Jeff Harford

The day the music died, Buddy Holly's wide-eyed good-gosh-almighty image was forever frozen in time. Also suspended was his passage through the inevitable convolutions of love, work and family...

For more than 33 fun-filled years, The Cramps did more to keep rock's "devil music" reputation intact than any other band. Steadfastly refusing to grow up and a get a proper job, the...

The finest exponents of dub understand that it is total reinvention. Through subtraction, diffraction and augmentation, one thing becomes another. And when a master manipulator joins forces with a...

Tim Buckley cut an impressive figure as a young musician. Handsome, rake-thin, his face framed within a halo of ringlets, he moved through his world with the countenance of someone perpetually...

Willie Nelson might not have known that he was redeeming country music's character when he made Red Headed Stranger, but that's what he did. Not single-handedly - fellow outlaws Waylon Jennings,...

It's tough being in a rock band, especially a successful one, particularly if it's an all-male line-up. You see, men don't communicate as freely and honestly as might be good for their collective...

Examine the DNA of contemporary hip-hop, R&B and soul acts and you wouldn't be surprised to find the genetic signature of James Brown, George Clinton or Sly Stone. Standing alongside these...

It's time to give the drummer some credit, though not for his panache with the pigskins. Dennis might be third on a list of three when you rank the Wilson brothers' contributions to the Beach Boys...

The Staple Singers' story opens in 1931 with group leader and patriarch Roebuck "Pop" Staples' tenure with traditional Mississippi-based quartet the Gospel Trumpets. Its closing chapter...

The cover of the March 1, 1971 edition of Time magazine bore a stylised image of singer/songwriter James Taylor under the headline "The New Rock: Bittersweet And Low". It was as apt a...

Richie Havens was the first musician to strike a note in the name of love at Woodstock. As organisers sweated out the late arrival of other scheduled performers, Havens captivated the crowd by...

Monsters from Mars. Death by heat ray. The imminent demise of civilisation. Heroic defiance and an unlikely saviour. However it is told, the tale of invasion in H.G. Wells' War Of The Worlds both...

In the ever-evolving world of rock, it can be dizzying trying to keep up with trends. Nailing your colours to the mast one moment can expose you as a hypocrite the next. It was a problem Paul...

To some, 1969 release The Howlin' Wolf Album was a genre-bending curiosity to be celebrated. To the artist himself, it was "dog s***", at least according to Rolling Stone magazine. The...

One version of New York's music history saw a conscious stripping away of excess in the mid-to-late '70s, with bands such as the Ramones paring rock 'n' roll back to its primal form. A second...