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The Album Isn’t Dead. Long Live The Long-Player
The long-player is a relic, we’re assured on a daily basis. An artform that stubbornly refuses to recognize its obsolescence and was stepped over by the single on music’s evolutionary ladder, consigned...
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Children Of The Revolution: How Glam Rock Changed The World
The Great Britain of the 70s could be a drab, monochrome place. The buzz of the Summer Of Love had long faded and in its place, it seemed, came the escalating tensions in Northern Ireland, economic and...
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The Digital Music Revolution: From The MP3 To Music-Is-Free
She may not think so herself, but Suzanne Vega just might be the most influential figure in the past three decades of music. That’s because “Tom’s Diner” was the very first song to be digitized when a...
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‘The Who By Numbers’: Combining ‘Surface Appeal And Fascinating Depth’
When The Who By Numbers was released, it was time for the British rock quartet to serve up a more conventional studio album, after the panoramic ambition of 1973’s Quadrophenia. Conventional, perhaps,...
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‘Quadrophenia’: Four-Way Brilliance From The Who
“The reason that the album has come out emotionally as it has is that I felt that The Who ought to make, if you like, a last album.” Those were the dramatic words of Pete Townshend in an interview with...
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The Who Announce Half Speed Mastered Reissues Of ‘Quadrophenia’ And ‘The Who...
The Who have announced the release of the third in a series of half speed mastered studio albums, this time re-releasing Quadrophenia and The Who By Numbers. Both titles will arrive on February 2,...
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‘Rough Boys’ Single: Pete Townshend Rounds Off A Solo Chart Year
Pete Townshend’s achievements aren’t often measured in pure commercial terms, but the year of 1980 was a notable one for The Who’s chief songwriter as a solo artist. His album Empty Glass became a Top...
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Best Concept Albums: 43 Classics That Will Blow Your Mind
Concept albums are most often associated with prog rock and the 70s, since epic LPs really did flourish in that era. But prog rockers didn’t completely own the concept of concepts. As this list shows,...
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‘Squeeze Box’: The Who Hit Championed By Ronnie Lane
One day in the 1970s, Pete Townshend went into a music shop and bought an accordion. Learning the instrument inspired him to compose a song during the period when he was writing for what became the...
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‘WHO’: Pete Townshend And Roger Daltrey Prove Rock Isn’t Dead
The tone of Pete Townshend’s interviews had been that everything in music has been done, and rock is dead. But it was a thrill to be able to say that his own work contradicts him. Certainly, some of...
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‘A Quick One’: How The Who Took a Giant Step Forward
It’s almost hard to fathom the leap The Who took from their 1965 debut LP to their 1966 follow-up, A Quick One. The debut, My Generation, introduced a lot of Who hallmarks – Roger Daltrey’s...
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Lennon, Clapton, Richards, Mitchell: A Tidy Guide To The Dirty Mac
Eric Clapton is rightly credited with instigating two of rock’s earliest supergroups, Cream, and Blind Faith, yet he also starred in a third, the near-mythical The Dirty Mac. Who are The Dirty Mac? The...
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‘Rock And Roll Circus’: Behind The Rolling Stones’ Wildest Extravaganza
Mick Jagger and director Michael Lindsay-Hogg came up with the idea for an all-star music concert filmed under a big-top tent, a project that came to fruition in The Rolling Stones Rock And Roll Circus...
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How the Greatest 60s Rockers Transitioned to the 70s
After the countercultural dream of the late 60s came crashing down, the artists whose music had given that dream a soundtrack were all faced with the same question: What now? The era’s most iconic...
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‘Ready Steady Who’: The Who’s Lesser-Known UK No.1
It’s well known that one of the few achievements missing from the epic career of The Who is a UK No.1 single. But there is a chart-topping release in their history that some of their latter-day fans...
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The Toppermost Of The TOTPoppermost: 20 Classic Performances
Britain’s longest-running and best-loved pop show, Top Of The Pops, ran from 1964 to 2006 and brought the nation’s families together round their TV sets. Dad would invariably be confused about...
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The Best Guitar Solos: 108 Hair-Raising Moments
There are plenty of ways to play a great guitar solo: You can make jaws drop by shredding for minutes on end, or you can do a simple but unforgettable bit that makes a great song even greater. We’ve...
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Session Man Supreme: The Pre-Fame Adventures Of Jimmy Page
Before he became one of the great guitar heroes in rock history, Jimmy Page was a hired gun with a formidable reputation in the business. When Led Zeppelin were just a twinkle in his eye and even his...
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The Who’s ‘Live At Shea Stadium’ Set To Make Audio Debut In March
Mercury Studios will release the first official audio companion of The Who Live At Shea Stadium 1982 on March 1, 2024. Previously released on DVD and Blu-ray in June 2015, the show features the...
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Best Bassists Of All Time: 55 Legendary Bass Players
Four mighty strings, 55 mighty players. Common wisdom holds that the bass player is the “quiet one” in a band, playing essential parts of a song that you don’t necessarily notice. Not the case with the...
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