Sound and the Fury

Barney Hoskyns is the author of several tomes on music and film.

More than 400 pages of highlights from the capacious and variegated rocksbackpages.com archive - MOJO stalwart and rocksbackpages co-founder Hoskyns' Intro reflects gloomily on rock journalism's former freedom and irreverence compared to, as he sees it, current collusiveness with "the entertainment machine". One can only hope that was a grey day talking and take inspiration from all the subsequent uproar. While the rehashed live reviews seem to have expired with time, otherwise it's a rush of a read whether the approach is Vivien Goldman's sweaty Northern Soul excitation at the Wigan Casino in 1975 or John Mendelssohn's aggressive 1991 reassessment of NWA as a cynical minstrel show calculated to snare white youth dollars. Virtually yellowed pages maybe, but they are alive with surprise and revelation, viz the extraordinarily cagey Bob Dylan's magnificent declaration of self-worth/egotism extracted by quiet old Mick Brown one night in a Madrid caf . "I don't think I'm gonna be understood until maybe 100 years from now," he said. "What I've done, what I'm doing, nobody else does or has done." - Phil Sutcliffe, MOJO, May 2003

• The Beatles - Music's Gold Bugs, by Al Aronowitz; How to Become a Cult Figure in Only Two Years - The Making of David Bowie, by Steve Turner; It's Hard to be a Saint in the City - A Chat with Bruce Springsteen, by Jerry Gilbert; Sounds Dirty - The Truth About Nirvana, by Jon Savage; Joni Mitchell - An Interview, by Penny Valentine; Marvin Gaye - Earthly Fights & Mystic Flights, by Cliff White; Neil Young - When Does a Dinosaur Cut Off Its Tail?, by Richard Cook; Bob Dylan - "Jesus, who's got time to keep up with the times?", by Mick Brown; Madonna's Blonde Ambition, by Glenn O'Brien; Ice Cube, by Robert Gordon; Morrissey - The King of Bedsit Angst Grows Up, by Will Self; The Golden Road: A Report on San Francisco, by Paul Williams; The New York Dolls at the Mercer Arts Center, New York City, by Miles; The Road To Wigan Casino - Northern Soul, by Vivien Goldman; Go, Johnny, Go! Punk Hits Britain, by Caroline Coon; Live from Nashville - A Limey at Large in Music City USA, by Mick Farren; Poison The Hood - Niggaz with Attitude, by John Mendelssohn; The Monterey Pop Festival, by Michael Lydon; Lollapalooza - A Woodstock For The Lost Generation, by Simon Reynolds; Altamont - An Eyewitness Account, by David Dalton; Hit the Road Stax - Otis Redding et al at Finsbury Park Astoria, by Bill Millar; The Band - We Can Talk About It Now, by Greil Marcus; Give Peace A Chance! Grand Funk Railroad Shea Stadium, by Lenny Kaye; Eric Clapton - Rainbow Theatre, London, by Charles Shaar Murray; The Who's Mod Generation - Quadrophenia Through The Years, by Greg Shaw; Pop Art/Art Pop - The Warhol Connection, by Mary Harron; The Sound and Vision of Psychedelia, by Robot A. Hull; John Lennon - My Brilliant Career, by Simon Frith; Surfin' Death Valley USA, by David Toop; ABBA - Welcome to the Palindrome, by Nick Hornby