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

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 (

‘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

“THE CALL OF Cthulhu,” written by American author H.P. Lovecraft, was first published in Weird Tales in February 1928. The story describes an ancient, nightmarish being rising from the sludgy depths t

PETER GABRIEL’S TIME with Genesis in the Seventies — not to mention his early-Eighties musings as a solo artist — had granted him a reputation as a musical maverick who merged modern prog with all sor

ON THE SURFACE, guitar trends in 1986 looked downright wild and perverse — a weird parade of shred-happy virtuosos, anthemic power pop heroes, dirtbag metalheads and eccentric alt-rock outsiders. But