fri 11/07/2025

guitar

theartsdesk Q&A: Musician Bruce Springsteen

It's a season of retrospection for Bruce Springsteen. New light has been thrown on his pivotal 1978 album Darkness on the Edge of Town with the release of The Promise, a double CD of out-takes and unreleased songs, alongside an expanded box set of...

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Richard Thompson, Philip Pickett, Musicians of the Globe, Cadogan Hall

I defy anyone not to be excited at the prospect of a concert featuring such numbers as “Cuckolds All Awry”, “The Queen’s Dumpe”, “The Wooing of the Baker’s Daughter” and “Tickle My Toe”. Add to these tantalising scenarios early music’s favourite...

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Paco de Lucía, Royal Festival Hall

Best foot forward: Paco de Lucía, Spain's musical Picasso

The sense of occasion around flamenco guitarist Paco de Lucía’s return to London was palpable. The Royal Festival Hall was heaving. Queues at the bars before the show and during the interval were three or four deep. Spanish was everywhere. And that...

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Terry Riley Celebration, St George's Bristol & Bristol Old Vic

Terry Riley is one of the great unsung heroes of contemporary music, the ur-minimalist who shaped the creative paths of John Adams, Peter Townshend, Mike Oldfield and Philip Glass, to name just a sample of the wide range of musicians who have been...

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Wilko Johnson, O2 Academy Islington

Wilko and Telecaster: ‘A great Wilko riff motors along like a speeding truck over the roughest terrain.'

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Is it an amphetamine-fuelled chicken on rollers? No, it’s the one-time guitarist for Dr Feelgood (during the only period that matters) still doing the moves that made him the main reason to see the band in the mid-1970s...

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Photo Gallery: Portraits of Keith Richards 1963-71

The lens loved Mick. Those child-bearing lips, to use Joan Rivers’s ripe phrase, always came up a treat in photographs. Did it ever love Keith quite so much? Ever since he started creosoting himself in eyeliner and crumbling like an oxidising mummy...

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Guns N' Roses, O2 Arena

"The Legend of Axl Rose" sounds like the title for a long and fanciful western movie, about a bandit who defies the law and even time itself. In person, wayward vocalist Rose does indeed resemble some kind of picaresque outlaw who rules his own...

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Shellsuit, Dublin Castle, Camden

'How much do you charge for a piece of your own soul?' The Shellsuit manifesto explained

During the 1980s, a major artistic response to the Conservative government came in the form of a sustained surge in music that was, on some level at least, politically engaged. Not necessarily in the classic agitprop manner either. For every band...

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Pink Martini, Barbican

“You see! This is America! All races, genders and everything else blending together to make something beautiful!” This a quote from an American fan living in the Middle East currently on Pink Martini’s website. Thomas Lauderdale, the musical...

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Ólöf Arnalds, The Slaughtered Lamb

Last year’s Vid og Vid (an Icelandic colloquialism for "every now and then"), Ólöf Arnalds’ debut album, attracted some high-profile fans. Fellow Icelander Björk raised the flag on America’s National Public Radio, as did Jonathan Richman who...

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Hofesh Shechter's Political Mother, Sadler's Wells

In the middle of the pulverisingly loud and utterly thrilling experience that is Hofesh Shechter’s new production Political Mother, I wished suddenly that all dancers could come and see this piece, see what clarion theatre dance can be. If the...

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Kings of Leon, Hyde Park

“It’s been one of the greatest experiences of our lives,” said Kings of Leon's lead singer Caleb Followill towards the end of this big outdoor gig on a warm summer’s night in London. “Thank you very much.” I’m glad he had a good time, and his...

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