Albert Ayler - October 2006 The Sunday Times - By Stewart Lee - October 8th, 2006

Albert Ayler’s body was retrieved from the East River in Brooklyn on the 25th of November, 1970, a few months after his 34th birthday. The saxophonist grew up in Cleveland, left to find work as a musician playing in restaurants in Sweden in 1962, and returned to New York, changed and inspired, to take the…

Nick Cave - September 2003 The Sunday Times - By Stewart Lee - September 14th, 2003

Lord Melvyn Bragg has flung open the gate of terrestrial television’s last remaining temple of culture and welcomed in a former heroin addict who sometimes physically attacked his own audiences, and whose only chart hit was accompanied by a video depicting him murdering Kylie Minogue. Tonight’s South Bank Show features the Australian singer-songwriter Nick Cave.…

Calexico - February 2003 The Sunday Times - By Stewart Lee - February 11th, 2003

Joey Burns has been biding his time. To see his group, Calexico, delivering their enthralling fusion of twangy guitars and widescreen soundtrack atmospherics live, often accompanied by a Mariachi band in traditional costume, one wouldn’t assume that such an explosive performance was the result of patience. But for over a decade, the rhythm section of…

The Folk’s Back Home – Shirley Collins - January 2003 The Sunday Times - By Stewart Lee - January 5th, 2003

While appearing in a production at the National Theatre in 1977, the English folk singer Shirley Collins lost her voice to nerves, and her musician husband to an actress. She rarely performed in public again, eschewing the peripatetic life of the entertainer to raise her children alone. But, in the previous quarter-century, she had travelled…

Patti Smith - April 2002 The Sunday Times - By Stewart Lee - April 7th, 2002

The assumed rivalry between Blondie’s vocalist, Debbie Harry, and the poet and singer Patti Smith is one of the most persistent subplots in histories of the 1970s New York punk movement. Apparently, downtown wasn’t big enough for the both of them. But despite their shared pedigree, Harry has become an icon and Muppet Show guest,…

Steve Albini / All Tomorrow’s Parties 2002 - March 2002 The Sunday Times - By Stewart Lee - March 10th, 2002

I don’t accept that aspiring to mainstream success is natural,” says Steve Albini. “By the time I was 10, I realised it didn’t matter what people thought of me. I have to look at myself in the mirror when I shave in the morning. I’d rather not look at a coward or someone who was…