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CALEXICO INTERVIEWED (2003): Beneath the high wide sky
Beyond the city limits of Tucson in Arizona, hot winds blow across the endless Sonoran Desert. Mexico is just 100km south. This is a mysterious and unforgiving place where the arid land shimmers in the heat. The sun plays tricks on the eye and the landscape looks the same everywhere. Yet there is beauty in the details, and in this land of marginalised characters and shifting sands there is... more >>
Added: 3 Mar 08
YOKO ONO COLLECTED AND RE-CONSIDERED (1992): The Onobox and the noises within
Yoko is a concept by which we measure our pain -- New York graffiti, 1970. A voice that comes once in a lifetime; unfortunately it came in ours.-- Critic Jim Mullen, 1992 Yoko Ono was always an easy target. Conceptual artists who mount exhibitions of chess sets where all the pieces are white, or write books which consist of ambiguously and unintentionally hilarious instructions like... more >>
Added: 2 Mar 08
SIR GEORGE MARTIN INTERVIEWED (1998): The retiring knight of the round vinyl
Of all the knights of pop -- Sir Cliff, Sir Paul, Sir Elton -- it is Sir George Martin, famously known a the Beatles’ producer, who seems the most deserving of the accolade. It was November '95 when I met him in London at the launch of the Beatles’ Anthology albums. He was self-effacing, courteous and well-spoken. (At age 16 he'd heard his voice on tape and thereafter... more >>
Added: 2 Mar 08
WILLIE NELSON INTERVIEWED 1998: The hard working lazy man
There’s not a lot you can say about the latest Willie Nelson album Teatro. Produced by Daniel Lanois, it’s Nelson’s second for the Island label after the critically acclaimed Spirit, has a band which includes Emmylou Harris and Luscious Jackson drummer Tony Mangurian, and is little more -- or less -- than another addition to Nelson’s extensive catalogue of more than 200... more >>
Added: 1 Mar 08
BEATLES PHOTOGRAPHER JURGEN VOLLMER PROFILED (1994): The man who clicked with the Beatles
If the name Jurgen Vollmer isn’t familiar at all, it’s because it only ever appears somewhere around the first chapter of even the most brainless Beatles biography -- then drops out forever. Vollmer was one of a group of self-styled existentialist art students in Hamburg -- photographer Astrid Kirschner the most well known -- who, around 1960, adopted the Beatles, then playing... more >>
Added: 1 Mar 08
WILLIE NELSON ALBUM REVIEWS 2000 - 2005: What a long strange trip
He smoked a joint on the roof of the White House, sang with Julio Iglesias and on We Are The World, and he's still here. And still great -- sometimes. Willie Nelson, much like Dean Martin, has an effortless approach to life -- and recording. He could, as they say, sing a telephone directory and make it sound intersting. But latterly it is almost as if that is what he is doing: far too... more >>
Added: 29 Feb 08
ABBEY ROAD REVISITED: Crossing the crossing (2006)
Long before you reach the most famous recording studio in the world you can hear the sound. But it is not music coming from inside the walls. It is the squeal of tyres as another car or truck slams on its brakes because a tourist - and often a whole group - has stepped on to the nearby pedestrian crossing to have a photo taken in imitation of an iconic image shot here on a late summer's day in... more >>
Added: 29 Feb 08
ORNETTE COLEMAN: Notes for the programme, International Festival of the Arts, Wellington NZ 2008
Few musicians remain creative their whole life. Most fall back on familiar styles or even phrases, others peak early and their career becomes a long and slightly embarrassing re-run of former glories. Yet Ornette Coleman (born in Fort Worth, Texas, 1930) has not only been restlessly inventive but is widely considered one of the great innovators of the 20th century. Even in the new... more >>
Added: 24 Feb 08
THE BEATLES' LET IT BE NAKED REVIEWED (2003): Get back . . . at Phil
The story behind the making of the Beatles' 1970 album Let It Be is well known, but to recap: The "White Album" of 68 was aural proof each was going his own way; however, late in the year, McCartney suggested they do a back-to-basics recording, ostensibly for an album to be called Get Back -- and get a film crew to make a doco to go with it. When they reconvened in January '69... more >>
Added: 21 Feb 08
THE BEATLES' LOVE ALBUM REVIEWED (2007): Remake and remodel
The Beatles are back, and in this collage of classic sounds sounding more trippy than even during the Summer of Love. Beatles’ music has always been reinterpreted. Even in the mid 60s when Lennon/McCartney were churning out chirpy chart-toppers their songs were being performed by Arthur Fielder and his Boston Pops orchestra, middle-of-the-road acts like the Brothers Four, earnest... more >>
Added: 21 Feb 08
BEATLES FOR SALE, AGAIN: The release of Anthology 1 (London, 1995)
The release of any Beatles album was always an occasion, so 25 years after the band broke up, the plush ambience of the Lancaster Room in the Savoy Hotel doesn’t seem inappropriate for the launch of The Beatles' Anthology 1, a collection of out-takes and unreleased material, the first of a series of three double CDs that effectively mops up the Mop Tops. But with 200 invited... more >>
Added: 20 Feb 08
LENNON PHOTOGRAPHER BOB GRUEN INTERVIEW (1998): The man who shot John Lennon, many times.
Photographer Bob Gruen is affable and chatty but clearly on autopilot. His stories, good though they are, are worn smooth by repetition. But to his credit he repeats them with enthusiasm and they are received by the various media representatives with equal pleasure. And despite this having the feel of the “I danced with a man who danced with a woman who danced with the Prince of... more >>
Added: 19 Feb 08
THE BEATLES AND APPLE RECORDS: Western communism and rotten at the core
The Beatles faced a screaming audience for the last time at San Francisco's Candlestick Park in August 1966. After that they retired as a live band. It was inevitable. As Ringo Starr said of their touring years: "It was the worst time and the best time of my life. The best time because we played a lot of good music. The worst time ... it was like 24 hours a day without a break: press,... more >>
Added: 15 Feb 08
THE BEATLES IN AMERICA 1964: Songs of innocence -- and experience (DVD reviewed, 2004)
In the beginning there were just the four of them. Then we learned of the fifth Beatle. Depending on who you talked to it was producer George Martin, New York DJ Murray the K, or the dumped drummer Pete Best. Then we heard about their Hamburg days and the dead Beatle Stu Sutcliffe, their manager Brian Epstein (below) and the rest of the supporting cast. As their legend grew the... more >>
Added: 14 Feb 08 
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THE LENNON LEGEND BOOK, REVIEWED (2003): More or less Lennon
Had John Lennon lived, he would have turned 63 last month. It's interesting to speculate what kind of music he might be making today. Interesting, but pointless: Lennon never saw the trickle-down of punk and new wave; the big-hair 80s; the rise of rap, Madonna and Springsteen; Guns N' Roses, Nirvana and grunge; trends like nu-metal, nu-jazz and boy bands ... Lennon saw none of this. Not... more >>
Added: 14 Feb 08
YOKO ONO: Back with the blueprint (2001) and re-disc-covered (2007)
Some years ago at another posthumous John Lennon album launch, a journalist asked Yoko Ono why she hadn't released an album of her own in quite some while. "There seemed no great call for it," she laughed. True enough. Whether it be her extraordinary primal screaming and emotional venting, her un-nuanced feminist polemics or naive childlike songs, there was never a groundswell of... more >>
Added: 14 Feb 08
THE BEATLES ANTHOLOGY IN PRINT (2000): Hardback Writers?
The Beatles' story has been recounted by those who knew them intimately and those who not only never met them but would seem, after enduring a few pages of their authors recycling press clippings, to have had little real interest in them. But it has rarely been told by the only ones who know the true story -- the Beatles themselves. Until now.After the outsiders have had their say --... more >>
Added: 14 Feb 08
JOHN LENNON, IMAGINE RECONSIDERED (2000): Peace in our time?
Some people just don't get it, do they? Wouldn't you love to meet those gearing up to pay an expected $4.5 million at on-line auction for the piano on which John Lennon wrote Imagine?Imagine no possessions, huh?Of course, the Famous White Piano will command top dollar because Imagine was recently voted the best song ever written or something, and in Britain was used to welcome the new... more >>
Added: 14 Feb 08
ERIC BURDON INTERVIEWED 2001: The songs of a survivor
Eric Burdon is alive and ... well, the fact that this founder member of Britain's legendary 60s r'n'b garage band The Animals is alive is enough to be happy with, let alone that he sounds well. Speaking from his California home in Joshua Tree, Burdon -- croaky of voice and lucid, if tangential, in conversation -- sounds extremely well for a man aged 60 who has been singing throat-abusing blues... more >>
Added: 6 Feb 08
ROBERT SMITH OF THE CURE INTERVIEWED (2001): Hits and the one that missed out
He's had a day of interviews yet few people have asked Robert Smith of the Cure the obvious. Something to do with the age of those asking the questions, he laughs. The question is simple: The Cure have a Greatest Hits album out - not their first such collection - but there's a notable omission.So Robert, was it the political climate, pressure from the record company, or are you just so sick of... more >>
Added: 6 Feb 08
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