Songwriting and Production
Richard Branson’s then newly-established Virgin Records set up special stalls to sell it, demand was so great. It was a similar story in the US, though Carole King’s Tapestry kept it off the No.1 spot. It didn’t matter. The airplay generated by Stairway To Heaven ensured the album remained in the Top 40 of the…
Phillips was also born in 1963, though she was raised in Pennsylvania by followers of the controversial Freud disciple Wilhelm Reich, a group that was hands-off in terms of child-rearing. “All about expressing, expressing, and not repressing anything,” she says. “And no rules.” At 15 she left home to “live with a drug dealer,” but…
Despite Butler’s evident disillusionment with his former band two years earlier, speculation had been rife that the original Black Sabbath line-up would attempt to bury their differences and reform. The rumours were proven true when Geezer, Tony Iommi and Ozzy Osbourne reunited to close the latter’s Ozzfest touring festival in the summer of 1997. Drummer…
Read More “Geezer Butler’s Lost Decade: “I Nearly Died” — Kerrang!” »
For all of the artistic advantages of the subscription model, it ultimately boils down to one thing: money. Mid-level indie artists who previously earned a living from touring and merch booth sales can now potentially turn to a few hundred of their most devoted fans to pay their rent. It’s not “cool,” and it demands…
Read More “Could Patreon Be the New Way for Musicians to Earn a Living?” »
The actions outlined here may seem very small in comparison to the power of a corporation like Spotify, whose upcoming IPO is expected to be valued at as much as $19 billion, much less that of the biggest tech company in the world, Apple. But small movements can read from the stage if you’re in…
Read More “How to Be a Responsible Music Fan in the Age of Streaming | Pitchfork” »
Powell: It’ll never happen again. For me, doing so would soil our reputation. Holder: The way things are now between Dave and Don [back in February, Hill sacked Powell from the current, post-Holder/Lea line-up of Slade by email], it’ll never happen. I couldn’t do four or five gigs in a row singing like I used…
Read More “The remarkable story of Slade, as told by Noddy, Jim, Dave and Don | Louder” »
53. Baby Please Don’t GoFor a new band on their debut, this was a strange choice for an opener – a cover of a blues standard written by Big Joe Williams in the 1930s and later popularised by Them. But AC/DC knew how to make it work for them. They played it fast, and they…
Read More “All 57 Bon Scott AC/DC songs ranked in order of greatness | Louder” »
“It was an incredible shoot, I think, 36 hours or something,” said Keith Richards in a statement. “I remember not remembering everything towards the end… but it was fun… we went through two audiences… wore one out… it was great!” read it all at Source: Watch The Rolling Stones’ First Live Performance of “Sympathy for…
Imagine: you wake up from a coma in November 2020. You’ve been asleep since Christmas, so you’re entirely unaware of the year’s contents. You don’t know about the virus, or the lockdowns, or that Liverpool are champions and that everything’s been cancelled. You grab your smartphone, and you log into Facebook to check out what’s…
It is not wholly beyond the realms of possibility that you could have become a critic yourself. Could you live with such a horrifying prospect? No. It’s interesting. I was learning the triangular paragraph, and that was it for me. You’re not supposed to have an opinion of the triangular paragraph. So I moved from…
Read More “Interview: Lou Reed on the Velvets, Bowie… and his love of heavy metal | Louder” »
It was all there in 1967, before most of the world had ever heard of her: the northern ice, the fancy clothes and the ache of sadness, the non-triadic melodies, the velvet vocal and painting with words. In her early days, she had written too many songs to take care of, so many of them…
Read More “Joni Mitchell: The Songs She Wrote Before She Released a Record” »
“The Rolling Stones is a big concert band in other decades and other areas when The Beatles never even did an arena tour, Madison Square Garden with a decent sound system” Jagger said. “They broke up before that business started”. Jagger thinks that while they sing the blues, the Stones went on to embrace something…
Read More “Mick Jagger Responds to McCartney Saying Beatles were Better than the Stones” »
I remember very clearly when this album Goat’s Head Soup came out. I was in Grade 8 and we were have a contest and the prize was that album. I never one. Thanks Allan. You went to Switzerland beforehand to do a little bit of writing with with Mick, and that’s where you wrote “Angie.”…
Read More “How Keith Richards is Spending His Quarantine – Rolling Stone” »
Do you think of Goats Head as a particularly druggy album? Druggy? Was it a druggy album? It’s not got a lot of druggy subject material, apart from perhaps “Coming Down Again,” but you’ll have to talk to Keith about that. I mean, my guess is that could be a drug reference. [Laughs.] But the…