Philip Bryer
Up and Down with Rock Biographies
I used to buy them all, rock musicians’ life stories, but then I stopped. Although I always enjoyed the score-settling and the airing of...
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Philip Bryer
- Aug 31
- 3 min
I’m Reading Andy Warhol’s Diaries — so you don’t have to.
It’s my own fault, really. If I’d bothered to check the page count before I’d bought it, no doubt the hefty 1,190 would have put me off,...
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Philip Bryer
- Jul 16
- 3 min
"We'll be right back after these messages..."
As the clock strikes 06:30, the SWAT team approaches the secure compound, going through their carefully outlined routines, moving forward...
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Philip Bryer
- May 13
- 1 min
And Now It's All This...
Compare and contrast John Lennon’s extraordinary performance at the Bigger Than Jesus press conference with those of some Australian...
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Philip Bryer
- Apr 12
- 8 min
Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my blog?
We’d just got out of the ‘Mad Day Out’ psychedelic taxi at the gates of Strawberry Fields when a car came screaming to a halt beside us,...
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Philip Bryer
- Feb 8
- 3 min
The Abbey Road Adventure
On the way to meet a pal* for lunch at Giovanni’s in Covent Garden, I was on the train from rural Somerset to London early on a freezing...
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Philip Bryer
- Jan 3
- 3 min
Would You Stay Here Again?
Have you seen Channel 4’s reality show, Four in a Bed? As the introductory blurb has it, four B&B owners throw open their doors and take...
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Philip Bryer
- Aug 15, 2022
- 4 min
Trainwreck: Woodstock '99
It has been said that musicians, specifically rock stars, are not only not particularly smart they are also remarkably self-centred...
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Philip Bryer
- Dec 10, 2021
- 2 min
I'd Rather Jacques
It became a thing in our house for a while that if I was playing a Jacques Brel CD it meant one of two things: 1. I was full to the...
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Philip Bryer
- Nov 3, 2021
- 1 min
One More Time!
I have been thinking about records where the band leader hands out instructions to the musicians. Here are a few of my favourites: John...
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Philip Bryer
- Jul 21, 2021
- 1 min
Funk Soul Brother
Back in the nineties, I heard a single on the BBC’s London radio station which made such an impression on me that I set out for a local...
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Philip Bryer
- Jun 26, 2021
- 3 min
Fame
I used to spend a lot of time in our family shed in the mid-sixties. At the age of six or seven, I had found something in there that...
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Philip Bryer
- May 7, 2021
- 1 min
100 Songs, 100 Years
It started out as an idle whim which surfaced during a long wander across the Somerset Levels. Could I build a Spotify playlist with a...
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Philip Bryer
- Mar 8, 2021
- 3 min
Baby, You're in Richmond
The White Cross was one of the premier pubs in Richmond, south-west London; an area not lacking in such top-notch boozers. I say ‘was’...
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Philip Bryer
- Feb 11, 2021
- 2 min
Taylor Swift
She’s a remarkable talent (get over it). Here are five of my favourite tunes from the Swiftatollah. In no particular order, but there are...
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Philip Bryer
- Oct 12, 2020
- 3 min
The Dark Age of Song
The pop lyric as unreconstructed sexist claptrap from the Dark Ages...
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Philip Bryer
- Aug 13, 2020
- 2 min
Party Party!
...so – at the age of seventeen – we got to hang out with a bunch of blokes we looked up to and a group of girls we just looked at.
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Philip Bryer
- Jul 1, 2020
- 1 min
Who Was That Man?
...two nondescript blokes walked into the shed that night, but when the third came in after them, “I just couldn’t believe who it was.”
39 views5 comments
Philip Bryer
- Jun 1, 2020
- 1 min
Frank Talks
In the sixties, Frank Sinatra asked maverick singer, songwriter, and producer Lee Hazlewood for help.
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Philip Bryer
- Feb 10, 2020
- 3 min
Whose Band is it Anyway?
McQueen constantly did what he could to distract attention so future audiences would look only at him...any bit of business possible
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