, b. 1959) Adored by fans almost as much as he adores himself, Morrissey’s post-Smiths career has been nothing less than stellar. Writing mainly with guitarist Boz Boorer, Morrissey delivered a number of hit albums and singles. With North and Latin America eventually falling for him, he could even afford to lose his way on Maladjusted (1997). Recent ...
huge hits. Second album Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie (1998) spawned ‘Thank U’ but little else. Drummer Taylor Hawkins joined Foo Fighters. Styles & Forms | Nineties | Rock Personalities | Morrissey | Nineties | Rock ...
new wavers John McGeoch (Magazine, Siouxsie & The Banshees) and Pretenders guitarist James Honeyman-Scott. Marr had been in various teenage bands before teaming up with singer and lyricist Steven Morrissey in 1982. They met when Marr called at Morrissey’s house on the recommendation of a mutual acquaintance. The pair immediately struck up a songwriting partnership, and The Smiths were ...
work as part of David Bowie’s Spiders From Mars band, work that would lead to production and performance assignments with artists such as Ian Hunter, Lou Reed and Morrissey, as well as American roots rockers such as Bob Dylan and John Mellencamp. Ronson played in local bands throughout the mid-1960s in his native Hull and endured a failed ...
One of the most influential acts of the 1990s, Nirvana formed in Aberdeen, Washington, in 1987 when Kurt Kobain (1967–94, guitar, vocals), Krist Novoselic (born 16 May 1965, bass) and Chad Channing cemented the line-up of Nirvana. Signed by Seattle’s growing Sub Pop label their first single was a cover version of The Shocking Blue’s ...
(Vocal/instrumental group, 1982–87) Manchester’s finest coalesced around the songwriting pair of former journalist Stephen Patrick Morrissey (vocals) and Johnny Marr (guitar). Andy Rourke (bass) and Mike Joyce (drums) completed a team who became the darlings of bed-sit melancholics everywhere, and exerted a huge influence on indie rock over the following decades. Their mesmerizing blend of 1960s beat music and ...
Rather a ‘catch-all’ category that includes many musically diverse bands from the 1980s and 1990s, ‘alternative’ is generally an American term referring to any remotely leftfield and non-mainstream band, whereas ‘indie rock’ originally refers generally to the UK bands recording for smaller, independent labels, again usually meaning non-mainstream bands. Alternative encompasses many sub-styles. To complicate matters, ...
Jarvis Cocker. Although Pulp had been in existence since 1978, it was not until 1995, with the era-defining, class-warfare hit single ‘Common People’, that Cocker became the Morrissey of the 1990s. His own personal Britpop war was declared at the 1996 Brit Awards when, during a predictably self-aggrandizing cast-of-thousands guest performance from Michael Jackson, Cocker invaded ...
than 10 times that number now claim to have been there. In fact it’s estimated that around 40 people turned up. But among those definitely in that select crowd were Morrissey, who would go on to form The Smiths, members of Buzzcocks, Mark E Smith (The Fall) and Bernard Sumner and Peter Hook (Joy Division and later New ...
David Bowie has inspired more musicians than most recording artists, but he naturally also had his own formative influences. Who Does He Love ? It almost goes without saying that Elvis Presley was important to him: few of the musicians who became teenagers in the Sixties weren’t overwhelmed by The King’s stunning larynx and greaseball beauty. Perhaps revealingly, Bowie ...
This was a decade when the impact of dance culture on rock and vice versa sometimes led to exciting results: it opened with ‘Thriller’ and closed with the Madchester scene of Happy Mondays. Punk had subsided to become the less threatening new wave movement, which, along with the new romantics, dominated the early days of the decade. As ...
duel on sax with trumpeter Lester Bowie (no relation). There were several covers but, unlike Let’s Dance and Tonight (1984), they were intriguing rather than bewildering (e.g. a Morrissey song that had sampled his own ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide’). The drunkenly tuneful ‘Jump They Say’ became a UK Top 10. Also in 1993 came The Buddha Of Suburbia. The ...
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David Bowie
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