Get all your news in one place.

100's of premium titles.
One app.

Get all your news in one place.

100's of premium titles. One news app.

EXPLAINED: Gus dudgeon - The Real Truth

“I began writing a song in my head about the drudgery of being an astronaut. An entire verse fell out of my mind and onto the page”: The classic song that transformed Elton John into a global superstar

“Unfortunately, people identify it with David Bowie’s Space Oddity”

MusicRadar

"They told me to change my name. They also told me to sing other people's songs." How Joan Armatrading refused to compromise, baffled session pros, and made the album that set her on the path to stardom

After accidentally getting a start in the London production of Hair, Joan Armatrading made the demo that (eventually) changed her life

Louder

“John called us and said he thought that we were the best stuff that he had heard since the Beatles… To hear that from John Lennon was like, ‘What?’ It was a wonderful compliment”: Davey Johnstone on Elton John’s smash-hit Beatles collab with John Lennon

How a visit from John Lennon during the sessions for Elton John’s 1975 masterpiece Captain Fantastic And The Brown Dirt Cowboy yielded an impromptu Beatles cover and another number one hit

MusicRadar

From analysis to the latest developments in health,
read the most diverse news in one place.

“I’ll never forget it – the three of us were almost in tears. We’re getting to sing this, Elton and Bernie’s whole history up to that point”: Davey Johnstone on the making of Elton John’s 1975 masterpiece, Captain Fantastic And The Brown Dirt Cowboy

It began aboard the high seas, a concept record about Elton John and Bernie Taupin's early days, and when the band got to Caribou Ranch, they'd turn out one of the greatest albums of the '70s

MusicRadar

Pop-rock wizard Todd Rundgren: ‘When I met John Lennon, he was a bundle of rags with nothing to say’

As he tours the UK, the musician answers your questions on making Bat Out of Hell with Meat Loaf, squabbles with XTC and the Band, and wiring his studio while high

The Guardian - UK

“We’d been paying Rick Wakeman £25 a week and Yes offered him £100… We had his son Oliver with us for a while, and he left for Yes too!” Dave Cousins and the life and times of Strawbs

Prog veteran recalls connecting with Sandy Denny, his band’s attempt to fire him, being loved by Led Zeppelin, why they’ve never had a Steven Wilson remix, the “albatross” of Part Of The Union and the unreleased, more political version

Louder

“I said, ‘What’s this – “Run For Home?’ He said, ‘Oh, that’s just shite’”: Lindisfarne’s biggest-selling hit, like so many, was a happy accident

If Back And Fourth producer Gus Dudgeon had arrived early, Ray Laidlaw wouldn’t have been looking through Alan Hull’s lyric book beside a piano

Louder

Read news from The Economist, FT, and more,
with one subscription

“I don’t know that much about folk music, except that most of it bores me to tears”: the incredible life of Michael Chapman, the greatest singer-songwriter the world never knew about

The life and times of Michael Chapman, the cult singer and guitarist beloved of David Bowie, Elton John and Sonic Youth

Louder

“Nobody in Decca studios had ever witnessed somebody setting up their guitar and amp and playing at that volume. People in the canteen were complaining”: How Eric Clapton revolutionized electric guitar in the ‘60s

It was a febrile time for popular music, and in Eric Clapton, guitar had a hero in waiting who would change forever how we would play the instrument

Guitar World

"Those were crazy times. I wouldn’t change it for the world": how Goodbye Yellow Brick Road reinforced Elton John's status as a global superstar

Goodbye Yellow Brick Road is the second-biggest-selling album released in 1973, with more than 32 million sales worldwide

Louder

"There were guitar players weeping, they had to mop the floor up. He was piling it on, solo after solo" – how Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton changed guitar forever

"When Jimi played with Cream... he walked offstage with this smirk; he knew exactly what he was doing" – we look back at the seismic impact of Clapton and Hendrix on the British guitar scene

MusicRadar

“There was no intention to be clever. We didn’t know what we were doing!” Herbie Flowers on David Bowie’s Space Oddity

Listen to Herbie Flowers give lift to David Bowie’s lyric about “floating in a tin can”

People

From analysis to the latest developments in health,
read the most diverse news in one place.

Organisations

Read news from The Economist, FT, and more,
with one subscription

Topics

Places

Fourteen days free

Download the app

One app. One membership.
100+ trusted global sources.