Going for broke
The founding member of the Small Faces was playing an instrument from the age of six, but was forever haunted by the fear of MS, the inherited disease which eventually killed him
The short-lived wonder of Creedence Clearwater Revival
Million-selling rock bands are rarely happy families. They are an uneasy combination of a creative alliance and a business partnership,…
A glimpse of lost London – before the yuppie invasion
In a 1923 book called Echo de Paris, the writer Laurence Houseman attempted to conjure up in a very slim,…
The musical gravy train: Leaving The Building, by Eamonn Forde, reviewed
Musicians cast a long cultural shadow. Politicians may wield considerable power in their time, but although today’s young people are…
What’s a scribbled signature worth?
In 2002 I was living in Berlin. One day my upstairs neighbour Peter told me he had just returned from…
Capital entertainment: how the West End became the playground of London
The West End was always something a little apart. Some years ago, I used to go drinking with a man…
Did George Formby and Gracie Fields really help Britain out of the Depression?
Cinema history is a strange thing. A couple of months ago the Guardian began a series in which film critics…
When Decca records were part of everyday life
In 1929 in America, Dashiell Hammett published his debut hardboiled novel Red Harvest, over in Paris Buñuel and Dalí began…
They just keep rolling along: the astonishing durability of the Rolling Stones
At the end of 1969, teenage Rolling Stones fans reading the new Fab 208 annual could be forgiven for thinking…
Speeding along the highway in America’s coolest cars
In 1973, four years before he disappeared down the Star Wars rabbit hole, George Lucas directed the film American Graffiti,…
Mary Whitehouse’s publishers also produced Gang Girls, The Degenerates and Bikers at War
The year 1971 was a busy one for Mary Whitehouse, self-appointed ‘Clean-up TV’ campaigner. Not only did she help establish…
Describing the indescribable: news from the Western Front
At the close of the 1970s, I found a selection of postcards in an antique shop which had been sent…
Days of frantic strumming
‘It was easy, it was cheap, go and do it,’ sang the Desperate Bicycles on their self-funded debut single in…
