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BIZARRE: Melody maker | Mind Blowing Facts

“I listen now and think, ‘This is a young man’s game!’ I’m proud of the albums”: How future members of Marillion, Soft Machine and Caravan got their start via Darryl Way’s Wolf

The violinist’s post Curved Air band only lasted two years, but released three compelling albums in that time, and set his colleagues on course for prog greatness

Louder

"I remember getting the award from Aerosmith and I went to an afterparty with Bono. It was all mad." How a comedy song about a posh lady getting her kicks from the homeless community became an impossible hit

When three acquaintances decided to make a joke song about a bizarre topic just for the hell of it, they can't have foreseen what'd happen next

Louder

"At one point I felt like soaking myself in vodka, setting myself alight and flinging my body from a balcony in protest." The explosive story of the little-known band who inspired The Who and influenced punk

From John Lennon to The Who, The Faces, The Clash, Steve Albini and beyond, Third World War influenced many

Louder

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The story of Born Slippy, Underworld’s emotion-stirring dance classic

At the dawn of the 1990s, Underworld were a spent force - little did they realise they were about to create one of the decade’s most enduring tracks

MusicRadar

“This song, on breakfast radio?! It was such a shock, ‘What?! When did the world change that this belongs here?’ Mad. It didn’t make sense”: The story of Born Slippy, Underworld’s emotion-triggering masterwork

At the dawn of the 1990s, Underworld were a spent force - little did they realise they were about to create one of the decade’s most enduring tracks

MusicRadar

“In ’73 it was listed in Melody Maker for £400. Glad you enjoyed it”: Phil Manzanera finally finds out the real story behind his iconic Firebird – 50 years after he bought it

The guitar’s previous owner has explained his side of the story

Guitar World

‘I’m in my sod-it era’: Sophie Ellis-Bextor on speaking up, suing the tabloids and finding power in perimenopause

The singer’s kitchen discos and that Saltburn scene have given her the mother of all career resurgences. So how is she capitalising on this midlife moment? With an album about the perimenopause

The Guardian - UK

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There will never be another Oasis – British culture, for better and worse, has moved on

We still have cocksure rock stars, but the gobby Gallaghers’ swaggering brand of witty mockery has gone out of style. Did we grow up – or get boring?

The Guardian - UK

‘We invented karaoke!’ – how Buzzcocks’ Pete Shelley swapped his punk-pop crown for synths, Spectrums and sexual censorship

PLAYBACK: Hits like ‘Ever Fallen in Love’ made the Mancunian punk’s sensitive bard – until he recast himself as a queer-pop electro pioneer and found himself banned by the BBC. Stevie Chick revisits a musical trailblazer

The Independent UK

"I really hate America. If Adolf Hitler came back and said 'I won't raise taxes', he'd win in a landslide." In 1988 R.E.M. were so disgusted with the state of the US that guitarist Peter Buck said he felt like shooting people, starting with President Bush

"I live in a country where I wanna shoot politicians"

Louder

"Britpop was the Make America Great Again of its day, xenophobic, misogynist, just horrible. We hated it, and it fuelled our anger." Compulsion were the greatest '90s band you never listened to, and now they kinda understand why

Garret 'Jacknife' Lee is one of the world's most respected producers due to his work with U2, R.E.M.,Taylor Swift and more. But 30 years ago he and his brilliant band Compulsion hated everyone and everything

Louder

“You see people who are into the glamour and ego of it. Music has nothing to do with ego. Music is like being a bank clerk – it’s work”: How Kate Bush smashed the barriers and became a star like no other

In 1978, Kate Bush had just released her debut single Wuthering Heights – and one journalist was there to watch it all take off

Louder

“We were young and excitable and we wanted to do something different. We wanted to wrest Irish music away from its custodians”: The inspirational story of Horslips, Ireland’s original Celtic Rock band

Horslips put celtic rock on the map and paved the way for U2

Louder

“No Strat? Not too clever”: A Rory Gallagher statue has finally been unveiled in Belfast – but some fans aren’t too happy with it

The statue was green-lit in 2016, and recreates one of the late guitar great’s most famous poses from a 1972 Melody Maker cover

Guitar World

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The Guardian - UK

‘We didn’t intend to create outrage’: Huggy Bear on radical politics, riot grrrl – and causing chaos on live TV

They said they’d exist for three years, then split. And that’s what the British punks did, winning love and notoriety for their feminist, queer worldview. Thirty years on, a new book tells their story

Louder

“I tried to persuade Steven Wilson we should give that one a miss on the remix series!” Ian Anderson still detests the mindless sax of Jethro Tull’s A Passion Play

Horrified by sessions in a French chateau, they went home, dumped the work they’d done on their Thick As A Brick follow-up and started again. The result was a Marmite production that inspired split rumours

Metal Hammer

“The Jilted Generation is all the kids who’ve grown up on this supposedly corrupt dance music”: revisiting The Prodigy’s era-defining second record, 30 years on

Liam Howlett says Music For The Jilted Generation was a reaction to the government trying to stop kids having a good time

Louder

“We were playing to people who didn't care if we fell over and died.” The Cure might be recognised now as one of the world's most iconic and influential bands, but that wasn't always the case

The path to rock superstardom can be long and winding

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Louder

“You pick five interesting guys, lock them in a room together… and if they make an album without actually killing each other first, it will at least be an interesting album”: How King Crimson made Larks’ Tongues in Aspic

The 1973 release steered a new line-up into uncharted waters, resulting in a work that could only have been made by a band who were “prepared to jump off the cliff”

Louder

“I put an ad in Melody Maker – ‘musicians only need apply!’ – and we got Peter and Michael Giles, and Robert Fripp”: So many artists wanted to be part of Judy Dyble’s world

Late singer decided to avoid staying in bands too long after being fired from Fairport Convention – “I’d leave before they could throw me out” – but believed the split sent both parties hurling into adventures they’d otherwise have missed

Louder

"One minute they were a band you'd never heard of, then the next you couldn't get into the gigs": In 1972 the then-unknown Focus appeared on UK TV. Within a year, their guitarist was voted best player on the planet

Powered by Jan Akkerman's guitar and Thijs van Leer's Hammond organ, Sylvia helped pave the way for the rapid rise to fame of Dutch proggers Focus

The Independent UK

Shoegaze pioneers Slowdive: ‘A journalist said we’d be stacking shelves in Tesco within six months’

Critical darlings one minute, vitriol magnets the next. Rachel Goswell of Slowdive speaks to Annabel Nugent about the backlash to shoegaze, their exceptional new album, and the health scare that almost ended her career in music

Louder

“It was a finished product, called A for Anderson, intended as a solo record. Then the record company heard it." The story of Jethro Tull and A

When 1980's A came out it featured a new Jethro Tull line-up, a new sound and songs about the threat of nuclear war and terrorism. Not everyone was impressed.

Louder

"We could have been bigger had we had an amazing manager. We’re our own worst enemies": How Roxy Music got it together despite themselves

They looked like they were from “Planet Zog” and sneaked through a gap created by drug addiction - but the members accept they could have made it easier for themselves

The Conversation

Totally Wired by Paul Gorman is a deft potted history of the music press – but it doesn't tell the whole story

Musicians have long had their careers captured for posterity by the music press. Yet, the spotlight has rarely been turned around to the journalists who write these stories. Totally Wired is a vivid oral history of music journalists in the UK and US.

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