Mick Gold
Mick Gold (snapped on Brighton beach in 1969) photographed rock musicians and wrote about music from 1968 to 1978. His work appeared in Let It Rock, Melody Maker, Sounds, Creem and Street Life He published a book of photo-essays about live music, Rock On The Road, 1976.
He threw it all away to produce and direct documentary films for TV. His work includes Europe After the Rain, a history of Dada and Surrealism; Schiele In Prison, a study of painting and paranoia in fin de siecle Vienna; Watergate, a 5-part history of the downfall of President Nixon which won an Emmy in 1995; Star Wars, the story of President Reagan and the Soviet Union; Hostage, a 3-part series on the hostage crisis in Lebanon; Death of Apartheid, a 3-part series on the relatively peaceful transfer of power in South Africa (Emmy nomination); and Endgame In Ireland, the secret history of the peace process in Northern Ireland (Peabody Award).
He has made several films for the BBC2 series Private Life of a Masterpiece, including Velazquez’s The Rokeby Venus, Goya’s The Third of May 1808, Degas’s Little Dancer aged Fourteen, and Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People. He lives in London with his wife and two daughters. His hobbies include spending too much money on books about rock music.
38 articles
List of articles in the library
Grateful Dead: The Grateful Dead: Europe '72
Review by Mick Gold, Let It Rock, February 1973
THE DEAD have never ceased to feed off their origins as a performing band in order to avoid the danger of becoming marooned in a ...
Review by Mick Gold, Let It Rock, April 1973
IT ALL DEPENDS what you expect an LP to do. If you'd like 40 minutes of rhythmic pap to plug a hole in your air ...
Derek & The Dominos: In Concert (RSO)
Review by Mick Gold, Let It Rock, May 1973
FOR A CULTURE that was geared to acknowledging the importance of flux and individual freedom, rock is ludicrously prone to attacks of nostalgia. ...
Review by Mick Gold, Let It Rock, June 1973
A DIFFICULT ONE to start with: who created the Mid-West Sound? Bet you don’t know. Bet you didn’t know there was a Mid-West Sound. Well, ...
J. Geils Band: The J. Geils Band: Bloodshot
Review by Mick Gold, Let It Rock, July 1973
EVER SINCE the first Butterfield Blues Band album I’ve been waiting and hoping for a group that could combine gut mangling excitement with instrumental virtuosity ...
Review by Mick Gold, Let It Rock, October 1973
IN THE PAST John Cale has appeared to be engaged in investing themes of madness and chaos with a deranged from of classical dignity. I ...
Dan Hicks And His Hot Licks: Where’s The Money?; Last Train to Hicksville
Review by Mick Gold, Let It Rock, December 1973
LIFE USED TO be tough but simple in Tin Punk Alley: you made it or you didn’t. Groups would ride in their pink Cadillacs or ...
Steely Dan: Countdown To Ecstasy (MCA)
Review by Mick Gold, Let It Rock, December 1973
STEELY DAN IS a vehicle for the songwriting talents of Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, who entered the music world via a two-year gig with ...
Interview by Mick Gold, Rock's Backpages Audio, 1974
Country Joe talks about being brought up by communist parents, his current musical and political interests, the Paris Sessions album, songwriting, the Beats, jazz and... Bowie!
File format: mp3; file size: 81mb, interview length: 1h 28' 27" sound quality: ***
The Beatles: The Act You've Known For All These Years: The Beatles and Sgt. Pepper
Retrospective by Mick Gold, unpublished, 1974
ALL ENTERTAINMENT HAS AN EXISTENTIAL dimension: all successful performances imply a life-style and a sense of values, a sub-structure of assumptions upon which the performer ...
Bob Dylan: Bringing The Garbage Back Home: A.J. Weberman
Report by Mick Gold, Let It Rock, January 1974
A.J. WEBERMAN sprang into the limelight some five years ago, around the time that students and banana-smoking intellectuals everywhere loved to argue about Bob Dylan. ...
Review by Mick Gold, Let It Rock, March 1974
HE'S NOT ONLY trying to sing like he used to, he's even surfaced with some more stoned sleeve notes and two or three lines actually ...
Profile by Mick Gold, Let It Rock, April 1974
THE LEGEND runs that in the summer of 1965 the Hawks (also known as the Crackers) were playing a night club in the seashore resort ...
Review by Mick Gold, Let It Rock, May 1974
AND IT CAME TO PASS in the 1970's that rock culture began to doubt whether it existed at all, and every time that two or ...
Joni Mitchell: New Victoria, London
Live Review by Mick Gold, Let It Rock, June 1974
WHEN JONI MITCHELL sang in a cinema next to Victoria Station, her entire audience fell in love with her three nights running. For weeks afterwards ...
Interview by Mick Gold, Rock's Backpages Audio, July 1974
Cale talks about his musical life, from King's College Cambridge to Fear, via La Monte Young and the Velvet Underground.
File format: mp3; file size: 48.1mb, interview length: 52' 32" sound quality: ***
Overview by Mick Gold, Let It Rock, July 1974
YOU COULD hardly miss him on the first album: his rubber-stamped signature was the only wording on the front cover, while on the back his ...
Profile and Interview by Mick Gold, Melody Maker, 27 July 1974
JOHN CALE is sitting in a preview theatre, cowering in the shadow of the London Hilton to see a screening of this movie hes scored ...
John Cale: The Mysterious Journey of John Cale
Profile and Interview by Mick Gold, Creem, October 1974
Part One: I was a prisoner in a lesbian lobotomy jail. I'VE TWICE missed making contact with John Cale and I'm getting tired of ...
Review by Mick Gold, Let It Rock, November 1974
BILL HENDERSON of Sounds has written with seductive simplicity that Paris 1919 (Cale's last release) was an album created in America 'about' Europe, whereas Fear ...
Country Joe & The Fish: Country Joe: Gimme an F!
Interview by Mick Gold, Let It Rock, December 1974
Mick Gold interrogates Country Joe and indulges in some Fishy nostalgia ...
Interview by Mick Gold, Rock's Backpages Audio, 26 February 1975
The men from Canvey Island talk about how they got together, getting into the London pub-rock scene, their aggressive performances and recording Down by the Jetty.
File format: mp3; file size: 71.8mb, interview length: 1h 18' 25" sound quality: ***
Profile and Interview by Mick Gold, Let It Rock, June 1975
"We didn't set out to look like deranged bank clerks..." ...
The Band, Bob Dylan: Bob Dylan and the Band: The Basement Tapes
Review by Mick Gold, Let It Rock, September 1975
On Blonde on Blonde, Dylan gave us his metaphysical, amphetamine dreams from some smoke-filled apartment in midtown Manhattan. On John Wesley Harding, he synthesized a ...
Pink Floyd: Wish You Were Here
Review by Mick Gold, Let It Rock, November 1975
TODAY’S LESSON is taken from the Book of Bowie, chapter 1984, side 2, track 4: ...
Crosby Stills Nash & Young, Dr. Feelgood, The Faces, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Slade: Introduction
Book Excerpt by Mick Gold, 'Rock on the Road' (Futura), 1976
THE IDEA OF doing a book of photo-essays about live music was sparked by a desire to examine two areas: what the job of being ...
Crosby Stills Nash & Young: Mel Bush: The Man Who Hired The World
Book Excerpt by Mick Gold, Rock On The Road (Futura), April 1976
A PROMOTER IS THE middleman between a musician and an audience. A promoter hires a venue, books an act, organises the publicity, is responsible for ...
Interview by Mick Gold, Rock's Backpages Audio, 10 May 1976
Ms Smith talks at length about her poetry, her influences, live improvisation, and Bob Dylan.
File format: mp3; file size: 102.8mb, interview length: 1h 51' 56" sound quality: ***
Patti Smith: Patti in Excelsis Deo
Profile and Interview by Mick Gold, Street Life, 29 May 1976
WE LIVE in dangerous times. We live in a society that can co-opt its own downfall, sprinkle some glitter on it, and gift wrap it ...
Interview by Mick Gold, Rock's Backpages Audio, 21 January 1981
On the back of his breakthrough solo hit single 'Games Without Frontiers', Gabriel talks about making Peter Gabriel 3, drum machines and technology, the influence of African music, the death of John Lennon and his take on punk, the Pistols and PiL.
File format: mp3; file size: 59.4mb, interview length: 1h 04' 53" sound quality: **
Essay by Mick Gold, unpublished, 1998
IT MUST HAVE been 1969 or 1970. There was a rave review of Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere in Rolling Stone and I bought it ...
Bob Dylan: Life and Life Only: Bob Dylan at 60
Retrospective by Mick Gold, Rock's Backpages, October 2001
HE'S BEEN RECORDING FOR 40 years, 43 albums, never-ending tours. There’s something Shakespearean about the complexity of his work: so many points of view expressed ...
Bob Dylan: He's Not There: Todd Haynes' Dylan
Essay by Mick Gold, Rock's Backpages, 2 December 2007
"THE MINUTE you try to grab hold of Dylan, he's no longer where he was. He's like a flame: If you try to hold him ...
Bob Dylan: Good As He's Been To You: Bob Dylan's Best Albums
Guide by Mick Gold, Rock's Backpages, December 2009
Mick Gold makes a personal selection of Dylan's Finest Works. A slightly modified version of an article for the Bobzine Isis. ...
Live Review by Mick Gold, Rock's Backpages, 21 November 2011
BOB-CATS PUSHED relentlessly forward against the bar at the front of the former Hammersmith Odeon, hats on their heads. Mark Knopfler was caressing liquid guitar ...
The Birth Of The Blues and The Myth Of Authenticity
Essay by Mick Gold, Rock's Backpages, November 2013
Film-maker Mick Gold on the blues, authenticity and Blues America – broadcast by BBC4 on Friday 29 November and Friday 6 December at 9pm. ...
Bob Dylan: A Subterranean Bicentennial Road Movie: Scorsese's Rolling Thunder Revue
Film/DVD/TV Review by Mick Gold, Rock's Backpages, 13 June 2019
WHEN ROLLING THUNDER REVUE: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese was posted on IMDb, I clicked on Full Cast & Crew and scanned the ...
Bob Dylan: "Is it rolling, Marty?": Scorsese's Rolling Thunder Revue
Essay by Mick Gold, Isis, January 2021
NOTE: An earlier version of this essay appeared in the Dylan fanzine Isis, #212-213 in January to coincide with DVD release of Scorsese's film. Here's an expanded, improved version. ...
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