After half a century as the adventurous tripper s drug of choice, LSD is being given a designer makeover. In our continuing series on drugs, STUART CLARK checks out the hallucinogens.
Contrary to the usual hysteria around drugs, Irish authorities have been alarmingly slow to respond to the availability of a truly dangerous pill – dob.
He has warts on his face, chemical paste in his blood, viagra in his dick and a heart full of rock 'n' roll. "There are occasions when I do preach temperance," Lemmy tells a startled STUART CLARK Woooooargh! Photography: SIMON ROCHE
n a career spanning 25 years in the glare of the stagelight, CHRISTY MOORE has known every emotion from insecurity, despair and vilification to adulation, triumph and the warm glow of creative fulfilment. He has dabbed in drugs, drink to excess, suffered a heart attack for his troubles and made some of the finest records that have ever been subjected to critical scrutiny in this country. Now, in a frighteningly honest interview, he tells it like it is and was. Cross-examination: JOE JACKSON. Microscopic camerawork: COLM HENRY.
It only took Jay Haze and Samim, aka Fuckpony, a few months to write and record 'Children', but its underlying themes are the result of two lives spent on the edge. Haze and Samim's troubled experiences - including stints living homeless in San Francisco and selling LSD while touring with the Grateful Dead - are not obvious from the predominant musical soundtrack, an unusual mixture of deep old school house and wiry minimalism. However, scratch beneath the surface and cautionary tales like 'Cell Phone Hit' and 'Make Money Hoe' reveal the darker side of life. Their story probably warrants a good book or film, but until Sodebergh comes calling, we'll make do with 'Children'.
A Garda seizure and anecdotal evidence suggest that the dangerous drug DOB – aka ‘Snowballs’ – is well established in Ireland. and there’s worse to come.
He helped invent disco, funk, r 'n' b and hip-hop. And when he wasn’t changing the face of popular music, Chic leader NILE RODGERS found time to chin-wag with pop’s best, bravest and weirdest. Here he talks about hanging with David Bowie, Slash and Madonna and reveals his oft-overlooked hippy leanings.
Andy Williams may have a reputation as a bland M.OR. crooner but beneath the squeaky clean showbiz facade lurks an interesting man indeed, who reveals a knowledge of modern art, a past laced with drug use and an unhealthy interest in Shirley Temple. Joe Jackson travels to Branson, Missouri to hear his confessions.
Bet you thought we’d gone all literary for a minute there. Not a chance! Europe is about to get a dose of The Cramps – so we decided to get the low-down on what to expect from the band’s prime-mover and trash philosopher extraordinaire Mr Lux Interior. Ear to the phone: Colm O’Hare.
UFOs, sunken Civil War forts and songs about Van Gogh’s severed ear are all subjects liable to come up when in conversation with WARREN DEFEVER from Michigan-based eclecticists his naME IS ALIVE. Interview: Nick Kelly.
In his heyday, Larry Hagman was the biggest television star in the world, portraying the manipulative and ruthless oil baron JR Ewing in the kitschy Dallas soap.
Neil Young, the Pixies and the Beach Boys are just some of the influences that Californian quintet grandaddy include in their own particular brew. Tape: nick kelly.
A suitably awestruck nick kelly shares a chinwag with jake shillingford, ringmaster of perfect pop merchants my life story and unashamed wearer of gold lami suits in public.
the poet Allen Ginsberg died at his East Village home in New York on Saturday, 5th April, just two months short of his 71st birthday. After more than four decades of constant, and often controversial, conflict with such repressive figures as J. Edgar Hoover, Fidel Castro and Newt Gingrich, liver cancer finally succeeded where they had always failed in silencing the notoriously outspoken writer and self-confessed beat-hip-gnostic-imagist performance poet.
Now that the picking season is upon us, Siobhán Long offers a guide to the pleasures and perils of Pysolisin, otherwise known as the humble magic mushroom. Pic: Alan O’Connor.
Backed by apparently damning new scientific findings, there is a move across Europe to outlaw ‘Spice’ and other legal smokes. Will this bring an end to the booming legal high industry – or encourage smokers to look further afield for their chemical buzz?
They say he s a Man Of The World it s just that for two decades the world in question happened to be Saturn. andy darlington meets peter green, the man who created fleetwood mac, then wrote the longest suicide note in rock n roll history.
Does ABSINTHE really make the heart grow fonder or are the Conservatives right in calling for its ban? STUART CLARK and his showbiz chums check out the drink that s taking clubland by storm. Pix: CATHAL DAWSON.
Magic mushrooms were banned in Ireland recently, effectively aiming an exocet at the local ‘head’ shop business. But even before the ban, customs officials had been waging a bizarre war against what most people accept was a legal substance – resulting in considerable losses being sustained by shop owners. No wonder some of them are considering going to court to gain redress.
Razorlight are one of the best bands in the world, or so reckons their dapper frontman Johnny Borrell. In an exclusive interview, he talks about heroin addiction, his troubled friendship with Pete Doherty and explains why Arctic Monkeys are also-rans.
As frontman of Galway’s Toasted Heretic Julian Gough was an enfant terrible of Irish rock. Then he jacked in music to become a best-selling writer. With his old band preparing to reform, Gough reveals his loathing of television and explains why his home town is the cosmopolitan capital of Ireland.
I’ll have at least one foot in the grave – or at least that’s the dominant feeling as JOE JACKSON joins the Country Music U.S.A. crew on their visit to BRANSON – a bizarre small town in the Ozark Mountains that now rivals Nashville as a centre for country music tourism, of the blue-rinse variety.
On the eve of Kraftwerk’s headlining appearance at the Electric Picnic, mainman Ralf Hütter talks with rare candour about David Bowie, U2, hip-hop, cycling and why sometimes even man-machines have to smile.
Our correspondent road-tests a rare but legal herb which might offer him an epic, life-affirming religious moment or make him feel like a mere atom in a speck of dirt up some earthworm's arse. How did he fare? Read on...
Brian Wilson is among the most influential forces in modern music and created, in The Beach Boys' 1966 album Pet Sounds, what many music fans agree is the greatest record ever made. In February he takes his world tour to Dublin's Point Theatre and Stephen Robinson asks what's on the set-list
2007 was another vintage year for Iggy. Here, he finds the time to discuss reforming the Stooges, his relationship with Bowie, the Stones and his trailer park upbringing.
Professor Ivor Browne has observed more cases of mental illness than the editor of Oireachtas Report. Siobhán Long takes a seat in the psychiatrist’s chair and hears Ireland’s leading man-in-a-white-coat give his diagnosis on the links between creativity and schizophrenia, the dangers of psychosurgery and the inevitable demise of the Catholic Church.
THAT OLD scapegoat for all of society’s ills has reared its ugly head again: the Video Nasty. As soon as the guilty verdicts were returned on two young boys for the brutal murder of Liverpool toddler Jamie Bulger, politicians, policemen, priests and parents began casting around for someone to blame.
Back in the '60s the MC5 made it on to the CIA's 'Most Wanted' list. Now, they're a chi-chi fashion accessory beloved of Jennifer Aniston and her Hollywood pals. Guitarist Wayne Kramer explains it all to Stuart Clark.
With the Dutch having just taken over from Ireland as EU President, paul o mahony looks at their liberal domestic drugs policy and visits Amsterdam s unique hash and marijuana museum.
Meet Larry Harvey, the man behind burning man, the world’s most extraordinary festival, in which a whole city, run as a gift economy, springs up in the arid nevada desert to celebrate creativity, non-conformism and the healing power of fire.
From First Cuts to Latest Cuts, from the First Lady Of Immediate , recording with Phil Spector, Jimi Hendrix and the Small Faces, to the First Lady of Techno, scoring Top Ten hits with Altern-8 and the Beatmasters, to today with Primal Scream and Ocean Colour Scene
P.P. ARNOLD has always been there, wherever the beat is hottest.
Interview: andy darlington.
To celebrate hotpress’s thirtieth anniversary issue, we thought we’d break out the bubbly (and the tea!) and invite round a collection of Ireland’s biggest stars.
In his latest book, the high profile psychiatrist addresses the idea of masculinity in crisis. But is it fact or fiction? And how have his own experiences as husband, father and professional informed his views? Joe Jackson asks the questions. And, oh, is size really important. Doc Shots: MYLES CLAFFEY
Robyn Hitchcock – wayward musical genius or fruitcake, depending on your point of view – is on the brink of even greater notoriety with the patronage of REM and the release of his strongest album to date. Andy Darlington does his best to uncover the man behind the mayhem.
He may well be RTE s only living intellectual but ANDY O MAHONY, host of The Sunday Show, will long be remembered by many as the man who asked Deirdre Purcell if she ever did the bold thing with Gay Byrne. JOE JACKSON gets the self-styled closet determinist to come out of the closet. Pix: Colm Henry
Best known for his Irish Times column An Irishman s Diary, KEVIN MYERS has been denounced as arrogant, bigoted, pompous and prejudiced. And those are just the people who like his witty writing! On the occasion of the publication of a collection of his writings, the journalist they either love or loathe talks to JOE JACKSON about class, prostitution, drugs, relationships, the North, Mary Ellen Synon and more. Photography: CATHAL DAWSON
Are Bono and the boys just a really good rock band or have they succeeded where the priests and politicians have failed and unlocked the neuroses of our colonial past? Joe Jackson indulges in a spot of cultural sparring with John Waters and finds the author of Race of Angels: Ireland and the Genesis of U2 well able to maintain his guard.
Over the past five years, Oklahoma psych-pop practitioners The Flaming Lips have become perhaps the foremost cult band of their generation. Olaf Tyaransen caught up with the Lips’ main man Wayne Coyne at the Jack Daniels birthday bash in Tennessee to discuss life, love, major label patronage and the vexed question of whether or not there’s life on Mars.
WITHOUT A shadow of doubt, the figures revealed in the Hot Press/Classic Hits 98FM survey will give politicians, priests, lawyers, legislators, educators and gardai pause for thought.
Annie Nightingale on BBC Radio One is Dance Music s fixture for insomniac clubbers. But for the BBC s first-ever female DJ this is just the latest incarnation of a career that began, sort-of, by insulting John Lennon. ANDY DARLINGTON reads the book, sits in on the show, and even finds time for an interview.
Go on, admit it. You thought you knew it all about the most festive occasion. Wrong, suckers! OLAF TYARANSEN is the man with the definitive lowdown on the Christmas alphabet as he offers his essential guide to surviving the Santa season. Well, with a name like that he’s obviously more in tune with the North Pole, right?
At the end of a year which saw (most of) Fleetwood Mac reunited, on CD and stage, drummer Mick Fleetwood recounts the story of a legendary band and the making of a classic album – Rumours.
In the nineties, renegade novelist, short-story-writer and establishment-bothering journalist WILL SELF had the additional dubious distinction of being the literary world's most high-profile drug addict. He begins the new decade clean, sober and with How the Dead Live, a new novel many are lauding as his finest work. He talks to KIM PORCELLI about being free of his own past, being alive, being dead, and being 'deader'
Or that's what the proponents of the phenomenon of Virtual Reality might want us to believe. GERRY McGOVERN enters this brave new world and discovers that its capacity to transform our lives - at work, rest and foreplay - is truly mindblowing. Now, put on your headset and start reading!
Michael O'Higgins interviews Bertie Ahern, one of Fianna Fail's young tigers and a man many are tipping as a future leader of the party and possible Taoiseach
In the final months of his battle with cancer, TONY GREGORY sat down with Hot Press to discuss his life and career. Knowing it would be his final interview he was in a reflective frame of mind.
Once he was the mouthy fop rocker who enraged at least as many people as he delighted; now with a debut novel just published he's a (mostly) critically acclaimed author whose time has apparently come. Peter Murphy meets former Toasted Heretic frontman Julian Gough to discuss a meeting with Morrissey and a near-miss with Sinead, the benefits of being humbled and crushed, fame and creativity on the dole and, one more time with feeling, the epic story of lawyers, lubricants and lunacy at Feile '92. Photography: Phillip Tottenham
Fourteen years on and people still come up to BRUCE ROBINSON and quote chunks of Withnail & I to his face. But if you don t know more about this talented, opinionated, chain-smoking, wine-guzzling writer/director, then that may be because, to put it at its mildest, he and Hollywood have never seen eye to eye. PETER MURPHY meets the angry older man
Republic Of Loose are one of the most exciting bands to emerge from Ireland during the last decade with one of the most charismatic lead singers ever to bestride a stage in the country.
Until recently one of the ultimate indie cult bands, The Flaming Lips have survived the ravages of heroin, acid and a hunting trip with William Burroughs. Now, their new album At War With The Mystics finds them taking their funky psychedelia to strange new places – including the upper reaches of the charts for the first time. Could it be that their moment has finally come? Interviews: Craig Fitzsimons (now) and Peter Murphy (then). additional reporting: Stuart Clark, Ed Power and Jackie Hayden
A new album, a new producer, a new sound and a new lease of life so where better to launch mary black s Shine than in New Orleans? Report and
interview: siobhAN LONG
A new album, a new producer, a new sound and a new lease of life so where better to launch mary black s Shine than in New Orleans? Report and
interview: siobhAN LONG
Ciaran Cuffe [right by Mick Quinn] doesn’t look much like a typical Teachta Dala. So little so, in fact, that when the Green Party TD comes out to greet photographer Mick Quinn and myself in a guarded reception area in Leinster House, we simply don’t recognise him. He just doesn’t look the part.
In the following pages, hear about Bono's top secret solo album; meet The Joshua Trio, the band whose mission is to bring U2's music to a wider audience; thrill to an appreciation of The Fab Four in their native tongue; and, last but not least, discover The Greatest U2 Fan Letter Ever Written! And, remember, don't believe everything you read...
In the second and final part of the ultimate interview, elvis talks about colonel Tom Parker, marriage to priscilla, his '68 comeback, his quest for enlightenment and the truth about his drug intake. but as he dreams of an exciting future, at 42 he doesn’t realise that the end is close at hand
*The quotes in this recreated interview are drawn from a wealth of reliable sources and involved extensive research into many rare articles and books
Ahead of their return to Ireland, Muse reveal they’re about to go through their U2 phase, talk about magic mushrooms and explain why, when it comes to conspiracy, they’re on Jim Corr's side.
The star of cult movies such as Natural Born Killers, Kalifornia and Strange Days, Juliette Lewis appeared to have a direct entry to rock's premier league when she turned her attention to her punk outfit The Licks. Instead, she opted to embark on a small-scale tour and play a series of small venues throughout the US and Europe. Peter Murphy was on hand as Lewis' magical mystery tour reached Ireland, and was witness to some truly fascinating scenes as the singer and her band bewitched the Dublin indie cognoscenti, travelled south to rock Limerick and strolled the red carpet to join the glitterati backstage at the Meteor Awards. Photography by Liam Sweeney.
In the second and final part of his exploration of the Secret Sexual History of Elvis Presley, joe jackson describes the king s prowess as a peak performer, reveals the great loves of his life, and charts his sordid, sad and ultimately tragic decline and fall.
In the second and final part of his exploration of the Secret Sexual History of Elvis Presley, joe jackson describes the king s prowess as a peak performer, reveals the great loves of his life, and charts his sordid, sad and ultimately tragic decline and fall.
The future is here. Well, somehow it always is. And, as usual, it is both familiar and strange. Nothing seems to change, but one day you turn around, it is 1995, and you are cybersurfing on the internet, summer seems to last all winter, ambient-acid-techno is bubbling away on the radio, your fax machine shows up on the Antiques Roadshow and papa’s got a brand new drug.
Very odd to think that these tracks were originally recorded 16 years ago. But now they’ve resurfaced to mark the release of the both Songs For Swinging Celibates and Charm & Arrogance on CD. And they still hold their own: quirky works as well now as it did then. However, while fans who have worn away their cassettes will consider this a godsend, the momentous occasion is sadly unlikely to earn the cult Galway act a new generation of followers.
A Spy Kids-style romp from the children’s channel Nickleodeon; it’s an underwhelming affair centred on two squeaky teens who discover a wristwatch which has the ability to stop time
Having tried sex with a host of different drugs, Anne Sexton has come to the conclusion that the best sex is had when you’re in full possession of your faculties.
Marc Evans’ third opus horribilis sees Colin Firth awaken from a coma to discover that his wife may or may not have survived their car-crash, that he may or may not have stalked and killed pop-star Naomie Harris, and that he may or may not live across the hall from Mena Suvari. But don’t take my word for it.
THE SUITABLY gushing press release makes great virtue of the fact that 4 Non Blondes hail from San Francisco and follow in the same maverick musical tradition as Jefferson Airplane, Captain Beefheart and those other legendary left-fielders, The Grateful Dead.
A Home At The End Of The World isn’t the balls-out flick it once was, and Colin’s manhood has been cut and discarded, having been deemed too big a distraction.
Depending on your point of view, this frustrating album is either an amusingly disjointed flying-visit traipse through the usual bustling, omni-cultural Cornershop tour of central London and points east, or a disappointing collection of great ideas brought about seventy percent of the way to satisfying fruition and then, perversely, left there
SO YOU reckon dance music is dull, repetitive and only marginally more fun to listen to outside of a club environment than a Black & Decker power drill.
Well, if 2 Unlimited and their thousand zillion beat per minute chums are your yardstick, I'd have to agree.
SO YOU reckon dance music is dull, repetitive and only marginally more fun to listen to outside of a club environment than a Black & Decker power drill.
Well, if 2 Unlimited and their thousand zillion beat per minute chums are your yardstick, I'd have to agree.
Paddy C. Courtney may be bidding “adieu” to The Comedy Cellar, but there’s a new crop of testosterone-filled freaks waiting to take over at dublin’s most famous chuckle palace.
The relationship between drugs and creativity has always been a hotly debated subject. But narcotic indulgence has proven to be the downfall of many a gifted artist.
...it was a year like any other year at Féile - except that there were dozens of extra acts on show, on not just two but three stages. There was also the Jim Rose Circus Sideshow, the Chris de Burgh stripper incident, Michael Hutchence dispensing condoms...and a rather loud Little Red Rooster that nearly got itself strangled. And the crack Hot Press team of reporters who attempted to keep up with it all? Words: Bill Graham, Stuart Clark, Tara McCarthy, Lorraine Freeney and Chris Donovan. Pix: Cathal Dawson.
Joe Jackson re-evaluates Elvis' prolific but inconsistent movie career – and the decisions that would lead to the ultimate downfall of the man known as the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll.
