Posts From Jeff Tamarkin

Idol Chatter: An Interview with the Late Bobby Rydell

“They wouldn’t pull the hair so much, but they would go for a tie or a cufflink.”–The 50s/’60s teen idol on his over-enthusiastic fans.

Read More

Bobby Rydell, ’50s/’60s Singer, Actor and Teen Idol, Dead at 79

Part of a wave of young, Philadelphia based teen idols, his hits included “Wild One” and “Volare,” and he starred in ‘Bye Bye Birdie’ with Ann-Margret.

Read More

New Riders of the Purple Sage’s Debut LP: Country + Rock + Jerry Garcia = ?

They began as a country-influenced offshoot of the Grateful Dead, but, by the time they recorded this debut, they’d morphed into something else altogether.

Read More

Jeff Lynne’s ELO at Radio City Music Hall: 2016 Review

Lynne’s gift is his ability to build complex arrangements into the simplest, most hummable of tunes. The concert was a taste of classic rock at its finest

Read More

Marianne Faithfull Interview: As Years Go By

We first heard her as one of the women of the British Invasion. When she came back to our attention more than a decade later, she’d changed entirely.

Read More

The Grass Roots: A Name in Search of a Band

Rarely absent from the charts for several years, they created songs that were unlike one another, even while sounding undeniably like the Grass Roots

Read More

Arlo Guthrie, Friends & Family at Carnegie Hall: 2018

He first played his annual Thanksgiving concert in 1967, a month after his father, one of America’s most important singer/songwriters, died

Read More

Charles Manson: The Rock Connection

From “Helter Skelter” to his ties with the Beach Boys, rock music was always a big part of the story of the now-deceased murderer’s life.

Read More

Gary ‘Chicken’ Hirsh, Country Joe & the Fish Drummer, Dead at 81

The drummer, who played with the Bay Area band from 1967-69, is said to have coined the “obscene” version of the famous “Fish Cheer.”

Read More

Patrick Sky, Singer-Songwriter Popular in the ’60s, Dead at 77

A mainstay of the Greenwich Village folk music scene of the 1960s, he started out playing traditional songs but then wrote his own.

Read More