Innholdsfortegnelse for June 2017 i Rolling Stone Australia

Berry Angry I FOUND IT BIZARRE FOR A music magazine to do a tribute for Chuck Berry and mention the “big” bands influenced by Chuck whilst ignoring the elephant in the room – the Beatles. Yes, that “boring old” band that just happened to be the biggest selling band of all-time also had a significant Chuck Berry influence. You thereby ignored the best quote of all about Chuck Berry and it came from John Lennon: “If you tried to give rock & roll another name, you might call it ‘Chuck Berry’.” In your article you mentioned bands that were influenced by Berry such as the Doors, Grateful Dead & Phish (whoever they are). Combined these bands wouldn’t have had album sales as much as the Beatles. It is a bit…

THE 2017 ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF Fame ceremony was full of moments fans thought they’d never see, from the classic lineup of Yes putting aside years of bad blood to play one last time, to the first performance since 1991 from Pearl Jam’s original lineup. But nothing was more surprising than the reunion of Journey. In the days before the show, the band resorted to Twitter to lobby its estranged former singer, Steve Perry, to appear with his old band onstage for the first time in 26 years. The group got its wish, with Perry showing up and embracing his bandmates as they collected their statues. Backstage, Perry made plans with guitarist Neal Schon to meet for a “way-overdue coffee”. “The night was surreal,” says Schon. “I got very…

As Screamfeeder’s Tim Steward tells it, the 2011 demise of the beloved Brisbane outfit (which formed in 1991) started in some ways with the end of the Nineties grunge boom. “In the early-Noughties things started to slow down within the touring scene,” says the singer-guitarist. “I remember we had a gig in a small town and no-one was there.” The bookings slowed to a trickle, and in 2011 drummer Dean Shwereb moved to the UK. Two support gigs in 2013 resulted in the band (rounded out by singer-bassist Kellie Lloyd) reconnecting. “We had this crazy buzz of energy, and Dean (who’d returned to Australia) said, ‘Guys, I’ve maybe got another album in me’,” says Steward. “It’s like that [Godfather] quote – ‘Just when I thought I was out, they pull…

It’s been 17 years since Boss Hog’s breakthrough album White Out established them as a slinkier, sexier partner to the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. Fronted by Spencer’s wife and Pussy Galore collaborator Cristina Martinez, the band honed the pair’s previous ‘pig-fuck’ blues into something more sleek and sophisticated. Then, at the peak of their success, Boss Hog went quiet. To Martinez, though, the 17-year break between White Out and new LP Brood X doesn’t seem that long. “I guess it’s almost my son’s entire lifetime, but it doesn’t seem so long if I think about what we did to get where we are today. The real big break happened between the end of touring White Out, which may have been 2002 or so, and then picking up to play some…

“I bottle everything up and purge it out,” she says. “It’s like I’m vomiting months of psychoanalysis.” WHEN HALSEY STARTED WORK on her second album, June 2nd’s Hopeless Fountain Kingdom, she faced an entirely blank slate, having written zero songs for it in the year since her debut, 2015’s platinum-certified Badlands. “I’m a purger,” she says. “I bottle everything up and purge it all out of me. That’s why I write so quickly. It’s like I’m vomiting months of psychoanalysis.” She worked with producers including Greg Kurstin (Adele, Sia), Benny Blanco (Katy Perry, Ed Sheeran) and Ricky Reed (Twenty One Pilots), and the result, like Badlands, is a concept album of sorts. Its story centres on a pair of lovers in a limbo-like realm that connects to the futuristic setting…

TOWARDS THE END OF LAST year, Amy Shark was in New York meeting with a major record label. This was not the kind of thing the songwriter her parents know as Amy Billings did on a regular basis – indeed, for nearly a decade the 30-year-old had spent her time vying for attention on the pub circuit around the Gold Coast, trying, and largely failing, to get people to take an interest in her original music. But in the wake of her hit-in-waiting “Adore” receiving spot rotation on Triple J at the back-end of 2016, she and her husband Shane (who was at that point her manager) were inundated with e-mails from labels and managers requesting meetings and, in the case of one, an invitation to fly to New York.…

‘Guardians Inferno’ This comedic original, co-written by Gunn and sung by David Hasselhoff, is meant as a sort of Guardians take on Meco’s disco Star Wars theme. ‘Surrender’ By including this 1978 Cheap Trick classic, Gunn repays a favour to the band, which let him use “If You Want My Love” in his 2011 indie film Super for nearly nothing. ‘Southern Nights’ Glen Campbell’s groovy 1977 version of Allen Toussaint’s song was a childhood favourite of Gunn’s: “It’s a little bit of a different flavour for the movie.” ‘Brandy (You’re a Fine Girl)’ Gunn has long adored Looking Glass’ cheeseball 1972 smash, which plays a key emotional role in the new movie, appearing in the very first scene. ‘Father and Son’ Gunn was inspired to use this 1970 Cat Stevens…

“I do think about ageing a lot, because I’m deteriorating rapidly, just as you do. I’ve hit that point.” ‘I’M GETTING OLD AND I LIKE IT,” IS Tim Rogers’ opening line. The gallery guffaws. A drunk at the front table makes her first nonsensical interjection. It’s the gala premiere, to use theatrical vernacular, of An Actor Repairs, and the plot is thickening by the moment. The You Am I frontman’s new solo record is a loose, nylon-stringed narrative “concerning the retirement from the stage of an elderly actor”. Its live debut at Brisbane’s Old Museum is all bare-boards and footlights, just the violin and voice of Xani Kolac colouring Rogers’ intimate reflections on “Youth”, “Age” and “One More Late Night Phone Conversation”. The latter song proves prophetic. Quaffing mineral water…

 ★★★★★ Classic | ★★★★ Excellent | ★★★ Good | ★★ Fair | ★ Poor Ratings are supervised by the editors of ROLLING STONE. “Heard the world is ending soon I assumed that they told ya They tryin’ ta dinosaur us So now it’s time to go up”—GORILLAZ, “Ascension” Gorillaz Humanz Parlophone/Warner ★★★ Well, at least Donald Trump’s presidency is good for something. Namely, giving songwriters something solid to kick against. And with the latest albums from Father John Misty and Depeche Mode, we’re starting to see artists’ reactions to the new world order. Add Damon Albarn to that list, although he’s not kicking so much as tripping. On the first album in half a dozen years from Gorillaz, the animated band he created with artist Jamie Hewlett in 1998, he’s…

Diet Cig   Swear I’m Good At This Frenchkiss Records ★★★★ “Can we hang, no strings attached? Listen to *N Sync cassettes?” A typical come-on from Diet Cig, and an invitation tough to resist. The New York boy/girl duo specialise in lovesick fuzz-pop on their fantastic debut album Swear I’m Good At This. Guitar-toting firecracker Alex Luciano keeps tripping over her own reluctant sentimental streak in these sardonic modern-love vignettes – as she sings, “It’s hard to be punk while wearing a skirt.” Even when her melodies get sugary, Luciano never wusses out as she contemplates the anxieties of youth, the terror of adulthood and the ever-astonishing lameness of the male. “Sixteen” has to be the best song ever written about dating somebody with the same name (“It was weird…

Lion Dev Patel, Nicole Kidman Directed by Garth Davis ★★★★ ½ IF THERE WAS AN ACADEMY Award for Best Australian Accent it would have been comprehensively lost over the years by some of the greats: Meryl Streep, Robert Downey Jr, Quentin Tarantino. Which makes Dev Patel’s flawless voice in Lion all the more remarkable – and helps convince us he’s grown-up Indian waif Saroo, lost to his poor family 25 years earlier and adopted by loving Tasmanian couple Nicole Kidman and David Wenham. Thing is: now, haunted by snapshot memories and propelled by new tech Google Earth, Saroo is compelled find his birth mother and brother. Directed by Aussie Garth Davis (known for NZ head-trip Top Of the Lake) on a comparatively small budget, Lion successfully transforms Saroo Brierley’s incredible…

After a career stretching over 50 years, former Kiss drummer Peter Criss is getting ready to hang up his sticks, and on May 12th will perform his second last concert ever in Melbourne, before a final farewell in New York in June. “I’m still kicking ass, I’ve been rehearsing my butt off,” says the drummer. “I’ve had the best of the best times on stage, but you’ve got to face that [it’s coming to an end]. Those who don’t it’s sad because you’ll die up there, or people start saying I wish he’d leave. I never want to hear those words. So I’m leaving on my terms.” As for why he chose Melbourne for his penultimate show? “Australia’s been amazing,” he says. “I had a ball playing with the Melbourne…

Dave Chappelle’s comeback is a bit of a mess. But then, he always was – a mess is his favourite kind of place. Anyone expecting polished perfection from his new Netflix specials is remembering his Chappelle’s Show-era material as tighter than it was; he thrived on a loose, winging-it feel. The Age of DAVE CHAPPELLE NETFLIX Spin and Deep in the Heart of Texas were recorded a year apart – for a reported $20 million a pop. Neither is a home run – he’s testing the waters, with a third stand-up special due this year. His best riffs are about being confused by today’s world. He recalls watching the space shuttle explode in 1986 – but tells the audience, “In your generation, it’s like the space shuttle blows up every…

CASHMERE CAT’S ALL-STAR EDM PARTY Since 2012, Cashmere Cat has existed mainly in liner notes, providing sparse, synth-heavy beats for Kanye, Britney Spears and Ariana Grande. The Norwegian DJ signed up more big names, including Selena Gomez and the Weeknd, for his new LP, 9. Cashmere (real name Magnus Høiberg) singles out “Wild Love” – an avant-garde meditation on crazy sex, sung by the Weeknd – as an example of his new musical mission. “I wanted to make a longer body of work,” he says of the album. “Not just club tracks.” KORY GROW JAY SOM: BEDROOM DREAM-POP PRODIGY Melina Duterte has been performing her own music for only about a year. Before that, the 23-year-old was a formally trained jazz trumpeter with conservatory goals. She changed direction in 2015,…

The Song That Reminds Me of Growing Up Engelbert Humperdinck The Last Waltz 1967 “My dad died in ’76, but when I was a kid my parents spent a lot of time going to dinner dances. They really liked to ballroom dance, that was their thing. So until I was old enough to complain about it and stay at home, I was always at these dances where I was knocking around. They always played this at the end of the night, and when that song played I knew at last I was bloody going home. [Laughs]” The Song That Made Me Want To Play Guitar Derek and the Dominos Layla 1970 “I spent a lot of time in my bedroom with a tennis racket playing along to that. It was…

IT WAS MASSIVE FOR US. WE WERE NUMBER ONE IN AMERICA FOR FOUR MONTHS!” THE LIGHT THROUGH THE STAINED glass of Colin Hay’s Los Angeles home is “dappled. That’s the only way to describe it,” he says. “Outside are these twisted California oaks and beyond that, circling the house are these very, very robust gum trees. They’re like, ‘Get out of the way, mate’,” the Scotsman grunts in flawless Aussie yobbo, “‘I’m comin’ through’.” As a man of poetry, the American citizen with the indelible Australian past lets the metaphor stand for itself as he prepares for another album and tour of the land down under. Your parents ran a music store in Scotland. How did that inform your future? My father was a great singer and a great dancer…

WHEN JOAN BAEZ SHARED A BILL WITH THE INDIGO Girls about 20 years ago, a young fan approached, asking for an autograph – for his grandmother. “Tell your grandmother to go fuck herself!” said Baez, who saw the show as a way to connect with a new generation of fans. Today, in the airy kitchen of her home near Palo Alto, California, with its view of the Santa Cruz Mountains and a painting of a nude woman above the fireplace, Baez winces at the memory. “I felt so awful and said, ‘I’m sorry – of course I’ll sign it.’” Baez, 76, loves to play against her image as the serene, hyperserious matriarch of folk music. Resting her chin on her hand, she flashes her recent metal-chick tattoo: a series of…

MUST-HAVES Honky Château 1972 Elton John had already scored a few hits as a mild-mannered piano man, but Honky Château was the breakthrough where he learned to rock. He banged out the songs in a week with his lyrics wingman, Bernie Taupin. For anyone else, this could have been a greatest-hits album: the New Orleans boogie of “Honky Cat”, the country-rock strut of “Hercules”, the slow-burn grooves of “Mellow” and “Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters”. One morning during the sessions, Taupin came down to the breakfast table with a stack of lyrics he’d dashed off overnight. Elton picked one – “Oh, I quite like this” – sat at the piano and wrote a tune in 10 minutes, ready to be recorded by the time the band finished eating. The result…

“The cops had M16s with fucking laser pointers pointed at us and were like, ‘Put your hands on the dashboard!’” The last time I asked for someone’s autograph Jennifer Love Hewitt at [fast food restaurant] Benihanas, I was 11 years old. And she gave it to me, and gave me her number too, cos I told her I was in love with her. But it was probably fake. If she’s reading this: Jennifer Love Hewitt, I love you, call me. The last time I was stopped by the cops I was coming back from playing in San Diego, and there was a robbery at some place in San Diego, and they were driving the same car that we had, except that we had plates and they didn’t. But the cops…

All Day and All of the Knight In recognition of his “service to the arts”, Ray Davies was knighted by Prince Charles at Buckingham Palace. “It’s nice being noticed,” says the Kinks frontman, who just released his new solo LP, Americana, backed by the Jayhawks. “But I still want to prove that I can write music and be contented by it. That’s what I strive for.” Gorillaz’ Supersize Return Gorillaz played their first show in six years, in London, and made up for the wait. “We’ve got pretty much everyone who’s on the record here,” said Damon Albarn, before playing his cartoon band’s entire new album, Humanz. Guests included Danny Brown, De La Soul and Noel Gallagher. “I’m not going to introduce anyone – because I’d spend the whole evening…

‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ The first take of the theme song is a long, raw Hendrix-style guitar jam, stretching out at the end as McCartney rants, “I feel it, oh, baby, I feel it, I feel freeeee now!” ‘A Day in the Life’ The original ending, with the Beatles humming that famous final chord, before they decided to do it with pianos instead. “Have you got the note?” John Lennon asks his bandmates. “Stop freaking out!” ‘Getting Better’ An aggressive take driven by McCartney’s Wurlitzer keyboard. Lennon gives him some advice: “Sing it – you know, ‘I gotta admit’, and all that – properly.” ‘Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds’ A take with Lennon leading on acoustic guitar, while McCartney follows on electric keyboard. Lennon’s raw-power vocal is…

IT’S A MONDAY AFTERNOON IN New York, but Father John Misty has already taken LSD. “It helps with my depression and anxiety,” says Misty, real name Josh Tillman, slumped on a couch at the Bowery Hotel. “It’s just a thing that works for me.” Thirty-six hours earlier, the singer made his biggest appearance yet, on Saturday Night Live, performing two tracks from Pure Comedy, his morbid and hilarious third LP, which takes a hard look at narcissism, Internet addiction and PC culture in the age of Trump. “I couldn’t believe they booked me,” says Tillman, who played drums in Fleet Foxes until 2012, and broke out with 2015’s I Love You, Honeybear. The SNL afterparty was everything he hoped it would be: “There was debauchery. I think I was out…

ON JUNE 3RD, 1968, eight months after the first issue of ROLLING STONE hit newsstands, editor and publisher Jann Wenner sat down at a typewriter and wrote Bob Dylan a letter. “I don’t mean to add to the number of people that pester you every day,” he wrote. “But we would like very much to include some direct coverage of your activities in our publication. You don’t have to tell us what kind of oatmeal you like in between meals, but it would be nice to let us and our readers know what you think about your music and what is happening in popular music today.” Wenner, 22, couldn’t have imagined he was kicking off a 50-year relationship between Dylan and ROLLING STONE, one that would produce one revelatory interview…

WHILE DIRECTOR JAMES Gunn was finishing the 2014 sci-fi film Guardians of the Galaxy, he kept hearing one bit of feedback from some Marvel Studios employees. “Nobody,” he recalls them saying, “is going to want to hear this music.” Gunn had laced the movie with eight-track-era gems – Redbone’s “Come and Get Your Love”, Blue Swede’s “Hooked on a Feeling” – but the sceptics insisted that using, say, Nineties Britney jams would be a smarter move. From the moment he got the job, though, Gunn was intent on lending some grounded humanity to his oddball space opera – where an acerbic space raccoon, voiced by Bradley Cooper, is among the leads – by setting key scenes against dusty, incongruous pop songs. The conceit is that the tunes come from an…

The Yes frontman – on tour with the Yes offshoot band Anderson, Rabin and Wakeman – is part of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s 2017 class. The Beatles “Eleanor Rigby” The Beatles were a very progressive band. It’s a very interesting lyric, dark and strange. No matter how many times you hear it, it still sounds amazing. Nina Simone “I Put a Spell on You” In the early days of my career, I would always carry around a Nina Simone tape. She went through hell to become a great artist. Jimi Hendrix “Purple Haze” I saw him play at a pub in Munich right after his first album came out. This song was really the beginning of powerful rock. Rickie Lee Jones “Magazine” She’s definitely one of the…

You spent nearly 30 years as a cult-favourite comedy actor and writer before getting dramatic roles in Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. How surprising was that turn of events? I’m surprised at the opportunity I got. I really am. I’ll read a Better Call Saul script and think, “Are they really trusting me with this?” Breaking Bad came out of nowhere. I thought I’d show up and they’d say, “Go home. You’re not the Bob Odenkirk we’re thinking of. It’s the other one, from the Royal Shakespeare Company.” I did have a gut feeling, years ago, that in a dramatic context I could be really impactful. It’s natural for me to get earnest and honest. I have comedy friends who congenitally can’t do that, but I can. In fact,…

“‘The Tracks of My Tears’ is immense. It could have sunk the Titanic if the Titanic had hit it.” ‘I wish I could say that I spent hours with the Godfather of Soul, shooting rolls and rolls of film, but in fact I only had about five minutes with him,” recalls Laura Levine. “Those five minutes, however, were unforgettable, not unlike an audience with the Pope. “For 15 years, beginning in 1980, New York City hosted an annual music event called the New Music Seminar; it brought together musicians, fans and music industry people for a week of gigs, trade shows and panel discussions. “James Brown was in town for the artists’ panel along with Afrika Bambaataa; they’d just recorded a song together. He was staying in the Presidential…

“EVERY DECISION I’VE MADE SINCE 16 WAS made in a democracy. I felt it was time to make a decision - and I shouldn’t rely on others.” January 2016. There’s a bench at the top of Primrose Hill, in London, that looks out over the skyline of the city. If you’d passed by it one winter night, you might have seen him sitting there. A lanky guy in a wool hat, overcoat and jogging pants, hands thrust deep into his pockets. Harry Styles had a lot on his mind. He had spent five years as the buoyant fan favourite in One Direction; now, an uncertain future stretched out in front of him. The band had announced an indefinite hiatus. The white noise of adulation was gone, replaced by the hushed…

 DR. X IS A DAD. APPROPRIATELY – boringly – at 4:37 p.m. on a national holiday, he is lighting a charcoal grill, about to grab a pair of tongs with one hand and a beer with the other. His kids are running around their suburban patio, which could be anywhere; Dr. X, though impressively educated now, grew up poor in a town that is basically nowhere. Like most Americans, he is a Christian. Like a lot of health-conscious men, he fights dad bod by working out once or twice a week, before going into his medical practice. ¶ Somewhat less conventionally, two hours ago, he was escorting a woman around his yard, helping her walk off a large dose of MDMA. He’s the one who’d given it to her, earlier…

“Way to Blue” Demo 1968 He cut this demo for a fellow struggling songwriter named Nick Drake. Within a few years, Elton was a jet-set star, and Drake had died in obscurity. “I Saw Her Standing There” B side 1975 At a 1974 New York show, Elton duetted with Lennon on what Lennon introduced as “a number of an old estranged fiance of mine called Paul” – sadly, it was the last public concert performance of his lifetime. “Mama Can’t Buy You Love” Single 1979 Like the Bowie of Young Americans, Elton fled to Philadelphia in search of soul. He partnered with R&B master Thom Bell for his biggest and best hit in years. “Little Jeannie” From ‘21 at 33’ 1980 A…