Latest articles by Danny Scott
Alan Parsons on engineering the side 2 medley on The Beatles’ Abbey Road
“Every day I walked up those famous Abbey Road steps and opened the door felt like I was stepping into a magic kingdom," he tells us. "There really is something very special about that building”
"If I'd had more time, I would have looked at that couplet and taken it out”: Jimmy Webb on Wichita Lineman
Plus, he picks his top 5 lyrics by other artists
“People assume that live dance music isn’t really ‘live’. They’re convinced that some of it's coming from a drum machine or sequencer. I could do that if I wanted, but I’d miss the humanity”: Róisín Murphy on her remixes album, touring, and Sing It Back
“Everything you hear at one of my shows is 100% live, played by the most amazing bunch of musicians”
Pete Doherty: "I’ve sat in a room with Amy Winehouse and a guitar. She made it look so effortless"
Plus, the 5 songs that changed his life
“I couldn’t listen to Genesis or Yes and feel like they were writing songs for me. It wasn’t my music! But with punk, I could understand the songs; the words mattered”: John Cooper Clarke on inspiration, addiction and being endorsed by Arctic Monkeys
“There are all sorts of technical gizmos you can get these days, but I still prefer a notebook and pencil,” says the performance poet
“I’m old enough to know that the Top 40 is a fickle mistress. I have no desire to get caught on that treadmill”: Bruce Hornsby on The Way It Is, having a hit with Don Henley and being “the Sid Vicious of the accordion world”
As he releases a new album with experimental chamber ensemble, yMusic, the singer-songwriter and pianist looks back on his storied career
“Musical comedy is a weird one, isn’t it?”: Taskmaster’s Alex Horne on global fame, Ferraris and trying to write funny songs with “GarageBand and a really crap microphone”
“If I would ever think of calling myself a musician, it would be a pretty rubbish one,” says the leader of The Horne Section
Jessy Lanza on the Roland Aerophone, recording in a treehouse and losing a Juno at the airport
Meet the Canadian producer adding a strange, techno twist to neo-soul with new album Love Hallucination
Mick Hucknall on the 10 songs that changed his life: “The Beatles changed the way music sounded, but the Stones were the world’s greatest rock band”
“I know my musical history,” says The Simply Red frontman, as he discusses new album, Time, and his lost afternoon with Keith Richards
ABC’s Martin Fry on The Lexicon Of Love and the 40th anniversary live recording: “We’re in Tony Visconti’s studio, being produced by Trevor Horn. And David Bowie’s popped in to say hello”
Sheffield’s most stylish lead singer looks back on a career-defining record and how it came to be
Joey Santiago on his top 5 Pixies guitar performances: “The only rule we had was to try and get away from the 12-bar blues framework. I love the blues, I love AC/DC, but music is allowed to do different things”
“It would have been great to be one of those million-notes-a-second guys like Blackmore or Eddie Van Halen, but I loved how George Harrison could add so much to a song without all the ego stuff”
Alexander O’Neal on being fired by Prince, rising again with Jam & Lewis and his 5 career-defining records
“Prince was from another planet. Whatever you can imagine musically and whatever you can imagine creatively, he could do it”
Bruce Hornsby - the 10 albums that changed my life: “Elton John burst into the room wearing a Tina Turner wig”
Classic interview: “It’s amazing how much impact one song can have”
Kiefer Sutherland on gigs, playing guitar and 6 songs he fell in love with: “This interview is doing nothing for my reputation, is it?”
“We all know the stigma that’s attached to an actor who decides to make music”
Bill Bailey: “I got a tremendous amount of pleasure out of listening to the Buzzcocks or the Clash, but playing the piano gave me the same sort of thrill”
The mirth-making multi-instrumentalist takes us on a tour of his musical toolbox
Carl Palmer: “As a kid, I found it easier to play drum solos than I did keeping time”
The prog legend picks three drummers and singles that changed his life
Roger Taylor on his 5 favourite Queen drumming songs: “Will we ever do another Queen album? I don’t see why not”
“C’mon, let’s face facts, here. Drummers are the most talented, most humble, best-looking members of any band”
Nick Rhodes on his top 5 synths: “I’ve got nothing against digital synths, but I just happen to prefer the real thing”
The Duran Duran man and Wendy Bevan discuss their brooding electronic project, Astronomia
Soft Cell’s Dave Ball: “To my mind, Kraftwerk are as influential as The Beatles”
The synth-pop veteran on synths, production and keeping things simple
Zero 7: “Trip-hop became a dirty word for some people - they called it background music”
“For a while, we just kept asking, ‘Why us? How did we sell this many records?’”
Squeeze’s Chris Difford - 10 albums that changed my life: “C’mon… who wouldn’t want to be in a band like The Who?”
“Some people see songwriting as a technical process, constructing a song like an Airfix model. That doesn’t really interest me.”
Nik Kershaw - 10 songs that changed my life: “It suddenly occurred to me that I was listening to the perfect pop record”
“The One and Only wasn't written for anything specific… Ches happened to wander by and snapped it up”
Rick Wakeman on his top 5 synths: “I suddenly had an instrument that could give the guitar a run for its money”
“Without synths, I wouldn’t have been able to play the music I wanted to play”
