It’s so sad to learn of the death of Blondie’s drummer Clem Burke, another of the Class of ’77 who has left us far too soon. Is this his finest moment?

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RIP Val Kilmer (1959-2025)

The night I met Val Kilmer was, weirdly enough, at a Mazzy Star gig at the Union Chapel in London. OK, it wasn’t actually at the gig, and I didn’t actually meet him, but we were both there at the same time that night in 1996.

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The thing about soul – soul in the musical sense – is that you’ve either got it or you haven’t. You only have to listen for a moment to know that Jerry Butler, who died this week, had soul.

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I’ve never been a jazz-funk fan and the vibraphone would be very low on my list of favourite instruments, ranking alongside the flute and just above the ukelele. But I’d have to make an exception for Roy Ayers.

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In a month when we lost some big names in music – Marianne Faithfull, Roberta Flack, Rick Buckler of The Jam – the death of Bill Fay may have passed without much attention.

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Roberta Flack sang two or three of the greatest and most ubiquitous songs in what you might call the Easy Listening Soul genre. But there was much more to her than that. A fantastic afro, for one thing; and the middle name Cleopatra for another… and this tune.

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The Jam gig I’ll always remember – along with the last one at the Rainbow in 1981 – is the time my mate filled in for drummer Rick Buckler at a gig.

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You can’t see him in this footage but this is the moment keyboard player Barry Goldberg – who died in January -became part of one of the most historic gigs in musical history.

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Susan Alcorn played my favourite musical instrument – the pedal steel guitar – and took it to new places with her experimental approach.

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It takes a bold and courageous artist to re-record her signature song after more than half a century, but Marianne Faithfull was nothing if not brave.

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