Category: Off the Beaten Tracks

THIS week, our time-travelling Ford Anglia coughs its way into Edinburgh, late 1965. Multi-instrumentalist Robin Williamson and banjo player Clive Palmer, both 22, had spent two years as a duo … Continue readingIncredibles but true

BACK to the heartworn highways this week for another great Texas singer-songwriter, Guy Clark. Like his bosom buddy Townes van Zandt, Clark provided hits for countless country singers while failing to become … Continue readingGuy Clark, heart of Texas

ONE of my favourite music videos is Robert Palmer’s Addicted to Love, directed by the fashion photographer Terence Donovan. Palmer is immaculate in white shirt, black trousers, skinny black tie and thousand-dollar … Continue readingRobert Palmer, rock ’n’ roll dandy

LAST week we left Tim Buckley having given his first, brilliant, British concert in October 1968. That December he went back into the studio to record his third studio album, Happy Sad. … Continue readingTim & Jeff, Buckley & Son Part 2

ONE of the most powerful movie passages I can remember is at the end of Coming Home, directed by Hal Ashby in 1978. It tells the story (spoiler alert, in case … Continue readingTim & Jeff, Buckley & Son

I THINK it’s fair to say that Sufjan Stevens didn’t get off to the most promising start in life. His schizophrenic, alcoholic, drug-addicted mother abandoned him in 1976, when he … Continue readingSufjan Stevens, Motherless Son

HOW did Joni Mitchell follow the towering achievement that was Hejira? Answer: With difficulty. As I wrote in a previous column, the album released in late 1976 was in my opinion the … Continue readingJoni Mitchell Part 4: The best of the rest

IT WAS in the spring of 1968 that Beach Boys drummer Dennis Wilson stopped his car for two attractive girl hitch-hikers in Malibu, Los Angeles. He invited them back to … Continue readingThe Beach Boy and the Evil Wizard

AMONG the many things I admire about Laura Veirs is that she is the polar opposite of a rock chick. A Mandarin Chinese-speaking geology graduate, she considered working as a … Continue readingTell Laura we love her

BACK in September we grimaced our way through Kenny Everett’s World’s Worst Record Show, a collection of 20 truly terrible tunes from the vaults, and I invited readers to provide their own … Continue readingA Christmas cringefest