Get all your news in one place.

100's of premium titles.
One app.

Get all your news in one place.

100's of premium titles. One news app.

The Latest Breaking News from John Leckie

“There was no master plan apart from we didn’t want to do the Thin Lizzy/Status Quo blues bendy thing”: Bruce Watson on the birth of Big Country, Stuart Adamson’s legacy and the secret to bagpipe guitar

Bruce Watson shares the guitar story of the Scottish rock stalwarts, the "Itch and Itch" amps so crucial to his tone, and how “Scotland’s answer to Jimi Hendrix” was the heart of Big Country's sound

Guitar World

“It's the best thing that's happened to Lee but also the worst. He wrote this perfect song, but it's meant he hasn’t had to do anything because he has a constant source of income”: The torturous - and ironic - story of There She Goes

"He had this blueprint in his head for the record, but it was like an acid trip that kept coming back to him, and it would mess him up"

MusicRadar

“In terms of the guitar solo, he just keeps going! You think, ‘OK, surely it’s time to wrap it up?’ But no, he keeps going and it’s great”: The genius of David Gilmour in Pink Floyd’s greatest songs – by Matt Bellamy, Kirk Hammett, Stu Mackenzie and more

Plus! Comfortably Numb or comfortably dumb? Find out with our Pink Floyd quiz challenge

MusicRadar

From analysis to the latest developments in health,
read the most diverse news in one place.

“I found it more rewarding playing bass than playing rhythm. I've always been into Northern Soul and funk grooves and it was like, ‘This is it’”: Anchoring Primal Scream and the Stone Roses, Mani proudly defied trends, and re-defined rock bass in the 90s

In this 2000 interview, the late Gary “Mani” Mounfield discusses “trouser flapper” amps, groove, the making of Roses classics, and the problems of playing with a drum machine

Guitar World

Gary ‘Mani’ Mounfield, the Stone Roses and Primal Scream bassist, dies aged 63

Ian Brown and Tim Burgess were among those to pay tribute to Mani, whose death was announced by his brother and nephew

The Guardian - UK

“I remember sitting down with Roger and saying, ‘Roger, this is insane!’”: The strange lost album that Pink Floyd abandoned in 1975

Only two tracks have ever been heard from what could have been Pink Floyd's most divisive record

MusicRadar

“Thom sat down and played it in three takes, then just burst into tears afterwards”: How Jeff Buckley saved Radiohead’s Fake Plastic Trees

It was the song Thom Yorke just couldn't get right, but a stellar Jeff Buckley gig unlocked the missing ingredient

MusicRadar

Read news from The Economist, FT, and more,
with one subscription

“Any package shining further light on the their singular brilliance is to be welcomed”: Be-Bop Deluxe’s The Albums – 1974-1976

Bill Nelson’s finest hours are revisited again in clamshell set, but the journey is always rewarding

Louder

"The hype was so great that we were never going to be able to fulfil it." The "nightmare" birth of the Stones Roses' wildly-expensive and long-delayed second album Second Coming, by those who were there, and those who quit

After The Stones Roses set the British music scene alight with their stunning debut album, the expectation was that they would take over the world with album two. Things didn't quite go to plan

Louder

“It was the first kind of rock monster that we'd created”: How an explosive 2001 switch-up revealed just how ferocious Muse could get

The juggernaut of a riff proved Muse’s mettle, setting the stall for a stadium-filling future

MusicRadar

I heard my favourite Radiohead album on the B&W speakers used to record it – and now I love it even more

I heard Radiohead's The Bends played through on the Bowers & Wilkins speakers used to record it in 1995.

What Hi-Fi?

Radiohead’s The Bends at 30: this fraught, compassionate, violently disturbed record remains one of their best

There was a time in the early to mid-2000s when naming The Bends as your favourite Radiohead album was like opting for chicken korma from the takeaway menu, while the gourmands decided between the bangla shatkora and jhinga bahar.

The Conversation

“I was sitting in the studio, thinking, ‘I don’t think we can pull this together, we’re just going to have to split up’”: how Radiohead pulled themselves out of the depths to make The Bends

The Oxford quintet’s era-defining second record turns 30 this month. Here’s the story of how it came together.

Louder

“The kids who bought it didn’t ask, ‘Where’s Syd?’ They increasingly asked, ‘Who’s Syd?’” Meddle marked the point where Pink Floyd as we know them really began

Their 1971 album marked the move from experimental live band to studio-based architects, paving the way for a decade of dominance

Louder

Get all your
news in one place.

100's of premium titles.
One news app.

Louder

"Roy Thomas Baker would organise food fights and set fire to the mixing desk": How Bill Nelson built up then broke up Be-Bop Deluxe

Bill Nelson on Jimi Hendrix, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and the brilliant five-album career of art-rockers Be-Bop Deluxe

Louder

Your essential guide to every album by The Verve

When they weren't splitting up on a monthly basis, The Verve made some fabulous records

MusicRadar

“We did turn a corner. But it must have been the biggest corner in the universe, ‘cos it took ages to turn it”: Inside the protracted creation and glorious guitar work of The Stone Roses' Second Coming

It took the band 347 ten-hour days in the studio to produce 75 minutes of music, but the definition of difficult second album saw a darker Zeppelin-esque Les Paul-toting John Squire emerge

MusicRadar

“There were so many demos that sounded like major songs, but that one was near the top of the list": The making of the 1995 Radiohead classic that became one of their all-time greatest anthems

Producer John Leckie: "It sounded instantly like a big track"

Get all your
news in one place.

100's of premium titles.
One news app.

The Guardian - UK

‘I often see fans crying or snogging to it’: Cast on how they made Walkaway

‘It was used as the soundtrack when the England football team were knocked out of Euro 96. The nation wept, Walkaway was the song – and I missed the whole thing’

Louder

“The council turned the power off in the middle of Out Demons Out. We carried on, and David Bowie is happily shouting his head off with me… We both received letters from the council, banning us for life”: Edgar Broughton has mellowed, but not entirely

He’s defended students in court, ordered cops to stop assaulting fans, and played free shows when he was warned against it – and while identifying with the prog genre, he believes he was proto-punk too

Louder

“The sounds of plucked elastic bands and scraping broomsticks are the last hurrah for the old Pink Floyd”: Household Objects, the lost album that nearly followed Dark Side

For over three decades, a two-minute clip of tuned wine glasses was the only sign of a project begun in 1980 and finally abandoned four years later

The Guardian - UK

‘A nuclear reactor of music’: the story of Simple Minds’ classic album Empires and Dance

Before their 80s megastardom, the band minted a strange vision of European culture and tension that still resonates. They – and superfan James Dean Bradfield from the Manic Street Preachers – reflect on its power

Guitar World

The Stones Roses, Primal Scream and bass playing: A rare interview with Mani

Stone Roses and Primal Scream legend Gary “Mani” Mounfield on gear, groove and the problems of playing with a drum machine

The Guardian - UK

Gris-gris enigma: can a new posthumous release shed light on the elusive genius of Dr John?

How did a middle-class white kid break into New Orleans’ feverish 1950s R&B scene and enjoy a wildly eclectic six-decade career? As a new release puts it: things happen that way

The Guardian - UK

Shivkumar Sharma obituary

Virtuoso instrumentalist and composer who introduced the santoor to Indian classical music

People

From analysis to the latest developments in health,
read the most diverse news in one place.

Organisations

Read news from The Economist, FT, and more,
with one subscription

Topics

Places

Fourteen days free

Download the app

One app. One membership.
100+ trusted global sources.