1970s

The likes of The Orphanage and The Conjuring have shown that the recent past is not just a foreign country, but a downright scary one. This horror, also set in the 1970s, lies on the same kitsch-uncanny continuum, with a fine ambassador in the shape of sickly faced David Dastmalchian, playing on-the-wane US late-night variety show host Jack Delroy. Seen creeping it up everywhere in character roles over the last few years – from a Harkonnen mentat in Dune to one of Oppenheimer’s detractors, as well as Suicide Squad’s…

Steve Harley was many things, but a man crippled by modesty was not among them.In his first big music press interview – before the appearance of Cockney Rebel’s debut album, when all they had released was a solitary single that featured a 40-piece orchestra, which had failed to make the UK charts – he proclaimed his band “a musical force that others will follow” and pitted himself squarely against the biggest names in British pop. Cockney Rebel, he suggested, would kick David Bowie “up the arse”: “he’ll say ‘I’ve got to…

Bryan Cranston casually recounted the time he was briefly a suspect in a murder case during his appearance on Jesse Tyler Ferguson’s Dinner’s On Me podcast. Cranston was prompted to share the tale — which he previously wrote about in his 2016 memoir — after Ferguson noted that recent guest Ed O’Neill revealed he’d once been approached to join the mob while growing up in Youngstown, Ohio. “I was wanted for murder once,” Cranston quipped, “take that, Ed O’Neill!”  As Cranston explained, he and his brother spent…

The German band Can, whose former singer Damo Suzuki has died at the age of 74, were innovators in many ways, but particularly because the group harboured two of the most original rock vocalists who ever lived. While their 1969 debut album, Monster Movie, featured the machine-gun poetic stylings of American expat Malcolm Mooney, it was Japanese free spirit Kenji ‘Damo’ Suzuki, who appeared on three stunning studio albums between 1971 and 1973, who most completely embodied their adventurous ethos.A 1971 TV clip from the…

David Soul, who starred as Detective Kenneth `Hutch` Hutchinson in the popular American TV series `Starsky & Hutch`, which ran from 1975 to 1979, died on Thursday, his wife Helen Snell informed BBC. He was 80, reports `Variety`. In addition to `Starsky & Hutch`, Soul starred in the Western series `Here Come the Brides` and movies such as `Magnum Force`, `Salem`s Lot` and more. Soul moved to the UK in the 1990s and obtained British citizenship in 2004. In 1971, `Variety` notes, Soul made his film debut in `Johnny…

Interplay of environmental and social factors at the rise of professional skateboarding. A) First covers of the Skateboarder journal from October 1965 when pools were still filled with water, and skateboarding was more an amusement than a sport. B) Surf culture in Southern California (1), printed color magazines as mass media (2), production of polyurethane (3), publication of The Surfer magazine (4), development of tens of thousands of new pools in the…

About 50 years ago, a quartet of L.A. session musicians became so synonymous with the era-defining soft-rock scene — headlined by James Taylor, Carole King, Jackson Browne, Linda Ronstadt, Crosby, Stills & Nash and Fleetwood Mac among others — that they were dubbed the Mellow Mafia.Danny Kortchmar (guitar), Russ Kunkel (drums), Leland Sklar (bass) and Waddy Wachtel (guitar) made their way to Los Angeles through various sliding doors. By the early ’70s, they frequented the same studios, worked with the same engineers…

The aesthetic of Star Wars Outlaws is largely influenced by the practicalities of movie-making in the 1970s, as well as the series’ iconic “visual language of reduction”. Revealed in the Xbox Games Showcase last month, Star Wars Outlaws is “set between the events of The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi”. Not only are the narrative and characters rooted in the original movie trilogy, but the creative director Julian Gerighty has said that everything that the player sees in the game will feel like it’s been…

Audi has celebrated the 150th birthday of its Neckarsulm production facility in Germany by getting a bunch of apprentices to re-imagine a classic car built in 1971 as a sporty future-modern electric based on the company's e-tron platform.The first NSU Prinz was revealed at the 1957 Frankfurt Motor Show, and rolled off the production line the following year as a boxy two-door with a 600cc two cylinder engine. More versions followed, including a Sport coupe edition and a roadster, and by the time the Prinz 4 arrived in the…

Steven Tyler has denied claims that he sexually assaulted a teen he met in 1973 three months after the alleged victim filed a lawsuit against the Aerosmith frontman.In his response, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court last week, Tyler “denies, generally and specifically, each and every allegation and cause of action” detailed in the complaint filed by plaintiff Julia Misley. According to the December lawsuit, Misley — whose maiden name was Holcomb — met Tyler after a concert in Portland, Ore., in 1973. She was 16 at the…