Tag Archives: the-last-word

O n April 26, 1973, a young writer got his first article published in Rolling Stone. “It’s been four years since Poco played their first gig at the Troubadour and everybody made a point of saying the band would be The Next Big Thing,” he wrote. “Five albums and many …

J ohn Fogerty rerecorded some of the best-known songs by his long-gone band for his new album, Legacy: The Creedence Clearwater Revival Years, a Taylor Swiftian move that’s best understood as the culmination of his decades-long journey toward reclaiming those hits. Fogerty spent years in a series of ugly legal …

F orty-one years ago, Ralph Macchio landed the role of a bullied high school student who learns karate from his apartment building’s handyman in The Karate Kid. Few people involved with the movie thought they were creating a mega-blockbuster, but it wound up grossing an astounding $130.8 million on a …

I n my 45 years on Earth, I’ve never seen a person place this order at a restaurant. Flavor Flav is at the Millennium Hilton near the United Nations in New York the day before Thanksgiving. He’s in town to catch the Macy’s parade with his family and attend to …

C yndi Lauper has never been the type who does things the quiet way. Forty years after she blew up into an Eighties pop icon, she’s still making a great big noise. Lauper just began her Girls Just Wanna Have Fun Farewell Tour, rocking arenas around North America up to …

B ryan Ferry has been making mischief for more than 50 years, on the margins of the rock world. But he’s still not done. He began as the singer/peacock/visionary of Roxy Music, but he started making his own solo records almost as soon as the band began. Retrospective: Selected Recordings …

M ethod Man’s star power was evident from the moment listeners heard him on Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), especially the album’s lone solo single, which carried his name. During our recent Zoom call, he tells me in his gravelly baritone that he’s still likely to listen to that project …

J ust a few weeks after Phish wrap up their summer tour with a four-night stand at Dick’s Sporting Goods Park in Commerce City, Colorado, Trey Anastasio will celebrate his 60th birthday. That’s a heavy moment for some people, but Anastasio says he couldn’t be happier about it. “Maybe this …

F or six decades and counting, John Cale has lived on the edge of the avant-garde. A classically trained violist, he spent the mid-Sixties playing hours of drones with minimalist composer La Monte Young before co-founding the Velvet Underground with Lou Reed. The band transformed rock & roll into an …

A lan Cumming is not a fan of dwelling on the past. “I don’t really have prepared ideas or thoughts about things from the past so much,” the actor, singer, novelist, activist, and general polymath says on Zoom as he prepares to embark on his upcoming one-man tour for Uncut, …