Fifty years ago, at the end of 1975, I was called upon by Melody Maker ’s editor to summarise the year in rock in New York, where I had live...

I will have owned my Gibson LG1 acoustic guitar for 50 years today. I bought it in New York, from a shop called We Buy Guitars on West 58th ...

Behind a cover that shamelessly mimics the typography and colour scheme of Pet Sounds lies the best book on The Beach Boys I have read sinc...

It’s a bit of a cliché to call a rock star down to earth, implying that he or she is unchanged by fame but there is no more apt description ...

Fifty years ago this week I met up with Patti Smith at a rehearsal studio on New York’s West Side to interview her for Melody Maker . We alr...

Jackson, that is, and to have ‘got’ Michael was something of a poisoned chalice as Dan Beck, senior product manager at Epic Records in New Y...

“The Kinks always hated photo shoots,” says Ray Davies. “When we first came into the music industry, photographers were strictly old school,...

No, I’d not heard of Big Pete either, not until Colin Harper sent me a copy of his book which, as labours of love go, might rank alongside M...

‘Long Black Veil’ is an American folk ballad that dates from 1959, written by Marijohn Wilkin and Danny Dill, that tells the sad story of a ...

The life of Cat Stevens was forever changed in the autumn of 1975 when, by his reckoning, he was saved from drowning by the Almighty. Swimmi...