Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2016 i UNCUT

“DON’T fuck with the formula!” In his new autobiography, Mike Love denies having said those notorious words to Brian Wilson, as his cousin struggled to make sense of Smile. Ever since a 1971 article in Rolling Stone made the accusation, Love has been lambasted as the most conservative of rock stars, and the phrase has been used as shorthand for a certain creative cowardice. In the world of magazines, however, there’s something to be said for not fucking with the formula; of ensuring that your loyal readers are given what they want, in a familiar format, each and every month. For most of Uncut’s 19-year lifespan, we’ve mostly abided by that rule, never changing direction in some vainglorious attempt to capture new readers and alienate old ones. Be assured, we’re…

“My favourite way to fly a kite? With my mind, of course” DEVENDRA Banhart is at home in LA’s Echo Park neighbourhood. A Harold Budd album plays discreetly in the background. It seems an unnaturally calm environment for Banhart, the former poster boy for the acid-folk movement. Raised in Venezuela, Banhart has lived homeless on the streets of Paris, scraped by in New York City and dwelt in a log cabin in Topanga Canyon. Currently, though, he is settled in this hub for the city’s creative types. Later today, he is due to head off to Croatia and Poland – to catch up with some friends, Lightning Bolt and Anohni, with whom he is sharing bills on the summer festival circuit. He is readying himself, too, for the release of…

It’s the first time you’ve not used a Wes Freed image on the cover – is that because it’s a more serious album than usual? The cover reflects the record – it’s a pretty dark record. We’re going through a dark time in our country. I guess the whole world is – it’s a very troubling period. Significantly, the flag on the cover is at half-mast. Yeah, it is. [Mike] Cooley said that it seems these days the flag is at half-mast more than it’s all the way up – there are so many shootings and so much horrific shit going on that there’s always some reason for the country to be in mourning. Tell me about Harlon Carter, the NRA guy who shot Ramón Casiano. The NRA wasn’t originally…

ACID MOTHERS TEMPLE & THE MELTING PARAISO UFO Wake To A New Dawn Of Another Astro Era IMPORTANT 7/10 Japanese psych-out masters, deliriously warped – “Eye Of The Tiger” notwithstanding It’s been a long time since Kawabata Makoto’s psychedelic wrecking crew Acid Mothers Temple made their first and strongest impression, with a run of overblown rock sides for Japanese imprint PSF. In the subsequent two decades, they’ve lost a little lustre due to a release schedule that both redefines “prolific” and questions their ethics of quality control. But when they’re on, they’re still on: Wake To A New Dawn Of Another Astro Era is compelling, the space-age psych overload of “Nebulous Hyper Meditation” its pinnacle. Not sure about the brief passage that channels “Eye Of The Tiger”, though. JON DALE…

I’ve always liked the reference to the Drop City commune in the group’s name. What’s the appeal of that era? Jack: Learning about Drop City struck a chord because society has moved so far away from that communal way of thinking. The early ’60s is so fascinating because everything was possible for such a tiny window of time. It was a glimpse into what might have been and I think that’s why people gravitate towards it. James: The ’60s were such an intensely creative period. In seven years The Beatles went from “Besame Mucho” to Abbey Road . Everything moved forwards at such a high speed. The appeal of [ the ] decade is so strong for me. The quality of the music, the fashion,…

Billy Bragg & Joe Henry: “We had to perform on the platform, listening for the ‘All aboard’” How did you choose the repertoire? BB: I was thinking about songs that had inspired people to play guitar, so we picked quite a few from Lead Belly. Jimmie Rodgers had to be in there, and the Carter Family. We didn’t want to make a record about the railroad; we wanted to make a record of the railroad. JH: We tried to play what felt alive to us. Anything that felt like a relic, we backed off. “Gentle On My Mind” was never a consideration until late one night on the train from Chicago to Texas. There must have been plenty of logistical problems… BB: First you need to…

You’ve described Away as a “death story”, which sounds a bit cheerless. I guess I don’t really think of death as cheerless. I don’t think I’m very often talking in these songs about literal death. I’m talking about allowing some way of letting [ a lifestyle ] die, so you can figure out a new way to live. A lot of the ways I was living had become unsustainable or had just stopped yielding any kind of reward. I realised a lot of my illusions, bad habits, hang-ups, assumptions and goals had to be let go of. And that included what Okkervil River had become? Okkervil River had stopped feeling, to me, like “me”. It became this outside idea that almost seemed to belong…

Why your fascination with the body? Uncontainable desire and a broken heart. The need to create a more interesting body than the one I was given. What I had wasn’t enough. Why do you think so few people are prepared to delve into these topics in such depth? Fear and good manners. But art doesn’t have good manners, so why should pop lyrics? Do you think male critics spend too much time dwelling on these themes? Yes. When you become so focused on society’s interpretations of isolated elements in an artist’s work, it’s easy to forget that the core of mine is not themes or issues or provocation. I might seem to talk about these aspects of my work a lot in interviews, but it’s because I answer questions. And…

“MESS AROUND” RAY CHARLES, 1957 Descending piano riffs open this headlong party jam: a rowdy fanfare for Charles’ first single on Atlantic. “This band is gonna play from nine ’til one!” he hollers. “Everybody here is gonna have some fun!” It’s impossible to tell whether the band is trying to outrun its leader or Charles is trying to trip up his band with a pounding solo, and that friction lends the song a sense of irresistible danger. “SWANEE RIVER ROCK (TALKIN’ ’BOUT THAT RIVER)” YES INDEED!, 1958 The official state song of Florida – where Charles grew up and started playing music – Stephen Foster’s “Old Folks At Home” tells the story of an American slave yearning for family back in Africa.…

THE BEACH BOYS Becoming The Beach Boys: The Complete Hite & Dorinda Morgan Sessions OMNIVORE The Book Of Genesis, complete, unexpurgated and authorised This comp of the original lineup’s first pro recordings, cut between September 1961 and March 1962, holds a special fascination. For the first time, we hear the crucial tweaks that led to the storied group’s signature sound, including subtle tempo changes and the appearance of lyrics on the bridge of “Surfer Girl”. Becoming The Beach Boys is revelatory not just as it details the band’s sure-footed first baby steps, but also because it serves as a snapshot of US pop music and culture at a transitional moment. Cannily pulling ideas from radio and the family record collection, Brian had assimilated ’50s styles including Chuck Berry’s rock’n’roll, doo-wop…

“I LOOK back and I realise the band that we started out as has been forgotten…” Simon Jones, The Verve’s bassist, has been looking back a lot lately, having put together new editions of the band’s first two LPs, A Storm In Heaven and A Northern Soul . “These albums were a significant part of our history, and in some ways a purer representation of all of us,” he explains. “When we got together we were listening to The Cure, Dinosaur Jr, Sugarcubes and Spacemen 3. We were into dark psychedelic drone music.” While Jones has no regrets about the huge success of the band’s third album, 1997’s Urban Hymns , it’s with a note of sadness that he observes…

1979 “John I’m Only Dancing (Again) (1975)” released as a single. The first unreleased song from the 1974 Sigma sessions is released on 12” single, backed with a version of the song from 1972. 1989 “After Today” is released A song from the 1974 Philadelphia sessions appears on the Sound & Vision boxset. 1991 Rykodisc reissues Young Americans with three additional tracks (“Who Can I Be Now?”, “It’s Gonna Be Me” and “John I’m Only Dancing (Again)”) from the Philadelphia sessions. “He didn’t exactly curate the EMI/Ryko reissues,” says an archive intimate, “but there were good business reasons why he did what he did. Those extra tracks were more teasers than anything else. Like, “Let’s give them this: a taster” and then…

“When we got the Young Americans LP, we were devastated. We’re session musicians and we know this happens, that sometimes your favourite song is gone. I’d play parts and I wouldn’t know if my part was going to be on there after I went home – or on the cutting-room floor. Then I hear the record in completed form and think, ‘There’s my part – I love it!’ Or, ‘That’s my part, being played by a sax!’ David uses his creativity to decide who David is, not who we are. “In turn, we were so delighted when the reissue came and those songs [ John, I’m Only Dancing’, ‘Who Can I Be Now?’, ‘It’s Gonna Be Me’] were included. I don’t think David…

“UFO was wonderful, because you never knew who could be on… or who was on what. Very, very good bands would play. Floyd used to play for hours on end, and there’d be films, with Mark Boyle’s light shows. When we began Granny’s, though, as far as nightclubs go, there was much more sophistication in the shape of a place called The Cromwellian on Cromwell Road, and Blaises on Queens Gate. Those places had gambling, and roulette and blackjack. So you could be listening to Ravi Shankar, who was playing in the next room, and be playing roulette at the same time. But some really good artists used to appear, like Ike & Tina Turner. I remember Tina’s sweat hitting me from the stage… Jimi Hendrix also played at Blaises.…

“I GOT turned on to Ravi Shankar by a guy here in Los angeles. I was thrilled, because the guy is one of the greatest musicians who ever lived. It was a brand new kind of music for me. The ragas that they played, they start off slowly and build up. It’s such an organic mode and such beautiful music, it just knocked my socks off. I had a Ravi Shankar record in my bag when I went to London one time and I gave it to George [Harrison]. George said to people that I had turned him on to Indian music. There were repercussions. Like all that Indian music influenced stuff he did in The Beatles. Which led to consciousness of India, which led to meeting the Maharishi, which…

THE BEATLES: EIGHT DAYS A WEEK – THE TOURING YEARS Directed by Ron Howard Starring Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr Opens Sept 15 Cert Unconfirmed HELL OR HIGH WATER Directed by David Mackenzie Starring Chris Pine, Jeff Bridges Opens September 9 Cert 15 LITTLE MEN Directed by Ira Sachs Starring Greg Kinnear, Jennifer Ehle Opens September 23 Cert Unconfirmed CAPTAIN FANTASTIC Directed by Matt Ross Starring Viggo Mortensen Opens September 9 Cert 15 THE CURSE OF THE CHILLS Directed by Rob Curry Starring Martin Phillipps Opens August 26 Cert 12A…

JULY 1993. At Black Island Studios in Acton, West London, Kate Bush is filming The Line, The Cross & The Curve , her long-form visual accompaniment to The Red Shoes . Present are her old mime mentor, Lindsay Kemp, cast in the role of The Guide, and an Italian photographer, Guido Harari, who has been working intermittently with Bush for the past decade or so. The work is focused and intensive: “She was demanding, and rightly so,” remembers Kemp in the foreword to Harari’s new book, The Kate Inside . “On one occasion she told me off for being too slow.” Harari recalls trying to engage Bush in a chat about the new record, but “she instantly made clear she could not engage in any conversation unrelated to the job…

75 DOLLAR BILL Wood/Metal/Plastic/Pattern/Rhythm/Rock THIN WRIST Hi-tensile, mantric jams from a New York guitar/drums duo with a radical twist on the desert blues sound of Tinariwen et al. WEYES BLOOD Front Row Seat To Earth MEXICAN SUMMER A baroque folk-rock marvel from Natalie Mering, redolent of early Tim Buckley, Pearls Before Swine, that sort of thing. PURLING HISS High Bias DRAG CITY Grungy Philly psychonauts go hi-fi punk. Imagine Dinosaur Jr transforming themselves into The Psychedelic Furs circa 1988. XYLOURIS WHITE Black Peak BELLA UNION Another thrilling double act, as the Australian/Greek drums’n’lute dream team bring a second set of Cretan freak-outs. NATURAL CHILD Okey Dokey NATURAL CHILD RECORDS & TAPES Anyone for choogling? Nashville’s premium purveyors of latterday boogie fire up the burners for an alternate take on “Transcendental…

“A thin line separates laughter from despair.. ” ALBUM OF THE MONTH 9/10 THERE’S a new darkness on the edge of town, in virtually every American town. Poverty persists while GDP is squandered on remote wars. Homeland security trumps homeland medical benefits. The forces of law and order seem increasingly out of order, and deep-seated anger and bitterness stains the atmosphere, prompting ever more violent recrimination. Lunatics massacre innocents. A disaffected underclass seeks salvation through a blowhard billionaire demagogue. Change is in the air – but is that a whiff of brimstone about it? Or just the lingering aroma of cordite? Change prompts change, even for a band like Drive-By Truckers, heretofore specialists in literate storytelling songs of lowlifes, losers and libertines, girls “as plain as a primer coat” and…

Early October sees the release of No.6 , the latest from Sid Griffin’s acclaimed ensemble, The Coal Porters. Produced by John Wood, who shaped recordings by Nick Drake, John Martyn, Fairport Convention and others during the golden years of Island Records, expect helpings of guitar, banjo, fiddle and doghouse bass, alongside autoharp and a trumpet cameo by Cuban virtuoso Eikel Venegas. “The Day The Last Ramone Died” has already been issued as a trailer. Also in the studio is John Murry, busy recording a belated follow-up to 2012’s glorious The Graceless Age . Cut in Toronto with various Cowboy Junkies as backing band, and Michael Timmins as producer, the LP also includes Cait O’Riordan. Results due at the back end of the year. Ahead…

“Ray was very vulgar, but in an artistic way… His cursing was like a John Coltrane solo”DAVID RITZ IN the late 1970s ,the LA-based writer David Ritz collaborated with Ray Charles on Brother Ray, which stands as one of the finest musical memoirs ever published. More than 50 books, countless essays and even a few songwriting credits later, Ritz penned the liner notes for The Atlantic Years and spoke to Uncut about his long relationship with the music. How did you discover Ray Charles? I moved to Dallas around 1955 or 1956, and that’s when I discovered R’n’B. I had been living in New York. I knew a lot about jazz, but I didn’t know anything about R’n’B and I hadn’t yet discovered the blues. I was just a jazz…

“SOMEHOW, I always knew who was telling me the truth musically,” explains NRBQ’s Terry Adams. “I found Sun Ra and met him in 1967. He gave me his business card, invited me to his apartment, and gave me ‘Rocket #9’. I had asked The Byrds if they knew his music, because they were both making ‘space’ music. They didn’t. That was OK. They had Bob Dylan, we had Sun Ra.” Ra, a jazz giant for whom exploring all possible creative avenues meant everything, provided deeply philosophical inspiration that settled deep into NRBQ’s core. Since 1966, the group have followed their own singular path, from rock and pop to jazz, from major record labels to fringe indies, free-range songwriting touching on The Three Stooges and Moon Pies, and collaborations with pro…

OCTOBER continues this month’s busy streak, with new releases including David Crosby’s Lighthouse , Goat’s Requiem , Hiss Golden Messenger’s Heart Like A Levee and Conor Oberst’s Ruminations . There’s also promising stuff from newer artists Weyes Blood and Julia Jacklin, and even Dr John Cooper Clarke’s singing debut on This Time It’s Personal , recorded with Hugh Cornwell. In the world of reissues, look out for Trials Of Eyeliner , a 10CD set from Marc Almond, Lou Reed’s RCA & Arista Album Collection , and Otis Redding’s complete Live At The Whisky A Go Go . TOM.PINNOCK@TIMEINC COM…

“MY dad was a gouster,” says Bowie’s backing singer/ sometime paramour Ava Cherry of her Chicago-based musician father. “He was a jazz musician from the ‘40s – he wore zoot suits, with a silk tie and a chain. That was the look my dad would call “gouster”. They would slow dance with their girlfriends. David took that idea and ran with it. It was a romantic thing – the men dressed very well.” Ava’s dad was generous with his historic finery. “I showed one of these suits to David. I asked my dad if David could use one of the suits to shoot a photo session in, and my dad was like ‘OK…’ He was cool, like, no problem… “David finished doing the tour with it and I asked him…

THE AFTERLIFE OF David Bowie is proving to be surprisingly rich. As this issue of Uncut goes on sale, an exhibition of unseen pictures of Bowie taken during 1967 by photographer Gerard Fearnley is underway at the Snap Galleries in London. Meanwhile, to coincide with a new cinema restoration of Nic Roeg’s The Man Who Fell To Earth in September, the original soundtrack recording is finally being released, after decades in limbo. A DVD/Blu-ray release of the film will be accompanied by a slew of previously unreleased behind-the-scenes stills taken by set photographer David James. Inevitably, it is the unseen, the unheard and the unreleased that constitute the holy grail of Bowie’s archival material. “We all keep our eyes and ears open,” says Bowie’s archive intimate. “There are also people…

“EDINBURGH was way ahead of London. There were a lot of freaks there, a lot of acid-taking before ’67. There was a little core of people in Edinburgh who were very out-there, taking acid and painting weird stuff and writing strange songs, and living in unusual combinations and circumstances. I’d been up and down the country going to folk clubs, and there were people smoking dope, wearing weird clothes, living in cottages in the country, on the dole, driving caravans. They maybe weren’t as fashionably dressed as the people that patronised Hung On You and Granny’s, but they were definitely freaks! They were living a very different way from the idea of what Britain was in the ’40s and the ’50s. It was a radically different mentality and it was…

Lou Reed liked telling how he found the title for his 1978 live album. That May, he played a small Montreal hotel: “We walked out, this guy yelled: ‘Lou! Take no prisoners!’ Then he took his head and smashed it as hard as he could… bam ! ...on the table.” Released in November 1978, it is a record that comes at you like a head butt. “The band in that period was kicking ass,” says Marty Fogel. “ Take No Prisoners is a good example – except I’d prefer it if we’d done a lot more playing and Lou had done a lot less talking.” To tape the album, Reed played five nights in May at Greenwich Village’s 400-capacity Bottom Line. “He was in…

A curious, constant ambivalence is Sid & Nancy’s defining characteristic SID & NANCY STUDIOCANAL Thirtieth-anniversary re-release for Alex Cox’s punk fable. By Damien Love John Lydon has never received his due as a film critic. To be fair, we only really know the great man’s opinions on a single movie, but almost all his key objections to it are on the money. Three decades on, even the film’s director has largely come round to his way of thinking: “All the advice [Lydon] gave us, we should have followed…” Alex Cox makes this declaration in a short but fascinating interview included among the extras on this new edition of his 1986 biopic, tracing the downward spiralling love affair between Sid Vicious, his American girlfriend Nancy…

CAFÉ SOCIETY OPENS SEPTEMBER 2 Woody Allen goes back to ’30s Hollywood for nimble rom-com with Jesse Eisenberg and Steve Carell. BEN-HUR OPENS SEPTEMBER 7 Night Watch director Timur Bekmambetov helms this sword’n’sandals remake. ONE MORE TIME WITH FEELING OPENS SEPTEMBER 8 In cinemas for one night only: Nick Cave narrates while The Bad Seeds perform latest album Skeleton Tree . THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH OPENS SEPTEMBER 9 Fortieth anniversary remaster, just ahead of Bowie’s Lazarus musical opening in November. BLAIR WITCH OPENS SEPTEMBER 15 Back to the Black Hills Forest for more found-footage horror in this belated sequel to the 1999 film. BRIDGET JONES’S BABY OPENS SEPTEMBER 15 More belated horror footage: the return of Renée Zellweger’s beleaguered…

CHARLIE RICH The Most Beautiful Girl 1973 I had a pal who lived in my street and, aged four, I had a crush – not on her – but on her mum [laughs]. We were in Aviemore, and this woman had come off the chair lifts, and she was crying, and this song must have come on a car radio. I was crying, and the song made perfect sense in that situation. It’s just the perfect song, and that I somehow cottoned on to that aged four further enhances my view that Charlie Rich got the sentiment absolutely bang on, it’s universal. I haven’t seen the woman in a long time – maybe she is still the most beautiful girl. JOHN TRAVOLTA & OLIVIA NEWTON JOHN You’re The One That…

After Jeff Beck’s comments in Uncut last month, Ringo Starr is the latest rock grandee to back Brexit. “I voted for Brexit,” the LA resident told Bloomberg Businessweek , “because I thought the European Union was a great idea, but I didn’t see it going anywhere lately. It’s in shambles... Britain should be out and get back on its own feet. And now Scotland wants to leave and Wales wants to leave. Then it will be Devon. God knows where it will end.” The 12th Lambchop album, FLOTUS , arrives on November 4, and you can order it as a special edition wine box from the website of their European label, City Slang. It’s been prefaced by an incredible 18-minute…

THE ROLLING STONES Beggars Banquet DECCA, 1968 Few albums captured the fractious social and political atmosphere of their era as forcefully as Beggars Banquet . And in its muscular musical confidence, it heralded the new-found, magisterial maturity of the Stones’ most fruitful era. BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN Born In The USA COLUMBIA, 1984 Another album with the American flag on its cover, Born In The USA brought cogent social commentary and radical politics firmly into the pop mainstream, along with rueful reflections on failed ambition and regional identity. TOM PETTY AND THE HEART-BREAKERS Southern Accents MCA, 1985 Originally planned as a concept album, Southern Accents still contains enough material – notably in the title track and “Rebels” – to qualify as…

Do the wigs in the “Intern” video connote a particular character? I went with the silver one as a nod to Bowie, glam rock. Friends have told me how my genuine self is more present in these films. There has been a curiosity about the wig, which got me thinking people really don’t pay attention to your poetic intent. But that’s what makes it fun: finding hilarity in statements I didn’t know I was making. It was really out of a need to make light in visuals what could be so heavy in words. How do you interpret the title of the album? It’s more of an attitude. It’s flirtatious and possessive, maybe even degrading, but also it could be very empowering and less about womanliness than owning up to…

“Hey everybody/Let’s have some fun/You only live but once/And when you’re dead you’re done” REISSUE OF THE MONTH 9/10 RAY Charles was only 22 years old when he was signed to Atlantic Records, but he was already a veteran in the industry. As a teenager growing up in Florida, he learned to read music using braille and played piano at school dances before graduating to gigging with big bands in Tampa and Orlando. In 1948, he moved to Seattle, Washington, where he established himself as a star on the juke circuit. By the time he joined the Atlantic roster, he had already released around 20 singles and notched a handful of minor R’n’B hits. The Atlantic Years – In Mono , a 7LP box that covers his tenure at the…

In An Expression Of The Inexpressible TOUCH AND GO, 1998 Produced by Fugazi’s Guy Picciotto, Blonde Redhead’s fourth album saw the New York trio taking their noisy post-punk sound as far as it could reasonably go, with “Distilled” conjuring up the wonky textures of Unwound, and “Led Zep” taking influence from dub. 8/10 Misery Is A Butterfly 4AD, 2004 Written after singer and guitarist Kazu Makino was horrifically trampled by a horse, Misery Is A Butterfly saw the trio take inspiration from European soundtracks and baroque pop – the harpsichords, strings and haunting melodies of “Elephant Woman” and “Messenger” are a stunning one-two. 9/10 23 4AD, 2007 Though it has definite peaks and troughs, the Pace brothers and Makino’s seventh LP is a gorgeous mix of electronics, stately…

IN the early 1970s, Eric Stephen Jacobs was a photographer for After Dark, a national entertainment magazine with a toe in both high art and the New York’s blooming gay culture. After a spell as a model and jobbing lensman, he revolutionised his technique by hand-tinting black and white images in the style of ’40s movie star headshots. In 1974 he was asked to shoot David Bowie’s choreographer, Toni Basil, who knocked on his studio door in the summer. “I almost fell over,” says Eric. “She was movie star gorgeous, with a hip, retro style of dress, and a huge mass of dark curly hair, as they wore in the old Hollywood era. She was perfect for my new style. We both had an appreciation for the whole hip, retro,…

“I LIKE spicy food and I like cheese,” Margo Price says as she scoots into a booth at Duke’s, a new dive in East Nashville. She points proudly to a small, handwritten sign across the room that advertises a sandwich that bears her name. The Margo Price is grilled cheese with Muenster, white cheddar, red onion and spinach, spiked with a bit of giardiniera and accompanied by a herb mayo dipping sauce. It’s not for the faint of heart or the weak of stomach, but Price grabs one regularly – or as regularly as she can when she’s not touring behind her solo debut, Midwest Farmer’s Daughter, one of the best country albums of the year. “My husband used to work here when the place first opened,” says the Buffalo…

ON May 23, 1968, The Beatles opened their second boutique, Apple Tailoring (Civil And Theatrical), at 161 King’s Road, London. The store dealt mainly in the ‘regency look’ of expensive velvet jackets, and boasted a hairdressing salon in its basement. For once, though, the Fab Four were far from the cutting edge; in fact, the group were belatedly jumping on the coattails of the pioneering boutiques that had sprung up along the same corner of Kensington and Chelsea almost three years previously as psychedelia bloomed into being. Hung On You, Top Gear and Biba had all opened in 1964 and ’65, attracting debutantes, fashionistas and those too hip to rate the more mainstream Carnaby Street. But for those most in thrall to the coming psychedelic zeitgeist – musicians, artists, film…

IN autumn 1977, Lou Reed bunkered inside the Record Plant studio a few steps off Times Square. Outside, New York was emerging from its hot, paranoid summer of blackout, disco and Son Of Sam serial killings. Inside, Reed was dealing with problems of his own, in a mood not helped by a steady diet of whisky and speed. “Lou was going through some managerial troubles,” remembers keyboard player Michael Fonfara, “and having a bit of a time with his drugs and Scotch.” “He was going a mile a minute,” says guitarist Jeff Ross. “There was a tremendous amount of Scotch and a tremendous amount of amphetamines. The combination could result in great anger. Lou had a favourite amphetamine, Desoxyn, which is used to start your heart when you die, so…

KEY PLAYERS Howard Kaylan Lead vocals, keyboards Mark Volman Vocals Johny Barbata Drums “WE wanted it,” says Howard Kaylan of The Turtles’ drive for success. “We really wanted it… We were a singles band. And we enjoyed it, because there was nothing better than watching our records go up the singles chart.” The Turtles’ search for stardom began when Kaylan and co-vocalist Mark Volman formed surf group The Crossfires at high school in Los Angeles, in the early ’60s. After trying out R’n’B, the pair heard The Beatles and swapped their saxophones for microphones. “All of a sudden the girls got closer to the stage, and people weren’t dancing so much as listening.” Reluctantly christened The Turtles, the band were passed off as part of the British Invasion. “For the…