Jools, Letterman, platinum discs, fan hysteria – it’s all very nice and much appreciated, you understand, but for Damien Rice the bottom line remains the song – and doing things his way.
Comic book artist and file clerk turned movie star, Harvey Pekar must be one of the most unlikely and somewhat reluctant celebrities of our time. An ordinary man whose work has produced extraordinary art, the anti-hero of American Splendour here talks about his friend Toby, Robert Crumb, James Joyce, David Letterman, fame and misfortune, surviving and more.
Righteous, raging and hysterically funny, the late Bill Hicks was the comedian too hot even for Letterman. Paul Nolan on a new book that fills out the legend.
RICH HALL has survived working with David Letterman and having his love life exposed in the Sindo, to take his rightful place as one of the top attractions of this year's Cat Laughs Festival. Interview: BARRY GLENDENNING.
Debbi Peterson of '80s pop act The Bangles talks about supporting Queen at Slane, surviving an embarrassing moment on the David Letterman show and drumming with Spinal Tap
When Rubyhorse quit their native Cork for the US in 1997, they had no game plan. Now they’re being hailed as one of the rock hopes for 2003, with appearances on Letterman and Conan O’Brian to their credit – as well as an extraordinary collaboration with the late George Harrison.
Having well and truly stuffed Whelan’s earlier in the year, British Sea Power play their biggest Irish shows to date in Dublin and Belfast next September.
Six months ago, Kaiser Chiefs were complete unknowns. Now, they’re making appearances on the Ant and Dec show, playing Letterman, being saluted by Damon Albarn and heralded as the spearheads of “the new Britpop” movement. The group here give the lowdown on what’s been a hectic 2005 to Ed Power.
It was inflight double entendres all round as Bell X1 donned cabin crew attire for a special Hot Press photoshoot. When not showing an unhealthy interest in women’s clothes and fancy Raybans, they talked about their chart-topping new album Blue Lights On The Runway, their imminent breakthrough in the US and freezing their arses off on The Late Show with Dave Letterman
American readers that missed out on tickets for his sold-out tour with The Frames can catch Damien Rice up close and personal with David Letterman tonight
Rubyhorse has trotted a long and winding road since their humble beginnings recording songs in a Cork City meat processing plant. Moving to Boston in ‘97, the four school friends earned themselves a name playing residencies in Irish bars, eventually propelling their debut album beyond the pint-swilling ex-pats to the mass audiences of Dave Letterman, Conan O’Brien and Good Morning America
Neil Delamere on the joys of working on The Panel, meeting Jason Alexander from Seinfeld and his appearance on Holland’s answer to the David Letterman show.
Anointed by the blogosphere, Tapes ‘N Tapes are just about the hottest thing in indie rock right now. Despite his rather fraught stage persona, frontman Josh Grier turns out to be a picture of charm. And no, he can’t explain the slightly silly name either.
Rolling Stone's most promising artist of the year and Dylan/Stones endorsed songstress Kathleen Edwards tells all about her acclaimed new record Back To Me, life on the road in the US and why she just might make the move to those shores in the not-too-distant future.
Top international journalist and acclaimed stand-up comedian BARRY GLENDENNING pens this self-aggrandising subhead before continuing his countdown to the third Murphy s Cat Laughs Comedy Festival
Roisin Dwyer catches up with electropop duo MGMT to discuss their greatest rock 'n' roll moment, Jools Holland and their growing reputation as popular music's new trouble-makers.
Self-styled sex siren Diablo Cody has moved into the mainstream with the acclaimed, Oscar-nominated Juno. What’s more, the movie is so good, she might just prove to be a winner.
Despite huge record sales, high-profile support slots and endless MTV rotation,
Good Charlotte are still good boys who choose early nights over conspicuous consumption. Stuart Clark finds out how, and why
He’s the classic indie shyboy who quit music to become a bingo announcer because he can't bear the rock 'n' roll gossip mill. Now Jens Lekman is back with his finest album yet words.
He may possess formidable academic credentials, but Road To Welville author TC Boyle refuses to take an elitist stance on his chosen art-form. “If it’s not entertainment at its root, it sucks!” he tells Peter Murphy
As U2 gear up for the release of No Line On The Horizon, they meet HP to talk about the creation of their latest masterwork, meeting world leaders, the way they’re perceived in Ireland, the current state of the music business and their future plans.
When we catch up with Bell X1 frontman Paul Noonan on a fine August afternoon, he’s bracing himself for a grueller of an autumn schedule that will begin with a handful of festival appearances – including an Electric Picnic set – and culminate in full-on month-long European and US tours. Reading dispatches from the band’s recent blogs, it’s apparent that the landscape of modern touring is far from Beat Generation romance and way closer to a Ballardian landscape of endless petrol stations, motorways and ferry docks.
They’re the hottest thing in British rock, four working class kids done good from the wrong side of the Glasgow tracks. At the start of what is shaping up to be a whirlwind year GLASVEGAS talk fame, football and fisticuffs.
IN THE NEW DAVID MAMET COMEDY STATE AND MAIN, AS IN HER LIFE IN GENERAL, SARAH JESSICA PARKER COULD HARDLY BE FURTHER REMOVED FROM HER SEX AND THE CITY ALTER EGO. TARA BRADY REPORTS.
He’s best known for reuniting – okay, attempting to reunite – the stars of ancient television programmes while the cameras roll. But behind the zany persona Justin Lee CoLlins has an interesting story of his own to tell, as he recounts in a fascinating memoir.
With a self-recorded and self-released album – called simply O – Damien Rice has emerged as a major force in Irish music. But that’s just the start of it: the record is now in the charts in both the U.S. and the U.K., and with the kind of momentum he has generated, the feeling is that it might just go all the way.
Patrick Hedlund catches up with Damien Rice and The Frames in Boston and finds they’re having more success on-stage than in the bowling alley. Additional reporting Stuart Clark
British director Bernard Rose hit paydirt over decade ago with Candyman, but his uncompromising single-mindedness has made him a virtual Hollywood pariah. However, Snuff Movie looks like putting him back in the game.
The taciturn reputation of Black Rebel Motorcycle Club has often had journalists thinking in terms of ‘blood’ and ‘stone’, but Stuart Clark finds Peter Hayes in downright garrulous form on the subjects of their new album, Johnny Cash, mermaids and Arnie.
From piano-plonking crooners to nihilistic electro-pop duos, the UK and US are bursting at the seams with fresh talent in 2007. Could there be a new Arctic Monkeys out there somewhere?
The Answer have played to almost a million people on the current AC/DC tour. Not bad for an indie hard rock band from Norn Iron. Singer Cormac Neeson gives us the skinny on Angus Young’s love of Rory Gallagher, meeting Alice Cooper, and why Hunger is required tour bus viewing.
Our annual HP-7 summit brings together some of the pre-eminent movers and shakers in irish music to reflect on everything from backstage catering to the end of war, pestilence and famine. Your host: Stuart Clark.
30th Anniversary retrospective: From the murders of Tupac and Biggie to the bizarre implication of Marilyn Manson in the Columbine massacre; from Courtney, Axl and Spector’s falls from grace to the canonisation and demonisation of Peter Doherty... here’s a potted history of the most controversial events in the last 30 years of rock ‘n’ roll.
From the profound and the insightful to the weird, funny and just plain daft, Paul Nolan rounds up what the famous and infamous had to say for themselves in 2004...
He created great songs out of the good, the bad and the ugly and earned the respect of people as diverse as Bob Dylan and Hunter S. Thompson. In this previously unpublished interview Warren Zevon, who died last week after a long battle with cancer, reflects on his sweet and dirty life and times.
Mark McClelland was a feature and music writer for Cork's Evening Echo for four years. Here, he presents his top ten most significant musical acts to emerge from Cork.
It’s been a tumultuous few years for Josh Ritter. Against the dramatic backdrop of the Swiss Alps, he talks about his number one fan Stephen King, recalls the day he met Bob Dylan and explains why it’s never a good idea to drink before a show
Champagne corks were popped last week as Snow Patrol joined that elite group of bands who’ve simultaneously topped the charts in Ireland and the UK. It’s all a far cry from the days when their fame was confined to the University of Dundee Students Union bar. Gary Lightbody takes time out from wowing the masses in Dublin and Belfast to tell Stuart Clark about their twisty and turny route to the top.
The last 18 months have been a hell of a ride for The Thrills, catapulted from the relative obscurity of the south dublin suburbs to the top of the uk charts, rubbing shoulders with Van Dyke Parks and Peter Buck along the way. But are the band suffering from diver’s bends? is that laid-back california-in-my-mind facade starting to crumble? We put on our therapist’s hats and endeavour to find out, if something’s gotta give, what gives?
JEAN BUTLER was at the very heart of the Riverdance phenomenon, as the original Eurovision interval set-piece was transformed into the most successful dance stage-show ever. Now, for the first time, she tells her side of that extraordinary saga. In a blistering broadside, she accuses her co-star MICHAEL FLATLEY of rampant egotism and argues that she's never been given the credit she deserves for the show's sensational impact. And then there's the question of money...
Interview: JOE JACKSON
Hotpress hitch a ride on the Wilt tour bus for the band’s whistle-stop tour of Europe. For tales of on-stage abandon, backstage debauchery and bizarre drumming accidents, read on. Plus Cormac Battle’s tour diary
Ireland’s biggest transatlantic TV star, Graham Norton has come a long way from his humble beginnings in Bandon. In his new tell-all autobiography, So Me, Norton writes about his tumultuous rise to the top, living in the media spotlight, keeping A-list company and coping with emotional upheaval. “It’s an uncertain time in my life,” he tells Olaf Tyaransen.
Never mind figgy puddings and partridges in pear trees, there’s some serious seasonal business to be done as the annual HP-7 summit gathers in the crucible of cultural discourse that is The Central Hotel’s Library Bar.
Has Madonna become the immaterial girl? Or will the Re-invention tour re-establish her as the foremost female icon on the planet? On the eve of her first ever Irish appearance at Slane, Peter Murphy takes a look at the strange twist the Queen of Pop’s career has taken – and how she is now fighting back, for all she’s worth.
From A to Z, Paul Nolan and Ronan Fitzgerald introduce all the runners and riders for Punchestown – throwing in a baker’s dozen of acts who are not to be missed* along the way
In the second and final part of an extended interview with Limerick's very own Fab Four, STUART CLARK travels back in time to their humble beginnings and charts their extraordinary transformation into one of the supergroups of the 90s. From shiny pink tracksuits to shiny platinum discos, here's the whole unexpurgated story.
It's been over four intriguing years since Damien Rice's extraordinary debut album O was launched. That record went on to become a huge underground international hit, selling in excess of 2 million copies. Now his long-awaited follow-up – the similarly simply titled 9 – is finally ready to hit the shops. So how did Rice so successfully capture the collective imagination? And will the latest instalment in the Rice musical biography propel him to even greater heights? Hot Press talks exclusively to some of the key players in his remarkable rise and rise.
This is THE CHIEFTAINS as you've never encountered them before - more like mad, trad and dangerous to know than the grand-daddies of Irish traditional music. Smoking dope with Philip Lynott! Busting muscles through wild sex! Yes, it's the bits that aren't in the official biography. But, soft, not a word to Paddy, OK? Part One of an exclusive two-part interview. By JOE JACKSON.
Sex and sanctity, grit and glitter, penthouse and pavement, God and the Devil, and all conical points in between!
PETER MURPHY dials M for ADONNA, the pre-eminent pop icon of this and every other year
It's all changed for DAVID GRAY. Within the past month he has played a series of sell-out gigs across the US, gone top ten in the UK, and returned to this country to celebrate the release of Lost Songs. In a hotpress exclusive, NIALL STANAGE reports from New York, Boston, London and Dublin on the globalisation of Ireland's favourite Welshman. Hotshot hitman: STEVEN FISHER
25 years after the publicaton of Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas, doctor hunter s. thompson remains the originator and unequalled exponent of Gonzo journalism, an author as famous for his own high-octane, outlaw lifestyle as he is for the remarkable series of books and articles which made him a rock star of the written word.
Tracked down to his lair in the Colorado mountains, Thompson lives up to all expectations in this exclusive interview and story by daniel senstius and jurrien dekker. Photography: chris van houts.
Paddy Casey has announced that he will perform his first solo gig in Dublin following his American Tour, at the National Concert Hall this August, as part of the ESB BEO festival.
Things are really hotting up for Bell X1. The Great Defector went to number 1 in the airplay charts last week, while their number 1 album Blue Lights On The Runway is still flying high.
Arms outstretched, swanky lighting awarding him a most pleasing rock star silhouette, it’s safe to say that right now, in a venue where he witnessed some of his own favourite gigs, Gary Lightbody is having a pretty good day at the office.
The word ‘luck’ turns up in the Snow Patrol story with set-your-watch regularity, and it’s commonly accepted that the period when the band cashed in theirs was around the release of their biggest selling single. I’m not sure I agree. The care and detail lavished on Eyes Open seems symptomatic of people who, finally rewarded with a budget to match their ambition, are determined to enjoy this opportunity for all it’s worth.
The year just gone was one of the most successful yet for Northern musicians. With Snow Patrol, David Holmes and Duke Special riding high, we take a look at 2009’s crop of contenders.
As cats all over Ireland prepare to have their fancies tickled, Jackie Hayden reflects on the comedic talents of one of the star turns at this year’s Smithwick’s Cat Laughs Festival, Tommy Tiernan.
