In the future I will be able to tell my grandchildren that I once saw the Spice Girls in concert. They will look up at me, cheeks gleaming, in their tracksuits and Union Jack mini-dresses (for by then the third Spice Girls revival will be in full swing), and for a moment I won’t be just some gnomic old codger but a man who was there when pop history was being made.

The Spice Girls put on a terrific show, and when my glowing review appeared in the Guardian, I got a heartwarming email from their agent telling me how they had all read the review in their dressing room, and how delighted they were to be praised by a newspaper that, for some reason, they normally associated with a sneering attitude to their work. I like to think that, in a small way, I touched the Spice Girls’ lives. Continued →

The lobby of the Jury’s Hotel in Cardiff resembles a Barratt’s town square built of brick, with an enormous clocktower that usefully shows the time in New York and Tokyo. Piped insidiously into the atmosphere is a loop of orchestral arrangements of popular songs. Handbags and Gladrags evokes the awful image of po-faced Welsh whinge-rockers the Stereophonics. It’s hard to imagine a band less like the Darkness. Finally I manage to escape and arrive in the beer-sticky warren that is Cardiff University students’ union to meet the band. Well, all of the band except singer Justin Hawkins, who is still in bed. They had a “heavy night” last night in Stoke, involving depth charges of Bailey’s in pints of Guinness. Continued →

After 20 pages, I was convinced that Words and Music was the best book about pop I had ever read. After 280 pages, I was at least convinced that it was the weirdest book about pop I had ever read. But that too is a kind of recommendation. Most books about pop are simply products of glossy merchandising, or obsessive-compulsive histories of studio minutiae for prog rock or gangsta rap aficionados: they are essentially tribal credos, written by insiders for insiders, a sort of comfort reading whose sole purpose is to reassure the audience of the importance and heroism of their discrimination. Continued →

Friday, 9.55pm The Temple in the City of London. Narnian lampposts glow in the twilight; black-clad singers roam the courtyard. I am approaching, with trepidation, the 12th-century Temple Church to witness the world premiere of John Tavener’s new work, The Veil of the Temple. Combining the forces of the Holst Singers, the English Chamber Orchestra and the Temple Church’s own boys’ choir, this piece is, the composer says, “a journey towards God” – an attempt to reconcile east and west, Islam and Christianity. A laudable aim, of course. But it’s going to last seven hours. Continued →

Bruce Dickinson is teaching me to fly. We are in the cockpit of a Boeing 737 simulator in the British Airways flight training facilities at Heathrow. Through the windows we see the winking nightlights of Gatwick airport. “You’re doing extraordinarily well here, sir,” says the legendary heavy-metal frontman, as I wrench the joystick around and yellow alarm lights wink on. While he solicitously explains the functions of the banks of switches, levers and luminescent screens, I’m waiting for him to start hollering “Bring Your Daughter to the Slaughter”. “Too low – flaps,” says a stern electronic voice in an American accent. Buzzers sound. The runway looms up to meet us. Groundrush. I have information overload.

We land safely – thanks, I suspect, to Dickinson’s finessing of my controls. The hydraulic cabin comes to a shuddering halt and the whine of the engines and air-conditioning subsides. Which leaves only one question. What on earth am I doing in a £10m airliner simulator with the lead singer of Iron Maiden? Continued →

Something like a polite cocktail party is taking place in a chintzy antechamber to the London Hilton’s Grand Ballroom. A few guests have carefully outrageous hair; many others sport nicely styled goatees and Gap casuals. One man is wearing a leather jacket with the word “REFUSE” printed on the back. Whether that is because his band is rubbish, or he Just Says No, is hard to determine. The throng sips champagne and chatters idly. This is, of course, the annual awards ceremony held by the raucously onomatopoeic Kerrang! magazine, of hard-rock legend. It is so dangerous that Ben Elton has been invited. Continued →