Absolute Elsewhere
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ROBERT SMITH OF THE CURE INTERVIEWED (2001): Hits and the one that missed out
6 Feb 2008 | 5 min read
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... > Read more
THE BRIAN EPSTEIN STORY: (2002) Behind the music, in a BBC documentary
5 Feb 2008 | 3 min read
When Brian Epstein died in August 1967 at the age of 32, he was one of the most famous men in Britain. His death by an accidental overdose of prescription drugs made the front page of newspapers at home and abroad. Yet a mere five years earlier Epstein was known only to a few close friends and family in his native Liverpool where he managed a popular record shop as part of the family... > Read more
YOKO ONO INTERVIEWED, THE TOURING LENNON ART EXHIBITION (1997) In his own draw
5 Feb 2008 | 7 min read
For anyone who has only experienced her singing -- which slews wildly between a visceral scream of anguish and an orgasmic howl -- Yoko Ono’s remarkably quiet speaking voice, barely above a whisper, comes as a surprise. And this week as she talks about art and music from her home in New York it is aggravated by a cold and initially reduced to being almost inaudible. “I’ll... > Read more
PAUL SIMON INTERVIEWED (2000) The Attraction of Opposites
5 Feb 2008 | 11 min read
Paul Simon calls from New York 15 minutes early, polite and apologetic. He needs to put the kids to bed -- his three children aged 7, 5 and 2 with his third wife, 34-year-old singer-songwriter Edie Brickell -- and read them stories. Could he call back in maybe an hour and a quarter?And, as you might expect from the man's almost obsessive, meticulously crafted music, punctually 75 minutes... > Read more
PATTI SMITH INTERVIEWED (1998): On the road again
5 Feb 2008 | 19 min read
The first phone call to Patti Smith at home in New York catches her weary and breathless. She's apologetic but disarmingly courteous. It's been quite a few years since I've been called "sir" and never, that I recall, by someone from rock'n'roll culture. But it is also an inconvenient time to talk she says. She's been working all day, it's now 5.30 pm and she wants to do... > Read more
STEVE EARLE INTERVIEWS (2004, 2002): A hero on the homefront . . . and relevant album reviews
5 Feb 2008 | 25 min read
By 2004, Steve Earle could reflect on a career and life which had been one of the most extraordinary in American music. He crashed into country music with his 1986 classic rockin' country album Guitar Town then spun through a drug-fuelled downward spiral which earned him a prison term in the early 90s. He emerged a stronger man, vocal advocate of free speech persuasively arguing against... > Read more
BEATLEMANIA IN '64: Good times and bad politics
5 Feb 2008 | 4 min read
Some photographs are deafening. Consider the images of American kids screaming at the Beatles in late 1964. Even now, more than four decades later, those who remember the times or have seen the footage will hear an inexplicable noise as if it were alive and ear-shattering right now. Beatlemania from this historical distance -- a world of moshpits, gangsta rap killings and bellicose stadium... > Read more
The sound of Beatlemania
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN, THE TRACKS BOX SET (1998): The creation, rise and redemption of the Boss
5 Feb 2008 | 11 min read
For Bruce Springsteen -- born in the unpromisingly named town of Freehold, New Jersey, in the promised land of America -- rock 'n' roll was the redemptive force which delivered him from his working-class existence in the "20 years of schoolin' and they put you on the day shift" world Bob Dylan once sang of. Springsteen is a Horatio Alger story -- with a backbeat. But he also... > Read more
Bruce Springsteen: Johnny Bye-Bye
BOB DYLAN: PORTRAIT OF THE YOUNG MAN ARTIST AT 60 (2001): The road goes on forever . . . and ever
2 Feb 2008 | 6 min read
The guitarist G. E. Smith must have great stories to tell. For a little over two years in the late 80s he was, for want a better description, Bob Dylan's band leader.During those difficult years when Dylan was emotionally adrift, Smith would audition players and introduce them to a repertoire of well over 100 songs, and replace members as some inevitably dropped out or Dylan would obliquely... > Read more
LUCINDA WILLIAMS INTERVIEWED (2007): Out of the Blue
29 Jan 2008 | 7 min read
Almost 20 years ago on her self-titled album, Lucinda Williams sang Am I Too Blue, a penetratingly drained song about loneliness and self-doubt. If it hadn’t been for some flashes of jangling pop and a few light-hearted romps in the intervening years, the essence of Am I Too Blue and its honest weariness might stand as Williams’ signature emotion in an impressive if small body of... > Read more
THE BEE GEES INTERVIEWED (1999). Inside Hitsville FLA
23 Jan 2008 | 26 min read
South Beach in Miami where tanned, bodies beautiful in stamp-sized bikinis parade the boardwalk, the sky is permablue and as you lie in the warm ocean watching the sun set over pastel Art Deco buildings you can hear the distant sound of Cuban music wafting from a seaside bar in the humid night air.Miami, USA. A great place for a holiday - and not bad if you have to work here either.And... > Read more
ELVIS PRESLEY (2007): Merchandising, marketing and maybe some music?
22 Jan 2008 | 4 min read
So Elvis is back in the building? That’s the impression we must draw on the 30th anniversary of his death with the announcement of plans to expand the visitor’s centre in Memphis. As part of some grand design the current centre will be bowled and a new one -- seven times the size of his home of Graceland across the road -- will be built. And some kind of 3D hologram imaging will... > Read more
CHARMAINE NEVILLE INTERVIEWED (2000): Who's in a name?
20 Jan 2008 | 3 min read
Sometimes, as with those Lennon children Sean and Julian, and of course Bob Marley's offspring, you just have to live -- sometimes live up to -- with the name you've been bron into. A help . . . but a hindrance no doubt. Yes, the name was an issue when she started, says singer Charmaine Neville, daughter of Neville Brothers' saxophonist Charles and one of the... > Read more
PAUL McCARTNEY GOES CLASSICAL (1993): An oratorio for everyman
20 Nov 2007 | 8 min read
Around the time of his 50th birthday in June last year, Paul McCartney could have -- if he so chose -- picked up a couple of mainstream British newspapers and read editorials and think pieces suggesting that this former Beatle be made a knight of the realm. And why not? James Paul McCartney is undeniably Britain’s most popular living composer and, as the writers pointed out,... > Read more
THE BEACH BOYS' BRIAN WILSON INTERVIEWED (2004): Heroes and Villains
7 Nov 2007 | 12 min read
The city is melting by mid-morning. One of the newspapers - under the thumping headline "Blast Furnace" - says the Met Office is predicting the hottest day of the month: a withering 42C. Summer is scorching its way to town, so Sydney responds with shirts off and shorts on. And by coincidence the soundtrack beneath the hiss of bus brakes and rattle of trams around Circular... > Read more
THE BEACH BOYS' MIKE LOVE INTERVIEWED (2007, and concert review): Hang on to Your Ego
2 Nov 2007 | 6 min read
It is a rare individual who can claim that the Beatles sang “happy birthday” to him. But then Mike Love -- the Beach Boy who keeps their early surf songs alive today -- is a rare man indeed. Now 66, Love can reflect on a life in popular music that began with 60s pop capturing the breezy vibe of southern California, but which became somewhat darker as the decade rolled on. In... > Read more
JOHN CALE INTERVIEWED (2005): Flipping the Velvet
20 Oct 2007 | 7 min read
At the end of a digressive conversation with John Cale, I thank him for his time then add, "and I didn't even mention The Other Band". Cale -- Welsh, classically trained and fiercely intellectual -- lets go a baritone chuckle and says, "and thank you" -- then makes his escape, as if fearing inevitable questions about it may come. The Other Band was The Velvet Underground.... > Read more
IGGY POP AND THE STOOGES, AGAIN: Loud, fast and out of control
20 Oct 2007 | 4 min read
A few years ago, a cartoon in a rock magazine captured the essence of the Stooges. It showed a guy in headphones whose head had exploded and his friend in the other room saying over his shoulder, "So what do you think of the remastered version of Raw Power?" The Stooges, fronted by Iggy Pop, delivered that kind of sonic intensity on albums like their drug-addled, self-titled debut in... > Read more
JOHNNY CASH REMEMBERED 2006: Solitary, and singular, man
20 Oct 2007 | 4 min read
The last photographs of Johnny Cash told their own story: the thinning grey hair, the once tough jaw bent out of shape by years of painful dental surgery, the lines which spoke of a world-weariness. And the ineffable sadness in those dark eyes as if he was looking into the beyond where he would once again be with his wife June, who died just nine weeks before Johnny passed on in September 2003.... > Read more
THE ROLLING STONES, AN ESSAY: Living in Memory Motel
20 Oct 2007 | 4 min read
If memory serves me still, it was schoolmate Chris Gilbert and I who went to see the Stones together at Auckland's Civic Theatre on March 1, 1966. I know I wore a black polo-necked sweater (of the kind that Stones Brian Jones and Keith Richard favoured), and that the show, while not actually changing my life, had a profound --and not entirely favourable -- effect on me.Even as a spotty... > Read more