I’ll always remember the date because it happens to be my wife’s birthday, April 5th 2009. In lieu of a present request, she has handed me a shopping list of things she needs from the big garden centre in Crews Hill, maybe ten miles from our house. No problem…

It had been made clear to me on more than one occasion that it would never happen. And yet here was the funny thing — no-one seemed to know why. Or, at least, if they did, no-one was telling me. Not Bert, when I first met him at the…

“It remains to be seen whether the fans go for anything as sinuous and earthy as this.” Over five decades later, it’s hard not to smile at the equivocation of the NME writer who reviewed Fleetwood Mac’s single Black Magic Woman. The song has long passed into the canon of…

Only half an hour separates the exclusive Pacific Palisades locale from the bustle of West Hollywood. But on a typically sunny Friday morning, it seems like another world. Traffic noise has been replaced by the faint hiss of lawn sprinklers. Nearby, a food van sates the appetites of workers who…

AS SOON AS I WAS old enough to go to pubs, Moseley was the place. The stop for the Number 1 bus was a few yards away from our house. At nights it would leave the silent suburbs of Acocks Green at 5 and 35 minutes past the hour. In…

One morning, says Terry Hall, you wake up and realise that, finally, you’re no longer scared. All the external factors that once conspired to keep you at home — some days not even emerging from your bed — gradually burn away. “It doesn’t happen all at once,” he explains. “It’s…

This time, he really must be going. Two-thirds of the way through our encounter, Phil Collins casually serves notice of his retirement. Having joined a reformed Genesis for a world tour last year, he says he’s through with the touring and there’s no album planned. He’ll write, but only…

It was probably something to do with the 3D glasses — handed out in cute little ‘Autobahn’ envelopes — that made people assume that cinema conventions would apply. In other words, there was little rushing to the front. Instead, Kraftwerk fans found a likely spot on which to place their…

Is it sentimental to feel so sad about the passing of someone about whom you almost know nothing? In the case of Kraftwerk’s Florian Schneider, it might be. But it’s also understandable. He was their most immediately recognisable face, and he seemed to know it. With his high forehead…