Tales Of The Unexpected

Luke Haines' 90s infamy revisited.

Colin MacIntyre – No man is an island

Mull Historical Society mainstay Colin MacIntyre lifts the lid on his vinyl reissues and box set

Iggy Pop – "I Can Take a Punch"

There are die-hard totemic musicians, and there's Iggy Pop, so reflective of rock's primal urges and irrepressible energies he could write the book and supply most of the images. His "ribald ruffian" of a new album, Every Loser, shows an artist still willing to take risks and not succumb, aged 75, to notions of growing old gracefully. Five decades since Raw Power, The World's Greatest Living Rock'N'Roll Star (TM) talks about that feral classic, working with Bowie then and, four years later, in Berlin, his surprise visit from Robert Plant, the nature of addiction, inventing punk, the impermanence of existence, oh, and his beloved cockatoo... "At certain points there are flare-ups," he warns Chris Roberts

Iggy Pop Special: Funtime

Credited to Iggy & The Stooges, Raw Power is, to some ears (usually bleeding), the greatest rock album of the early 70s, sheer sonic violence further enlivened by bids to "search and destroy". More than The Stooges' previous two albums, it captures the puressence of rock'n'roll while setting fire to the rulebook. With a little help from James Williamson, their guitarist, Johnnie Johnstone tells the story of its brief yet volatile making and impact following its release a half-century ago this month. And then, on p88, RC is granted an audience with the mighty Iggy Pop in which he traces his career from the band's 1973 landmark to his new solo album, Every Loser, concluding with a Stooges/Pop discography on p97. All aboard.

Jukebox Heroes

Continuing our ongoing survey of unusual formats, Simon Wright looks at the rise and fall of jukebox EPs and 'Little LPs'

THE WHO, WHAT, WHERE AND HOW OF 'WHY'

The song Why has a significant place in music history because it was one of the tracks the fledgling Beatles recorded with Tony Sheridan in 1961 before making a recording debut in their own right. But few people know of an earlier, 1958 recording of the song made by Sheridan, which recently surfaced on a 10\" acetate. Beatles scholar Hans Olof Gottfridsson tells the story of a song that would later attain immortality by association.

33 1/3 minutes with...Jake Bugg

A prodigious talent, Jake Bugg burst out of Nottingham aged 18 with his self-titled debut album in 2012. Featuring timeless rock’n’roll hits Lightning Bolt and Two Fingers, it saw Bugg championed by Noel Gallagher and starting a fascinating career that has led to albums produced by Rick Rubin and The Black Keys singer Dan Auerbach. After 2021’s poppier Saturday Night Sunday Morning returned Bugg to the Top 3, his debut has recently been reissued as a deluxe set adding demos and a London Royal Albert Hall show. Bugg tells RC of rediscovering teenage demos, hanging out in Rick Rubin’s garden, and getting walloped with indie stars at football.

auteur to author

Luke Haines writes the shuk out of rock'n'roll It's all about the 'tude

david quantick likes

...to write a column for Record Collector. Yay Remake/Remodel - or re-record?

mac on black

Fan or obsessive? Ian McCann long since crossed the divide

music to visit

Bob Stanley carries pop's baggage everywhere Ark of the lost Raiders

Not Forgotten

Keith Levene 1957-2022 - Keith Levene was, in a literal sense, hugely instrumental in the formation of punk and post-punk. As a teenage member of The Clash, he persuaded Joy Strummer to join the band. He taught Viv Albertine of The Slits to play guitar, and alongside Jah Wobble and John Lydon, he was responsible for some of the pinnacles of the post-punk era, defining achievements such as 1979's Metal Box, a jagged, silver monument which still stands, Shardlike, casting its long shadow.

Christine McVie 1943-2022

In the soft-rock soap opera of Fleetwood Mac at the height of their global fame, Christine McVie was a calming presence. While no stranger to the relationships freefall and wild substance abuse that unwittingly became shorthand for the making of Rumours, there was something steady and reassuring about her ice-cool voice on You Make Loving Fun, Oh Daddy and possibly the finest 200 seconds of her entire career, Songbird.

Diggin' For GOLD

Our regular look at the more arcane corners of record collecting. Includes Label Of Love and Sound And Vision

VALUE ADDED FACTS

Ian Shirley, Editor Emeritus of the Rare Record Price Guide, answers your questions

The Collector

This month: Jeremy Greenspan of Junior Boys

All in the family

The inspiration for David Cassidy et al, The Cowsills are the pop family that stayed together: 57 years after their recorded debut, they are making some of the best music of their lives their first new album in 30 years, Rhythm Of The World, was released last month. Bill Kopp talks to Bob, Paul and Susan Cowsill about the rain, the park, the fun, the horror - including an abusive father - and other things.

Skid Row – The Crazy Gang

New Jersey’s Skid Row have 36 years on the clock and a clutch of platinum records on the wall, but far from resting on the laurels of their peak successes back in the early 90s, they’re now back on ebullient form with their first album in 16 years, The Gang’s All Here. With a new frontman and a bright future, the band feel they’ve got a new lease of life. “How lucky are we?” founder member Dave ‘Snake’ Sabo and vocalist Erik Grönwall ask John Tucker.

ABBA – The History Book on the Shelf

For years, music fans have debated about which are the finest songs ever by the likes of The Beatles, the Stones, Bowie, Springsteen, and Kate Bush - those artists widely regarded as all-time greats. But how about ABBA? Surely, postMamma Mia! the movie and musical and decades of mainstream adoration, they have earned their place in the pantheon and their catalogue merits serious evaluation. Pete Paphides believes so and, in this ABBA Special, picks their 40 (plus one) Best Songs. Then, on page 100, RC enjoy a rare encounter with one half of the group's peerless songwriting partnership...

Johnnie Taylor – Smooth Operator

Although his biggest hit came after he left the label, Johnnie Taylor was one of the bestselling - and most consistently brilliant artists to record for the legendary Stax. He remains a sorely underrated soul artist, a "seducer-showman" suffused with polish and grit, regarded by some as the missing link between Sam Cooke and Marvin Gaye. Jack Watkins sings his praises.

Benny Andersson – "We learned from The Beatles"

And now to meet the man behind those 40 (plus one) amazing songs... Along with Björn Ulvaeus, ABBA's chief melodist, Benny Andersson, comprises what is finally - after years of being dismissed as pop lightweights - regarded as one of the great songwriting partnerships, up there with Lennon-McCartney, Jagger-Richards, Holland-Dozier-Holland and Wilson-Love. And with the Voyage album, their first for 39 years, and the ABBA Voyage concert spectacular featuring virtual avatars going on 'til well into 2023, ABBA are poised at last to be hailed as true immortals. But what was it like to make their first ABBA music since 1982? How have they managed to pick up after so lon-----g? "It was like it had been three weeks, not 40 years," Andersson tells Pete Paphides in this rare interview.

Magic Man

As guitarist in an early incarnation of Captain Beefheart's Magic Band when they made career-defining albums such as Trout Mask Replica, Jeff Cotton, aka Antennae Jimmy Semens, had a first-hand view of the bizarre and often terrifying and traumatising working methods of the artist formerly known as Don Van Vliet. He lived to tell the tale just and went on to create more heady psychedelia with Mu. He then dropped off the rock'n'roll radar... until now, as Cotton returns with a solo album that draws on many of the ideas and unfinished songs he began work on back in the early 70s. \"I love the guy,\" he tells Mike Barnes about Beefheart. \"But it took years of hindsight to be able to process it.\"

THE RIGHT STUFF

Clothes-swapping with Ian Curtis? Teaching songs to Bob Dylan?? Miming with David Bowie? Getting punched by Mick Jagger? There’s a lot you don’t know about the pre-fame career of Right Said Fred, contends Joel McIver of their “avant-garde” years…

33% minutes with...Don Was

Bassist, producer, and filmmaker Don Was was born Don Edward Fagenson in Detroit in 1952. With school friend David Weiss he enjoyed his first success in Was (Not Was) when they hit the UK  Top 10 with 1987’s Walk The Dinosaur.

auteurtoauthor

Luke Haines writes the shuk out of rock’n’roll Prolific, moi?

davidquanticklikes

...to write a column for Record Collector. Yay Remembering when 60s went 80s

maconblack

Ian McCann considers soul brothers and sisters, and blues siblings

musictovisit

Bob Stanley carries pop’s baggage everywhere Staring down the Middle Of The Road

Jerry Lee Lewis 1935-2022

The title of the 2006 duets project that gave Jerry Lee Lewis his biggest-selling album in a career stretching over half a century was both a reverential nod to fallen comrades, and the typically  showman-like brag of a rock’n’roll bad boy nicknamed The Killer.

CORPS AND EFFECTS

Brixton synthpop group, Hard Corps, split prematurely in the 80s, with much of their work coming out posthumously. They tell Ian Shirley how they made their best-loved single, Je Suis Passée