‘We’re going to have a tonal centre and tap our feet, and that’s the way it is.’ Steve Reich is in full flow, talking to me from his home in New York. ‘The big break, the knife down the line, was betw

VAN HALEN WAS the world’s biggest rock band at the beginning of 1985. Their 1984 album had sold more than five million copies in the U.S., reaching Number 2 on the Billboard 200 albums chart (their hi

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XTC’S 1986 ALBUM, Skylarking, is fairly beloved today, but for Andy Partridge, the British band's co-founder, chief songwriter and guitarist, it was difficult to make. The main issue? Partridge's disa

What was your first guitar? I wanted a guitar when I was 10, but it took until I was 12 before my parents gave in. We went to a shop in King’s Cross in North London, and they had guitars hanging up, i

PARADE BEGAN WITH a bruised ego. Two years earlier, in 1984, the 25-million-selling Purple Rain had set a sky-high bar. Now, the critical consensus was that Prince had fumbled the follow-up with Aroun