Blog Posts by Barney Hoskyns

My Bloody Valentine inspired purple journalistic prose and surreal interpretation. But onstage they merely enjoyed inflicting pain. Stephen Dalton spoke to them for Vox in April 1992——Barney Hoskyns, Editorial Director, Rock's Backpages

"My Bloody Valentine are not rock 'n' roll, they are God!"

Pardon?

Backstage at Reading University on the first night of the band's UK tour, My Bloody Valentine main man Kevin Shields cowers in bashful bemusement under a barrage of hysterical praise from 20-year-old superfan Jason Kelpie.

"If the world ended tomorrow and there was nothing left but My Bloody Valentine, I'd be happy. They are the coolest f---ing sonic visual experience we've got. You can't beat My Bloody Valentine with a big stick! Only having your brains blown out with a massive shotgun while on acid comes close to My Bloody Valentine! Worship at the altar of My Bloody Valentine! Religion sucks, but the closest thing to religion we've got is My Bloody Valentine..."

Strange that four

Bonnie Raitt's career was dumper-bound until a P45 from her record company inspired her to rediscover her musical roots. Andy Gill interviewed her for Q in September 1991——Barney Hoskyns, Editorial Director, Rock's Backpages

All of a sudden, Bonnie Raitt was Number 1. After a career of close on two decades, it was hardly an overnight success, but so little had been heard of her since the early '80s that when 1989's Nick Of Time album hit, it hit with all the shock of overnight success.

Most people who cared thought she'd given up long ago, retired into that twilit hinterland of rock'n'roll memories. Since 1982's Green Light, there had been a yawning silence from the first lady of the slide guitar, broken only by Nine Lives some four years later. The truth was simple and brutal: in 1983, Bonnie Raitt had been unceremoniously booted off Warner Bros, the first and only label of her career, in some corporate cost-cutting exercise. As it turned out, she was in good company: that Van

Levon Helm's funeral is held today in Woodstock, the Catskills town where The Band — following in Bob Dylan's footsteps — settled in the late '60s. Al Aronowitz visited the group there in the summer of 1968 and filed this report for Rolling Stone. Rest in peace, brother——Barney Hoskyns, Editorial Director, Rock's Backpages

NEW YORK — Big Pink is of those middle-class ranch houses of the type that you would expect to find in development row in the heart of suburbia rather than on an isolated mountaintop high above the barn architecture of New York State's rustic Woodstock.

When The Band moved into Big Pink in the spring of 1967, the house looked as if it had been tenanted by little more than a housewife with a dustmop who only crossed its threshold once a week to clean it. The Band, of course, had spent its six previous years living in hotels, motels, rooming houses, bus stations, airport terminals, and the back seats of newly wrecked cars. What The Band brought to Big Pink was the

Levon Helm was the Arkansas-born drummer/singer/mandolin player with the otherwise Canadian group The Band: his brilliant playing and inimitably good-old-boy singing supplied the cornerstone for the sound of these Americana forefathers. His death yesterday brought to a close the life of a man who lived, breathed and drank American music like a sacred elixir. Levon, we salute you — and remember you as you were in this profile from Uncut in October 2009——Barney Hoskyns, Editorial Director, Rock's Backpages

If Levon Helm's studios have a Green Room, then this must be it. A ramshackle den leading off a homely wooden kitchen, it's currently crawling with musicians warming up for the Midnight Ramble, the weekly musical revue hosted by the former Band linchpin at his backwoods spread in Woodstock, New York.

Framed pictures of comrades — fallen or otherwise — cover the back wall, The Band's Rick Danko and Richard Manuel prominent among them. Conspicuously missing among these war heroes is the

RBP marks the passing of broadcasting legend Dick Clark — he of American Bandstand fame — with this career-spanning 2004 interview by Harvey Kubernik——Barney Hoskyns, Editorial Director, Rock's Backpages

Dick Clark is one of the most recognized personalities in entertainment in America: He hosts two nationally syndicated radio shows ("Rock, Roll and Remember" and "The Music Survey"), live "Good Ol' Rock 'n' Roll" shows, and various Rock 'n' Roll video collections.

Clark began his entertainment career at age 17 at WRUN Radio in Utica, New York. After graduating from Syracuse University, he became a news anchorman at television station WKTV. He later moved to Philadelphia to work for WFIL Radio and Television, where he became the host of the local television show, "Bandstand". Later, Clark convinced the ABC Network to carry the show nationwide, and shortly thereafter, "American Bandstand" was the country's highest-rated daytime show. "American Bandstand" holds the record as television's

After two stunning gigs at the Lyceum in London, Bob Marley found himself universally hailed as reggae's first superstar. Karl Dallas watched the Wailers in action and talked to their leader about music, prejudice and Babylon. This piece ran in Melody Maker on July 26, 1975——Barney Hoskyns, Editorial Director, Rock's Backpages

Columbo's is a mostly black-patronised disco in London's Carnaby Street. The only white face on the stairs is the autographed picture of Peter Falk in the role of the club's eponymous (but differently spelled) TV hero. A black bouncer, who looks like a heavy in a Raymond Chandler yarn, is keeping a crowd of ticketless gatecrashers at bay with less effort of his ham-like fist than it would take him to crack a walnut.

Inside, Bob Marley is partying. He's a little guy, lean and wiry, but it is easy to see him as he bends his knees and straightens them in that characteristic Jamaican strut he does on stage as he plays, and it's neither the spike plaits of his natty

On August 18, 2009, in Salt Lake City, I was privileged enough to sit down with Jack White — variously a White Stripe, a Raconteur, a Dead Weatherman (and arguably the most prodigiously gifted American musician to emerge in the last decade) — and walk back through his career from pre-Stripes Detroit to present-day Nashville. These are the outtakes from an interview that ran as the cover story in the 150th issue of Uncut magazine——Barney Hoskyns, Editorial Director, Rock's Backpages

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RBP: In an interview about two years ago you looked back to childhood and conjectured as to why you didn't "swim with all the other fish" at school and elsewhere. You said you were looking for something deeper, maybe in religion. When did music become part of that search?

JW: Probably in early childhood I didn't know any different, and I think that's sometimes how I reflect on it now when people say the word "fun": "Did you guys have fun playing that show last night?" "Did you have fun recording the

David Bowie turned out to be the more enduring artist, but T. Rex's Marc Bolan was the greatest star of glam rock. Keith Altham interviewed him for NME in October 1971, following the release of T. Rex's classic Electric Warrior album and just before their smash hit 'Bang a Gong'——Barney Hoskyns, Editorial Director, Rock's Backpages

I do believe I am in grave danger of becoming a pleb! For example, in the opinion of a number of eminent musical critics Marc Bolan "the little Bopper" is contributing nothing significant or worthwhile to the pop music front with his recent singles or new album Electric Warrior.

There is, for example, very little in the way of progressive musical diarrhoea or intuitive cosmic flashes from the lyrics department. What there is appears to be good old-fashioned funky kind of music in the form of easy rock and roll, which has brought him a string of big hits like 'Hot Love', 'Ride A White Swan' and 'Get It On'.

Is it right that someone should be making music