TO 'ELLO, 'ELLO, 'ELLO & BACK
Record Collector|October 2023
Formerly the biggest band on Planet Earth, The Police split almost 40 years ago. Not long before that, in 1978, they were just a trio of blond hopefuls waiting at the nation's gates with a daring hybrid of punk and reggae which seemed to catch the ear of many of the pre-punk old guard. Stewart Copeland's new book, Police Diaries, in words (his diaries circa 1976-78) and pictures (photos and illustrations), takes us back to those early days of The Police. It is, according to the drummer, "the fun part of the Police story, the starving years when we didn't have any songs to play just crap punk songs, mostly written by me [some of them on a CD in the Signature edition of the book]. "These formative years," Copeland attests, "are the interesting part of the Police story, which is why the book focuses on the period of formation and exploration that preceded the stadium tours - it shows how three disparate individuals bonded before figuring out what music to play..."
TO 'ELLO, 'ELLO, 'ELLO & BACK

1975 (1-r) Phil Kohn, Mick Jacques, Sonja Kristina, Darryl Way, me (wish I still had those boots). Curved Air had split up by the time I met their violin player Darryl Way, and we were just about to bust out a new band together - with me actually in the band - called Stark Naked & the Car Thieves. But Curved Air was hit with an unexpected tax bill and decided to reform for one last tour to pay off debts. Dang! So, I put away my drums, grabbed my slick briefcase that I got from my spydaddy father [Miles Copeland Jr] and hit the road with them as their tour manager. They had been missed! The crowds roared! A live album was recorded, and the taxman was paid. It had all gone better than expected and some of the band wanted to keep on trucking, but original drummer Florian Pilkington-Miksa and keyboardist Francis Monkman decided to bail. This left my chum Darryl Way and singer Sonja Kristina in need of a drummer...

Public Enemy Number Ones by 4 December, the Sex Pistols were banned everywhere following their expletive-filled appearance on live TV three days earlier. This gig didn't happen, and that night two of the Pistols and two of their pals tumed up at our Mayfair pad... After a Curved Air show in Leicester and a two-hour drive, when we get back to slumbering Mayfair in the dead of night, we can hear the revelry from blocks away; Sonja and I run up the stairs to the penthouse apartment and find bedlam swinging from the chandeliers. I'm not sure that anyone was pogoing yet but with all the gilded furniture pushed to the side, the grand drawing room was heaving under the stomping feet of a tribe of what came to be known as punks.

Denne historien er fra October 2023-utgaven av Record Collector.

Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.

Denne historien er fra October 2023-utgaven av Record Collector.

Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.

FLERE HISTORIER FRA RECORD COLLECTORSe alt
Paperback Blighters - The books every record collector should read.
Record Collector

Paperback Blighters - The books every record collector should read.

The books every record collector should read. Vinyl, you may have heard, has made a big comeback. In 2022, sales of vinyl albums surpassed compact discs (CDs) for the first time in more than three decades in terms of global revenue, racking up more than $1.2bn.

time-read
10+ mins  |
September 2024
"Beware the Savage Lure/of 1984..." - David Bowie is one of the most venerated musicians ever. But even he had his bad periods.
Record Collector

"Beware the Savage Lure/of 1984..." - David Bowie is one of the most venerated musicians ever. But even he had his bad periods.

David Bowie is one of the most venerated musicians ever. But even he had his bad periods. For many, 1984 remains the nadir of his Phil Collins” phase; an artistic/sartonial/tonsorial disaster area. But was it really that awful? Forty years on, Matt Phillips explores Bowie's so-called annus horribilis.

time-read
10+ mins  |
September 2024
7"  Heaven & Hell the Story of the 45 - The 45 turns 75 this year. Matthew Quinlan charts its history, recalling the RPM wars and two belligerent titans who went into battle over the speed of spinning sound
Record Collector

7" Heaven & Hell the Story of the 45 - The 45 turns 75 this year. Matthew Quinlan charts its history, recalling the RPM wars and two belligerent titans who went into battle over the speed of spinning sound

Someone needs to come and empty the bins behind the Lloyds Bank branch in Kingston-upon-Thames. It’s been raining and flattened cardboard slumps next to a flytipped air conditioning unit and a rusting clothes rack. There are two signs at head height on the red brick wall. One warns that you’ll be clamped if you park here; the other, a stainless-steel plaque, marks Nipper’s 100th birthday. Nipper, the dog at the heart of the HMV and RCA Victor logos, was a white terrier with chocolate brown ears, maybe a Jack Russell, Smooth Fox, or Bull Terrier, more likely a mix. This is his final resting place. He was buried under a mulberry tree but, you know, urban sprawl, progress, etc. The plaque was unveiled by the Chairman of HMV Stores on 15 August 1984, while Captain Sensible, Janice Long, and a Nipper doppelganger looked on. Round the corner, at HMV and Our Price, George Michael’s Careless Whisper was flying off the shelves, and every copy turned at 45 RPM.

time-read
10+ mins  |
September 2024
STARS ON 45s
Record Collector

STARS ON 45s

A BUNCH OF MUSICIANS - 45, COUNT 'EM! RHAPSODISE ABOUT THEIR FAVOURITE SINGLE

time-read
1 min  |
September 2024
THE TORTURED SHOPPER'S DEPARTMENT
Record Collector

THE TORTURED SHOPPER'S DEPARTMENT

John Coleman celebrates the great art of vinyl collecting on the 45th Anniversary of Record Collector and finds out, in an exhausting series of anxietyinducing sprees, how much vinyl you can buy today, ina variety of outlets, with 45.

time-read
2 mins  |
September 2024
Young American
Record Collector

Young American

A serendipitous collaboration with David Bowie in 1974 kick-started Luther Vandross' recording career. But he still faced an uphill struggle to succeed as a solo artist. Charles Waring talks to some of the singer's most trusted collaborators about his early years and how he battled to be heard....

time-read
10+ mins  |
September 2024
MOD ALMIGHTY
Record Collector

MOD ALMIGHTY

Steve Ellis began his career as a mod in flower-power clobber as frontman of chart-toppers Love Affair. Quitting in 1970, he worked with The Who's Roger Daltrey then gave up music to become a docker before a near-death experience. Interest in his work was rekindled after hooking up with long-time fan Paul Weller. Lois Wilson hears how his romance with music endures.

time-read
7 mins  |
September 2024
ANARCHISTS IN THE UK
Record Collector

ANARCHISTS IN THE UK

EXACTLY 45 YEARS AGO, CRASS, THE ANARCHIST ACTIVIST COLLECTIVE, WERE FINISHING PIVOTAL SECOND ALBUM, STATIONS OF THE CRASS.

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10+ mins  |
September 2024
The boy with the thorn in his side
Record Collector

The boy with the thorn in his side

David Cassidy was arguably the biggest solo star of the immediate post-Beatles era, yet his fame as well as his boyish good looks and extracurricular excessesovershadow the excellence of his breathily intimate, musically accomplished records. Simon Goddard, RC contributor and author of an acclaimed series of books on David Bowie, hails the work of the tortured pop idol

time-read
10+ mins  |
September 2024
"I COULD JUST THROW MUD AT THE WALL"
Record Collector

"I COULD JUST THROW MUD AT THE WALL"

There's little sign of slowing down from the 19-year-old Pete Townshend. Currently on the go: multi-media project The Age Of Anxiety; a dance production of Quadrophenia; and Pete Townshend Live In Concert 1985-2001, a 14-disc boxset of his solo in-concert recordings. Not, he admits, that his every whim and fancy are worth deeper exploration. \"Some of them are good ideas, some of them are pretty dumb,\"

time-read
10+ mins  |
September 2024