In 1966, THE VELVET UNDERGROUND AND NICO brought together the worlds of avant-garde art, European cool and downtown rock’n’roll in one explosive package. Sixty years on, the survivors share tales of drugs, breakdowns, burnouts, blocked toilets and hospital beds – and, of course, the creation of some of the most important music ever made. “We only did things our way,” learns Tom Pinnock . “We were arrogant, perhaps, in thinking we knew best. We were also right. We did know best…”

After Grace , JEFF BUCKLEY retreated from fame into a bare Memphis shack, chasing darker sounds, deeper truths and a new creative path. As a new documentary confronts the realities of his life, family, friends and collaborators reflect on the restless search and the fragile rebirth. “He was trying to figure out where he fit in the universe spiritually,” they tell Nick Hasted. “He was trying to make his A Love Supreme .”

Sarah Ditum on Pop JAMES GLOSSOP/OPERA NORTH ● ...

IT WAS THE summer of 1985, and Johnny Marr was a man out of time. Three years earlier, while still a teenager, the guitarist had co-founded the Smiths in Manchester, England, with vocalist Morrissey (

When Take That started out they were all about leather trousers, bare chests and lots of jelly. Youngsters Gary Barlow, Howard Donald, Mark Owen, Jason Orange and Robbie Williams sweated it out in gay

There has been a tectonic fragility to the early weeks of 2026, the uneasy sense of an old world shifting. New horror in Syria, Venezuela, Greenland, Iran; ongoing terror in Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan. In t