Fergal Kinney

England

Music and Culture Writer at Freelance

Music and Culture Writer at The Face

Music and Culture Writer at The Guardian

Culture Editor of Tribune (also writer for The Guardian, The New Statesman, The Quietus, The Face, Jacobin & more.)

Articles

Lennon, Ono and the Leftists

1 week ago | msn.com | Fergal Kinney

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Lennon, Ono and the Leftists

1 week ago | tribunemag.co.uk | Fergal Kinney

When John Lennon was murdered on Manhattan’s Upper West Side in December 1980, it was a tragedy that took place in that strange winter hinterland between the defeat of a Democratic presidential candidate and the inauguration of a Republican one. Ronald Reagan had just won a landslide victory over the beleaguered incumbent Jimmy Carter, whose 1977 inauguration Lennon and Ono had attended.
Northern Gothic: Rainy Miller Interviewed

3 weeks ago | thequietus.com | John Doran |Fergal Kinney

What do you do when the most exhilarating moment of your musical life has already risen and fallen by the time that you are just fourteen? For Jack Bowes, the electronic producer who operates under the name of Rainy Miller, this was the explosion of mid-00s grime in the Lancashire city of Preston. “Fifteen years down the line,” he says, eyes looking away and still visibly awed at the memory, “I’m still like, that’s the sickest thing that’s ever happened in my entire life.” It was, he says, insane.
King Charles III's implausible Commonwealth canon

1 month ago | newstatesman.com | Fergal Kinney

When King Charles III was born on 14th November 1948, charts were still compiled from sales of sheet music – as they had been since the late 19th century. Top of the pops that week was So Tired by US bandleader Russ Morgan and Orchestra. The song, also released at the time on heavy and brittle shellac, had held the top spot for the previous six weeks. Its title was an apt summary of Britain in the immediate post-war era where tastes, like the footsteps in the nation’s dance halls, shuffled slowly.
Richard Dawson’s songs of England

2 months ago | newstatesman.com | Fergal Kinney

Exhausted fulfilment centre workers. Self-loathing civil servants. Medieval peasant soldiers. Attendees of a future museum of extinct human life. Drunken teens on a secondary-school trip. Joggers combating anxiety. In the decade since his breakthrough with his 2014 album Nothing Important, the songs of the iconoclastic Newcastle singer-songwriter Richard Dawson have observed life in England from now dozens of vantage points. Do not let it be said that he lacks perspective.
It's a beloved Lewisham landmark. So why is Mr Pink's house falling down?

2 months ago | the-londoner.co.uk | Fergal Kinney

It was the summer of 1997, and Helena Appio went to knock at the door of 62 Loampit Vale in Lewisham. “I’ve lived in south London most of my life,” says Appio, serving tea and banana bread in her pristine Gipsy Hill home. “I’ve known that house forever.”The house, a large Italianate mansion with a columned entrance and steep tower, would have been interesting enough purely for its high Victoriana.
The Beatles ‘64 director on his timely documentary about obsessive fandom, and a divided America

Nov 29, 2024 | gq-magazine.co.uk | Fergal Kinney

Outside New York’s Plaza Hotel, the fans are in a frenzy. Blocking every entrance to the grand 19th century building are teenage girls, maybe in their hundreds, struggling to be contained by an exasperated police officer. The Beatles have arrived. On the street, everything is for sale: from freshly photographed street Polaroids of the boys, to bits of towels that staff insist have been used by the Fab Four.
What You Give Is What You Get: Paul Weller Live In London

Nov 10, 2024 | thequietus.com | Patrick Clarke |Fergal Kinney

At the Paul Weller concert, there are surprisingly scant Paul Weller haircuts. Least of all on Paul Weller himself. Walk past one of the mod themed weekends that are the fixtures of seaside resorts and small market towns, and a fixed type emerges: gentlemen of a certain age in an uncanny panto tribute to the subcultures of their now distant youth.
La fine del rock

Oct 24, 2024 | internazionale.it | Fergal Kinney

In una sera di giugno, la stessa del fatidico dibattito televisivo tra Joe Biden e Donald Trump, i Rolling Stones si sono esibiti a Chicago. Mentre negli studi della Cnn il leader del mondo libero barcollava verso il podio, Mick Jagger si proiettava sul palco, troppo rapido perfino i cameraman. Per due ore Jagger si è contorto e ha piroettato nei suoi jeans attillati. Jagger e Biden, che sembrano lontani anni luce l’uno dall’altro, avrebbero potuto andare a scuola insieme.
Whalley: is this England’s seshiest village?

Oct 22, 2024 | theface.com | Fergal Kinney |Nik Hartley

Lines of gear sniffed off car bonnets. Quiet village alleyways disrupted by loud shagging. A vicar and his wife harassed by kids hosting an illegal rave at an ancient monument. Before 2024, if the North West village of Whalley was known for anything, it was its large Catholic cloister, Whalley Abbey, which was partially destroyed by Henry VIII in the dissolution of the monasteries.