Eric Clapton: Layla (and Other Assorted Love Songs)
Launched into the stratosphere with arguably (in my humble opinion, indisputably) the greatest opening riff in the history of rock, Layla…
Thanks for stumbling upon my retirement project and labour of love, Here Comes The Song. Here you'll find the latest blogs from music fanatics about their favourite songs and the artists who wrote them. It really is about the music that moves us...
Launched into the stratosphere with arguably (in my humble opinion, indisputably) the greatest opening riff in the history of rock, Layla…
If the 1960s were the decade of the classic single, the Seventies were the decade of what was quaintly called the album. And for the first…
To some, The Artist Better Known As Prefab Sprout occupies an unthreatened throne. A thousand rave reviews, one Top 10 single. A daring deb…
Frankie Avalon, Johnny Tillotson, Brian Hyland, Fabian, Bobby Rydell: by the mid-1960s many teen idols of the pre-Beatles era were already…
My Girl the Month of May, Dion’s hymn to her, may have been the flipside of a flop but it inspired two distinctive covers by artists who…
It is always pleasing when a songwriter you greatly admire echoes a long-held belief. My contention is that the best songs are the sad ones…
There cannot be a music lover anywhere in the world who does not have direct knowledge of a band who might have made it – could have made…
In December 2015 I slithered back home over snowy Canadian roads from an unnerving trip to my dentist. Unnerving not because of anything he…
Comes a time when all you thought was nothing after all. A day will bring you down to your knees. Time conveys our rivers of blood through…
We can consume our music around the clock and everywhere we go – we no longer have to find a jukebox when we’re on the move. We can hear it…
So there I was, choogling to the iPod on the 9.44 from Lewes to Eastbourne, when the ebullient strains of XTC’s We’re All Light chirped up…
It is doubtful Donald Trump has a playlist, and even if he has the name James McMurtry is unlikely to feature. The Texan troubadour recorded
Observing Donald Trump over the past few years, I’ve found myself asking more than once, to quote the title of Marvin Gaye’s socio-political
The Seekers. The Beatles. Pet Shop Boys. U2. Longpigs. Each of these has, at some point over the last 40-odd years, been my favourite band…
Imagine a hall of fame for comic actors that neglected Groucho Marx or Charlie Chaplin. Or an academy for film directors which excluded…
Rubbish. A load of old trash. Garbage. These are words that always spring to my mind when I hear the opening tracks of Elton John’s Goodbye…
Has there ever been a better 10-track album than Stevie Wonder’s 1972 masterpiece Talking Book? A rhetorical question, as nobody will agree…
In April 1964 Nehemiah ‘Skip’ James was not a happy man. Holed up in the Tunica County Hospital in north-west Mississippi, ravaged by a…
I first clapped eyes on Rod Stewart in 1971. I first clapped ears on him later the same year, at my cousin Mike’s birthday party, held in…
I remember one of the first times I wrote an article for a newspaper – a story that I thought needed the benefit of my historical knowledge…