The Strange Brew - artist stories behind the greatest music ever recorded

Doctor and the Medics had one of the unlikeliest number ones of the 1980s thanks in part to an ambulance their record company sent to Radio 1 and then it spent the next forty years refusing to disappear. Jason Barnard talks to frontman Doctor, Reverend Dr. Clive Jackson, about new album The Optimal Mystic and about pretty much everything else: the A&R man who wrecked Andy Partridge’s snare sound on Miracle of the Age, writing lyrics for The Damned, the failed Welsh snail farm, and getting left off Liverpool’s number one list and putting that right.

...

The Residents don’t give interviews, so when they have something to say, Homer Flynn says it for them. He is their art director, their spokesperson and part of the Cryptic Corporation that has looked after them since 1976. Eskimo is currently on the road. The 1979 album, with its invented vocals and wind treated as seriously as music, reaches the stage this autumn with inflatable icebergs, projections and five new songs.

Homer tells me how a 20-minute slot at a San Francisco event grew into a full production. He explains why the first costume idea, a giant silver Ch...

Fairport Convention made a £5 profit from their first gig, at St Michael’s Church Hall in Golders Green on 27 May 1967. About 30 or 40 people turned up, and the band had printed the tickets and hired the hall themselves. Simon Nicol, whose house gave the group its name, was a professional musician at the age of 16.

Here Simon talks as Fairport embark on their autumn 2026 UK tour, a seated acoustic run that includes village halls and social clubs, and for the 60th anniversary shows in May 2027.

Nicol grew up in North London, where Ashley Hutchings lived just dow...

Geoff Downes and Chris Braide talk about Trauma, the new Downes Braide Association album, and how the project has evolved since the first DBA record in 2012. They discuss the difficult circumstances behind the record and the hope that runs through it.

They also trace how DBA began, and how bringing in Dave Bainbridge (guitars), Andy Hodge (bass) and Ash Soan (drums) has expanded their sound. They explain why making the records they wanted, with no A&R department steering them, has been essential, and how Roger Dean’s artwork has shaped their identity.

Along the wa...

Deep Purple play their last show of this run on 19 December in Mexico City. After two weeks at home for Christmas, Gillan goes straight back into work with the band, before leaving their Nashville sessions three days early to rehearse for a twenty five date speaking tour built around the practice that gives it its name: filling gaps with nonsense words until the real lyrics catch up.

Gillan covers The Javelins, Episode Six’s German club circuit, joining Deep Purple, the new album SPLAT!, Jesus Christ Superstar, the Ian Gillan Band and a year with Black Sabbath he...

When Jimmy Webb first saw Joni Mitchell at the Troubadour, he sent roses to her dressing room with a letter asking her to tea. It went unanswered. The following decade, after they had become friends, she told him she had moved the couch while clearing out her Laurel Canyon house and found the letter, and asked if he would still like to go. Webb wrote ‘Simile’ for her.

He tells that story in a conversation I recorded in February 2022, ahead of live dates in the UK. Elsewhere he describes the organ sound in the fade of ‘Wichita Linema...

Randy Edelman is probably best known to British listeners for the records he made in the 1970s and early 1980s, including Uptown Uptempo Woman and Concrete and Clay. The Carpenters recorded his songs and took him on tour, and his records found an audience in the UK that he hadn’t found in America.

Then his career took a different turn. After working his way into film scoring, Twins led to a long run of Hollywood films including Ghostbusters II, Kindergarten Cop, Gettysburg and The Last of the Mohicans. Randy spent two decades concentrating on film music an...

From the dub sound systems of 1970s Ladbroke Grove to Killing Joke, The Orb, Paul McCartney’s Fireman project and Pink Floyd’s The Endless River, few musicians have moved through as many worlds as Youth (Martin Glover). In this conversation with Jason Barnard, Youth discusses the CHANT Artist Collective’s new release, Relics Of Tree Worship In Dub (Gaudi & Don Letts Roots Dub Plates), and explains why he still calls dub “an endless river” of reinvention.

He goes back to Gooseberry Sound Studios and the John Lydon-produced 4″ Be 2″ session that set him on a path into music, his dep...

Allan Clarke started The Hollies with Graham Nash as a teenager, copying other people’s records at Abbey Road. He left the group, came back, then left again, and along the way his voice carried the group through four decades.

Jason Barnard sat down with Allan again to talk through his new single “Walking On Still Waters,” a decades-long search through faith, the stroke he’s been recovering from, his wife Jenny who got him through the hardest years, and what the future holds for The Hollies and their legacy. Clarke also explains how “Long Cool Woman in a Black...

John Leckie joins The Strange Brew to talk through the Dukes of Stratosphear story, from his first sight of a young XTC through to the new Dolby Atmos edition of the complete Dukes recordings.

Leckie was the Abbey Road staff engineer who cut XTC’s 3D EP in three days, then White Music at the Manor, then Go 2 and the dub experiments released as Take Away / The Lure of Salvage under Andy Partridge’s Mr Partridge alias (later gathered on the Explode Together compilation). He explains how that dub habit of pulling a mix apart and rebuilding it s...

Steve Hackett and Steve Rothery discuss their joint album The Roaring Waves. They explore creative process behind it,

The post Steve Hackett & Steve Rothery appeared first on The Strange Brew .

Mari Wilson was the beehived voice behind “Just What I Always Wanted”, the Neasden Queen of Soul who

The post Mari Wilson appeared first on The Strange Brew .

Ten years on, Jeremy Clyde is back. Chad Stuart left behind decades of unfinished Chad & Jeremy recordings.

The post Jeremy Clyde – Chad & Jeremy appeared first on The Strange Brew .

Devo co-founder Gerald V. Casale joins us for a career spanning conversation, starting with his new protest single

The post Gerald V Casale – Devo appeared first on The Strange Brew .

Arthur Brown joins Jason Barnard, alongside his partner and collaborator Claire Waller, to talk through his new album

The post Arthur Brown appeared first on The Strange Brew .

Robin Scott’s career spans from acoustic songs on the 1960s folk circuit to the sequenced synth-pop of ‘Pop

The post Robin Scott – M appeared first on The Strange Brew .

Over fifty years ago, a teenager from Cleveland got talked into playing “Maggot Brain” at an after party,

The post Michael Hampton – Parliament/Funkadelic appeared first on The Strange Brew .

Eric Barrett spent two years, from 1968 to 1970, as Jimi Hendrix’s road manager and one of the

The post Jimi Hendrix Didn’t Know He Was a Genius – Eric Barrett appeared first on The Strange Brew .

Graham Parker didn’t get a record deal until he was 24, having worked in a rubber glove factory

The post Graham Parker – In Conversation appeared first on The Strange Brew .

George Bunnell, Mark Weitz, Howie Anderson, Gene Gunnels and Randy Seol discuss the history of Strawberry Alarm Clock.

The post Strawberry Alarm Clock appeared first on The Strange Brew .

The Iveys came together in Swansea in the early 1960s, with Ron Griffiths on bass alongside guitarist Pete

The post Ron Griffiths – The Iveys/Badfinger appeared first on The Strange Brew .

Steve Tilston joins Jason Barnard for a tour through six decades of songwriting, picking thirteen tracks from across

The post Steve Tilston appeared first on The Strange Brew .

Philip Norman returns to talk about Mr. Moonlight, his first book devoted entirely to Brian Epstein, and what

The post Brian Epstein and the Making of the Beatles appeared first on The Strange Brew .

Martin Barre is already playing when the evening begins. Recorded live at The CAT Club in December 2025,

The post Martin Barre – live in conversation appeared first on The Strange Brew .

Otis Williams discusses over six decades of The Temptations and their upcoming UK tour. Williams talks about moving

The post Otis Williams – The Temptations appeared first on The Strange Brew .

Anthony Phillips, founding Genesis guitarist, joins Jason Barnard to talk about the formation of Genesis, his departure, and

The post Anthony Phillips, Genesis, A Life In Music appeared first on The Strange Brew .

John Leckie is one of British rock’s greatest producers, who started out as a tape operator at Abbey

The post John Leckie on Be Bop Deluxe and the Making of Sunburst Finish appeared first on The Strange Brew .

John Helliwell of Supertramp returns to talk about Crime of the Century, the newly restored 1975 concert film

The post John Helliwell – Supertramp appeared first on The Strange Brew .

Boz Boorer talks about his life in music, from his earliest memories of Marc Bolan and T. Rex

The post Boz Boorer – The Polecats to Morrissey appeared first on The Strange Brew .

Mark Webber has been with Pulp for so long that his story and the group’s are almost the

The post Mark Webber – Pulp appeared first on The Strange Brew .

Singer-songwriter Michael Weston King picks tracks from across his career, a conversation bookended by his new solo album Nothing Can Hurt Me Anymore, shaped by the Southport attacks of summer 2024 and the loss of his granddaughter, Bebe. King recalls Fragile Friends, who put out singles through Probe Records in early 80s Liverpool. After their split he found country music and formed The Good Sons, touring and recording with Townes Van Zandt. Solo albums followed, including collaborations with Jackie Leven, and with Chris Hillman and Herb Pederson. With his wife Lou Dalgleish he formed My Darling Clementine, enjoying critical success...

He wrote some of the greatest songs in American music, Dark End of the Street, Do Right Woman,

The post Dan Penn appeared first on The Strange Brew .

Gary Talley was 19 when The Box Tops scored a number one hit with ‘The Letter.’ Alex Chilton

The post Gary Talley – The Box Tops appeared first on The Strange Brew .

In a market town seven miles south-east of Manchester, a recording studio opened above a shop in 1968

The post Strawberry Studios Forever appeared first on The Strange Brew .

Few works of musical theatre receive the recognition they deserve, and The Kibbo Kift is a prime example.

The post The Kibbo Kift: The Lost Rock Musical appeared first on The Strange Brew .

Duncan Mackay spent the 1970s at the keyboard of British popular and progressive music, often invisibly, yet seldom

The post Duncan Mackay – Cockney Rebel, Alan Parsons Project, Kate Bush, 10cc appeared first on The Strange Brew .

Rat Scabies needs little introduction as the thunderous drummer of The Damned. His collaborator in One Thousand Motels,

The post Rat Scabies and Chris Constantinou appeared first on The Strange Brew .

Jason Barnard is joined by music writer and artist Chris Wade to talk about The Kinks Are the

The post The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society appeared first on The Strange Brew .

Andrew Sandoval talks about THE KINKS – ALL DAY AND ALL OF THE NIGHT, The Day-By-Day Story Pt

The post The Kinks 1940 to 1971 appeared first on The Strange Brew .

Lou Gramm discusses his long-awaited album Released and how it brings unfinished songs back to life. Gramm also

The post Lou Gramm on Foreigner appeared first on The Strange Brew .