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The Latest Breaking News from Melody Maker

‘We didn’t intend to create outrage’: Huggy Bear on radical politics, riot grrrl – and causing chaos on live TV

They said they’d exist for three years, then split. And that’s what the British punks did, winning love and notoriety for their feminist, queer worldview. Thirty years on, a new book tells their story

The Guardian - UK

“I tried to persuade Steven Wilson we should give that one a miss on the remix series!” Ian Anderson still detests the mindless sax of Jethro Tull’s A Passion Play

Horrified by sessions in a French chateau, they went home, dumped the work they’d done on their Thick As A Brick follow-up and started again. The result was a Marmite production that inspired split rumours

Louder

“The Jilted Generation is all the kids who’ve grown up on this supposedly corrupt dance music”: revisiting The Prodigy’s era-defining second record, 30 years on

Liam Howlett says Music For The Jilted Generation was a reaction to the government trying to stop kids having a good time

Metal Hammer

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“We were playing to people who didn't care if we fell over and died.” The Cure might be recognised now as one of the world's most iconic and influential bands, but that wasn't always the case

The path to rock superstardom can be long and winding

Louder

“You pick five interesting guys, lock them in a room together… and if they make an album without actually killing each other first, it will at least be an interesting album”: How King Crimson made Larks’ Tongues in Aspic

The 1973 release steered a new line-up into uncharted waters, resulting in a work that could only have been made by a band who were “prepared to jump off the cliff”

Louder

“I put an ad in Melody Maker – ‘musicians only need apply!’ – and we got Peter and Michael Giles, and Robert Fripp”: So many artists wanted to be part of Judy Dyble’s world

Late singer decided to avoid staying in bands too long after being fired from Fairport Convention – “I’d leave before they could throw me out” – but believed the split sent both parties hurling into adventures they’d otherwise have missed

Louder

"One minute they were a band you'd never heard of, then the next you couldn't get into the gigs": In 1972 the then-unknown Focus appeared on UK TV. Within a year, their guitarist was voted best player on the planet

Powered by Jan Akkerman's guitar and Thijs van Leer's Hammond organ, Sylvia helped pave the way for the rapid rise to fame of Dutch proggers Focus

Louder

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Shoegaze pioneers Slowdive: ‘A journalist said we’d be stacking shelves in Tesco within six months’

Critical darlings one minute, vitriol magnets the next. Rachel Goswell of Slowdive speaks to Annabel Nugent about the backlash to shoegaze, their exceptional new album, and the health scare that almost ended her career in music

The Independent UK

“It was a finished product, called A for Anderson, intended as a solo record. Then the record company heard it." The story of Jethro Tull and A

When 1980's A came out it featured a new Jethro Tull line-up, a new sound and songs about the threat of nuclear war and terrorism. Not everyone was impressed.

Louder

"We could have been bigger had we had an amazing manager. We’re our own worst enemies": How Roxy Music got it together despite themselves

They looked like they were from “Planet Zog” and sneaked through a gap created by drug addiction - but the members accept they could have made it easier for themselves

Louder

Totally Wired by Paul Gorman is a deft potted history of the music press – but it doesn't tell the whole story

Musicians have long had their careers captured for posterity by the music press. Yet, the spotlight has rarely been turned around to the journalists who write these stories. Totally Wired is a vivid oral history of music journalists in the UK and US.

The Conversation

"People were very down on us after Syd left. Everyone thought Syd was all the group had": In the wake of the worldwide success of The Dark Side Of The Moon, David Gilmour remembered when Pink Floyd were written off as yesterday's men

Pink Floyd's management weren't the only ones who thought the group were doomed after Syd Barrett's exit

Louder

‘On reflection, it’s very uncool’: readers’ scrapbooks of pop fandom

With the Wham! documentary showcasing Andrew Ridgeley’s mum’s scrapbooks of their career, readers share their own shrines to Roxy Music, Metallica, David Bowie and more

The Guardian - UK

“We discovered we had an audience out there and it numbered in millions”: How Focus secured TV music show The Old Grey Whistle Test’s future

Revered music series ran for nearly two decades after Thijs van Leer’s band played two-song set during its first year

Louder

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Metal Hammer

"America is the most satanic country in the world": How Black Sabbath getting huge in the US opened Ozzy Osbourne's eyes to the cut-throat nature of capitalism

"They've found a way of destroying the world by just pushing a button... At times I don't think it would be a bad idea"

Louder

A German concert promoter once offered Black Sabbath an extra one way plane ticket in case they needed to bring a "sacrificial victim" to their gig

Some people got a little carried away with the mistaken belief that Black Sabbath were a Satan-worshipping occult band

Metal Hammer

Pink Floyd's Roger Waters and Free's Paul Rodgers reviewed Black Sabbath in 1970, and were not at all impressed

In 1970 Melody Maker got Roger Waters and Paul Rodgers to offer their opinions on two Black Sabbath singles

Louder

"I don't think I could hum any of your stuff" - what happened when Led Zeppelin visited the BBC

In 1970 The Beatles abdicated and Led Zeppelin took their crown, so Robert Plant and John Bonham visited the BBC to explain the rock revolution

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The Guardian - UK

Dennis Lotis obituary

Big band crooner of the 1950s who also turned his hand to film and theatre

ABC News

How Radiohead single Creep became a 90s classic despite being 'deleted' by their label

Creep was a monster that charted around the world and gave a British act a rare hit in the United States. But when the single was first released, the BBC refused to play it and Radiohead's label eventually gave up on it.

The Guardian - UK

Colin Irwin obituary

Folk music journalist on Melody Maker, fRoots and Mojo whose books took him on explorations of Ireland and England

The Independent UK

John Lennon’s angry letter to ‘my obsessive old pal’ Paul McCartney after Beatles split goes up for auction

Lennon accuses McCartney of trying to ‘s*** all over us in public’ in three-page document

The Independent UK

John Lennon’s angry letter to ‘my obsessive old pal’ Paul McCartney after Beatles split goes up for auction

Lennon accuses McCartney of trying to ‘s*** all over us in public’ in three-page document

Belfast Live

Belfast music journalist who died of cancer honoured with legacy bursary for future talent

Carol Clerk won the PPA Journalist of the Year award for her coverage of Live Aid in 1985

The Guardian - UK

They got rhythm: the interwar British dance bands who pointed towards pop

Music stars of the 1920s and 1930s, including Spike Hughes and Reginald Foresythe, transformed American jazz to suit British tastes, explains Bob Stanley in an extract from his book charting the birth of pop

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