This article originally appeared in the June 1985 issue of SPIN. Hey you. Yeah, you—come here a second, I wanna talk to you. Look, I don’t know you, you don’t know me, we don’t go to the same parties, never tubbed together. I know you think I’m some kind of weirdo, but listen… I bet, just […]
This article was originally published in the December 1988 issue of SPIN. We’re republishing this on the 15th anniversary of Owens’ death. Buck Owens has spent the last few years looking after business in Bakersfield, California, back again where his career began. When country music went slick in the ’70s, Buck let it alone—and for the last decade […]
This article originally appeared in the January 1988 issue of SPIN. Critics don’t like them. Black radio stations won’t play them. But in less than a year Public Enemy has managed to sell 275,000 copies of their debut LP, Yo! Bum Rush the Show, and has toured the U.S. and Europe with L.L. Cool J. […]
This article originally appeared in the April 1986 issue of SPIN. There are at least three different people running around inside Patti LaBelle. At least three. Sometimes they merge and confuse the issue, blur the images we have of her. But most of the time they are sharply defined, separate from each other, as night […]
This article originally appeared in the April 1986 issue of SPIN. A battered motel room in Watts, the Glen-Dora Motor Lodge. When you come in, John Lee Hooker is standing at the stove in the cramped kitchenette. He’s cooking him up some red beans and rice, some biscuits and gravy, some neck-bones. Battered neckbones. Or no, better—it’s […]
This article originally appeared in the September 1988 issue of SPIN As an arena for boxing, the Convention Hall at Atlantic City is not one of the happier architectural palaces of the world. It drops the kind of pall an audience that would come from witnessing a cockfight in a bank. Lyndon Johnson was nominated […]
This article originally appeared in the September 1989 issue of SPIN. I turned on the radio at 7:40 p.m. on June 27th and a DJ was announcing, in that near hysterical delivery DJs have, that they would be broadcasting the “WHO’S ONE AND ONLY LIVE PERFORMANCE OF TOMMY SINCE 1969 AT RADIO CITY MUSIC HALL.” […]
This article originally appeared in the January 1988 issue of SPIN. Waylon Jennings was born on June 15, 1937. In on honor of what would have been his 83rd birthday, we are republishing the interview here. “You’re gonna get in trouble if I write this.” “I don’t care. You write what I tell ya.” Waylon Jennings, […]