In The Studio Archives: Classic Rock Interview

Four years before the dawn of MTV and almost two decades before the internet revolutionized the music industry, Rush sold more than a million copies of their 1978 Hemispheres album and sold out 10,000-seat arenas primarily on word-of-mouth and relentless touring. But I, for one, was continuing to get considerable pushback from powerful...

It was late January 1985 and Atlantic Records had invited me to London (along with the late WNEW-FM legend Scott Muni and WBCN Boston’s Oedipus ) to interview Jimmy Page and Paul Rodgers as The Firm, broadcasting back to millions listening in America live from the famed Abbey Road Studios. As I prepared...

Hundreds of miles north of Miami, Jacksonville Florida is light years away culturally from its more glamorous and glitzy counterpart downstate. Jacksonville does not show up on many listings of American music meccas alongside New York City, Nashville, Memphis, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle. But maybe it should. You see, the swamps...

The completely unanticipated release of a new Pink Floyd album in November, The Endless River, threatened to distract from what otherwise would be, under different circumstances,  a significant rock landmark: the 35th anniversary of Pink Floyd’s monumental opus The Wall. Whether architectural student-turned-musician/ composer Roger Waters would have designed an actual structure more...

Possibly the worst conceivable time to approach a rock musician for any reason is immediately after coming off stage from performing for 90 minutes or more. They are physically and emotionally spent. So that’s exactly the circumstances under which I first met Mark Knopfler, a good 10-12 months into the massive Dire Straits...