Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2015 i UNCUT

IT FEELS PRETTY disingenuous writing the introduction to this month’s Uncut , since for most of the issue’s gestation I was waltzing round Sardinia living out my less toxic Julian Cope fantasies. When I arrived back, in the face of looming deadlines, I discovered that my colleagues had assembled a startlingly high-powered lineup of interviewees: a charming, philosophical John Lydon; Dan Auerbach, embracing life beyond The Black Keys; a rejuvenated Squeeze (Jools Holland compares them to Chaucer, enterprisingly); Paul McCartney at his most candid; and, at the last moment, Keith Richards at his most irrepressibly Keith-esque. There’s also a great piece about the adventurous LA singer-songwriter Julia Holter, which compounds the sense that this month is a significant one for newer talent as much as it is for returning heroes.…

IN EARLY 2013, Roger Waters travelled from his home in Hampshire to Europe. Driving his trusty Bentley across the continent, the purpose of Waters’ road trip was to visit the Commonwealth War Graves cemeteries in France and Italy where his grandfather and father are buried. This pilgrimage was filmed by director Sean Evans and forms the emotional core of Waters’ latest project – a hybrid concert film and documentary, Roger Waters: The Wall, that Waters describes as “an anti-war protest film”. Evans first worked with Waters in 2005 as visual designer for his ‘Ça Ira’ opera and, later, his 2006-2008 The Dark Side Of The Moon tour. “Dark Side… was pretty successful,” says Evans with understatement. “We thought, ‘What are we going to do now?’ When Roger suggested The Wall,…

I’M YOUR FAN “Welcome to the Helter Skelter house band! Like a black, twisted echo from all my favourite psych and biker films, and countless, acid-soaked squat parties.” MR DIBS, HAWKWIND ‘‘DOOM SEEMS TO have had some kind of resurgence and people are just repeating themselves,” Kevin Starrs pronounces. “But we’ve never just been a doom band; we’ve always had these diverse influences and weird harmonies, so it’s all about progression and trying new things, rather than being stuck in a rut.” This is more than empty talk from the singer/ songwriter and guitarist of Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats. Across three albums, the Cambridge quartet have made their name as worshippers of the monolithic, deep rock groove, citing obsessions ranging from pulp fiction to Hammer horror films and drug/…

A FEW DAYS BEFORE we meet, The Black Keys played a headline set at the Isle Of Wight festival. “It was really good, but it rained,” says guitarist and singer Dan Auerbach. “That’s the thing with European festivals – there’s a 50 per cent chance it’ll rain. But they didn’t seem to mind.” Today, Auerbach is sitting in a hotel suite in Paris waiting for his coffee to arrive. Dressed in black despite the summer heat, he explains he is spending a few days in Europe before heading home to the US. At present, he’s somewhere between projects. With no further engagements planned for The Black Keys, he is allowing himself a short break before the release of Yours, Dreamily – the debut album from his new band, The Arcs.…

KEITH’S LONG friendship with Dylan stretches back to the 1960s. “We all pushed each other in those days,” Richards told NME . “Bob’s a nasty little bugger. I recall him saying, ‘I could have written “Satisfaction”, Keith, but you couldn’t have written “Desolation Row”.’ I said, ‘Well, you’re right there, Bob!’” During 1985, Dylan invited Richards and Ron Wood to perform with him at a charity concert. In his autobiography, Ronnie , Wood remembers the three of them rehearsing at Dylan’s West 78th Street house. “On the day of the gig,” Wood wrote, “a limo came to pick up Keith and me. Before we got in, a truck pulled up with Dylan on board – the driver was his daughter. ‘You coming?’…

BLINK AND YOU’LL miss the turning to John Lydon’s house in Malibu, the beach town 36 miles west of Los Angeles. The house is located a little more than two miles up from Zuma Beach – and only a few streets away from where Neil Young wrote much of his Zuma album in 1975. It is, Lydon insists, the reason he bought the house. “Zuma is one of my favourite albums,” he says with a straight face, but it’s difficult to figure out if he’s serious. The usual tipoff that he’s trying to pull one over is that he cocks his head at a 45-degree angle and bugs his eyes out a little, then waits a few seconds too long, this side of awkward, like a lizard waiting to entrap…

“When I was growing up, there was a tradition in the musical hall to have a stage act with a song that involved various people. ÔIf I Were Not Upon The Stage’, I think it’s called. It appealed to me as a kid. ‘If I were not upon the stage, someone else I’d like to be/If I were not upon the stage, a window cleaner me/You’d see me all day long singing out this song/Running up ladders, running up ladders…’ And that’d be one person’s song. Then another person would come on. ‘If I were not upon the stage, someone else I’d like to be/If I were not upon the stage, a midwife I would be/Delivering babies, delivering babies…’ And that…

“I knew her from the Human Ear people, the group surrounding Ariel Pink – she was the intern. After a while I realised that she did music. I did live sound for her once and realised she was incredibly proficient. She just played solo with harmonium, but the songs obviously had a lot to them – not only in craft but where they were coming from. Julia’s artistic vision is very fully formed, it would exist whether anyone was paying attention or not. Whether consciously or not, she’s more or less in her own world. She’s not engaged with a lot of pop culture – she keeps a little bit of a buffer. I think the thing that’s influenced her music most is playing live, she’s really embraced the band.…

“WE WERE IN New Orleans on our second US tour and we didn’t have much money so we had to stay 15 miles outside town,” recalls Difford. “We were young, we wanted to go to the French Quarter, but we had to sit there and do our laundry, feeling homesick. The lyrics just popped into my head, influenced by watching TV plays, kitchen sink dramas by Mike Leigh, Ken Loach, Alan Ayckbourn. It was written in one sitting, sometimes you just put the pen to paper and it’s done. I never question that, it was a spiritual thing attached to a feeling.” Tilbrook was handed the lyric while the band were recording Cool For Cats and wrote the tune in his lunch break. “It just tumbled…

THIS IS YOUR most upbeat record in years – how did that come about? It came from the songs. It burst out of The Evangelist, which was very clouded by Grant’s passing. In 2008, ’09 and ’10, a bunch of songs came that had a lot in common, that were obviously lighter. I knew it was the start of something new. I really wanted time to pass because I thought this was another stage of my career. So I had the album written by 2011… but then what happened was the …Go-Betweens [boxset], and it took a year more than what everyone thought. Later, I wrote two more songs, one of which was “Learn To Burn”. In many ways, this is your first record without any of Grant’s influence, isn’t…

ALIF Aynama-Rtama NAWA Damascene conversion: post-rock heads East Rethinking Arabic music in the same way Fairport once did British folk, five-man collective Alif owe some inspiration to their London-raised oud player and Melvins nut Khyam Allami, and his mission to bring lo-fi ethics to the Middle East. Aynama-Rtama – translation: wherever it falls – fuses many old schools, traditional instrumentation and vocalist Tamer Abu Ghazaleh’s intense meditations cross-fertilised with psychedelic backward-masking (“Dars Min Kama Sutra”), Warp ambient bleeps (“Al Juththa”) and colossal Led Zeppelin drums (“Al-Khutba Al-Akhira”). Triumphant closer “Eish Jabkum Hon?”, meanwhile, discovers that music’s East-West faultline might have been Echo And The Bunnymen’s Porcupine all along. JIM WIRTH DAVE & PHIL ALVIN Lost Time YEP ROC Avatars of US roots: brothers boldly delve into oft-ignored heritage Having established…

“You know what is fascinating?” says Chris Baio, erudite bass player with New York’s Vampire Weekend and now, off-duty, solo artist extraordinaire. “ Come Dine With Me . I enjoy watching it with my wife. I like how mean the prize money is and the cutting wit of the announcer.” Tea-time telly is not the only quality British product that Baio has been savouring. The 30-year-old, who has lived in London for three years and recently moved from Islington to Peckham, became enchanted by the electronic reveries of Caribou and Four Tet while he took his first steps into producing his own music outside the band, and believes that leaving New York for London spurred him on to create The Names , his…

Shaun Fleming, aka singer-songwriter Diane Coffee, and the drummer for Foxygen, knows all about creating characters. Before he went into music, Fleming was a voice actor for Disney, working on several animated films and TV series. But Fleming feels Diane Coffee is something different. “Diane Coffee is the part of me that’s the performer,” he explains. “It’s been there as long as I can remember. I’m never writing as an alter ego and because Diane is just a piece of me, I don’t really feel like I’m hiding behind a character.” Everybody’s A Good Dog has a bigger sound than Coffee’s previous album, My Friend Fish , a result of changing circumstances. “It was recorded in proper studios, so production quality is a lot cleaner,”…

It’s no longer unusual for musicians to fund projects by pre-selling albums and other enticements online. However, it is unusual for musicians – or anyone – to trust their investors as far as Craig Finn did. Among the options for Pledgemusic backers of his second solo album, Faith In The Future , were the options of going jogging, drinking or to the baseball accompanied by the Hold Steady singer. “We [ previously ] did a Pledge campaign with The Hold Steady to raise money for a charity and create an official fan club,” says Finn. “I was nervous going in, but I found that we have fantastic fans and spending time with them only bolstered the sense of community around the band.” Faith…

Widowspeak – a duo, but they record with other musicians – have been languishing on voguish Brooklyn indie Captured Tracks for four years, making clever, decent records (two albums to date – a self-titled 2011 debut and Almanac from 2013, which they followed later in the year with an EP, “The Swamps”), but never becoming a hype act. Not that they ever sought that kind of attention and, ultimately, they decided to move from New York City to rural upstate two years ago specifically to get out of the indie rat-race. “We were put off by the constant infatuation with the ‘next big thing’ or the ‘next big neighbourhood’,” says Robert Earl Thomas, the group’s guitarist and co-songwriter with singer Molly Hamilton. “We don’t want to…

CONTENTS QUEEN 1973 QUEEN II 1974 – DOUBLE VINYL SHEER HEART ATTACK 1974 A NIGHT AT THE OPERA 1975 A DAY AT THE RACES 1976 NEWS OF THE WORLD 1977 JAZZ 1978 THE GAME 1980 FLASH GORDON 1980 HOT SPACE 1982 THE WORKS 1984 A KIND OF MAGIC 1986 THE MIRACLE 1989 INNUENDO 1991 – DOUBLE VINYL MADE IN HEAVEN 1995 – DOUBLE VINYL All albums come with a download code QUEEN WERE A strange old beast. Featuring four gifted songwriters (bassist John Deacon wrote “I Want To Break Free” and “Another One Bites The Dust”; drummer Roger Taylor penned “Radio GaGa”) with wildly differing personalities, it’s little wonder they were stylistically confused, leaping from…

THE INTERNATIONAL SUBMARINE BAND Safe At Home LHI, 1968 Safe At Home is now viewed as a foundation stone in the myth of singer Gram Parsons. Release of the record was delayed by Parsons’ involvement with The Byrds, but the album includes “Luxury Liner” and “Blue Eyes”. Future Flying Burrito Brother Chris Ethridge plays bass. HONEY LTD Honey Ltd LHI, 1968 This Detroit girl group quit college and hitchhiked, stoned, to Sunset Boulevard to meet Lee. They were promptly signed and put in the studio with the Wrecking Crew. Their summer harmonies verge on psych folk, never lovelier than on the breezy “Silk’n’Honey”. They also do extraordinary things to “Louie, Louie”, turning it into a sassy strut. ARTHUR Dreams And Images LHI, 1968 Baroque pop oddity by sensitive…

As the ’90s drew to a close, Washington noise-rockers Unwound were becoming fed up of rushing at expensive studios. They decided to build their own, dubbed MagRecOne, in which to track their masterpiece, Leaves Turn Inside You . This wasn’t the kind of facility with a jacuzzi and a well-stocked wine cellar, though. “It was in the basement of a property that Vern [ Rumsey, bass ] had lived in, near Olympia,” explains singer/guitarist Justin Trosper. “The live room wasn’t conducive to creativity, it was like, ‘All right, let’s get this over so we can put some jackets and hats on and crowd around the heater.’ Recording there had the feeling of being somewhere 100 years ago… musty, mouldy, mildewy.” Seeping up this atmosphere, the…

AMERICAN ULTRA OPENS SEPTEMBER 4 Stoner comedy, with Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart on the run from the CIA. CARTEL LAND OPENS SEPTEMBER 4 Documentary from Matthew Heineman exploring vigilante efforts to thwart organised crime along the Mexican-American border. RICKI AND THE FLASH OPENS SEPTEMBER 4 Neil Young reportedly taught Meryl Streep to play guitar for Jonathan Demme’s latest: she plays a former rock star coming back for one last hurrah with her old band. IN COLD BLOOD OPENS SEPTEMBER 11 Reissue of Richard Brooks’ fine adaptation of Truman Capote’s book; Robert Blake and Scott Wilson are killers on the run. PASOLINI OPENS SEPTEMBER 11 Collaboration between Willem Dafoe and Abel Ferrara about the life of the notorious Italian director behind Salò . TRIPLE 9 OPENS…

The first song I loved The Beach Boys Surfer Girl 1963 My father bought me this Beach Boys tape, a greatest hits compilation. I used to listen to “Surfer Girl” obsessively – I’d play it so often that my brother actually took the tape, threw it out into the garden and smashed it to bits, he was so sick of hearing it. The changes in the music kind of give it a depth it otherwise wouldn’t have, and I’m sure that my very young mind latched on to that without me having any idea why I liked it so much. An album that redefined trumpet Clifford Brown And Max Roach Study In Brown 1955 I was learning trumpet by fifth or sixth grade. I loved the feeling and tone of…

THIS MONTH, UNCUT’S favourite festival celebrates its 10th year. Over the last decade, Dorset’s End Of The Road has remained small enough to feel intimate, but big enough to attract impressive headliners – Ryan Adams, Wilco and Joanna Newsom have all performed, and this year, Sufjan Stevens, The War On Drugs and Tame Impala head the bill. These lineups, as well as the beautiful setting and relaxed vibe, mean that we’re delighted to be back once again this year with our own stage – featuring Jacco Gardner, Euros Childs and Sam Amidon, among others – hosting Q&As with artists including Sleaford Mods and Jessica Pratt, and blogging from the site all weekend. “I’ve been going to festivals since I was a kid,” says the festival’s co-founder Simon Taffe, “and we…

JOANNA NEWSOM Sapokanikan DRAG CITY Back after five years, Newsom previews her fourth album ( Divers , due October) with this rococo marvel. Paul Thomas Anderson, no less, directs the vid. LOS LOBOS Gates Of Gold 429 David Hidalgo and co return with their first full-length in five years, an eclectic, warped set taking in blues, boogie and even – on “When We Were Free” – out-there acid jazz. DAVE HEUMANN Here In The Deep THRILL JOCKEY The frontman of doomy folk-rockers Arbouretum goes solo, with bewitchingly similar results. Pianist Hans Chew figures among the Uncut-friendly supporting cast. THE DEAD WEATHER Dodge & Burn THIRD MAN Jack White, off the touring circuit for now, is back at the drum stool for his other other…

REFLECTING ON A career spanning 53 years, Keith Richards is trying to account for his extraordinary longevity. “We didn’t just do it to get a few hit records and be famous and blah blah blah, ’cos sometimes that’s a curse,” he insists. “We’re doing what we feel we’re good at, and in order to be heard. I don’t think there should be any time limit on that. I’m still growing up.” A conversation with Richards is peppered with similar such routines. A flash of insight undercut by a self-deprecating punchline delivered with a throaty chuckle. Although his sentences are liberally scattered with colloquialisms like “croak” – at one point, he describes himself as “a lucky son of a bitch” – nevertheless his warm, feline purr carries a faintly thespish quality.…

BILLY PRESTON THAT’S THE WAY GOD PLANNED IT 1969 Released on Apple Records, Preston’s fourth album featured Richards (unusually, playing bass) in addition to George Harrison, Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker. ALEXIS KORNER GET OFF MY CLOUD, 1975 The British blues godfather convened this ‘supersessions’ album featuring Nicky Hopkins, Peter Frampton and Steve Marriott. Richards contributed guitar to Korner’s Stones cover. TOM WAITS RAIN DOGS, 1985 Guitar and backing vocals on “Big Black Mariah”, “Union Square” and “Blind Love”. Richards also co-wrote and played on “That Feel” from 1992’s Bone Machine and, more recently, appeared on “Chicago”, “Satisfied”, “Last Leaf” and “Hell Broke Luce” from 2011’s Bad As Me . ARETHA FRANKLIN “JUMPIN’ JACK FLASH”; 1988 Keith produced and played guitar on Franklin’s…

YOUNG IS BOTH a talisman and a bête noire for Lydon. He elevated Johnny Rotten’s profile by including him in the lyrics of “My My, Hey Hey (Out Of The Blue)”, but later refused to be part of a show Lydon made for VH1. “I wanted to interview him. And his press people or management, I’ve no clue about it, really, other than that they said they refused to believe that I actually existed, or counted. Inferring that they only work with geniuses. You wouldn’t think I would like someone like this. My musical tastes are vast and enormous, but it’s very difficult for an alleged punk audience to understand just how expansive the King Of Punk’s library is. But at the same time, people like Neil reject me when…

KEY PLAYERS Jonathan Donahue Vocals, guitar Sean ‘Grasshopper’ Mackowiak Guitar Adam Snyder Hammond organ, keys Dave Fridmann Production, keys “‘OPUS 40” COULD be the song of ours that’s most connected to the Catskill Mountains,” says frontman Jonathan Donahue today. “It just came out of me like that.” Not only a stately highlight of Deserter’s Songs, “Opus 40” is aptly infused with the unique spirit of New York State’s most famous mountain range, an area still deeply connected with such luminaries as Bob Dylan and The Band. “I think the song is a bit of an homage to The Band,” adds guitarist Sean ‘Grasshopper’ Mackowiak, “in that it’s got those descending chords which The Band did a lot, especially Rick Danko’s bass parts with all those hefty suspensions. So we wanted…

1980 January 16: Arrives at Tokyo’s Narita Airport ahead of Wings’ tour of Japan; is arrested for possession of 219g of marijuana; imprisoned for 10 days May 16: McCartney II released in the UK July: Wings begin early rehearsals on new material at Finchden Manor in Kent July 11: Paul and Linda work on Ringo’s Stop And Smell The Roses at Super Bear studios, Berre-les-Alpes, France October 30: Additional Wings rehearsals at Parkgate Studios, Sussex and Pugins Hall, Kent are unproductive; soon after, McCartney disbands Wings but continues to collaborate with Denny Laine November: Works with George Martin on “We All Stand Together” December 7: Recording officially begins on Tug Of War at AIR Studios, London December 8:…

PAUL McCARTNEY wasn’t the only ex- Beatle to record a tribute to John Lennon following his death. George Harrison was working on a song while Lennon was still alive. He originally wrote “All Those Years Ago” with different lyrics for Ringo to sing. A recording was made at Friar Park in late 1980, although Ringo was unhappy with the result and it was shelved. After Lennon’s death, Harrison rewrote the lyrics, including a line to “the devil’s best friend” : presumably, Lennon’s killer, Mark Chapman. Harrison retained the original backing track – with Starr on drums – and overlaid his revised lyrics. He recruited Paul & Linda, and Denny Laine to add backing. Released in May 1981, the song hit No 2 on Billboard and No 13…

EATING THE STARS HUMANEAR MUSIC, 2007 Holter’s rich, celestial touch shimmers through on her debut. There’s naïve fun here, though, in haunted carousel melodies, found sound samples, and two odd covers: a manic, glitchy take on Guillaume de Machaut’s 14th-century “Je Vivroie Liement”, and Crowded House’s “Don’t Dream It’s Over”, pitch-shifted and wobbling. CELEBRATION ENGRAVED GLASS, 2010 Just 50 copies of this were released, though it’s now out online. The least accessible of Holter’s recordings, it’s mostly musique concrète. But nestled within “Bars in Afternoons” is a lovely cover of “Don’t Make Me Over”, sung over Disintegration Loops- indebted lapping organs. LIVE RECORDINGS NNA TAPES, 2010 A knack for poppy, sample-scuffed balladry shines through on this bedroom-recorded cassette release (now on iTunes). MARIA HUMAN EAR, 2011…

COOL FOR CATS A&M, 1979 Tilbrook calls this Squeeze’s real debut. It’s a breezy introduction to the band’s world, comprising songs about masturbation (“Touching Me, Touching You”), crime (“The Knack”) and the danger of intoxicated songwriting (“Slightly Drunk”), as well as matchless singles “Cool For Cats” and “Up The Junction”. ARGYBARGY A&M, 1980 After Cool For Cats established the Squeeze sound, Argybargy took it a stage further, with wonderful tracks like “If I Didn’t Love You” (“ Singles remind me of kisses”) and “Another Nail In My Heart”. EAST SIDE STORY A&M, 1981 Brilliant, funny and clever songwriting from a pair on top of their game, with Paul Carrack bringing a new voice to “Tempted” and Tilbrook and Difford…

After issuing eight studio albums as one half of Air alongside Jean-Benoît Dunckel, Nicolas Godin didn’t consciously set out to go solo. In fact, he’d planned on retiring. “After a while you start making less good albums when you’re in a band,” he explains. “So I wanted to stop making records and study classical music instead, just sitting at home and playing piano all day. But I couldn’t help it, this thing caught me by surprise.” The impetus for ravishing solo debut Contrepoint was the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, which Godin used as a launchpad to travel far into prog-pop exotica, with a little help from guests like Brazilian singer Marcelo Camelo, Phoenix frontman Thomas Mars and New Zealander Connan Mockasin. “I started using Bach for one…

The album had its genesis in your enforced recuperation… I slipped a disc in my back, compounding what happened a year before, when I broke my leg while on tour. An unlucky series of events! I ended up just lying on my back for four or five months, and when you’re in that state it’s easy to get negative, so I tried to stay positive. I started writing songs, and as a result, without wanting to over-egg the pudding, your mind goes to deeper places. There’s a very philosophical cast to the song, “Sometimes I Feel”. That’s my favourite on the record. It just seemed to appear out of nowhere. It strikes me that we pay so much attention to our outer appearance and wellbeing, but very little attention to…

Produced by: David Gilmour, Phil Manzanera Recorded at: Medina Studio, Hove Personnel include: Gilmour (vocals, guitar, assorted other instruments), Phil Manzanera (guitar, organ), Guy Pratt (bass), Steve DiStanislao, Andy Newmark (drums), Roger Eno (piano), Jools Holland (piano), Colin Stetson (saxophone), Robert Wyatt (cornet), Rado Klose and John Parricelli (guitar), Graham Nash and David Crosby (vocals), Mica Paris (vocals), Liberty Choir (vocals), Polly Samson (lyrics), Zbigniew Preisner (orchestration)…

FALLIN’ RAIN POLYDOR, 1971  A gorgeous country-rock weeper, and not the only time Wray would deliver a tune that seemed to be a genetic outcrop of the Stones’ “Out Of Time”. The vocal is delivered with a hint of menace and a touch of despair as the Korean War veteran sings of tormented times in a world gone insane. Covered by Calexico circa Feast Of Wire. FIRE AND BRIMSTONE POLYDOR, 1971  The tune is curiously understated in this song about an apocalyptic dream. Is it the end of the world, or a flashback to war? The lyrics keep things sketchy, and the tune proceeds gently until Wray’s guitar solo fires in, as if from another dimension. As covered by The Neville Brothers; and Nick Cave, Warren Ellis and Mark Lanegan…

Five and a half years on from her mammoth 3CD Have One On Me , Joanna Newsom returns next month with Divers . Stretching to a slightly more modest 51 minutes, and in part recorded by Steve Albini, guest arrangers include Nico Muhly and the Dirty Projectors’ Dave Longstreth. Los Lobos re-emerge after five years, too, with the eclectic Gates Of Gold , while The Chills’ upcoming Silver Bullets carries straight on from the New Zealand cult heroes’ last record 19 years ago. John Grant flits between ’80s electro and lush, sweeping balladry on his third album, Grey Tickles, Black Pressure – with his customary black humour liberally applied – while Patty Griffin,…

The Uncut stable currently has another couple of mags on sale for your delectation. Our History Of Rock monthly series has hit ’66, full of astonishing stories from the NME and Melody Maker archives, and we’ve also produced a deluxe upgraded version of our Ultimate Music Guide : Led Zeppelin . For full details, and the latest news, reviews, playlists and so forth, visit www.uncut.co.uk . Shortly after our review of the new Faces box had gone to press (p95), news arrived of the surviving members reforming to play a show for Prostate Cancer UK. They will reunite in the unlikely environs of Hurtwood Park Polo Club, Ewhurst, Surrey…

RICHARDS HAS REMAINED commendably faithful to the Stones; only straying from them a handful of times during their 52-year history. On July 13 and 14, 1974, he teamed up with Ron Wood, Ian McLagan, Willie Weeks and Andy Newmark for two shows at the Gaumont State on Kilburn High Road to promote Wood’s I’ve Got My Own Album To Do . Five years later, Richards again joined Wood and McLagan for another live project, The New Barbarians, this time on a larger tour to support Wood’s Gimme Some Neck album. “It was a fun tour and we had a lot of laughs,” Richards wrote in his autobiography, Life . The lineup also included Stanley Clarke, Bobby Keys and Joseph ‘Zigaboo’…

BOBBY KEYS AND Keith Richard first met when the Stones played the San Antonio Teen Fair in 1964; Keys was performing with Bobby Vee. Keys was initially prejudiced against the Stones for their cover of Buddy Holly’s “Not Fade Away”: Keys had toured with Holly, a fellow Texan. By the time he first recorded with the Stones – on 1969’s “Live With Me” – his credits included Delaney & Bonnie and Joe Cocker’s Mad Dogs And Englishmen Tour. His early contributions for the Stones included “Brown Sugar” and “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking” from Sticky Fingers . Outside of his formal duties, he was an usher at Jagger’s wedding in 1971; later, he acted as musical director of Ron Wood’s Miami nightclub, Woody’s On The Beach. Keys…

“PEOPLE ASK ME, ‘Which is your greatest achievement, PiL or the Pistols?’ It’s neither. My greatest achievement is surviving a really insidious slow death called meningitis. It almost destroyed me, and it almost took everything that I held dear, memories, personality, all those things were almost stolen off me permanently. So that’s my greatest achievement, to survive that. And around that everything else hinges and echoes. I had the rare privilege of a disease that allowed me to look at myself from the outside in, rediscover myself to find out I wasn’t that far removed from what I was initially, but I was given the gift of self-analysis therein. So you could say I’m my own worst enemy, but also my own best friend, and if I’m doing wrong I…

March 23, 1996 Mercury Rev perform their final show in support of See You On The Other Side , and return to New York in disarray Summer 1997 Donahue, Snyder and Levon Helm record the original tracks for “Opus 40” in Hurley in the Catskills Winter 1997/98 The group reconvene at Dave Fridmann’s new Tarbox Studios in Cassadaga, New York, to continue work on the songs, including “Opus 40” September 29, 1998 Deserter’s Songs is released to acclaim Spring, 1999 “Opus 40” released as a single…

ABOUT FIVE MILES northeast of Hog Mill Hill studios lies Rye. McCartney has a long connection with the medieval town. In 1990, he led a four-year campaign against NHS plans to close Rye Memorial Hospital. “My mother was a nurse,” he told The Independent . “I’ve got a lot of time for nurses and doctors ’cos of what I saw her go through. The NHS is something our tax money buys.” Meanwhile, McCartney has often hosted Christmas parties for his staff at The George In Rye, a boutique hotel on the High Street. Across the road, you’ll find Grammar School Records, a regular haunt of Mary McCartney during her childhood. Inside, you’ll find a copy of The Hollyridge Strings Play The Beatles Songbook…

“Dublab asked me to perform Parallelograms at their 10th anniversary. I said there’s no way I can do that for you, I’ll do four or five songs, but not an entire LP when I’ve never performed. They said, don’t worry, we’ll bring in backup people who are young, not that well known yet, and each person can choose a different song. Julia chose the most difficult song on the whole album to sing, and, oh my God, she knocked us out! I ran backstage, put my arms around her, gave her a big hug and said, ‘Who are you?’ “Julia’s a natural at harmonies that are unlike anything I’ve ever heard. If I asked someone else to harmonise onstage, or for a recording, it can be…

AFTER MEETING in 1973, Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook quickly put a band together. “That summer, we played a couple of festivals, one as a band, one as a duo,” recalls Tilbrook. “The band was a bass player called Norman and a drummer, John, that’s all I can remember. That didn’t really work. Later, we had a West Indian pianist called Floyd. He was great, and I always wondered what Squeeze would have sounded like with him in it. He had some great songs, but it just didn’t happen, that lineup was very fluid and gone in a few months. So after that, we asked Jools to join.” Tilbrook was also playing in another South London band at this time. “I played in an early lineup of The Only Ones,”…

“IT’S BEEN A MAD WEEK,” admits Kurt Vile. “I was practising with the band for five days. Then we flew to the Pitchfork festival in Chicago, left the stage directly after our set, went to the airport and flew to London to play the Citadel Festival that same day.” It is safe to say that the Philadelphia musician is currently entering a new phase in his garlanded career. His new album, b’lieve I’m goin down…, continues to refine his brand of hazy psych-rock and, as his recent travel itinerary demonstrates, his international profile keeps on rising. “It’s hard to say how this record will be received,” he admits. “But I know it’s my cleanest, clearest message.” Vile has always been prolific, of course, whether it be his stream of early…

The River People DANGER IN THE PAST , 1990 This hushed, acoustic track from Forster’s first solo album, inspired by Rupert Bunny’s painting Tritons , is still a mysterious, circling thing, hypnotic in its oblique narrative: “You came up to the house after swimming on sunset and the flattened sea.” 121 CALLING FROM A COUNTRY PHONE , 1993 With its chiming guitars, this propulsive highlight from Forster’s most country-influenced album predicts the flighty delights of “Let Me Imagine You” and, with its tales of “tombstones, cobblestones, all those old bones” , the travelogue of “A Poet Walks”. I Can Do WARM NIGHTS , 1996 Complete with taut and dry production from Edwyn Collins, Forster’s fourth solo LP is the only one that…

Why the title? Ones And Sixes is a step away from zeros and fives. It’s an organised effort to create randomness and/or chaos. Where do you place your precious control to create something that is then out of your control? Once it was there, other references came: one to six was a scale once used to measure someone’s sexual preference, or the success of an internet page. I heard the number of the beast is actually 616, not 666. What prompted the dystopian electronic textures? We work in a certain direction for a few records then, when it feels like we have arrived with it or have answered a few questions, we tend to stab off into a different direction. The past few records have been…

Recorded At: Germano Studios, NY, with additional recording at One East Recording, NY; Brooklyn Recording, NY; Willie Mitchell’s Royal Studios, Memphis Produced by: Keith Richards and Steve Jordan Personnel includes: Keith Richards (vocals, electric and acoustic guitars, bass, piano, keyboard, electric sitar, Farfisa, Wurlitzer, tiple), Steve Jordan (drums, percussion, piano, backing vocals), Waddy Wachtel (guitars), Bobby Keys (saxophone), Larry Campbell (pedal steel, violin), Paul Nowinski (bass), Charles Hodges (organ)…

Southern overlords Drive-By Truckers have announced the release of It’s Great To Be Alive! , a 35-track set recorded over three nights at San Francisco’s Fillmore in November 2014. Due at the end of October on ATO, and available in 5LP or 3CD format, the LP spans their entire career, including cuts from Adam’s House Cat, the pre-Truckers band formed by Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley. There’ll also be a condensed 13-track edition: This Weekend’s The Night . Elsewhere, the Eagles’ Don Henley heads back to his roots for Cass County , his first solo effort since 2000’s Inside Job . Co-produced with ex-Tom Petty drummer Stan Lynch, the album is named after his East Texan birthplace and…

Were you trying to recreate New Order’s ’80s sound on Music Complete ? It’s not as self-conscious as that. The only self-conscious thing was: let’s use some synths for a change, that was as far as it went. Everything else was just a chain reaction from that really. The last couple of albums did have synths on too, but they mostly started out as guitar tracks, whereas these mostly started out as synth tracks. Which is kind of what we did in the ’80s. Did it feel like an obstacle recording the first ever New Order album without Peter Hook? Ooh, I knew there was something missing! I wouldn’t say it’s an obstacle, but it makes you write songs in a different way. Because we weren’t working with Hooky…

Techno Animal The Brotherhood Of The Bomb MATADOR, 2001 After convening their ’80s jazz-grindcore group GOD, Kevin Martin and Justin Broadrick – also of Godflesh – concentrated their energies on this industrial-strength hip-hop project. Machine-like grooves meet abstract lyricism, best seen on “We Can Build You”, featuring El-P and Cannibal Ox’s Vast Aire. The Bug London Zoo REPHLEX, 2008 As dubstep swept the capital, Martin responded with this apocalyptic vision, drawing lines between modern bass music, vintage dub and dancehall backed by a host of MCs. It spawned two enduring classics, the wickedly barbed “Poison Dart” (featuring ragga toaster Warrior Queen) and MC Flowdan’s chilling “Skeng”. King Midas Sound Waiting For You HYPERDUB, 2009 Kevin Martin’s work with Trinidad-born poet and author Roger Robinson tones down the booming volume of…

Ought were very much a right-place/right-time occurrence, according to keyboardist Matt May. The right place was Montreal, where the band’s three American and one Australian members converged to attend university. The right time was 2012, when massive student protests exploded over tuition hikes. “Every night for several months people would be outside, strangers and friends alike,” May says. “That energy and excitement was palpable… It made a huge impact on my life and on the city.” It wasn’t long before the four moved into a communal space and began developing the incendiary racket that fills 2014’s More Than Any Other Day and its successor Sun Coming Down . Ought soon attracted the attention of Constellation, the Montreal label spearheaded by Godspeed You! Black…

Linn Osterberg never had a Plan B. The young Swedish singer-songwriter, who records under the name of Sea Lion, always knew music was her destiny. “I thought if I had absolutely no back-up plan, I would pursue it harder,” she says. After years as a wallflower on the fringes of Gothenburg’s vibrant scene, Osterberg’s youthful ambition has finally paid off with her official debut album, Desolate Stars . It’s an achingly beautiful collection of avant-folk torch songs, albeit wreathed in heartbroken Scandinavian gloom. “Yeah, it turned out pretty slow and dark,” Osterberg admits. “It’s definitely a reflection of my emotional state when I recorded it. I guess I can be a pretty melancholic person but it’s not like I don’t have every other emotion equally much.”…

What was the impetus for this album? After touring The Harrow & The Harvest, we started writing songs and it just felt as though the first couple of dominoes fell toward me, in terms of me singing. And that was combined with a feeling that we wanted to push a little differently after the last record. We decided to play a few dates, so I began looking for a new iteration of the [Dave Rawlings] Machine. Were you after a particular feel? The initial concept was that Gillian and I were going to record with just Paul Kowert on bass. But the songs dictated a certain other feeling. I liked the pace of them and they suited the ruminations of the lyrics. As we were writing,…

HOW DID YOU persuade Link to work with you? At the beginning, Link didn’t like me. Link was like, “What the fuck do you want?” He was the guy who invented rock’n’roll, and he was broke. He couldn’t even feed his family. So he was very sceptical. He barely shook my hand, he didn’t want to know about me. He said: “You want to produce an album? Who the hell wants an album of Link Wray’s music any more?” This was the ’60s, man, it was The Beatles, the Stones and all that stuff. And I said, “Well, Link, these are the people who idolise you.” He didn’t believe it – he thought I was just bullshitting him. I went back to New York and I began getting all these…

ALEX CHILTON Live In London AURA, 1980 Grounded by a thudding, virtually improvised backing group, Live In London is a full-bore mess, obdurately so. It’s also about as hard as Chilton ever rocked, as evidenced by a blistering “Train Kept A-Rollin’”, and a dark, stomping “Bangkok”. ALEX CHILTON Electricity by Candlelight: NYC 2/13/97 BAR/NONE, 2013 This impromptu, near-acoustic bevy of covers, performed during a power cut, is startling, shambolic, hilarious, and mercurial in equal measure. Chilton shows his range, covering Joni Mitchell and Glen Sherley, and ploughing through Loudon Wainwright’s intemperate “Motel Blues”, only to modestly offer up a trio of heartfelt Brian Wilson nuggets. BIG STAR Live In Memphis OMNIVORE, 2014 With kindred spirits Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow of The…

SCORING: 10 A true classic 9 Essential 8 Excellent 7 Very good 6 Good 4-5 Mediocre 1-3 Poor WHEN WILCO INVITED suggestions for their setlist at the 2013 edition of the Solid Sound Festival, they got a surprise. They expected their fans to treat the invitation lightly, and were braced for requests to play Justin Bieber songs. But the Wilco legions had other ideas. “I have worries,” says guitarist Nels Cline at a rehearsal, only half-joking, “some of this stuff was iconic.” He needn’t have worried. Wilco’s covers set stands as a cut-out-and-keep guide to their creative roots, starting with Thin Lizzy and meandering through Big Star, Uncle Tupelo (obvious, that), The Rolling Stones, Dylan, The Grateful Dead, the Velvets, Brinsley Schwarz (or possibly Elvis Costello/Nick Lowe), Neil Young, Cheap…

LEGEND Director Brian Helgeland Starring Tom Hardy, Emily Browning Opens September 9 Cert 15 TRAINWRECK Director Judd Apatow Starring Amy Schumer, Bill Hader Opened August 14 Cert 15 STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON Director F Gary Gray Starring O’Shea Jackson Jr, Paul Giamatti Opens August 28 Cert 18 ROGER WATERS THE WALL Director Roger Waters, Sean Evans Starring Roger Waters Opens Sept 29 Cert 12A THE ARCADE FIRE – THE REFLEKTOR TAPES Director Kahil Joseph Starring Win Butler, Régine Chassagne Opens Sept 25 Cert U…