Interview by Paul Lester (The Guardian) Hi, Quincy. Good to talk to you, especially considering the time where you are (1.15am). You’re up late! I always am, fella. All my life. It’s the only time the muse lets you loose, you know? I used to write from midnight to 10 in the morning. You’ve got […]
Interviews with musicians
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“For twenty years, The Hitman Blues Band has been rocking the New York area with their searing brand of blues/rock, drawing favourable comparisons to Johnny Winter, Joe Bonamassa, and Kenny Wayne Sheppard along the way. Led by founding member, guitarist/singer Russell “Hitman” Alexander, the band has made various personnel changes along the way, but Alexander […]
“It’s partly about Woking where I grew up. I don’t think the swinging 60s ever hit there’. In 1981, I was going through a few changes. I was taking note of what was going on in our country. When you’re touring, you’re often in your own bubble, but we were going around the country seeing […]
Simon Broughton talks to pianist Lusine Grigoryan about her new Komitas recording on ECM Ask someone to name an Armenian composer and the first name on the list is likely to be Aram Khachaturian, famous for his Gayane and Spartacus ballet scores. But for Armenians, their most treasured composer is Komitas (1869-1935), often described […]
Michael Feinstein, the singer and pianist known as the “ambassador of the Great American Songbook,” has a serious pedigree to back up that title: a real-life connection to one of America’s greatest songwriting teams. It’s the subject of Feinstein’s new memoir, The Gershwins and Me: A Personal History in Twelve Songs. (A CD of Feinstein […]
From the archives. Neil =========== To mark the occasion, we’ve once more raided Rock’s Backpages – the world’s leading collection of vintage music journalism – for this classic interview from the Los Angeles Times in 1976 MORE
It’s 30 years since the death of Glenn Gould, but the pianist still provokes strong reactions. So how do today’s top players assess his legacy? It still sounds like nothing you’ve ever heard, however many times you listen to it: Glenn Gould’s first recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, made in 1955, has an energy, an intensity […]
The great jazz pianist on his years in Miles Davis’s legendary quintet, his debt to Buddhism and why he still has the urge to innovate Continues HERE The ONLY FM / Mixcloud Show where every track is chosen by the listeners. And, tracks far too long to be played on air by the boring alternatives […]
We are talking about soul music. Rod Stewart is telling me what a disaster his 2009 covers album Soulbook was. “It was a cock-up,” he says, his raspy voice made raspier still by a developing cold, “simply because you can’t beat the originals. You’ll never beat the originals, because they’re still on the airwaves.” MORE
John Harris (The Guardian) writes ….. From agitpop to love songs, Bragg has brought his audience through life with him, creating a soundtrack to thousands of lives Billy Bragg has a new beard, a mixture of grey and what he calls “sandy coloured: a bit grey, and a bit red”. When he grew it, he […]
This week on the Gramophone website we are celebrating the career and recordings of the great Italian conductor Claudio Abbado. Among the highlights of Abbado Week are two different guides his finest recordings, a comprehensive overview of Abbado’s career and heartfelt tribute from Gramophone’s Editor-in-Chief James Jolly, and a classic interview with Abbado drawn from […]
https://www.quora.com/Was-Paul-McCartney-hard-on-George-Harrison-1
About a year ago, a curious new website appeared, claiming to represent The New Face Of Jazz. With so much of jazz’s public image oriented toward the music of decades past, it seemed important to follow. But who was this new face? How would it be profiled? Why was it being done? Who was behind it? […]
Recorded live at the Danish Radio Concert Hall, Copenhagen in 2010. It is a little known fact that Charlie Watts lived for a few months in Denmark in the early 1960’s. This was in the early days of the Stones and at the time the band were not an established entity, so Charlie was still […]
The composer credited with creating Minimalism tells Phil Johnson about discovering his own kind of music. “I grew up in the Forties with the hit parade, broadway shows and even Rhapsody in Blue. I took piano lessons like most middle-class kids but I never played or heard anything before Haydn or after Wagner. It wasn’t […]
From the archives but …. still a good read Explore HERE
Previously published here and elsewhere As Teodora Gheorghiu prepares to sing in Der Rosenkavalier at Glyndebourne, she tells Rupert Christiansen how she overcame an illness that threatened her career. It may only be something they put in the water, but over the last century or so Romania has produced an extraordinary succession of velvety lyric […]
Dave Davies is standing among the seated breakfasters one bright morning in the Clissold Arms, a heavily remodelled gastro-pub in north London, across the road from the terraced house where he grew up. He is trying to discern a more shadowy spot, visible only in his memory, where in 1961, aged 14, he and his […]
Originally published 2016 Tom Jones, the hitmaker whose work dates back more than half a century, continues to draw fans and make interesting recordings. Since 2010, he has been working with rock producer Ethan Johns (Ryan Adams, Kings of Leon, Ray LaMontagne) on a trilogy of albums that both return Jones to his bluesy roots in […]
that I had the talent to write like this. My page was too white My ink was too thin The day wouldn’t write What the night pencilled in… From “The Book of Longing” by Leonard Cohen