Nashville rock and roll marathon

It is 37 years since the Rolling Stones more or less single-handedly invented the latterday mega-tour. Huge artists had toured huge sports arenas before the Stones’ 1981 jaunt around the US, but not on that scale, not with that profit, and not with corporate sponsorship – courtesy of Jōvan Musk, an aftershave one suspects Mick Jagger was no more likely to wear than he was to spray himself with manure. There were also pay-per-view tie-ins and the early 80s equivalent of live streaming to cinemas: all the stuff one now expects when the rock aristocracy hit the road. The best part of four decades on, with umpteen tours that make their 1981 outing look like the apotheosis of understatement, you might imagine the Stones’ stadium show to be a thing of perfectly drilled slickness. In a sense, it is. You get a lot of what you might expect to get at a Rolling Stones show in London, from Mick Jagger reminiscing about a long-lost local venue, Dalston Baths (or, as he puts … [Read more...] about The Rolling Stones review – old devils put on raw, thrilling show

The art studio of the latest rock star to trade in the plectrum for the paintbrush is not in the most starry of locations. It’s in her flat above a row of shops opposite a council estate in an ungentrified corner of north-west London. Her artist’s view is usually a gaggle of buses dawdling at their stops; on the afternoon I visit, a homeless man is necking a bottle of sweet wine. Chrissie Hynde, for it is she, the shaggy-fringed, no-nonsense Pretenders frontwoman of 40 years standing, has lived here for a few years, which coincides with a time “when her life changed”, according to Royal Academy director Tim Marlow in his introduction to a new book of her paintings, Adding the Blue. A collection of still lifes, portraits, and colourful abstracts, they have been created in a “calm frenzy”, he writes, since 2015. Rock stars becoming painters remains one the most cliched career transitions in showbiz, however. You may have seen Ronnie Wood’s … [Read more...] about Chrissie Hynde: ‘It’s hard work being alone. Paintings are an outlet’

Later, police reported more than a hundred white men had planned to attack Cole and overpower Heath’s band. They said the affair had been planned four days before it took place. A total of 150 men from the Birmingham area and near-by towns were to have arrived at the auditorium, but the mob failed to show up. Mr Cole was singing when men from the audience clambered over the footlights and rushed at him. One grabbed his knees and brought him to the floor. Police ran on to the stage and seized three of the assailants. The three others were arrested later. Mr Cole, who was appearing before an all-white audience, has been active in the fight for equal rights for Negroes. One of the men arrested is a member of the board of directors of the local White Citizens’ Council, which supports segregation. Police said they came in a car in which were found several rifles, coshes, and brass knuckles. The council is waging a campaign to rid Alabama of “rock and roll” music … [Read more...] about Nat ‘King’ Cole attacked on stage – archive, 1956

The Rolling Stones have been rocking together for a half century but the legendary tensions between Keith Richards and Mick Jagger look to be very much alive. Richards has apologised to his bandmate after the guitarist suggested that the fecund frontman needed a vasectomy. “Mick’s a randy old bastard,” Richards told the Wall Street Journal Magazine. “It’s time for the snip – you can’t be a father at that age. Those poor kids!” Jagger in December 2016 became a father for the eighth time at the age of 73. His son, Deveraux Jagger, was born to his girlfriend Melanie Hamrick, a ballerina in New York who is four decades his junior. “I deeply regret the comments I made about Mick in the WSJ which were completely out of line,” Richards wrote on Twitter, saying he also apologised to Jagger in person. The Stones have endured despite decades of hard living and internal tumult. In 2010 Richards published a memoir, Life, in which he … [Read more...] about Keith Richards apologises to Mick Jagger for saying he needed a vasectomy

Finding your identity as a solo artist after handing your teenage years over to a pop band can be notoriously tricky. Liam Payne, One Direction’s erstwhile resident safe pair of hands, seems to have settled on a curious, Unilad-sponsored approximation of Ed Sheeran (who co-writes two songs here) and Drake, eschewing his Wolverhampton roots to become Miami’s least convincing playboy. On the abysmal Rude Hours, one of a handful of generic trap bops, he coos: “Meet me in the parking lot... might be a bad idea I’ll probably do your ass in the car”, while Weekend and Both Ways, the latter about a threesome, are as boring as they are eye-rolling. There are hints at a beating heart behind the bravado on Remember and the lilting synthpop of Say It All, while 2018’s OTT Rita Ora collaboration For You – chucked on to the album’s second half alongside six other singles previously without a home – at least injects some drama into proceedings. … [Read more...] about Liam Payne: LP1 review – genre-ticking anonymity