Hack at work.
Killing Bono
"The best book I have ever read about trying to make it in the music business" - Elton John
"A fantastic book, which manages the difficult trick of being simultaneously very funny and very sad." - Bob Geldof
"I was Neil McCormick's fan in school. He was much cooler than me, a much better writer and I thought he'd make a much better rock star. I was wrong on one count. He's written a great book" - Bono
The Jolly Boys: sound that rocked Jamaica
Published: 5:18PM BST 21 Jul 2010
Jolly Boys, featuring Albert Minott, centre
‘Everybody knows Albert,” says Albert Minott proudly as he walks through the streets of Port Antonio, Jamaica, recognised by many of the passers-by. “This is my town. I was born here, and I’ll die here. All my life, singing and dancing. It’s like a fire inside.”
Tall and lean, the 71-year-old Minott cuts a dapper figure in a matching ensemble of crisp shirts and slacks, waistcoats and cravats, set off with nifty colour co-ordinated trilby hats. He would stand out anywhere, let alone amid the faded Caribbean glamour of Jamaica’s north coast resort, where painted wooden shacks lean up against collapsing colonial buildings, and the locals favour bright T-shirts and shorts.
Albert pauses to point out the marina, where he used to dive for coins back in the Forties, when the banana boat pulled in. “Way back when England was our mother,” he says, a mischievous smile displaying his few remaining teeth.
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Rox: move over Amy
Rox: Memoirs, CD review
Published: 1:20PM BST 08 Jun 2010
When Amy Winehouse pronounced herself too “exhausted” to fulfil festival dates with Mark Ronson last year, a young singer was asked to step into her high-heeled shoes, singing her hit Valerie. Roxanne Tatei, aka Rox, is a 21-year-old from south London (of Jamaican-Iranian descent) who (like Winehouse herself) came through the ranks of the National Youth Orchestra and attended the Brit school in Croydon.
Now comes her debut album, Memoirs. Opening track, No Going Back, blasts out in a dense stew of gushing Hammond organs and hip-hop beats, with Rox delivering a feisty lyric about a drunken one night stand with an ex-boyfriend, in a streetwise London accent. Her casual attitude masks the technical accomplishm
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Mitch Winehouse: the crooning cabbie
The first time I saw Amy Winehouse perform live was in the basement of Pizza Express in Soho, in 2003. It was a more innocent time, before the beehives and tattoos, before the release of her witty debut album, ’Frank’ (later the same year), long before the breakaway global success of ’Back In Black’ (2006) and the well documented personal problems that followed in one of the most spectacular falls from grace the modern music business has witnessed.
Amy was just a great young singer-songwriter, with a set of smart, sassy, soulful original pop songs and some classic jazz standards. I met Amy’s extended family, who were out in support, including her cab-driving father, Mitch Winehouse, his wife, Jane, and ex-wife, Janice (Amy’s mum).
At some point of the proceedings, the burly, white-haired Mitch joined Amy for a knock-out duet of the 1930 classic ’You Go To My Head’, as recorded by Frank Sinatra, Billie Holiday and others. Mitch was a natural, ebullient performer with a bluff, jazzy style, and Amy clearly enjoyed singing with him. When I interviewed Amy in 2004, she spoke glowingly of Mitch. “My dad’s great,” she enthused. “He is like the karaoke Sinatra. He could be a lounge act, he’s that good.”
“That was a good night,” recalls 59-year-old Mitch, smiling. “I always wanted to sing at every opportunity, weddings, parties, bar mitzvahs, I would be up there.”
Who are the real musicians of the decade?
November 30th, 2009
The cover of the new issue of music magazine Q is boldly headlined ‘Artists Of The Century’. Which might be considered just a tad peremptory. A quick scan of over thirty musicians featured on the full gatefold cover reveals that men outnumber women over 7 to 1, and that the ratio of white people to black is 15.5 to 1 (not counting one green cartoon figure from The Gorillaz). So that’s something to look forward to: another white male century for popular music. Perhaps we should just cancel the next 90 years and go home now.
We are entering the season of the list. Music magazines and newspapers have been nominating their artists and albums of the decade. I suppose I am going to have to get round to my own in due course, although when I contemplate other proposed top tens, I am not sure I have lived through the same decade as my fellow critics. In fact, for me, if there is any defining characteristic of the Noughties, it has been its lack of definition. There have been no musical movements that have seized control of the popular imagination and really imprinted themselves on the decade, just a something-for-everyone, pop cultural migration to the margins.
Of course, critical lists are subjective, reflecting and reaffirming the tastes of those who make them, and those who read and identify with the given periodical.
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A health clause would be bad for music
October 23rd, 2009
HMV inspirations: some of these people may be on drugs, you know.
This week, the former boss of Island Records, Marc Marot, gained headlines when he floated the ludicrous and entirely unworkable notion that record companies should be able to suspend artists who are “self-harming” with drugs, or displaying other personal health problems such as anorexia and depression. This was presented as a “health clause”, something that would benefit troubled artists, although given the record industries own long and not very respectable history of narcotic consumption, I can’t imagine many artists taking health advice from a record executive.
By coincidence, this week I received, from HMV, a very nice calendar featuring handsome black and white pictures of a selection of music business icons. It includes Amy Winehouse, Keith Richards, Bobby Gillespie of Primal Scream, Bob Dylan, Elvis Presley, Noel Gallagher, Paul McCartney, Bob Marley, Tom Waits and David Bowie. Now, believe it or not, some of these people actually used drugs. Indeed, from a purely artistic point of view, you’d have to say that some of them did their best work under the influence of drugs and alcohol.
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