Leyla Sanai
Leyla Sanai started writing for the NME aged 17 while at school. She freelanced for them through the rest of school and during a year out and then reluctantly left London to study medicine in Edinburgh.
She subsequently qualified as a doctor and then as a hospital physician (MRCP) and anaesthetist (FRCA). She worked as a consultant anaesthetist in Glasgow for some years before having to give up because of scleroderma which caused gangrene of fingers and involvement of other organs.
She has freelanced for Number One, The Herald, The Guardian, The Times, The Sunday Times, Scotland On Sunday, Sunday Herald, The Scotsman, The Observer, The British Medical Journal (BMJ), The British Medical Association News Review, Hospital Doctor, Lancet, Student BMJ, Careers BMJ, British Journal of Intensive Care, International JIC, and Scottish Medical Journal.
23 articles
List of articles in the library
Aztec Camera, Josef K: Josef K, Aztec Camera: The Venue, London
Live Review by Leyla Sanai, New Musical Express, 15 August 1981
WHEN I entered The Venue, I expected to be bestowed with an endless soul. I wasn't, but I got a ticket instead. A choice of ...
Dead Or Alive, The Decorators: I.C.A., London
Live Review by Leyla Sanai, New Musical Express, 5 September 1981
I MISS The Room — put it down to the usual punctuality of the Jubilee Line. The Decorators are surprisingly palatable to the cool, coiffeured ...
Live Review by Leyla Sanai, New Musical Express, 5 September 1981
THE SECOND day of the ICA Rock Week sees the immaculate combination of the Chefs, Tarzan 5 and Depeche Mode. The Chefs are high-grade Peelie ...
Altered Images, Modern English, The Event Group: Heaven, London
Live Review by Leyla Sanai, New Musical Express, 12 September 1981
ALTERED IMAGES at Heaven draws a crowd large enough to stretch a queue almost to Charing Cross station. Semi-dead pop stars gathering dust around the ...
New Order: North London Polytechnic, London
Live Review by Leyla Sanai, New Musical Express, 30 January 1982
CRIES AND WHISPERS ...
Orange Juice: You Can't Hide Your Love Forever
Review by Leyla Sanai, New Musical Express, 20 February 1982
SOME PEOPLE are irritated by Orange Juice. Onstage, they're relaxed and unrehearsed, and execute their clear-cut sound with such disregard for criteria such as tightness, ...
A Certain Ratio, Maximum Joy: Lyceum, London
Live Review by Leyla Sanai, New Musical Express, 27 February 1982
RATIONAL RATIO ...
Daryl Hall & John Oates: Hall & Oates: H2O (RCA)
Review by Leyla Sanai, New Musical Express, September 1982
DARYL HALL and John Oates are potentially a formidable partnership. 'I Can't Go For That' was the slickest snappiest ditty the wrong side of the ...
The Damned: Strawberries (Polydor)
Review by Leyla Sanai, New Musical Express, September 1982
YOU DIDN'T really think they'd gone, did you? After all, it's only four years since their 'farewell' gig, and looking at Jimmy Pursey's Hams 69 ...
Review by Leyla Sanai, New Musical Express, 11 September 1982
KATE BUSH LPs are not the kind of thing duels are fought over up in the NME office, so when a hopeful-looking Andy Gill handed ...
The Psychedelic Furs: Psychedelic Furs: Forever Now (CBS)
Review by Leyla Sanai, New Musical Express, 25 September 1982
ONCE UPON a time, the Psychedelic Furs were everyone's epitome of the vulgarity and pretence of rock music. ...
The Teardrop Explodes: Brunel University, Middlesex
Live Review by Leyla Sanai, New Musical Express, 16 October 1982
TEARS ARE NOT ENOUGH ...
A Certain Ratio: I'd Like To See You Again (Factory)
Review by Leyla Sanai, New Musical Express, 4 December 1982
I REALLY wanted to love the new A Certain Ratio LP. After countless plays I've accepted it's not going to click the way I'd hoped. ...
Indeep: Last Night A DJ Saved My Life (Sound Of New York)
Review by Leyla Sanai, New Musical Express, 11 June 1983
IN AT THE DEEP END TOO SOON? ...
Bette Midler: No Frills (Atlantic)
Review by Leyla Sanai, New Musical Express, 24 September 1983
OK, FORGET the drip through the roof. Forget the mortgage and the DHSS snoop halfway through the letterbox. Imagine a night out on the town ...
The The: Working In The The The Soul Mine
Interview by Leyla Sanai, New Musical Express, 5 November 1983
MUCH CONFUSION SURROUNDS THE NAME OF MATT JOHNSON. LEYLA SANAI DOES SOME UNSCRAMBLING. ...
Bronski Beat: St James Church, Piccadilly, London
Live Review by Leyla Sanai, New Musical Express, 11 August 1984
THE BRONSKIS have a knack of being roped in to playing unconventional venues but they always manage to cut through the atmosphere. ...
Box, The (UK): The Box: Great Moments In Big Slam (Go! Discs)
Review by Leyla Sanai, New Musical Express, 18 August 1984
WHEN THE old DVA clocked out in late '82, the name went one way, the spirit the other. While the new DVA went on to ...
Helen & the Horns: Helen & the Horns (Rockin' Ray)
Review by Leyla Sanai, New Musical Express, 4 May 1985
THE DISC THAT MADE 1,000 YAWNS ...
Memoir by Leyla Sanai, Rock's Backpages, 5 March 2009
OK, SO ROCK CRITICS are meant to be the epitome of cool, but all writers have embarrassing moments, don't they? What have been the most ...
Nick Cave: The Death of Bunny Munro (Canongate Books)
Book Review by Leyla Sanai, Rock's Backpages, September 2009
NICK CAVE was never going to settle for "just" being a rock star. Right back from when I was first aware of him, in the ...
Book Review by Leyla Sanai, Rock's Backpages, 26 January 2010
FATHER OF hip–hop, granddaddy of rap, articulate polemicist and early pioneer of the fusion of black politics with poetry and music, Gil Scott–Heron has been ...
Joy Division: Torn Apart: The Life of Ian Curtis by Mick Middles and Lindsay Reade
Book Review by Leyla Sanai, Rock's Backpages, June 2010
WITH THE thirtieth anniversary of Ian Curtis's suicide (he killed himself on May 18th 1980) just gone, enough time had passed for me to want ...
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