Christine McVie 1943-2022

In the soft-rock soap opera of Fleetwood Mac at the height of their global fame, Christine McVie was a calming presence. While no stranger to the relationships freefall and wild substance abuse that unwittingly became shorthand for the making of Rumours, there was something steady and reassuring about her ice-cool voice on You Make Loving Fun, Oh Daddy and possibly the finest 200 seconds of her entire career, Songbird.

Diggin' For GOLD

Our regular look at the more arcane corners of record collecting. Includes Label Of Love and Sound And Vision

VALUE ADDED FACTS

Ian Shirley, Editor Emeritus of the Rare Record Price Guide, answers your questions

The Collector

This month: Jeremy Greenspan of Junior Boys

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.

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.

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...

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.

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.

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.\"

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…

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.

auteurtoauthor

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

davidquanticklikes

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

maconblack

Ian McCann considers soul brothers and sisters, and blues siblings

musictovisit

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

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

William Bell – Ace Venturer

You may not know William Bell, but you'll know his co-writes - You Don't Miss Your Water, Born Under A Bad Sign, his hit duet with Judy Clay, Private Number - his samples (hello, Kanye), or his covers: his songs have been performed by everyone from The Byrds to Billy Idol. Garth Cartwright meets the Stax legend, now in the seventh decade of his career

Ian Shirley is 007 "The man with the Golden Ton"

So, now you know which £100 records to buy. But what if you want more than one disc for your dosh? Ian Shirley, licensed to chill and a secret agent when it comes to tracking down rarities, shows how to spend the whopping £100 he got given as his leaving gift from RC as he heads off to work as Production Manager for Ace Records.

The Beatles – It was 60 years ago today...

On the very first day of 1962, The Beatles failed their audition with one of the biggest record companies in the UK. On the final day of 1962, WITH they had a No 1 single in the can and played their last gig on the Hamburg club circuit – on the verge of conquering Britain in 1963, and the world in 1964. How could just one year change their fortunes so vastly? As the 60th anniversary of Love Me Do approaches, we offer a full appraisal of their 1962 recordings, and the myths and mysteries that continue to surround them. Richie Unterberger delves into the archives.

Take a Beau

At the height of Beatlemania, San Francisco quintet The Beau Brummels crashed the British invasion party with a chart-busting sound that shifted from beat pop to embryonic country rock and psychedelia. But as their creativity grew, sales and label backing fell away. Richie Unterberger recounts their story with help from some of the original California dreamers.

Ex-Monkees Business

Even Monkees fans might not know of a mid-70s reunion involving Micky Dolenz and Davy Jones. With hit songwriters Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, they formed pop supergroup, Dolenz, Jones, Boyce & Hart. Two tours brought their music to enthusiastic audiences, but a studio album (and a live record) failed to sell, and the 14-month adventure was soon lost to time. Bill Kopp spoke to Hart, band leader Keith Allison (who died last autumn) and tour manager Christian de Walden.

Auteur To Author

Luke Haines writes the shuk out of rock’n’roll Cold War games

Fire Starter

A prominent figure on the 60s London scene, Brian Auger is one of the great missing links. A highly skilled musician, band leader and songwriter, he is, perhaps, best known for his hit version of Dylan's This Wheel's On Fire. But he was also an early pioneer of jazz-rock fusion, later hailed the 'godfather of Acid Jazz'. Now 82, he is entertainingly forthright, with tales of Hendrix, Rod Stewart and the tower of pianos that threatened to put "a huge hole in rock'n'roll". Life of Brian: Garth Cartwright

Billy Idol – "I was a proper 80s rock star"

With pin-up good looks and a refusal to toe the Year Zero party line, Billy Idol was dismissed by the music press as a major-label plastic punk. Yet 45 years on from his recording debut with Generation X, his music has survived to tell a very different story, one of masterful songwriting and unashamed showmanship. Here, the ace face of the late 70s charts his transition to leather-clad staple of 80s MTV on the back of hits such as White Wedding, Eyes Without A Face and Rebel Yell, and confirms his aversion to stasis. "You can't always stay in your comfort zone, it's boring," he tells Lois Wilson.

THE ENGINE ROOM

The unsung heroes who helped forge modern music

UNDER THE RADAR

Artists, labels, and magazines meriting more attention

STONES IMMACULATE

The first Rolling Stones shows in the capital sans Charlie provide the epitaph he deserves. Good tonight: Kris Needs

NO LAUGHING STOCK

One of the great living Liverpudlians, Michael Head has plenty to smile about. But his has been a bumpy journey, as widely admired albums he’s made first with The Pale Fountains then Shack, under the aegis of The Strands and now The Red Elastic Band, have come either side of addiction-related potholes. Reanimating the latter project in some style at 60, fresh from another withdrawal induced by Covid lockdowns, he tells Pete Paphides how “I got my shit together, got focused” for his latest release, the Top 10 LP, Dear Scott.