Evening Standard, January 1970 ‘The money you get paid as a singer is all out of proportion. In America they pay you to sing – but they don’t pay the birds to sing in the trees. So it really is ridiculous. But I don’t want to give to charity just to appease my conscience. I… Continue reading…
Evening Standard, December 1969 There were four births and four deaths during the Rolling Stones free concert at Altamont, California, last week. Even the Stones were shocked, said Keith Richards, as he reflected on the events at his Cheyne Walk, Chelsea home yesterday. ‘I thought the show would have been stopped, but hardly anybody seemed… Continue reading…
London Evening Standard (August 1969) ‘Sometimes when I walk into a room at home and see all those gold records hanging round the walls I think they must belong to another person. Not me. I just can’t believe it’s me.’ This is Elvis Presley talking: the legend himself. The man who virtually started the rock and… Continue reading…
Evening Standard, July 1969 There are two brands of Rolling Stones: there are the big, bad ones, who sometimes appear to have been created for the specific benefit of the Sunday newspapers; and there are the others. Brian Jones appeared, I suppose, to be the baddest of them all, and Mick Jagger and Keith Richard… Continue reading…
Evening Standard May 1969 You don’t meet too many men with the Stars and Stripes painted in enamel on their false teeth. Truth to tell Ken Kesey is the only one I know. Every time he smiles, which is pretty frequently on a good sunny day, the zip in his mouth breaks apart and his… Continue reading…
Evening Standard October 1968 ‘The idea for our “Two Virgins” album came from John. I know some people may think “ah, that bottoms-girl Yoko has persuaded John into this” but that wasn’t how it was. I don’t think my bottoms film inspired him either. I know some may think that I have a bottoms fetish,… Continue reading…
Evening Standard, July 1968 Leonard Cohen is a poet, and a singer, and a novelist. And in a romantically ethereal and almost mystical sense, a gipsy too. In America concert promoters and television producers clamour to pay him thousands of dollars a night but he doesn’t work very often and his manager is distraught at… Continue reading…
Evening Standard March 1968 You step through a large white hoop like an airlock on a submarine to get to Ringo’s play room. It is the top floor of an annexe built on to the dark brown living room end of his home, and it’s a splendid place of flashing lights, panda rugs, a fruit… Continue reading…
Evening Standard April 1969 Janis Joplin is instantly, aggressively friendly. I’m a complete stranger and right away she’s asking me to massage her neck and kissing me ‘hello’ with a scorching cat-lick of my right eyebrow. She wears her sexuality with an arrogance tainted with derision. Yet she’s a woman of little femininity. Her voice… Continue reading…
Evening Standard December 1967 The Who are the group who smash up their guitars at the end of their act. They’re the boys who pick their noses (only their own) during Top Of The Pops, and they’re the group who tattoo their umbilici and bosoms with bullseyes and girls’ eyes and appear at gigs wearing… Continue reading…
