Dark, demented, tormented, torrid and tetchy? Oh, I don’t think so. The Cure’s Robert Smith might have gained something of a reputation in his 40-year-plus tenure as the leader of one of the most enduring of alternative post-punk bands, but these days you will find him basking in the glow of sun shining throughout The
The voice is slight yet unmistakable, but the mindset remains as firm, if not steely, as it has always been. Paul Simon may be closer to 80 than 70, but the songwriter – who in 2007 was the first recipient of the Library of Congress’s Gershwin Prize for Popular Song – is having none of the ‘elder statesman’ discourse.
Pennie Smith on her photo of The Clash, which has been voted the Best Rock’n’Roll Photograph Of All Time: “I’m so familiar with it that I can’t assess it. I’m astonished that it’s taken off so well. For me, taking it, it was feeling that something was about to happen. I saw Paul Simonon lift his guitar from his
What do you do when the nickname that has stuck is The Modfather? What happens next when you’re viewed as an Elder Statesman of Contemporary Cultural Affairs? Or when, as a musician and songwriter in your mid-50s, you are plugging your latest solo album in just under 25 years? If you’re Paul Weller, you take it all in your
The nomad comes full circle? The prodigal daughter returns home? The last time Laura Marling and the Irish Times had a chat was less than two years ago, outside an East London pub, which was no more than a few minutes walk from her house. She hadn’t lived in the house for a few weeks, as she had relocated
Personality crisis, left-wing radical politics, drug abuse, drug addiction, drug dealing, jailbird, rehabilitation, recovery, redemption – these are the ingredients of a life less ordinary but no less complicated, and if there’s one person still around to tell the tale then it’s Wayne Kramer. Approaching his 67th year, Kramer is chatting from his Los Angeles office, preparing his work
That’s twigs with a lower case ‘t’, to you, mate. Yes, people, we’re in the potential danger zone of being as pretentious as the next arty Big Thing, but when you have a chat with fka twigs (the woman formerly known as Tahliah Barnett) you come to the conclusion fairly quickly that she’s as normal as the rest of us.
So which Julian Cope do you remember? The pop star Cope of Teardrop Explodes, the Liverpool post-punk band that enlivened Top of the Pops with reassuringly left-of-centre gems such as Treason and Reward? The solo Cope wrapped around a gravity-defying mic stand-cum-lectern as he crooned his solo hits, World Shut your Mouth and Trampolene? Or, most latterly, the
Tony Clayton-Lea is an Irish-based freelance journalist/writer/editor who writes on music, arts, and pop culture (and travel/hospitality) for a variety of print and online outlets.
Email: tclaytonlea@gmail.com
This is the personal website for Tony Clayton-Lea.