Muff Winwood, a person widely rumoured to be in charge of CBS Records in this country, speaking a mere seven days before that single zoomed into the charts: He's got a great voice, but I'm afraid we're gonna have to drop him — it's back to the pub circuit for Paul Young...

The hero of OTT's Propfinders piece (August), Mark Rimmell by name, has just been nominated for an MTV Award for Art Direction of Simple Minds' "Don't You Forget About Me"; we said you wouldn't regret that interview...

Is it true that famed jazzer John Coltrane would, in the absence of any other musicians to play with, lift his telephone off the hook and jam along with the Bb of the New York dialling tone?...

It is reasonably true that Pete Townshend's imminent film is to be called "White City". Just nostalgia for West London, you may say — or has he been listening to old Thomas Dolby songs?...

Talking of Dolby, word comes from fabby guitarist Kevin Armstrong of their (Tom & Kev's) work with Bowie at Live Aid. A mere three hours of rehearsal was all that was necessary to knock six songs into live shape. Those that weren't aired included "Fascination" and "Loving the Alien"...

Kevin is also working with Bowie on the soundtrack to Julien Temple's soon-come new film "Absolute Beginners". Bowie's contributing two songs, the title track (which Kevin describes as a Velvets-like "Heroes" classic), and "That's Motivation", which features a Gil Evans brass arrangement in a 1950s nightclub style...

Interview star Stephen Duffy, after spending time in the USA earlier this year, mutters about the prevalence of new hallucinogenic drug Ecstasy, which he describes as "LSD without the nasty side-effects". Seems this Chemical is gaining much popularity in the music world — the new Talking Heads LP features seven songs about psychedelic happenings, and the words "ecstasy is all I need" in another. "It's like 1966 again," claims Mr Duffy. Better watch out, because that means the Seventies are coming...

Drummers a-go-go on the track "Under A Raging Moon" which is dedicated to the late K. Moon, and sits on Roger Daltrey's new album. Producer Alan Shacklock told the battery of drummers who take eight bars each in the middle section of the song, 'Play something you would have felt proud to have played to Keith Moon.' On the rough mix we heard, the order of bashers went: Martin Chambers, Roger Taylor, Cozy Powell, Stewart Copeland, Zak Starr, a space (for Phil Collins?), Carl Palmer, and Mark Brzezicki (who provides the drumming for the rest of the track and album). Let there be drums...

Sotheby's Rock & Roll Memorabilia sale at the end of August had blabber in ecstasies over the opportunity to touch Jimi Hendrix's guitar (a white SG, right-handed, but strung upside down), and a chance to leaf through his record collection. In amongst the 22 albums (some of them doodled on in the Man's own hand) were assorted blues classics by Robert Johnson ("King Of The Delta Blues Singers"), John Lee Hooker ("Drifting Blues"), and Elmore James ("Memorial Album"), Wes Montgomery's "A Day In The Life", "Sergeant Pepper", "Highway 61 Revisited" (not the Wilko Johnson version), the Roland Kirk Quartet's "Rip, Rig & Panic" LP, and two LPs of Indian music. Also present was a sleeveless copy of Mr Acker Bilk's Lansdowne Folio — could this be the missing link in Jimi's elusive guitar style?...

Doubtless Joan Armatrading reads One Two, as she's just bought a home recording set-up consisting of a Fostex B16 and the much-praised-in-July-issue TAC Scorpion mixer. A pleasant demo to you, Joan...

Leafing through the September issue of Germany's "Fachblatt" musicians' magazine, we stumbled upon that rare item, an ad in English. Well, almost. It's from Pendragon Publishing of London EC1, and aims to sell a sort of dictionary for German songwriters who want to write "hit songs in English". Some examples of Pendragon's persuasive way with words: "Writing songs in english (sic) means you have eccess (sic too) to a world market", or: "English hit songs always contain hook lines/phrases comprising es (really sic) is 'Rhyme Lines'..." Prepare for some even weirder Teutonic rock later this year...