Back in 2012 inside a Toronto penthouse, a domestic shorthair cat once gazed out over Yonge–Dundas Square, his own face beaming back at him in LED glory from a billboard below. “Do you even fucking know? Do you care?” Joel Zimmerman, better known as deadmau5, recalls asking him of the massive album ad featuring his face.
The cat didn’t. Typical.
But in true deadmau5 fashion, where innovation meets self-deprecation, Meowingtons’ indifference didn’t stop him from becoming a muse. And now, posthumously, a playable one.
Zimmerman has unveiled Meowingtons Simulator, a tribute to his late companion, who sadly passed away in August 2023. Developed under his newly launched Oberha5li Studios banner and powered by Epic Games’ Unreal Engine, it’s a rhythm-based rag doll game where players control a digitized, dancing Meowingtons in a virtual nightclub.
“Meowingtons was basically a rag doll in real life,” Zimmerman tells EDM.com. “You’d pick him up and he’d just flop. You could make him dance and he was just cool with it, which was really funny.”
A famous 1935 thought experiment by the theoreticalphysicist Erwin Schrödinger illustrated the oddity of quantum mechanics by imagining a cat in a sealed box that is simultaneously alive and dead until someone observes it. Like Schrödinger’s cat, Meowingtons now exists in its own quantum state of parody and poignancy.
But don’t mistake Meowingtons Simulator for therapy in disguise. While it does function as a sort of eulogy in code, it’s more so a seedbed for Zimmerman’s big ambitions with his new game development studio.
“It’s not a grief process or coping mechanism,” he insists. “Meowingtons lived to be 16. That’s pretty alright, so it’s not like ‘woe is me.’ I processed it in a day, maybe two. It happens.”
Ever since Zimmerman got into game development, he says, he’s been learning about rag doll physics in Unreal Engine. One of his earliest experiments was building a cat model that behaved and looked like his own, the first prototype of which was a low-poly kitty with no fur, flopping around with the grace of a drunk sock puppet.
When activated by the cue button, the cat transitions from procedural animation into rag doll mode, where its movements are entirely governed by gravity and physics. Zimmerman compares the dynamics to a concept he admits is “really dark”: imagine holding a lifeless cat by its head and tail, then watching it flop around as though it’s “nodding to the beat.”
The sim’s rag doll physics create the illusion of the cat dancing to the music, akin to a puppet’s movements, but without showing the strings. Zimmerman likens it to the unsettling realities behind the production of hot dogs: it works, but it’s better not to ask how.
The “Meowingtons Simulator” game from Oberha5li Studios co-founders Joel Zimmerman (deadmau5) and Cameron Rockey.
Oberha5li Studios
It’s the kind of thing that only someone who’s spent years in Unreal Engine forums and nerding out over real-time audiovisual mechanics can appreciate. That passion led him to meet Aaron McLeran and Max Hayes, Epic Games’ Lead Audio Programmer and Senior Audio Programmer, respectively. They worked on the bleeding-edge Quartz subsystem, a sample-accurate timing engine that syncs audio with precision far beyond standard frame rates.
Zimmerman emphasizes the need for hyper-precise synchronization between audio and visual elements to avoid lag in game engines, where even minuscule misalignments are noticeable. In most games, he explains, visuals are rendered at a relatively low rate of between 60 and 120 frames per second. However, audio operates on a much finer timescale, at 48,000 samples per second, which means audio events can happen in sub-microsecond intervals.
This massive difference, which he refers to as a “chasm,” makes it difficult to tightly sync visual cues with specific audio samples, like a kick drum or snare hit. That’s where the processing of Quartz came in.
Running parallel to Unreal Engine, the tech, for which Zimmerman has a deep fascination, essentially acts as a reliable metronome for audio within it. The system enabled him to cue visuals and gameplay events exactly in time with the music, even at unconventional tempos with pesky decimals like 128.6 BPM.
“So it’s that technology that really drove me to [game creation] and finding these different use cases,” he says. “Then it was a marriage of, let’s take my rag doll cat and attach it to the port system so that every beat, the handle would go up. And if I changed the BPM up and down, the cat would perfectly be in sync. And I thought, ‘This is funny as hell. I should make a game.'”
The “Meowingtons Simulator” game from Oberha5li Studios co-founders Joel Zimmerman (deadmau5) and Cameron Rockey.
Oberha5li Studios
But this wasn’t just about noodling with the physics of a noodle-legged cat. Despite the hilarity of it all, Zimmerman realized early on that a floppy feline wasn’t quite a game. So he brought in veteran programmer Cameron Rockey, who added multiplayer features, cosmetics and, perhaps most crucially, a sense of community.
“What are the little things we can add to build a community feel?” Rockey recalls asking. Under his direction, what began as a quirky, simplistic simulator quickly evolved into a more immersive, socially-driven experience.
One of the first things he did was replicate dance variables across players’ cats so everyone could jam out together, even if they were listening to different tracks. “The cats in the nightclub are synchronized to your local music rather than us sharing the music,” Rockey explains. “So you could be hanging out together, but doing something different at the same time.”
Rockey, who has over two decades of dev experience, then layered in leaderboards and a “mau5head builder” that lets players assemble custom deadmau5 helmets using collectibles gathered around the map.
“We started adding more and more little features like that for the community to do and customize their experience within Meowingtons, but staying on-brand for deadmau5,” he says.
The mau5head builder in the “Meowingtons Simulator” game.
Oberha5li Studios
While the co-founders’ passion for game creation drives the project forward, its development process remains refreshingly unpretentious at its core. Behind the expanding features and growing fan involvement lies a partnership unburdened by corporate game development conventions—just two avid creators following their instincts.
“Don’t get me wrong. I like to think I’m pretty talented, and I know Cameron’s very talented with game design,” Zimmerman says. “But we’re just two dudes fucking around on Discord and making a game.”
That’s underselling it. After fetching an estimated $55 million through Create Music Group’s acquisition of his timeless music catalog, he says he has big plans for Oberha5li Studios, which is shaping up to be much more than a passion project.
“We’re at our first little thing and I anticipate growing this company over the next couple of years,” Zimmerman says. “Maybe two years from now, I’ll be 10 employees deep and we’ll have a bigger, more AAA-looking title on the go. So the ambition is high.”
The music career of the man called Swamp Dogg has been like no other, with highs and lows, big hits and weird side trips, sometimes getting himself dropped from one label or another. He always bounced back.
He’d begun in the 1950s playing traditional R&B, releasing his first record at 12 as Little Jerry Williams from Portsmouth, Virginia. What followed was an unlikely career as producer, songwriter, manager, A&R man, and hit-maker. And in 1970 he had an epiphany and became Swamp Dogg, a name befitting a mysterious musical superhero and chameleon.
“We did damn good. Success just came,” says Swamp Dogg, still a dapper dresser at 82, appearing onstage in colorful suits and carrying a cane. “I just kept doing things. If I believe in something, and if I can’t find investors to go with me, I’ll figure out a way to do it my damn self. And that’s what I’ve done off and on all of my musical life.”
His career has had him working with multiple generations and genres, from Gene Pitney, Doris Duke, and Johnny Paycheck to Bon Iver, Jenny Lewis, and John Prine. And his series of solo albums of country soul and eccentric R&B are often presented with startling cover art. His 1971 classic Rat On! has him riding a giant rat. Another has him laying happily within a chili dog (his favorite dish, he says).
Now his story is being told in the hilarious and often moving Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted, a feature documentary that debuted last year at the South By Southwest Film Festival.
Swamp Dogg was speaking from his Los Angeles home, the night before a trip to New York City, where he would be participating in Q&As at the IFC Center on May 9 and 10. The film is already playing in L.A., and rolls out to other cities over the next two months.
Isaac Gale, co-director of Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted. (Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures)
The film was directed by Isaac Gale and Ryan Olson, a pair of filmmakers based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, who originally landed at Swamp Dogg’s house in L.A.’s suburban San Fernando Valley to shoot a music video. What they found there was a community of players and a secret history waiting to be told.
Inside the house were gold and platinum records lining the entryway, with a grand piano crowded into one bedroom, and a pair of singular musicians in permanent residence at Swamp’s bachelor pad: Guitar Shorty and Larry “MoogStar” Clemons.
Shorty, an accomplished blues-rock player who was a direct influence on Jimi Hendrix, ended up as Swamp’s roommate and sideman when he decided to move to L.A. after his marriage ended.
“He called me and he said, ‘Man, you got a pretty big house. Can I rent a room from you a couple months till I can get on my feet and get everything going?’” recalls Swamp Dogg. “I said, ‘Yeah, Shorty, why not?’ So he came in and he was here for 18 years. I never charged him no rent, none of that. You know, you already in trouble. So why add to your troubles?”
His other roommate, MoogStar, is a cosmic and joyful multi-instrumentalist who had worked with Too Short and Humpty Hump, among many others. “He is a talented producer, keyboardist,” says Swamp. “The man can play at least 15 different instruments. Plus, he helped keep my shit fresh.”
Swamp Dogg first came into contact with singer-songwriter John Prine while working A&R for Atlantic Records at the beginning of the ’70s. Prine’s name was on a list of newer artists the label was ready to drop. But Swamp fell in love with Prine’s song “Sam Stone,” which tells the bleak story of a drug-addicted veteran and appears on his 1971 debut album. It’s now considered a country-folk classic, and Swamp recorded a cover the following year.
Swamp Dogg in Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted. (Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures)
“I said, this motherfucker is going places,” recalls Swamp, who remained in touch with the acclaimed singer-songwriter for decades after. Prine appeared on two songs from Swamp Dogg’s 2020 album, Sorry You Couldn’t Make It. It was recorded in Nashville and was among Prine’s final recording sessions, captured by the documentary filmmakers.
They were talking about collaborating on more songs, but COVID hit, and Prine didn’t survive the pandemic. At the same time, Swamp has embraced opportunities to work with a younger generation of artists in his home studio and elsewhere, collaborating with Lewis, Bon Iver’s singer-songwriter Justin Vernon and Margot Price.
“When I get with new people, it’s like going to a six-week class” on the newest sounds and ideas, he notes. “That’s how I kind of stay in touch.”
In the 1980s, Swamp managed the electro/rap/R&B group World Class Wreckin’ Cru, which included a young pre-gangsta Dr. Dre, soon to be a member of N.W.A. “He was very quiet, intelligent, and he was a hard worker and he wanted to come up with new sounds and all that kind of stuff,” says Swamp. “That shows in the very first album that they put out. I knew he was destined for greatness. He’s the first billionaire rapper and producer.”
Moogstar in a scene from Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted. (Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures)
In the documentary, viewers get a glimpse of Swamp’s late wife and career confidante, Yvonne, in vintage footage, and her presence is still strongly felt in the house. With shooting starting in 2018, the film also captures some visitors to the Swamp Dogg home—Johnny Knoxville, Mike Judge, and Tom Kenny (SpongeBob)—sitting poolside with the veteran music maker.
“He’s got an infinite amount of stories of really cool people, and I think he’s pretty proud of that,” says Gale. “One of the pleasures is to just sit there with him and hear more crazy bonkers tales of everyone he’s met.”
One of those stories was Swamp Dogg’s appearance on the Jane Fonda-led Free the Army Tour, an act of protest against the Vietnam War in 1970. It was a radical move for any pop musician, and it cost him his deal with Elektra Records, but he has few regrets.
“No, I thought I was right,” Swamp says now. “It was fun. We got a lot of criticism, because Jane was heading it up and we called the thing FTA, which was Free the Army—which was really ‘Fuck the Army.’ And I was saying things about the president. I talked about him like a dog.”
Swamp Dogg carried on. And decades later, he saw his influence in action when Snoop Dogg emerged as a new hip-hop sensation. The older player couldn’t help but see the similarity in their chosen names.
“I didn’t like the idea of it at first, but then my wife had a good talk to me,” says Swamp. “I hadn’t patented the name Swamp Dogg. A lot of ‘doggs’ came out, [including] Nate Dogg. Oh man, they got a baseball team down in North Carolina calling themselves the Swamp Doggs. Yeah, that ‘Dogg’ thing came from me. I was the first ‘Dogg.’”
The film offers some meaningful recognition for a career that has spanned decades and multiple genres and time zones. At screenings attended by Swamp Dogg and his inner circle, they’re soaking it up.
“Him and MoogStar, they’re cracking up with their own jokes,” says Gale. “They’re loving it. Hopefully it leads to some people buying some Swamp Dogg records, because everyone should have them in their collection.”
Swamp Dogg has never stopped working, and isn’t about to now in his 80s, especially with a new documentary introducing him to a new wave of listeners.
“I don’t feel like an 82-year-old guy when I’m on stage,” he insists.” I start doing things and I say to myself, ‘Motherfucker, what are you doing?’—because I’ll be dancing and shit. I walk onstage with a cane and when I finish my set, I can’t even find the cane. There’s something that music does for me the way I guess cocaine does for other people. I never had any cocaine, so I can’t compare it, don’t want to compare. But music just gets all into me.”
To see our running list of the top 100 greatest rock stars of all time, click here.
Best known for Guitarist and occasional vocalist and bass player for Butthole Surfers, and producer of Sublime’s self-titled album. I was also the guitar player for The Crowd Pleasers, my elementary school band in 1965.
Current city Austin, Texas
Really want to be in I love living in Austin because I like hot weather and early morning bike rides. Also, we now have a terrific assortment of Japanese restaurants. But my dream city would be Estes Park, Colorado, as I love hiking in Rocky Mountain National Park. Lack of Japanese restaurants will keep it a dream.
Excited about I’m excited about Butthole SurfersLive at the Leather Fly album out in May, and an upcoming documentary movie about my band coming out soon. I attended a premier screening of the documentary at SXSW last month, and the audience response was enthusiastic. There was clapping and cheering and, towards the end, crying.
My current music collection has a lot of Wire, Leather Nun, Buzzcocks, Undertones, Ian Dury and the Blockheads, and Ramones.
And a little bit of Big band music from the 40’s. It’s hard to imagine that there was a time when so many musicians played so great all at the same time. I was introduced to Glenn Miller when I played in stage band in high school. “In The Mood” was one of my favorite songs to play.
Preferred format I do Spotify for my music enjoyment. To be honest, I don’t listen to music much anymore unless I’m working on it. It’s become a bus driver’s holiday.
5 Albums I Can’t Live Without:
1
Live Album, Grand Funk Railroad
The first concert I ever attended was Grand Funk Railroad in 1972. Their Live Album was identical to the show that I saw. I learned how to play the guitar for the entire double album when I was 15. I still love that band.
2
More Songs About Buildings and Food, Talking Heads
Those clean guitars and precision chops just never get old. Jerry Harrison’s keyboards and synthesizers are out of this world. On top of it all is amazing poetry sung in a strange voice. This album is peak Talking Heads.
3
The Undertones, The Undertones
It’s more strange vocals. Feargal Sharkey is like a fun version of Jello Biafra. There is a kinda retro appeal to their song style. I just love the production on that album, it’s so pure and fun to listen to. They were a fun punk band, which is a rare thing. The guitars sound just right, and I just want to hug Feargal Sharkey.
4
154, Wire
All of Wire’s albums are fantastic. 154 was Wire at their peak. The song “Map Ref. 41°N 93°W 3:36” is one of my all-time favorite songs by anyone. A punk band that wrote pop songs and featured brilliant use of synthesizers.
5
New Boots and Panties!!, Ian Dury
This album came out during the early punk rock days, but it isn’t at all punk. It was lounge music for punk rockers. Music to rest your weary ears to. It has really aged well. Everyone should own this record.
To see our running list of the top 100 greatest rock stars of all time, click here.
Fifteen-year-old breakout country artist Maddox Batson has always been surrounded by music. Growing up, his father sang and played the guitar all the time.
Batson, however, was much more into sports, playing baseball, basketball, and football. But when he was diagnosed with Osgood-Schlatter disease in his right knee in 2022, his life took a different direction. Unable to play sports anymore, he turned to music, playing and singing with his dad on TikTok Live.
As Batson sees it, he really had no choice but to fall in love with music and start playing.
When Batson decided to pursue professional music at such a young age, his parents supported his decision wholeheartedly. “I have amazing relationships with both of my parents, so the support has always been there,” he says. “Having them during this process has made everything a million times easier.”
Batson’s determination—along with his parents’ blessing—paid off. The Birmingham, Alabama-based songwriter started quickly gaining notoriety from covering country musicians Zach Bryan and the Red Clay Strays on social media. His cover of Sam Barber’s “Dancing in the Sky” went viral with more than 1 million views. Eventually, he began getting noticed for his original songs, such as his 2024 single “Tears in the River.” which garnered more than 21 million streams globally.
(Credit: Cooper Pattison)
Just over a year later, Batson has released other singles such as “I Wanna Know,” “X’s,” and “Southbound,” and has more than 4.5 million followers on social media, exploding onto the forefront of the country music industry.
But Batson’s talents go beyond country music; he co-wrote Lana Del Rey and Quavo’s latest single, “Tough,” a mix of alt-pop, country, and trap. “I freaked out from excitement when she released it with Quavo,” he says. “It’s such an honor to be a part of that record, let alone being the inspiration.”
On May 2, Batson released the deluxe version of his first EP, First Dance(The After Party), which includes three new songs and explores relationships, breakups, and as he puts it, “capturing the love life of a teen.” In April, he finished his headline tour, with his final stop at the Stagecoach Music Festival in Indio, California. The singer-songwriter, however, will be back on the road supporting Lainey Wilson’s Whirlwind tour in the fall.
“There are so many great aspects of touring—seeing new places and getting close with your band,” he says. “But mine by far is seeing the fans. From the second I walk out on stage and hear them scream my name, I can’t stop smiling. They mean the most to me.”
Batson made his Grand Ole Opry debut on March 26, performing songs from First Dance, participating in a Q&A, and signing autographs for his ever-growing fan base.
Here’s a day in the life of Maddox Batson…the Grand Ole Opry edition.
Date 3/26/25
Time I woke up 7:30 a.m.
Every day starts with A shower.
Breakfast consists of A bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich.
To get going I always listen to TikTok…haha.
I don’t feel dressed without Cologne.
Before I start working I must Have coffee or breakfast.
Currently working on Touring and my Opry debut!
But I’d really love to be Golfing.
I don’t know how anyone ever Can willingly eat sardines.
“Connection is a hell of a thing…it’s the life jacket we all need,” says Adam Duritz, frontman of Counting Crows, a band that’s built their 30-year career through heartfelt live performances, emotional lyrics, and recurring, world-building themes in their songs.
Ironic, then, that growing up, Duritz says he didn’t know how to make connections with other people. “When I was younger, I was so stuck inside myself,” he tells me from his New York City home. A bunch of movie posters plaster the wall behind him—Seven Samurai and Smokey and the Bandit among them. He’s wearing a black Raspberries T-shirt, and sports a full black beard and a head full of dark brown hair, albeit thinner and shorter than the dreadlocks he was known for back in the ’90s.
“I had all this stuff I felt, and no way to express it or no way to connect with people because I didn’t talk to people very well, and I didn’t have any way to make connections. I felt so bound up inside myself.”
It wasn’t until later in life that he discovered he was suffering from depersonalization disorder, a condition that makes him feel emotionally detached from his surroundings, and even himself, which can last from minutes to sometimes months. Imagine feeling like you are seeing yourself from outside of your own body, or that everything around you is not real, and you don’t know how to stop it; that’s how Duritz feels a lot of the time. It can be a lonely existence
Duritz’s father served in the military during the Vietnam War and later became a doctor, which meant the family moved around a lot, only adding to his sense of isolation.
“It really separates you from the world in a lot of bad ways,” Duritz says. “I was always a new kid. I didn’t know people. I really had a lot of questions when I was younger, and I knew something was wrong with me. How am I going to take care of myself? How am I going to live a life? I didn’t really know how any of this was going to work.”
While he was in college, Duritz discovered, rather spontaneously, that he could write songs and play them. “Good Morning, Little Sister” was the first song he ever wrote, about his younger sister who was going through a difficult time as a teenager. For the first time in his life, he says he had a sense of self, of who he was: He was a songwriter.
“I had a feeling there was all this stuff inside me that mattered, that was important, but it just was there, like a big ball of feeling,” he says. “And then I write songs, and suddenly it’s this way that connects me to the whole world, and all the things inside me that were stuck because the mental illness had a purpose.”
Then, in 1993, two years after forming the Counting Crows with producer-guitarist David Bryson, the band—which by then consisted of Matt Malley on bass, drummer Steve Bowman, and on keyboards, Charlie Gillingham—exploded onto the music scene with its multi-platinum breakout album, August and Everything After. Then, in 1996, the group’s sophomore album, Recovering the Satellites, debuted at No. 1 on the U.S. Billboard 200 album chart, going double platinum.
The Counting Crows in 1994. (Credit: Dave Tonge/Getty Images)
The Counting Crows has released a number of live albums and compilations over the years, as well as five studio records, including its latest, Butter Miracle, The Complete Sweets!, the band’s first in seven years.
As Duritz describes it, the new record is “so rock and roll.”
Not to be confused with the band’s 2021 EP, Butter Miracle: Suite One, Butter Miracle, The Complete Sweets! is a sequel of sorts to its predecessor. Duritz tells me he wrote Suite One as a challenge to himself, to see if he could write one long-playing, continuous piece of music. The result was, well, a suite of four songs: “The Tall Grass,” “Elevator Boots,” “Angel of 14th Street,” and “Bobby and the Rat-Kings.” But it was also his answer to how people listen to music now.
“I don’t know if anyone’s listening to whole records,” says Duritz. “People are digesting music in different ways anyway, so to me, it felt like since I was moved to challenge myself to make this 20-minute piece of music where the songs all flow together, it was just that, you know? But I really loved how it turned out. I thought well, it does make sense to make another half to this, though.”
The Complete Sweets includes remixed versions of the songs on Suite One, along with five new songs, including the band’s latest singles, “Spaceman in Tulsa” and “Under the Aurora.”
But the road to get there wasn’t so easy. Going back to his friend’s farm in West England, where he wrote Suite One, Duritz composed the other half of the album and on his way home, he stopped in London to sing backing vocals on the Gang of Youths’ album, Angel in Realtime. When the band sent him the finished product, he thought it was one of the best records he had heard in a long time.
“I was so blown away listening to it, and I had this realization that these songs on their record were significantly better than the stuff I’d written,” he says. “The stuff lacked a sort of passion that these songs had and they were missing something, and I needed to go back to the drawing board.”
So, that’s what he did. And through the process of reworking his new songs, Duritz pushed himself like he’d never done before.
“I’d never really had this experience before of thinking I’d finished something and then realizing it wasn’t good enough,” he tells me. “They were a little more ambitious musically, to the point where I couldn’t play them myself. Usually, I can tell a song is good because I can just play it for myself. But these were really difficult for me to play. I had them in my head, but I couldn’t recreate them.”
As much as he loved his new material, he lacked the confidence to share it with the rest of the band.
So he sat on it for two years.
Then a breakthrough happened. He wrote “With Love, from A-Z.”
(Credit: Mark Seliger)
“I knew that was great. I loved that song,” he says. “And it felt like, in a way, an updating of ‘Round Here.’ Whereas that’s a real statement of a person and where they are in life, just as a kid getting ready to go out into the world and make something. And to me, ‘With Love, from A-Z’ was a statement of where I am today. And I really felt it worked and it was very powerful.”
With a renewed sense of confidence, Duritz invited band members David Immerglück (guitar), Jim Bogios (drums), and Millard Powers (bass) to his house to play his new songs.
Two weeks later, along with the rest of the group, Duritz ripped through the tracks in the studio in 11 days. Then, together with Chad Blake, the Counting Crows mixed the new songs, combining them with the remixed Suite One tracks, making a complete, nine-track LP.
“So the Suite [One] sounds different now than it did originally because we remade it to match the first half,” he says. “The two pieces fit together really well. It was a different experience…”
While the title of the album, Butter Miracle, The Complete Sweets!, has a bit of a nonsensical tone to it, the themes that run through it are quite serious and incredibly relevant to what’s going on in America now.
“Boxcars,” for instance, is about the deportation of immigrants. “Under the Aurora” was inspired by the murder of George Floyd during the pandemic. Other songs cover the objectification of women and trans kids in sports.
“A lot of the stuff on this record is about people in isolation and people on the outside looking in, finding ways to get through life. Sometimes it works out because we can pick up a guitar,” says Duritz, referring to himself.
The Counting Crows perform at the Greek Theatre in1997. (Credit: Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images)
Duritz says that after more than 30 years together, he and the band are still fascinated with the process of making music, exploring new ways to perform older songs live, never replicating the same old playlists during their shows, and, as with the group’s new album, finding new ways to write songs.
“We enjoy playing music,” he says. “I love being in a band. I don’t want to be a solo artist. I like the jazz of being in a band. I think we matter to each other. I’ve watched my friends fuck up great bands. I don’t want to do that. There are a million ways to justify why things should fall apart. You just have to decide whether that’s okay to let it happen.”
The musical landscape is a lot different than when August and Everything After debuted, when the only option to hear it was to buy the album at the record store or borrow (or copy) it from a friend. Exposure meant getting a single played on the radio or creating a music video for MTV. The rise of streaming music, of course, has changed all of that; it’s all the music you want, anytime you want, making it more difficult for artists to stay relevant, to build a fanbase, to connect with an audience. The Counting Crows are still passionate about being in a rock ‘n roll band.
“I’m 30-some-odd years into a career here; a career that lasts five minutes for most people, if it even happens,” Duritz says. “And we’re still a band and we’re still going on tour. And it’s still cool. There are bands that are bigger and, it’s not effortless, but it’s still happening. That thing that saved me when I was a kid is still saving me now. It’s my world, and I love it.”
To see our running list of the top 100 greatest rock stars of all time, click here.
You can’t judge a songwriter by their first hit. That’s certainly true for Dan Wilson, who topped the charts and earned his first Grammy nomination with Semisonic’s 1998 earworm “Closing Time.”
In the 27 years since that song’s release, Wilson has written for a wide range of artists, including Adele, LeAnn Rimes, John Legend, Panic! at the Disco, Preservation Hall Jazz Band, and Taylor Swift. He’s collected four Grammys and last year won the CMA Award for Song of the Year for Chris Stapleton’s “White Horse.” He also received an Academy Award nomination for co-writing Jon Batiste’s “It Never Went Away” from American Symphony.
The prolific songwriter’s talents stretch across genres. “I try to think of songs as ‘just songs,’ without genre,” he says. “I grew up listening to and playing jazz, and so many jazz classics are songs that originally came from other genres, like Broadway musicals or Top 40 radio or Brazilian dance music. I’ve always liked the idea that songs could travel from one genre to another. Really good songs are portable.”
While much of his time is spent in songwriting sessions, Wilson has a Sunday night ritual: sitting at his restored 1918 upright piano to “end the week on a gentle note.”
“It always comes back to the piano for me,” he says. “My musical beginnings were at my parents’ piano in Minneapolis. When I was 10 or 11, I started figuring out how to make up simple songs. In my early teens, I taught myself to improvise on the piano. Throughout high school, I would deal with my emotions and anger and blues by expressing them on the piano. I can’t imagine what that was like for my family! At this point, playing the piano at night is a lifelong habit of mine. Either a habit or a lifeline.”
Wilson began posting short pieces from these evenings to Instagram as a way of saying good night to his adopted hometown of Los Angeles, naming each piece after streets tied to significant moments in his life: “mulholland,” “beverly glen,” “moorpark,” “coldwater,” or as Wilson puts it, a map of his time living in the city. Eighteen of those pieces now appear on good night, los angeles, an album that captures the quietude of Wilson’s Sunday nights and makes it transportable.
It’s revealing to see the five (plus one) songs Wilson credits with making him a songwriter, and the context in which they made a lasting impact on him. Nearly half come from artists who were his contemporaries during the Semisonic years, or even earlier, during his time with the band Trip Shakespeare.
“At every stage of finding myself as an artist I’ve taken a lot of cues from the music that was happening at the time,” says Wilson. “This is probably because since I was 11, I knew that I was going to be a musician. I saw new records as half enjoyment and half learning ways to make music. Songs have always had deep connections to the times of my life when I first heard them. When I was a kid, I discovered that songs are a time machine that can bring you back to an earlier chapter of your life.”
Reconnecting to the Semisonic time in his life, Wilson joins the band this summer for tour dates, including stops on the “Good Intentions Tour” co-headlining with Toad the Wet Sprocket and Sixpence None the Richer.
“Coyote,” Joni Mitchell
“Coyote” on Hejira [1976] was my first introduction to Joni Mitchell, probably my most revered and most-listened-to songwriter. It has no chorus, just a quick tag at the end of each verse: “You just picked up a hitcher, a prisoner of the white lines of the freeway.” The song indoctrinated me into the life of a touring musician before I even knew what it was.
“Coyote” was also my first introduction to Jaco Pastorius, the amazing bassist whose melodies are like a second voice on Hejira. This was what made me want to learn to play the electric bass, and play it exactly like Jaco. Before I switched to guitar, I played bass in my high school’s big band, and in all my bands until I joined Trip Shakespeare.
“Purple Haze,” Jimi Hendrix
This song definitely changed my life. It was the first song I learned to play on the electric guitar. I was 13. A guitar teacher at our local music shop taught me how to play the major-minor 9th chord in the verses. So dissonant! So rebellious! So distorted! Most of my guitar riffs owe something to “Purple Haze,” even now.
“Let Down,” Radiohead
OK Computer ruled my listening life throughout the time I was recording Feeling Strangely Fine with Semisonic. When the band was recording part of the album out in the countryside at Pachyderm Studio, we’d listen to that Radiohead record all the way out there and then all the way back at the end of the day.
There were other, splashier songs on the album, but “Let Down” was the one that moved me the most. The strange arpeggiated orchestra bells and guitar in a different time signature from the song created a dissonance that I couldn’t get enough of. It was like an itch that could only be scratched by listening again. What an amazing thing to do with a piece of music.
(Credit: Yazz Alali
“Live Forever,” Oasis
I was waiting to pick up a friend at the Minneapolis airport when this song came on the radio. I can still remember how thunderstruck I was. It was equal parts Beatles-y psychedelia, nasty distorted metal, nursery rhyme melodies, and Sex Pistols punk rock vocals. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. When it was over the DJ announced it was by a British band called. Oasis. What a terrible name! I thought. Now of course I love the name and everything else about the band between Definitely Maybe and Standing on the Shoulders of Giants.
“A Remark You Made,” Weather Report
I loved Heavy Weather by Weather Report. I was just getting into jazz and blues music, and this record had both pop breakthrough hits and gnarly light-speed jams. Plus, it was crammed with beautiful bass melodies by the greatest electric bassist of all time, Jaco Pastorius. But the song I kept coming back to was “A Remark You Made,” a gorgeous ballad featuring saxophonist Wayne Shorter scaling heartbreaking lyrical heights on the horn. The final coda with its relentlessly repeated rising melody—such tension—only to suddenly stop, and end in a state of harmonic suspension. OMG.
“Purple Rain,” Prince
What can I say, he’s Prince. He is funky. But in this case, he’s a diva and a balladeer too. This song should be ridiculous. It’s over-the-top dramatic, no apologies. Meanwhile, the song’s title is a pun on Prince’s favorite color purple and his royal name (Purple Reign). Even sillier, the title is a lyric stolen from “Ventura Highway,” the stoner classic by the band America. And yet we all sang along and cried and screamed until the final endless guitar solo finally came to an end.
To see our running list of the top 100 greatest rock stars of all time, click here.
On March 19, SPIN Magazine turned 40, marking four decades of redefining music and cultural journalism. Launched in 1985 by Bob Guccione, Jr., SPIN didn’t just cover music — it challenged the status quo, reshaped how artists were covered, and ultimately became the voice of a generation. At a time when the field was crowded with heavyweights, most notably Rolling Stone, SPIN carved out its own lane by embracing the raw, the alternative, and the stories others weren’t telling, including important social stories.
From its earliest days, SPIN championed the artists who would come to define entire movements. It gave a platform to groundbreaking acts long before they became household names, from R.E.M. and Nirvana to Public Enemy and Björk. But more than that, it spoke directly to a generation that didn’t see itself reflected in the glossy pages of the establishment press. Unafraid to take risks, SPIN’s coverage often pushed boundaries — not just musically — cementing itself as a magazine with an edge. By the 1990s, it had surpassed Rolling Stone as the preeminent music publication of the era, defining the voice of Generation X with an authority that was sharp, rebellious, and unmistakably cool.
To mark the occasion, I sat down with SPIN’s founder, Bob Guccione Jr., for a candid conversation about the magazine’s legacy. In typical Guccione fashion, he doesn’t hold back. From the early struggles to the triumphs, the controversies, and the cultural moments that made SPIN what it was, he reflects on 40 years of impact with the same unfiltered honesty that made his magazine essential reading. Here, in his own words, is the story of SPIN — past, present, and future.
Energy and honesty. The first SPIN.
SPIN: When did you know it was something special?
Guccione: I thought it was special from the first issue, because it was an extraordinary array of talents that produced it. But I didn’t realize it until I held the first edition in my hands and read page after page and it was all so fluid and interesting and sparkly and bold. We weren’t fettered to any record company, or any publicist, or any musician, or anything. It was genuine. It had the spirit of the best fanzine ever produced, but it was put into mainstream retail outlets and carried mainstream advertising.
I had this vague idea that the magazine should have all this energy and be honest, and should represent its generation the way Rolling Stone had represented a slightly older generation. I wanted a magazine for the next generation — which was then unnamed, but became named Generation X — and was listening to music and talking about things that weren’t being represented in Rolling Stone or the mainstream press. I wanted a magazine that represented the raw youth culture that was just forming. I always said that SPIN was a magazine for young adults crossing the threshold from adolescence to adulthood.
So this great unfettered energy manifested quite well, if roughly, in that first issue. And then after that, I suppose, we started breaking some big stories. We were inured in the culture and we were bringing truth to people that they weren’t getting anywhere else, specifically around the AIDS column.
Making music journalism exciting again: SPIN’s birth as covered by the Orlando Sentinel, April 18, 1985.
The idea for SPIN came to me in a fraction of a second. I was putting my jacket on to go out for dinner and Cyndi Lauper was on the radio singing “Girls Just Want To Have Fun” and the thought came to me, “Everybody just wants to have fun!” And in that same, truncated moment, I saw in front of my eyes page layouts, with the typography — which I actually remembered and copied and ultimately published, including some of the headlines. Time stopped and it just came to me: all these pages came to me, headlines, section heads, articles, topics, and I thought, Oh wow, that’s the magazine I should make.
It happened all in the act of putting my jacket on. By the time I got my arms through my sleeves I thought, I can’t do that. How do I start a magazine? I’m only 28. I don’t know. I just want to go out to dinner with my friends.
Six weeks later I sat bolt upright in bed and thought, “Oh my God, it’s not a question. It’s a vocation. This is not something I get to decide. It has been decided.” So I got up at 6 a.m. in my New York apartment, in my sweatpants, and took out sheets of paper and started drawing obsessively. I drew the whole magazine out, or most of it. Sure, we added to it, and I thought, that’s it. I had no name for it, but I knew this was going to be the magazine I would do, and it was meant to be for my group of friends, and our age group and the music we were listening to, the culture we were consuming, the way we regarded the outside world, which was with tremendous distrust. Don’t forget, it was the Reagan years.
I was inspired by Jann Wenner, because I thought he was brilliant, and I thought Rolling Stone magazine had been brilliant, but it was turning a little soft and mushy and giving in to commercial concerns over cultural concerns. So I thought, “Well, I’ll do what he did, only I’ll do it for now.”
Bob with his mum, Muriel, proud of her boy upon the release of Spike Lee’s Guest Editor issue, October 1990.
Fifteen years ago you wrote a great piece for the 25th anniversary that began: “The country had just re-upped Ronald Reagan as President, once again buying his snake oil vision of America as a curative for all that ails us. It was a time of bland plenty and artistic stagnation, and also of crippling need and artistic promise. The cold war was raging and dying.” Doesn’t that seem like a parallel for what’s going on now?
It could be, but I’m afraid that the Cold War now might be heading in the opposite direction. And Reagan was Mahatma Gandhi meets Churchill meets every other great world leader by comparison to the fool and criminal that’s running the office right now.
These are dangerous times and I think the media needs to be more reactive and more bold. And the media is being intimidated. That’s deliberate. He’s deliberately intimidating the media. Arresting the Palestinian activist was a way of intimidating the media. They’re saying, “This guy spoke up. Look what happened to him. You know what’s next for you.”
I think we’re living in the same times that Argentina and Chile lived in in the seventies, and Iran has become. I don’t see the difference. We have a guy talking about annexing Greenland and taking the Panama Canal by force, I mean, isn’t that exactly what Putin is doing? I think we live in terrible times and I’d like to see more of the media more reflective of that. And I hope it is. I’ve got to commend Rolling Stone for what they’ve been doing. They’ve done great work. Fantastic work. They’re on top of it. They’ve got balls. And we’re doing a lot of good cultural stories on the site and in the magazine, which has come back to print recently.
I think we need more media covering more of the politics, taking a stand and making a statement.
Sovetskiy SPIN: a 1985 SPIN shoot in Leningrad, Russia, U.S.S.R., with Viktor Tsoi, Yuri Kasparyan, Stingray, and the ‘founder of Russian rock,’ Boris Grebenschikov (with his son, Gleb), in Grebenschikov’s flat. (Photo by Joanna Stingray via Getty Images)
How does SPIN 2.0 drop into this Trump 2.0 backdrop? Since returning as Editor Emeritus, you’ve certainly done your share, including a highly controversial interview with RFK Jr. some say helped give him a platform to run for president, and ultimately become Secretary of Health and Human Services. Would you like to do more of that?
You’re referring to an interview I did with RFK Jr. a couple of years ago when we were still in the pandemic, and he was famously espousing anti-vaccine sentiment. We argued a lot. And I would say out of the entire interview transcript, I took a third of it out because it was just rubbish. And a third of it was exaggerated or tilted. But a third was dead accurate. That’s the third we published. He got to say his piece, which I thought is what’s important. Everybody should say their piece, even if you don’t agree with it, even if they’re wrong, as long as you call them out for being wrong, or you allow others to call them out for being wrong.
I think Kennedy was adding some discourse. That’s powerful journalism, that’s what we need more of. You know I’m a great believer that free speech means free speech, including loonies. And I don’t think Kennedy is a loonie, but he tilts the tables for his arguments. But call them out.
We’ve done very unpopular stories in the history of the magazine. In 1986, we did the piece saying Live Aid was a bust and that the money it raised was going to the wrong guy and he was using it to buy weapons and furthering his cause in a civil war most people didn’t even know existed.
It was 1986. There was no social media, and most TV networks had eliminated their foreign correspondents and were relying on the AP. This story was going under the radar. We thought it was just a famine. No, it was a deliberately created famine as part of a civil war to crush rebels who wanted to form Eritrea. They eventually did, as you know, so we investigated what happened to Live Aid and what happened with the money it raised. It was terribly mismanaged and they gave the money to the Ethiopian dictator, who bought weapons, and let donated food rot on the docks.
We exposed that and we were almost put out of business as a result. The music industry turned on us. They canceled every ad they had, and at that point 90% of SPIN’s revenues were music ads. We had no ads, but we did that story and we stuck by it, because as I said at the time to my staff, I’d rather fail for the right reasons than succeed for the wrong ones. And that became our guiding principle through the 12 and a half years I owned the magazine.
A lot of that kind of journalism was not repeated for decades, but now we’re looking to repeat that. And again I took a lot of heat, for the RFK Jr. thing. SPIN took a lot of heat. People were upset. Well, that’s good. We should upset them, they should get woken up out of this torpor we’re in.
Ed Rasen, SPIN’s first Executive Editor, 1985.
That said, could you have launched this magazine today in a world where most people are getting their news from social media feeds and professional journalism has become so fragmented and come under attack?
The answer is, no, you could not do it today because the times are so profoundly different. But you could do a new version of it, and the times are calling out for strong, opinionated journalism, making powerful, bold statements, and saying, “This is wrong. This is bad.” Not just a tit for tat. Somebody says, “Oh, the government’s bloated and it’s great that he’s cutting it.” And someone else says, “That’s not the way to do it, you know. And, by the way, we’re cutting things to help the rich.”
I think we’re in too many silos. I don’t think Substack is broad enough for enough voices to penetrate the mainstream. TikTok is wrong because it’s too frivolous and stupid. It’s hard to get real news in a two- to three-minute video. We need the existing mainstream news media to get tougher, but you have situations like the Washington Post. It’s not so much that [owner] Jeff Bezos agrees with Trump. It’s that Bezos has businesses that Trump can affect that are far more important to him than the Washington Post.
What Bezos should do is sell it, because he’s going to end up killing it and helping destroy faith in mainstream newspapers.
Sheila E at a SPIN party on November 19, 1987 at Club 1018 in New York City. (Photo by Ron Galella, Ltd./Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images)
Do you have any regrets about anything you published?
Not journalistically. But we made mistakes in music reporting a lot of times. I regret putting Lisa Stansfield on the cover because it didn’t sell, and it made us look like we were following a trend! I just thought she was going to be hot. She wasn’t hot, that was it. Thankfully, we didn’t put Paula Abdul on the cover, which was one of my ideas. I was talked out of it.
What is the best story about your days and SPIN that’s never been told or published?
One of my favorites was that we were coming up to our 100th issue, and I thought we should do something to make a big deal out of it to attract readers and advertisers.
So we sold it as “the biggest issue in the history of the magazine,” and it was tremendously successful. It came out and it was a great issue and the whole thing was perfectly done. And later an intern walked up to me and said, “Mr. Guccione, you didn’t count it right, it was the 101st issue.” I said to her, “well, that’s rock ‘n’ roll!” And no one knows that story, I don’t think.
Oops — don’t tell anyone, but this was actually the 101st.
Sounds like you cranked that one up to 11. Do you have any practical insight you can give contemporary readers of SPIN today about how they can get more out of music culture. Obviously, the recording industry has changed a lot.
I would advise them to turn off streaming and go to a record store. They’re still there and you can find them. Walk in and just start browsing. Pick up old records. Pick up new records. Ask the guy in the record story what he listens to.
That’s what I would recommend, because that element of discovery is gone. It’s not discovery when a mechanical algorithm tells you what to listen to next.
And I would say read more about music. Don’t get your musical impulses from Tiktok, because it’s just a different way of using algorithms. So I would just say “Use the Force, Luke,” and just walk into a record store.
Turn off the machines and go out, and physically experience music in three dimensions, either in a dusty record store or or a smoky club. Well, they’re not smoky anymore, are they, but they’re airless.
“Turn off the machines and go out,” says Guccione. “Physically experience music in three dimensions.”
Speaking of machine algorithms, we asked one — ChatGPT — to come up with some questions that the 1985 version of Bob Guccione Jr. would ask you, the 2025 version. It came up with some pretty good questions. Is it okay if we ask a few?
Ha, I don’t mind, but remember that 1985 was a stupid version of me.
As that may be, his first question is: “So did we sell out or did we stay true to our vision of SPIN magazine?”
That’s easy, we stayed true to the vision. And we never sold out. I’ll tell you another story no one’s heard outside of SPIN: One day my publisher came to me in 1985 when we just had a couple of issues under our belt and she said, “Budweiser wants to take double-page [advertising] spreads in every issue.”
I said, “That’s fantastic,” but she adds that it’s contingent on us doing a story on the ‘Budweiser Band.’ It’s Budweiser’s house band. They go around playing in clubs and “they’re really, really good,” she said.
I said, “No, they’re not really, really good, because if they were, they wouldn’t be the house band for Budweiser.”
I love Budweiser and they became one of our biggest advertisers, but I wouldn’t do it. She came back later in the day and persisted, and I told her “If I do it once, I might do it twice. If I don’t do it once, I can never do it twice.” That became one of our guiding principles.
Bob 1985’s second question: “Be honest, did we actually change music journalism? Or did we just piss people off.”
Both. By the way, the 1985 version actually is smarter than me, because I wasn’t that smart then!
We did both, because sometimes pissing people off is just for the fun of it, but quite often it’s part of a signal to the constituents. The music industry thinks they own you, but the music industry — or any cultural industry for that matter — doesn’t, because I’ve always said we work for the reader.
The readers are our shareholders, that’s it. We always work for them. They’re our master, not anybody else, not the advertisers, not the distributors, and not the music industry. And that was again a very simple, clear philosophy. So we’ve pissed people off sometimes to show an irreverence. It was our magazine and we could have fun with it.
Last question from Bob 1985: “Which artist did we totally get wrong? Praise them when we shouldn’t have or trashed them when they were actually brilliant.”
Who did we get wrong, that’s interesting. I mean some of it was just opinion, but we made fun of Sting, just because he’s a bit pompous. But he really is a great musician and a very brilliant man. Did we get it wrong? No, we were sort of tweaking his nose because he was a bit pompous.
What did we miss? Not much that I can’t think of. I mean, I’m sure we missed a few musicians here and there. We didn’t miss hip-hop! We were the first to be all over that of really any mainstream music magazines. Even Black magazines didn’t cover hip-hop in the beginning. It was very obscure.
Obviously, we were all over grunge and Nirvana long, long before anybody else. And frankly, we were onto World Music long before anybody else.
Bear in mind, I don’t get the credit for that. I can take the credit for 1% of that. The other 99% goes to my editors who just really cared.
What I will take credit for is giving them the green light to follow their noses — you know, their instincts — and it always paid off for us.
What did we get wrong? We probably praised a few people that were no good. There was a little bit of collateral detritus. We liked an album, and it didn’t go anywhere. We praised Bronski Beat, but we didn’t realize they had already broken up before the first issue came out. The writer had asked them to keep it quiet, so he’d still get paid. But we didn’t get that one wrong. That’s still one of the great albums, I think, of the last 40 years. So no, I don’t know. Honestly, I can’t say that we really missed a trend or a person.
To see our running list of the top 100 greatest rock stars of all time, click here.
A quick one today, to tie in with Bandcamp Friday. A smattering of familiar names – Lee Ranaldo, William Tyler, Garcia Peoples – but hopefully some new discoveries for you, too. I saw Margo Cilker play at the Voodoo Rooms in Edinburgh earlier this week, who covered “Invisible Stars” by Slow-Motion Cowboys, who I’m ashamed to say I’d not heard before, but are the project of a songwriter called Pete Fields, who dubs himself ‘the Buzzard Prince of San Francisco in Exile’. Anyway, I can’t now stop playing the track’s parent album, Wolf Of St Elmo. I’ve also included an older track by Mally Smith – another new discovery – who opened for Cilker.
A quick one today, to tie in with Bandcamp Friday. A smattering of familiar names – Lee Ranaldo, William Tyler, Garcia Peoples – but hopefully some new discoveries for you, too. I saw Margo Cilker play at the Voodoo Rooms in Edinburgh earlier this week, who covered “Invisible Stars” by Slow-Motion Cowboys, who I’m ashamed to say I’d not heard before, but are the project of a songwriter called Pete Fields, who dubs himself ‘the Buzzard Prince of San Francisco in Exile’. Anyway, I can’t now stop playing the track’s parent album, Wolf Of St Elmo. I’ve also included an older track by Mally Smith – another new discovery – who opened for Cilker.
A new mini-album celebrates her lost ‘brothers’: Nick Drake, John Martyn, Kevin Ayers and Michael Chapman. Bridget St John explains all to Uncut…
A new mini-album celebrates her lost ‘brothers’: Nick Drake, John Martyn, Kevin Ayers and Michael Chapman. Bridget St John explains all to Uncut…
UNCUT: On Covering My Brothers, you pay tribute to four artists who were important to you. Did you feel like a sister to them? BRIDGET ST JOHN: They were my brothers – never lovers! They were people that stayed in my life, other than Nick, who died so young. I saw John Martyn three months before he died, he came to New York [where St John has lived since 1976]. Even though I didn’t see them all the time, the connection was there, like it is with good friends.
You’ve really put your own stamp on these songs, including an experimental take on Michael Chapman’s 10-minute “Aviator”. I only cover a song if it has got inside me. I can sing these songs because I relate to them as if I’d written them. “Aviator” was about a personal thing for Michael, a problem with the Inland Revenue, but for me it’s about the world and what’s going on now. So I changed a few words, with his wife Andru’s blessing. Michael’s version is much more aggressive than mine – I think he was really angry when he wrote it!
You cover Nick Drake’s “Fly”, and you knew him back then too – as much as anyone could… I related to him very strongly because we were both so shy – it’s hard to be so shy and be onstage. I don’t think I was as introverted as him, but I felt he was a kindred spirit.
Yours and Kevin Ayers’ voices worked very well together – almost like male and female versions of each other. I always loved playing with Kevin. I’m not a perfect singer, I often don’t sing exactly on the beat, and I think we just could feel where the other one was. Here, I play “Jolie Madame”, which we recorded together originally. I can speak French, but Kevin was properly bilingual, so it was completely finished when he played it to me.
The oddity on this EP is your version of John Martyn’s “Head And Heart” – a demo you made for 1974’s Jumblequeen, lost and recently discovered. John was originally going to produce the album, so I recorded some demos for him. There were six songs, and “Head And Heart” was one of them. I’d totally forgotten doing it until last summer when Mhairi, John’s daughter, got in touch and said, “I have this reel-to-reel.” I really like this version.
John was the first of these four you met, wasn’t he? I met him in 1967, when I was at Sheffield University, through Robin Frederick who also knew Nick Drake. He was the one who took me to Al Stewart‘s house to record my first demo, which got to John Peel, which led to everything opening up for me. John Martyn helped me buy my first steel-string guitar, because I only had a nylon string. I did several gigs with him, until it became clear that he was so far ahead of his time, with the Echoplex and his way of playing… his audience didn’t relate to me so much, as a quiet singer-songwriter, so we did fewer gigs together, but still some, and sometimes with him and Danny Thompson.
Did you try and keep up with their hell-raising? No, after two glasses of wine I’d need to go to bed! But all my ‘brothers in music’ had kind hearts. They might have had rough edges, or deeper than rough edges… but I think I’m drawn to the good and the depth of people.
What have you got coming up after this release? I’ve got a couple of songs I definitely want to put down, so I’ll probably go to the studio upstate, where I recorded “Aviator”, in May or June.
Covering My Brothers is available on 10” vinyl by Shagrat Records
