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…”

‘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

EVAN STANLEY AND Nick Simmons have known each other since they were babies. After all, their fathers — Kiss co-founders Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons — have been bandmates since the early Seventies. C

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

The prog giants’ much maligned and misunderstood 1973 concept album reappears in deluxe expanded and enhanced form. Mark Blake braves a deep dive.

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 (