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Fretbuzz

A monthly look at must-hear artists from all corners of the guitar world,from the roots of their sound to the tracks that matter most

PRESTIGE ELECTRICS

The flawless electrics that reside at the peak of guitar design in 2022

TAYLOR 724CE KOA

Taylor’s commitment to a more ecological approach regarding the use of timbers in its guitars is exemplified in its new koa-bodied 700 Series.

UNIVERSAL AUDIO UAFX RUBY '63 TOP BOOST AMPLIFIER

Universal Audio has been on a stompbox roll recently. Following a trio of effects last year, the company has condensed the sound and features of three classic amps into three stompboxes.

Clarity Redefined

Premium-quality USB audio interfaces designed for producers, engineers and artists.

Benny Andersson – "We learned from The Beatles"

And now to meet the man behind those 40 (plus one) amazing songs... Along with Björn Ulvaeus, ABBA's chief melodist, Benny Andersson, comprises what is finally - after years of being dismissed as pop lightweights - regarded as one of the great songwriting partnerships, up there with Lennon-McCartney, Jagger-Richards, Holland-Dozier-Holland and Wilson-Love. And with the Voyage album, their first for 39 years, and the ABBA Voyage concert spectacular featuring virtual avatars going on 'til well into 2023, ABBA are poised at last to be hailed as true immortals. But what was it like to make their first ABBA music since 1982? How have they managed to pick up after so lon-----g? "It was like it had been three weeks, not 40 years," Andersson tells Pete Paphides in this rare interview.

ABBA – The History Book on the Shelf

For years, music fans have debated about which are the finest songs ever by the likes of The Beatles, the Stones, Bowie, Springsteen, and Kate Bush - those artists widely regarded as all-time greats. But how about ABBA? Surely, postMamma Mia! the movie and musical and decades of mainstream adoration, they have earned their place in the pantheon and their catalogue merits serious evaluation. Pete Paphides believes so and, in this ABBA Special, picks their 40 (plus one) Best Songs. Then, on page 100, RC enjoy a rare encounter with one half of the group's peerless songwriting partnership...

Skid Row – The Crazy Gang

New Jersey’s Skid Row have 36 years on the clock and a clutch of platinum records on the wall, but far from resting on the laurels of their peak successes back in the early 90s, they’re now back on ebullient form with their first album in 16 years, The Gang’s All Here. With a new frontman and a bright future, the band feel they’ve got a new lease of life. “How lucky are we?” founder member Dave ‘Snake’ Sabo and vocalist Erik Grönwall ask John Tucker.

All in the family

The inspiration for David Cassidy et al, The Cowsills are the pop family that stayed together: 57 years after their recorded debut, they are making some of the best music of their lives their first new album in 30 years, Rhythm Of The World, was released last month. Bill Kopp talks to Bob, Paul and Susan Cowsill about the rain, the park, the fun, the horror - including an abusive father - and other things.

Johnnie Taylor – Smooth Operator

Although his biggest hit came after he left the label, Johnnie Taylor was one of the bestselling - and most consistently brilliant artists to record for the legendary Stax. He remains a sorely underrated soul artist, a "seducer-showman" suffused with polish and grit, regarded by some as the missing link between Sam Cooke and Marvin Gaye. Jack Watkins sings his praises.

THE RIGHT STUFF

Clothes-swapping with Ian Curtis? Teaching songs to Bob Dylan?? Miming with David Bowie? Getting punched by Mick Jagger? There’s a lot you don’t know about the pre-fame career of Right Said Fred, contends Joel McIver of their “avant-garde” years…

auteurtoauthor

Luke Haines writes the shuk out of rock’n’roll Prolific, moi?

Jerry Lee Lewis 1935-2022

The title of the 2006 duets project that gave Jerry Lee Lewis his biggest-selling album in a career stretching over half a century was both a reverential nod to fallen comrades, and the typically  showman-like brag of a rock’n’roll bad boy nicknamed The Killer.

CORPS AND EFFECTS

Brixton synthpop group, Hard Corps, split prematurely in the 80s, with much of their work coming out posthumously. They tell Ian Shirley how they made their best-loved single, Je Suis Passée

musictovisit

Bob Stanley carries pop’s baggage everywhere Staring down the Middle Of The Road

maconblack

Ian McCann considers soul brothers and sisters, and blues siblings

Magic Man

As guitarist in an early incarnation of Captain Beefheart's Magic Band when they made career-defining albums such as Trout Mask Replica, Jeff Cotton, aka Antennae Jimmy Semens, had a first-hand view of the bizarre and often terrifying and traumatising working methods of the artist formerly known as Don Van Vliet. He lived to tell the tale just and went on to create more heady psychedelia with Mu. He then dropped off the rock'n'roll radar... until now, as Cotton returns with a solo album that draws on many of the ideas and unfinished songs he began work on back in the early 70s. \"I love the guy,\" he tells Mike Barnes about Beefheart. \"But it took years of hindsight to be able to process it.\"

33% minutes with...Don Was

Bassist, producer, and filmmaker Don Was was born Don Edward Fagenson in Detroit in 1952. With school friend David Weiss he enjoyed his first success in Was (Not Was) when they hit the UK  Top 10 with 1987’s Walk The Dinosaur.

davidquanticklikes

...to write a column for Record Collector. Yay Remembering when 60s went 80s

TRANS WRITING BLOSSOMED ON THE BOOK SCENE

In many ways, 2022 felt like the year of the underdog in the book world. Although it lacked blockbusters, fringe fiction flourished and works in translation soared. But which trends will we look back on from our lofty armchairs and think, 'That was so 2022'?

THE YEAR THAT: SEX PARTIES WENT MAINSTREAM

As someone who talks endlessly and openly about sex for a living, I had long wanted to attend a sex party. And this year there was something in the air that made it feel like the perfect time to experience one.

CATHOLICISM MADE A MINI COMEBACK

Catholicism has always lent itself to transgression. Its flamboyant aesthetics and patriarchal power structure have inspired everything from Renaissance art to Nunsploitation films, and the Met Gala to the relationship between Fleabag and her Hot Priest.

Heavy Is the Hand That Holds the Mic

Doechii has a big spotlight on her as record label TDE's first female rapper. She couldn't be more ready

THE YEAR THAT MUSIC BOOKS GOT NOSTALGIC FOR THE 'GOOD OLD DAYS'

The 2010s felt like my lucky years. I read the now-defunct Rookie Magazine run by Tavi Gevinson, a website and annual that used a diverse roster of girls to cover music and pop culture.

FOOTBALL FINALLY CAME HOME

If you tuned into BBC One on the morning of 1 August, you'd have seen a team of young female footballers sporting all the signs of a heroic hangover for the ages.

THE YEAR THAT WE WENT ON STRIKE

While the French strike at the drop of a chapeau and love to kick W aristocratic heads up and down the Champs-Élysées, the English drink cups of tea and get on with things, or so the stereotypes go.

THE YEAR THAT NOTHING IN THE UK WORKED

This year, I realised I needed to learn T how to drive. I'd been made redundant during the pandemic, and a few months later was forced to leave my rental accommodation when my landlord decided to sell the house.

The only way is up

Sam Ryder truly changed the record when he snatched second place for the UK in this year’s Eurovision Song Contest with ‘Space Man’. With a new album on the way, his feet have barely touched the ground since, as he tells Rolling Stone UK.

THE YEAR THAT MISOGYNY WAS BACK IN FASHION

This time last year, very few people thought about Andrew Tate with any regularity if at all. Now, he's inescapable.

TV HAD REMAKES ON REPEAT

In 2022, the era of revamping, and rebooting that has gradually wrapped its fingers around mainstream cinema's throat for the past five years - via sprawling superhero epics, origin stories, remakes and whatever is going on with the Halloween franchise - felt like it finally arrived in the world of TV.