Latest articles by Rob Hughes
“He wrote, ‘Eat more shit – 100,000 flies can’t be wrong”: German prog icon ignored haters to scale the charts
Accused of being a European “knob-turner,” he faced the music establishment’s rejection attitude with a lesson learned from Salvador Dali, and defied expectations by scaling the charts
Radiohead, Primal Scream influencers found new singer on the street, after the last one went mad on stage
The late Holger Czukay discusses the importance of Can's groundbreaking second album Tago Mago
Born in a dream, the solos in Sweet Home Alabama were out of key, but superstition kept them in
Lynyrd Skynyrd's down-home anthem was a retort to Neil Young's Southern Man, but decades on it's soundtracked everything from KFC to video games
“Somebody threw a toilet roll at Peter Gabriel. He threw it back and it landed just below me. I had that bog roll on my windowsill for years!” Marc Riley’s prog world
Turned on by Genesis, Beefheart, Zappa and Can, the former member of The Fall and The Creepers continues to smuggle prog into his radio shows
Fifty years in, Cheap Trick might not be friends, but musical glue binds them together
Cheap Trick's Robin Zander on Anglophilia, AC/DC, and the song no one else wanted on the album
How a 40-year-old Glaswegian out-weirded David Bowie to become the most unlikely pop star of 1973
The story of an ironically titled epic that acted as a condensed history of rock'n'roll
The debauched story of the Faces, the ultimate party band who gave the world Rod Stewart
They were the greatest party band of the 70s
Out of step with Britpop, one of the Levellers' biggest hits was inspired by Led Zeppelin
During the post-grunge era, the Levellers were derided as obsolete crusties, but one of their biggest hits was influenced by classic 70s rock
The story of the Dinosaur Jr. classic recorded on the verge of implosion
Dinosaur Jr. frontman J Mascis and bassist Lou Barlow recall the tribulations of third album Bug and the classic Freak Scene
The 50 Best Rock Albums of 2025
Twelve months of life-enriching, extraordinary new music
In 1962 a band decided to play as badly as possible until someone noticed. It worked.
They blended prog, art-rock, visual theatre, Dadaism and music hall – and never pretended to do any of it well
The Norwegians who abandoned black metal and re-enacted the psychedelic rock era
They were always known for genre-hopping. But their exploration the Age of Aquarius’ disintegration via obscure tracks from the era was something else again
Devon Allman picks the soundtrack of his life
Singer/songwriter/guitarist Devon Allman picks his records, artists and gigs of lasting significance
The Byrds’ Roger McGuinn on Lennon, Dylan and the forgotten guitarist who was as good as Hendrix
Bob Dylan, Brian Wilson, The Beatles – Roger McGuinn has crossed paths with the them all
“David Gilmour openly accused Roger Waters of copying me”: The folk artist who missed stardom but won respect
Acclaimed by Pink Floyd, Kate Bush, Led Zeppelin and Peter Gabriel, he recalls feeling insulted by the way his best-known album was treated, his short stint in a US prison, and his decision to stop writing long notes to fans on their record sleeves
Wolfgang Van Halen finds his voice and sets a high bar on third Mammoth album
The third Mammoth album feels like the work of a musician settling comfortably into his own space and comfortable with all that attention
Review: Ace Frehley annoys Gene and Paul by releasing the most successful of the Kiss solos
Kiss famously released four solo albums on the same day. Just as famously, only one of them was truly worthy of the Kiss name - Ace Frehley's
Bill Wyman on Hendrix’s brilliance, Moon’s madness and Jagger’s brutal reaction to him leaving the Rolling Stones
The Beatles, The Who, Jimi Hendrix – ex-Rolling Stones bassist Bill Wyman has known them all
The story of the sexually ambiguous anthem that got Placebo a tour with David Bowie
A three-minute rush of hedonism, Placebo’s alt-rock anthem raised two fingers to Britpop and got them on Top Of The Pops – so why do they feel so ambivalent about it?
The Moody Blues attain peak psychedelic whimsy on In Search Of The Lost Chord
Join the Moody Blues for a psychedelic voyage through mysticism, melody, and late-60s cosmic curiosity
The iconic cover version that launched a legendary hard rock band – but nearly turned them into one-hit-wonders
It came a year before Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath released their debut albums
"He's with that meth lab that he designed, his baby - the lyrics back that up and he is at peace with himself": The story of the minor seventies hit that soundtracked the bloody finale of Breaking Bad
The story of the song that accompanied Walter White's demise
How an acid-tinged account of a North African adventure became the sound of the counterculture
With 60s pop music going psychedelic, Morocco's hippie trail inspired a song that took three years to come to fruition
