The cover stars this month are ABBA. In a 20-page spectacular, there is a rare interview with Benny Andersson – the genius largely responsible for ABBA’s timeless melodies – in which he discusses his love of The Beatles, The Beach Boys and Bee Gees, his working methods with lyricist Bjorn Ulvaeus, his relationship with Anni-Frid Lyngstad and …
“We’re all at church, right?” Hendrix says at the start of this concert, which might explain the possessed nature of an audience that needs police restraint to stop them from rushing the stage. Hendrix himself, the high priest of psych-rock, is, however, in a largely laidback mood, the overall vibe being that he can deliver his Foxy Ladys and…
Taking roughly as much time between super-deluxe box sets as it took Guns N’ Roses to follow the original release of Appetite For Destruction (1987) with Use Your Illusion I and II (1991), this collection is less a snapshot of a point in time as it is a panoramic of a band in evolution. A pre-release club gig burns with street-punk ferocity, with…
From a ruined mansion in the Hollywood hills, Arthur Lee cast his gaze across the Los Angeles skyline. He saw the world had gone to hell and was convinced he was about to die. His vision of an imminent holocaust was the antithesis of the flower power Utopia envisaged by his youthful contemporaries. Lee, only 22, was bombed on acid and heroin much o…
Now that £150 box sets like this one are the bread and butter of physical media sales, standards have become exactingly high for compilers and curators of these items. Even so, this comprehensive summing-up of pretty much everything to do with Queen’s 1989 album The Miracle – whether audio, visual, lost, rediscovered or reordered – is a triu…
