A French friend brought over a load of Gainsbourg vinyl and I worked my way through it: by the time I got to L'Histoire De Melody Nelson (1969) I was….

Even though it felt completely natural - strangely enough - recording an album, I was very shy about making it public..

I'm not trying to ally myself with the rock stars of the universe..

There's that old cliché which has a lot of basis in truth, that all music journalists are failed rock stars. They all harbour the inner feeling they ….

I didn't want to live in LA again, although I'd go back every couple of months to do an interview, usually with a heavy rock or metal band. And as th….

I love Tom [Waits] for the same reason I love Leonard Cohen, which is that they are both one-offs, templates; they both seemed old, or at least dress….

Leonard Cohen can give you "Leonard Cohen" - the self-deprecating wit, the slow, considered speech, the perfectly-honed anecdote - Tom Waits is far m….

Not so much that I wanted to give up rock writing, but I also wanted to try something new. So I moved to a crumbling stately heap on top of a hill in….

Everybody was in tears. You turned on the radio or the television, and it was nothing but Gainsbourg. With typical British music journalist disdain, ….

The difference between fiction and journalism is that you can disguise the characters, so you won't get your legs broken, and there's no interview ta….