Tag Archives: music-features

“I don’t really read autobiographies,” says Bruce Dickinson, the Iron Maiden frontman and solo artist who just happens to be promoting his own memoirs. “So when I decided to write my own, I sampled a few – as in, going to a bookstore, not buying the book and opening at …

By the dawn of the Nineties, R.E.M. had become that rarest of musical breeds: a globally famous rock band with integrity to match. During the course of the previous decade they parlayed their success as relentlessly gigging college-radio darlings into something far bigger, selling out stadiums while simultaneously avoiding the …

Just a half hour before doors open for Harry Styles‘ first show of his debut solo tour, San Francisco’s Masonic is completely empty. Band and crew members are buzzing backstage, including Styles himself, not yet wearing the snazzy Gucci suit he would be seen sporting onstage just hours later. Outside, …

When Charles Bradley, the “Screaming Eagle of Soul,” died last week of cancer at the age of 68, the music world lost one of its most sincere voices and exuberant live performers. Gabriel Roth, whose label Daptone Records released all of Bradley’s music, had first seen the singer as Black …

As a close friend and collaborator of fellow Chicagoans Chance the Rapper and Vic Mensa, Kevin “Knox Fortune” Rhomberg is used to ceding the spotlight. But even he has his limits. “I remember I was at Umami Burger with Vic a year ago,” Rhomberg recalls while eating a sushi lunch …

If you want Gene Simmons to come to your house, all you have to do is buy his new ten CD box set The Vault and he’ll bring it right to you. You can even invite over up to 25 friends. He’ll spend two hours at your place and maybe …

“Hold on a minute, the little doggy’s about to run away,” Robert Plant says as he puts the phone down at his home in England, on the Welsh border. After a vacation in Morocco, Plant sounds antsy as he prepares to release his new album, Carry Fire. He recorded it …

At their peak, Big Black were some of the nastiest noisemakers in rock. Their sound was an industrial-strength miasma of piercing, static-like guitar (played with metal picks), drum-machine battery and frontman Steve Albini‘s unapologetically hateful and acrimonious lyrics about the worst aspects of humanity. So when they decided to break …

“This is my first day off in weeks,” Dave Grohl says, barefoot in his kitchen in jeans and a biker T-shirt, big goofy Dave Grohl grin on his face. The 48-year-old Foo Fighters frontman doesn’t get much downtime these days, between making records, touring, directing documentaries and gigging with pretty …