It’s strange that a song written by a New Yorker about a place I’ve never been can cause such a reverie. The above title was written by Billy Joel, I think it was from Turnstiles, forgive me if I’m wrong, and whenever I hear it, as I just did, then I’m back in a classroom [...]
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Somehow I let the summer go by without writing anything down. Actually, that’s not true, I spent a few months working absurdly long hours ghosting a memoir. It’s a strange if lucrative gig. You spend hours with your subject, pore over the very bones of their being, make their voice come to life on the [...]
To his eternal credit the dog really does look like an Ewok, but as I’ve got a life and very little time on my hands (and George Lucas brandishes lawyers like Darth swings a lightsabre) I’ve resisted dressing him up in a cowl and taking pictures of him. There are enough of those images on [...]
I can’t remember the last time I was interviewed, I think it must have been when Phill and I were at 6 Music, someone came in to ask us why we were both Apple devotees or when we did an outside broadcast at a student radio station somewhere. It’s fuzzy and I imagine we did [...]
After three missed calls, about eighteen e-mails and any number of exasperated sighs I finally tied up the interviews with two parts of ELP this week. Greg Lake on Tuesday and Keith Emerson last night. For the teenagers among you this won’t mean much, but for men of a certain age ELP once strode the [...]
A wet Thursday night on the Archway Road acted as the backdrop to what would turn out to be a fairly difficult (breach) birth to my first novel, Cross Country Murder Song. There were around a hundred people there in all at the very fetching Boogaloo, which put me in mind of some of the [...]
Not to drop names, but I’m about to, Neil Peart (look him up) once told me that the song Limelight was his most personal lyric. Moving Pictures was Rush’s biggest album, Limelight one of the most recognisable songs from said album. It talked about the downside of fame – which Rush had a lot of [...]
Pinned to the stars, your father’s face among the heavens…
Posted: February 5, 2010 in UncategorizedFriday morning, I can hear the sound of the shower in the next room. Bob Dylan’s on the radio and someone’s just asked me to write about an Australian vacuum cleaner for cash and I’m thinking about it. It’s been a strange week (not to get too Garrison Keillor about it), Danny Baker’s Show on [...]
On Friday I had lunch around the corner from Random House, it wasn’t free though, what lunch is? For my pizza, two glasses of red and the delightful company of Clara the PR and Vicki the marketing kid (she is a a kid, she’s twelve and had her own corner office at RH already, I’m [...]
Good Morning, It’s hot tea inside, gunship grey outside, winter’s snapping and the ludicrous Parka I brought back from a freezing Chicago now doesn’t seem quite so stupid. I actually got coat envy on my local train platform the other morning, as the masses (including the tiniest member of the Random House staff who’s a [...]
