the studio cutting tracks for Dirty Work, their first album under their new deal ...
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 6 July 1974
OL' COCONUT Bonce is back. Elton Schmelton himself in the too, too solid flesh, still opening up interview sessions by walking into the room at ...
Frank Zappa: How To Write, Sub, And Lay Out A Frank Zappa 'Lookin' Back', part 1
Retrospective by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 16 November 1974
"LEMME TELL YOU SOMETHING. You've got our recordings, you've seen us work a few times, you interviewed me three or four times, you've read a ...
Report and Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, The Face, October 1984
"WHAT WE'RE DOING here is bringing back the talkies," David Bowie announces self-mockingly. His livid mask recalls the white-faced clowns and demons of the Commedia ...
Frank Zappa: How To Sub And Lay Out A Frank Zappa Lookin' Back Part 2
Retrospective by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 23 November 1974
"PERHAPS THE most unique aspect of the Mother's work is the conceptual continuity of the group's output macrostructure. ...
Diana Ross: The Gospel According To Miss Ross
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, October 1987
"I'VE BEEN HERE so many times before," murmurs Diana Ross as she sweeps, surrounded by a clucking entourage, through the foyer of the EMI Records ...
Frank Zappa: How To Complete The Subbing And Layout Of A Very Long Frank Zappa Lookin' Back, Part 3
Retrospective by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 30 November 1974
THE ALBUM and movie of 200 Motels erupted late in 1971. Both received near-unanimous critical meat-axe jobs and both were ignominious commercial failures. United Artists, ...
Report and Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, April 1988
THE BIGGEST FOOTBALL stadium in the world is the Maracana in Rio de Janeiro: a big game such as a World Cup Final can pack ...
Joe Jackson: Crisp. In A Huge In America Sort Of Way
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 10 February 1979
THE HANDS spell nerves: balled into fists and rammed into the pockets of the pinstripe jacket. The elbows jerk and the knees twitch, the face ...
Jeff Beck: Music And Cars And Sex…
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 9 November 1974
A DIGESTIVE BISCUIT is poised, somewhat uneasily, a few inches away from Jeff Beck's celebrated nasty leer. ...
The Beatles: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, July 1987
AND ONCE THE tumult and the shouting have died, and life returns to something resembling normality... Sgt. Pepper remains a central pillar of the mythology ...
Robert Wyatt: I Played Robert Wyatt At 78rpm And Saw God
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 26 October 1974
THERE'S SOMETHING extra special about green suede boots. A certain devil-may-care attitude, a touch of fearless dandyism combined with a sense of the earthy and ...
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, September 1987
"I'M VERY, VERY self-critical. I'm very critical of others, but I'm also very critical of my own work and there's no-one that could possibly put ...
Randy Newman: The Back Room Boy
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, August 1987
"There's no excuse at all. It's just bad career planning, bad work habits, bad discipline...and I keep doin' it." ...
Mick Ronson - Play Don't Worry
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 4 January 1975
DUNNO ABOUT YOU, but from where I'm sitting it seems as though you can't go on saying that someone has potential for too long unless ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 11 January 1975
I CANNOT THINK of any legal way in which the Baker-Gurvitz Army can be prevented from Becoming Huge, so maybe there's something to Adrian Ben ...
Grand Funk Railroad: Grand Funk - All the Girls in the World Beware
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 18 January 1975
...I GOT TAR on my teeth but I don't care/I got dark brown stains in my underwear... ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 18 January 1975
ONE DAY WHEN it was raining, I swore a great and terrible oath. ...
Kinky Friedman: Kinky Friedman
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 18 January 1975
ONE LEARNS FROM the customary reliable sources-from-which-one-learns things that Kinky Friedman's original ideas for the title of this album included "Come Back Little Kinky" and ...
Three Dog Night: Greatest Hits
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 25 January 1975
IT WOULD BE an amusing little taskenheimer indeed for some rock-oriented socio-anthropologist to work out exactly why Three Dog Night were at one time The ...
Bruce Springsteen - The brilliant, the awful and the bumfluff shuffle
Comment by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 1 February 1975
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN IS an excellent rhythm guitarist, which just about compensates for the fact that he grows a terrible beard. ...
Bo Diddley - Bo's a Lumberjack!
Essay by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 8 February 1975
THE WHOLE THING about Bo Diddley was that he was by far the weirdest and craziest musician ever to come out of either blues or ...
Elvis Presley: The Promised Land
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 8 February 1975
IT HAS ALWAYS been accepted as an article of faith by ladies and gentlemen in the critical profession that Elvis Presley is not dead. ...
Flying Burrito Brothers: Sneeky Pete Kleinow
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 15 February 1975
SNEEKY PETE KLEINOW looks like you'd expect a veteran pedal-steel player to look. Green shirt with an elaborate marijuana-leaf motif emblazoned there-on, neatly pressed, white ...
Albert King: I Wanna Get Funky
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 15 February 1975
I WANNA GET Funky is the best album I've heard all year. ...
Alice Cooper: Welcome to My Nightmare
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 22 February 1975
ETHYL'S FRIGID AS an eskimo pie, she's cool in bed/she oughta be, 'cuz Ethyl's dead... ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 1 March 1975
AIN'T NO GETTING round it: 10cc make brilliant records. ...
Elton John: The Life And Times Of Elton John, part 1
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 22 February 1975
Part one: how the sand kicked in his face turned to gold-dust after all ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 22 February 1975
ONLY ONE OBJECTION to this album, so let's put it right up front. ...
The Righteous Brothers - Give it to the People
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 4 January 1975
ANOTHER ILLUSION SHATTERED. ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 22 March 1975
IAN? IAN? ...
Jonathan King: A Rose in a Fisted Glove
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 22 March 1975
WHEN JONATHAN KING first manifested his presence upon this already sufficiently troubled planet he was able to masquerade as a genuinely provocative presence, mainly because ...
Grand Funk Railroad: Grand Funk at Wembley Stadium
Live Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 26 April 1975
LORD, LORD, WHY hast thou forsaken me? ...
The Sensational Alex Harvey Band: Alex Harvey - Thou shalt have no other punk before me…
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 3 May 1975
AND NOW, ALEX Harvey, your starter for ten. What is rock and roll? ...
Bachman Turner Overdrive: Bachman-Turner Overdrive - And this isn't all they do
Profile and Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 17 May 1975
"WHEN I'M TRYING to do a solo, I'll try and play what Jeff Beck would play, or I'll try and play what Eric Clapton would ...
Al Kooper - Al's Big Deal and Unclaimed Freight: An Al Kooper Anthology
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 21 June 1975
AL KOOPER IS good at lots of things. ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 21 June 1975
IN WHICH JOHNNY Cash meets up, quite casual-like, with the '70s and discovers that even though they don't really have a whole lot in common, ...
The Rolling Stones - Made in the Shade and Metamorphosis
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 28 June 1975
ECONOMICS: When a famous big-time rock and roll band reaches that particular special point in its year when it's time to pack the clean socks ...
Frank Zappa - One Size Fits All
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 19 July 1975
THE FIRST WORD of this review is "deteriorate." It means to Lose Your Magic. ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 3 May 1975
LET'S GET ONE thing straight right up front. ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 19 July 1975
MY H.A.L. PRINT-OUT on Ron Wood sez that his guitar-playing veers from the sublime to the ridiculous (i.e., his playing on Rod Stewart's solo albums ...
10cc, Man, Steeleye Span: Man, Steeleye Span and 10cc at Cardiff Castle
Live Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 19 July 1975
DEKE LEONARD IS getting incoherent. ...
Bob Marley & the Wailers: The Lyceum, London
Live Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 26 July 1975
"HEY, MON... WHAT are all these whites doin' here? They not here last time the Wailers play..." ...
The Kursaal Flyers - Chocs Away
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 2 August 1975
THE KURSAAL FLYERS' entry into the Wonderful World Of Wax is neat, tidy, restrained, unobtrusive, and extremely well-behaved, more like a third album than a ...
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 2 August 1975
"BASICALLY, YOU'RE TALKING about a lorry driver who was thrust into it because he had a number one for seven weeks." ...
Live Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 9 August 1975
THE FIRST THING that hits you when you see Be-Bop Deluxe in their current incarnation (or, for that matter, listen to said incarnation's Futurama album ...
The Kinks: The Kinks Live at Kelvin Hall
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 16 August 1975
IT'S AMAZING. BY now, Pye must've incorporated virtually every track The Kinks ever cut into one or other of their multifarious compilation albums, and in ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 20 September 1975
FOR ALL PRACTICAL purposes, Phoenix is Labelle's third album. Forget anything prior to Pressure Cookin': those albums were by some other people and are of ...
Elton John, part 2: They Laughed When I Stood Up To Play The Piano
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 1 March 1975
NME: Earlier, you said that when you first met Taupin his lyrics were somewhat influenced by the Flower Power fad. It was a period when ...
Elton John: Rock Of The Westies
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 25 October 1975
FACT: ELTON JOHN is one of the nicest people ever to touch ground while walking. ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 1 November 1975
SHAVED FISH is all of John Lennon's post-Beatle singles scooped up and dumped onto one album, spiced up with a few relevant album tracks and ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 8 November 1975
THIS IS IT funk y'allThis is it right hereThis is it do ya hear me girlsAnd well they can't do it forya no nastier than ...
Bob Dylan: Plymouth Memorial Hall, Mass. USA
Live Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 15 November 1975
BOB DYLAN'S ROLLING Thunder Revue hit the Plymouth Memorial Hall at 8.20 p.m. on Tuesday November 4.That's Plymouth, Massachusetts, USA, by the way, and it ...
Jimi Hendrix: Midnight Lightning and For Real
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 15 November 1975
AND THE GHOST walks once more. ...
Dr. Feelgood: Hammersmith Odeon, London
Live Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 15 November 1975
DEFINITELY a weird one. ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 22 November 1975
FIRST ALBUMS THIS good are pretty damn few and far between. ...
Climax Blues Band: Stamp Album
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 13 December 1975
I'M SICK AND tired of bloody good bands. ...
Elton John part 3: Maybe It's Because I'm A Socialist…
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 8 March 1975
TELL US, El, what is Rock all about? Having a bloody good time. When I was a kid and went to see those Larry Parnes-Billy ...
Report by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 23 August 1975
WHERE THE HELL is Lou Reed?Good question, if a trifle academic, but eminently suited for whiling away times in the coach by discussing. ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, October 1986
THE CAREER OF The Human League – from Sheffield art-school beginnings to their current miraculous return from the dumper – has been a comedy of ...
David Bowie: Station To Station
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 10 January 1976
"A sixty thousand word novel is one image corrected fifty-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine times"– Samuel R. Delaney ...
Dr. Feelgood: Dr Feelgood: Pure Essex Voodoo
Retrospective and Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, August 1987
ONE OF THE few remaining saving graces of rock'n'roll is that its most compelling legends do not always belong to those who achieve the greatest ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 24 January 1976
ARGUABLY, THERE IS no more exciting rock artist to listen to than one whose time has come; one whose art (not to mention attitude, appearance, ...
Speedy Keen: Y'Know Wot I Mean?
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 21 February 1976
ONE IF THE many things of which any court of law would instantaneously acquit Speedy Keen (along with singing in a thunderous bass voice and ...
The Yardbirds: The Yardbirds Featuring Eric Clapton, The Yardbirds Featuring Jeff Beck
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 27 March 1976
STRANGELY ENOUGH, the thing that hits you first about these albums is not so much the excellence of the two gentlemen named in the titles ...
Buffy Sainte-Marie: Sweet America
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 3 April 1976
IT TOOK ME a while to figure out where Buffy Sainte-Marie was at with Soldier Blue. ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 10 April 1976
IRRATIONAL SCHMIR-RATIONAL; it still don't seem right to see a Man album without a United Artists logo on the label. ...
The Rolling Stones: Rolling Stones: Black And Blue
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 24 April 1976
"THE ROLLING STONES are a really good band, but, like, I consider them like a boys' band because they don't play mens music. They don't ...
Ian Hunter: An American Alien Boy
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 15 May 1976
THERE EXISTS A subtle difference between a tax exile and an expatriate. ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 19 June 1976
ABOUT EIGHT OR nine months ago I was preposterously drunk in the Bottom Line club in New York watching the Roger McGuinn Band. ...
Michael Chapman: Drury Lane, London
Live Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 26 June 1976
IT'S TERRIBLE HOW people sometimes get the wrong idea, it really is. ...
The Sensational Alex Harvey Band: SAHB Stories
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 17 July 1976
ROUND ABOUT THE third revamp of Captain Marvel (that's Marvel's Captain Marvel, not the other one), they changed his billing from The Sensational Captain Marvel ...
Quincy Jones: Back On The Block
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, January 1990
ON THE FACE of it, this is where the man who was called 'Q' even before this magazine generously allows his address book to make ...
Muddy Waters: Chess Records Round-Up
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, April 1990
THE NAME OF Chess Records spells "Chicago Blues" just as clearly as Levi's spells jeans, Zippo spells lighters and Special Brew spells headaches. ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, June 1990
CHRISSIE HYNDE CAN certainly never be accused of flooding the market: barring a Best Of, Packed is only The Pretenders' fifth album in 12 years. ...
Robert Cray: The Robert Cray Band: Midnight Stroll
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, October 1990
ANOTHER ROBERT CRAY album: we all know what to expect by now, right? ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, October 1990
ONE EASY WAY of telling who the record industry considers to be this year's hot producer is to check the credits of the latest Dylan ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, October 1990
LIVING COLOUR'S CHOICE of guest stars for their debut album Vivid was a significant one: Mick Jagger (who had produced their original demos and virtually ...
Various Artists: The Blues Guitar Box
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, January 1991
FORTY-THREE tracks featuring 39 guitarists for over three hours of music: if this bouncing, bulging blue box demonstrates anything other than the blues' current high ...
Fats Domino: My Blue Heaven: The Best Of Fats Domino (Volume 1)
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, February 1991
IN IDLE MOMENTS, it's often mildly amusing to visualise the stars of yesteryear, relaxing backstage at some oldies package show and taking bets on who ...
Bob Marley & the Wailers: Bob Marley: Talkin' Blues
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, March 1991
IT IS A popular truism that the obsessiveness with which popular culture picks through the bones of its most illustrious dead is the sign of ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, March 1991
FOR A FEW good years in the mid-'70s, Dublin cowboys Thin Lizzy bought the pop virtues of literate, evocative wordplay, danceable, funky grooves and a ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, October 1991
TALK ABOUT COOL: it's as if John Lee Hooker is so relaxed he can afford to be late for his own album. ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, October 1991
SHANE MACGOWAN HAS set himself a truly heroic task: in the seven-year lurch of The Pogues, he has distilled an aromatically personal poetic myth from ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, January 1992
DETROIT'S ECLECTIC, MILITANT-HIPPY combo MC5 were the ultimate in late '60s punkadelia. Though they never sold any significant quantity of records, the influence of their ...
Robert Johnson: Peter Guralnick: Searching For Robert Johnson
Book Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, September 1990
THE POWERFUL FASCINATION which the legend of Robert Johnson still exerts over virtually all blues fans is derived, in almost equal proportion, from his genius ...
Quincy Jones: Mr Jones, I Presume!
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, April 1990
THE THREE DUMBEST questions you could possibly ask this month are, "Do the ambulance workers deserve more pay?", "Is Mike Gatting a pillock?" and "Does ...
The Doors: John Densmore: Riders On The Storm
Book Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, April 1991
GOD PRESERVE US from brilliant pricks. John Densmore played drums alongside one in The Doors for six years and he's still attempting to recover from ...
The Sex Pistols: Jon Savage: England's Dreaming
Book Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, November 1991
EVEN THOUGH 15 YEARS have passed since the release of 'Anarchy In The UK', there has never been a book which has satisfactorily documented Britain's ...
X-Ray Spex: Poly Styrene Is Still Strictly Roots
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 13 May 1978
SUNDAY NIGHT in Croydon, and Poly Styrene's voice is shot. Flu goes for the throat like a cornered rat: when the victim's a singer, the ...
John Lee Hooker: The Voodoo Guru
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, February 1990
ON 74TH & BROADWAY, the Gotham fog freezes your lungs with every breath, but inside the Beacon Theatre, Van Morrison has just spent something under ...
ZZ Top: Welcome To Weirdsville…
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, November 1990
ROBERT CRAY'S favourite ZZ Top story: the last time the Robert Cray Band played San Antonio, Billy Gibbons called up and requested tickets. Come show-time, ...
Ian Dury: How Not To Get Lumbered
Report and Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 13 December 1980
IT'S DARK and it's cold and it's raining: a wind with a grudge against warm flesh knifes through the clothing and the matted thing behind ...
Elvis Costello: Holocaust In Microcosm
Report by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 18 March 1978
"HEY ELVIIIIIS!!!" There's this blonde gumdrop down the front, see, shaking it down in that demure stoned way that hippie girls seem to favour, and ...
The Beastie Boys: Paul's Boutique
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, August 1989
PRANKSTERS TO THE last, The Beastie Boys slide into their comeback album so quietly and casually that you double check the volume knob on your ...
Little Richard: "I Am The Rill Thang!"
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, December 1986
GOOD GOSH A-MIGHTY...it's Little Richard. A little fuller in the face, a little thicker in the waist, but there he is in a Mayfair Hotel ...
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 18 March 1978
EVERYONE GETS that glazed marzipan look in make-up. Maybe it's some weird chemical that they put in the booze in the Artists' Bar at Television ...
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, July 1991
"I'M BLOWING MY COVER," Elvis Costello announces mournfully, as the sun, knowing no better, blazes happily down on Notting Hill Gate. ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, June 1991
AN ASSEMBLAGE of 71 tracks and slightly less than five hours of music, weighing in at four CDs or cassettes (committed vinylists are, unfortunately, totally ...
The Rolling Stones: Too Rolled To Stone
Report by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 8 May 1976
THE NICE THING about the law of gravity is that it applies to everybody. ...
Patti Smith: Welcome To The Monkey House
Report by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 23 October 1976
"IT'S LIKE...I'm not ever gonna be a hundred per cent cool, y'know...I mean, for you to like even try to be a hundred per cent ...
The Bay City Rollers: The View From Seat A6
Live Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 25 September 1976
"Then one day I found a perfect plan,I shake my ass and sing in a rock and roll band,From now on there'll be no compromisin'Rock ...
Wings: Paul McCartney: …No Not Really In A Way Actually As It Happens…
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 26 July 1975
VENUS AND MARS ARE LATE. The sandwiches don't care, though. Even though they're the same day's vintage – fresh, soft white bread-triangles housing excerpts from ...
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 4 March 1978
"CBGB & OMFUG" is what it says over the door of Hilly Kristal's rock and roll dive down on New York's Bowery. That's the club ...
Report and Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 6 December 1975
ONCE UPON a time in the early '60s when everybody suddenly started getting paranoid about advertising men, and half the people you met were convinced ...
Shirley Goodman, Sylvia Robinson: All Platinum Records: My Wife, The President…
Report and Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 4 October 1975
IT'S NICE AND cool and dark in the back room of the bar, and you can sit in your booth and nurse a beer and ...
Sex, Drugs And Violence In Rock: The Sexual Language Of Rock Part 1
Essay by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 28 February 1976
"Eddie please write me one line,Tell me your love is only mine,Please Eddie, don't make me wait so long,You left me last September,To return to ...
Sex, Drugs And Violence In Rock: The Sexual Language Of Rock Part 2
Essay by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 6 March 1976
"I'm gonna pick you up nowAnd carry you away,So you'd better pack up now, baby,Packin' up today,Here I come, just a big bad man,When I ...
Report by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 8 November 1975
"BEAT ON the brat, beat on the brat, beat on the brat with a baseball bat..." ...
Bob Dylan: The View From Seat BB59
Live Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 24 June 1978
THE FIRST NIGHT it rained, and it seemed that the atmosphere would be nostalgic to the last: all of us in our massed thousands gathered ...
The Byrds, David Crosby, Crosby Stills and Nash, Crosby Stills Nash & Young: David Crosby
Profile by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 19 April 1975
IT STARTED with trademark objects, really. When The Byrds got their hit with 'Mr Tambourine Man', Jim McGuinn established himself as the one with those ...
David Bowie: Tin Machine: Versus
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, October 1991
PICTURE THIS: you are in a sex shop in Sydney (for whatever twisted reasons people have for patronising such institutions), and this scholarly-looking gent with ...
The Sex Pistols: The Social Rehabilitation of the Sex Pistols
Report and Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 6 August 1977
THE PROSPEROUS CYBORGS at the next table in the backroom of this expensive Stockholm eating-place are sloshing down their coffee as fast as they possibly ...
Cher, LaBelle: LaBelle: It Happened In Hollywood
Report by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 4 January 1975
IT HAPPENED in Hollywood.To be precise it happened on The Cher Show. ...
Muddy Waters: The Blues Had A Baby… And They Called It Rock 'N' Roll
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 30 April 1977
"THE KIND OF BLUES I play there's no money in it. You makes a good livin' when you gets established like I did, but you ...
Suzi Quatro: For Your Information, She Happens To Be A Lady
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 25 January 1975
"ALISTAIR...CAN YOU go through your solo again and count exactly how many bars you need for it?" ...
Essay by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 20 September 1975
On the fifth anniversary of his death (Sept. 18, 1970) a personal view of the Titan Axeman ...
LaBelle: Voulez-Vous Coucher Avec Moi Ce Soir?
Report and Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 8 March 1975
"THE RE-VO-LU-SHUN...will not be televaaaaaazed," declaims Patti LaBelle, staring into the audience from the stage of the Congressgebouwe in the Hague. ...
Overview by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, July 1990
He began making records as a control-fixated 18-year-old studio rat from Minneapolis. Ten albums later Prince had become the definitive pop icon of the '80s. ...
10cc: The Punk And I or Two Jews Blues
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 15 March 1975
...In which two nice young men of Hebraic extraction (LOL CRÈME and CHARLES SHAAR MURRAY) engage in heated debate about 10 c.c.'s collective attitude. Or ...
Diana Ross: Red Hot Rhythm And Blues
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, July 1987
Miss Ross: not exactly on the front burner, but cooking nonetheless. ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 6 September 1980
AH, THE shimmering dust-free corridors, the pleasure machines, the limitless possibilities opened up by microtechnology, the disturbing effects of cybernetic leisure upon the fragile human ...
Punk: I Fought The Biz And The Biz Won (How We Got Here From There)
Overview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 1 February 1986
PUNK: IT MADE OUR DAY...It's been ten bleak winters since...well, we look back in hunger at the years youth reclaimed rock and for a while ...
Report and Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, November 1989
That deaf, dumb and blind kid is back, along with all the unsavoury characters – Cousin Kevin, Uncle Ernie, the Acid Queen – who made ...
Buddy Guy, Junior Wells: Buddy Guy and Junior Wells: Why Are These Guys Grinning?
Report and Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 5 August 1978
...They've been 'between contracts' since 1969, there's hardly any such thing as a black audience for their music and on their recent visit to London ...
Retrospective by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 25 December 1976
AFTERMATH CATCHES the Rolling Stones in transit: somewhere in between pissing on garage walls and the mass dope busts, after their first long spell on ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 23 October 1976
NOW HERE'S what you do for openers. You get someone to blindfold you, put boxing gloves on your hands, tie a maddened rhino to your ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 10 April 1976
M'lawds, ladies 'n' gennelmen, presenting the new album by... ...
Robert Johnson: Robert Johnson: The Complete Recordings
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, December 1990
And the days keeps on worryin' me There's a hellhound on my trail ...
Howard Devoto, Magazine: Magazine: Howard Devoto's Enigma Variations
Profile and Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 25 February 1978
HOWARD DEVOTO gives good face. Unlined and triangular, topped with a vast expanse of forehead; the kind that popular folklore maintains is the unmistakeable dead-giveaway ...
Ray Charles: The Definitive Ray Charles
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, MOJO, January 2002
Forty-six tracks from 48 years – 40 of which are from the '50s and '60s, but them's the breaks – a definitive encapsulation of a ...
Bob Dylan, George Harrison: George Harrison et al: Concert for Bangla Desh
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, MOJO, March 2002
The first hi-profile multi-star benefit concert of the post-psychedelic era. Harrison, Dylan and Shankar strut their stuff alongside Clapton, Ringo and Leon Russell. ...
Live Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 3 April 1976
THE KID was good. I have to hand it to him: he was good. ...
Alice Cooper: The Man Who Ate Alice Cooper
Retrospective by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 15 February 1975
Yes, once again CHARLES SHAAR MURRAY, Regius Professor of Logic, Rhetoric, Trash Aesthetics, and Hohner Super Vamper, leaps forth with a mouthful of scintillating verbosity ...
David Bowie: Did We Use Him? Did We Abuse Him?
Essay by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 2 August 1975
Well, he's acting like we did, so maybe there's something in it. Two recent and much-maligned Bowie albums are herein re-evaluated for your reading pleasure... ...
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 22 July 1978
TOMMY RAMONE don't wanna be a pinhead no more (that's assuming you thought he was a pinhead in the first place – in which case ...
Angelic Upstarts, Jimmy Pursey: Jimmy Pursey: The Cockney Kid Is Innocent
Report and Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 6 December 1980
So who are you gonna be today then, Jim? The new Messiah or the little boy lost? Robespierre or the Urban Spaceman? An all-round good ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 20 March 1976
LAURA NYRO: fringed red velvet shawl over a lamp, candlelight, one line of cocaine on a mirror, a half-empty glass of red wine on the ...
Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich: Dozy Beaky Mick & Tich: Dingwalls, Camden
Live Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 21 October 1978
HIPSTER PANTS held up with two-inch-wide white belts, op-art shirts with bloody great monstrous collars that hang down to armpit level and then button down ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 28 October 1978
THIRD ALBUMS generally mean that it's shut-up-or-get-cut-up time: when an act's original momentum has drained away and they've got to cover the distance from a ...
The Damned: The Torments of The Damned
Report by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 7 January 1978
(a somewhat sobering cautionary tale of our time)Charles Shaar Murray asks, is that a light at the end of the tunnel – or another oncoming ...
Retrospective by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 21 January 1978
The Department of Cryptic Headlines presents a retrospective view of THE WHO's Quadrophenia, noting that Mr Pete Townshend's Mod vision is as valid now as ...
Arthur Brown: Live at Speakeasy, London
Live Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 11 September 1976
THE LAST time I saw Arthur Brown work he perpetrated one of the most numblingly embarrassing performances I can recall, one that still festers in ...
Terence Trent D'Arby: Neither Fish Nor Flesh
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, November 1989
"PEOPLE, LISTEN to me," announces Terence Trent D'Arby over the intro of 'I Don't Want To Bring The Gods Down', "this is not a film, ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 26 March 1977
BECK IN Ongoing Fusion Situation (he blows it). Bloomfield Simply Plays The Blues (he makes it). ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, December 1989
A CERTAIN self-deprecating irony is evident in the title of Eric Clapton's latest: a journeyman is certainly what he has become in his post-God years. ...
George Thorogood & The Destroyers: Move It On Over
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 11 November 1978
THE BOTTLENECK that ate Delaware returns to your hearts and turntables: no steps forward, no steps back. Move it On Over is this or any ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 11 November 1978
"YOU ARE not in touch with the modern world, sucker," hissed the obnoxious little voice in my ear. 'Today's kids don't give a flying one ...
The Beatles: Silly Charlie and the Not-So-Red-Hot Pepper
Essay by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 25 May 1974
Will Ringo get the mums? Can George hold the mystics? Who was the Walrus? Is Charles Shaar Murray a loony? Only the last question need ...
Ian Hunter: What A Hunter He Turned Out To Be
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 14 May 1977
ONE THING YOU GOTTA HAND to Ian Hunter: the old bastard knows how to make an entrance. ...
Jim Croce: Photographs And Memories
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 27 November 1976
JIM CROCE was a witty, adroit songwriter with a dual penchant for sharp, good-humoured barroom-jive badman songs and love songs which ranged from the genuinely ...
David Bowie: Total Sensory Overload
Report by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 26 May 1973
Following the controversial London Earls Court gig, Charles Shaar Murray and photographer Joe Stevens check out Bowie on tour – and find a riot goin' ...
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 11 February 1978
What do all these bands have in common? ANSWER: They're all EDDIE AND THE HOTRODS, slidin' on the moment and trying not to fall off. ...
Report and Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 2 June 1973
LEON WANTED US TO LIVE IN HIS HOUSE...WE WEREN'T INTERESTED NEEDLESS TO SAY ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 14 October 1978
SKIP JAMES scares me. ...
Hawkwind: In The Hall Of The Mountain Grill
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 7 September 1974
DON'T TELL anybody, but yours adoring thinks that he's finally got this bunch sussed. ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 16 December 1978
IF ROCK stars had the kind of union that insisted on overtime bans and frowned on over-productivity, George Clinton would undoubtedly be the subject of ...
The Rolling Stones: Dirty Work
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 29 March 1986
IN THE 1970s, The Rolling Stones were a distinctly unlovely proposition: fronted by a jet-setter and a junkie and churning out a series of tedious ...
Captain Beefheart And The Magic Band: Doc At The Radar Station
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 20 September 1980
IN THE Beefheart Universe, you see everything that you see in other places, but it always seems different. ...
Report and Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 31 March 1973
THE BECK, BOGERT and Appice album is completed and virtually upon us, and it leads us to two inescapable conclusions. The first is simple: man ...
Muddy Waters: Dingwalls, London
Live Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 23 December 1978
FAST TALK/hard bargain: as Mr Muddy Waters was spending a few days of his 64th year in Great Britain in the faintly congruous role of ...
Report and Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 17 December 1977
AN ANECDOTE: hopeful young Irish band up in London for the first time. Their bass player – Philip Lynott by name – is exploring the ...
Henry Cow: Gerroff An' Milk It
Profile and Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 31 August 1974
CHARLES SHAAR MURRAY wanted to call it 'How I listened to HENRY COW – and lived' ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 8 June 1974
ONE THING you gotta admit about Steve Harley, and that is that he does the funniest interviews since Marc Bolan. He even opens up Cocky ...
John Lennon: Walls And Bridges
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 5 October 1974
IT'S A FINE, warm day here in London, Johnny. What's the weather like in New York? ...
Robert Wyatt: Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London
Live Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 14 September 1974
EVEN THOUGH the gig was due to start at 8.30, Drury Lane had started to clog up with earnest-looking hippies nearly two hours before the ...
The Sensational Alex Harvey Band: Alex Harvey: The Meat Of The Matter
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 25 June 1977
A discussion of the respective virtues of sheep's brains, raw mince, or monkey's brains sucked through a straw. Plus a bit about ALEX HARVEY. ...
Maggie Bell, The Pretty Things: Rainbow Theatre, London
Live Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 12 October 1974
OKAY, FIRST things first. When Maggie Bell's done a few more gigs (and maybe even a couple more rehearsals) with her new band, then there's ...
Man: This Is The Man Band. In 6 Years They've Had Six Lineups. It Looks Like This One May Do It
Report and Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 9 February 1974
TRANSLATED FROM THE HERO'S TONGUE BY CHARLES SHAAR MURRAY, WHO'S ABOUT AS WELSH AS A NICE JEWISH BOY CAN GET THESE DAYS... ...
Bunny Wailer: Tribute (Solomonic import)
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 16 January 1982
"...and we know we shall win because we are confident of the victory of good over evil." ...
Bruce Springsteen: The Sprucing Of The Springbean
Report by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 11 October 1975
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: Man, Myth or Monster? CHARLES SHAAR MURRAY reports from Houston, Texas ...
David Bowie: Bowie-ing Out at The Chateau
Report by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 4 August 1973
CHARLES SHAAR MURRAY WITH THE MAIN MAN IN FRANCE. WORK ON NEW PROJECTS, REPORTS MURRAY, IS GOING AHEAD DELICIOUSLY IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 26 October 1974
IS THERE life on Uranus? Dunno. Things were pretty quiet last time I looked. On the other hand, Tony Defries' little redhead has a new ...
Millie Jackson: Dominion, London
Live Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 10 March 1984
WHY IS this woman not in the movies? ...
Beck, Bogert and Appice, Vanilla Fudge: Vanilla Fudge: From Pizza to Fudge
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 28 September 1974
SO WHAT did happen to Beck, Bogert and Appice?. ...
Bruce Springsteen: Born In The USA (CBS)
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 4 August 1984
IN BRUCE Springsteen's 1984, America – the original big country where dreams stay with you – has contracted; it is now a very small country ...
Profile and Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 23 September 1978
Mister DAVE 'Are You Sure Chuck Played It Thaat Way?' EDMUNDS, the celebrated Welsh lickologist, persevered and learned those classic solos note for note. So ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 3 March 1973
IT'S BEEN nearly 18 months since we heard anything new from Paul Butterfield. In 1971 he released Sometimes I Just Feel Like Smilin' which was, ...
Dr. Feelgood: Hope & Anchor, London
Live Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 11 September 1976
REAL CASE of dejaja vuvu it was, the night the Feelgoods played the Hope. To readers outside London the Hope and Anchor may just be ...
Graham Parker, The Rumour: Graham Parker: Shades Of The Pink Parker
Report and Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 22 October 1977
NINE WAYS TO AVOID THE HEAT TREATMENT ...
X-Ray Spex: X-Ray-Spex: Germ Free Adolescents
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 18 November 1978
SMASH THE barriers and the truth shall make you free (as long as stocks last, anyway): barriers between humans and objects, between the natural (sic) ...
Isaac Hayes: Rainbow Theatre, London
Live Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 3 February 1973
ISAAC HAYES, they tell me, is the leading light of the new black life-style. Black Moses, yet. ...
Roxy Music: The Man Who Put Sequins into Middle Eights
Interview by Nick Kent, Ian MacDonald, Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 20 January 1973
The BRYAN FERRY interview, in which the Roxy mastermind meets IAN MacDONALD, CHARLES SHAAR MURRAY and NICK KENT ...
Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show: Dr. Hook & The Medicine Show: Sloppy Seconds (CBS)
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 17 February 1973
NOW DON'T get me wrong. I ain't no weenybop, but I have to admit that I really dig this Dr. Hook album here. Hell, I ...
J. Geils Band: Live — Full House (Atlantic)
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 6 January 1973
THERE COMES a time in each man's life when he needs to have his brain tissues reduced to absolute smouldering wreckage. ...
The Faces: Ooh La La (Warner Bros.)
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 7 April 1973
FIRST THERE'S this rolling piano lick, then in comes Ronnie Wood's guitar. Nice tough chording, anchored down with a bent note descending to the root ...
The Adverts: Crossing The Red Sea With The Adverts
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 25 February 1978
ONCE UPON a time, the fastest way of revealing yourself as an Old Fart Who Didn't Understand The New Wave was to allege – in ...
B.B. King: Uneasy Lies The Head That Wears The Crown
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, February 1993
From the no-horse town of Ita Bena, Mississippi, to the planet's most prestigious culture palaces, Riley "Blues Boy" King has spent half a century as ...
Elton John: Don't Shoot Me, I'm Only the Piano Player (DJM)
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 27 January 1973
WELL, WHADAYA know – another fine Elton John album. Despite sneers, calumny and general foulness, the former Reg just keeps on writin', playin', singin' and ...
David Bowie, The Troggs: David Bowie: Zigs and Troggs and Backless Nuns
Report by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 27 October 1973
IT DOESN'T MATTER who's playing. The Marquee's always a drag on Saturday nights. It's hot, crowded, uncomfortable, and noisy, and it poses a severe visibility ...
The Edgar Broughton Band, Jeff Beck, Pink Floyd: British Psychedelia: More Zits Than Hitz…
Guide by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 26 April 1975
It's dream-time in Compilationsville once again, amigos. This week CHARLES SHAAR MURRAY does his worst to induce EMI into issuing Volume Two in his discocartography ...
Frank Zappa: Hammersmith Odeon, London
Live Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 4 February 1978
"FRANK ZAPPA is the leader and musical director of the Mothers Of Invention. His performances in person with the group are rare. His personality means ...
Report by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 12 May 1973
ANGIE BOWIE is a gas. She really is. She's sitting between Cherry Vanilla and an ice-bucket at a table in the colossally elegant main dining ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 13 October 1973
I GUESS I ought to be grateful to Status Quo. If I hadn't heard this album, I wouldn't have thought of writing the "Heavy Metal" ...
The Sensational Alex Harvey Band: Alex Harvey: Delivered From The Jaws Of Death
Report by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 20 September 1975
...We proudly present the intrepid ALEX HARVEY, fresh from being restrained from swimming in the shark tank and currently engaged in entertaining the young people ...
Steeleye Span: Parcel of Rogues (Chrysalis)
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 14 April 1973
IT WOULD be considerably more than a pity if Steeleye Span, that most English of bands, have to become superstars in the States before really ...
Peter Guralnick: Sweet Soul Music
Book Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 19 July 1986
FA-FA-FA-FA-FA-FAB ...
Buffy Sainte-Marie: The Best Of… (Vanguard)
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 7 April 1973
BUFFY SAINTE-Marie is one of the special ones. She's one of the few performers guaranteed to move me to tears, and side two of She ...
Flo & Eddie: Flo and Eddie: Flo & Eddie
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 26 May 1973
MR. HOWARD KAYLAN and Mr. Mark Volman are a somewhat literal-minded pair. When they originally left the protectve aegis of Frank Zappa to strike out ...
Graham Parker: Another Grey Area
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 13 March 1982
OH, DEAR. Talk about unfortunate titles... ...
Diana Ross: Rapping with Lady D
Report and Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 14 April 1973
THE DISTINGUISHED-looking old gentlemen in the red braided uniform accepts my coat with an expression of mild distaste and ushers me into the Pine Room ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 27 July 1974
I'VE ALWAYS HAD me suspicions about Johnny Cash. ...
The Faces, Jeff Beck, Rod Stewart: Rod Stewart: The Scarecrow Harlequin
Overview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 20 January 1973
STRANGE AS it may seem, there was a time when Rod Stewart used to hide behind Jeff Beck's amplifiers and only come out front if ...
New Barbarians: A Tale Of Two Rock 'n' Roll Addicts
Report by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 26 May 1979
AWWWWWW MAMA! I wanna tell ya 'bout Texas radio and the big beat. ...
The Clash, Suicide: The Music Machine, London
Live Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 5 August 1978
TIME HAS come today. Third of four Music Machine gigs and – surprise! – the ritual bottling of Suicide appears to have been omitted for ...
Eric Clapton, The Who: Pete Townshend part1: The True Saga Of Clapton's Rainbow Gig
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 24 February 1973
IF YOU TURN up at the famous Track office in Soho's historic Old Compton Street, you're sure of a big surprise – there's a glitzy ...
The Who: Pete Townshend part 2: If The Who Split We'd Really Have To Own Up
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 3 March 1973
PETER TOWNSHEND is an amiable sort of dude. He sits in Track Records' office, with booze and dog to hand, and talks about anything that ...
James Brown: Rainbow Theatre, London
Live Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 10 March 1973
SOUL BROTHER Number One's in town, and the James Brown Revue's gettin' down and gittin' it on at the Rainbow. Bop through to the stalls ...
Elton John: Sundown, Edmonton, London
Live Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 31 March 1973
I WAS counting the number of fainting chicks pulled up out of the audience. After the 38th, I gave up. ...
The Osmonds: Ever Thought Of Stringing Jimmy Up On Stage?
Report by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 10 March 1973
HAVE YOU heard? Donny Osmond's in town – along with big brother Alan – and the secret weeny bopper jungle telegraph knows where he's going ...
Derek & The Dominos: In Concert (RSO)
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 10 February 1973
QUESTION NUMBER One: how do you follow up a masterpiece? ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 28 April 1973
BY NOW, most people know that Fanny are one of the best rock bands currently functioning. Their albums, particularly Charity Ball (their second, but the ...
David Bowie: Tight Rope Walker At The Circus
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 11 August 1973
THE CHATEAU D'HEROUVILLE is probably the only recording studio in the world boasting a resident chef who does Charlie Chaplin impressions at suppertime. Trouble is, ...
Beck, Bogert and Appice: Rock 'n' Roll Vandals
Report and Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 10 February 1973
"HEY," SAID Jeff Beck a trifle slyly, tilling his head to one side and allowing a patently nasty leer to edge its way across his ...
Pete Townshend, The Who: Pete Townshend: Who's Jimmy?
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 3 November 1973
IN THE SECOND LEG OF THE TOWNSHEND-MURRAY TALKABOUT, PETE TELLS ALL...AND MORE. ...
Jefferson Airplane: Don't Just Do Something, Stand There…
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 21 September 1974
UP GOES the window and out comes the head. ...
Burning Spear: Man In The Hills
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 11 September 1976
NEXT TO THE current crop of wild-eyed wired-op weird-asses coming out of JA these days, Burning Spear sound almost conservative. ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 11 December 1976
THIS ALBUM is neither Bizarre nor DiscReet, but that's neither here nor there. ...
Ry Cooder: Bop Till You Drop (Warners Import)
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 21 July 1979
RYLAND P. Cooder is a most reliable fellow. Ever since the days when he was laying down that stinging bottleneck guitar behind the likes of ...
Frank Zappa: Penguins in Bondage and Other Perversions
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 1 September 1973
WHERE WERE WE? Oh yeah, Frank Zappa. Anyway, ol' Frank is sitting in his hotel room above Kensington, discoursing on this and that and demonstrating ...
Marianne Faithfull: Broken English (Island)
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 10 November 1979
BEFORE WE get started on the music... ...
The Lovin' Spoonful: Golden Spoonful (Polydor Twosome)
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 13 October 1973
JOHN SEBASTIAN was the best P.R. man that hippies ever had. ...
Kate Bush: The Palladium, London
Live Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 28 April 1979
TWO MEMORIES: recalled first are the days when rock and roll was swamped with failed classical pianists and violinists who knew that they could make ...
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 21 April 1973
BACKSTAGE at Bristol, and everything is panic and turmoil. Steeleye Span's support act hasn't arrived half-an-hour before show-time. Jo Lustig, Steeleye manager, is standing with ...
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 27 July 1974
Take one midget, add a small guitar, wind him up and hear him talk ...
Smith, Perkins & Smith: Smith, Perkins & Smith (Island)
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, International Times, 19 June 1972
I THINK I'M going crazy. Crosby, Stills, Nash, Young, Kossoff, Kirke, Tetsu, Rabbit, Fishbaugh, Fishbough, Zorn, Brewer, Shipley, Demick, Armstrong, Seals, Crofts, Scott, Ethridge, Barbata, ...
The Persuasions: Street Corner Symphony (Island)
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, International Times, 19 June 1972
THE PERSUASIONS are a five-strong black vocal group who perform acappella. Their album Street Corner Symphony is just what it says: a set of songs ...
The Clash, Joe Strummer: Joe Strummer: Comrade, Goodbye
Memoir by Charles Shaar Murray, MOJO, March 2003
SOMETIME IN 1979, I WAS interviewing Joe Strummer for the NME in the Worlds End pub on the King's Road. As well as giving me ...
The Jam, The Vapors: Apollo Theatre, Manchester
Live Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 1 December 1979
FIRST NIGHT out on tour: welcome back to another edition of So Who Really Is The Best Group In The World? Down in Manchester Apollo ...
Bo Diddley: Hey! Bo Diddley: The Man Whose Sexuality Was Too Much For America
Report by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 26 August 1972
Diddley Freak Charles Shaar Murray, in the presence of the main man... ...
Black Sabbath: Satan, The Bomb And Geezer's Dreams
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 28 October 1972
CHARLES SHAAR MURRAY looking for flames ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 16 December 1972
LOU REED WITH COLOURED GIRL DAVID BOWIE... ...
Rod Stewart, T. Rex: Rod Stewart: Never A Dull Moment/T. Rex: The Slider
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 22 July 1972
TEENAGE TEARDROPS... Or, would you buy a used riff from these men? ...
Live Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 22 July 1972
THIS WAS one of the few gigs I can remember where all the acts deserved a full-length review to themselves. The teaming of Reed, Gnidrolog ...
David Bowie, Roxy Music: Rainbow Theatre, London
Live Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 26 August 1972
GOING TO THE Rainbow these days is definitely an outing, an excursion, something of a treat. Unfamiliarity breeds respect, and though the cheerful hippies who ...
Beck, Bogert and Appice, Steeleye Span: Great Caledonian Express Festival, Grangemouth, Scotland
Live Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 30 September 1972
Mr. Beck we salute you ...
Chilli Willi & The Red Hot Peppers: Marquee Club, London
Live Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 9 March 1974
CHILLI WILLI and the Red Hot Peppers are gonna save your soul. They're the only band in the country specialising in funky country, an area ...
Report and Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 12 October 1974
"ON OUR first American tour," says Ricardo Kemprini, famed Italian bass player, "the agents put us on the bill with everybody and his dog, right? ...
T-Bone Walker: The Complete Imperial Recordings, 1950-1954 (Imperial/EMI)
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Guitar World, 1991
CONTEMPORARY BLUES guitar starts here. True enough, everything has its origins in something else: Aaron Thibaux "T-Bone" Walker (1910 – 1975) had hung out in ...
David Bowie & The Spiders from Mars: Rainbow Theatre, London
Live Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 6 January 1973
ZIGGY PULLS THE SQUEALERS ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 22 January 1977
AND YOU'RE profile to profile with The Man Who Fell To Bits. Against an incandescent orange background, the cover of David Bowie's new album reprises ...
Live Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 11 September 1976
Our Islington correspondent mingles with the Sex Pistols' portable audience looking for Johnny Rotten's toof. It's incisive stuff… ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 19 August 1978
BUFFY SAINTE MARIE used to have this song called 'I'm Gonna Be A Country Girl Again', but you won't find Elizabeth Barraclough or Carlene Carter ...
David Bowie: Lookin' Back, David Bowie: Sinister Odyssey Through a Treacherous Landscape
Overview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 17 February 1973
RIGHT NOW David Bowie's albums are the subject of more close and obsessive study than anybody else's since the days when hippies all over the ...
David Bowie: Lookin' Back Part 2, in which Murray looks at Hunky Dory and Ziggy Stardust
Overview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 24 February 1973
AFTER MAN Who Sold The World came Hunky Dory (RCASF 8244), with its Garbo cover-pose and its extraordinary range of mood and sound. The hard ...
Willie Alexander and the Boom Boom Band: Willie Alexander and the Boom Boom Band
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 21 January 1978
AND WELCOME back the Bosstown Sound! That's Boston USA, spelled B-O-S-S-T-O-W-N, home of the J. Geils Band, Aerosmith, The Modern Lovers (sort of) and now…Willie ...
B.B. King, Howlin' Wolf: Various Artists Sun Records: The Blues Years 1950 — 1956
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 15 February 1986
"The blues is a chair, not a design for a chair, or a better chair… it is the first chair. It is a chair for ...
The Rolling Stones: Rolling Stones: The Rolling Stones And The Death Of The Sixties
Book Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, January 1991
THE HISTORIES of the legendary rock bands and movie stars have been told so often that they have not so much achieved the status of ersatz ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 11 September 1976
Support your local Spades!! ...
Black Oak Arkansas: Hot And Nasty
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 19 October 1974
ACTUALLY Atlantic are taking a hell of a chance with this album. In case you haven't yet glommed the cover in your local, it's a ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 15 June 1974
Take a holiday, Elton. Take two. ...
New Riders of the Purple Sage: Home Home On The Road
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 25 May 1974
IT WAS Greil Marcus who founded what has since become known as the "What-is-this shit?" school of rock criticism. ...
Joni Mitchell: A Tender Dignity
Guide by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 6 January 1973
ONE DAY, many years ago, Al Kooper went home with a blonde Canadian chick who used to hang out with the Blues Project. In the ...
Annette Peacock: A British Rail Breakfast With The Artbreak Kid
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 1 December 1979
TIMING: a while ago someone asked Bob Geldof — famous vocalist and composer with the extremely well-known Boomtown Rats pop group — for his definition ...
The Sensational Alex Harvey Band: Usher Hall, Edinburgh
Live Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 17 May 1975
Slicker and rougher ...
Dr. Feelgood: Dr Feelgood: Sneakin' Suspicion (United Artists)
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 14 May 1977
Is there a doctor in the house? CHARLES SHAAR MURRAY thinks the FEELGOODS might just need one… ...
Ian Hunter: Hammersmith Odeon, London
Live Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 18 June 1977
Mutton dressed as lamb ...
The Sensational Alex Harvey Band: The Impossible Dream
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 12 October 1974
ALEX HARVEY has just released the first rock and roll comic book. ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 19 October 1974
IT MUST BE something of a bringdown for Pete Atkin that so much of the critical interest in his albums is focused on his collaborator, ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 31 August 1974
Rock verite — the Beatrix Potter way ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 6 May 1978
THE ONE thing more annoying than a duff album, by a duff band is a duff album by a good band. ...
Bob Dylan: Slow Train Coming (CBS)
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 25 August 1979
THE RELATIONSHIP between rock and religion has always been fraught and filled with tension: back at its Southern rural roots, there was always a serious ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 23 November 1974
IN WHICH two culture heroes find themselves well and truly on the artistic skids. ...
Neil Merryweather: Space Rangers
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 28 September 1974
THIS GUY'S got to be kidding. ...
Frank Zappa: Roxy And Elsewhere
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 5 October 1974
CAPSULE REVIEW for the Busy Reader: if you like Apostrophe and Over-Nite Sensation better than any of Uncle Frank's other efforts, then ooze into your ...
Crosby Stills and Nash, Crosby Stills Nash & Young: Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young: So Far
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 7 September 1974
Gormlessly groping ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 18 June 1977
Taj Me In The Morning ...
Suzi Quatro: Aggrophobia (RAK)
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 15 January 1977
FOUR AND A HALF YEARS since Suzi Quatro scored jackpot and replay with 'Can The Can', and it's only now that she's made an album ...
Live Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 15 April 1978
FIRST OF all: a public service announcement: the Charing Cross Road Astoria is one terrible gig. ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 5 August 1978
OVER THE years, The Hollies' records have tended to fall into one of three categories: the bright, snappy early '60s pop put together from the ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 2 June 1979
PERSONS FAMILIAR with Nick Lowe in his recent incarnation as cynical-old-Basher, the man who'll steal any lick that isn't nailed down, disguise himself as anything ...
Graham Parker: Gram Parker: The Parkerilla
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 15 April 1978
YEAH, WE know: just what the world needs is another double live album, right? ...
The Human League, The Rezillos: The Rezillos, The Human League: Music Machine, Camden, London
Live Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 29 August 1978
REZILLOS CAN'T STAND THE AUDIENCE And that goes for all you liggers in the bar, too ...
Steeleye Span: Below The Salt (Chrysalis)
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 30 September 1972
THERE'S A very select coterie of bands who give off an aura of total peace. Listening to their performance gives you a sense of security ...
Book Excerpt by Charles Shaar Murray, 'Elvis Died For Somebody's Sins But Not Mine', Spring 2013
MICK FARREN IS a man of many parts, an impressive number of which are still working despite the natural wear and-tear incurred by decades of ...
Brian Auger, Julie Tippetts: Brian Auger and Julie Tippetts: Encore
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 22 April 1978
AS REUNION albums go, this is considerably better than The Byrds' album, Booker T and the MGs', The Small Faces' or The Animals', but that's ...
Johnny Winter, Muddy Waters: Muddy Waters: I'm Ready
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 28 January 1978
"If you're watching me and Johnny Winter, the show is MEANT to be in black and white." ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 22 April 1978
NO MORE GOOD GUYS ...
The Clash: Yes It's Strummer In The City
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 30 June 1979
HOT TOWN! Strummer in the city: walks into the Kings Road pub that serves as his temporary local while he's staying in Fulham dead on ...
The Sex Pistols: Sex Pistols: Some Product: Carri On Sex Pistols (Virgin)
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 28 July 1979
THIS IS getting silly. ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 19 August 1978
Say Goodbye To Angry Songs For Kids Say Hello To Angry Songs For Grown-Ups ...
David Bowie: Who Was That (Un)masked Man?
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 12 November 1977
CHRIST, HOW LONG has it been? Four years, man, and I set up the tape machine – Bowie attempting to balance the microphone on top ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 14 December 1974
IN WHICH it begins to look disturbingly like influences are dangerous toys indeed. ...
Jefferson Airplane: Jefferson Airplane Takes Off
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 10 August 1974
Birth-pangs of the acid monster ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 27 November 1976
YOU KNOW what these albums remind me of: The This Is Mersey Beat collections that Oriole put out after the first wave of Liverpool bands had gotten ...
The Modern Lovers: Modern Lovers Live (Beserkley)
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 10 December 1977
JONATHAN RICHMAN reminds me irresistibly of Fotherington-Thomas in the old Nigel Molesworth books: forever skipping about burbling "Hello sun, hello trees, hello sky." ...
Elton John: They Laughed When He Played The Piano
Retrospective by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 3 February 1973
FOR MANY MOONS it has been ever-so-chic to take pokes at Elton John. To admit to a considerable admiration for the man and his work ...
Annette Peacock: The Perfect Release (Aura)
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 3 November 1979
ANNETTE PEACOCK is, I am reliably informed, very well thought of in bohemian circles. This is unsurprising, the surprise being only that her work is ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 26 April 1975
AT LAST the 1972 show! ...
Mott The Hoople: Ian Hunter: 'I Have Nothing To Say'
Report by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 4 January 1975
THERE IS a certain poetic irony in the fact that Saturday Gigs and Mott The Hoople Live turned out to be Mott's farewell recordings anyway, despite the addition of ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 12 April 1975
THE VERY Famous Tony Williams once included on one of his albums a track entitled 'Some Hip Drum Shit'. ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 3 May 1975
If you're a living blues master, are you better off dead? ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 28 April 1979
AH, THE BELLS, the bells…somehow I don't think this is what Victor Hugo had in mind all those years ago. However, what Slick Vic had ...
Bob Marley & the Wailers: Bob Marley: The Lost Prophet
Retrospective by Charles Shaar Murray, The Word, May 2012
A new documentary presents Bob Marley in the raw, in the round, in close-up and in perspective. CHARLES SHAAR MURRAY recalls their weed-scented encounter in ...
The Osmonds: The View From Seat T39
Report by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 3 November 1973
He thought it would be good clean fun… Safe family entertainment. He was wrong. Now Charles Shaar Murray reveals the full horror of the night ...
Live Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 8 July 1972
WHEN THE J. Geils Band team up with Brinsley Schwarz and Brewer's Droop for a night's rockanroll, you can be sure that you're going to ...
Report and Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, Vogue, May 1982
The Human League are widely acknowledged as this minute's perfect pop group. The following is an account of their perfectly romantic rise in the charts. ...
Loudon Wainwright III: Attempted Mustache (CBS)
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 23 February 1974
LOUDON WAINWRIGHT'S a mean son of a bitch. Maybe his bark is worse than his bite, but his bark is still pretty nasty. ...
Lennon, Lenin, The Oz Schoolkids Issue And Me
Retrospective by Charles Shaar Murray, The Word, April 2011
In 1970 Charles Shaar Murray answered an ad in furry freak magazine Oz for a bunch of juveniles to edit a Schoolkids issue. Next thing ...
Bush Tetras, Gang of Four, Pere Ubu: Gang Of Four, Pere Ubu, Bush Tetras: Hammersmith Palais, London
Live Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 11 April 1981
FOUR BETTER OR WORSE? ...
The Beat: I Just Can't Stop It (Go-Feet)
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 14 June 1980
Are you ready for post-2-Tonism? ...
Roy Harper: Valentine (Harvest)
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 23 February 1974
THIS ALBUM is going to sell a lot of copies, and not just because Jimmy Page and Keith Moon are on it, either. It's going ...
The Human League: LADIES, GENTS, ANDROIDS, MUTANTS & BIOTRONS A BIG HAND For The Human League
Report and Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 12 July 1980
THE HUMAN LEAGUE ADVENTURE IS JUST BEGINNING. The first slide appears on the top left-hand screen. It is rapidly flanked by another: A LONG TIME AGO IN ...
Martha Velez: Escape from Babylon
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 31 July 1976
WHATEVER HAPPENS, no way can Martha Velez bitch about never getting the breaks. ...
Comment by Charles Shaar Murray, Oz, May 1970
IT WAS, AT least for me and most of the people I know, the music that first aroused interest in things Underground, and the music ...
KISS, Queen: Queen: Live Killers (EMI)/KISS: Dynasty (Casablanca)
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 30 June 1979
PROFESSIONAL ENTERTAINMENT! It's the best, it never quits, there's nothing like it. It's the real thing! It's sound and light and colour and spectacle to ...
Hawkwind: Stacia, Happy Amazon of the Cosmic Trailways
Profile and Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 10 March 1973
"SO THERE I was on the planet Saturn dancing naked with my body painted, and this weird craft loaded with strange degenerates landed near me ...
Eddie & The Hot Rods: Eddie and the Hot Rods/The Pirates: Roundhouse, London
Live Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 11 December 1976
THE HOT RODS are careering through 'Get Out Of Denver' at a speed so close to the velocity of sound itself that the song seems ...
Manassas: Edmonton Sundown, London
Live Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 14 October 1972
I DON'T THINK I've ever heard so much good music and so much bad from the same group at the same time as when I ...
MC5, John Sinclair: Memoirs of rock mentor John Sinclair
Profile and Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, The Sunday Times, 29 March 2009
Poet, activist, entrepreneur, critic, journalist, manager of MC5 and kingpin of US punk scene still performing and writing. ...
Poly Styrene: Poly Unsaturates
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 25 October 1980
Dazed and crumpled in the tumble-drier of fame. Poly Styrene has now ironed out the creases of her frayed psyche. Is she still hung-up? Is ...
Bob Marley & The Wailers: Exodus (Island)
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 28 May 1977
THE REVOLUTION may not be televised, but sure as death and taxes it'll be packaged... the sleeve of this album looks like a Cecil B. ...
Beck, Bogert and Appice: Beck, Bogert & Appice: Edmonton Sundown, London
Live Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 24 February 1973
EVER BEEN totally numbered by the hero of your adolescence? Viz: "What did you think of the gig?" asked Jeff Beck. "Tremendous," I gushed. "Really great. You really ...
Stone the Crows: Mayfair Ballroom, Newcastle
Live Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 29 July 1972
MAGGIE'S MIRACLE — THE SURVIVAL OF STONE THE CROWS ...
Curtis Mayfield: Things Go Better With Coke: Curtis Mayfield's Superfly soundtrack
Report and Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 3 March 1973
Charles Shaar Murray previews SUPERFLY ...
Sweet: Rainbow Theatre, London
Live Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 7 April 1973
I'M STILL trying to work this one out, but here's a brief rundown of what basically happened at the Sweet's Rainbow gig. ...
Melanie: Royal Albert Hall, London
Live Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 28 October 1972
CLEARLY, A Melanie concert is no place to be for a boozed up, doped out degenerate to sit chain-smoking and picking his nose. The vast ...
Dollar Brand/Abdullah Ibrahim: Dollar Brand: Royal Festival Hall, London
Live Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 8 September 1984
A LONG TIME ago, Dollar Brand recorded an album called African Space Programme: the cover's landscape interpreted space as being something which is not up ...
Johnny Otis, Shuggie Otis: 100 Club, London
Live Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 2 September 1972
DO YOU FEEL all right? I mean, are you ready to put yo' hands together one time and say yeah? Louder, I wanna hear you ...
Phillip Goodhand-Tait, Lou Reed: Lou Reed: Edmonton Sundown, London
Live Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 7 October 1972
EDMONTON IS NOT exactly the rock capital of the world, and when Phillip Goodhand-Tait took the stage, the auditorium was somewhat underpopulated. This was somewhat ...
Captain Beefheart, Ry Cooder, Randy Newman: Ry Cooder
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 9 December 1972
On himself, BEEFHEART and RANDY NEWMAN — and backing JAGGER by remote control. ...
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 3 July 1982
The Black Uhuru dilemma — they're hard, but is their militancy also a weakness? ...
Tupac Shakur: Rebel For The Hell Of It: The Life Of Tupac Shakur Armond White (Quartet)
Book Review by Charles Shaar Murray, MOJO, September 1997
TWENTY OR so years ago, in 'White Man In Hammersmith Palais', The Clash sang disapprovingly of those they deemed to be "turning rebellion into money". ...
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, November 1986
Ask the besuited patriarch or the bedenimed young turk. Charles Shaar Murray talks to B.B. King and Robert Cray. ...
Live Review by Brian Case, Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 6 November 1976
GETTIN' BACK TO IT: MUDDY WATERS, McCOY TYNER & SONNY ROLLINS brought Newport to London's New Victoria Theatre on Saturday. CSM & BRIAN CASE went ...
Stevie Wonder: Hotter Than July (Motown)
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 1 November 1980
Blastin' back. Hello roots, bye bye geraniums ...
Gong, Henry Cow, Robert Wyatt: Robert Wyatt and Henry Cow, Gong: Piazza Farnese, Rome
Live Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 19 July 1975
The Roman Spring Of Mr. Wyatt Thrill to the chariot racing. Dice with death in the streets of the Italian capital. Listen to the music. Special ...
Nik Cohn: Triksta – Life and Death and New Orleans Rap
Book Review by Charles Shaar Murray, The Independent, 9 December 2005
JUST AFTER THE first printing of this iconic writer's account of his cultural and musical misadventures in an iconic city, the situation changed almost beyond ...
Report and Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, MOJO, May 2006
Bloodied But Unbowed Indie Rock Grandeur ...
Rory Gallagher: Blues for the Muse
Retrospective by Charles Shaar Murray, The Word, July 2011
A lost studio album is out – by Rory Gallagher, the man who put all he had into his music and took nothing back in ...
Retrospective by Charles Shaar Murray, MOJO, November 2004
Johnny Ramone's death on September 15 marked the true passing of The Ramones. Charles Shaar Murray, recalls his landmark 1975 encounter with Da Brudders. ...
Obituary by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 14 May 1983
CHARLES SHAAR MURRAY SALUTES THE MAN WHO ELECTRIFIED THE BLUES AND PUT THE RHYTHM INTO ROCK'N'ROLL ...
The Deviants, Mick Farren: Goodbye, Mick Farren, activist, rabble-rousing rocker and NME journalist
Memoir by Charles Shaar Murray, The Guardian, 29 July 2013
Mick Farren, who died onstage in London on Saturday, was a "living banner for the psychedelic left". He was also a friend who joined me ...
Bob Marley & the Wailers: Bob Marley: A Lickle Love An' T'ing
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 18 February 1978
Interview CHARLES SHAAR MURRAY. From the Court of the Ranking Dread. ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 26 June 1976
Rock'n'Roll? Nah, that's kids' stuff ...
Joy Division: Closer (Factory)
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 19 July 1980
Closer to the edge ...
Richard Pryor: ...And It's Deep Too! – The Complete Warner Bros Recordings (1968-1992)
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, MOJO, January 2001
A 9-CD box showcase for the greatest stand-up comic who ever lived... and it's funny, too! ...
Live Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 23 March 1974
STRANGE THING about the Return To Forever gig at the Rainbow, and that was that the place seemed fuller than I've ever seen it before. ...
Bob Dylan: Howard Sounes: Down The Highway – The Life of Bob Dylan
Book Review by Charles Shaar Murray, MOJO, June 2001
How pleasant to know Mr Dylan, who has written such oodles of stuff — or is it? ...
John Lee Hooker: Free Beer And Chicken (ABC)
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 7 December 1974
ANYBODY WHO'S ever listened to a fair amount of John Lee Hooker will have realised that recording him with a band is a task on ...
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 2 May 1981
Life in the League with only one haircut between them ...
Loudon Wainwright III: Album III (CBS)
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 13 January 1973
YOU'LL PROBABLY never meet anyone less like a star than Loudon Wainwright III. G.I.-short hair with the stubble of his next beard, scruffy clothes that ...
Various Artists: Goodbye Babylon (Dust-to-Digital/Cargo)
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, MOJO, February 2004
A wonderful digest of the first three decades of recorded rural gospel music, black and white, collected on six CDs, exquisitely packaged and exhaustively annotated. ...
James White and The Blacks: James White: James White's Flaming Demonics (ZE)
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 10 September 1983
A PALER SHADE OF WHITE ...
Jimi Hendrix: Midnight Lightning: Jimi Hendrix and the Black Experience by Greg Tate (Lawrence Hill)
Book Review by Charles Shaar Murray, MOJO, July 2003
Erudite, eclectic and pungently demotic polemic on Hendrix's centrality in the 20th century African-American cultural pantheon. ...
The Clash: Going overground — The Clash: London Calling 25th Anniversary Edition
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, MOJO, October 2004
Last album of the '70s or first album of the '80s? The Clash's meisterwerk still sounds scarily fresh, says Charles Shaar Murray ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, MOJO, June 1995
BY 1969, JIMI HENDRIX HAD COMPLETELY LOST the plot. He'd dumped all the English guys — apart from Mitch Mitchell — who'd been the best ...
The Rolling Stones: Rolling Stones: Howzat!
Retrospective and Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, MOJO, October 2004
Out the same month as the rock and roll circus was filmed, Beggars Banquet was the Stones' first classic album. Charles Shaar Murray revisits their ...
Black Roots, Stimulin: Stimulin, The People, Black Roots: ICA, London
Live Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 5 September 1981
STIMULIN ARE going to have to blow it pretty drastically if they are to avoid becoming massively popular in the near future. Last Sunday night ...
Plastic Ono Band: John Lennon: John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band (Apple PCS 7174)
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, International Times, 28 February 1971
"I don't expect to be singing 'Twist and Shout' when I'm thirty." — John Lennon (1964) ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, The Word, May 2012
AFTER SEVEN YEARS OFF THE RADAR, Bonnie Raitt takes on a set of sophisticated, often contemporary covers — and wins. ...
The Rolling Stones: Tattoo You (Rolling Stones Records)
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 5 September 1981
HERE WE are! The Rolling Stones have made another album! Depeche Mode and Soft Cell join more established names like Duran Duran at the top ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 16 May 1981
IN WHICH we welcome back to these pages that perennial guest: the vexed question of white attitudes towards black music. More specifically, the expectations brought ...
Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page: Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page: The Guv'nors
Interview by Charles Shaar Murray, MOJO, August 2004
"Big loud chords, fuck-off guitar sound — we started it all. GOOD MORNING!" chimes Jeff Beck. "Now it's time to do something new and unexpected!" ...
Memoir by Charles Shaar Murray, The Guardian, 2 August 2001
It's 30 years since Oz was prosecuted in an infamous obscenity trial. The underground magazine had been guest-edited by a bunch of teenagers – and ...
Roxy Music: For your pleasure again
Report by Charles Shaar Murray, Daily Telegraph, 17 February 2001
The greatest band of the Seventies are reforming, and though Bryan Ferry now looks like a slick MP, Charles Shaar Murray is celebrating ...
Elvis Costello, The Stray Cats: Rainbow Theatre, London
Live Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 4 October 1980
Smile Elvis, you're in a frontlash situation ...
Nik Cohn and Guy Peellaert: Rock Dreams (Taschen)
Book Review by Charles Shaar Murray, The Observer, 22 February 2004
Charles Shaar Murray sees the Rolling Stones lose their minds – as well as their trousers – in a classic work of the imagination. ...
Black Flag: Everything Went Black (SST)
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 26 March 1983
HERE WE GO GATHERING NUTS IN L.A. ...
Paul Butterfield, KGB: KGB: KGB (MCA): Paul Butterfield: Put It In Your Ear (Bearsville)
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 20 March 1976
"I saw young Vanderbilt playing down at the tennis club and he doesn't hit the ball any better than a fellow without money " — ...
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