We’re barely a minute into Classic Rock’s Zoom interview with Mark Bowen and Joe Talbot from Idles when we are rudely interrupted. Your correspondent’s cocker spaniel, Barney, is barking at a squirrel he’s spotted at the window.
“What’s your favourite breed?” Talbot asks.
“Well I like spaniels, obviously, but we also look after a cockapoo and a labrador-retriever cross sometimes…”
“Don’t like cockapoos,” he replies, leaning intensely into the camera of a laptop. “They’re a bit stuck up for me. The only dogs I love are golden retrievers. I learned a fact recently. If you died in your house, within hours most dogs would start eating your face, out of hunger. But a golden retriever would wait until it was at death’s door, when it had no option but to eat you or it would die.”
And that’s Joe Talbot – a man you can easily imagine getting into a random pub conversation with at the drop of a beer mat, offering pearls of wisdom that leave you curious but wondering if it might be worth Googling it later to double-check.
There’s a lot more to him than that, though. That much will be evident to anyone who’s listened closely to Idles records or caught the full blast of their live shows over the past seven years or so. Longtime fans will recall how Talbot’s lyrics have tackled subjects as delicate as caring for his late mother (after her paralysis following a stroke), the death of his young daughter, his own bisexuality and the toxic masculinity surrounding him, his empathy with immigrants, and frustrations at Brexiteer Little Englanders. Life experiences of a man who walks wobbly emotional tightropes between aggression and sensitivity, empathy and contempt, humour and rage.
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة October 2024 من Classic Rock.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك ? تسجيل الدخول
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة October 2024 من Classic Rock.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
Joan Armatrading
The singer-songwriter on her new album, inspirations, being a 'band', what her key was about, meeting Nelson Mandela...
Meat Loaf: I'd Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That)
It was the power ballad to end all power ballads, and 30 years later people still ponder what the it’ is that the singer wouldn't do.
Kris Kristofferson: June 22, 1936 - September 28, 2024
Kris Kristofferson, the iconic, Grammy Award-winning singer, songwriter and actor who played a key role in advancing a strand of country music into a more raw and confessional direction now recognised as outlaw country, has died peacefully at his home in Maui, surrounded by family. He was 88 years old.
"I have come a very long way in the last two-and-a-bit years"
Back from the brink: the Thunder vocalist who survived major medical trauma returns.
EVER MEET LEMMY?
He's heard Lemmy's unreleased solo album, had dinner with Chris Holmes, told Paul McCartney to get a round in, been told gangster Reggie Kray wanted to have a word with him... He is Dogs D'Amour frontman Tyla 7 Pallas, and these are some of his stories.
"LET'S NOT FORGET ABOUT HAVING FUN"
With their ninth studio album In Murmuration, Finnish rockers Von Hertzen Brothers have replaced their erstwhile prog epics for a more honest approach to songwriting reflecting their personal lives.
IN THE BEGINNING
With previously unseen photographs from their early days as featured in the new Queen | Collector's Edition, Sir Brian May talks us through sights of the band in the early seventies.
BASS-IC INSTINCT
Plucked from obscurity in 1975 to be in David Bowie's band, then unceremoniously out of the picture five years later, bassist George Murray looks back on his time with the Thin White Duke.
High Rollers
When Ronnie Wood, the Stones and some A-list mates holed up at his house to help with his solo album, it sparked a days-long party, a Rolling Stones hit and the last album by arguably their finest line-up.
THE NAME OF THE GAM
When ABBA-mad Opeth leader Mikael Akerfeldt met one of their singers, he lost it”. She didn’t sing on their new concept album, but some other, perhaps unlikely, big names did.