Last week the New Zealand Herald published my article about the 50th anniversary of the death of Martin Luther King Junior. Click here to link to the piece that details my 2016 visit to the site of King’s assassination, the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. If you’re planning a trip to the States and Memphis is somehow missing…
Category: Artists: I-P
Happy 65th To The Coolest Man In Music – A Coast Soul Special For Nile Rodgers
In a post-David Bowie world, is there a cooler musician alive than Nile Rodgers? I’m not certain there is. Aside from what he can do rhythmically with an electric guitar, there are the dreads, the sunnies, the beret, the suits and most crucially, the sense of being entirely comfortable in his own skin. Turning 65…
Barry Gibb: ‘You’re living in the now and you don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow’ – Our Extended 2009 Interview
Bee Gees with their Saturday Night Fever Album Of The Year Grammy, 1979. Barry Gibb once told me this was up there with the favourite interviews he’s ever done. Well Barry, it’s fair to say the feeling is mutual, though more to the point, the gratitude and the pleasure is mine. To mark the…
After Breaking Records At Glastonbury, Could Barry Gibb Be Teaming Up With Nile Rodgers?
One week on, the numbers for Barry Gibb’s ‘Legends slot’ at Glastonbury are looking even more impressive with news the latest Bee Gees best of, Timeless: The All-Time Greatest Hits, has shot into the UK top 10 at #9*. This is as a direct result of Barry’s 15-song Glastonbury performance, a setlist that contained no less…
Music With A Message – My Newstalk ZB Interview On Why Pop Matters
A few weeks back I was interviewed on another Newstalk ZB show, Total Recall, about pop songs that have a message and a conscience. As someone who loves popular music and the possibilities of the format (including when it’s being highly socially charged) this is one of my favourite topics. In the clip below (approximately…
Watch Keith Urban Nail His Tribute To The Bee Gees
2017 marks 40 years since the release of a soundtrack of such cultural and commercial impact that not only did it become for a time the biggest selling album ever, but people as varied as Dave Grohl, Burt Bacharach and George Benson still hail it as being about as good as pop music gets. Saturday…
How The Bee Gees Always Had The Best Opening Lines – 50yrs Since New York Mining Disaster 1941 Launched Them To Fame
It was 50 years ago yesterday that the Bee Gees first official international single, New York Mining Disaster 1941, was released. Spicks & Specks before it had been a hit in New Zealand, Australia and in the Netherlands too, but it was New York Mining Disaster 1941 in April 1967 that launched the brothers Gibb to instant…
How A Bored-Looking Simon & Garfunkel Smashed Their Chuck Berry Cover Out Of Central Park
It was in the early 80s when I was about 3 or 4 years old that I was first introduced to the music of Chuck Berry. Dad brought home the cassette tape of Simon & Garfunkel’s The Concert In Central Park and amidst all the P. Simon writers credits was one for a certain C. Berry. This…
Carrie Fisher: ‘If you can get Paul Simon to write a song about you, do it’
The next sentence to that quote from her memoir Wishful Drinking (as used in the headline) had Carrie Fisher adding, “Because he is so brilliant at it.” Indeed he was and none better than the title track from Hearts And Bones – the underbought 1983 precursor to the mega-selling Graceland in 1986. If 2016 was…
Barry Gibb: ‘You couldn’t step out like Phil Collins was able to step out of Genesis’ – In The Now With Tim Roxborogh Part 4
Barry Gibb With just two days to go until Barry Gibb’s first solo album since the 80s is released – In The Now – here is part 4 in my series of transcribed extracts from the interview we did together at the start of September. I’ve pulled these sections of the interview with the biggest…
Paul Simon’s Graceland Turns 30 – The Album’s Key Moments & Where It Still Always Takes Me
Ladysmith Black Mambazo & Paul Simon South African rhythms, Americana lyrics and an album that always takes me back to Malaysia, last week marks 30 years since the release of Paul Simon’s Graceland. 30-years-old and 30 years of being a mainstay of virtually every “top 100 albums of all time” list published since. And the…
Barry Gibb’s First Solo Album Since The 80s – 6 Of His Best Ever Solo Songs
Barry Gibb. I have a theory that the tail-end of every decade is extra special when it comes to the music and successes of the Bee Gees. It all began in 1958 when the Gibb family left the grey of England for the warmth of Australia. Then after years of toil as teenage TV stars…