MOJO 2018-01

SHOWCASING ONE OF DYLAN’S MOST SURPRISING, CONTROVERSIAL AND INSPIRED PERIODS. THE LATEST BOOTLEG CHAPTER COVERS THE ALBUMS SLOW TRAIN COMING / SAVED / SHOT OF LOVE

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OUT NOW

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JANUARY 2018

ORO Issue 290

FEATURES

38

JOSH HOMME

44

ROBERT FINLEY

48

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN

With another of MOJO’s Albums Of The Year on his résumé, the QOTSA riff machine rolls out his worldview. “I’m looking for reality,” he tells Keith Cameron. A life in music began at 60 for Finley, hatched in Louisiana mud but now finally bringing his bluesful soul to the world with a leg-up from The Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach.

After Born In The U.S.A. made him an icon, The Boss got hitched and put his regrets to music. Max Weinberg, Angel Olsen and more salute Tunnel Of Love, 30 years on.

57

THE BEST OF 2017 Includes the 50 Best New Albums, Best Reissues, Books and Music Films. Starring Paul Weller, James Murphy, Alice Coltrane, Grateful Dead, Jane Weaver and many more.

COVER STORY

Tom Sheehan

74

THE JAM

The rise of The People’s Band, and the Mod renaissance they unleashed, by the ace faces who were there. Cue: life-changing shows and era-defining songs, haloed with a pop-art blur of ripped seats and smashed Rickenbackers, and all driven by “a raw sense of destiny”.

“I wanted to dance, I wanted to groove, I wanted there to be girls, I wanted it to be hedonistic.” JOSH HOMME, P38 MOJO 3

The Mummies little helpers, Lives, p120.

REGULARS 9

ALL BACK TO MY PLACE

11

THEORIES, RANTS, ETC

34

REAL GONE Hail and farewell, George

The B-52’s’ Cindy Wilson, reggae voice Ken Boothe and TV hoofer Anton Du Beke spin the platters. Adieu Petty, a sound like Thunders, you Dü right. Young, Gord Downie, Wo Tom a aPaley, d JoGradya Tate, . Bunny Sigler and many others.

126 ASK FRED What happened to the extra

Electrified Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith: MOJO Rising, p20.

film from The London Rock And Roll Show of ’72?

130 HELLO GOODBYE Gary Lucas says howdy and so long to Captain Beefheart.

WHAT GOES ON! 14

FATS DOMINO He was the hard-driving

19

THE BREEDERS Kim and Kelley Deal

22

KEVIN GODLEY The former 10cc/ Godley & Creme audio-visualist renders his SelfPortrait and tells us about life, labour and heaven.

26

PULP NOVELS Fancy cheap’n’nasty

28

MOBY They all thought he was washed up in

Bono and U2 share Songs Of Experience: Lead Album, p86.

New Orleans piano rhythm king who jumpstarted rock’n’roll more than six decades ago. After his passing, aged 89, MOJO presents a four-page tribute to one of the true pioneers of music. have reformulated the line-up that made 1993’s Last Splash album to record an entire new LP. We join them in the studio to find out what’s cooking.

paperbacks about skinheads, punks, beatniks and acid heads, with lurid cover art? It’s a page-turner! the late ’90s. Then he made Play, it sold 10 million copies, and he was spun into a broiling centrifuge of temptation. Eyewitnesses Moby and Mute kingpin Daniel Miller recall the maddest of times.

MOJO FILTER 86 NEW ALBUMS U2 back on form. Plus Björk’s “Tinder album”, the Howes, Jim James, Jazz, Underground, Urban, Electronica and more.

100 REISSUES Isaac Hayes unleashed, the Stones on BBC, German Oak, Wilco and more.

112 BOOKS Television’s Richard Lloyd tunes in, plus Steely Dan, Lou Reed, Steely Dan and more.

114 SCREEN John Coltrane’s genius, plus Bert Berns, The Beatles, Shirley Collins, L7.

116 LIVES Arcade Fire in Seattle, Bruce on Broadway, and The Mummies know best.

Lois Wilson Lois Wilson first interviewed Paul Weller for the late MOJO Collections in 2001. This month she writes about his formative years in The Jam (p74) then interviews him as a part of our Best Of The Year round-up. She also talks to late-blooming bluesman Robert Finley on page 44.

Fred Dellar

Nate Watters

He’s been a fish and chip shop employee, a paint sprayer, a nonflying airman and factory worker in his time. But he claims, with some conviction, it’s been better just chatting with the likes Dolly Parton, Dusty Springfield, Nancy Wilson, Tammy Wynette and Thelma Houston. Yes, really.

He’s been photographing live music for almost 20 years, yet this was Nate’s first time shooting Arcade Fire (see Lives, page 116. “As a photographer, this band is everything I want in a live show,” says the impressed Watters, “high energy, the band running all over the stage, wild fans. Such a blast!”

Peter Strain, Joseph Rosen, Tim Saccenti

’S CONTRIBUTORS INCLUDE

MOJO PRESENTS PAUL WELLER, NADIA REID, THE WAR ON DRUGS, GHOSTPOET, ALICE COLTRANE, SPARKS, JULIE BYRNE, PETER PERRETT & MORE

01 THE WAR ON DRUGS PAIN

Adam Granduciel’s dreamy rock proxy added more shimmery ’80s polish in 2017, offering woozy balm for searching souls. He’s at his best on Pain, gently propulsive and replete with pealing guitar solos – medicine for all who “wanna find what can’t be found”.

Philippe Mazzoni, Benoit Peverelli, Tom Bead, Steve Gullick, Tonje Thilesen, Sarah Danziger, Meek Zuiderwyk, Constance

(Granduciel) Published by Sea Formation Music (ASCAP). & 2017 Atlantic Recording Corporation for the United States and WEA International Inc. for the world outside of the United States. All Rights Reserved. Printed in USA. From the album A Deeper Understanding.

09 THIS IS THE KIT HOTTER COLDER

Kate Stables, a Bristolian banjoist and singer resident in Paris, knows just how to employ minimal ingredients for maximum effect. Like Afrobeat reimagined for rural England, this loose-grooved folk conundrum with filigrees of guitar and voice speaks of visitation and oblique guidance, with a sax break pushing it into real-ale hoedown territory. (Stables) Published by Copyright Control 2017 Rough Trade Records Limited. Licensed courtesy of Rough Trade Records Limited by arrangement with Beggars Group Media Limited. www.roughtraderecords.com

6 MOJO

02 SONGHOY BLUES BAMAKO

Talk about a band that seized the year: Mali men Songhoy Blues turned everyone who saw them live into evangelists, and the rough, tough energy that marks them out from the elders of desert rock is distilled on this funk-filled paean to the city that offered them shelter from the storm of violence and Islamist persecution prevailing in their native north.

03 PAUL WELLER

04 GHOSTPOET

His lucky 13th solo album typified the modern Modfather’s combo of experiment and inalienable soul-rock chops. Listen to him out-Jools Jools on piano, rock the glockenspiel, and journey to Pepperland and back on this statement of relevance and optimism. “I like today just as it is,” he sings, and why wouldn’t you?

Obaro Ejimiwe put politics ahead of self-reflection on this most powerful moment from his fourth album. A first-person imagining of a desperate man (“with my two kids and my lovely wife”) in a desperate situation (“I can’t swim/The water’s in my lungs”) whose misery is palpable; it’s in Ejimiwe’s claustrophobic voice and in the ominous helicoptering guitars.

SATELLITE KID

IMMIGRANT BOOGIE

(A. Touré, O. Touré, G. Touré, Dembele) Published by Handsome Dad administered by Kobalt. Licensed from [PIAS]. From the album Résistance. http://songhoyblues.com/

(Weller) Published by Universal Music Publishing. & 2017 Solid Bond Productions Limited under exclusive licence to Parlophone Records Limited, a Warner Music Group Company. From the album A Kind Revolution.

10 ENDLESS BOOGIE

11 ALICE COLTRANE

12 JULIE BYRNE

From MOJO’s Reissue Of The Year, an extraordinary collection of devotional music by the organist/ pianist/harpist who also happened to be John Coltrane’s wife, restored to the world by the Lost Music explorers at David Byrne’s Luaka Bop label. This epic harp-and-voice mantra will have you packing up and heading off to the nearest ashram for a crash course in mindfulness.

Set adrift on the Buffalo, NY native’s ghostly cloud of a voice and economical finger-style guitar picking, it’s easy to forget those workaday essentials like your name and what you came here for. That the parent album of this heat-hazed on-the-road hallucination, the exquisite Not Even Happiness, is only Byrne’s second seems absurd. She sounds like she’s been here centuries.

(Turiyasangitananda). & Jowcol Music, BMI. From the album: World Spirituality Classics 1: The Ecstatic Music Of Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda Luaka Bop 087. AliceColtrane.com

(Byrne) Published by Mute Song; & 2017 Basin Rock. from the album Not Even Happiness (Basin Rock) http://juliemariebyrne.com / http://mutesong.com/

BACK IN ’74

NY’s zen bar-band, who have been known to perform underneath a giant cardboard cigarette, are not a group to be trifled with. This gnarly piece of trance-out biker rock tells of watching Kiss at a kite festival in St Louis in 1974: as the acid kicks in and the meatheads go on the attack because someone shaved their eyebrows in tribute to Bowie, the driving suspense that only they can command is palpable. (Major, Eklow, Razo, Druzd) Published by Endless Boogie BMI. From the album Vibe Killer. noquarter.net/artists/endless-boogie/

ER RA

(Ejimiwe) Published by Just Isn’t Music. & 2017 Ghostpoet. Under exclusive license to Play It Again Sam, from the album Dark Days + Canapés (Play It Again Sam) www.ghostpoet.co.uk

NATURAL BLUE

A

LICE COLTRANE, PAUL WELLER, ST. VINCENT, Lal Waterson, Endless Boogie… No, it’s not one of those “…walked into a bar” jokes. In fact the one place you could be guaranteed to clock that wonderfully unlikely collection of people is in MOJO’s list of the Best Albums Of 2017 and on this compilation of some of our favourite songs of the year. The year itself was a challenging one; the music world struggled to come to terms with the Manchester Arena bomb attack – just part of a picture of violence and volatility that continued to define our world. Some of those issues – the global refugee crisis, ongoing conflict in Mali – are addressed amid the 15 incredibly varied tracks gathered here. But a lot of music we loved leaned another way – towards healing and hope – and as ever there are echoes of a better world, of communion and communication, in the songs on this CD. Play it to anyone who needs assurance that there are amazing, life-enhancing, maybe even world-improving sounds still to discover.

05 SPARKS

06 NADIA REID

The Mael Brothers returned with an album of typically rare conceits(eg, a song that rhymed Titus Andronicus with a Volkswagen microbus). Unaware imagines a baby’s blissful ignorance of all the trivial chaff (“Taylor Swift has something new”) and bland disappointments it has to look forward to. All to a great, churning electro-raga. Sui generis.

An up-tempo highlight from our Number 2 Album Of 2017 (there was barely a hair’s breadth in it), Ride On Time is the New Zealand songwriter’s Feetwood Mac moment: a windswept gallop of a song about selfcourageousness and romantic resolve with a minor key melody so luminous it casts its light over the rest of the album.

(Ronald Mael, Russell Mael) Published by BMG Rights Management, & 2017 BMG Rights Management (UK) Ltd from the album Hippopotamus (BMG) http://allsparks.com/

(Reid) Published by Blue Raincoat Songs; & 2017 Basin Rock, from the album Preservation (Basin Rock) https://www.nadiareid.com/ http://blueraincoatmusic.com/

UNAWARE

RIGHT ON TIME

07 HURRAY FOR THE RIFF RAFF HUNGRY GHOST

Alynda Segarra – Bronx-born Americana artist of Puerto Rican descent – has “been a lonely girl, but I’m ready for the world”, perhaps unwittingly addressing the step-up into the public eye made inevitable by the rich, passionate and genrefree music she’s now making. As exemplified by this yearning epic. (Segarra) Published by Wooden Wings Publishing (BMI) From the album The Navigator www.hurrayfortheriffraff.com/

08 PETER PERRETT AN EPIC STORY

The ex-Only Ones mainman’s own epic story – career seppuku; neardeath; high-stakes drug dealing – could have overshadowed the music he returned with in 2017. But beautiful songs and arrangements aided by sons Jamie (guitar) and Peter Jr (bass) told their own tale. This winning hymn to romantic love (and Perrett’s wife Xena) shone brightest. (Perrett) Published by Domino Publishing Co. Ltd (PRS); & 2017 Domino Recording Company, From the album How The West Was Won (Domino Recording Company) www.dominorecordco.com/

REELIN’ IN THE YEAR! 13 LAL & MIKE WATERSON SHADY LADY

A second track from MOJO’s Reissues Of The Year list, plucked from Domino’s long-overdue restoration of 1972’s Bright Phoebus, surely the Sgt. Pepper of British folk-rock. This is the verveful ying to the album’s spook-folk yang, underlined by Lal and Mike’s advice to “get yourself some sunshine when you can”. (Waterson) Published by Domino Publishing Co. Ltd (PRS); 1972 Domino Recording Company and 2017 Domino Recording Company, from the album Bright Phoebus (Domino Recording Company)

14 RICHARD DAWSON

15 OUMOU SANGARÉ

An eccentric wassailer from Tyneside, avant-folk voice and guitar Richard Dawson set his Peasant album in 6th century Northumberland. A song in several parts involving spry strings, choral chanting and Dawson’s own unschooled cries and rumbles, Ogre is its stage-setter, cogitating on sacrifice, murder and searching for truth within the limited horizons of a self-contained world.

“When I wrote Yere Faga I realised that it had to be Tony Allen playing on it,” says the Malian superstar of her long-envisioned collaboration with Afrobeat’s master drummer. A song about suicide and the need to talk more openly about it may not seem like an obvious party tune, yet Allen’s hypnobeat propels this straight onto the dancefloor with an insistent two-step rhythm any audience will understand.

OGRE

(Dawson) Published by Domino Publishing Co. Ltd (PRS); & 2017 Domino Recording Company, from the album Peasant (Domino Recording Company) www.dominorecordco.com/

YERE FAGA

(Sangaré) Published by NO FORMAT! & 2017 NO FORMAT! From the album Yere Faga.

OR OUR 50 BEST ALBUMS OF 2017, PLUS BEST REISSUES, BOOKS, MUSIC FILMS AND MORE, TURN TO P57

Cindy Wilson THE B-52’S PISCES WHO LIKES CHIHUAHUAS What music are you currently grooving to? I’ve been going psychedelic and electronic. I’ve been kind of obsessed with Tame Impala for a while now, and Temples. Just beautiful. What, if push comes to shove, is your all-time favourite album? I guess it would be Nirvana’s Nevermind. I’d moved down to Atlanta, Georgia and there was this brand new energy for me, and Nirvana came out and blew my mind. It really was important for me, I was driving around just rocking to it. What was the first record you ever bought? And where did you buy it? Well, I was a little girl and I got my allowance and bought Downtown by Petula Clark, from a small record shop in downtown Athens, Georgia. So crazy. We kind of did a punk, upside-down version of it later. Which musician, other than yourself, have you ever wanted to be? Again I’m gonna date myself – Dusty

Springfield. That blue-eyed soul, you know? She was gorgeous, I loved her voice, her TV show, everything about her! She should be worshipped. What do you sing in the shower? The goofier the song the better – Wooly Bully by Sam The Sham, To Sir With Love by Lulu, Howlin’ Wolf, stuff from wherever, depends what the mood is. I have eclectic tastes! What is your favourite Saturday night record? Well for a good time you can’t beat funk, and I love George Clinton and Parliament and Funkadelic, and James Brown. The old-time stuff, I’d play it all without stopping. And your Sunday morning record? I like Sérgio Mendes & Brasil 66, so I’ll turn on a bossa nova bunch of songs. Blues and bluegrass are also great. I have these ’50s coffee cups, with an atomic design on them. I’ll sit on my porch, relax and drink coffee. Cindy Wilson’s album Change is out on December 1 on Kill Rock Stars.

IN WHICH THE STARS REVEAL THE SONIC DELIGHTS GUARANTEED TO GET THEM GOING...

Ken Boothe

later, American musicians, like the great Jimmy Smith.

HE’LL GIVE YOU EVERYTHING HE OWNS

Which musician, other than yourself, have you ever wanted to be? Maybe Otis Redding, or Sam Cooke. It’s difficult to pick only one. But Otis was always somebody special, he touches my heart in a special way.

What music are you currently grooving to? I listen to all kinds of music – the Jamaican classics like Bob Marley, Dennis Brown and Delroy Wilson, but also the blues, R&B from the ’60s, everything from Stax and Motown… I also love to hear the youth music. I’m not that kind of man stuck in the past. I like Chronixx, and Romain Virgo who can sing very good. They are real talents.

Lynn Goldsmih/Getty Images, Bernard Benant

What, if push comes to shove, is your all-time favourite album? I’ll say The Dock Of The Bay by Otis Redding for all the emotions that you can hear in his voice and his way of singing. What was the first record you ever bought? And where did you buy it? As I sing since a very young age in Kingston, producers know me, and I don’t have to buy their records. But I would say that I used to collect and keep all records from Der i , Owen Gray also… And

Anton Du Beke STRICTLY SPEAKING What music are you currently grooving to? Things that I might be able to turn into a dance number. I’ve got a paso doble next week and I’ve been listening to Mr Brightside by The Killers. When I was growing up I loved The Jam. Was I a punk? Christ no.

What do you sing in the shower? I don’t sing in the shower, most of the time. I keep my voice for the people, for the shows. What is your favourite Saturday night record? Let’s say Delroy Wilson, I can’t forget him. The record will be I’m In A Dancing Mood. Always a good tune to dance and rock the place. And your Sunday morning record? Gospel. A record from Shirley Caesar for example. I like to hear gospel, since I’m a small child. When we were living in Denham Town, my mother used to sing gospel in church you know, and I used to go with her at church. That is where I learn to sing in the first place. So, when I listen to gospel, it reminds me of her also. Ken Boothe’s LP Inna De Yard is out now on Chapter Two.

NOW PLAYING G

The young Cindy Wilson instigated her music habit – and forgot all her cares! – with Petula Clark’s 1964 transatlantic smash Downtown. G Ken Boothe’s alltime favourite album is Otis Redding’s posthumous 1968 LP The Dock Of The Bay. G He wasn’t much of a glam rocker, but dancin’ Anton Du Beke was crazy for Bowie’s 1972 opus The Rise AAnd Fall Of Ziggy SStardust And The SSpiders From Mars.

What, if push comes to shove, is your all-time favourite album? It’s terrible to say a Greatest Hits but The Best Of Sammy Davis Jr has a live version of him singing Old Man River that’s astonishing. The sentiment and the power of the song is magnificent What was the first record you ever bought? And where did you buy it? The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars. I wasn’t much for glam rock but David Bowie was the one. There used to be a Woolworths and a W.H. Smith’s on Sevenoaks High Street. I’d have bought it from one of those sorts of establishments. The first single I ever bought was Oliver’s Army by Elvis Costello. I don’t think he’s recorded anything as good since, quite frankly.

Which musician have you ever wanted to be? I’ve always wanted to be Sammy Davis Jr. He’s got the most incredible voice. Or Fred Astaire. What do you sing in the shower? Me And My Shadow is one of my favourite tracks so I’m often caught singing that. I loved it anyway but now it’s become really important to me because I sang it with Brucie on Strictly. What’s your favourite Saturday night record? The Strictly Come Dancing theme. I have a slightly sweaty moment when I hear that. And your Sunday morning record? Fergie’s song from The Great Gatsby soundtrack, A Little Party Never Killed Nobody (All We Got), that’s great. I get all creative when I hear stuff like that. Every day’s a dance and every day’s a song! Anton Du Beke’s album From The Top is out now on Polydor.

MOJO 9

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Acting Editor Danny Eccleston Art Editor Mark Wagstaff Associate Editor (Production) Geoff Brown Reviews Editor Jenny Bulley Associate Editor (News) Ian Harrison Picture Editor Matt Turner Senior Associate Editor Andrew Male Associate Deputy Art Editor Russell Moorcroft Contributing Editors Phil Alexander, Sylvie Simmons, Keith Cameron For mojo4music.com contact Danny Eccleston

THEORIES, RANTS, ETC. MOJO welcomes letters for publication. Write to: Mojo Mail, Academic House, 24-28 Oval Road, London NW1 7DT. NEW E-mail: [email protected]

IT’S BEEN A YEAR OF EXTREMES. EXTREME

weather, extreme politics, reflected in a year of wildly varied (and, sometimes, pretty polarising) music, plus novel wheezes for getting it across. Jam magus Paul Weller tried to get a song on his A Kind Revolution album adopted by Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn. Bruce Springsteen, whose Tunnel Of Love album MOJO celebrates – mixed music and monologue on the Broadway stage. Josh Homme employed premier pop producer Mark Ronson and waited for the brickbats to fly in. But as he winningly explains in this month’s MOJO Interview, it takes a lot to put the Queens Of The Stone Age philosopher-frontman on the canvas. Amid the melee, the fundamentals endure: blues, R&B, rock’n’roll. Driven home this month by the loss of one of rock’s greats, Fats Domino. And underlined by new music by Robert Finley, a 63-year overnight sensation from Winnsboro, Louisiana, whose incredible story we tell on page 44. Race you there?

Thanks for their help with this issue:

Keith Cameron, Fred Dellar, Steve Fawcett, Del Gentleman Among this month’s contributors: Matt Allen, Martin Aston, Mike Barnes, Mark Blake, Glyn Brown, Stevie Chick, Andy Cowan, Fred Dellar, Tom Doyle, Daryl Easlea, Paul Elliott, Jim Farber, David Fricke, Andy Fyfe, George Garner, Pat Gilbert, David Hutcheon, Chris Ingham, Jim Irvin, Colin Irwin, Jesse Jarnow, David Katz, Alan Light, James McNair, Joe Muggs, Ben Myers, Kris Needs, Chris Nelson, Mark Paytress, Andrew Perry, Tony Russell, Jon Savage, Victoria Segal, David Sheppard, Michael Simmons, Sylvie Simmons, Laura Snapes, Mat Snow, Paul Stokes, Ben Thompson, Gianluca Tramontana, Paul Trynka, Kieron Tyler, Charles Waring, Roy Wilkinson, Lois Wilson, Stephen Worthy.

Among this month’s photographers: Cover: Richard Young/Rex/ Shuttershock. Adrian Boot, Emily Beaver, Andy Crofts, Corinne Day, Timothy Duffy, Guy Eppel, Andy Fallon, Alysse Gafkjen, Martyn Goddard, Lynn Goldsmith, Rebecca Lupton, Gered Mankowitz, Edgar Mata, Robert Matheu, Neal Preston, Joseph Rosen, Ken Schreiber, Tom Sheehan, Nate Watters, Mattia Zoppellaro

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DANNY ECCLESTON, ACTING EDITOR Good lad, well done Mat Snow’s farewell to Tom Petty in MOJO 289 was fulsome and insightful – especially his reflection on what made Petty, having grown up with his mother, granny and aunts, such a notably non-macho rocker (Tom: “Writing songs, I felt women’s trials and tribulations”). But I’m sure I’m not alone in wishing there had been more, maybe even the cover? I’m sure Dylan (“crushed” by the news of his friend and collaborator’s demise) would have applauded the move.

David Smith, Wallingford As is often the case, the sad news about Tom Petty came too late in our production schedule for MOJO to dramatically alter its course. But look out for a fuller tribute in a forthcoming issue, when it is hoped that the people who knew Petty best, having in some way come to terms with their initial shock and grief, will contribute to a piece that properly addresses what made him unique.

Really one to watch for the future I’m just dropping a note to say how valuable MOJO has become to my music life. The features and interviews are always interesting and it’s rare that I don’t end up learning something new even about artists I’ve followed for years. Most importantly, MOJO has become a great way to learn about artists that I don’t know, especially ones who aren’t well known in North America. Case in point, I read your short article on This Is The Kit in MOJO 287 and gave them a listen. Barely a few weeks later, by some

good timing, I was at their terrific show in Toronto and getting my photo with Kate Stables! Thanks for the good work.

Scott Maniquet, Toronto

Buffoon at times MOJO 289 was a feast. Bootsy, The Yardbirds, Queen’s 1977, a tasty-looking Gospel freebie… and Bob’s maligned (temporary) salvation. T’riffic. Shame about your Morrissey review. I’ve never cared for Moz OR the Smiths, so the only dog in the fight I have is the one concerned with the forcing of overgrown students’ icons to be politically on-message and unequivocally for the many, not the few etc.

Simon Fay, via e-mail

It’s not Weight Watchers I felt a particular connection to MOJO 289. I was at The Yardbirds’ Anderson Theater gig, which – in my recollection – was a benefit for the Hell’s Angels, whose headquarters were just around the corner. As such the audience was a strange but peaceful mix of Angels in their full colours mingling with hundreds of stoned-out hippies, underneath a thick marijuana cloud. Some years later I knew Johnny Thunders, who would sometimes drop by my East Village apartment in the early hours of the morning, knowing I’d probably be awake (and not caring if I wasn’t). On one such occasion, shortly after Sid Vicious died, Johnny told me that he and Sid had been ­ MOJO 11

¢

planning to form a band together(!), and he played me a song he’d just written in memory of Sid called Sad Vacation, which has since appeared on some albums. Also – make of this what you will – Johnny told me he thought Malcolm McLaren was a cunt. The Heartbreakers were an underrated band, and their regular shows at Max’s Kansas City were both raucous and wildly exciting. It’s good too to see So Alone getting some recognition – the album’s a neglected masterpiece that holds up well, as does L.A.M.F.

Bruce Paley, Castlemorris, Pembrokeshire

Breathe it up deep I thought I knew a fair bit about music already when I first picked up a copy of your magazine back in the very early days, even though I wasn’t buying new material through family/career/football team pressures. How wrong could I be? You got me back into it, though, and in a big way (in one year I made 68 CD purchases), with my knowledge expanding 10-fold over time. A lot of this is down to your How To Buy pages, as I have been introduced to many fine artists and albums I might never have fancied previously through this feature. It would be great to see all of them again in one place (on your website?). With The Temptations and, I see, Scott Walker (two acts I already know well) securing their places on those pages in consecutive issues, you have even managed to surpass yourself. Well done MOJO.

Steve Hobin, Urmston, Manchester

It ain’t a race Thanks for the Neu Decade CD in MOJO 288. David Bowie clearly gleaned many bits from these European music makers. Upon hearing some of the tracks, one cannot help imagining Bowie sliding a line in the mix, in his Peter O’Toole style, something comparable to “Oh dearie me!” Perhaps in England these tracks were played, but they are all unknown in the US. We got Sound And Vision and “Heroes” and if you were lucky you heard I Am A DJ. Keep revealing! Lastly, Phil Alexander we’ll miss ya! I’ve been on the MOJO ride for years now and you never let me down. All The Best!

Vin Maganzini, WMFO DJ, Tufts University, Massachusetts

I’ll make the phone call Hi. Excellent magazine, well done. What about an interview with/feature on George ‘Porky Prime Cuts’ Peckham? Cheers.

Oliver Burt, via e-mail

Please don’t mess me about, all right? Three things about using new technology to improve “listening experience” for old records… 1. Lodger sounded great and fabulous and weird

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12 MOJO

A GRE A GIFT!! T !

on vinyl in ’79. And a re-mastered CD sounded good too… 2. Why re-master AGAIN just because technology allows you to? Spend more money for another box set…? Buy nicer equipment to listen…? 3. Toni Visconti (multimillionaire) is 70 years young, still has perfect hearing and is STILL a studio genius? I think I’ll pass on the “tom-toms” sounding “brighter ”…

Mr S Richards, (48 and a half), Stoke On Trent

It’s a lovely article Despite the sad circumstances of its publication (RIP Grant Hart), I must thank Keith Cameron for his heartfelt Hüsker Dü feature in 289. I notice that it’s rare that MOJO writers include themselves in features (and it’s something I tend to approve of, having suffered through too many pained personal pieces of emotional music writing in the past) but the observational asides in Keith’s feature seemed to chime perfectly with who Hüsker Dü were as a band, and the ways in which many of their fans connected with their music. For me, Hüsker Dü brought a much needed warmth, humanity and romanticism to the US hardcore scene. They made me smile, and they made me cry, in a way, say, Black Flag never did. Well, damn, so did Keith’s feature. From one true fan, to another, thank you.

Noah Burford, via e-mail

A good, good man That was a great article in MOJO 288 about the magnificent Taj Mahal. I’d often wondered how he ended up on the Stones’ Rock And Roll Circus in 1968 and I now have the explanation. Thank you Michael Simmons! I was surprised, however, that there was no mention of Taj Mahal’s involvement in 1969 with the fantastic CBS Sampler The Rock Machine Turns You On. I think this was the first ever LP sampler (it was followed very quickly by Island’s Nice Enough To Eat and You Can All Join In) and it certainly turned me on, and thousands of others, all for the price of 12 shillings and sixpence! The LP showcased a wonderfully eclectic group of rock performers and included one track from their current albums, from stars such as Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Simon & Garfunkel, and The Byrds to then unknowns like Moby Grape, Spirit, Blood Sweat And Tears, Peanut Butter Conspiracy, The Zombies and Elmer Gantry’s Velvet Opera, folkies Roy Harper and Tim Rose, and then a track by this sensational blues performer called Taj Mahal, who sang Statesboro Blues! I’ve no idea who at CBS had the foresight to put this marvellous first-ever sampler LP together, but I’ll warrant that lots of MOJO readers must still have a copy, and like me will have enjoyed their first introduction to the brilliance of Taj Mahal!

Keith Handle, Leeds

SUBSCRIBE RIGHT NOW! And you’ll get MOJO delivered direct to your door. See page 37 for full details…

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FATSLIFE

“HE WAS THE ORIGINAL PLAYER” Dr. John leads the tributes to rock’n’roll original Fats Domino, who left us on October 24. Gianluca Tramontana reports. was asked to play Fats’ songs at so many sessions,” Dr. John told MOJO on the news of Fats Domino’s death. “Nobody else sounded like him. He’s the one who brought everything to fruition, and when he and Dave Bartholomew got together – they made the planet reverberate.” Pianist Fats, with his writer/producer partner Dave Bartholomew, came up with some of the most sublime music of the modern era. The two years from 1955 saw pioneering smashes Ain’t That A Shame, Blueberry Hill, Blue Monday and I’m Walkin’ shaping the rock’n’roll explosion then in progress. By the time of this success, Domino had already had a career as a hit-making R&B “race records” artist, whose piano-pounding, fierce left hand and heavy infectious backbeat could get any room dancing. After his years of success, unlike contemporaries who kept their hats in the ring when the musical landscape shifted, Domino quietly withdrew, unfussed whether anyone remembered him or his place in the pantheon of rock’n’roll. Antoine Dominique Domino Jr was born the youngest of eight in the semi-rural Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans into a French Creole-speaking family in 1928. By his mid-teens he was already turning heads and tapping feet in bars, while working in a bed-spring factory by day. Bandleader “HE’S THE Billy Diamond hired Antoine. Noting his healthy appetite – on tour, it was said that everyone knew ONE WHO which room he was in by following the smell of stewed BROUGHT pig feet or red beans – he gave him the moniker ‘Fats’ in EVERYTHING line with other rotund piano players like Fats Waller and TO Fats Pichone. Soon Fats Domino and his show-stopping FRUITION.” version of Albert Ammons’ Swanee River Boogie Dr. John became one of the main draws of Diamond’s band.

“I

hen bandleader, producer and talent scout Dave Bartholomew took Imperial Records owner Lew Chudd to see Domino at New Orleans’ Hideaway Club, they asked him to come to Cosimo Matassa’s J&M Records, where they had recorded Roy Brown’s Good Rockin’ Tonight two years earli The result was The Fat Man, a cleaned-up version of the Crescent City druggie blues so Junker’s Blues, recorded direct- disc at the end of 1949. Stripped down to just a rhyth section, guitar and Domino’s rollicking piano, The Fat Man’s t minutes 35 seconds of driving beat and loud distortion still sound impossibly thrilling. Though his records were bold and confident, Domino was a ­

Getty Images (2)

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“He made the planet reverberate”: Fats at the piano, March 27, 1967; (left) Domino (far left) and Dave Bartholomew flank Dr. John, New Orleans Film Festival, 2014.

THE HOT NEWS AND BIZARRE STORIES FROM PLANET MOJO

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self-effacing man. At J&M Recording Studio, where Fats made most of his hits, he would sit at the piano lost in his own world, running his fingers along the keys. Producer Bartholomew would be patient, allowing the music to manifest. “They’d give Fats a new song and he’d sort of noodle at the piano,” J&M owner and engineer Matassa told me back in 2004. “[He’d] noodle and noodle… and somewhere along the way it was almost like a transformation. He suddenly got it, he’d make it his own, and from then on it was Fats’ version of whatever [the song] was. You could feel it.” In 1955 Elvis Presley was still a regional Memphis artist with the occasional flutter in the country charts, and the mainstream pop listings were swaying to the gentle sounds of Davy Crockett and The Yellow Rose Of Texas. Then, on July 16, 1955, Ain’t That A Shame crashed into the Top 10 like a wrecking ball. Preceding Chuck Berry’s Maybellene by three months, it catapulted Domino from the R&B charts into the mainstream where he stayed until the early ’60s. He was constantly on the radio, a Billboard Top 100 fixture who sold more records than any other solo artist except Elvis, paving the way for black artists to enter the mainstream. Says Meters bassist George Porter Jr, who played with Fats at New Orleans’ Cindy Club in the mid-’60s, “He was the first, the original player that brought rock’n’roll to the forefront.” There were other ways he helped move society on. The 16 MOJO

I’m ready to rock’n’roll all night: (top) Fats and band at the New Orleans Jazz Festival, April 1977; (above right) with Jerry Lee Lewis and James Brown, 1986; (above left) film poster; The Beatles meet “a huge influence” backstage, 1964.

“HE’D NOODLE... THEN THERE WAS A TRANSFORMATION.” Cosimo Matassa

ats prospered in the heyday of ’50s rock’n’roll. In 1956 he appeared in two movies, Shake, Rattle And Rock! and The Girl Can’t Help It, with Little Richard, Gene Vincent, Eddie Cochran and more. That September, Blueberry Hill would be his biggest hit, a US Number 2 and a UK Number 6, selling in the multimillions. But following the British invasion, Domino’s hits started to taper off. He continued to play live and record over the next few decades, never truly fading from the public eye. But in 1995 on a memorable UK tour of rock’n’roll greatness with Little Richard and Chuck Berry, Domino was taken ill, couldn’t finish the dates, and never toured again. He withdrew into the home he had built for himself in the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans, a piano stool’s throw from the shotgun shack where he was born. Explaining that he did not want to travel as he could not get any decent food outside New Orleans, he didn’t pick up the National Medal of Arts from President Bill Clinton in 1998, sending his daughter Antoinette in his stead. He was happy to be with his wife, with his pots and pans, cooking pig’s feet and red beans or gumbo, playing piano and hanging whenever fellow musicians or any of his eight children – whose names all began with an ‘A’ – would stop in to say hello. If he was in his yard, he would occasionally talk to sightseeing fans. The Fats Domino story might have ended there were it not for 2005’s Hurricane Katrina. Images of a frail 77-year-

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Getty Images (2), Frank White Photo Agency, Photoshot/Avalon, Frank Bertacci Collection/Historic New Orleans Collection, Greg Miles

presence of white teenagers at his shows was scandalous in the segregated South, where blacks were split from whites by either a rope down the middle of the room or by separating patrons onto different floors. On occasion, Domino’s good-time entreaties whipped the crowd into such frenzy that the dividing rope would be pulled down or kids would come down from the mezzanine.

FULLFATS Six easy pieces of prime Fats Domino.

perial, 1950 )

Recorded irect-to-disc, this is one of Fats’ most high octane rockers. It also boasts a earing solo by l g-time mino saxman H ardesty, f walking along the bar and sliding across the floor during shows. “La bas”, meanwhile, refers to the voodoo spirit Papa Legba, the root of the ‘devil at the crossroads’ blues myth.

old Domino being rescued from his home, which had been destroyed along with everything in it, got him more attention than he had had in decades. Thereafter he moved to Harvey, another suburb of New Orleans. After Rosemary, his wife of 60 years died in 2008, Domino started to develop Alzheimer’s, yet English New Orleans-style piano player and longtime Crescent City resident Jon Cleary remembers that Fats could still play even in his twilight. “I was invited round to his house by a mutual friend after Katrina,” Cleary says. “I gravitated towards the piano and he came over, watching, and tentatively reached out with one hand. He played a few notes and then was playing fucking great. The part that felt the music wasn’t affected… he was playing as good as I’ve ever heard him play. His daughter liked that and would invite me to come and play for him. We’d play tunes together, and he would enjoy it.” ats had played his last public show on May 19, 2007 at Tipitina’s Uptown in New Orleans. This writer and others present were anxious that the Crescent City’s shyest son and biggest export, who hardly left his neighbourhood any more let alone performed, might not show. Though he’d missed that afternoon’s rehearsal, the moment Fats arrived his signature riotous piano and swinging backbeat had the room moving. He tried to escape after the fourth song, but was coaxed back to play his 1956 single Blue Monday. After his 30-minute, 11-song set, he swiftly left the stage with So Long’s chorus: “So long, I’m all packed up and on my way.” Even after his passing, the vision of that chubby, ever-smiling face and the extraordinary music that he made will not fade. Tribute-payers following his death included Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard and Paul McCartney, who wrote of how Fats’ “voice, piano playing and musical style was a huge influence” on The Beatles. “Antoine was a hip cat,” says Dr. John in conclusion, “and spiritually off the hook. I always saw him in New Orleans with his sprouts [kids]. He was ahead of his times. I’ll always remember that about him. He was a good man, and people responded to that in his music.”

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SWANEE RIVER HOP (Imperial, 1953)

Domino effect: (from top) Fats spruces up, ’74; tour poster; back in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina; Imperial team, with collaborator Dave Bartholomew.

A later recording of Swanee River Boogie, Domino’s showstopper in the ’40s, lets you hear his genius. With the rhythm section low in the mix, it’s the perfect setting for that swinging left hand.

BLUE MONDAY (Imperial, 1956)

This bluesy strut about the drudgery of work after the weekend was a favourite of Domino, Dave Bartholomew and Imperial Records owner Lew Chudd. It was written by Bartholemew after a disastrous trip with an all-star New Orleans Revue, which saw the band underpaid and holed up in the theatre for days.

BLUEBERRY HILL (Imperial, 1956 ) Domino sings Louis Armstrong’s 1949 version of the 1940 song, but simplifies it, stretching out the vowels and showcasing his Southern drawl. Pieced together from multiple takes, it became an anthem of romance and his biggest hit. Elvis had Domino teach him the piano part, while Led Zeppelin, Elton John and even Vladimir Putin have sung it live.

I’M READY (Imperial, 1959 )

One of Fats’ fastest songs, recorded minus saxes with just a rhythm section backing him. When he played it that year on Dick Clark’s highly rated The Record Years show, he loudly reminded the Paul Anka and Frankie Avalon fans that at least someone was still “ready to rock’n’roll all night”.

WHISKEY HEAVEN

(Warner Bros/Viva, 1980) From the soundtrack of Clint Eastwood’s movie Any Which Way You Can, Fats’ musical personality – that left hand, the swaying rhythm and piano triplets – is so strong that he even makes a straight-up country song with pedal steel his own. And his heavy-lidded pronunciation of “Jack Daniel’s” should be standard. By Gianluca Tramontana and Rick Coleman, author of Blue Monday: Fats Domino And The Lost Dawn Of Rock And Roll (Da Capo Press, 2007)

Credit in here

HEY! LA BAS OOGIE

MOJO 17

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JULIA JACKLIN COLD CALLER

Ace interpretive dance video for this new song (a double A-side with Eastwick) from Jacklin, a native of New South Wales whose aching Appalachian waltz and woozy vocal burr will sway the stiffest of hips. Find It: YouTube

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LEE FIELDS & THE EXPRESSIONS TIME

The sessions for Fields’ 2017 album Special Night also yielded this tasty off-cut: a gorgeous, horn-driven soul celebration of the heart-stopping, age-defying possibilities of true love. Find It: SoundCloud/Big Crown Records

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MOJOPLAYLIST

HAMILTON LEITHAUSER HEARTSTRUCK (WILD HUNGER) FEATURING ANGEL OLSEN

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Plugging into the western mainline, the singer finds where the prairie meets the sky in a string-shivered song of longing. Olsen adds echoes of Patsy Cline’s Crazy. Find It: YouTube

1 TUNE-YARDS

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LOOK AT YOUR HANDS Three years after last LP Nikki Nack, k Merrill Garbus brings an ebullient ’80s electro-influenced dancer with big soul vocals and house piano – and is that a dialled-down quirk factor? The song’s about personal responsibility, with Garbus musing, “the world is a mess, but I’ve been attempting to look more and more inward: how do all of these ‘isms’ that we live in manifest in me, in my daily activities, interactions?” It’s a taster for new album I Can Feel You Creep Into My Private Life, out in January. Find It: YouTube THE WAR ON DRUGS LIKE A HURRICANE

Live at Massey Hall, Toronto, in October, the heartland psychedelians cover Neil Young’s song of the pros and cons of freaking out when intense attraction comes knocking. Cue fretboard lift-off. Find It: YouTube

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Palmy army: (above) TuneYards’ Merrill Garbus and Nate Brewer (left); (below) Jim James.

HOLLIE COOK FREEFALLING

Turn up the air con! In anticipation of next year’s Vessel Of Love album, Cook puts out two tropical tasters; this dizzyingly lovely song with its blissful, My Bloody Valentine-on holiday reggae sound and the (slightly) more upbeat Survive. Find It: various streaming services

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BAXTER DURY MIAMI (PARROT AND COCKER TOO REMIX)

Playing a sinister role with a hint of self-doubt, Dury The Younger heads to the Parisian discotheque, with Billie Jean tempos, extravagant Lexicon Of Love strings and electro squiggle courtesy of top Sheffield remixers. Find It: Heavenlyrecordings.com

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FUNKADELIC MUSIC 4 MY MOTHER (UNDERGROUND RESISTANCE MIX)

From the Reworked By Detroiters remix album, a c bl rocker gets stripped, looped and fat-injected by the relentless techno infiltrators. Get your diaper on and groove. Find It: SoundCloud

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STEELY DAN BOOK OF LIARS

Live in October in Oxon Hill, Maryland, the Donald Fagen-led Dan cover his late partner Walter Becker’s solo track of mellowly jazzy acerbic remembrance. Find It: YouTube MOJO listens to all its music on Roksan equipment

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A nine-minute soundscape with scrapes of iron, chiming bells and lava flow, this A-list team up – recorded for the Adult Swim Singles Program – will one day soundtrack your holiday on Venus. Find It: SoundCloud

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SANFORD CLARK IT’S NOTHING TO ME

A barroom brawl over a woman ends in murder, ’66 country-style, and a dispassionate narrator muses, “Oh well, that’s life, or it was.” A fave of Dylan. Find It: YouTube

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HELEN McCOOKERYBOOK THE MAD BICYCLE SONG

Touching, cyclical folk philosophy from the Brighton ex-pun) whose self-released album, The Sea, comes embellished with a colour-in lyric book as well as much gentle jazz-folk wisdom. Find It: helenmccookerybook.bandcamp

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MACKA B LYRICAL CHEF

From new album Health Is Wealth, the plainspeaking Wolverhampton MC draws parallels between eating a fruit and veg diet and making up killer words, to a high-roughage retro dancehall soundtrack. Find It: YouTube

JIM JAMES I JUST WASN’T MADE FOR THESE TIMES

Where the My Morning Jacket all-rounder makes the Pet Sounds classic of alienation and displacement into ghostly lounge psychedelia, via Isaac Hayes covering Jimmy Webb, bringing out the song’s sense of certainty despite the sadness (what would you be like if you were made for these times?) Find It: YouTube

KEVIN SHIELDS AND BRIAN ENO ONLY ONCE AWAY MY SON

16 “JIM JAMES PLAYS GHOSTLY LOUNGE PSYCH.”

BLACK BOX RECORDER BRUTALITY

From 2000, tense indie rock with musical saw that finds singer Sarah Nixey icily pondering the long-gone certainties of the ruling classes. “Say anything to stay out of jail,” she advises. Find It: YouTube

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BLIND LEMON JEFFERSON AND HIS FEET HOT DOGS

Fabulous country-style picking and foot stamping from the blues giant, from way back in 1927. Hear it all cleaned up on the CD free with the always-swinging Classic Blues Artwork From The 1920s calendar, 2018 version. Find It: YouTube/ bluesimages.com

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FINK CRACKS APPEAR

From Fin Greenall’s latest album Resurgam (one for The Archers fans there), five minutes of ominous, creeping blues menace with epic instincts, like a downhome Talk Talk. i YouTube

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COW SHELTER

Weller’s producer Stan Kybert conjures five minutes of stirring, psychedelic deep soul from Woking-based eco-groovers, replete with cosmic jazz piano flight. From the One Love remix EP. Find It: cowmusic.co.uk

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AUGUST ROSENBAUM CREDO PT II (FEAT. COCO O)

Reworked from an album track on the Dutch pianist’s recent impressive Vista album, this eerily seductive slow jam replaces Rosenbaum’s unsettling Auto-Tuned vocals with the soulful voice of Quadron’s Coco O. Find It: Spotify

Eliot Lee Hazel, Getty Images

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HOOKWORMS NEGATIVE SPACE

Over seven minutes, West Yorks psych-droners move from burping robots to kosmische prog to big-room sing-along with guitar solo. “How long’s forever?” it asks. From February 2018’s LP Microshift. Find It: YouTube

FACT SHEET

MOJOWORKING

THE BREEDERS ’90s million-sellers are back to buzz, thwack and frazzle nerves; but no band discussions. ait In The Car, the first Breeders single in a decade, begins with a buzzing, nagging guitar riff and a thwack of drums before Kim Deal gleefully declares, “Good morning!” like she’s reintroducing the band after their prolonged absence. “That’s awesome!” she responds, calling in from Dayton, Ohio. “But nah. Complete accident.” Deal is not one to plot – at least most of the time. She confesses 1993’s 1.5 million-selling Last Splash album was a burnished reaction to the rise of ‘indie’ – “most of the labels were owned by majors,” she scoffs – but all other Breeders albums (1990 debut Pod, 2002’s Title TK and 2008’s Mountain Battles) have been rougher, sparser affairs, mostly produced by anti-producer Steve Albini. A total of four albums in 27 years, meanwhile, suggests an absence of careerism. Now comes All Nerve, which is a surprise since Deal told MOJO in 2013 that since “music is now free, there was no way to survive as a band.” What changed her mind was the fun factor of 20th anniversary shows for Last Splash, with that album’s line-up of Kim, twin sister/guitarist Kelley, bassist Josephine Wiggs and drummer Jim McPherson. With McPherson (working as a carpenter) living locally, and Wiggs (based in Brooklyn) available for extended stays, the quartet were able to record in Dayton. They also

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Finger not the song: Kim Deal gets the point from Steve Albini at Electrical Audio Studio, Chicago; (inset right) Kelley Deal sings.

“THE BAND PERSUADED ME TO GO DIGITAL, WHICH WAS WEIRD.” Kim Deal

Working Title: All Nerve Due: March 2018 Production: Steve Albini, Greg Norman, Mike Montgomery Songs: Skinhead #2, MetaGoth, Walking With A Killer, Howl At The Summit The Buzz: “This record didn’t kill us! And it gave me moments of pleasure – which is rare!” Kim Deal

worked at Steve Albini’s studio in Chicago and in Dayton, Kentucky. That it’s taken five years to finish is partly down to Deal’s resistance to modern digital recording. “Analogue is expensive,” she says. “And we didn’t have a record label behind us at the time, so I was paying. The band eventually persuaded me to go digital, which was weird, because digital feels to me like nothing’s real. But when [engineer] Greg Norman put a lion’s roar throughout one chorus, it sounded better than the guitar! I wanted to keep it, but Josephine said (in English accent), ‘No, it’s ridiculous!’” All Nerve’s eventual analogue-digital hybrid was then sent to former 4AD label head Ivo Watts-Russell. “He said it sounded like demos. Fuck, really? He suggested this guy, Matt Boynton, mix it, and it sounds pretty good.” The album is named All Nerve, “because it’s a good title,” Deal reckons. “Living’s so fraught nowadays.” Wait In The Car’s exuberance aside, the tracks MOJO has heard define ‘fraught’. The title track, solo single-turned-band song Walking With A Killer (which addresses Kim’s high school memories of sexual harassment) and MetaGoth (words by Wiggs) are all slow, sombre and taut. Blues At The Acropolis and Skinhead #2 (both debuted on 2014 dates) are equally devoid of Last Splash’s joie de vivre. Not that The Breeders planned it that way. “We don’t have discussions about what we want to accomplish,” Deal vouches. But they have discussed another album – the first time a Breeders line-up might manage two. “It’ll happen,” says Kim. “Unless I was told I couldn’t play music any more!” Martin Aston

Steve Albini, Getty Images (2)

ALSOWORKING …rocker and motivational speaker ANDREW W.K. will release his first new set since 2010 next March. He promises, “One thick syrup of super life-force feeling… psychically amplified by the celebratory spirit of glorious partying” …Foo Fighters/Adele/Liam Gallagher producer Greg Kurstin has worked on a new PAUL McCARTNEY (right) LP,

release date to be confirmed …more on Adrian Sherwood’s plans for the first new CREATION REBEL album since 1982. “I’d like to make a very trippy instrumental dub album which I haven’t done with live musicians for a long time,” he says. “It would be quite fun to go back in, along the lines of [1980 space bass classic] Starship Africa, and maybe do a series of dates around the world next year.

But I have to get prepared for it” … also out early next year, CALEXICO ’s The Thread That Keeps Us. Of songs like Br d h Uncondition l d l d In The Water, voice Joey Burns says: “There’s a little more chaos and noise in the mix than what we’ve done in the past” …ARCTIC MONKEYS are in the studio recording album number six, expect it next year …Techno

auteur JEFF MILLS (left) recorded new music in Jules Verne’s house in Amiens, France, in October. Previously he’s made tracks at the former home of Rembrandt in Amsterdam …more news on the BELLY reunion album: it has 11 tracks and it’s out next April …and, breathe easy world, the BUTTHOLE SURFERS have begun work on their first new album since 2001’s Weird Revolution…

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MOJORISING

From the Pacific Northwest, an Enya fan with dreaming modular synth bubble and freak. lectronic music not beholden to the dictatorship of the beat is in the air right now – think young club culture faces like Call Super, The Orb’s creative resurgence and even the rehabilitation of new age – and standing out vividly in this hazy landscape is Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith. Though her main instruments are the vast modular synthesizers beloved of techno producers the world over, and her music is rich in psychedelic textures, Smith is as much a singer-songwriter as a producer. On her sixth solo LP in five years, The Kid, she brings an expressive palette, like the sound of Liz Fraser trapped in Super Mario World. It’s maybe not surprising that songcraft’s at the heart of her work. Smith had a bohemian, home-schooled upbringing in Orcas Island off the northwest coast of Washington State, where she immersed herself in her parents’ Enya and Paul Simon albums and learned to love the local landscape. “I’m so filled with joy whenever I’m back in the Pacific Northwest,” she says. “It’s so lush!” She became adept at classical guitar and attended Berklee College in Boston, where she began to write what she calls “orchestral folk” with her short-lived band Ever Isles. But on a visit home, she helped a neighbour set up his home studio. “I told him I was influenced by Terry Riley,” she says, “and immediately he offered to lend me a Buchla 100 synthesizer for a year.”

Hive mind: Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith gets on the grid.

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“CHALLENGING MYSELF IS A NATURAL RECIPE FOR CHANGE.”

FACT SHEET G

For fans of: Burial; Vashti

This wood-clad analogue Bunyan; Steve Reich. audio generator took over her life. G The Kid is a concept album about a human life from The second Ever Isles album was birth to death, inspired by shelved and Smith moved to Los the philosopher Alan Watts. Angeles. To begin with, tentative G Enya wasn’t the only wavelets of guitar and piano were super-smooth influence on Smith: she’s a huge Sade fan in the foreground of her records, and covers her By Your Side. but the Buchla – and other synths she accumulated – steadily KEY TRACKS G Closed Circuit (from dominated. 2016 was her SSunergy with Suzanne Ciani) breakthrough year: her album G Max Richter – Dream Ears reached a global audience, 3 (Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith and she had collaborative releases Remix) (from Sleep Remixes) G In The World But Not Of with both UK electronica vet Mark The World (from The Kid)) ( Pritchard (of Global Communication and Jedi Knights), and synth pioneer Suzanne Ciani, who had been a friend and colleague of instrument designer Don Buchla himself. Smith was also focused on live performance, and The Kid – with its dense, bubbling soundworld – has generated some great ones. “There’s a lot of live patching [rewiring of the synth] in my setup now,” she says. “I think that learning and challenging myself is a natural recipe for change, and I’m having a lot of fun with it.” It’s unlikely The Kid is a settled template: “LA is not a place I feel I’ve ‘landed’,” she says, “I prefer hikes or the ocean right out my door. For my music, though I plan ahead, I need lots of room for spontaneity.” Joe Muggs

Tim Saccenti

KAITLYN AURELIA SMITH

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Totally wired: Kevin Godley in electrical Cthulhu guise.

SELFPORTRAIT

KEVIN GODLEY 10cc-and-beyond music/ video ace in his own words and by his own hand. I’d describe myself as… Lazy. Driven. Messy. Creative. Shambolic. Shy. A workaholic. A young brain in an old body. If something grabs me by the short and curlies, you can’t stop me. Music changed me… well, it didn’t so much change me as it made me. I wanted to do it, to make it and to live it. It was more exciting than graphic design, which was what I was studying through the middle to late ’60s. When I’m not making music… I write. I’ve just finished a screenplay about Orson Welles which I hope to direct. And I still dabble in design. My biggest vice is… I am ashamed to say I am addicted to my iPhone. It’s class-A technology and I despise it beyond words for making me look at it every 15 minutes. What do I look at? I

dunno, mails, news, anything but social bloody media. The last time I was embarrassed was… I don’t embarrass easily, but about 20 years ago, we were picking Chrissie Hynde up to go somewhere, and her door was ajar, so I walked in and said, “Chrissie!” and opened my arms for a hug, and took a step forward and fell through a fucking trap door. I didn’t even have the good taste to disappear completely, I kind of hung on to the lip of the thing with one foot and my chin. She, the coolest woman in the world, couldn’t stop laughing and I was bum-clenchingly embarrassed, forever. My formal qualifications are… I have three O levels, two A levels, a BA in graphic design, and I have a silver medal for full bore pistol shooting, which I got a while ago, before they took everyone’s guns away. That was my hobby, at gun clubs. I found it very relaxing, shooting off big fuck-off

“I TOOK A STEP FORWARD AND FELL THROUGH A FUCKING TRAP DOOR.”

pistols like .357 Magnums. It switched everything else off, which is difficult for me, because if I’m working on a number of things, they’re constantly doing the wall of death around the inside of my head. Something like that was, I suppose, a form of loud meditation. The last time I cried was… most recently, just trying to get anything done – we recently moved house and it took a month to get back online – got me crying. I enjoy a good old sob, though, it’s like a nervous breakdown in miniature. I find it quite cleansing. Vinyl, CD or MP3? …any method’s fine. Though I do have a soft spot for vinyl. I reminds me of when music was rare, significant and a work of art, though I no longer have a record deck. My most treasured possession is… I once had a piece of rock with a picture of Jesus embedded in it. But I lost it. I suppose my family of one wife and two dogs is a more honest answer, although I can’t say I possess them. I am, however, possessed by them. The best book I’ve read is… The Master And Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. I’ll pull it out every 10 years, it’s just so rich and full of meaning. Is the glass half-full or half-empty? … it varies. But the empty half is always at the top. My greatest regret is… being so obsessed with work, I’ve neglected some aspects of being a human being. When we die… I’ll probably show up at the pearly gates, and there won’t be anybody there, but there will be a computer keypad. I’d be prompted to tap in my password, but this one’s my Life Password, which would be about 3,000 characters long, with numbers, caps and hieroglyphics and stuff. I’d get three guesses, balls them all up, and then some bored belligerent fuck of an angel would put me on hold with distorted choirs singing shit hymns. Then I’d lose it and wander off into limbo for a sulk. I would like to be remembered… in bronze, as a big statue wearing a cloak on a horse in some major city like Paris or New York, or Stockport. Actually, if I’m remembered for a few interesting visuals or words or sounds, that’d do. Godley & Creme’s Body Of Work 1978–1988 is out now on Caroline International.

Getty Images

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…the worlds of skewered, grilled meat and mega-selling pop met in October, when it was reported that TAYLOR SWIFT (right) had filmed segments of a video in north London kebab outlet Kentish Delight …the rise of the holograms continues, with a new tour featuring a digital resurrection of ROY ORBISON touring the UK next April. Live musicians will also accompany a hologram

of Ronnie James Dio in Europe in December. A similar presentation involving Frank Zappa’s image is mooted… another innovation in revenue streams was hit upon by Boston’s Newbury Comics last month, when they sold copies of BECK’s newie Colors s d b baggy-trewed rap stager MC Hammer… worrying news for French music fans after the government published a

public health decree setting the volume at live music events to just 102 decibels and limiting low frequency bass lines. In October names including Jean Michel Jarre, Jeff Mills and Cerrone signed an open letter imploring ministers to not “silence the joy”. And we thought President Macron was into Daft Punk …

APHEX TWIN’s (left)1999 track Windowlicker is being used on a road safety TV advert to stop people using mobiles while driving. As this news broke, North Swindon Police warned of ‘A Noel Gallagher look- alike swigging from a bottle of White Lightning and licking windows’. Is it a false flag action by Liam to make his brother look bad?… MOJO 22

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NONESUCH.COM

ROCK’N’ROLLCONFIDENTIAL

MICHAEL McDONALD The Doobies/Dan voice on perfectionism, grooves and Ferguson, Missouri. ichael McDonald, the silver fox of yacht rock, owner of the bluest eyes in blue-eyed soul and very arguably its greatest voice, is calling from his home in Santa Barbara, California, to promote his excellent new album, Wide Open. But its release was overshadowed on the very eve by an incoming call bearing bad news. His old friend and musical comrade Walter Becker of Steely Dan was dead. “It was very, very sad. I had heard that he wasn’t feeling well, but he had been through bouts of ill-health in recent years so I felt this was nothing unusual and couldn’t be all that bad because they were gearing up to do a tour,” he says. “Walter and Donald have always been pretty private people and I felt to pick up the phone and call might be an intrusion. I regret now that I didn’t give Walter a call.”

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After emerging from the chorus line of wannabes to join team Dan then front The Doobie Brothers with multiplatinum success continuing into solo stardom, McDonald ground through the mill of excess all areas before overcoming drug and alcohol addictions in 1985. Though as songsmiths they could hardly have been further apart – McDonald writing from the heart, Becker from the head – you sense that this gently spoken, thoughtful and humble man and the Dan’s arch-cynic weren’t just comrades but kindred spirits. There was a great outpouring of affection for Walter when he died. Walter was a very honest, and a very kind man; I never saw him treat anyone with anything except kindness. When I went over to Hawaii with my family, Walter would reach out and we would get together. He just loved music, and there was nothing he enjoyed more than sitting with you in a relaxed setting and listening to your new

Yacht goes on: smooth Michael McDonald, pre-driving into the sunset.

SIX BIG MACS 1 Steely Dan My Old School S (FROM COUNTDOWN TO ECSTASY, ABC, 1973)

2 Aretha Franklin Ain’t

No Way (FROM LADY SOUL, ATLANTIC, 1968)

3 The Kinks You Really Got Me (SINGLE, PYE, 1964) 4 The Zombies Tell Her No (SINGLE, DECCA, 1965) 5 The Beatles Every Little Thing (FROM BEATLES FOR SALE, EMI, 1964)

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6 Edwin Starr Stop Her On Sight (S.O.S.) (SINGLE, RIC-TIC, 1966)

record or one you were still working on and giving you his critique, and he was one person I would be interested to know what he thought. Those are fond memories. You’ve been part of the Steely Dan team since 1974. First impressions? When I joined them I had not been so enthralled by a band since The Beatles. I went to an audition on the suggestion of my friend [drummer] Jeff Porcaro, and to get the job was too good to be true. I was able to sing all the background parts in my natural voice, and could play enough piano to cover some of the keyboard parts. Were their perfectionist album sessions frustrating? It was always a challenge to pull it off; sometimes I did and sometimes I didn’t. They sent me Dr Wu [from Katy Lied, 1975] to learn, and right away I realised I needed to sing the part in one breath. I wasn’t able to do it because I smoked way too much at that point. Though light-hearted they were pretty meticulous, and no less hard on themselves – very often

Donald and Walter would be the first to be fired from the session to get in someone else to play piano and bass – so you learned not to take it personally. Most musicians I’ve talked to hung on in there because it was all for a great cause and a source of great pride to be part of their records. Joining The Doobie Brothers in 1975 as singer-songwriter, in a few years you transformed them from funky rock band to a blue-eyed soul hit machine. Were Hall & Oates and the Bee Gees an inspiration? Probably. I’m a huge fan of Barry Gibb, one of the all-time great pop songwriters. Like most kids my age, The Beatles were everything, and them, the Stones and Kinks were the first bands we played. Then my older sister introduced me to more pop R&B, Motown stuff, and one of the first records that really struck me was Edwin Starr’s Stop Her On Sight (S.O.S.). It was not just a four-piece but had strings and horns, the guitarist was playing syncopated and the drums weren’t just rock bashing but had a sophisticated groove. Do you, like Holland-DozierHolland, sit down at the piano with the intention of writing a hit song? Less and less, though that’s always been my aim. Unabashedly, I want to write a song people driving down the highway will reach over to turn up on their radio. What got me into this business in the first place is listening to music on my dad’s car radio.

Christopher Amerouso

Your birthplace is Ferguson, Missouri, scene of death and riot in 2014. Was it always so bitterly divided along racial lines? When I was growing up it wasn’t much different from apartheid. Now you can see it for what it was, but for some Americans, those years were idyllic. But if you were black it was hard, you were shut out of the mainstream. Even as a kid it wasn’t lost on me. I remember being four or five years old lying in bed trying to wrestle with what it would have been like to have been born black. I thought we’d be well beyond this by now, that our generation wouldn’t leave the next to inherit the burden of racism and divisiveness, but apparently not. We are suffering a backlash of a toxically fearful element in this country; it’s a call finally to be honest with ourselves. Tell us something you’ve never told an interviewer before. I was always enamoured by the Nashville publisher-songwriter relationship. I could have been happy as a song publisher finding the right song for the artist and creating an entity out of the new song that he believed in and nobody else had heard yet; there is something romantic about that whole idea. Mat Snow

LAST NIGHTA RECORD CHANGED MY LIFE

JOSÉ FELICIANO José Feliciano raves over 1963’s epochal The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. was living in the Village in New York City, in an apartment on 8th Street near St Mark’s Place. I’d started my teenage years away from home and my life was full of music, all the music happening in America then, like The Byrds and The Beatles, who came to the kids and said, ‘You can live like this and be happy, you don’t have to conform to the ways of the adults!’ I felt free. Then somebody took me to their home and played Bob Dylan to me. When he came, it was another thing, again. Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right, Girl From The North Country, and Masters Of War – they were great songs, dealing with important subjects. He wasn’t the greatest of musicians, but his poetry and the way he used words affected me very deeply. Through his music we tried to treat members of society that we wouldn’t even talk to years before with some respect and dignity. So I listened to Dylan, but I followed José, me. My conscience and my mind taught me how to play, and that’s what I did. But he was an example. My understanding of what music could do was deepened – other

“I

West Village preservation: (below) José Feliciano, still mind-deepened; (bottom) Dylan’s epochal second.

“DYLAN WAS THE FIRST GUY WHO TURNED THE BEATLES ON TO GRASS, REMEMBER.”

fields were opened to me, like jazz and classical. For a time, I wanted to be like Segovia or Julian Bream or John Williams, guitarists who were my heroes. I honestly don’t know, if I hadn’t heard this record, would I have been the freewheeling guitar player that I am today? I used to hang with him, then. I met him at Gerde’s Folk City in the Village. He’d come and catch my show, we’d have a couple of glasses of wine and then he’d get on-stage and do his thing. He’s a good guy. He just couldn’t put up with people asking him dumb questions! If you knew that coming in, you left him alone and sat down and talked to him like I’m talking to you. Even then he was a legend, in a sense, before he even crossed over to the West Coast. I still follow Dylan. He’s still great. I’d like to do something with him, you know. It’s been ages since I heard [The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan] because I lost a lot of my albums in a fire, but I know it pretty well, so I can just play it in my mind when I want. These songs don’t get old, it’s the same with Elvis, Heartbreak Hotel and Hound Dog. There’ll never be another band like The Beatles and there’ll never be another Dylan. And Dylan was the guy who turned The Beatles on to grass, remember! That’s important.” José Feliciano and Jools Holland’s album As You See Me Now is out now on East West.

SCANDALSHEETS

PAPERBACK RIOTERS From Skinhead Escapes to Jazzman In Nude Town, the pop exploitation pulp novel, saluted… ’d always been interested in pulp fiction,” explains Melbournebased writer Andrew Nette. “My father read these Australian pulp crime books. They totally fascinated me. They allowed you into hidden worlds. Suddenly you were let loose in the ’50s beatnik scene, a ’60s hippy commune, or a ’70s biker gang. They were escapism and wish-fulfilment at the same time.” Nette’s childhood fascination has resulted in Girl Gangs, Biker Boys, And Real Cool Cats. Subtitled Pulp Fiction And Youth Culture, 1950 To 1980, it’s a 320-page full-colour history of the exploitation subculture in Britain, the US and Australia. “It’s a history of what people actually read,” says Nette, “as opposed to what people said they read or were told to read.” Most eye-catchingly, it brings together the most outlandish, hilarious and beautiful pulp cover-art: for starters, see Jazzman In Nude Town, Glam and

Book wild!: a selection of unimproving literature featured in the volume below – and what’s Scott Walker doing on The Rebels’ cover (above right)?

“I

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“WRITING PULPS WAS A TOUGH GIG… WRITERS TOOK DRUGS, OR DRANK TOO MUCH.”

Punk Rock (cover blurb, “The punks were on the march and the Teds were out to nobble them…”). But Nette’s book also presents deeply-researched articles on the writers, publishing houses and sub-genres of this vast underground milieu. “Pulp captured cultural themes and pop trends better than mainstream fiction,” Nette goes on. “The writers scoured newspapers for stories, trying to make fast books and fast bucks out of the lived experience. The covers are very important but so are the stories and the writers. This is a culture that slipped through the cracks.” That, if anything, is the strength of Girl Gangs… . Beyond the lurid cover art delights, the book illuminates obscuro-scriveners like little-known LA writer Jane Gallion, who wrote a brace of working-class proto-feminist pulps entitled Biker and Stoned, and Afrika Korps deserter-turned-pimp Gunther Bahnemann. Also present are more familiar but no less crackpot tales of such notorious thrill-peddlers as Harlan Ellison and Richard Allen, whose oeuvre infamously included Mod Rule, Knuckle Girls and the Skinhead series. “A lot of the books are great,” stresses Nette, “but a lot of them were quickly written, churned-out crap. They also depict events totally at odds with today’s sensibilities. Some outrageous out-there stuff goes on in those

New English Library hippy and biker books. You can’t write about them in a celebratory manner, but you also can’t approach them from the standards of today. They are this vast cultural unconsciousness.” Assembling the book has not been an easy ride. “This history is dying,” says Nette. “The books are scarce, collectors are dying, the writers are dying, or dead, or embarrassed to talk. Writing pulps was a tough gig. You didn’t get paid enough, the hours were brutal. Writers took drugs, or drank too much. Their marriages fell apart. I’ve talked to children of pulp writers who were so pissed off with their parents they just got rid of everything, all their work, and never wanted to talk about them ever again.” If anything, Girl Gangs… is an important attempt to re-present the history of the pulp-war novel as a site of valid cultural importance and fascination. Plus, adds Nette, “There’s no other book around like this. Name me one other book with a chapter on British beat-group fiction or Charles Manson-inspired pulp paperbacks? You can’t. There isn’t one!” Andrew Male Girl Gangs, Biker Boys, And Real Cool Cats: Pulp Fiction And Youth Culture, 1950 To 1980 edited by Iain McIntyre and Andrew Nette is out now, published by PM Press. Volume 2, Sticking It To The Man: Revolution And Counter Culture In Pulp And Popular Fiction 1956-1980, is promised for 2018.

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MOJOEYEWITNESS

MOBY SELLS 10 MILLION COPIES OF PLAY, 2000 He was the quixotic techno changeling who, in 1996, looked like he’d shot his bolt. Then a cleansed musical palate and an encounter with Alan Lomax field recordings led to planet-bestriding success and the world’s advertising agencies beating a path to his door. But how did it all happen?

PART 1 “IT INSTANTLY RESONATED.” Play with fire: (clockwise from main) Moby photographed by Corinne Day for the album’s cover art; in animal garb at London’s Liquid Room; at his home studio; bathing in New York; playing the Scala, London; sleeves; Mute boss Daniel Miller.

“WE THOUGHT, IF IT SELLS 30,000, WE’LL BE REALLY HAPPY.”

DM: “Rhythm King, Mute’s sub-label, had licensed Moby’s Go!, which was his first huge hit [in 1991]. When he played me his new music, what I liked about it was he clearly understood music as opposed to just beats and samples, without being cheesy. In 1996, he made Animal Rights [a hardcore punk album]. I think everybody questioned it – Elektra, his label in America, definitely questioned it. It was when Chemical Brothers, Fatboy Slim and Prodigy were exploding, with that first wave of electronic music, and Moby would have fitted perfectly into that. So that extreme left turn had a very negative effect: record sales were poor, live shows had to be scaled down. But it was a creative detox, shall we say – which I guess cleared the way for what came next. The early recordings for his next album were electronic pop songs, which didn’t relate to what Play became. Me and his manager Eric Härle listened together and we thought they were good but they weren’t amazing, and things needed to be turned around. Then he sent one track which was Honey, the first one he used a blues sample on [of Georgia gospel voice Bessie Jones]. It instantly resonated. He got really into the concept of the whole thing [voice samples were sourced from the Alan Lomax field recordings collection Sounds Of The South]. I don’t think I really had any expectations at that point. I remember we thought, Well, if it sells 30,000, we’ll be really happy. My spirits lifted considerably when the Melody Maker gave Play a full-page, zero out of 10 review, a complete slagging off of the record and Moby as a human being. I felt, Yeah, anything that can create that level of extreme response has to have hope! The first year, we kept releasing singles, but by the end of the third one we still didn’t have a result, so I just said, What’s everybody’s favourite track? Everyone said, Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad? When we released that, Pete Tong played it on his show and it must have got an incredible response because it went on the C-list at Radio 1, and then straight to the A-list. Around that time, Moby was booked to play two nights at the Scala in London, one night at the beginning and one at the end of a tour. The first one [September 22, 1999] was respectably attended, but in the time between he’d become a phenomenon. The second [October 25] was insanely over-sold, one of those gigs where people seem to be hanging off the rafters. I couldn’t even get in the dressing room: our press people couldn’t believe that all the TV and fashion celebs and musicians wanted to be at the gig. It was hilarious. That second year, in 2000, Moby broke in the biggest possible way. It was absolutely huge, [selling] around the 10 million mark. Every week, you couldn’t believe the numbers. Another thing that I think contributed to its success was, he was one of the first artists who was very open to allowing his music to be used on TV commercials [clients would eventually include American Express, Volkswagen and Galaxy chocolate]. Find My Baby was the first big sync to happen, for Nissan. [Photographer] Brian Griffin was making the commercial and he really wanted to use one of our artists, Pan Sonic, but the chairman said, ‘No, too weird.’ Somebody must have sent Brian Play because they said, ‘Let’s try something from this.’ And it worked. Every day there was a new request. I’m not sure if it’s actually true that every track was licensed, but it’s become the myth. You had this phenomenon: every shop you walked into was playing Moby, it was the music bed for every TV trailer… it was, Wah! Too much, you know? We weren’t in great shape at that point, so from Mute’s point of view, and that of his career, it was like the cavalry coming over the hill. Of course, his lifestyle changed completely. It can be difficult when you’re a solo artist and you’re constantly being self-critical. Maybe there were times when his sanity was on the edge, but you’d have to ask him about that.” TALKS ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED WHEN YOU GET WHAT YOU THINK YOU WANT. TURN OVER! MOBY

Corinne Day (4), Deirdre O’Callaghan/Camera Press, Getty Images, Retna/Avalon (2)

Daniel Miller of Moby’s label Mute recalls modest expectations and sudden overwhelming momentum.

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MOBY SELLS 10 MILLION COPIES OF PLAY, 2000 Moby himself on demi-godhood, rinsing singles and the inevitable crash. efore Play I’d sort of become a maligned pariah, so the success of Play was such a 180 degree turn it made every aspect of its success even more baffling. Everything about it was absurd and nonsensical. Honestly, if you told me it was a mescaline hallucination, I’d probably believe you. All of a sudden, in late ’99, it started metastasising, and started taking on this very strange life of its own. [In February 2000] we played the Astoria in London, which for me was huge. I’d just started dating someone and she flew over from New York – she was very impressed that Neil Hannon from The Divine Comedy was in the audience, because he’d written the music for Father Ted. The trajectory in the UK for that year was then a whole bunch of festivals, and then in autumn, Wembley Arena and Brixton Academy, because Wembley sold out too quickly. Why was it so successful? I think one reason was that other albums that were succeeding at the time were these huge pop records by Limp Bizkit, Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys, but Play was less bombastic and made sense in people’s living rooms.

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I think the possible happiest zenithmoment for me was Glastonbury 2000. It was a beautiful summer evening, the sun was setting, 100,000 people were singing along to Porcelain and I looked at the side of the stage and Joe Strummer was singing too, smiling at me. A lot of degeneracy, depravity, hedonism, sybaritic behaviour came after that. My reaction was in some ways a very clichéd public figure/ musician one. When you’re growing up you get a normal amount of attention from women, bosses, friends, even family, they treat you as a normal person. I had a lot of insecurity, and in the course of just a few months, you had everyone in the world celebrating you like you’re some demi-god. Every woman you’ve ever longed for is suddenly in love with you. It didn’t just make me insane, it made me the worst version of myself that I could be. I became entitled but also anxious; my alcoholism went out of control, but so did my self-loathing. It sort of rearranges your neural architecture – wonderful when it’s happening but when it starts to go away, that’s when you really start to lose your mind. We mined the album to the

Feel so bad: (clockwise from main) Moby hangs on; at Glastonbury; at the MTV Awards, September 1999; final singles; with Elton John at the MusiCares Awards, February 2000; more singles.

“I WANTED TO STAY DRUNK, PROMISCUOUS, AND SURROUNDED BY SYCOPHANTS.”

point that there was nothing left. The last real single was a version of Honey with Kelis and Pharrell. Play had already been out for two years, and I remember thinking, This is just unnecessary. [But] I wanted that success to go on forever, I wanted to stay drunk, and promiscuous, and surrounded by sycophants. I remember, at the Grammys in 2001, yelling at my publicist because she hasn’t allotted enough time for me to do all the interviews on the red carpet. That was a disgusting moment, when you feel that your soul cracked a little. The next seven years was a downward spiral of entitlement and bitterness and belligerence… it didn’t happen in public that much, it happened on tour buses at four o’clock in the morning or in my apartment after 15 drinks and 300 dollars’ worth of cocaine. For a while it did bother me, that nothing I did after had the same level of success, and to my shame there was a time in the 2000s when I desperately wanted to claw my way back to the success I’d had with Play. I’m in the process of finishing the second memoir [the sequel to 2016’s Porcelain] and if I do a decent job with it, it will be an honest, intimate look at how fame really does damage people.” As told to Ian Harrison Mute: A Visual Document: From 1978 Tomorrow, by Daniel Miller and Terry Burrows, is published by Thames & Hudson.

Camera Press (2), Rex, Alpha Press

PART 2 “YOUR SOUL CRACKED”

TIMEMACHINE

DECEMBER 1962 ...LOUIS JORDAN BOOGIES IN BLIGHTY The weather was foul that Wednesday, icy with dense fog covering much of Britain. It was the precursor to what would prove to be The Big Freeze, the UK’s coldest winter experience since 1895. Jump blues great Louis Jordan had been due to fly to London on that date but, instead, found his plane diverted to Prestwick. “I spent the coldest hour of my life in a heated room at the airport,” he later mused. Eventually, he caught a train to London but this too proved to be a bitterly cold journey. When he awoke next morning he had completely lost his voice. The tour set up for him by British jazz bandleader Chris Barber faced disarray, and some appearances were cancelled. When he had recovered sufficiently to face the media, Louis immediately apologised: “I can’t tell you how sorry I am. It’s been rough, man. Until today I haven’t been able to leave my room.” An R&B mainman, Louis

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took his responsibilities seriously. “Most jazz musicians usually want to play for themselves,” he maintained, ”but I just wanted to play for the people.” And that he did, inventing a form of R&B that was at once infectious, fun and practically sat up and begged the audience to dance. In America, Jordan was a sensation, notching around 60 R&B chart hits including 18 Number 1s, and starring in several movies. In the UK his music also resonated strongly with British youth. During the late ’40s and early ’50s, the ebullient, sax-playing bandleader notched eight big sellers in this country with Is You Is Or Is You

Jive alive! Louis Jordan (third from left) with his Tympany Five (Teddy Bunn, far right); (below) Chris Barber, Ottilie Patterson; (right) their LP.

“PLAYING WITH LOUIS WAS LIKE BEING DRAGGED ALONG BY A WILD HORSE.” Chris Barber

Ain’t My Baby, Caldonia and Open The Door, Richard!, while Let The Good Times Roll and Daddy-O, indicated changes soon to come. No one doubts that as a precursor of rock’n’roll, Louis Jordan had few rivals. Some even credit him as a very early rap MC. Chris Barber caught up with Jordan in the early ’60s. Barber, who had arranged UK tours for such as Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee, Muddy Waters and Big Bill Broonzy, recalled, “We were touring America and were in New York where the Apollo had Louis Jordan for a week.” He and his wife, singer Ottilie Patterson hurtled off to the Harlem venue, where Jordan’s Tympany Five were appearing in the company of a guest star, the saxophonist Sonny Stitt. ”The great thing was at the end of the show, when Louis and his baritone player were doing the splits,” recalls Barber. “Sonny Stitt was beaming. I was amazed to find that Louis had Teddy Bunn on guitar, I didn’t know

He fought the law: Alan Freed (centre) seeks counsel.

ALSO THIS

that he was still alive. And he was still playing without a pick. I said to Louis, Would you like to come to England some time? He said, ‘Of course!’ We got back and I fixed up a 10-day tour of England, which was fantastic.” Jordan belatedly made his UK debut at Sheffield City Hall on December 8. The weather was still poor and the hall consequently was only half full, but one reviewer who braved the elements reported: “Louis should not be missed, his playing was really something, tough, unsubtle but mightily swinging.” As well as playing those irresistible hits, he duetted with Ottilie Patterson on T’Ain’t Nobody’s Business and provided the best moment of the night with the blues Outskirts Of Town. Says Chris Barber: “The thing was, he didn’t reckon on singing blues, and if he sang anything serious he would put humorous interjections into it. He said, ‘You must not bring your audience down.’ He was marvellous. He could have sung blues all night and no one would have minded. Off-stage he was a quiet, very likable man. Very methodical too. He had this book which was filled with phone numbers, addresses and birthdays. Each day he would send cards to anyone who had a birthday coming up. He once said that if he ever wanted work in any place, all he had to do was to call one of the numbers in his book and he’d get fixed up.” Before he headed home for Christmas, Jordan went into Barnes’ Olympic Studio on December 15 to cut nine tracks with the Barber band. “He and Ottilie performed T’Ain’t Nobody’s Business, which is beautiful,” says Barber. “Louis Jordan was the greatest thing that ever happened to our band. We can swing with the best, but playing with Louis when he was 54 years old was like being dragged along by a wild horse.” Fred Dellar

AD ARCHIVE 1962

MONTH

MATHIS MOANS

Mathis (above) is a surprise 1guestJohnny on the BBC’s Juke Box Jury show. He dislikes Anne Shelton’s Tell Me Again In The Morning, causing Philips’ A&R man Johnny Franz to protest that the song had sold a million in Germany.

WYMAN, WHY?

Bill Wyman auditions for The 7Rolling Stones at the Wetherby Arms in Chelsea.

CONNIE RED-EYE

Connie Francis flies the Atlantic 15 twice in one day to take part in a dialogue dubbing session at Elstree for the film Follow The Boys.

FABS MACH SCHAU

The Beatles head for Germany 18 to begin their fifth and final trip to Hamburg.

SOUL TIME

...FREED FACES THE MUSIC Alan Freed’s payola trial begins. The pioneering DJ and rock’n’roll evangelist pleads guilty to numerous charges, admitting that, at various times in 1958, he accepted bribes from record promoters to spin their discs on air. He receives a suspended sentence and is fined. Spurned by the broadcasting establishment, he later works for stations including WQAM in Florida and KNOB in Los Angeles, and dies in Palm Springs on January 20, 1965, of alcohol-related causes. In 1986 Freed was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

DECEMBER 10

A Motown Revue arrives in New 19 York for a 10-date stay

TOPTEN

at the Harlem Apollo. The line-up includes Mary Wells, The Contours, The Supremes, Marvin Gaye and The Miracles.

US R&B SINGLES DECEMBER 22 LENOX

C’EST MEEK

The Tornados become the first 22 British rock group to top

ABC-PARAMOUNT

the US charts. Their single, Telstar, was penned and produced by Joe Meek.

VEE-JAY

SHORELY NOT

Acker Bilk’s Stranger On The Shore drops out of the charts after a run of 55 consecutive weeks.

MERCURY

22

CHRISTMAS WITH ELVIS

Elvis Presley throws a party 25 for some 30 friends at Graceland. Elvis gives then-girlfriend Priscilla a toy poodle named Honey, while she gives him a wooden cigarette box that plays his 1961 hit, Surrender.

Getty Images (7)

LEE’S HOME BURNS

Brenda Lee’s Nashville home 30 is destroyed in a fire. They loved warm drawers and sturdy vests in ’62. And if you could sing On Moonlight Bay too, so much the better!

Lee is injured in a vain attempt to rescue her pet poodle.

ME ESTHER PHILLIPS 1RELEASE ARE MY SUNSHINE 2 YOU RAY CHARLES GIRLS DON’T CRY THE 4 SEASONS 3 BIG HAPPINESS BROOK BENTON 4 HOTEL LOVERS MARY WELLS 5 TWO HANG UP THE ORLONS 6 DON’T RETUR 7PRESLEY SENDE EL S MOTOWN

Pubstep: Dylan at the Pindar of Wakefield.

...DYLAN PLAYS LONDON Bob Dylan, in Britain for the first time to film an appearance in a BBC TV play entitled Madhouse On Castle Street, plays at The Pindar Of Wakefield pub in London’s Gray’s Inn Road. The occasion is the Singers’ Club Party, a music night run by Peggy Seeger and Ewan MacColl. His song set includes The Ballad Of Hollis Brown and Masters Of War.

DECEMBER 22

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1946-2017

THE LEGACY Album: AC/DC, Powerage

AC/DC co-producer, Easybeat and pop hitmaker George Young left us on October 22. e was only the third most famous member of his family, after his AC/DC guitarist brothers Malcolm and Angus. But George Young was a major figure in Australian music, first as a member of The Easybeats, and later in partnership with fellow Easybeats alumnus Harry Vanda. Born in Glasgow on November 6, 1946, George Redburn Young was one of eight children. After the family emigrated to Australia in 1963, the 16-year-old George formed The Easybeats, in which he played rhythm guitar alongside lead guitarist Vanda. Success came quickly. In May 1965 the group’s second single, She’s So Fine, co-written by Young, hit Number 1 in Australia. A year later came their biggest hit, Friday On My Mind. Written by George and Harry, it reached Number 1 in Australia and Number 6 in the UK. At their zenith, the group’s popularity was dubbed

H

34 MOJO

‘Easyfever’. But in 1969, the band split. Moving into songwriting and production, Young and Vanda‘s studio project the Marcus Hook Roll Band yielded the 1973 album Tales Of Old Grand-Daddy, on which Malcolm and Angus Young made their first professional recordings – albeit on a record that George dismissed as “a joke”. The serious business began in 1974 with AC/DC’s debut single Can I Sit Next To You, Girl. The band would make their first six albums with Vanda & Young, from 1975’s High Voltage through to live tour de force If You Want Blood You’ve Got It in 1978. For AC/DC’s powerful blend of hard rock’n’roll, boogie and blues, Vanda & Young adopted a no-frills approach. 1976’s Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap was so raw that Atlantic Records refused to release it in the US. The follow-up, Let There Be Rock, was cut ‘as live’, with feedback, bum notes, and a title track in which George ordered Angus to finish a solo even when his amplifier overheated and caught fire. As George once mused: “It

Brother going to work it out: (above and below) George Young.

“GEORGE ORDERED ANGUS TO FINISH A SOLO EVEN WHEN HIS AMPLIFIER CAUGHT FIRE.”

Alamy (2)

FRIDAY ON HIS MIND

(Atlantic, 1978) was always more The Sound: As a writer important whether and performer, George it had the balls and Young’s peak was The the atmosphere, Easybeats’ Friday On My Mind. But the best record whether it had he ever made, as the heart.” co-producer, was AC/DC’s Vanda & Young’s Powerage, on which the run as AC/DC’s band’s gritty, Chuck Berry-inspired rock’n’roll producers ended was distilled to its purest with the more essence. As Keith Richards radio-friendly told this writer: “The whole band means it, and accession of Robert you y can hear it.” John ‘Mutt’ Lange on 1979’s Highway To Hell. Beyond AC/DC, Vanda & Young’s biggest successes were with pop acts, including studio project Flash And The Pan, whose new wave-style hits included 1983 UK Number 7 Waiting For A Train and one song, Walking In The Rain, covered by Grace Jones for her 1981 classic Nightclubbing. The team made one more album AC/DC, 1988’s Blow Up Your V deo; after Harry retired, George co-produced the band’s 2000 album Stiff Upper Lip. Upon his death, a statement from AC/DC read: “It is with pain in our heart that we have to announce the passing of our beloved brother and mentor.” Paul Elliott

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EPHANT’S MEMORY ELEPHANT’S MEMORY 1969 debut album from this NY band primarily known for backing John Lennon & Yoko Ono during the 70’s.

Tom Paley: conveyor of portentous truths.

GORD DOWNIE TRAGICALLY HIP FRONTMAN BORN 1964

TOM PALEY OLD-TIME MUSIC CHAMPION BORN 1928 On the British folk scene where he spent much of his life, Tom Paley was a unique link with the American folk revival and the oldtime music he helped to revitalise.

He joined the New York folk milieu in the ’40s, playing guitar and banjo, and gigged with Woody Guthrie. Later he taught Ry Cooder and Jerry Garcia. With The New Lost City Ramblers (1958-62) he opened up a new repertoire of old songs possessing, Bob Dylan said, “some dizzy, portentous truth”. In 1965 he settled in London,

where folk club patrons came to recognise the stocky figure laden with instruments, now augmented by a fiddle for playing Swedish tunes, and a heavy, but seldom opened camera case. Indifferent to celebrity, he performed with the same scrupulousness whether booked – often with his son, fiddler Ben Paley – or playing from the floor. Tony Russell

Ontario rockers The Tragically Hip did not always translate internationally, but they were loved at home. Central to their appeal was frontman/lyricist Gord Downie, whose songs of Canadian places his stories forging a bond between group and audience. Initially a covers band, they formed in 1984 when members were at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario; they would go on to release 13 LPs, nine of them domestic Number 1s. Self- effacing and unimpressed by fame, Downie also recorded six solo albums and was known for his interest in environmentalism and indigenous issues. After he made public his diagnosis of terminal brain cancer, the band played a farewell tour of Canada in 2016. The final show, Downie singing with the help of teleprompters, was a national event. Delivering a tribute after Downie died on October 17, Canadian PM Justin Trudeau wept. Clive Prior

THEY ALSOSERVED

Getty Images (2), Vera Marmelo

KONONO Nº1 BAND- LEADER and likembé player AUGUSTIN MAWANGUMINGIEDI (b.c.1961) took over the leadership of the Kinshasa junkyard experimentalist collective from his father Mingiedi Mawangu in 2009. Under his stewardship, they toured internationally and released two albums: 2010’s Assume Crash Position and 2016’s Konono Nº1 Meets Batida. His son Makonda will now take the reins. “We are devastated,” said the group in a statement, adding, “but Konono N°1 are indestructible.”

36 MOJO

CANTERBURY SCENE guitarist PHIL MILLER (b.1949) taught himself to play under the influence of blues, rock and jazz. Later, he brought his distinct and integrated playing to groups including Delivery, Matching Mole, Hatfield And The North and National Health. In 1982 he formed his group, In Cahoots, and continued to work with old collaborators. Of the man given to engrossed facial expressions while playing, bandmate Robert Wyatt said, “[He] would rather play a wrong note than a note that somebody else had ever played.” COMEDIAN SEAN HUGHES (b.1965) came to notice in the early ’90s comedy boom. As well as being known for including references to The Smiths and The Cure in his acerbic routines and two-season sitcom, he was a team captain on BBC music quiz TV show Never Mind The Buzzcocks from 1996 to 2002. He also released two scabrous albums with

Microdisney’s Cathal Coughlan under the name Bubonique: 1993’s 20 Golden Showers featured covers of Bobby Golds- boro’s Summer (The First Time) and Julian Cope’s Jellypop Perky Jean. JAZZ DRUMMER GRADY TATE (b.1932) played kit with Quincy Jones, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Jimmy Smith, Ella Fitzgerald, Stan Getz, Charles Mingus, Lalo Schifrin, Roland Kirk, Dizzy Gillespie, Peggy Lee, Roy Ayers, Bette Midler, Paul Simon, Kate And Anna McGarrigle, Mark Murphy, Roberta Flack, and Wes Montgomery. He played in the house band on The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson, sang on several tracks on the Schoolhouse Rock educational TV series, and drummed at Simon And Garfunkel’s Concert in Central Park. His solo albums included 1977’s Master Grady Tate. BASSIST, guitarist and keyboardist ALVIN DEGUZMAN (b.1978) formed East Los Angeles ska-punkers Kanker Sores in high school with vocalist Joe Cardamone. From 1998 he was a solid, reserved presence within the post-hardcore

tumult of The Icarus Line. The group would record seven albums, record sessions for John Peel and play live with Killing Joke, Primal Scream and The Cult. After Deguzman was diagnosed with cancer, the group disbanded. Writing in tribute, Cardamone stated, “Without Alvin, I would not have had the strength to press forward for so long.” CLUB OWNER, promoter and entrepreneur HAROLD PENDLETON (b.1924) helped make blues and jazz popular tastes and a credible career choice when he was secretary of the National Jazz Federation in the 1950s. He also opened the Marquee Club in 1958, crucible of The Rolling Stones, The Who and The Yardbirds among many others, and staged the first National Jazz Festival in 1961, an event that continues as the Reading festival. DRUMMER and writer IAIN SHEDDEN (b.1957) began his musical life in Glasgow neo-Mods The Jolt, who released a self-titled album on Polydor in 1978. In 1981 he joined The Saints, and spent the rest of the decade, on and off, touring and recording with Augustin them. Having Mawangu Mingiedi: likembé master.

relocated to Sydney, he turned to music journalism, writing for The Australian since 1998. PRODUCER, singer and songwriter BUNNY SIGLER (b.1941) sang doo wop and released numerous solo singles before a recommendation from Leon Huff led him to CameoParkway Records, where he scored a US Number 22 pop hit with the Shirley & Lee medley Let The Good Times Roll & Feel So Good. In the early ’70s, Sigler began working with Huff and Kenny Gamble at Philadelphia International Records, where he projects included The O’Jays, as well as solo recordings. He also discovered New Jersey disco men Instant Funk. Having left the label for Gold Mind, he had a 1978 Number 8 R&B hit with Let Me Party With You (Party, Party, Party) and also worked with The Whispers, Billy Paul, Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes, Curtis Mayfield and The Roots. GUITARIST DAISY BERKOWITZ (b. Scott Putesky, 1968) co-founded Marilyn Manson (the group) in 1989. After writing or co-writing 11 of the 13 songs on the band’s 1994 debut Portrait Of An American Family, he left during the recording of second album Antichrist Superstar in 1996. There- after he worked on his solo projects Three Ton Gate and played in the groups Jack Off Jill and Kill Miss Pretty. “We had our differences over the years,” said Marilyn Manson, “but I will always remember the good times more.” Clive Prior

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THE MOJO INTERVIEW

Cheating death, riffing hard, speaking truth: all in a life’s work for Queens Of The Stone Age’s Ginger Elvis. Perhaps he really has been chosen to save rock, singlehanded. “This is my religion,” shrugs Josh Homme. Interview by KEITH CAMERON

t

Portrait by TOM SHEEHAN

“My name is not by the producer credit, because it’s Ronson’s HAT’S THE STUFF!” JOSHUA HOMME victory or loss to carry,” Homme says. “He really did an amazing accepts MOJO’s proffered tube of E45 fucking job.” moisturising cream and decants its Built like a bear but with the dainty comportment of a cat, contents onto his left forearm, where a Homme is the one constant in Queens Of The Stone Age’s 20-year large, freshly-inked scorpion tattoo has span, the only survivor from Rated R and Songs For The Deaf, twin begun to sting. Inscribed above the thunderbolts that redefined heaviness for a new millennium. In eight-legged beast is one word: “Desert”. 2004, he quashed QOTSA’s vagabond mythos by firing volatile Limb soothed, Homme turns to greet Mark Ronson, who has bassist/vocalist Nick Oliveri, his friend and wingman since teenage joined the five Queens Of The Stone Age at central London’s years in stoner rock legends Kyuss, and began building a new model Edition Hotel to celebrate the UK Number 1 chart entry of Villains, the latest QOTSA album, which Ronson produced. Queens in solely his own image. But though this narrative plays to The Edition is a hi-spec Ian Schrager remodel of the formerly stereotypical notions of control, Homme’s collaborative résumé dowdy Berners Hotel, and you could argue that London-born, tells another story. As well as ongoing membership of Eagles Of New York-raised Ronson sprinkled an equivalent dusting of Death Metal with school friend Jesse Hughes, he’s worked with uptown chic onto Queens Of The Stone Age, the smouldering Dave Grohl and John Paul Jones as Them Crooked Vultures, edifice hewn by Josh Homme from the produced and co-written Iggy Pop’s valediclibertine rock scene of the desert communities tory Post Pop Depression, drawn P.J. Harvey WE’RE NOTWORTHY 150 miles east of Los Angeles. Ronson didn’t and Mark Lanegan into his Desert Sessions Mark Ronson on how to tame the beast so much as arrange the collective, and other credits include Arctic necessary ambience for Homme to reconnect Monkeys and Lady Gaga (Homme and produce Josh Homme. with the diamond-hard groove that underpins Ronson first worked together during sessions “He’s a great songwriter, his most admired music, which by 2013’s for 2016’s Joanne). His most important lyricist, producer and arranger who also has the …Like Clockwork was subsumed by gloom and collaboration, meanwhile, is with former most sublime falsetto. He gravitas. That the best rock album of 2017 Distillers singer Brody Dalle, his wife since knows more about gear should have been produced by a pop auteur is 2006, with whom he has three children. than any engineer. He’s like Sly, D’Angelo, Jack testimony to the skills of both Ronson and the Homme admits the kids were thrilled White, McCartney, people who can do music’s complex, restless creator. at dad’s recent stint reading the CBeebies ➢ everything better than you. It’s quite

Leann Mueller

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intimidating. His quality bar is so high.”

MOJO 39

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bedtime story. “I gotta be honest, I never watch or read about myself ’cos it makes me wanna quit, but because of how they were holding me, I could have watched that a million times.” He beams. “If I could sprinkle that behind my ear every day, I could go anywhere!”

Villains’ opening lyric is a statement of fact: “I was born in the desert, May 17, ’73.” What impact did your place of arrival have on the subsequent journey? I suppose everything. It impacted me heavily because of the lack of outside influence. And the enormity of space. The scene that I walked into was created by a guy named Mario Lalli, who we called Boomer. It was his ethos that ruled the roost. He had this extremely open mind. He listened to Zappa, Deep Purple and Black Flag, and classical music: “That’s all wonderful – what could be wrong with that?” How did you meet him? I was into punk rock music, and he’d have these parties at his house. Looking back on it now, there’d be 13-year-old people – me – and 40-year-old people. Which is kinda gross, ultimately, perhaps, but in that time frame it was totally fine. Because it’s a gang of individuals and outsiders. Did many touring bands visit the desert? Never. Billy Idol played and he slept with my friend’s sister and I just thought that was the greatest thing of all time. Tommy Tutone came – he had this great song, 867-5309/Jenny, that I thought of as this renegade version of pop. Then Black Flag played the desert. So they brought it into our yard. That SST mentality: “Go on, be yourself.” That’s what Boomer preached – without preaching. He more lived that way. Growing up, was music in your household? Members of my family play instruments. They

were always my heroes. I wanted to be like my grandpa. He had a horse and a gun, and my grandma was a talented painter, thinker and played music. They had a ranch in the middle of the desert. I remember watching my grandma paint, and as soon as she finished one she put it down and started the next one. No one ever played in front of each other. Maybe that’s the Norwegian part of us. So I just played in my room. I didn’t go running through the hallways screaming, “I have music!” What records did you listen to? We used to take these long drives in the summertime. This was the time of cassettes, they just flipped and kept going. And perhaps it was in the background for my parents as they were driving, but it started to sink in deep. I listened to a lot of Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton, a lot of The Doors… and a lot of Jackson Browne. One album called Running On Empty, I used to stare at the cover. It’s just a road going to nowhere and there are songs about the road, recorded on the road… I wonder, what did that do to me? It speaks to the loneliness. There’s a huge lonely side to what we do. Were you lonely growing up in the desert? I never thought so. But boy, was there all this free time to be alone. I think of boredom as a gift. Because when you’re so bored you just have to do something. You formed your first band very young. I was 11, 12. We were called Autocracy. We just played in garages and made flyers and stuff. That seemed great. Then Katzenjammer formed, which turned into Kyuss. I was really into the Misfits. Really into GBH and The Exploited and the English Subhumans. But then something wonderful happened – people hated us. In the dez, people didn’t boo you, they did nothing. You finish a song – nothing. Nothing. It affected me. “OK I should be

A LIFE IN PICTURES

inspired by that, inspired to find who I am.” I was tuning down because I’d never heard anyone tuning down, and we didn’t have tuners. Also, in the desert, with no bounceback, when the sound just goes – it was big, right away. Then, what if you use bass amps…? What if you do things wrong on purpose? The sound was important. Why did you leave Kyuss? It became clear we were part of creating a scene. And I didn’t want it to go south – I loved it so much. I thought we had maybe painted ourselves into a corner. I wasn’t angry no more, I was chasing girls… Also I had melodies that John, our singer, couldn’t get to. I didn’t want to sing, but I felt the ceiling. I thought, “We’ve accidentally got something – don’t ride it into the ground. Blow it up! Destroy it! It’ll live forever.” Your next move is joining Screaming Trees as auxiliary guitarist. I was a bit disillusioned with music. I moved to Seattle ’cos my brother and his husband were living there and I wanted to be around them. My friend Mike Johnson from Dinosaur Jr, who Kyuss had toured with – I used to call him ‘Downer Mike’, ’cos he was always bummed out – I used to go to his house, we’d both drink, and he had this amazing record collection. The Trees asked him to play guitar but because he’s Downer Mike he was like, “No… but Josh could do it.’’ I didn’t really know the Trees’ music that well. I knew Nearly Lost You and that’s about it. I knew I loved [Mark] Lanegan’s voice, just from that song, I knew his thing was special. And I knew they notoriously hated each other. But I also did not know what it was like to be a hired gun and to make someone happy. I wanted to make them incapable of saying anything other than, “Hey thanks, man.” I was just gonna do one Lollapalooza tour. And it turned into two years. What did you gain from that experience?

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Homme on the range: Josh in focus.

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Homme at Palm Desert High School: “I think of boredom as a gift. Because you just have to do something.”

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The riff robot: playing with Screaming Trees during Lollapalooza 1996, Spartan Stadium, San Jose.

Courtesy of Palm Desert High School, Courtesy of the BBC, Getty Images (6), PA

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“What if you do things wrong on purpose?”: Kyuss, 1992 (from left) John Garcia, Brant Bjork, Scott Reeder, Josh Homme.

Grohl, Homme and John Paul Jones at a Teenage Cancer Trust show, Royal Albert Hall, London, March 22, 2010.

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Distilled cool: Homme with wife Brody Dalle, Hollywood, June 17, 2010. The king of Queens rocks the Pinkpop Festival, Netherlands, June 1, 2008: “This is how I show who I am. I want to just get it right.”

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Queens Of The Stone Age circa Songs For The Deaf: (from left) Dave Grohl, Troy Van Leeuwen, Nick Oliveri, Homme, Mark Lanegan.

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“Don’t have nightmares”: Josh reads Julia Donaldson’s Zog for BBC’s CBeebies Bedtime Stories.

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“The coolest thing I’ve ever been part of”: Homme does Post Pop Depression with Iggy Pop, Amsterdam, 2016.

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Let us prey: Them Crooked Vultures’

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I got along with each of them individually, and they did not get along with themselves. They had trouble communicating, which I didn’t have. They had trouble listening to each other, which I didn’t have. I got along with Lanegan, who was in a very interesting state at that time. Lanegan described that band as: “Like prison. Without the sex.” Hahahaha! But see, that’s why I had no choice… All I wanted to do was listen to comments like that. I don’t mind if it’s awful, so long as we can giggle. The rowboat to hell can be wonderful ’til you reach the destination. Lanegan and I were inseparable. We understood each other. And didn’t judge each other. ’Cos I don’t know what anyone else should do, and I never have. I thought, “He’s an individual. He’s got troubles. He shouldn’t probably do that, but he’s an adult, what the fuck am I doing?”

played one thing until you got lost in a trance. One note is so much more difficult than 50. That’s what I learned in the Trees, because I was playing rhythm, I was trying to play like [AC/DC’s] Malcolm Young, trying to play that riff like a robot. So I had the first Queens record written, this robotic trance stuff, and then my friend Hutch, our sound man, who has turned me on to so much music, was like, Cough… and plays me Can, Neu!, Wire… I was like, “What?!” Really disheartened.

all the way up to [2013’s] Smooth Sailing. I can track that Cad. From doing the first album practically on your own, you make Rated R with a shifting troupe of guests and accomplices. That was the idea. I did this Desert Sessions stuff, and I didn’t have a band so I had to come up with a way to convince people to play with me and also not have their bands be outraged. Like – Fuck me tonight, then go back, I don’t care. No commitment, it’s just about music. So I opened a brothel, in the middle of nowhere, and that seemed to be exciting for other people… It was totally normal for me.

“Billy Idol slept with my friend’s sister and I just thought that was the greatest thing of all time.”

But eventually you quit. It was time for me to do what I needed to do. I tried to find a guy who could sing and play an instrument. The first incarnation of [QOTSA] was actually John McBain, from Monster Magnet, who’s a very peculiar person. He basically does crosswords and says “No”. Which I found fascinating, his disdain for humanity. There was a kid named Jason Albertini who I just called The Kid. He had to talk to his mum to let him rehearse. He was a virtuoso. But he didn’t talk, he just ate rice and jogged. So he was weird. And then Matt Cameron on drums, and Mike Johnson played bass. We played a gig, I can’t remember if it was good or bad. I was going to make a record, but I realised I had a singular idea and I was asking for people to muddle it. What was your singular idea? I wanted to see what it was like when you just

On the debut QOTSA album, the music doesn’t seem compelled by the words. It’s like they’re an afterthought… I did not want to sing but I did not want to tell someone what to do, so I was forced to do what I wanted to hear. I was very conservative. As luck would have it, I was dating a crazy person. So there were songs like You Can’t Quit Me and they were very real, but they were the least words I could say to get it across. I wrote a lot of lyrics in Kyuss but they weren’t always very good. To this day I find lyrics difficult. But I wanted to talk about how outside I felt, so I found this weird character that made me feel safe. I called it ‘The Cad’ – and The Cad is in You Would Know and Walkin’ On The Sidewalks, and I can track it

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It feels like your quantum leap. Not to me. I thought the first record should be singular and it’ll announce I Are This. The second one will fan out its wingspan, and the third one will answer everything. And so Rated R was like, I guess all bets are off. I’d heard that Paul McCartney and George Martin had taken a speaker to use as a microphone – so what if you take two speakers and put a microphone on omni in the middle? That’s an extremely important sound on Rated R for guitar and bass. I was a bit like Dr Frankenstein but shooting the injections on myself. I was up late a lot… (laughs). There’s still the robotic skeleton inside Rated R, but I wanted to dance, I wanted to groove, I wanted there to be girls, I wanted it to be hedonistic. I liked this rogue cast. Also, I knew I didn’t want to sing, so I was like, “What if we had three singers?” Nick had a cool voice, Lanegan did too… I wanted it to feel like monsters coming over the horizon – “Ohmigod, there they come!” You built a piratical fantasy world – yet “Nicotine, Valium, Vicodin, marijuana, ecstasy and alcohol” was also your

➢

“When I was younger I almost drowned – and when I got out of the water I remember thinking, ‘I’m never gonna wait...’” ¢

reality. Was it as wild as it appeared from the outside? It was way worse. It was dangerous. It was… stupefying. Stupid-defying. (Laughs) And I was proud of it. And I knew that it would meet a wall. Because it had no choice. You cannot harness chaos. You can touch it and die, or touch it and live. At what point did it meet that wall? When the money showed up. I want to be there for my people that I’m close to, ’cos that’s all you have, right? Your family, your friends. But sometimes I realise I’ve enabled people to go longer. When the money’s there, you stop communicating. Everyone I’ve let go should have been let go probably two years before. And I desperately tried to hang on to them.

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Presumably you’re alluding to Nick [Oliveri]’s departure? Yeah, and Mark’s too. Mark was not gonna live much longer. Nick was doing things that had nothing to do with music. And I love Nick so much, so I won’t say what they are. I once did and it hurt too much. The only judgement call I really can make is what I’m willing to live with. I don’t tell people how to be – this is about shepherding the weird. Queens Of The Stone Age circa Songs For The Deaf was a monstrous live band – Dave Grohl ran away from the Foo Fighters to play drums for you. I never expected him to stay, because it was the nature of our band to eat the heart, and leave the rest. In a beautiful way. We were

there to seize moments. If I hadn’t let Nick go, I would have broke up the band after that record anyway and started a new one. But then when I let Nick go, it was like, “You can’t make it without him.” Are you kidding me?! I don’t think anyone in the moment listened to our next record [Lullabies To Paralyze, 2005], because they had made decisions. It was ‘pick a side’ for a moment. I kept my mouth shut but other people didn’t, so I had no way to say, “You have no idea.” I fired my friend – could you do that? I went to his house and looked him in the face. I was doing what I was raised to do, in the manner I was raised to do it. So I wrote a Brothers Grimm fairytale as a response, saying, “You go ahead and have your witch trial…” I’ve always put so much into the records and I put so much into that one. I honestly thought I had the musical answer. I was wrong (laughs). I don’t think people got it at all. You get married in the same year Lullabies is released, and then in 2006 your first child is born. What was the impact? The birth of my daughter really saved me. Meeting Brody saved me too. Because I’d cut my tether, and Brody was a grounding for me. I like to see how far things go. To agitate has always been my thing. At that point in my life

with The Vampyre Of Time And Memory and said, “Nobody will ever want to hear this.” One thing I know for sure is that of all the different styles of complaint, a successful musician complaining is the worst! It’s not a great look, is it? It’s like you come out of the dressing room of life and go, “Whaddya think?” And someone goes, “Fuck you!” (laughs). It was a difficult record to make. When it was finally done I just called each guy in our band and said, “I’m really sorry, this has a strong chance of being our last record – this is probably not gonna go that well.” ’Cos it was so emotionally different to everything else. Between that record and Villains, you make a fourth Eagles Of Death Metal album and

DRIVINGHOMME

Three essential Josh vehicles. By Keith Cameron. THE PROTOTYPE

Kyuss

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Blues For The Red Sun (DALI, 1992)

Produced by Masters Of Reality’s Chris Goss, the second Kyuss album is a critical component in Homme’s DNA, showcasing traits that would recur, albeit much refined, in QOTSA: alternate tunings, a deeply pliable rhythm section, and the distended groove quests that emerged from playing generator parties in the desert. One element missing is his subversive voice; and with John Garcia singing like a baby James Hetfield over sludge juggernauts like Green Machine, it made perfect sense that by 1993 Kyuss were opening for Metallica. “Are you sitting comfortably?”: Josh Homme prepares to tell us a story, The Edition Hotel, London, August 30, 2017.

THE CLASSIC

Queens Of The Stone Age

##### Rated R

(INTERSCOPE, 2000)

Tom Sheehan

I was actually well beyond the edge, but still looking for it. I think it’s very possible it could have been a very stereotypical story: ‘Band with promise flames out.’ I am so very blessed to have met someone that can spit 30 feet and punch like a guy and has a really strong brain like Brody. You’ve referred to …Like Clockwork’s mood as “broken”, following your hospitalisation during 2010, and complications after knee surgery. What exactly happened? It wasn’t knee surgery – I’ll put it at that. I never said there was a knee surgery. It may have been our publicist. I don’t like talking about how I got there. I got there. And it wasn’t the surgery that fucked me up, it was afterwards because I was committed to a bed, I couldn’t move, and I was contagious. For three months I couldn’t touch anybody. My daughter was young and I had to yell to keep her away. By the end of that, I wasn’t very happy. I was desperate for another story to tell about that record. But lyrically the records are a diary of a lifetime. So they have to be real or I’m out. Also, the guys were wanting to do a record and I did not. It was actually Brody – she just talked to me. I imagine I was not the greatest person to be around, so she was like, “Please go out in the garage and play some music…!” I came back in

Rated R presented Queens Of The Stone Age as less band, more rock’n’roll circus; the wry sleeve inscription stated membership was “Restricted To Everyone”. Homme’s songs were now precision-moulded boogie dune productions, in cahoots with trouble brother Nick Oliveri, providing peak material for Mark Lanegan (In The Fade) plus signature bakes Feel Good Hit Of The Summer and The Lost Art Of Keeping A Secret. 2010’s deluxe reissue added the steaming 2000 Reading Festival set and a Kinks cover. Pure, visionary, modern rock’n’roll.

THE HYBRID

Iggy Pop

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Post Pop Depression (CAROLINE INTERNATIONAL, 2016)

Ostensibly an Iggy Pop solo album, Post Pop Depression was really a thank-you gift from Josh Homme to the man whose Lust For Life and The Idiot rescued him from post-Kyuss creative inertia. Just as David Bowie produced the Berlin diptych for his idealised vision of Iggy, so Homme and band (QOTSA’s Dean Fertita, Arctic Monkeys’ Matt Helders) created a soundworld in the image of his hero, but also himself: desert lounge blues singer making perverted European disco, with intense performances from all.

then Iggy Pop’s final album. What role does EODM play in your life? Oh, it’s just as important as Queens. Eagles Of Death Metal is where I put my jeans shorts on and jump in the pool. That’s where you drink during the day, philosophically. Jesse [Hughes] and I have been so close. That notion of just giggling like a retard… ah, which is probably not what you’re supposed to say these days. Sorry man! But that notion of being footloose and fancy free is so pleasurable. I also believe in Jesse. We have such differences and such similarities, but one thing is for sure: he’s born to be a frontman. Were you originally due to have been playing with EODM at the Paris Bataclan on November 13, 2015? I was so adamant about touring with Eagles. And then Brody was pregnant again, so at the last minute I didn’t go to Europe. Everything that happened after [the terror attack] felt a lot like being in a dryer filled with cannonballs. So the Iggy record was really helpful. And then Bowie died. It was a weird time. I remember sitting there with Iggy looking at each other, not needing to say anything. What did you take from the Post Pop Depression experience? It was the coolest thing I’ve ever been allowed to be part of. The conversations I had with Iggy in my car, which I can’t share but they’re all based on how to survive. To make it through. That’s what I need to figure out, so that I do. To what extent is the moodshift on Villains a reaction to the emotional turbulence of the preceding years? When I was younger I almost drowned – and when I got out of the water I remember thinking, “I’m never gonna wait…” So after Bataclan and Iggy, the word ‘now’ just kept pulsing like a heartbeat in glaring lights. This is it – every step is all you get. Take a chance. From top to tail, I’ve always thought of Queens as a dance band. In working with Mark Ronson, were you looking for a new way to be a rock band? Absofuckinglutely. It doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to understand that he was asking me to be on the Gaga record to bridge the gap. I was like, “Why deny signs along the road? Why not band together and break as many preconceived notions as we can.” It’s that word again – to agitate. It’s flashing again now – agitate now, agitate now. Another word that crops up with regard to you is “driven”. My yardstick for success is all emotional. I used to think that I was hard and absent of that, but I’m not. This is my religion, this is my way of life, this is how I explain to my kids how to be somebody. This is how I show who I am. I want to just get it right. Because I know I’m not gonna be around here as long as other people, y’know? When I’m gone the music will be there for the people that are close to me. I would like to get it right so I feel like I set a high watermark for our family. For my name. You’ll be around a long while yet, surely? Well… I know what it’s like out here, and you don’t. Also, whenever I’ve had troubles in my life, the work has always pulled me through. My old man works, my grandpa worked, I work. So the work is everything. Being on tour can be difficult, because there’s an element that’s like being a vacuum salesman. You ring a doorbell and it’s like, “Hi!” That’s why I need the shows to be different every night. Because if they’re too similar I could split at any M moment. I guess I’m looking for reality. MOJO 43

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Credit in here

Credit in here

Alysse Gafkjen

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Credit in here

Credit in here

says Robert Finley. “It was just an ordinary Saturday morning, and I was supposed to be buying a pair of shoes with the $20 note my dad had given me.” IFTY-THREE YEARS ON FROM THAT FATEFUL DAY, Robert Finley, smartly dressed in blue jeans, plaid shirt, grey and red baseball jacket, cowboy hat perched firmly on his head, says nothing much has changed in Winnsboro. Yet much has changed for him in recent times. In 2015, while jamming at the King Biscuit Blues Festival in Helena, Arkansas, the then 61-year-old was discovered by the Music Maker Relief Foundation, a non-profit organisation which helps aging and vulnerable Southern musicians. His debut album for Big Legal Mess, a subsidiary of Fat Possum, followed in 2016. Produced by label boss Bruce Watson and guitarist Jimbo Mathus and recorded with The Bo-Keys in Memphis, Age Don’t Mean A Thing introduced an expressive voice and a compelling storyteller. He’s just finished recording its follow up Goin’ Platinum! with Dan Auerbach, for the Black Keys singer/guitarist’s Easy Eye Sound label. “He put me in his studio with his session guys to woodshed,” explains Finley of Auerbach’s approach. “These guys were my heroes. They’d played on my favourite records by Joe Tex and Aretha Franklin, many of the ones I heard coming out of that juke joint when I was “I’m staying a kid. It was like coming full circle.” focused”: Robert Finley, Hillsborough, North Carolina, 2015, ready to celebrate the spoils of talent and patience; (inset top) young Finley joins the Army band.

INLEY WAS ONE OF FIVE BOYS AND three girls, who grew up on his father’s farm on the outskirts of Winnsboro. Finley Sr was a seriously religious man and he insisted that no music was played in the home. Robert, the youngest of the sons, was disptached to molk the cows and plough the fields. “I didn’t like it much” he says. “I knew I was never going to be a sharecropper. I was going to be a guitar player.” Both his parents sang gospel, and he did too. When they went out, his brothers turned their dad’s radio to the rock’n’roll station to hear B.B. King and Bobby Rush. Robert stood on point duty looking for the dust in the road that indicated his parents’ return, so they could retune the radio back to the religious programme. When his dad died in a car accident in 1970, Robert joined the army, aged just 16, signing up as a helicopter and subsystem mechanic. The Vietnam War was coming to an end though, and he spent his time as the military bandleader in charge of entertainment. “If you were a part of the band you had to be serious,” says Finley. “It was a part of your duty. Late for rehearsal, you’d be fined 50, 100 dollars. If you didn’t show and you didn’t have a reason, you were AWOL. You could get a dishonourable discharge. I learned discipline in that job but it was great fun too.” On his return to Winnsboro, Finley ran the local grocer’s, then took up carpentry. The church became his family and he formed Brother

Timothy Duffy, Courtesy of Robert Finley, Getty Images (2), Alysse Gafkjen

The year was 1964, the place, a small town called Winnsboro, in the Franklin Parish of Louisiana. Finley and his friends were stood outside White’s Auto, the boro general store. There was a guitar hanging in the window. The price tag was $19.95. “Maybe it was peer pressure,” says Finley, “but it also felt like it was meant to be, that $20 note was really burning a hole in my trouser pocket. I left that shop with the guitar and I felt like the Pied Piper, strumming it all the way home with my friends following behind me. On the Monday we skipped school, went to the woods and I spent the whole time playing that guitar. Of course my dad found out. Someone had seen us and he came and got me in his truck and took me home and gave me a good spanking. It sure hurt. You could hear me hollering down the street. But it was worth it.”

Finley And The Gospel Sisters. Every Sunday at 10am they hosted The Gospel Hour on Radio KMAR. “This was the early ’80s. People would ring in with requests and we would sing them,” he says. “Then the sisters got married and I was left on my own, so music became just a hobby.” When he started losing his eyesight to glaucoma and became legally blind in 2015, music became central again. “I couldn’t work any more but I could still sing and play guitar so I’d go out into the streets. I did reunions, restaurants, house parties, I’d play a bit of gospel, blues, country and western, delta blues, low down dirty blues, whatever the occasion called for. I knew I was good. I just needed someone to discover me.” At the King Biscuit Blues Festival that same year, he asked the stage manager if he could play a short set before the scheduled show. “I said, Hey man it’s my first time here and I’d like to rock the crowd. He said I had a lot of nerve and gave me a go. I played one song, and he said, ‘Go ahead, sing another.’ The crowd started screaming, shouting, clapping. When I stopped performing, people were coming up to slap me on the back and give me money.” OBERT HAD A BORROWED AN old karaoke box, with flashing lights, and his exuberance was infectious,” says Tim Duffy, head of the Music Maker Relief Foundation who saw that show. “I was immediately taken by his voice. I got his telephone number, talked to him about visiting me in North Carolina, said I would send him a plane ticket. I called him when I got home, and he flew up the next week. We told him about our programs at Music Maker and how we’d love to partner with him. We recorded 60 songs in two days, all but three he’d written. I was floored.” Duffy then tipped off his friend Bruce Watson, who helmed Big Legal Mess. “I heard him and thought, This is what I’ve been looking for,” Watson told me. “How come no one has heard of him? He has a great voice, is a great songwriter, holds himself well. I decided I’d make a record with him.” Up until that point Finley had been concentrating on the blues, but, recorded in Memphis, Age Don’t Mean A Thing’s nine songs, seven of which are self penned, placed the sexagenarian in an arresting Southern soul setting. Watson then sent another friend, Dan Auerbach, some footage of Finley playing live. Auerbach was equally excited. “He stood out as exceptional and I knew I wanted to work with him,” says Auerbach. Their first collaboration came on Murder Ballads, his score to his friend Gabe Soria’s graphic novel of the same name. “He sung his ass off, his spirit defined the recordings, and then I knew I wanted to work with him some more.” Earlier this year, the pair entered Auerbach’s Easy Eye Sound studio in Nashville, with a house band including former Memphis Boys drummer Gene Chrisman and keyboardist Bobby Wood, plus legendary guitarist Duane Eddy, to record Finley’s second album. The first thing Auerbach told him was to put the guitar down. “He’s a blues player, but he’s so much more,” explains Auerbach. “You can put him in any setting, in front of an orchestra, a small ensemble, and

“He is so good… The sky’s the limit”: Finley and Dan Auerbach, Easy Eye Sound, Nashville, 2017.

The Florida-born soul singer, cook, and James Brown impersonator was 63 years old when he released his debut LP, No Time For Dreaming, in 2011.

Although the North Carolina singer and guitarist had been playing since she was seven, she didn’t release an album until 1958, when she was 65, and had already been retired from music for 25 years.

Radical Brooklyn sculptor and noise artist Alan Bermowitz was 39 years young when he and Martin Reverby released their debut LP as Suicide in December 1977.

he’s a natural. He’s a Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles, Tom Jones He can’t play every chord change but freed of the guitar, he knows exactly how to sing over every one. I wanted to show that.” With a set of songs penned by Auerbach, John Also known as the Viking Prine, Pat McLaughlin and Nick Lowe, they spent just of 6th Avenue, the blind Kansas-born minimalist three days recording the album. composer and street “You know, I am 63,” says Finley, “and I’m looking artists Louis Thomas round the room and I’m the youngest there. I’m overHardin waited until he was 37 before releasing whelmed. When you got the best of the best pushing his first album, on Epic. you, it’s not hard to stay in your lane. I look back now and I still can’t believe just how easy it was. We soundchecked, jammed, then got it down. It was the same with our first live show in New Orleans [at the PreserThe New York publisher, vation Hall on August 21, 2017]. The response was poet, author and cartoonist had already awesome.” celebrated his 40th Goin’ Platinum! is pretty awesome too. Mixing gosbirthday by the time he pel fervour with soulful emotion, and framed with feformed avant-folk radicals The Fugs with fellow poet male harmonies, horns, organ and strings, it ranks Ed Sanders in 1965. alongside the work of the great soul voices Solomon Burke, Syl Johnson and Al Green. “He’s a natural born performer,” says Auerbach. “He is so good. Where is Robert Finley headed? The sky’s the limit.” “The last two years have been the pay off to the 50 before it when I refused to give up on my dream,” says Finley. “I don’t want to throw it away now it’s finally here so I’m staying f cused. I approach every s ng as if it’s my last one, Late bloomers: a d I’ll celebrate when the (from left) Tuli show is over.” M Kupferberg; Charles Bradley; Moondog.

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When you’re alone: Bruce Springsteen soundchecks the E Street Band on the Born In The USA tour, Kyoto, Japan, April 19, 1985.

N FEBRUARY OR MARCH OF 1987, Max Weinberg – the drummer in Bruce Springsteen’s rock’n’roll arena-party powerhouse, the E Street Band – got a phone call from his boss. “He said he was recording at home with a drum machine – expletive deleted,” Weinberg recalls with a laugh. “He had recorded everything with a simple beat.” Weinberg makes a robotic, clicking sound, like the static cha-cha of a hotellounge organ. “He said, ‘I’m not feeling the rhythm of this stuff. I was thinking you could humanise it, loosen it up.’”

Getty Images (3)

Weinberg remembers the timing of the ensuing session, because they were working together at Thrill Hill Recording, Springsteen’s home studio in Rumson, New Jersey, when Weinberg heard that his drumming idol Buddy Rich had died on April 2. “There was no control room,” Weinberg says of the recording space. “It was just an attic in the guest house,” near Springsteen’s main residence. “It was really small and primitive. He had some mikes set up, and my drums took up a lot of the room.” When Max Weinberg arrived, Springsteen “played me the whole thing – the stuff that, at that point, was the contenders for an album.” The arrangements were spare but fuller than demos, with fully evolved lyrics, vocals and an unexpected emphasis on electronic keyboards. There were no other musicians, so far; Springsteen had played all of the instruments. The sound “was extremely modern,” Weinberg says. “I guess he wanted a little more of that East Coast muscle.” Weinberg remembers Springsteen’s summation of the stories in his new songs: “He played me all of the songs – twice. My reaction was, Wow. Then I said something like, That guy is really confused. And he goes, ‘Exactly. This character goes between 51 per cent and 49 per cent certain that he’s made the right – or wrong – decision. He keeps going back and forth between the percentages of that morality, between right and wrong.’ “Then we set to work.” IX MONTHS LATER, ON OCTOBER 9, 1987, Springsteen released the unprecedented and – to many fans – shocking result of that dilemma, Tunnel Of Love. “I’d recently begun writing some new material that, for the first time, wasn’t centred around the man on the ‘road’ but the questions and concerns of the man in the ‘house’,” the singer reflected in his 2016 memoir, Born To Run. In May 1985 – during a break in the 15-month worldwide tour for his multi-platinum blockbuster, Born In The USA – Springsteen had married Julianne Phillips, an Oregon-born actress and model 10 years his junior. They’d met the previous fall, at dinner after one of Springsteen’s shows in Los Angeles. The songs he wrote in late 1986 and early 1987 “captured the ambivalence, love and fear brought on by my new life,” Springsteen wrote, adding that “I wasn’t ready for producers, a big band or any band. The music was too personal.” His “first full record about men and women in love would be a pretty tough affair.” Less than a year after it came out, Julianne Phillips filed for divorce, citing irreconcilable differences.

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In the driver’s seat: Springsteen at the wheel, circa 1987; (above, from left) with first wife Julianne Phillips; on-stage with second wife Patti Scialfi during the Tunnel Of Love tour, Copenhagen, Denmark, July 25, 1988.

The album those songs became would feature Max Weinberg on eight of 12 tracks. Guitarist Nils Lofgren – who joined the E Street Band in 1984, on the eve of the Born In The USA tour – would contribute a solo in the title track. But pianist Roy Bittan, organist Danny Federici and bassist Garry Tallent, all long-serving pillars of the E Street Band, would make only minimal appearances. And saxophonist Clarence Clemons, Springsteen’s ‘Big Man’ since 1972, was on just one track, as a harmony singer. Notably, Patti Scialfa – a New Jersey native who joined the E Street Band shortly prior to the Born In The USA tour in 1984 as a backing vocalist – would end up singing on three songs, including One Step Up: a quietly searing ballad of straying and despair that ended, prophetically, with healing seduction. In 1988, she and Springsteen became a real-life couple as they re-enacted, nightly on tour with the E Street Band, the dramatic see-saw inside his Tunnel Of Love songs. In June 1991, they married. “I didn’t need to be told to hold it back,” Weinberg says of his work on the album. “Lyrically, the songs were so powerful.” He notes something Springsteen said during one session. “We had just made a big noise” – the topical charge and explosive release of Born In The USA… “This time, he said, ‘We need a quieter noise.’”

N OCTOBER 2, 1985, SPRINGSTEEN AND THE E Street Band finished the Born In The USA tour with a 33-song blowout at the Los Angeles Coliseum. At a celebratory dinner that Springsteen hosted for his group at the Sunset Marquis hotel, he “went around the table,” Weinberg says, “shaking each of our hands, going, ‘I want to thank all of the members of the band who rocked the land.’” Weinberg also remembers his first thought after that show, as he walked off the Coliseum stage: “That’s it.” It was, and still is, like that at the end of every tour, the drummer says. “It’s always been ‘See ya,’ and you go back to your real life” until the leader calls again. When Springsteen rang in early 1987 about his drummachine problem, Weinberg had had no idea that he was making a record and that it was all but done. Nils Lofgren was used to that silence with Neil Young. “I’ve called Neil,” the guitarist says, “asking him what he was up to. And he’d say, ‘I’m just hanging out, waiting for the muse.’” Springsteen was not waiting; he was not in a hurry either. After a reported series of sessions in the spring of 1986 at the Los Angeles home he shared with Julianne Phillips, he turned his attention to preparing Live 1975-1985, a five-LP box set of his decade in clubs and beyond with the E Street Band. That November, back in New Jersey, Springsteen swung by Weinberg’s house with a copy, fresh off

the presses. “Max,” he said, “when you start having those babies and they ask you what you did with this particular period of your life, you give ’em this record.” By January 1987, Springsteen was in his attic in Rumson laying down words and music with engineer Toby Scott. Two Tunnel Of Love songs, Walk Like A Man and Spare Parts, were supposedly done on the first day. “He was doing what he had done with the demos that became Nebraska,” says Chuck Plotkin, who co-produced the album with Springsteen and his manager Jon Landau, “except on high-quality equipment. He wasn’t limited to two overdubs.” Springsteen – who had cited the primal electro-punk of the New York duo Suicide as an influence on Nebraska – was also “addressing this issue happening in the culture,” Plotkin notes, “which was hiphop. He got a beat-maker and learned how to use it.” Lofgren’s solo on the title track was “interesting kismet”, according to the guitarist. He was passing through New Jersey when he called Springsteen “to say hi and check in”. Springsteen said he had a track underway: “Maybe you could come by and take a poke at it.” Lofgren asked when. “How about tomorrow afternoon?” “It was an accidental thing,” Lofgren figures. “If I hadn’t called, would he have called me?” Weinberg was also in Thrill Hill, putting tom-tom fills on Tunnel Of Love, as Springsteen listened with ebbing satisfaction to the guitar solo he had already recorded. “His style was bumping up against what he really wanted,” Weinberg says. “He said, ‘I should get Nils to give this a crack,’ because Nils had a modern, clean sound.” The album was already “next to finished,” according to Springsteen biographer and confidant Dave Marsh, even before Lofgren’s break and the smattering of harmonies and keyboards added at New York’s Hit Factory and at studios in Los Angeles. A later Rolling Stone report suggested that a couple of country sidemen played on the LA sessions: pedal-steel guitarist Jay Dee Maness, who appeared on The Byrds’ 1968 classic, Sweetheart Of The Rodeo, and violinist Richard Greene, formerly of the group Seatrain. They did not make the final record. Jimmie Wood, a harmonica player called in for Spare Parts, did – mistakenly credited as ‘James Wood’. “It was through Chuck [Plotkin], who I’d known since high school,” says Wood, an LA blues veteran who has played for over 20 years with the Imperial Crowns. “Chuck called and said, ‘Jimmie, do you still have your blues musician’s union card?’” ­ MOJO 51

to release them. Once the iron furnace of heartbreak had cooled, lines like “Days fade to black in the light of what they lack” (Already Dead) revealed their universal wisdom: poetry in moping. JB

(Hannibal, 1982)

(Parlophone, 1999) The end of Damon Albarn’s partnership with Elastica singer Justine Frischmann looms large (“There’s blood on the tracks,” bassist Alex James said, flagging the Break-up Album lineage) , immanent in the mood of opiated, fuck-everything dissolution and manifest in gospelly opener Tender (“Tender is the ghost / The ghost I love the most”) and penultimate epic No Distance Left To Run, whose lyric (“I won’t kill myself, trying to stay in your life”) is as nothing next to the Peter Green lamentation of Graham Coxon’s guitar. DE

Richard Thompson has always written about doomed relationships, enwreathed in sinister metaphor, but this time around the circumstances were all too painfully real. Produced at Olympic Studios, with Joe Boyd, while Richard and Linda’s marriage was on the rocks, Shoot Out walks a knife-edge of emotional pain, the of-its-time production lending this already emotionally fragile record a brittle, airless intensity. AM

(Motown, 1978) This apogee in divorce albums – its proceeds were to go to Anna Gordy after their separation – is poignant and bitter yet full of hope for his new life with Janis Hunter. Marvin’s singing is warm, the studio band is cool, but the barbs aimed at the past are sharp and unerringly strike home. From Anger, Sparrow and Anna’s Song, there’s beauty but You Can Leave, But It’s Going To Cost You and I Met A Little Girl, with its sign-off “Hal-le-lu-jah I’m free” form the core of score-settling genius. GB

(Reprise, 1971) That Joni’s vital heart-map travelogue has become more about her relationships with men (Graham Nash, James Taylor, Leonard Cohen, a Cretan barman) than her own remarkable veracity says much about the narcissistic patriarchal gaze. Clean, acoustic songs seem simple, starkly self-aware (“I’m so hard to handle/I’m selfish and I’m sad” – River) then a rush of poetic lyrical complexity (“I am a lonely painter/I live in a box of paints” – A Case Of You), like bird footprints in sand. JB

(Epic, 1975) Nihilistic ballad I Just Don’t Give A Damn is rightly considered one of country legend George Jones’s most compelling performances. It’s best understood within this LP: informed by his divorce from Tammy Wynette, it regards his broken love life both through rose-tinted Aviators and a bloodshot hungover stare, always finding the naked emotion at every song’s core. Tammy even co-writes two songs, the debauched Bring On The Clowns poignantly depicting a redemption that was not to be. IH

(Charisma, 1977) After seven years, “Alice” has found she can no longer stand Peter, and has gone off with an old friend of his. Cue a most shattered and shattering relationship post-mortem, taking in a fallen man’s fury, disbelief and resignation over slash-and-burn rock, acoustic desolation and beauteous orchestral mea culpas. “I am drunk with sadness”, and “There is nothing left but hatred and lust” are just two of the choicest lyrics of emotional annihilation. IH

(Geffen, 2002) An album about losing your anchor, in this case, Beck’s fiancée, the stylist Leigh Limon, and the dramatic emotional shift in direction that loneliness brings. It was another two years after the songs were written before Beck felt able

(Capitol, 1955) Recorded after-dark, in Hollywood’s KHJ Studios, in the early months of 1955, as a heartbroken Sinatra came to terms with the collapse of his relationship with Ava Gardner, this exquisitely sequenced proto-concept album of desolate torch ballads married to spare Nelson Riddle arrangements turned one man’s romantic pain into exquisite musical pleasure for millions, an aching introspective mood of romantic desolation so pure that it soared. AM

(Epic, 1981) Their final album played out as Benny and Frida followed Björn and Agnetha to the divorce courts. The men, of course, were still writing the lyrics for the women to sing and those alchemical voices enter a psychodynamic tailspin from the opening title track (female dissident cracks up under the weight of the song’s Cold War/divorce metaphor) to the woman reflecting on the consequences of an extra-marital Ain’t got you: Bob Dylan affair in One Of Us. with Sara Lownds, Taxi for Dr Freud! JB 1989; (from top) Damon Albarn and Justine Frischmann, 1996: Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner, 1950.

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(Columbia, 1974) As the last embers of his marriage to Sara Lownds fizzled, Dylan delivered his most focused and forensic album about what happens between lovers (until Together Through Life). Like Tunnel Of Love, it was an LP about ends (Idiot Wind’s black hole of exasperation) and beginnings (how grateful does he sound for the solace of Shelter From The Storm?) while the ghosts of past loves cling to If You See Her, Say Hello and Simple Twist Of Fate, as emptiness and loss resound with every tick of the clock. DE

Cautious man: in Japan, 1985: “I had to put my old dreams down… I had grown beyond them.”

¢ Neal Preston, Rex (2), Getty Images

Springsteen turned Wood loose on Spare Parts. “I did this chugging thing that is sort of a trademark of mine. I wish I was louder in the mix,” he says with a laugh. But he was paid double the union scale and got a lot of subsequent session work “because I was the first non-E Street cat to play harp on a Springsteen record…”

OT QUITE COUNTRY AND NOT JUST SYNTH-POP; streaked with blues and fairground keyboards; anchored by rhythms somewhere between New York hip-hop and the vintage soul-ballad crack of a drumstick on a snare rim (Weinberg: “We call it the Try A Little Tenderness Beat”): Tunnel Of Love was nothing like Bruce Springsteen’s seven previous studio albums and yet absolutely faithful to his songwriting mission. “I wanted to make a record about what I felt, about really letting another person in your life and trying to be a part of someone else’s life,” Springsteen explained late one night in April 1988, talking to a Rolling Stone reporter in Atlanta, Georgia during the subsequent Tunnel Of Love Express tour. It was difficult, he allowed, because “there’s a part of you that isn’t so sure. That was the idea of the record, and I had to change quite a bit just to get to the point to write about that stuff. I couldn’t have written any of those songs at any other point in my career. I wouldn’t have had the knowledge or the insight or the experience to do it.” Tunnel Of Love is a record of intimate, often stinging immediacy. Springsteen conceived and recorded its dispatches from the front lines of commitment – with cost and revelation at every step – as the doubts, striving and consequences mounted in his own life. Even after he opened the home-studio door wide enough to let in a few, decisive overdubs, it remained the most deliberately interior album Springsteen had made to date. The solo, acoustic tracks on his 1973 debut, Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J., were a holdover from his adolescent immersion in Bob Dylan, while 1982’s Nebraska was a transcendent accident – a set of home-demo cassettes that Springsteen couldn’t beat with the band. Most of his writing on Tunnel Of Love was in the first person. Ain’t Got You opened the record like a field-holler spin on The Yardbirds,

Springsteen jubilantly mocking his Born In The USA celebrity (“I been around the world and all across the seven seas/Been paid a king’s ransom for doin’ what comes naturally”). The urgent desire and pressing hope in Tougher Than The Rest and All That Heaven Will Allow were familiar romance with a wily, tempered futurism: the former with a throaty-treble guitar break like Duane Eddy phoning in from space; the latter suggesting a Kraftwerk twist on the ’73 boardwalk romance 4th Of July, Asbury Park (Sandy). But the tales, as they got darker, were not entirely his, at least in the telling. The couple in the country-blues hoedown Spare Parts – a skittish boy and frightened but resolute girl, confronted by an unintended pregnancy – could have come from the 1980 double album, The River. In Cautious Man, a veteran “of the road” with a restless heart hits a crossroads, feeling “a coldness rise up inside him that he couldn’t name.” “It wouldn’t have surprised me if the song ended with a gunshot,” says Dave Marsh. “And there’s only one person to shoot at. It sounds suicidal to me. But that’s a character, not Bruce.” Still, this was storytelling framed by present tensions and grounded in striking, personal allusions. The setting of Tunnel Of Love evoked Springsteen’s old bar-band turf in Asbury Park – specifically, Weinberg says, the “distortion of mirrors in the old Fun House” on the boardwalk. “I was into the haunting,” Lofgren says of the first time he heard that song. “We’ve all been haunted by the good and bad of love. And I got that right off the bat.” Walk Like A Man is a lifetime of flashbacks – of a parent feared, misunderstood and admired – as the singer, standing at a church ­ MOJO 53

i i Clemons, 1988; (above) with Paul Simon at the 1987 Harry Chapin tribute concert, Carnegie Hall, NYC; (far right) at Wembley Stadium for the September 1988 Amnesty International benefit concert (from left) Youssou N’Dour, Peter Gabriel, Bruce, Tracy Chapman, Sting.

Capital Pictures, Getty Images (2), Robert Matheu, Kylie Coutts

¢

altar, watches his bride-to-be march up the aisle. “Walking like a man is what the whole record is about,” says Chuck Plotkin. “Every song is about figuring out how to keep things beautiful, to not betray the truth at the heart of something that, in your sloppiness, you can crush out of existence. This is something that Bruce has always been dealing with.” “Bruce likes to talk about his pain obliquely,” Marsh observes. “Every song [on Tunnel Of Love] is utterly real and honest. But the record is not a chronicle. He’s not John Lennon.” Tunnel, says Marsh, is closer “to a Bob Dylan record, where if you took tweezers, moved this little part here and this little part there, you would have sort of a map of what really happened. “I’m not saying he made a dishonest record,” Marsh says. “He made a dissembling record.” Indeed, on the inner sleeve, at the end of the credits, there was a line that simply said “Thanks Juli”. “In my life previously,” Springsteen said, that night in Atlanta on the 1988 tour, “I hadn’t allowed myself to get into a situation where I would even have cause to reflect on these things. When I was in my twenties, I was specifically avoiding it. It was like, ‘I got enough on my hands, I ain’t ready for that, I don’t write no marryin’ songs.’” But, the singer admitted, “You get to a place where your old answers and your old dreams don’t really work any more, so you have to step into something new.” On Tunnel Of Love, “I had to put my old dreams down, because I had grown beyond them.” Tunnel Of Love sold three million copies in America, impressive for a wilful experiment but only a fifth of Born In The USA’s 15-million tally. But Tunnel was a permanent shift in Springsteen’s record-making. With the E Street

54 MOJO

Band, in the march to glory from 1978’s Darkness On The Edge Of Town to Born In The USA, Springsteen cut everything “live in the studio,” Weinberg says. “No one had a chart. Play what’s appropriate. If he didn’t like it, he would tell you.” That became the exception. The dominant process over the next three decades, as recently as 2012’s Wrecking Ball and 2014’s High Hopes was, Marsh says, “create a matrix, then bring musicians in.” Tunnel Of Love was “Bruce carving his own steps up the mountain.” Jimmie Wood recorded with Springsteen again, on three unreleased songs from the sprawl of sessions leading to 1992’s Human Touch and Lucky Town. “My impression,” he says, “was that Bruce Springsteen is exactly how he appears. He’s a star, but this cat loves rock’n’roll. There was nothing going on but that.” He recalls a memorable break at the studio the day he

Wynette, June and Johnny Cash.” Springsteen and Scialfa’s soaring duets – often in songs where, on the record, he sang all of the vocal parts – were also “the ultimate magic trick,” according to Marsh. “You take the truth and turn it into what looks like guile. The surprise is that there is no surprise.” There was a lot less roulette in the setlists. Over the next seven months – a relative sprint compared to the Born In The USA itinerary – Springsteen performed virtually all of Tunnel Of Love, sticking to identical setlists at nearly a dozen shows. An acoustic version of his 1975 anthem Born To Run, first played at McCloone’s on Halloween, became an encore fixture and key to the show. “In that song I asked every question I’ve been trying to an“I WAS on tour when I first really encountered swer since I was 24,” said Springsteen. Tougher Than The Rest. Stewart [Bronaugh], played on Spare Parts. He and Springsteen “Fifteen years down the line, you underwho plays guitar with us, said I should check out were in the men’s room, “taking a piss side stand much clearer what those things are this video. Springsteen’s playing a show, I don’t know where, but it’s daylight, and he plays this by side. They’re playing Black Is Black by and what they cost and their importance.” version of the song, and I thought, Yeah, I think I Los Bravos on the muzak. And there’s this Ironically, the song closest to those lescould sing this song. bridge, where the singer does this real cool sons on Tunnel Of Love was the one SpringI started singing it solo on that tour. Then we steen didn’t play at any stop: Valentine’s scream. I go, Here comes the scream… did it as a band, and we went back and forth on which one was better. But we played it for two Day, a slow dawning of the responsibilities And Bruce – he knows ever y fucking years almost. Eventually I record this lo-fi version and reward waiting at the end of the road. rock’n’roll song ever written. He just goes, of it and kind of forgot about it until it came time “It’s a powerful theme moving through the ‘Yeah, I know.’” to put together [current archive album] Phases. I was touched by the song. Two people in a record,” Marsh contends. “He’s coming bar, kind of lurking on each other, but at the same home and taking down the barriers.” EINBERG’S PHONE RANG time it’s bittersweet. Maybe they’re doing There were six more weeks on the road again, this time at the end of something wrong. Or maybe it’s not wrong. – in September and October of ’88 with October 1987, shortly after Maybe they’re meant to meet each other. My version is way slower – it’s a stony version of it. Peter Gabriel and Sting on the Human the release of Tunnel Of Love. Springsteen But my guy is a similar character. They know that Rights Now! tour, raising money and was reconvening the E Street Band for a they’re strong and that they’ve become stronger awareness for Amnesty International – and surprise gig on Halloween at McCloone’s for what they’ve gone through. Spending more time, since then, with the then, in October 1989, another round of Rum Runner, a club in Sea Bright, New Tunnel Of Love album, I realised it was a darker phone calls. Lofgren sums up the message: Jersey. Lofgren and Clemons were out of album than I thought and it made me think more “Bruce said, ‘I had a great run. Thanks for town. Everybody else turned up in black about what Bruce Springsteen was going doing a great job. I’m gonna try some ninja outfits and camouflage makeup. The through at the time. Brilliant Disguise is a really interesting song about self-awareness. To me it’s different things. I’m putting the band aside setlist included three live debuts from about spending some time with someone you for a while.’ It turned out to be 11 years.” Tunnel Of Love: Brilliant Disguise, Tougher wouldn’t have spent time with, normally, and Aside from a short bout of recording Than The Rest, and Two Faces, a moody then realising that that was… not a stupid decision, but it wasn’t quite part of who you are. with the E Street Band in 1995, Springsfolk-blues admission of duplicity. And then, Valentine’s Day – what an incredible teen concentrated on making solo albums, Springsteen and the band were soon ending to a record! The fear of losing her is so attending to his new marriage and raising a back at McCloone’s, rehearsing the new powerful. It’s such a crusher. It’s so sad. family until the 1999-2000 reunion tour. album “with no real expectations,” Lofgren There’s something about Springsteen’s records that goes across the generations. Weinberg notes a conversation he had contends. “It wasn’t a commitment to do a Something people with Springsteen more than a decade tour. He was trying to figure out what kind my age can relate to into the return of the E Street Band. of tour he wants to do.” Lofgren arrived and my uncle can relate to and my dad The leader had just finished Wrecking one day to find only Springsteen waiting to can relate to. He’s a Ball – another solo album-withplay. “I’m like, ‘Oh, shit, it’s not like the unique songwriter in friends, including Weinberg. “We band to be late like this.’ And Bruce goes, ‘I that way. He’s just went for a ride in New Jersey, in his thought we’d tr y some things.’ Bruce real. Bruce Springsteen is about car,” the drummer says, “and he wanted to see what these songs sounded the real shit.” played me the record. He said, ‘The like with just two musicians in an acoustic Angel Olsen’s Tougher whole thing is, I’m a miner. I mine setting. Who knows what else he did when Than The Rest is on this vein here, then I go over there I wasn’t there.” Phases (Jagjaguwar) and there may be something I want to When Springsteen and the E Street chip at.’ I thought that was a great Band finally opened the Tunnel Of Love analogy. Sometimes it involved the Express tour on February 25, 1988 at the Centrum in Worcester, big noise; sometimes it’s the smaller Massachusetts, there were nearly as many changes on stage noise, by himself. He just wants to as there were on Tunnel Of Love, including a four-piece horn write and sing a song he can stand to live with.” section, arranged by Springsteen’s high-school buddy and ex-E Last February, Springsteen wrapped up an Australia-New ZeaStreeter Miami Steve Van Zandt; a thematic entrance with each land tour with the E Street Band. On October 3, he opened musician handing a ticket, as if for an amusement park ride, Springsteen On Broadway, a solo residency at the Walter to crew member Terry Magovern; a disorienting switch in Kerr Theater in New York that runs, five shows a week, stage positions (“Bruce clearly wanted to shake things into February 2018. “I don’t know if we’re ever going up,” says Weinberg); and Springsteen’s heated vocal to play again,” Weinberg says. “And I don’t ask.” bond with Scialfa, reflecting their accelerating Instead, he suggests another analogy from one of his personal relationship. favourite musicals: the mythical Scottish city in “The female character is a very important part of Brigadoon, “where it appears every 100 years. And putting those Tunnel songs across,” Weinberg says. “It it’s magic when it does.” became the rock version of George Jones and Tammy M MOJO 55

STARRING < LCD SOUNDSYSTEM < NADIA REID < PAUL WELLER < GRATEFUL DEAD < ALICE COLTRANE < ROBERT FORSTER < BINKER & MOSES < JANE WEAVER < TWIN PEAKS

Credit in here

Credit in here

PLUS “THE BEST THING I’VE HEARD ALL YEAR” WITH < JARVIS COCKER < AIMEE MANN < LAURA MARLING < LOUDON WAINWRIGHT < BAXTER DURY < HURRAY FOR THE RIFF RAFF < SPARKS

Tom Sheehan, Sri Hari Moss, Benoit Peverelli, Jonathan Booknight, Alamy, Guy Eppel, Andy Crofts, Noam Galai, Getty Images (2), Andy Fallon, Steve Gullick, Stephen Booth

REVIE W OF THE YEAR

MOJO 57

THE 50 BEST ALBUMS OF AMERICANA COMPILED BY SYLVIE SIMMONS

1 2 3 4

Steve Earle So You Wannabe An Outlaw (WARNER BROS)

Rhiannon Giddens Freedom Highway (NONESUCH)

Son Volt Notes Of Blue (30 TIGERS)

Ray Wylie Hubbard Tell The Devil I'm Getting There As Fast As I Can (BORDELLO)

5 6 7 8 9 10

Marty Stuart Way Out West (SUPERLATONE)

Chuck Prophet Bobby Fuller Died For Your Sins (YEPROC)

Andrew Combs Canyons Of My Mind (LOOSE)

David Rawlings

50 49 48 47 46 Wrongtom Meets The Ragga Twins In Time (TRU THOUGHTS)

The venerable Hackney MCs and Leyton’s reggae rejuvenator take an ebullient trip into uncannily faithful ’80s dancehall, with Flinty and Deman tag-teaming on the big subjects – unity, overcoming adversity, and weed. For full enjoyment, augment with the dub version for more archetypal moves. IH Standout track: Bacchanal

Poor David's Almanac (ACONY)

Jim White Waffles, Triangles And Jesus (LOOSE)

Howe Gelb Future Standards

The War On Drugs

Father John Misty

A Deeper Understanding

Pure Comedy

(ATLANTIC)

Rolling down the windows and letting the breeze ruffle his hair, Adam Granduciel tempered his solo obsessions with a greater band presence on his lush fourth album. The Philadelphian remained lost in the dream, though, sending drive-time rock on a cosmic diversion, cat’s-eye synths and a sense of quest blurring the middle of the road. VS Standout track: Up All Night

45 44

(FIRE)

URBAN COMPILED BY ANDY COWAN

1

Binker & Moses Journey To The Mountain Of Forever (GEARBOX)

©Andy Crofts, Chad Batka, Victoria Kovios, Shawn Brackbill, Mattia Zoppellaro

2

A Tribe Called Quest We Got It From Here… (EPIC)

3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

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Shabazz Palaces Quazarz (SUB POP)

Dizzee Rascal Raskit (DIRTEE STANK/ ISLAND)

Thundercat Drunk (BRAINFEEDER)

Gabriel GarzónMontano Jardin (STONES THROW)

Jehst Billy Green Is Dead (YNR)

Kendrick Lamar DAMN. (INTERSCOPE)

Your Old Droog Packs (FAT BEATS)

Loyle Carner Yesterday’s Gone (AMF)

Wolf Alice

Kate Bush

Visions Of A Life

Before The Dawn

(DIRTY HIT)

(FISH PEOPLE)

North Londoners both lauded and disdained for the millennial virtues of their boundary-free, ‘as seen on the internet’ debut, here prove the multi-disciplinary approach still holds core virtues: smart, demonstrative indie-pop studded with enough lyrical intensity from remarkable singer Ellie Rowsell to hang not just a cogent album on but a set of songs to cherish. JB Standout track: Don’t Delete The Kisses

With no visual record of her extraordinary 2014 live appearances in sight, the audio record will have to do. And it does. Bold, rousing, beautiful and surprising, with songs largely drawn from Hounds Of Love and Aerial, musically at least these are among Kate’s finest hours. JI Standout track: King Of The Mountain Laughs Inc: (from left) Shabazz Palaces, Father John Misty, The War On Drugs.

Roger Waters

Mogwai

Is This The Life We Really Want?

Every Country’s Sun

(COLUMBIA)

(ROCK ACTION)

In-the-studio LSD microdosing produced the clear visions of FJM’s elegant and perceptive third. The “jokes” were far less wry than on its predecessors, replaced by bleak if strangely hopeful views of the human condition in our troubled 2017. TD Standout track: Things It Would Have Been Helpful To Know Before The Revolution

Gloomy? Didactic? But of course! This was a Roger Waters album after all. But the Pink Floyd concept tsar and his sonic sidekick Nigel Godrich also delivered a richly textured State Of The Planet address wracked with clocks, curlews, Trump, terror, throat-clearing and outbursts of desperate (yes!) Floydian melody. DE Standout track: Déjà Vu

The discipline of soundtracking films about zombies or nuclear war seems to invest Mogwai’s bona fide albums with heightened rigour, and, in the case of Every Country’s Sun, a revived impishness. Party In The Dark sweated pure cryogenic go-go juice; while the title track’s awestruck soar evinced hope amidst even the bleakest times. KC Standout track: Crossing The Road Material

“Bleak if strangely hopeful views of the human condition in our troubled 2017.”

43 42

FATHER JOHN MISTY’S PURE COMEDY

(SUB POP)

(ROSWELL/RCA)

Quazarz was the point Ishmael Butler and Maraire’s free-form experiments fully gelled. A cosmic treat in the Sun Ra lineage, this astral-travelling, outer-dimensional, afro-futurist two-volume opus imagined an extra-terrestrial in ‘Amurderca’, via dizzy, hypnagogic production and drawled tirades against digitisation, police brutality and those perennial sucker MCs. AC Standout track: Fine Ass Hairdresser

The bandleader’s innate restlessness doubled up with pop producer Greg Kurstin to lend the ninth Foo Fighters album an unexpected freshness. Dreamy melodies and diabolic riffs, multistorey harmonies and lyrics about Psychic TV: stadium-rock behemoths don’t need to mess with the formula, but happily the Grohl can’t help it. KC Standout track: Dirty Water

(BELLA UNION)

Shabazz Palaces Quazarz

Foo Fighters Concrete And Gold

was very passionate and I related to the story. It’s about redemption, getting off the drink. Then there’s the boxing element and my dad was a boxer and I have such admiration for it, the discipline, the hard work, the dedication involved. I thought, I want to be involved, even if it never gets off the ground. Thankfully it did and the film deserves to become a cult classic. You were heavily involved in Stone Foundation’s Street Rituals album, producing, co-writing, playing and singing on it. We’re coming from the same place. They are great lads, tight musicians, have meaningful lyrics, saying things that people haven’t said in songs for a long time. They came down to the studio, started demoing, and over two, three days we cut six tracks and we knew we had an album well on the way so we kept at it. You explored Ethiopian funk on the Mother Ethiopia 12-inch with them. It was my tribute. I’ve been listening to those Ethiopiques albums over the last few years and you can hear so many strands of music in there – Middle Eastern, James Brown, funk, soul, jazz. It’s e heartbeat of the world. You can hear it in the all of the music. The earliest bones were found i Ethiopia. I’m of the opinion we all came from t ere. We all came from one place.

TRACK OF THE YEAR & SOUNDTRACK OF THE YEAR

PAUL WELLER The Cranes Are Back & Jawbone [Music FromThe Film]

Weller’s poignant manifesto song even melted Van The Grump. And his first soundtrack wowed MOJO’s mavens. He talks to Lois Wilson about both, and more.

T

heHardestWokingManInShowbusiness?2017was certainly a productive year for Paul Weller. “Sometimes it’s like that,” he says. “The ideas come and you’ve just got to get them down, because you never know when they might stop.” The year brought A Kind Revolution – Weller’s thirteenth solo album, majoring on compassion and communion messages and peaking with The Cranes Are Back, an eloquent hymn to rebirth. Jawbone, his first soundtrack, for actor/writer Johnny Harris’s tale of pugilism and propitiation, maps the film’s intense moods with sound collage, choral harmonies and plaintive folk, and shows how, at 59, Weller is not tired of trying new things. The Cranes Are Back is a very positive song on a positive album. Yeah, that was at the core of the record and the album’s title [A Kind Revolution] comes from a line in it. Even Van Morrison complimented me on it. It’s a very simple song in the gospel tradition, in the chords and structure and feel. It’s a song of hope. You sent A Kind Revolution to the leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn. Why did you want him to hear it? I thought The Cranes Are Back could be his campaign song. The lyrics tied into a lot of things he’s been saying. Perhaps it was me thinking above my station but I thought it would work. You’ve got some great guests on the album: Boy George, P.P. Arnold, Madeline Bell and Robert Wyatt. I tried to get Boy George on [2015 album] Saturns Pattern, but he was busy. But I was keen to hear how

our voices sounded together and he liked One Tear so we did it. He wanted to get a bit of a Horace Andy vibe in his vocal. He’s got a beautiful voice. It has gotten better with age. With Woo Sé Mama, I was imagining The Ikettes singing backing vocals. I wanted them screeching, so I thought about Pat [P.P.] Arnold as she was originally in The Ikettes and then I thought of Madeline, her backing vocals on those Dusty Springfield records and the stars were aligning as they were both free to do it. With Robert, I sent up a man with a tape recorder to him and we got him playing trumpet. How did your Jawbone soundtrack come about? A mutual friend introduced me to [screen writer] Johnny Harris. He showed me the rough synopsis. He

“The Cranes Are Back is a very simple song in the gospel tradition. It’s a song of hope.” PAUL WELLER

SOUNDTRACKS

You’ve already started on your next record. The title’s True Meanings and it is half done already and I’m hoping to have it finished by Christmas. It’s acoustic, reflective. One track features this massive orchestra on it. It’s kind of a big, finale piece. One track I’ve done with Indian musicians. There are a couple of songs with Erland Cooper of Erland And The Carnival and The Magnetic North. There’s a song called Gravity with these sweet, melodic strings arranged by Andy Crofts. Conor O’Brien from V llagers has co-written a song. I ve also collaborated with Lucy Rose and Richard Hawley on songs for it and I want to do s mething with Danny Tho pson and Martin Carthy as well.

COMPILED BY JONNY TRUNK & ANDREW MALE

1 2 3 4 5 6

Jawbone Paul Weller (PARLOPHONE)

Jackie Mica Levi (MILAN)

The Vietnam War Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross (UNIVERSAL)

Let Me Go Philip Selway (BELLA UNION)

Pretty En Rose Ross Blake (HORSE ARM)

The Sunshine Makers The Heliocentrics (SOUNDWAY)

7 8 9 10

Eat It Ennio Morricone (CINEDELIC)

I Start Counting Basil Kirchin (TRUNK)

Lo Sport Various (SONOR)

The Last Wave

You’re 60 in 2018. How does that feel? It’s mind-boggling. I think, How did that happen? But I’m grateful and glad it did happen. I don’t feel too much different, not even physically. In fact I’m in better shape now than I was when I was 50 as I was still at it then. My passion is undiminished that’s for sure. I just came back from Europe and the gigs we did there were amazing. There was a complete connection with the audiences, spiritual. We’re the children of the revolution. What’s the best thing you’ve heard this year? I really love Jane Weaver’s Modern Kosmology, especially the track Slow Motion, with its mix of psychedelia and electronica. Then Baxter Dury’s Miami, it’s brilliant poetry. Lucy Rose’s Something’s Changing. I love her voice. Time will tell that she is one of the great vocalists. There is such a beautiful tone to her voice, a fragility but strength and I connect to it. It’s really soulful. Peppe Citarella’s Organ Ride too, which is this really wicked organ instrumental that’s housey and Latiny. He’s an Italian DJ and producer and it’s a mega tune.

Charles Wain (ROUNDTABLE)

MOJO 59

REISSUE OF THE YEAR

ALICE COLTRANE The Ecstatic Music Of Alice ColtraneTuriyasangitananda (LUAKA BOP) Revelatory recordings by the extraordinary pianist, harpist, organist and singer who just happened to be John Coltrane’s wife. Andrew Male tunes into the cosmos.

a spiritual language, to express what we were feeling inside. This was the sound she was searching for. She said, “This is what the universe sounds like.” Is it true that it was you who suggested your mum use synthesizers on this music? Well, I’d been out in Japan for a while doing my little R&B thing [as a DJ and backing singer], hanging with musicians, and I’d see all these wonderful new keyboards with all these great sounds. She insisted

R

emastered from her own master tapes, the first-ever compilation of Alice Coltrane’s devotional music, only previously available on limited-run cassettes, struck a chord in an emotionally difficult year. Recorded by Coltrane between 1982 and 1995, when she was known as Swami Turiyasangitananda (Sanskrit for “the highest song of God”), these simple Sanskrit chants, transformed into complex, call-and-response epics of weird psychic energy, were originally intended as objects of devotional study for the residents of the 48-acre Vedic ashram Coltrane ran in the Santa Monica mountains just outside Los Angeles. And they were damn-near impossible to find, before Luaka Bop’s much-needed release. MOJO was lucky enough to speak to Alice’s daughter – jazz musician and singer Michelle Coltrane – about the woman and the faith behind this bewitching music.

MICHELLE COLTRANE How do you think she would she feel about this music having a life outside of that world? Well, I hate to speak on her behalf but it’s not like we found her diary. It was available to people, just on a small scale. Everything was contained and controlled at the ashram. But she was serious about devotion, respect, discipline inside and outside the ashram. It took me years not to be overwhelmed by the loss. To be grateful and listen to the music from another direction, the human situation, and I realise that these are wonderful things that she left. I have it in my car, my kids have it in theirs, they never take it out. Protection, you know. If you listen to the music, I think you know. It’s all there. This is an ailing society and people are looking for something a little more meaningful.

When did you first become aware of your mum’s music? Since I can remember. I was always on her lap at the piano, or under the organ. We were children in the company of our mother and at the ashram we learned the songs as if they were hymns. Yes, she did mainstream things in her life, but she knew it was a calling she had to do this, so when she started the ashram she would introduce the music to her students and it was

The Ecstatic Music Of Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda

Hitchhiker (REPRISE)

(LUAKA BOP)

Bright Phoebus (DOMINO)

Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (APPLE)

60 MOJO

She makes that thing sound enormous. Yeah! She loved the arpeggiator on that. She said, “That reminds me of what I feel in my meditation.” In the ashram she encouraged involvement, building, arranging on the spot with voices, based on the energy of the music. It was a beautiful experience.

“This was the sound she was searching for. She said, ‘This is what the universe sounds like.’”

The Ecstatic Music of Alice Coltrane is MOJO’s Reissue Of The Year Woh! Oh my God! I’m just going to tell my daughter! (Goes off to tell daughter) All right!

20 BEST REISSUES OF 2017 1 Alice Coltrane 5 Neil Young 6 David Bowie Lal & Mike Waterson 2 3 The Beatles 7 Hüsker Dü 4 Yoko Ono 8 Brian Eno

she was fine with her piano – but we went to [LA music shop] Guitar Center to check them out and gradually there was a gathering of people around her. When she started to play, her presence was kickin’! We walked out with an Oberheim OB-8.

A New Career In A New Town (PARLOPHONE)

Savage Young Dü

9 10

(NUMERO GROUP)

Reissues (SECRETLY

Half-speed Reissues (UMC/

CANADIAN/CHIMERA)

VIRGIN_EMI)

11

Can Singles (MUTE)

Bob Dylan Trouble No More: The Bootleg Series Vol. 13 / 1979-1982 (COLUMBIA)

Various Cerebral Sounds Of Brain Records (UMC)

12 13 14

Gene Clark The Lost Studio Sessions (SIERRA)

The Necessaries Event Horizon (BE WITH)

Thelonious Monk Les Liaisons Dangereuses 1960 (SAM)

15 Radiohead Shane 16 Jackie

OKNOTOK (XL)

Any Other Way (REPUBLIC OF MUSIC)

17

The Congos Heart Of The Congos (VP)

18

Various Pop Makossa: The Invasive Dance Beat Of Cameroon 1976-86 (PPRS4)

19 The Creation 20 The Jam Action Painting (NUMERO GROUP)

1977 (UMC)

THE 50 BEST ALBUMS OF 41 40 39 38 37 Beck

Kelley Stoltz

Colors

Que Aura

Vibe Killer

(CAPITOL)

(CASTLE FACE)

(NO QUARTER)

Having broken the rules in the past assembling ‘party records’ like Odelay, Beck has a stab at full-on classic pop. Replete with instantly addictive, golden songs, Beck’s Colors prove timelessly vivid, though he still breaks the rules when he needs to. PS Standout track: No Distraction

Combining hard work with insouciance, Stoltz’s eighth brought a savant’s miscellany of dilated psych-fuzz, sophisticated yacht languor, synth poignancy and even some lovelorn soul. The unifying factor: his undimming knack for the kind of box-fresh pop song you can’t believe no one’s written before. IH Standout track: Feather Falling

You know what to expect from Brooklyn vinyl provider Paul ‘Top Dollar’ Major’s Cro-Magnon quartet: awesome Groundhogs fugue-state riffing and bad-granddad growl-vox ’til you wave the white flag. Yet their fifth studio LP sketched in some shade behind the clear white light, adding ruminative psych and even musical memoir. DE Standout track: Back In ’74

36 35 Wire

Sampha

Silver/Lead

Process

(PINK FLAG)

(YOUNG TURKS)

The art-punk veterans’ insistence on evolving has led to a new approach: accessibility. Over mostly mid-paced grooves, staccato guitars give space to a set of memorable tunes. Lyrically they remain inscrutable, but Forever & A Day is as close as they’ll get to a straightforward love song. MB Standout track: Playing Harp For The Fishes

The tellingly-titled Process turned Sampha’s pain into beauty. Whether working his way through a health scare (Plastic 100°C), mugging paranoia (Blood On Me) or the death of his mother (Kora Sings), the south Londoner proved himself a master of heartfelt sonic invention. TD Standout track: Kora Sings

Oumou Sangaré

Paul Weller A Kind Revolution

Mogoya

(PARLOPHONE)

(NO FORMAT!)

Weller calls for a better world on his conscience-soul LP with a hope, peace and unity message. Coming together moments are many: a rejuvenating The Cranes Are Back, the JB funk-riven She Moves With The Fayre featuring Robert Wyatt on trumpet, and rousing swamp rocker Woo Sé Mama with P.P. Arnold. Boy George also guests. LW Standout track: The Cranes Are Back

The queen of the Wassoulou sound opted for a makeover, adding keyboards, cello and rock guitar while throwing down a challenge to Mali’s hip-hop-loving youth. When you can sing this well, you can afford to take liberties with tradition. DH Standout track: Kamelemba

“The south Londoner proved himself a master of heartfelt sonic invention.”

34 33

SAMPHA’S PROCESS

COMPILED BY COLIN IRWIN

1 Lankum 2 Lisa Knapp

Between The Earth And Sky (ROUGH TRADE) Till April Is Dead: A Garland Of May (EAR TO

THE GROUND)

Eliza Carthy & The Band 3 Wayward 4 The Young ’Uns Peter Knight’s 5 Gigspanner Big Machine (TOPIC)

Strangers (HERETEU)

The Wife Of Urban Law (GIGSPANNER)

Kelly & The Lost Boys 6 Sam Petrie 7 &Grace The PC Brigade Phillip Henry & Martin 8 Hannah 9 Leveret 10 Offa Rex

Pretty Peggy (NAVIGATOR)

Heart First Aid Kit (GP)

Edgelarks (DRAGONFLY) Inventions (ROOTBEAT)

The Queen Of Hearts (NONESUCH)

JAZZ COMPILED BY CHRIS INGHAM

The Magnetic Fields

Randy Newman

50 Song Memoir

Dark Matter

(NONESUCH)

(NONESUCH)

Fifty songs, one for every year of a life? In Stephin Merritt’s hands it’s revelatory, waspishly reflecting on existence from cradle to middle age in all its messy beauty. Taking in cartoon pop, disco, indie and beyond, the songwriting’s up there with Randy Newman. IH Standout track: I Wish I Had Pictures

Anticipating Trump since 1972, the satirist and half-sympathetic mouthpiece of America’s unlovely losers serves a mixed bag of lavishly arranged musical theatre both topical (Putin, The Great Debate) and historical (Brothers, Sonny Boy) plus naked moments of sighing recollection, bleak thanksgiving and the grim pathos of Lost With You. MS Standout track: The Great Debate

1

DeJohnette, Grenadier, Medeski, Scofield Hudson (MOTÉMA)

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Ralph Towner

My Foolish Heart (ECM)

Georgia Mancio/ Alan Broadbent

Songbook (ROOMSPIN)

Eliane Elias

Dance Of Time (CONCORD)

Christian McBride Big Band

Bringin’ It (MACK AVENUE)

Vince Mendoza

Homecoming (SUNNYSIDE)

Chandler/ Stanley/Ford

Astrometrics (33)

Indigo Kid

Moment Gone In The Clouds (BABEL)

Dave O’Higgins

It’s Always 9.30 In Zog (JVG)

They break the rules: (from left) Beck, Sampha, Randy Newman.

Gilad Atzmon/ Alan Barnes The Lowest Common Denominator (WOODVILLE)

Getty Images (3), Sarah Flynn

Endless Boogie

FOLK

M JO 61

THE 50 BEST ALBUMS OF BLUES COMPILED BY TONY RUSSELL

1 Cash Box Kings 2 Chris Bergson 3 Band 4 Various Various

American Epic (SONY) Royal Mint (ALLIGATOR)

Bitter Midnight (2 SHIRTS) Fine Boogie: Down Home Blues – Chicago (WIENERWORLD)

Monster Mike & Mike 5 Welch Ledbetter Right Place, Right Time (DELTA GROOVE)

Phillips 6 Washington

…And His Manzarene Dreams (DUST-TO-DIGITAL)

Lee Hooker 7 John 8 Selwyn Birchwood 9 Hayes McMullan King Of The Boogie (UMC) Pick Your Poison

32 31 30 29 28 Tamikrest Kidal (GLITTERBEAT)

Without an iconic Marley figure, the Sahara blues fired up by Tuareg rebel rockers Tinariwen will always struggle to break big. However, Tamikrest’s fifth, break-out set augmented the mesmerising rhythms and meditative chants common to the region with the spidery telepathy of Grateful Dead, the grit of P.J. Harvey and the cosmic bliss-out of Pink Floyd. MP Standout track: Erres Hin Atouan

(ALLIGATOR)

Everyday Seem Like Murder Here (LIGHT IN THE ATTIC)

10 Billy Flynn

Lonesome Highway

Susanne Sundfør

The Bug Vs Earth

Perfume Genius

Music For People In Trouble

Concrete Desert

No Shape

(NINJA TUNE)

(MATADOR)

(BASIN ROCK)

(BELLA UNION)

Where the industrial dub heavyweight and the guitar drone metallurgist come together to create a nightmare vision of Los Angeles’ crumbling megapolis. Eerie aural daguerreotypes suggest a city consuming itself and a population living like rats. Their sonic power is preternatural. IH Standout track: Agoraphobia

Next to his skeletal piano-ballad origins, Seattleite Mike Hadreas’s fourth album exploded in electronic, and part-orchestrated Sensurround, even as his trademark frailty and harmony remained at the core. Deeper inside was a wounded yet articulate message of resistance to homophobia and gender oppression. MA Standout track: Run Me Through

Darkly intimate and deeply desolate, Byrne’s second album is a compendium of solitude and restless, rootless drifting. “I was made to be alone,” she admits early on, but the growing crowd that follows her every move revelled in the solitude. DH Standout track: Sleepwalker

An instant charttopper in her native Norway, Sundfør’s spare sixth LP fused the disquieting personal exposition and musique concrète exploration of its antecedents with a country lilt and the spiritual harvest gathered while visiting the world’s edgiest regions. An emotive, intense setting for her malleable, always melodic voice. KT Standout track: The Sound Of War

27 26 25

(DELMARK)

UNDERGROUND COMPILED BY ANDREW MALE

Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit

Tony Allen

Laura Marling

The Source

Semper Femina

The Nashville Sound

(BLUE NOTE)

(MORE ALARMING)

At 77, Nigeria’s polyrhythmic potentate shows no sign of losing his mojo. Here, on his most accomplished LP yet, Africa’s answer to Art Blakey fuses Afrobeat’s mesmeric grooves with big band jazz to produce a masterful musical hybrid that cements his place in the pantheon of rhythm masters. CW Standout track: Cruising

Six albums in, after 2015’s electric travelogue Short Movie, Marling returned to her acoustic first principles, adding layers of dreaminess. Producer Blake Mills helped bring the focus and atmosphere, not least in Soothing – a spooky incantation repelling a supernatural intruder. TD Standout track: Soothing

Simon Fernandez, Bernard Benant, Avalon, Linda Edelstein, Tom Sheehan, Stephen Booth, Getty Images

(SOUTHEASTERN)

1

Tony Conrad Ten Years Alive On The Infinite Plain (SUPERIOR VIADUCT )

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

62 MOJO

The Necks Unfold (IDEOLOGIC ORGAN)

Roland Kayn A Little Electronic Milky Way Of Sound (FROZEN REEDS)

Aine O’Dwyer Gallarais (MIE)

Laurence Crane & Asamisimasa Sound Of Horse (HUBRO)

Richard Horowitz Eros In Arabia (FREEDOM

The sixth studio album by former Drive-By Trucker (and his second to top the US country chart) gets him closer to his riveting on-stage sound, and includes the new dad’s most outspoken political statements to date with the progressive class-consciousness of White Man’s World. AL Standout track: If We Were Vampires

TO SPEND)

Kaitlin Aurelia Smith The Kid (WESTERN VINYL)

Karen Gwyer Rembo (DON’T BE AFRAID)

Karima Walker Hands In Our Names (ORINDAL)

The Inward Circles And Right Lines Limit And Close All Bodies (CORBEL STONE PRESS)

Source material: (from left)Tony Allen, Laura Marling, Susanne Sundfør.

Julie Byrne Not Even Happiness

24

“A return to her acoustic first principles, adding layers of Sees dreaminess.” Oh Orc LAURA MARLING’S SEMPER FEMINA

(CASTLE FACE)

Each Oh Sees album is better than the last, and their 19th (!) is no exception, a riot of overdriven garagepsych, frenetic high-register guitar scree, doomy Floydian detours and the killer percussive attack of duelling drummers Dan Rincon and Paul Quattrone. Experimental rock that never forgets to rock. SC Standout track: Jettisoned

“Complete dreamers”: The Go-Betweens’ Robert Forster (right) and Grant McLennan.

“I woke up the morning after he died and it was like he was in my ear, giving me messages.” ROBERT FORSTER

her the band was going to break up, that broke him. For the ’90s, and to the end of his life he was a very different person.

BOOK OF THE YEAR

GRANT & I

by Robert Forster (OMNIBUS PRESS) In a terrific year for music books, Robert Forster’s moving tribute to his former Go-Betweens bandmate pipped the rest. Andrew Male spoke to the author.

D

elicately tuneful and articulate, Brisbane transplants The GoBetweens surfed Britain’s ’80s indie wave, but despite mainstream inroads late in the decade, they never hogged the charts. At their heart was the contrast between two great songwriters: the urbane, quirky Robert Forster, and the romantic, enigmatic Grant McLennan. The former’s moving, funny and poetic memoir is mostly about the latter: a naive intellectual raised on a cattle station who quietly drank himself to death in the final decade of his life. File alongside Patti Smith’s Just Kids as a heartfelt book of deep friendship that also happens to be about the death drive of the rock’n’roll life. Grant & I is MOJO’s Book Of The Year. Ohh! I’m completely stoked, as they say in Australia. That’s amazing. Thank you. I pore over the lists every year. My secret little hope, that I hadn’t told anyone, was that I might just scrape into the Top 10. But to be the Book Of The Year is a wonderful, wonderful thing. Did you allow a definite period of time to elapse before writing the book? I did, although the book started the day after Grant died [May 6, 2009]. It was very bizarre. I woke up the morning after he died and it was like he was in my ear, giving me messages. One was, “Tell people what we did.” Because, of the 30 years I knew Grant 17 were with the band and 13 weren’t, so there was

a lot people didn’t know. But I knew I couldn’t start straight away. It was almost rude. About two years went by before I started, then another 18 months of despair because I couldn’t get a start. Then I just began with the sentence, “The last time I spoke to Grant was on a Wednesday,” but it took another five years to write. What did you discover about Grant through the writing process? One was what an unorthodox group we were, complete dreamers with all these cinema references, not even in touch with reality. I’d forgotten that. The other was how the band’s break-up became the pivot point of the whole book. Grant was reliable and dependable and clear throughout the ’80s, especially compared to me. Then Amanda [Brown] leaving Grant on the day he told

Forster, still acting the go-between.

Are there things that still remain a puzzle about Grant? Good question. This is a speck in the whole thing but, he never played me [1988 Go-Betweens single] Streets Of Your Town. We played each other every song before we worked on the albums, but everyone knew about that song before I did. He never showed it to me. I still don’t know why. There are things in his early life that are a mystery to me. Another mystery is… he died at the age of 48. Why at the age of 40 didn’t he stop drinking? He must have been feeling it inside his body that he was in serious trouble. There was a fatalism about that. That’s another mystery I can’t kick. Did you set yourself any rules? Very few. One was “no pictures”. I didn’t want 18 photos of The Go-Betweens getting progressively older. I wanted it to look ‘novelistic’. Another was, “I’m only going to write about my own drug use.” Really, taking heroin or taking amphetamines was a part of my life but it never affected albums or touring. We were drinkers on tour. There was no clichéd junkie behaviour. The reason I put it in was because when I found out I had hepatitis C in early 1997 it massively affected Grant and I. I stopped drinking that day, and Grant’s alcohol intake was ever-increasing. Alcohol and drinking was a part of our friendship and Grant was an amazing, wonderful person to drink with. He drank slowly, very funny, very insightful and we had great times sitting in bars, so it really changed the Grant and I dynamic. That’s why it’s in the book. What has been the response of the other members of the band to the book? Not much. Doesn’t surprise me. If people were upset they would have told me, so I’m taking silence as a good thing. Also, I just think that for other people who were in the band, if they don’t want to read the book, that’s fine. I take no umbrage at that. If they just want to lay the book on the table and decide not to go there and maybe come back to it later, I’m completely fine with that.

10 BEST MUSIC BOOKS 1 2

Grant & I Robert Forster (OMNIBUS)

Art Sex Music Cosey Fanni Tutti (FABER & FABER)

3

Meet Me In The Bathroom Lizzy Goodman (FABER & FABER)

4

Memphis 68: The Tragedy Of Southern Soul Stuart Cosgrove (POLYGON)

5

Fearless: The Making Of Post Rock Jeanette Leech (JAWBONE)

6

Roots, Radicals And Rockers: How Skiffle Changed The World Billy Bragg (FABER & FABER)

7

I’m Just Dead, I’m Not Gone Jim Dickinson (UNIVERSITY PRESS OF MISSISSIPPI)

8

Trouble In Mind: Bob Dylan’s Gospel Years: What Really Happened Clinton Heylin (ROUTE)

9

Set The Boy Free Johnny Marr (ARROW)

10

The Cake And The Rain Jimmy Webb (OMNIBUS)

MOJO 63

THE 50 BEST ALBUMS OF WORLD COMPILED BY DAVID HUTCHEON

1 2 3

Oumou Sangaré Mogoya (NO FORMAT!)

Tamikrest Kidal (GLITTERBEAT)

The Orchestra Of Syrian Musicians Africa Express Presents… (TRANSGRESSIVE)

4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Songhoy Blues Résistance (TRANSGRESSIVE)

Antibalas Where The Gods Are In Peace (DAPTONE)

Benjamin Biolay Volver (BLUE WRASSE)

23 22 21 20 19 Songhoy Blues

Peter Perrett

Thundercat

Résistance

How The West Was Won

Drunk

(DOMINO)

A visionary fusion of restless jazz-funk, heartbroken soul and introspection, superstar sessioneer Stephen Bruner’s third solo set was vulnerable, adventurous and confessional, as he struggled to keep his outwardly-glamorous life together. As lonely as he often sounds, though, Bruner isn’t alone: Kenny Loggins and Michael McDonald offer guest vocals. SC Standout track: Show You The Way

(TRANSGRESSIVE)

The Saharan quartet make it look so simple: swaggering grooves, to-the-point solos, an ace frontman, lyrics that mean something, choruses that stick. If their rise seemed instantaneous, there’s plenty here to suggest they’ll be around for a while. DH Standout track: Bamako

Yasmine Hamdan Al Jamílat (CRAMMED DISCS)

Ibeyi Ash (XL)

The comeback of the year – perhaps century – as The Only Ones’ singer and songwriter, long waylaid by drug and health issues, delivered a batch of songs, steeped in rue, to match his best. Special mention to his sons, Jamie (guitar) and Pete Jr (bass), who further amped the album’s air of candour and immediacy. DE Standout track: An Epic Story

Trio Da Kali & Kronos Quartet Ladilikan (WORLD CIRCUIT)

Amadou & Mariam La Confusion (BECAUSE)

(BRAINFEEDER)

18 17 16

ELECTRONICA COMPILED BY STEPHEN WORTHY

Mark Lanegan Band

Binker & Moses

Gargoyle

Journey To The Mountain Of Forever

(HEAVENLY)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Kelly Lee Owens

Kelly Lee Owens (SMALLTOWN SUPERSOUND)

Bicep

Bicep (NINJA TUNE)

UMFANG

Symbolic Use Of Light (TECHNICOLOUR)

Special Request

Belief System (HOUNDSTOOTH)

Benoit Peverelli, PA, Sheryl Nieldj, Getty Images (3), Rex

Laurel Halo

64 MOJO

Dust (HYPERDUB)

Call Super

Arpo (HOUNDSTOOTH)

Talaboman

The Night Land (R&S)

Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith The Kid (WESTERN VINYL)

Oneohtrix Point Never Good Time (WARP)

DJ Python Dulce Compañia (INCENSIO)

Possessing a voice that could engrave teak comes with certain preconceptions, which Lanegan continues to smash via sun-baked electronica, Krautrock grooves and a stash of ’80s-vintage careworn melody. Gargoyle’s succinct songs offered the singer’s apocalyptic growl an optimum showcase, accommodating the extremes of high and low drama. KC Standout track: Nocturne

(GEARBOX)

Is Binker Golding the new Sonny Rollins? The new Coltrane? Or both? Like those R&B-rooted sax colossi, Golding and powerhouse drummer Moses Boyd shake ass first, stroke beards second. The Londoners’ progpackaged second – half duo, half eclectically augmented by stellar guests – is a hip trip every which way. MS Standout track: The Departure

Courtney Barnett & Kurt Vile Lotta Sea Lice (MARATHON ARTISTS)

The intercontinental indie hook-up of the year. The musical correspondence at the basis of this collaboration – a free-flowing dialogue between two simpatico songwriters. Barnett’s deadpan reportage and Vile’s sleepy-eyed drawl blend effortlessly on reciprocal covers in a daze of dreamy, elliptical guitars. DE Standout track: Over Everything

Richard Dawson

Aimee Mann Mental Illness

Peasant

(SUPEREGO)

(WEIRD WORLD / DOMINO)

For her first solo album in five years, the velvet-gloved chronicler of damaged love, toxic men and the West Coast human condition shifted everything into waltz time (à la Sinatra’s 1963 album, All Alone) for 11 soft, intimate and enchanting songs of crack-up, loneliness, romantic failure and despair. AM Standout track: Lies Of Summer

His characters – Prostitute, Weaver, Soldier – inhabit the pre-medieval kingdom of Bryneich in Peasant, a masterwork of choral folk-horror, deconstructed guitar-picking, polyphonic narratives and unique intonation. Disturbing, tender and uplifting, this is folk music that blows the genre apart. BM Standout track: Ogre

“A freeflowing dialogue between two simpatico songwriters.” COURTNEY BARNETT & KURT VILE’S LOTTA SEA LICE

It’s good to talk: (from left) Aimee Mann, Thundercat, Courtney Barnett & Kurt Vile.

15 Sparks Hippopotamus (BMG)

Fossil evidence of a time when pop music conveyed ideas, sometimes baffling or indigestible, the Mael brothers raised the lyrical bar on this 23rd instalment of spiky, shiny, often frantic chamber pop, exploring the efficacy of prayer, the power of “mild disappointment” and the joy of big words that rhyme. DE Standout track: What The Hell Is It This Time?

“It’s not a date movie. I wouldn’t take my wife to see it.”

In Haight-Ashbury, Grateful Dead settle in for movie night, 1967; (below) Mickey Hart in 1968.

THE DEAD’S MICKEY HART

FILM OF THE YEAR

LONG STRANGE TRIP This four-hour Grateful Dead doc blew MOJO’s minds. If only the band had dug it as much. Jesse Jarnow quizzes director, Amir Bar-Lev.

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ondensing the psychedelic adventures and endless jams of the Grateful Dead into four exuberant hours, Amir Bar-Lev’s Long Strange Trip transcends even the epic rock documentary genre to which it nominally belongs. Like the Dead themselves, the film is less concerned with the path to the toppermost of the poppermost than the inclusive all-hands-on-deck camaraderie of the Dead’s cosmic mission and the unfolding tragedy within. Unlike the Dead, there is not a loose moment. “I never saw the film as reportage about the history of the band only,” says California-born Bar-Lev, 45, who directed Happy Valley, about the Jerry Sandusky paedophilia scandal in Pennsylvania “I was trying to get at what I felt the band was about, and the meaning of the story of the band.” The Dead, with their self-effacing and well-spoken non-leader Jerry Garcia at the centre, provide a story with far more shades of darkness than their happy-go-lucky fans might convey. “He’s a guy who was very vocal about his commitment to the Now, y referenci y tells about a post-Acid Test revelation visiting Los Angeles’s homemade Watts Towers. “We built the entire film around that. He was

Necessary and vital: The Slits are Here To Be Heard.

incredibly articulate about this pretty complex idea.” Following Garcia’s death in 1995, the Dead universe has endured with surviving members lately touring stadiums and arenas under the name Dead & Co. Calling the film “kind of tragic”, drummer Mickey Hart told Rolling Stone’s David Browne that Long Strange Trip is “not a date movie. I wou d take my wife to see it.”

Indeed, the film doesn’t flinch from the heroin addiction that consumed Garcia, using the repeated motif of Garcia’s favourite childhood movie, Abbott And Costello Meet Frankenstein, but feeling more in the realm of true horror than that. Balancing the intricacies and idiosyncrasies of the Dead became a tightrope for Bar-Lev. “It’s really an eight-hour film, because it’s two four-hour films laid on top of one another, one for fans and one for non-fans,” he says, only half-kidding. He and his collaborators favoured a “rhythmic” approach to editing, “where things happen much faster than you could ever digest”. Perhaps the single giddiest sequence builds around never-even-rumoured black-and-white footage of the BBC tracking the band’s first trip to the UK in May of 1970, rehearsing at the Roundhouse, offering tripping advice, getting the BBC crew into trouble. From the height of the band’s psychedelic cowboy period, the LSD is on full display, as a goofed and clean-shaven Garcia stares into a fish eye lens, and a half-century into the future. “I wanted that to be the poster to the film!” says Bar-Lev. “When you have a shot of Jerry looking through a camera directly at you, high on acid, knowing that, in the future, people would be looking at that... it sort of says everything the film needs to say.” Long Strange Trip is streaming on Amazon Video.

NTIONED IN DISPATCHES… Here To Be Heard

I Called Him Morgan

Bunch Of Kunst

England Is Mine

(dir. William E. Badgley)

(dir. Kaspar Collin)

(dir. Christine Franz)

(dir. Mark Gill)

The story of The Slits, the world’s first all-girl punk band. As necessary and vital as the group itself.

Deeply moving tale of Blue Note jazz trumpeter Lee Morgan, the woman who saved his life, and the woman who ended it.

Martin Parr meets Mike Leigh in this suitably funny and bleak on-the-road portrait of Sleaford Mods.

Morrissey biopic in which the young Steven’s socialist past is a stick to taunt modern Brexit Moz.

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‘THING’ OF THE YEAR THE USE OF MUSIC IN

TWIN PEAKS

The revival of David Lynch’s TV mindfuck was music-enhanced storytelling at its best. Andrew Male reports.

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arry Dean Stanton sees a dead child’s soul ascend to heaven, underscored by Angelo Badalamenti’s keening strings; the ethereal doo-wop of The Platters’ My Prayer plays at a radio station where a lumberjack crushes the skulls of its employees; Penderecki’s Threnody For The Victims Of Hiroshima fritzes and distorts beneath black-and-white footage of an atomic bomb explosion; Sharon Van Etten serenades drug-bombed denizens of a roadhouse bar; static electricity crackles in empty rooms. Funny, surreal, terrifying, and confounding, David Lynch’s return to the town of Twin Peaks, Washington in 2017 may not have provided the crime-drama thrills or satisfying dramatic closure that many anticipated, but as a psychedelic sonic and visual experience it was an undeniable masterpiece, and much of

“You make sounds until you have this bundle that will start a fire.” DEAN HURLEY, MUSIC DIRECTOR

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that was down to Lynch’s unique use of music. “[David] approaches music as a mural-like presence,” explains Lynch’s music director, Dean Hurley. “He calls it ‘firewood’; you make a bunch of sounds, and go through it like comparing logs, until you have this bundle that will start a fire in a scene and catch a blaze.” As well as assembling the crackling and droning cues for the show, Hurley helped assemble the bands who played at Twin Peaks’ Bang-Bang Bar (Nine Inch Nails, Au Revoir Simone, ZZ Top etc), working around the legal restraints of TV loudness to push the listener to their sensory limits. However, even though he was able to observe every stage of the programme’s creation, aspects of Lynch’s work remain beyond him. “Whenever there was a scene where David laid in a new Angelo [Badalamenti] cue, that’s Twin Peaks. That’s a thing they do that no one else can do. But you can see all those evolutionary moments and it still doesn’t account for how this programme happened. I’ve worked with him for 13 years. I constantly try to look at the magic of what he does, and sometimes I see it happening before my eyes, but I still can’t figure it out.”

This Is The Kit

Ghostpoet

Moonshine Freeze

Dark Days + Canapes

(ROUGH TRADE)

(PIAS)

A Bristolian in Paris, TITK’s Kate Stables’ fourth album of quietly chimerical folk-pop was bigger on the inside than it seemed on the outside. Songs of numerology, demons and retribution are rarely delivered so lullingly. All the better to leave you spooked. IH Standout track: Moonshine Freeze

London raconteur Obaro Ejimiwe’s imposing fourth album is a set of downbeat, guitardriven songs with epic instincts and an aura of gloomy, ’80s intensity variously reminiscent of Talk Talk or Sisters Of Mercy (Freakshow’s spidery guitars) as much as trip-hop (though Massive Attack’s Daddy G adds his fathoms-deep voice to Woe Is Meee). JB Standout track: Many Moods At Midnight

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St. Vincent

Jane Weaver

Masseduction

Modern Kosmology

(CAROLINE INTERNATIONAL)

It had often been said that Annie Clark’s music was easier to admire than love. That changed with this fifth album: no longer the elliptical, architectural St. Vincent of old, but a marriage of irresistibly queer synth-pop and apocalyptic balladry that made Clark’s nihilism and heartbreak unusually explicit and addictive. LS Standout track: Sugarboy

(FIRE)

If 2014’s The Silver Globe was Jane Weaver’s prime mover – one that applied her gift for pastoral folk and glass-clear voice to hypnotic space-rock grooves – then its follow-up further expands on the heart-lifting primacy of strong, repetitive rhythms with swooping analogue keyboard riffs and a surfeit of elevated pop hooks. JB Standout track: The Lightning Back

THE 50 BEST ALBUMS OF 12 11 The National Sleep Well Beast (4AD)

Rancho Rosa Partnership/Twin Peaks Productions/Collection Christopher (4), Reuters, Eyevine, Guy Eppel, Andy Fallon, Getty Images (2)

A first and deserved UK Number 1, the Cincinnati quintet’s seventh LP saw Matt Berninger’s enthralling exposés of married, middle-aged disquiet intensify, and the Dessner twins’ intricate, ugly-beautiful music grow more imaginative still, as the band found universal themes in claustrophobic settings. A work to lose yourself in. JMcN Standout track: The System Only Dreams In Total Darkness

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The Moonlandingz

Aldous Harding

Sleaford Mods

Kendrick Lamar

Interplanetary Class Classics

Party

(ROUGH TRADE)

Hurray For The Riff Raff The Navigator

DAMN.

(4AD)

(ATO)

(AFTERMATH/INTERSCOPE)

(TRANSGRESSIVE)

Harding’s ironically titled second album sounds at first like she’s singing internal monologues while you eavesdrop, her vulnerable voice trying on different ways to obfuscate; but the songs soon exert their spell and Party begins to magically broaden in the mind. For fans of Joanna Newsom, Kate Bush, and other eccentric stylists. JI Standouts: Horizon

The Lincs electro-punk Steptoe And Son again inspect a battered Britain via their sweary Sprechgesang spex – the view dolorous but oddly invigorating. This time the rancorous free-association alights on Brexit, Ringo Starr, middle-aged hedonism and, on the likes of I Feel So Wrong, even a move into singing. RW Standout track: B.H.S.

The sixth HFTRR album hangs 12 irresistible tunes on a conceptual framework of the life, loves and reflections of Bronx- born siren Alynda Segarra. In its personal poetry yet freewheeling New York alt-folk-Nuyorican-Brill Building inventiveness, it’s a stunning successor to Laura Nyro’s 1968 classic Eli And The Thirteenth Confession. MS Standout track: Nothing’s Gonna Change That Girl

Distilling the grand, layered themes of 2015’s To Pimp A Butterfly without diluting them, DAMN. captures Kendrick Lamar at his most incisive. The Compton rapper’s absorbing psychodramas frame his soul besieged by ego, fame, masculinity and the American experience itself to breathtaking effect. GG Standout track: HUMBLE.

The Fat White Family/ Eccentronic Research Council fantasy supergroup’s debut was a caustic bogwashing of satirical, shop-soiled electro-rock, with glam ebullience brought to songs of auto-castration, dole life and suicide. Yoko Ono lends keening delirium to eschatological closer This Cities Undone. IH Standout track: Black Hanz

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A Tribe Called Quest

Queens Of The Stone Age

Nadia Reid

We Got It From Here… Thank You 4 Your Service

Villains

(BASIN ROCK)

(MATADOR)

Dunedin songwriter finds herself on the peak of a seven-year cycle that began aged 19 on her self-released EP. A natural sense of melodicism developed on her 2014 debut LP and is delivered on in spades here, where heartbreak, wise introspection, lyrical observation, fluid folk guitars and hook-filled pop smarts meet. JB Standout track: Richard

(EPIC)

The omens were against this millennial comeback when Phife Dawg died midrecording. It made the exuberant results even more astonishing; Tribe lashing out at racism, injustice and Trump above off-kilter analogue beats and clashing samples (Black Sabbath, Can, Musical Youth). A triumph. AC Standout track: The Space Program

Recruiting Mark Ronson to maximise the hip-shaking possibilities of QOTSA’s always-groovy heavy rock was a shrewd move. While the Bowie-Iggy moves Josh Homme brushed up on to produce Iggy’s Post Pop Depression also prove invaluable, from the rhythmic snap and drop of Feet Don’t Fail Me to the closing high-tension love ballad, these are his best songs yet. JB Standout track: The Evil Has Landed

Preservation

English Tapas

“Where heartbreak, wise introspection and hookfilled pop smarts meet.” NADIA REID’S PRESERVATION

Delivering the goods: (from left) Kendrick Lamar, A Tribe Called Quest, Sleaford Mods, St. Vincent, Nadia Reid.

ALBUM OF THE YEAR

1.LCD SOUNDSYSTEM American Dream (COLUMBIA)

Escaping rock’n’roll, becoming a dad, being called ‘a dick’: all fuelled James Murphy’s fire on his exceptional comeback album, finds Victoria Segal.

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star should know when to leave a party – knowing when to dive back in is another talent altogether. Happily, it’s a trick James Murphy aced with American Dream, LCD Soundsystem’s superb comeback LP. When he halted the band in 2011 after three albums, it seemed as conclusive as only a farewell show at Madison Square Garden could be. Their decision to return aggrieved some fans – although not, famously, David Bowie, who encouraged Murphy to reactivate the band – but they would have had to work hard not to be captivated by American Dream. A potent distillation of everything that made LCD Soundsystem vital a decade ago – ferocious wit, bubbling neuroses, music that was both knowingly referential and full of heart – it also showed a deepening and darkening of Murphy’s key themes. Here was aging, death, disillusionment – all with an added crackle of synth-pop apocalypse. MOJO speaks to the frontman as he travels on a tour bus between New York and Washington: “I’m just cresting a hill into the joyous mountains,” he says. American Dream is MOJO’s Album Of The Year. Oh, that’s fantastic. Were you worried before the album’s release? Some people took your return badly – the subtext being ‘this better be good or else…’ With this record, people were calling into question the very root of what the band was – “Is this a big fraud?” That liberated me because if I ever thought a band was capable of the shit people think we’ve done – staged a fake ending knowing we’d come back… well, firstly that gives us a lot of credit, and second, if that’s who we are, then don’t even bother mentioning us! Write us off, don’t listen – because

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that’s an awful thing to do. So it liberated me from worrying about anybody to a certain degree. I’ve never had the experience of making a record where people said, “I think this guy’s a dick but his record’s really good,” which is kind of what happened. Before, it’s always been, “Oh, he’s a lovely cuddly guy!” Back in the day, I was really opinionated, much more aggressive and obnoxious, and that’s when everybody was like, “Oh, he’s a loveable bear!” Now I’ve calmed way down, I’m a dad, I don’t drink an entire bottle of whiskey per show, everyone’s like, “This guy’s a dick.” It’s OK, it’s how the world works. I would have been very sad if the record had stunk, but I don’t think I would have put it out. How did you feel about having a US Number 1 LP? I realise the only record I own that I bought when it came out, that I cared about at all, that was Number

1, was Purple Rain. Me getting a Number 1 when the industry is dying, in a week when nothing else big was put out, is not connected in any way to making Purple Rain. I found it funny – a mix of pleasure and awkwardness. Did becoming a father [2015] affect your decision to reform the band, or change your idea of its legacy? Is your child too young to understand? Much to my chagrin, he really wants to hear my music over and over. I wake up in the morning and I’m half-asleep making an espresso and he’s telling me to play Call The Police – which he calls ‘We All, We All’ – and it’s the last thing on earth I want to hear in my own house. If anything, having a kid made the legacy of the band less important to me. It made everything less important to me. I don’t mean that in a Hallmark-y way – it made me reduce certain anxieties and fears in my life. I was able to make a

THE 50 BEST ALBUMS OF “People were calling into question the very root of the band – Is this a big fraud?”

Getty Images

JAMES MURPHY

record much more calmly than I had done before. I feel that people say that because they want to sound like thoughtful parents, and I’m not – I’ve just left my kid, I’m on a tour bus now and he’s behind me in New York – but I just didn’t give a shit as much. I’m unable not to give a shit about the music, but I don’t worry about the second layer of what people think – I can tune that frequency out or down. For fear of sounding like a 47-year-old musician, I feel I’m in a better place to make music than I have been since the beginning.

I always worry about being one of those people trying to sound like they’re with it. I am not with it. I’m 47. I’m in a real Durutti Column phase right now. I feel like hip-hop in America is having its punk rock moment – I find that really exciting. But I’m not obsessed with new music. I never really was. If I’m looking at my records, I’m not saying, “What new band can I listen to?” When you throw Transformer into the mix, you know, it’s hard not to compare – “This is definitely going to be better than most things…”

What’s next? I know what I want to do – I want to make three records as quickly as I can. But here I am on tour, sat in a bus hurtling around America playing songs that I’ve already written.

TURN FOR : THE BEST THING I’VE HEARD ALL YEAR!

What’s the best thing you’ve heard all year?

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:THE BEST THING I’VE HEARD ALL YEAR Aimee Mann Soft rock LA noir “I have to first mention albums by my friends Jonathan Coulton and Ted Leo but sadly, apart from them I haven’t been listening to anything recent. I think this is a real post-election depression feeling but what I would put on to soothe myself was a particular kind of soft jazz. The record I discovered recently that I played over and over again was Gerry Mulligan’s Night Lights. The quietest, saddest, softest jazz. And Can’t Buy A Thrill by Steely Dan. Those two on rotation, and Paul Desmond’s From The Hot Afternoon, which is a little bit like jazz you hear on a ’70s TV show, and Gil Evans’ Out Of The Cool. I love that record. Other than that it’s just being obsessed with the news and being on Twitter all day and Trump, which seems like a different disaster every hour.”

Lars Ulrich Metallica‘s panel-basher “This British band called Counterfeit, who are amazing – it’s right up my strasse, in my wheelhouse, in terms of just crazy, attitude-filled hard rock, with great drive and just a little bit of underlying chaos. I look forward to seeing what happens with them. I also really like the new Foo Fighters record, I think that’s maybe the best record Dave Grohl’s done so far.”

Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross Nine Inch males Trent: “Working on the soundtrack of Ken Burns and Lynn Novick’s Vietnam War documentary, re-hearing the songs of that time against that story gave them new context. It made them much richer. Music seemed much more culturally important then. It had power.” Atticus: “When you look at how the artists responded to the political climate back then you realise how much of a musical void there is now.”

Trent: “We’re not motivated by what’s happening in pop culture. For me, Twin Peaks: The Return was my music and visual event of the year. We’d only seen the segment we were in, maybe two frames on either side, and I was blown away by the vision, the dedication and commitment to something that was singular and didn’t give a shit if you cared or not. In this renaissance age of long-form storytelling David Lynch has once again changed the rulebook.” Atticus: “Twin Peaks, again, for me, which was a lesson in sound design. Also, I take my hat off to Eminem for what he did at the BET Hip Hop Awards, and I’ve been listening to Mount Kimbie’s Love What Survives quite a bit but it’s generally been a year of revisiting classics: The Idiot, Transformer, Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space, To Bring You My Love and Hunky Dory.”

Jane Weaver Modern kosmologist “I haven’t listened to alt-folk for ages, there was a rich load of it 10 years ago, which became exhausting. So,

Shaun Keaveny 6Music’s Full indie breakfast “I got to see Ryley Walker at Glastonbury. He is just a fucking unbelievable musician with an incredible band. His album from last year – Golden Sings That Have Been Sung – is just a jaw-dropper. I think The Halfwit In Me is a really beautiful song. I really enjoy the album, but he’s even better live – he has a jazz-calypso-folkfunk band and they’re just off-thechart brilliant. And also, weirdly, only 40 years late, I finally got into Moondance by Van Morrison on some of the hotter days of the summer. It just seemed to fit well!”

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Blown away and feeling sick: Trent Reznor and Jane Weaver.

hearing This Is The Kit was a really refreshing change. The unusual percussiveness of their sound is attractive, it’s not just strummy folk. I even found myself picking up an acoustic guitar – like, what’s going on here? Similarly, there was a glut of girl indie guitar groups when I was at college, and Girl Ray really remind me of that time, they have the same appeal and energy. Very recently, I heard the name Snapped Ankles, which made me feel a bit sick, so I had to check them out, and they’re totally up my street. It’s got that motorik feel that I love, but also a strangeness, it doesn’t particularly belong to anything. They’re doing their own thing, like a secret society. Like, what do they get up to at weekends? Probably rituals! It’s like some Swedish commune in a forest, which always appeals to me, romantically.”

Jason Williamson (Sleaford) Modfather “Kendrick Lamar’s Damn. reminds me of old West Coast hip-hop. There are lots of people from that area who’ve been doing it but they just haven’t been filling the bucket, but the more I listened to this the more I was convinced it was worthy of the noise surrounding it. He can carry this off. It surrounded me when I was on tour in Europe and America and became a soundtrack for all those trips from one hotel to the other, walking around in

Sheryl Nields, Rebecca Lupton, Capital Pictures, Eyevine, PA, Wenn

From Snapped Ankles to Edith Piaf, sounds that impressed the stars last year…

landscapes you’d never seen before. It felt like it attached itself to all that. His anger, and refusal to be used, which is a real trait with good rappers, that resilience. It reeks of self-belief but not arrogance. I’ve also been listening to LFO’s first album [Frequencies] a lot. [Sleaford beat-maker Andrew [Fearn] suggested it, along with the Pet Shop Boys’ first album, because I never ask him what really influenced him, so he’s pointed me in the direction of those two albums.”

Anohni She’s gotta have it “There is an open-heartedness and a kindness to the work of The xx; and with I See You it feels like the music is born of real trust and friendship. It affirms one’s humanity, and allows one to just feel innocent for a minute. Numero Group’s Jackie Shane re-release was gorgeous and bracing. I hear she still lives in LA and to really dive into her recordings has been a joy. Moses Sumney’s Doomed is just immaculate and chilling. It reminded of me of Little Jimmy Scott and Ennio Morricone’s Miserere from The Mission soundtrack. Also, Corbin’s Mourn. I have followed Corbin since he started out. He is inspired, and it’s been amazing to hear each phase of his already extensive output. He has given so much already, and most of it for free. My friend Ossian from Cyclobe sent me Zabelle Panosian’s I Am A Servant Of Your Voice. It’s strange listening to a woman’s voice from 100 years ago, it seems so fragile, at the dawn of the industrial age, at the beginning of mass production, and the beginning of the recording industry, which I’ve been thinking about recently as a petrochemical industry. And I cried very hard when I heard the live recording of Joan Baez singing Another World. I was honoured she’d sing one of my songs. She has a moral authority that affirmed the undertow of the song and the gravity of it. It upset me and really broke through to me.”

Dan Auerbach

Linda Nylind/Eyevine, Getty Images (2), Photoshot/Avalon (2)

Single Black Key “I just saw this country singer from Arkansas called Ashley McBryde play recently, and she really made my day. She’s just fantastic. I really respect her as a songwriter, and she’s an incredible singer, and she just really rings true, to my ear. She connects. People love her story, and where her songs come from, and the struggle she’s been through – she’s 38 years old, she’s been working the circuit for over a decade, and no one’s ever heard of her until right now. Eric Church, this massive country star out here describes her as a ‘whiskey-drinkin’ badass’. She definitely drinks whiskey, but when I’ve been around her when she’s drinking whiskey, she gets nice, she doesn’t get mean, so I wouldn’t say she’s a badass. She gets huggy. She’s like a huggy drunk. She’s peace and love, she turns into Ringo Starr. She goes hunting with her dad, and when an animal catches its hair on the fence, her dad can pick up the hair, smell it, feel it, and know if it’s male or female, if it’s carrying babies – it’s like that level with her. That’s the guy she was raised by. She loves catching snakes. She’s just not your typical human, let alone woman. I think she finally has a record coming. She’s been supporting some singles here, that have been getting played on the radio, and everybody’s talking about her in Nashville. Apparently, she’s playing at some country festival in London [Country To Country, March 9-11] and I would expect everybody to be talking about her after that show, because that’s just the type of person she is.”

Jarvis Cocker Post-Pulp pop pundit “Baxter Dury’s Miami is my single of the year. It’s one of those songs that gets you on first listen and then takes up permanent residence inside your head. Plus, it’s got lots of creative swearing in it. When I was asked to do a remix of it, we took out Jarvis Cocker: a big fan of creative swearing.

the two catchiest elements – the bass line and the guitar – and it still worked its magic. That’s the sign of a good song: it’s indestructible. Album of the year is Benjamin Clementine’s I Tell A Fly. Many reviewers emphasised the experimental nature of his record but it’s far from being some kind of Metal Machine Music-type of ordeal. He’s managed to retain melody whilst playing with different types of song structure and none of it feels laboured or gratuitous. And he’s done so whilst keeping the instrumentation pretty basic – it’s just piano, drums and vocals mainly. By no means an easy task. And the lyrics are also fab! I totally doff my chapeau to him.”

Aaron Dessner National treasure “Discovering a new band like Big Thief, I haven’t experienced that in a while. I’ve never seen them live so they’re slightly mysterious to me: all I know is, they’re a quartet from Brooklyn, and Adrianne [Lenker] is their singer and guitarist. The album Capacity feels in the lineage of the Velvets and Sharon Van Etten, that East Coast blend of folk and rock, and there’s something effortless about it, nothing feels forced. It’s been years since I felt so affected. I’ve been a Perfume Genius fan since his debut album, Learning, in 2010, it’s still in my car. He’s grown album by album, and No Shape is his greatest yet. It’s very intimate, moving and pleasurable,

and he’s such a great performer too. I’ve also been aware of Mike Taylor’s songs for Hiss Golden Messenger, and with Hallelujah Anyhow, they’re increasingly picking up the mantle of The Band. For me, they represent this warm heart of music: I find them weirdly therapeutic, like I’m stepping into a better world. I’m also super-into Moses Sumney’s debut album Aromanticism. I find his sense of harmony and adventurousness transcendent. I wish I could write like that.”

Ron Mael Sparks plug “I love Khalid’s Young Dumb & Broke. There aren’t enough songs nowadays about being teenage that aren’t inane in one way or another. This song is sincere, emotional, and beautifully sung and uplifting and yet quite sad, at the same time. Our track, Edith Piaf (Said It Better Than Me), from our new album [Hippopotamus], makes a reference to Edith Piaf anthem Je Ne Regrette Rien, and I’ve been listening to this and other Piaf songs ­

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:THEBESTTHINGI’VEHEARDALLYEAR ¢

continuously. Her singing and the songs are so connected that it’s nearly impossible to imagine anyone else singing them. We were recently on French radio and the interviewer told us he’d received an e-mail from Charles Dumont, who wrote the music to Je Ne Regrette Rien, saying how much he enjoyed our song and the reference. I think I need to have the e-mail contents tattooed on my forehead. What an honour! We’ve also spent a lot of time in Japan lately where ‘muzak’ is, by and large, not the cheesy affair it is in other cultures. Most often it’s straightahead jazz – Miles Davis, Coltrane, Monk. You realise that quality music has another dimension than being intently listened to, that it can also lend a very special atmosphere to munching tempura or buying a Hello Kitty rice cooker.”

Courtney Barnett and Kurt Vile The Lice couple Kurt: “My favourite record right now is Ariel Pink’s new one, Dedicated To Bobby Jameson. I love the mellow pop jams of the second single, Feels Like Heaven, and the video for Another Weekend was pretty much my video of the year as well. He’s a pop freak, he knows the right people to play with. I read this Syd Barrett quote back in the day, that the definition of psychedelic music was to get as many ideas in as you can in as little amount of time as possible and his last record, Pom Pom, was definitely like that, tracks like Exile On Frog Street, but he’s got the pop sensibility and the classic AM/FM Gold sensibility. I don’t know, he’s maybe just a weirdo, but he’s a good artist.” Courtney: “The main thing I’ve been listening to

a lot is the new Torres album, Three Futures. I’ve been obsessed with that. I haven’t been able to see a live show of her new album but we did one show together a couple of years ago in New York and she has such an amazing voice but this new album is weird. The songs, like the title song, and Righteous Woman, I love, and all the weird sounds on it, the instrumentation, these weird beats and drum machines, but her vocals stand out so much on this album. Her voice is primal, brutal, first take with no inhibitions, when no one’s watching you and you don’t really care about anything. It’s the kind of thing you might listen back to and be like, ‘Wow, is that a bit too revealing?’ But no, it’s amazing.”

Loudon Wainwright III He’s all right “I thought I’d heard all the great female jazz singers: Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Peggy Lee, Anita O’Day, and Mildred Bailey, but somehow I missed Lee Wiley until just a few months ago. Wiley was born in Oklahoma in 1908 and she died in Manhattan at the age of 67. Her singing is always understated, and yet she still manages to sound sly, sexy, and, most importantly, vulnerable. When she gently croons I’ve Got a Crush On You you can’t help but believe it. She’s best known for her albums featuring the songs of George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, and Rogers & Hart , thus launching the concept of the ‘song book’, which was later imitated by other singers. Do yourself a favour and give her a listen. The other best thing is my friend Dick Connette’s Too Sad For The Public Vol. 1 – Oysters Ice Cream Lemonade. Dick re-imagines and then musically reconstructs folk, jazz, blues, and rock‘n’roll classics, reinventing the old and familiar.”

Baxter Dury Mr Miami “This year I’ve been listening to a lot of ’80s French synth-pop like Touche Pas A Mon Sex by Comix. Insanely pretentious and definitely already rediscovered by cool angular people so I’m late to the function. I did a photo shoot in the Sahara desert (as you do) earlier this year and Morrocan Mike, our fixer, played a lot of this type of music on a perilous journey across the Atlas Mountains. I always listen to a lot of hip-hop from the ’80s, obvious stuff like N.W.A and Public Enemy which is soft and dated now and takes on another musical charm unintentionally. It’s almost pantomime in its delivery. I always love listening to Sleaford Mods and English Tapas was excellent and funny and really upbeat in a bleak way.”

Steve Earle Ain’t ever satisfied “Best thing this year? The show I saw at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival in San Francisco: Randy Newman, playing alone at the piano, and it was just incredible. Everything about it: the power of his lyrics, his wisdom, the stories he tells in his songs. I think I know most of them by heart. And there’s also his humour and irony. He got a huge crowd of people to chant on cue, ‘You’re dead! You’re dead’; he said it made him think of the Hitler Youth. I’ve

heard a lot of new music this year, but his new album Dark Matter is my favourite. A master at the top of his game.”

Hurray For The Riff Raff AKA Alynda “Residente’s border-defying album is everything we need in 2017. René Juan Pérez Joglar is a poet of the world and the people, who’s travelled to the far corners of the globe, meeting and recording people everywhere his DNA is linked to. To make music as a reminder of our shared humanity is a sacred art and I’m so grateful this album exists. Also, Princess Nokia is the hero we need. A feminist Afro Nuyorican warrior from the hood who isn’t taking any shit and empowers women like me to take up space and honour our power. She is already a favourite in underground scenes across the world but you can bet Nokia is a rising star.”

Steve Earle and Hurray For The Riff Raff: humour, irony and shared humanity.

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Martin Aston, Mike Barnes, Jenny Bulley, Keith Cameron, Stevie Chick, Andy Cowan, Tom Doyle, Danny Eccleston, George Garner, Ian Harrison, David Hutcheon, Chris Ingham, Jim Irvin, Colin Irwin, Jesse Jarnow, Alan Light, Andrew Male, James McNair, Ben Myers, Mark Paytress, Andrew Perry, Tony Russell, Victoria Segal, Sylvie Simmons, Laura Snapes, Mat Snow, Kieron Tyler, Paul Stokes, Charles Waring, Roy Wilkinson, Lois Wilson, Stephen Worthy.

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UNCUT

“A chandelier made of strobe lights” DAZED AND CONFUSED

“A powerful, brooding, enveloping return” CLASH

“Delicate minimalism” THE GUARDIAN

NEW ALBUM OUT NOW CD / VINYL / DIGITAL

In the Smoke: The Jam, under the Westway flyover and outtake from This Is The Modern World cover shoot, 1977: (from left) Paul Weller, Rick Buckler, Bruce Foxton. 74 MO JO

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, D O M , D O IT’S A M

FLUNG FROM WOKING STRIPPER PUBS INTO THAES CRUCIBLE OF PUNK. HAILDE,DBUT THE PEOPLE’S BAN SH SCORNED AS A BUSTED LFLURU OF AFTER 12 MONTHS IN ASBMASHED RIPPED SEATS AND SSURE RICKENBACKERS. THE PRREBREAKON THE JAM IN THEI SHING, THROUGH YEAR WAS CRHUE BOND BUT THEIR SPIRIT, AND BTAND AND FORGED BETWEEN OKEN. FANS, WAS NEVER BR ING, “RIGHT FROM THE BEGINANKING IT WAS ABOUT M A CONNECTION,” DISCOVITERBSY LOIS WILSON. PORTRA ITZ. GERED MANKOW Credit in here

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D L R O W D MOD, MO

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Court pop-up gig, October 1976; (insets from top) In The City debut LP; Larry Williams; The Modern World EP.

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Unlikely as it sounds, the guerilla gig is a landmark moment, as the stunt secures the three-piece group their first press coverage – write-ups in Sniffin’ Glue, Melody Maker and Sounds magazines, and The Jam enter the emerging punk narrative along with their 18-year-old singer-songwriter-guitarist, John William Weller Jr – AKA Paul. “We knew Paul from the stall,” says Roger Armstrong today. “He was always dressed neat in his suit and he’d be buying Motown records while everyone else was looking for The Stooges, MC5 and New York Dolls. But the first we knew of The Jam playing that day was when John [Weller, Paul’s father, the band’s manager] came in and said could they use our power supply. We put a bayonet in the light bulb socket and they ran it off that.” Only a month before, it had been a ver y different scene: Friday night at Michael’s Disco Diner, a run-down latenight drinking den on the edge of Woking’s town centre. Downstairs, in the basement, the sounds of Status Quo and Be Bop Deluxe piped out of local DJ Mike Taro’s neon-lit soundsystem. Upstairs: stained, peeling wallpaper, strippers, and live music provided by The Jam, a three-piece since July ’75, churning out Chuck Berry, Beatles and Motown numbers to men with one eye on beer and the other on scantily clad women.

“PAUL HAD SOMETHING DIFFERENT ABOUT HIM. HE WAS DRIVEN BY THIS RAW SENSE OF DESTINY.”

ELLER HAD FORMED The Jam in 1972 with school friend Steve Brookes. After several personnel changes, and Brookes’s departure, the group had settled on the power trio line-up of Weller, bassist Bruce Foxton and drummer Rick Buckler. Buckler, the son of a postman and GPO telephone engineer, was a fan of Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin. Foxton worked at a local printers and had fronted prog rockers Rita, a band formed with work colleagues. Enthusiasm and locality bonded the three, but even at this embr yonic stage, Weller’s burning ambition to make it told friends and acquaintances that he was on a different path. “He was driven right from the start,” says Steve Brookes. “He saw music as his purpose, he felt he was put on earth to make it. He was that single-minded, which meant he could be seen as difficult at times, he could get vitriolic, react quite easily, but he always talked about being rich and famous.” By the spring of 1976, Weller had become aware of something different, simpatico, stirring 20-odd miles away in the capital (he’d already absorbed the pre-punk sounds of Dr. Feelgood). And though the end-of-days fashion aesthetic and ragged musical values of the emerging punk groups were miles from The Jam’s sharp, businesslike look and apprenticed chops, when Weller had seen the Sex Pistols play at the Lyceum in July he’d felt a connection. ­

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Modrules, Getty Images

T’S A BUSTLING SATURDAY LUNCHTIME IN October 1976, the sun is shining and Chiswick Records’ co-founder Roger Armstrong is manning his record stall Rock On in Soho market on Newport Court, just off Charing Cross Road. The Clash are over the road eating a late breakfast; Mark Perry of Sniffin’ Glue fanzine is killing time, flicking through the boxes looking for Iggy Pop records. Suddenly, a battered van turns up, doors fling open and three lads jump out of the back. Dressed in three-button black suits, white shirts and black ties, they set up drums, bass, guitar by the red phone boxes, plug in to Rock On’s power supply and blast out a cacophonic version of Larry Williams’s Slow Down. A guerrilla explosion of youthful energy and defiance, their skinny lead singer spits out the words with an earnest ferocity, his fireglo Rickenbacker 330 thrashing out the rhythm, distorting with the volume. Shoppers with kids balanced on their shoulders stop and stare. Even the firefighters at the nearby station on Shaftesbury Avenue climb onto the roof to get a glimpse of what is going on. Weller, Newport

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Getting serious: onstage at Manchester’s Electric Circus, June 19, 1977, Buckler (rear) Weller and Foxton.

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In the city: (from left) Foxton, Buckler and Weller refuel after the News Of The World single sleeve shoot, Lexington Street, London W1, January 1978.

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“It was an epiphany,” Weller told me in 2010. “When they came on stage there was the feeling that, This is it. They were of my generation, speaking to me. I felt isolated before that. We’d play pubs and working men’s clubs in Surrey where the typical punter had to get pissed before he’d get up and dance and then usually it was a slow dance. I wanted something different. After we got in the press, we concentrated on London, the punk venues. It got serious.” Getting serious meant gigs at the 100 Club and Upstairs At Ronnie Scott’s, where the metamorphosis from small-town covers band playing soul and R&B to ‘people’s band’ began in earnest. But The Jam’s status on the punk scene was ambiguous from the off, as Shanne Bradley, then 18 and member of The Launderettes (later The Nips) fondly recalls. “I was staying in Croydon with Ray Burns [AKA The Damned’s Captain Sensible],” says Bradley. “We got the bus to the Ronnie’s show. I had a toy bass that Fred Berk from Johnny Moped had given me, and Ray was teaching me Damned bass lines on it. Midway through the gig, Bruce broke a string. I handed him the toy one and he couldn’t stop laughing. That really endeared me to him.” As the gig went up through its gears, however, The Jam’s otherness became clearer. “It was almost like they were a holiday camp band from Butlins,” says Bradley. “They were doing covers and Paul was doing these Pete Townshend arm windmills, but they had this energy. In the early days, punk wasn’t a music, it was an attitude and feeling, and they had that.” “They’d bussed in a load of Wokingites, so there was an uneasy atmosphere at Ronnie’s,” recalls Steve Mick, the Sniffin’ Glue fanzine writer. “Paul loses it, lifts up the monitor in front of him and smashes it down, shouting, ‘Is this what you want?’ We started pogoing, and the Wokingites piled into us. There were 20, maybe 30 people brawling. It was mayhem.” Weller later burned a copy of Sniffin’ Glue on-stage, after an interview Mick conducted with the singer didn’t appear. “It was a mistake,” admits the writer. “We’d sat under the jukebox speaker so I couldn’t hear anything other than music on the [interview] tape. Mark Perry wrote something snidey in its place. Paul bought the issue, saw our interview wasn’t in there, got angry. I was impressed though – it showed he had guts. He questioned stuff. ‘Why should I do that just because punk says I should? Why should I act bored? Why should I wear ripped clothes?’”

London and its musical brethren, and were far removed from the elite and its communication network. Yet in musical attitude they weren’t that different. Rooted in the amphetaminefuelled peacocking of The Who and Small Faces, and drawing a direct line between Pete Townshend’s auto-destruction and the Pistols’ nihilism, The Jam vibrated with tension and, importantly, sought an engagement with their audience. “It was always about breaking down that barrier for me,” said Weller. “Right from the beginning I wanted that. It was about saying something and making a connection.” “Because they were out-of-town boys, they were seen as yokels,” says then-Chiswick/Rock On co-boss Ted Carroll, who’d offered the group a one-off single deal. “Their differences were seen as them being out of step but that wasn’t the case. Punk was never going to hang around – the major labels were never going to get a handle on it, never going to take it s usly. And then you had Bernie [Rhodes, The Clash manager] and Malcolm [McLaren, Pistols boss] playing games, seeing how much money they could get. We liked the fact The Jam had this energy but were modelled on the ’60s groups, with melody. We approached John Weller, said, We think they’re terrific, we’ll do one single, we’ll get it out real fast, it will increase the profile of the band and will put you in a stronger position to negotiate with the majors… But sadly it wasn’t to be.” “We’d chosen In The City to be the single and we knew it was going to be a hit,” adds Armstrong. “Ted sent contracts out to John for him to read, then he was to come to Ted’s flat, which was over the Rock On shop, to sign. Ted put mod photos around the place, The Who’s Ready Steady Who EP on display. Then Ted rings me: ‘John’s gone with Polydor for £6,000.’” On January 22, 1977, The Jam played the Marquee supporting Bearded Lady. In the 500-strong audience was Chris Parry, a Polydor label A&R man who had just missed out on signing the Pistols and The Clash and was there on a tip-off from The Nips’ Shane MacGowan. Impressed by the group live, he arranged a demo session on Oxford Street, then signed the trio on February 15, initially for a single but with the option to extend, which he did – to four albums over as many years. “They were like punk kids but unlike the Pistols whose role models were the MC5, Stooges, the Dolls, theirs was The Who, they liked to play power chords,” says Parry. “So when I went backstage at the Marquee and said I was from Polydor, Paul’s eyes lit up. Paul had something different about him, l ke Joe Strummer and Johnny Rotten, and he had ­

Martyn Goddard, Getty Images

“IT WAS ALMOST LIKE THE JAM WERE A HOLIDAY CAMP BAND FROM BUTLINS, BUT THEY HAD THIS ENERGY.”

ROM THE SUBURBS, MANAGED NOT by metropolitan flibbertigibbet Malcolm McLaren but by John Weller – a former boxer, cabbie and builder – and playing covers to drunken party-goers for £50 at the weekends, The Jam had an idealised, outsider’s view of

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Paul and John Weller, Wembley Arena, December 1982; (insets above) The Jam in Sniffin’ Glue, March 8, ’77; the debut 45.

But the intensifying attention wasn’t without its drawbacks – as Bruce Foxton recalls. “Paul would get so nervous before shows,” says the bassist, “that he’d be pacing around then have to rush off to be physically sick.” N APRIL 29, THE JAM ISSUED THEIR first single. In The City encapsulated everything they were about: a romanticised view of London and a Wordsworthian revelling in being young: “All those golden faces are under 25…” “Life in London seemed so removed from sleepy Woking,” Weller told me. “Loads of punk songs were about boredom and it was like, Well you should come and live in the suburbs where there is literally nothing going on except drinking and fighting. With punk we were playing to our generation, we could sing about things our audience could relate to.” Made NME Single Of The Week, In The City just scraped the UK Top 40, and although not the first punk band to make the British singles chart, The Jam were the first to appear on Top Of The Pops. Beamed into living rooms around the country, they had moved instantly from fanzine world into the mainstream. “I saw them shortly before the single release at the Marquee,” says Steve Mick. “I went backstage, it was wall-to-wall business suits. In my mind they were famous then. I saw them once more after that. It was 50p to get in, I went up to Chris Parry and demanded my money back.” For Polydor “it was a massive deal”, says Parry. “We’d put a lot of thought into it. We’d booked a tour that would end at Hammersmith Odeon to promote their first album. It was ambitious, there was a lot hanging on it to make it work, so we had to keep rolling, accelerating the band. We had a frantic work rate.” A week after In The City’s release, The Jam joined The Clash’s White Riot 77 tour. Along with Buzzcocks, The Slits and Subway Sect, it was set to take punk to the masses, but after shows at Edinburgh’s Playhouse, Manchester’s Electric Circus and The Rainbow in London, The Jam left. Clash associates have offered a number of different interpretations: Bernie Rhodes feared The Jam would usurp The Clash; John Weller was inching out of a deal to help fund the other support acts; The Jam had never fitted in anyway – the old ‘yokel’ argument… “There was a lot of bickering between us and The Clash over how much PA and lighting we got to use,” says Foxton today. “It felt like we had gone back to the early ’70s with big companies fighting. We just thought, We don’t need this crap.” “It felt like a rip-off, not about bringing the youth together,” said Weller. “By this time, I was getting disillusioned with the whole punk scene anyway. There were a lot of bands just jumping on the bandwagon,

Here comes the weekend: The Jam, union jacketed in Carnaby Street, 1977; (right) second album This Is The Modern World.

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immense confidence. He had a clear vision about what he was going to be. At our first meeting he said, ‘I’m going to be one of the spokespeople for my generation. I’m not just going to make it musically, I’m going to play a pivotal role.’ He was driven by this pure, raw sense of destiny.” Residences at the Red Cow in Hammersmith and the Nashville Rooms in West Kensington were booked on the back of their signing and with the band playing an average of two to three shows a week, they started to attract bigger and bigger crowds. “It happened so quickly,” says Steve Carver, a friend of the band who became their roadie and merch man. “At the first show at the Red Cow there’d be 12 people, at the second 25, by the fourth it was absolutely rammed. The publicity machine had gone into overdrive, we had all these Jam badges which we’d throw into the audience after the show. The kids started collecting them, they’d be turning up with them pinned to their jacket lapels. They saw it as being part of the gang.”

“I FELT DEJECTED. THE TOUR, THE REVIEWS… I THOUGHT THIS COULD BE THE END OF THE JAM.”

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10 SONGS THAT DEFINEHTEHE RAPID EVOLUTION OF T BERT EARLY JAM. BY PAT GIL

HE FIRST ALBUM, IN THE CITY, WAS ISSUED ON MAY 20. Recorded at Polydor’s in-house studio at Stratford Place in London’s West End over 11 days, with Parry producing and Vic Coppersmith-Heaven engineering, the brief was simple. “Like all bands when they start out, they’d honed down a bunch of songs over two, three, five years and that’s their work to date,” says Parry. “So you think, This is what they do, this is their sound, let’s try and recreate that. That’s your starting point. You want to capture the smell, the sound, the feel of the band.” In The City did just that, its 12 songs including frantic covers of Slow Down and the Batman theme, the first strands of social observation with Bricks And Mortar, and the first glimpse of how Weller’s songwriting would evolve as Away From The Numbers revealed a more thoughtful, introspective keen. “It was such a blur, very quick and very intense,” says Foxton of those album sessions. “It was like we had got on a rollercoaster and we just had to hold on. It was so brand new, we had to learn so quick but it felt like we were a gang, us against the world. It was a proper buzz.” The album hit the UK Top 20, and a 36-date tour followed, starting at Barbarella’s in Birmingham on June 7. Peter Gabriel turned up at The Jam’s Bristol Polytechnic gig – Weller would turn down a support slot with Gabriel later that year, saying he wanted to continue playing small venues. At the tour’s finale at Hammersmith Odeon, they celebrated their second hit single: All Around The World had charted the day before. Its lyric put further distance between Weller and punk’s Year Zero rhetoric: “You can’t dismiss what’s gone before…” “He was very prolific,” says Parry. “He was writing all the time while he was on the road and you never knew how much material he had. He never told you he’d written a new song, it was never like that, he’d just play them at some point when he was ready. He did that with All Around The World, and I thought, I like that a lot. We needed another single out before the Odeon show. We had to sell that out and ticket sales had levelled. We had a day off between shows, so we went into Chappell studios on Bond Street, and recorded and mixed it in a day then got it out in three weeks, just before the show. And it did the trick, we sold out the venue on the back of it.” Without a break, Parry booked them into a tiny studio in Aylesbury to tentatively start work on songs for their second album. The session was abandoned after a week. “With the two singles and the Top Of The Pops appearances, Paul was positive,” says Parry. “But there was an awareness coming, that he’d reached first base and there was a sense of pressure building on him. It all came on so bloody fast. As 1977 went on he got more introverted.” “We were at Paul’s mum and dad’s,” recalls Carver. “We were watching Top Of The Pops and he comes o with All Around The World. We were all really excited. He just went, ‘I don’t really like the song.’ He didn’t celebrate and he definitely didn’t show off.”

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ELLER’S IDEALISM was rubbing up against major label reality, a challenge for a group whose emerging principle was that the band and the fans were in it together. “It felt like you were a part of something,” asserts ­

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IN THE CITY

(Single, April 1977) In autumn 1976, Weller honed the first song inspired by his punk epiphany; but The Jam were still playing MOR sets at Surrey weddings. Its urban theme, frantic riff and lines about police savagery owed much to The Clash; but its clarion promoting “the young idea” was 18-year-old Weller’s own.

2 TIME FOR TRUTH

(From In The City, May 1977) Misread as a Little Englander anthem following Weller’s Clash-baiting “I’m voting Tory” furore, this Beatles-punk hybrid was a more sophisticated dig at how Establishment forces – PM Jim Callaghan, feral police (again), etc – had perverted the liberal values Empire had been built on. The brusque, martial ‘Jam Sound’ begins here…

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AWAY FROM THE NUMBERS

(From In The City, May 1977) Weller’s almost overnight acceleration from Feelgoods copyist to exponent of Who-style psychological rock is well illustrated by this timeless cri de coeur of Mod outsiderdom, replete with a gloriously un-punk, surf-harmonies interlude. A major talent had arrived.

4 ALL AROUND THE WORLD

(Single, July 1977) Crashing waves of guitar and strong bass undertow define this non-album stopgap. Sonically more textured than anything on In The City, its lyrics sneer at punk’s studied nihilism, calling for progressive, post-punk youth revolt. Its explosive precision-pop energy all but defined the New Wave sound.

5 CARNABY STREET

(B-side of All Around The World, July 1977) Bassist Bruce Foxton’s first stab at

songwriting took The Jam’s trademark bish-bash punctuations and bullish vocal delivery and applied it to a retro-Carnabetian theme. Worryingly, though, it seemed to decry the Street’s multiculturalism in the ’70s – “part of the British tradition, gone down the drain”. A problematic period piece.

6 THE MODERN WORLD

(Single, October 1977) Written soon after In The City was recorded, this fanfare for album two established Weller as Mod icon and generational spokesman, his struggle against teachers and music critics (“I don’t give two fucks about your review!”) set out in a bolshy, personal, still-empowering screed. Freer use of chords and unconventional guitar solo drew further Townshend comparisons. A foundation stone in the cult of Weller.

7 LIFE THROUGH A WINDOW

(on This Is The Modern World, November 1977) Received wisdom says Weller’s classic ’60s-inflected Brit songwriting came with All Mod Cons, but Life Through A Window proves his liberation from punk’s rubric was in evidence a year earlier. This wistful, melancholic study of the eternal observer uses acoustic guitars, dynamic arrangements, harmonies and much else to make In The City look positively Neolithic.

8 TONIGHT AT NOON

(on This Is The Modern World, November 1977) With Weller’s growing interest in ’60s pop culture came a keen appreciation of the Liverpool Poets, including Adrian Henri’s surrealist Tonight At Noon. Dreamy drone chords, a chiming 12-string guitar and a verse that slips into a one-off bridge broadcast the fact The Jam now had real musical richness.

9 NEWS OF THE WORLD

(Single, March 1978) A disastrous US tour and a lukewarm response to …Modern World knocked Weller’s confidence, and with the singer retreating into his relationship with girlfriend Gill Price it was left to Foxton to conjure their next A-side. A scything riff and twiddling overdubs couldn’t disguise an overwrought – if catchy – song that’s a UK TV staple as the theme to comedy news quiz Mock The Week.

IN THE TUBE 10 DOWN STATION AT MIDNIGHT (Single, October 1978) Weller returns from writer’s block with this terrific poem-story about a commuter falling prey to right-wing thugs set to a fractured, Pop Art backing. Lines like “they smelt of pubs and Wormwood Scrubs” flagged Weller as the new wave’s suburban poet laureate, and, to irk all punk ideologues who still cared, there was a drum solo. The ultimate taster for the genius of All Mod Cons. Credit in here

changing their image, thinking that was all it took to be a punk.” “By the Rainbow show, punk tribalism had taken over,” says Carver. “It was tense and the crowd smashed up the place but The Jam were all right because they could play. Paul and Bruce’ feet were never on the ground. They could win over any audienc didn’t matter who you were.”

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“We clicked instantly”: The Chords, September 21, 1979, with Brett Ascott, far left.

“IT’S BETTER THAN A LOT OF RELIGIONS”

Resort in Brick Lane and the next day I went and got one. I was a Mod. I thought I was in splendid isolation, using Quadrophenia as my guide. I think [The Chords’ guitarist and songwriter] “Initially it Chris Pope and [The Purple was the Hearts’] Simon Stebbins look. There felt exactly the same at the is just same time because something suddenly this thing started classic to escalate very quickly. about the There were no Svengalis, look. It’s clean, sharp, no puppetry, no Seditionstreamlined. Then you aries, Sex or Let It Rock. It get into the philosophy, came truly from the street, how it drew on so many from a group of kids who different cultures and had grown up on the influences, from African, Quadrophenia album, came Indian, Ivy League, Italian to see The Jam as a and you learn to take a surrogate Who, were little bit of this and a little adolescents full of bit of that and copy it and hormones and disorientaadapt it and process it tion, and it was a perfect and absorb it and it storm. I bought a green becomes an expression jacket for a fiver from of yourself and whenever Oxfam. I’d read Roger you think you know it all, Daltrey made his own you discover something T-shirts in the ’60s and new and become a better started making mine. person for it. It’s a good The Who took a break attitude to have, better from playing live in ’77, Who than a lot of other Are You came out in ’78 and religions and addictions.” was awful, then Keith Moon died, which was devastating. In that sense The Jam replaced them. Keith was the whole reason I played the drums, he informed everything I did. My mantra was, What would Keith do? I got blind drunk, took a load of Valium, jumped the train to Brighton, started smashing the train up, setting off the fire extinguishers, got to the seafront, started writing Keith Is Dead on the wall and got arrested on a charge of criminal damage. Next day an ex-Mod policeman took pity on me and let me out at 6am with no charge. ‘I feel the same, mate,’ he said. I auditioned for The Chords in January ’79. I turned up in a target T-shirt and my parka. I broke the bass drum pedal, cut my hand and covered the kit with blood. We clicked instantly. The next month the band went to see The Jam in Paris. We turned up at the hovercraft in Dover and everywhere you looked there was a kid wearing a parka. I’d downed all the speed I had on the way down, my eyeballs were busting out of my head, it was horrible, and when we got to Paris, John Weller, who I’d never met, gave me a clipboard and told me to get all the names of the British Mods down so they could go on the guest list. It was a proper invasion. The Chords put out our first single, Now It’s Gone, in September ’79, the Purple Hearts had Millions Like Us the same month. It felt like nothing could stop us.” As told to Lois Wilson.

PAUL WELLER ON MOD’S APPEAL, IN ’77 AND 2017.

FROM THE WHO TO THE JAARKA : THE CHORDS’ DRUMMER ON BRICK LANE FOR A P ON HIS REBIRTH AS A MOD, 1976 78. BRETT ‘BUDDY’ ASCOTT

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FRIEND LENT me The Who’s Quadrophenia in 1976. I was 16, and puberty had kicked in and it made perfect sense; the angst, the self loathing. I became fixated with the imagery and the photos inside the booklet. I’d not liked glam, heavy rock or prog rock and listened to my older brother’s Kinks and Who records up to then. He’d been an original Mod and had a scooter. Quadrophenia became my bible. I knew the sleevenotes and the essay by Pete Townshend by heart. Soon after I read an interview with The Jam where they said they did a version of So Sad About Us. I went to see them at Stockwell College in Bromley, on May 6 ’77 on the basis of that. It was a Friday night, the stage was a foot high,

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there were no punks or Mods, just students and hippies. They weren’t going down great and I shouted out for So Sad About Us and Weller went, ‘At least we’ve got one fucking fan here.’ Three days later I saw them supporting The Clash at the Rainbow. In ’78 I saw [R&B group] The Inmates at the Rock Garden. A bloke was wearing a parka in the audience. I couldn’t believe it. I’d not seen one in real life, so to speak. I tapped him on the shoulder, asked him where he got it. He said the Last

“THE JAM WEREN’T GOING DOWN GREAT. I SHOUTED OUT FOR SO SAD ABOUT US AND WELLER WENT, ‘AT LEAST WE’VE GOT ONE FUCKING FAN HERE.’”

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” E L B I B Y M S A W A I N “QUADROPHEM AND ON TO THE LAST RESORT

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Shanne Bradley, whose band The Nips would later support The Jam (Weller would also produce their 1981 single Happy Song). “Paul’s mum and dad, his sister Nicky, were always there. At the end of the night, they’d give me a lift home. They didn’t want me walking on my own. As the shows went on, the band became more pertinent, got more attitude, and they got it, whatever it was, really quickly, whatever we were fighting, whatever we were angr y about. There was no distinguishing between us and the band.” “Paul would invite us to just turn up in the afternoon of a gig as the equipment was being loaded in,” says London DJ Gary Crowley, who was 15 in 1977. “We’d get there ridiculously early but he wouldn’t care. He’d let us hang out and watch everything going on. He was so attuned to his audience. The Jam felt like it was something I could belong to. It felt like, this was our time.” It wasn’t just in the capital that the connection was made, as Phil Jones, editor of Liverpool fanzines Time For Action and The End, remembers. “I bunked off school to see them at the Empire in Liverpool. I was in my uniform. Paul invited us in, asked us loads of questions, how old were we, what school did we go to, what were our politics. He gave us a mini lecture on socialism and told us to read. That was one of his main points he tried to get across. We started to dress more like him after that – suit jackets, badges on the lapels. It wasn’t Mod at this time, more just a new dynamic in punk. We’d go to [Mathew Street punk club] Eric’s every week to the matinees and they looked at us like oiks. But The Jam were inclusive. It felt new compared to punk.” “It was great to start with,” Weller recalled. “Of course I wanted success. I wanted to make it. So when kids came up and wanted to hang out, it was like a validation of this street movement, which I thought punk was about. But then by the end of the first year we were getting 50, 100, 200 kids outside waiting, all of them looking at me, wanting me to say something, do something. I started pulling back. I didn’t know what else to do.” To further complicate matters, Weller had fallen in love with Gill Price, his first proper girlfriend, whom he’d met at a Jam gig in Dunstable in July. Soon after, the pair moved into a flat together in Baker Street and a wedge was driven between the singer and the rhythm section, who remained in Woking. Says Parry: “Paul was distracted. He went from being a young kid having fun and enjoying playing rock’n’roll to getting a girlfriend, getting serious and questioning what it was all about. In the space of a year, he went from a teenager to something resembling a married man. He met a girl, fell in love. He was like, This is my life, the other stuff is shit, and the recording of that second album was a struggle. It got messy.” The Jam, with Coppersmith-Heaven, entered Island’s Basing Street studios in Notting Hill in September with a £20,000 advance and completed In The City’s follow-up, to be titled This Is The Modern World. “The Jam’s deal had been renegotiated,’ says Parry. “John [Weller] would get a substantial amount with a second album so he was keen to get it done, obviously, and there was also a hunger from

Polydor: you know, ‘Let’s have another record before Christmas so we get our bonus.’” The sound of The Jam’s debut album had been strictly templated by the title track. The approach on This Is The Modern World was to be more varied. “We wanted to push ourselves musically,” says Foxton. “We didn’t want to make In The City Part 2. Paul was experimenting with songs, bringing in harmonies, acoustic guitars.” “We wanted more subtlety, texture,” says Parry. “Paul was looking to The Beatles for inspiration musically, but there was no time to give it the attention it needed due to the live schedule, and it felt like we were really up against it.” Another problem, says Parr y, was Weller’s choice of guitar. “Rickenbackers are known for going out of tune quickly,” he notes. “We’d be in the middle of a take and then suddenly hear this ‘Bang Bang Bang Crash!’ and he’ll have got frustrated and hrown his guitar across the studio, then another one, and another one. We spent a lot of time sourci g him Rickenbackers because he was literally trashing them. But he wouldn’t play anything else.”

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“PAUL WOULD O GET SO NERVOUS BEFORE SHOWS THAT HE’D HAVE TO RUSH OFF TO BE PHYSICALLY SICK.”

“It was a crazy schedule…Something had to give”: The Jam in Chinatown, San Francisco, on the first American tour, 1977; (top) Weller with first love Gill Price, Sheffield University, May 4, 1979.

NCE THE ALBUM WAS MIXED, A&R AND band rushed to Heathrow Airport to catch a plane to Los Angeles. Their first US tour promoting In The City was to begin with two nights at the Whisky A Go Go. “It was a crazy schedule looking back now,” concedes Parry. “Single, album, UK tour, single, album, US tour and no break. Something had to give.” Weller was homesick from the start – “I hated it,” he said. “I missed everything about being in London at that time and just wanted to get back to my life there.” Then, in San Francisco, their show at the Old Waldorf was cancelled. “Everyone from the US record company was due to see the band ­

“It was a spur to get back on the case”: the rejuvenated Jam, 1978; (insets) early ’78 single, and album.

“There are some really great songs on that album,” Parry insists. “Life Through A Window, Tonight At Noon, I Need You, then some good ones like Standards, but they suffered from second album syndrome. You can see it was a transitional album, one which takes the band from one place to another. Those albums are always flawed but are vital stepping stones. Paul was never going to leap from In The City to All Mod Cons, he needed This Is The Modern World to get where he was going.” OR THE MOMENT, WELLER WAS SPENT. HE withdrew from the band, finding sanctuary in Gill Price. “I felt dejected, had my tail between my legs,” he told me. “The tour, the reviews… I thought this could be the end of The Jam. Because I was in love I wasn’t too bothered in some ways. I had this other life to consume me.” “As the main songwriter, Paul was on a treadmill,” says Foxton. “He had to continually come up with material. There was no let up for him.” When it came time to release the next single, Weller had nothing to give. Foxton’s News Of The World was issued on February 24, 1978 as a stopgap. Was there a sense that Bruce might take over as prime mover? “Never. The record company needed a g, I had one, so it kept our name out th re,” says the bassist. “At the back of my mind all the time I was hoping that Paul hadn’t dried up, that this wasn’t going to be it. If my song gave him a break that he needed, great. I don’t know if it did, but hat was the intention.” It was actually a rejection that got Weller b ck into the swing. A set of demos The Jam h d ecorded at Polydor studios in February intended as the basis for their third album were, according to Parry, “shit. I heard them and there was no getting round it. I told Paul to start again.” “I had run out of ideas,” Weller admitted. “Chris Parry was right. Someone had to say it and I thought, Thank God. I had a bit of hurt pride, but it was more a spur. I needed a kick up the arse to get back on the case. I went away and wrote most of the album in a few days. I felt we’d been written off, this was make or break and I was going to show them.” “We went into Polydor studios in June to demo the new songs,” says Foxton, “and we knew we had something special with Down In The Tube Station At Midnight, To Be Someone, In The Crowd, English Rose. We were making something new.” A double A-side featuring a cover of The Kinks’ David Watts, sung by Foxton, and a new song, ‘A’ Bomb In Wardour Street, salvaged from the original set of rejected demos, was released on August 11, 1978 and made the UK Top 30. It bought valuable time. Fans would never know how close The Jam had come to splitting. “They were our band,” says Gar y Crowley, not the only 1977-vintage fan to have stuck with Weller ever since. “They could do no wrong. David Watts was brilliant – it became a kind of anthem for us. Then All Mod Cons came out and it was, Wow, the possibilities are endless…” M

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“WE’D BEEN WRITTEN OFF, THIS WAS MAKE OR BREAK AND I WAS GOING TO SHOW THEM.”

Thanks to Jon Abnett, Dave Edwards and Jo Wallace.

Adrian Boot/urbanimage.tv

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there,” says Parry. “Paul was playing up. Bruce was playing up. There was some voltage leakage on the mike and John said we were putting Paul at risk if we made him use it. He was overreacting; it was quite common, but Paul wasn’t bothered about performing.” Unsurprisingly, Parry continues, the incident proved a major obstacle to The Jam’s reception in the States. “It should have been the beginning of a good relationship with the US label. Instead we went back to square one. They couldn’t understand it. They’d paid for the flights over, a nice hotel, thrown money at them and then they didn’t play.” At New York’s CBGB’s, an antagonistic Weller announced the group had split and urged the audience to riot. After six shows over nine days The Jam’s first crack at America was over. They returned to mixed reviews for This Is The Modern World. Their second album had charted two places lower than its predecessor, stalling at Number 22. “[Weller] also won’t want me to point out that the production… is well on the thin side, that some of the riffs don’t stand up to the amount of repetition that they are subjected to and that after a couple of tracks the vocals do lean towards the monotonous,” Mick Farren wrote in NME. Over the years, Weller has regularly disparaged the album, though Parry is more generous. It certainly benefits from the strength and detail evident in the remastered version in the current 40th anniversary box set, 1977.

YOUR GUIDE TO THE MONTH’S BEST MUSIC. EDITED BY JENNY BULLEY

CONTENTS

86

ALBUMS s U2 stage second-half comeback s Björk’s earthy paradise s Steve and Virgil Howe connect s Jim James covers himself in glory s Plus, the month in Jazz, Mike Love, Ken Boothe, Karine Polwart, Jim White, Thurston Moore, Brian Eno and more.

100 REISSUES

s Chef’s special: celebrating Isaac Hayes s The Rolling Stones on the radio s German Oaks’ kosmische conundrum s File Under Sweet s Plus, King Crimson, Esther Phillips, Dub

Syndicate, Ut, Wilco on vinyl and more.

112 BOOKS

s Richard Lloyd’s Television guide s Plus, Steely Dan, Genesis, Chuck D’s history of hip-hop, Lou Reed and more.

114

SCREEN s The illustrious John Coltrane s Plus, Bert Berns, Shirley Collins, The Beatles and, having their day in the sun at last, L7.

116 LIVES

s Corporate hostility from Arcade Fire s Bruce on Broadway s The Mummies awake.

“There he stood, big and bald…” GEOFF BROWN ADMIRES ISAAC HAYES, REISSUES P100.

RATINGS & FORMATS Your guide to the month’s best music is now even more definitive with our handy format guide. CD COMPACT DISC DL DOWNLOAD ST STREAMING LP VINYL MC CASSETTE DVD DIGITAL VIDEO DISC C IN CINEMAS BR BLU-RAY

##### #### ### MOJO CLASSIC

EXCELLENT

GOOD

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DISAPPOINTING BEST AVOIDED DEPLORABLE

The letters of Paul Bono writes to his loved ones on Songs of Innocence’s follow-up. They may’ve come second class but they’re top notch, says James McNair. Illustration by Peter Strain.

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Songs Of Experience ISLAND/INTERSCOPE. CD/DL/LP

inosaur wonders why it still walks the earth,” sings Bono here on The Blackout. True enough, the gargantuan musical entity that is U2 has weathered its share of meteor storms of late. iTunes freebie Songs Of Innocence eclipsing socks as folks’ most resented gift; the 2014 “high energy bicycle accident” that cost Bono five hours of surgery; the singer’s mysterious and more recent brush with mortality – these and other unforeseeables have forced a great Irish institution to adapt to a whole new way of being. A band whose line-up hasn’t changed in 41 years clearly has staying-power, though, and U2’s recent tour commemorating 1987’s The Joshua Tree was a shrewd – and highly bankable – move. With its rooted-ness in popular culture and second-time-around political relevance, The Joshua Tree 2017 Tour was also a timely reminder of the ongoing scale, grandeur and ambition of U2, one of the few extant rock/pop bands still happily chowing-down on enormodome-sized adoration. If said tour also served as a diversion, drawing the curtain of discretion around the various contingencyplan moves that made the gestation of U2’s latest studio album so protracted, the good news is that Songs Of Experience is an infinitely more satisfying beast than its patchy predecessor. “We started with the very clear agenda that the songs should be bulletproof,” The Edge tells MOJO, and Songs Of Experience does pay due care to the crucial business of hooks and choruses. You can sense the band reaching for a comeback; something both forward-looking and classic. This might be their last shot at a critical reappraisal from the naysayers. Beaming in on a soft-tremolo passage broadly reminiscent of Simon And Garfunkel’s take on El Condor Pasa, spare opener Love Is All We Have Left is actually U2 at their most contemporary and constructed-sounding. In places, Andy Barlow of Manchester BACK STORY: electronic duo Lamb’s pitch-shift DEAD POET’S and Auto-Tune tweaks give the SOCIETY song’s lead and background vocals G “Brendan Kennelly is one of the great Irish poets an extra-terrestrial feel, while and our hero, really,” says Bono’s “this is no time not to be Edge. “He told us that he alive” signals the need for likes to try and write as if he is dead, on the basis wakefulness in the face of current that you unburden world events. yourself of all the Lights Of Home, by contrast, is constraints that you wouldn’t necessarily know very much a band affair. Built upon you were carrying about a sinewy guitar riff leased from how your work might be sister-act Haim at the suggestion of received, or what polite society might think. That producer Ryan Tedder – and was Bono’s approach on featuring Este, Danielle and Alana’s this record.” backing vocals on its fine, almost

“D

86 MOJO

KEY TRACKS G

Lights Of Home Landlady G Love Is Bigger Than Anything In Its Way G Summer Of Love G

“A BAND WHOSE LINEUP HASN’T CHANGED IN 41 YEARS CLEARLY HAS STAYING POWER.”

Godspell-like coda – it finds Bono singing, “I shouldn’t be here/’Cos I should be dead.” Like a Beastie Boy, he also double-tracks certain words of the song’s lyric for emphasis. Nine different producers and 15 different engineers had a hand in Songs Of Experience, its credits list as long as any modern rap or pop album. Work began pre-Brexit and pre-President Trump, leaving U2 chasing the political Zeitgeist as the album progressed. The Blackout – an end-of-days type song with distorted Discothèque-era-like riffage, humongous Adam Clayton bass, and a dancefloor-orientated chorus – was rewritten to incorporate “democracy flat on its back”, while Summer Of Love, with its taut and nifty guitar intro, Lady Gaga backing vocal and reference to “the rubble of Aleppo”, is a striking, last gasp appeal for a more humane world that was moved from back- to front-burner late on. The Edge says U2 approached Kendrick Lamar because “it’s in hip-hop that you find the most [acute] social commentary these days.” The celebrated Compton rapper’s ironic twist on The Beatitudes (“Blessed are the arrogant… blessed are the bullies…” he reports) forms an address bridging this album’s weak point, Get Out Of Your Own Way, and the start of American Soul, but the latter song’s syncopated “You. Are. Rock-and-roll!” hook is a winner, U2 sounding trim, vital. In truth, global politics concerns but half of Songs Of Experience at most. The Showman, for example – “It’s about singers. [But] It’s not me,” Bono has said – is simply tremendous fun; a skiffle-ish and hugely infectious rock’n’roll tune playful as Trash, Trampoline And The Party Girl, that daft U2 B-side from 1982. The true heart of the album, though, lies elsewhere. Landlady, Love Is Bigger Than Anything In Its Way and 13 (There Is A Light) conjure Bono as old Irish man-ofletters. For, drawing inspiration from poet Brendan Kennelly (see Back Story), it’s within these songs that the singer really drops his guard, writing candidly to those closest to him. With its typically Edgian guitars and Larry Mullen’s shuffling groove, Landlady can’t help but raise a smile, its images of Bono coming home off tour to a locked door evoking a “you treat this house like a hotel” vibe. It’s a kooky but alluring song that seems to acknowledge a pre-fame debt to (very) long-suffering wife Ali: “And I’ll never know what starving poets meant/’Cos when I was broke it was you that always paid the rent.” It’s on the brace of songs that closes the album, though, that Bono acknowledges that there is no song of experience like parenthood, and no end of the innocence like a middle-aged parent’s paranoia. “Guard your innocence/From hallucination/And know that darkness always gathers around the light,” runs lullaby for insomniac adults 13 (There Is A Light), against a richly textured backdrop with piano. Textbook anthem Love Is Bigger Than Anything In Its Way, meanwhile – it references Killiney Bay, Dublin, where both Bono and The Edge have homes – is plainly a parent-to-child letter of reassurance; an important unburdening for someone recently spooked, and another key component in U2’s strongest album this century. ALICE COOPER BONO’S MOTIVES… THE EDGE TALKS! ONANDMORTALITY,

Alamy

U2

Mike Love

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Unleash The Love BMG. CD/DL/LP

Weird in his own way, the straightest Beach Boy unleashes the cheese.

Ken Boothe

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Inna De Yard g o

f i

o

g i

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“Bono had to face his mortality…” The Edge talks to James McNair. Together with companion-piece Songs Of Innocence, this record has been a huge undertaking for U2. Did it sometimes feel like too big a fish to land? “Well, we were responding to a lot of unforeseen circumstances, both personal and political. Plus, we weren’t just asking ‘What is everybody else doing?’, but also ‘What has never been done?’ For us there is always an element of jeopardy; big challenges along the way that we tend to relish. In the chaos of putting out Songs Of Innocence I turned to our sound engineer Joe O’Herlihy and said, ‘Joe! This is intense!’ He just looked at me and said, ‘Edge, it’s always like this.’ And so it goes on.” I read Landlady as a message to Bono’s wife, Ali, and Love Is Bigger Than Anything In Its Way as a message from parent to child… “I think that’s definitely true in both cases. That was where Bono was coming from. I think Love Is Bigger… was to his kids, but also to all of our kids.” And probably the first musical mention of the word ‘landlady’ since Kirsty MacColl’s Electric Landlady… (Laughs) “That metaphor has caused wide comment and push-back from various people we trust, but I always saw it as a necessary counter-balance to what could have been something too sentimental. It’s still a beautiful song, and very heartfelt. But the truth is it probably gives you more insight into Bono than Ali.” There’s an apocalyptic, end-of-days feeling to some of these songs, but being U2 they are not without hope…. “Yeah, well recent political events have felt like a death of some sort; the end of something. I choose to be a bit more positive, but it’s not wrong to try and figure out what the hell this all means for the identity of Britain, Europe, and the United States Of America. Then on a personal front, Bono had this recent medical difficulty which meant that he had to really face his mortality…”

Anton Corbijn

Yes. What was that? “Well, he doesn’t want to go into much detail about it, so I really don’t want to. But it caused him to think about things in a different way. The loss of Lou Reed and David Bowie and Leonard Cohen… it does cause one to pause. We’re all buckling our safety-belts a bit more than we did before. Bono is asking himself, ‘What do I actually want to leave behind? What do I definitely want to be contained in these lyrics?’”

88 MOJO

What did the rest of you make of Larry playing on Alice Cooper’s album? “Ha! He did it for the fun of it, I think. Our project was obviously quite lengthy and there were times when he wasn’t needed so much in the studio. I remember buying the 45 of School’s Out when I was 15 or 16, and I’m sure Larry did, too. And with Bob Ezrin being a friend of ours it made sense.”

CHAPTER TWO. CD/DL/LP

Mr Rocksteady returns to the genre he defined with this follow-up to 2013’s Journey. Recorded live on a terrace among Jamaica’s Blue Mountains, Inna De Yard, issued as a part of Chapter Two’s unplugged series, captures the 69-year-old singer in remarkably full voice revisiting songs from his back catalogue. His take on The Supremes’ You Keep Me Hangin’ On harnesses the same soulful melodrama of his first recording of the Motown classic back in 1968 for Studio One. But almost five decades on, Boothe sounds even more desperate to be set free. His return to Bob Marley’s African Lady is equally convincing. Framed with sax, horns and accordion, it’s driven by a take-me-to-the-river passion and fervour. His own Black Gold And Green, meanwhile, is satisfying roots reggae; Speak Softly Love from The Godfather soundtrack is delicious lovers rock. Lois Wilson

Effectively rebooting The Beach Boys in the ’70s as its own tribute band, that noted exception to the rule of nominative determinism and self-confessed “Antichrist” to Brian Wilson’s holy innocent has kept the show on the road over the decades with a steely CEO’s adherence to the core values of sun, surf and soaring harmonies – and, like Mick Jagger, has been widely reviled for his pains by those who like their genius wayward. Now 76, Love follows up 1981’s unloved solo debut with a core values celebration springing but one surprise: how pleasurable it is – providing you aren’t cheeseintolerant. Tunes abound, performances are slick, and all 13 songs boast a hook or two, even if unintentional, not least Pisces Brothers’ claim of spiritual kinship with George Harrison and Crescent Moon’s opening query, “Morpheus, why have you forsaken me?” Mat Snow

Michael Chapman & Ehud Banai

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EB=MC² NANA DISC. CD/DL/LP

Englishman reinvents old glories by hitting ‘Eastern mystic’ button. If the title alone doesn’t make you want to listen to this album, what lies within will floor you. Israeli guitarist Ehud Banai first met his idol Michael Chapman in a Jerusalem club in 2013, and the pair became firm friends and touring partners. Just as 2017’s 50 album explored Chapman’s back catalogue with an electric band, on EB=MC² the duo rifle through the old: Soulful Lady, which provides the titular lyric of 1970’s Fully Qualified Survivor; Rosh Pina, an instrumental from 50 which gets new Hebrew lyrics; Kodak Ghosts is rewritten to reemerge as Angel; The Mallard, Plain Old Bob Has A Hoedown and Sometimes You Just Drive take on a more overt Eastern flavour thanks to Banai’s electric guitar and tan playing. Beautiful, engrossing and more than a rehash of old glories, it’s Michael Chapman 3.0. Andy Fyfe

Jim James

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Tribute To 2 ATO. CD/DL/LP

Songs of praise: My Morning Jacket man covers himself in glory. “The world’s falling down/ Hold my hand,” sings Jim James on his fragile but graceful version of Abbey Lincoln’s The World Is Falling Down, the sentiment underpinning this glowing

Nabihah Iqbal: real presence.

collection of covers. The first Tribute To was devoted to George Harrison, but here James casts his interpretative net wider: a whispery drift through Willie Nelson’s Funny How Time Slips Away, a rainblurred Crying In The Chapel and an elastic remodel of I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times, stretched across the frame of Isaac Hayes’s By The Time I Get To Phoenix. The muzzy take on Al Bowlly’s antique Midnight, The Stars And You might trigger unease, the original’s role in The Shining seeping through the vintage twinkle, and Blue Skies has an alarmingly stormy intensity – but if the world outside is cold, this patchwork of songs is all about keeping the warmth in. Victoria Segal

Nabihah Iqbal

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Weighing Of The Heart NINJA TUNE. CD/DL/LP

DJ, producer (and qualified barrister) dances to own beat on first album. She might have stepped out from under the fierce cover of her previous working name, Throwing Shade, but Nabihah Iqbal doesn’t head directly for the spotlight with Weighing Of The Heart. Named after the Ancient Egyptian judgment of the dead, this record sounds like a transmission from a shadowy Other Side, Iqbal’s thread vocals signalling through distorted guitars and cloud-cover synths. That dimension can often be traced to the early ’90s – The Cure’s dance-pop excursions on Saw U Twice, Something More’s shoegazing disassociation – but Iqbal controls the atmospheric thermostat with subtle skill. Zone 1 To 6000 – West End Girls in a day-job meltdown – or Alone Together’s Cluster-like pulses show harder edges, but cling to them for balance and they quickly dissolve. For a record that’s not quite here, though, it’s got real presence. Victoria Segal

Björk blows her own horn, welcoming us to her “Tinder album”.

No place like home Icelandic avant-pop matriarch strikes out for earthly paradise on ninth album. By Victoria Segal.

Björk

### Utopia ONE LITTLE INDIAN. CD/DL/LP

WITH 2011’S Biophilia, it seemed Björk had evolved into her ultimate pop star incarnation: a cosmic queen bee buzzing around a multimedia hive of apps and global workshops, a digital Glinda Of Oz with a pagangoddess twist. That artful digital rendering, however, broke back down into human flesh with 2015’s elementally bleak Vulnicura, a record that charted the collapse of her relationship with artist Matthew Barney. Messy though the circumstances of Vulnicura’s creation were, they resulted in a remarkably stark and beautiful record. Utopia is messy in a different way, its focus blurred and scattered, its desire to heal and hope conversely less comforting and affirming than Vulnicura’s raw maenad anguish. Björk has playfully described it as her “Tinder album” – a record about finding love and possibility in a world that increasingly resembles a bad sci-fi dystopia. Arisen My Senses sets the tone, lush and verdant, like it’s been grown in a tropical hothouse. Throughout, there is birdsong (some

sampled from David Toop’s Hekura); flute and harp sounds skitter and flit, beats splash from the geodesic roof. If Vulnicura was all dark water and earth, Utopia is supposed to be air and light, but in its own way, it is equally oppressive. Björk has spoken joyfully about working with kindred spirit Arca on this record – not to mention the 12-piece Icelandic female flute “choir” – yet Utopia often fails to reach outside itself. At times, it’s reminiscent of a ‘50s research lab film showing people on LSD staring enraptured at colours while the scientist asks “how do you feel?” Björk often leaves the listener with the clipboard, making them interested observer, not fellow traveller. Even the love songs feel oddly solipsistic. Blissing Me’s intimate whisper between “two music nerds” or the eerie, sea-inshell thrum of Features Creatures, where the singer is transported by the sight of a man with the same beard as her lover, both feel inward-

audacious and rejuvenating; at the other end of the emotional spectrum is Empty Arms, a real heartbreaker, his voice throbbing and choked. Then there’s Holy Wine, which he delivers in his previouslyunheard falsetto; not unlike Al Green’s, it’s pure, beautiful and strong. For more on Finley’s late bloom, see feature on p44. Lois Wilson

Robert Finley

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Goin’ Platinum! EASY EYE SOUND. CD/DL/LP

Fantastic second album from the 63-year-old Louisiana singer. On Finley’s 2016 debut Age Don’t Mean A Thing, producers Bruce Watson and Jimbo Mathus emphasised the bluesman’s Southern soul side on a series of great Finley originals. Dan Auerbach, who produces this follow-up, takes Finley further away from his church-and-porch roots with a brief to present the artist as a classic all-rounder and on 10 songs written by Auerbach, John Prince and Nick Lowe, he proves himself just that. On Get It While You Can he’s as exciting as Elvis In Memphis, singing with a swagger both

Zombie Zombie

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of space-occupying Krautrock klang that suddenly fills you with the urge to set up an underground magazine and get the brown rice ready for dinner. The thrumming Neu! explorations of Acera and the title track are accompanied by a playfulness, though, especially on the unhinged Looose where a voice intones, “When you have nothing to lose, it gets groovier.” If Livity’s carefully controlled derangement is anything to go by, it might have a point. Victoria Segal

Livity

VERSATILE. CD/DL/LP

Fifth album freak-out from French electronic trio. Nobody could accuse Zombie Zombie of concealing their artistic intentions. A drummer and special effects maestro called Cosmic Neman is one significant pointer; Livity’s sixth track, titled Heavy Meditation, is another. Dig into their decade-long history, and there are more clues: covers of Sun Ra and John Carpenter, a soundtrack to a contemporary circus show. Livity is not, then, airy ukulele pop, but the kind

Howe Gelb & Lonna Kelly

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Further Standards FIRE. CD/DL/LP

Giant Sand leader further explores new jazz direction. Never one to care much for others’ expectations, Howe Gelb’s next move as leader of a piano trio after finally retiring Giant Sand in 2016 was still a left-field step. A companion album to last year’s Future Standards, Further

looking, Björk’s circuits overloading with glitchy joy rather than connecting. The Gate’s iridescent bliss starts well as a techno-pagan lullaby, but even its cry of “I care for you” can’t stop its feelings weighing it down. The best moments, and arguably the most convincing ones, come when Björk allows Vulnicura’s pain to erupt back into these songs. The hammering beats of Loss, courtesy of Texan producer Rabit, come as exhilarating relief amid the floral headiness, while Sue Me and Tabula Rasa revisit Vulnicura’s primary horror: that the damage inflicted by a broken family could echo curse-like down the generations. Healing lies not in the dizzying, fluting hello-birds wonder, but in the plastic ooze of Claimstaker, where Björk plays the pioneer she is, mapping bizarre new territory. It’s defiant musically and lyrically, a signpost. Yet Utopia feels like a diversion, not a destination. A nice place to visit – beautiful, even – but you wouldn’t want to live there.

Standards includes all the songs from the earlier album – Clear and Irresponsible Lovers even appear twice – recorded live in London. More laid back and late night than even the earlier album, the addition of Phoenix singer Lonna Kelly as a duettist adds a new spark, the songs rolling off the fingers after the best part of a year on the road. Though not always a perfect match, the way the voices stumble around and support each other like drunken dancers perfectly suits the 3am bourbon-soaked mood. Andy Fyfe

Out Lines

#### Conflats

ROCK ACTION. CD/DL/LP

and strength in traumatic raw material. With their interviewees lacking any bourgeois notions of selfcensorship when telling the stories of their lives, the trio were able to push their songwriting and arrangements into unexplored terrain: the no-holds-barred tales deserved nothing less. Meanwhile, the instrumentation – most notably Joseph’s harmonium and ship’s piano – lend the songs an otherworldly, timeless quality only heightened by the way the two voices intertwine, like a married couple spilling their heartaches out in a counselling session, she determined to protect what she holds, he bowed and defeated. Fans of Ken Loach films will find much to savour here. David Hutcheon

Scottish supergroup find hopes and schemes on the outskirts of Glasgow. Recorded after holding interviews with the residents of Easterhouse, a notorious housing estate to the east of Glasgow, this collaboration between Kathryn Joseph, The Twilight Sad’s James Graham and the producer Marcus Mackay somehow finds hope

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Karl Blau

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Out Her Space BELLA UNION. CD/DL/LP

Glorious soul-funky shift for Washington DIY maverick.

Electronic sleaze and shimmer: Cindy Wilson (second from left) makes a change.

Cindy Wilson

#### Change

KILL ROCK STARS. CD/DL/LP

B-52’s queen makes her solo debut. So it’s the 40th anniversary of The B-52’s, and what does Cindy Wilson, one of that band’s founders, do? She puts out a debut solo album of such synth-streaked electronic sleaze and shimmer that it kicks Goldfrapp and Gary Numan into the bleachers. Teaming up with multiinstrumentalist Ryan Monahan and drummer Lemuel Hayes, Wilson looks like a punky blonde elf and sounds like a spectral disco machine channelling Tame Impala-style psychedelia. Woozy chill-out People Are Asking has a latephase Bowie feel about its clipped vocals; the title track is funky, airy trip-hop; Mystic is claustrophobic, distorted and slightly kitsch, with a throbbing Ladytron twist. Starting hushed (“Baby, is she looking after you?”), Things I’d Like To Say turns into a reverberating rock-out, and tactile Sunrise could be a female version of R&B seduction smooch Float On. Change Is about right. Glyn Brown

Adrian Crowley

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Dark Eyed Messenger CHEMIKAL UNDERGROUND. CD/DL/LP

Unsung Irish folk hero jettisons guitar and hits peak powers. Two decades in and Adrian Crowley sounds like a man revived. On his eighth album, the poetic Dubliner

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forsakes his trusty six-string to hitch his rich, weathered baritone to producer Doveman’s impressionistic keys. It’s a blissful union that meshes Crowley’s first-take vocals with texturally deep backings, as ghostly soft-focus orchestral builds percolate unexpectedly throughout the mix. They serve to enhance the cinematic potential of Crowley’s dry, playful stories, be it the Reggie Perrin-esque escape narrative (and sly Matt Monro homage) of Halfway To Andalucia, extended bobbins metaphor of Unhappy Seamstress or Silver Birch Tree’s spectral imagining of a wooden dotage. Swarming with rich atmospherics, it’s a wee-small-hours treasure trove for fans of Blue Nile, Scott Walker or Bill Callahan and perfect antidote to the encroaching autumn chill. Andy Cowan

strangeness and beauty are still there (Prisoner’s Dilemma). But even on the most stripped-down song, hymn-like Sweet Bird Of Mystery, his spooky, heartwrenching voice is fleshed-out with reverb. Elsewhere, it’s rich and upfront – even more so than on the Joe Henryproduced Drill A Hole… – and layered with backing vocals by himself and guests, who include Holly Golightly, playing June to his Johnny on back-porcher E.T. Bass. Strong, memorable, sometimes unanticipated songs (upbeat Silver Threads; fun sing-along Playing Guitars) with a Cinerama production. Sylvie Simmons

Erland Dahlen

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Clocks HUBRO. CD/DL/LP

Tension and texture define dramatic outing by Norway’s one-man percussion band.

Jim White

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Waffles, Triangles & Jesus LOOSE. CD/DL/LP

Sixth solo studio album from the man who shouted “Wrong-eyed Jesus”. Jim White and “rowdy” don’t often appear in the same sentence – OK, Hellwood, his collaboration with Johnny Dowd, but that was a different kind of rowdy. This new 11-song album is dense, almost (another unexpected adjective) joyous with sound, instruments all jostling for space – guitar, banjo, drums, horns. White’s trademark

Although Clocks comes across as the work of a multiinstrument band, it is an entirely solo album by a percussionist. The third by Norwegian serial collaborator Dahlen – Anneli Drecker, Hanne Hukkelberg, Ingrid Olava and Susanna Wallumrød are among his credits – is a sharp six-tracker offsetting traditional instruments against a bowed saw, marbles on metal plates and the clatter of knives and forks. Such raw ingredients suggest a challenging cacophony. Instead, the result is a series of layered and linear instrumental pieces which ratchet up tension as they unfold. While the urgent title track implies a twitchy David Sylvian/Robert Fripp collaboration, Glas nods towards a vocal-free analogue of Iceland’s múm. Most

impactfully, Bear rolls forward with the measured power of a lava flow. If a soundtrack to Journey To The Centre Of The Earth were needed, this is it. Kieron Tyler

Högni

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Two Trains

Blau is German for ‘blue’ and also ‘drunk’: in Blue As My Name, Karl Blau is “drunk with wonder” anticipating parenthood, while feeling Earth has plunged into chaos. Paradoxes abound on this feminist-sympathising humanitarian lament that sets Blau’s heartfelt, weary tenor against a backdrop of uplifting Southern gumbo, ameliorated with Can-style rhythmic stealth. It’s all very different to 2016’s belated UK debut (20 years spent recording!) of Nashville covers, Introducing Karl Blau. First nailed in 2009 with Matthew E White’s Spacebomb rhythm section while White made Big Inner (which Blau engineered/ co-produced), Blau only finished it once babies and Nashville covers were in hand. More surprises: the respective wild-jazz and sheer-rock codas of Where You Goin’ Papa and Aphrodite’s Child cover Valley Of Sadness, as Blau exercises an instrumental vision to rival his studio and vocal nous. Martin Aston

ERASED TAPES. CD/DL/LP

GusGus and Hjaltalín man links his inner life and his homeland Iceland. The trains of the title are the only ones ever assembled in Iceland. Each worked on constructing Reykjavík’s harbour and was then mothballed. One still stands forlornly on truncated tracks at the oceanside. Högni is Högni Egilsson of art-electro combo GusGus and soul-indie outfit Hjaltalín. Two Trains is his first solo album. For Egilsson, the trains symbolise a period when he developed seemingly distinct personas – he had psychotic episodes. This very personal album is about contrasts and disconnects. It begins with a male voice choir of the type assembled in 19th century Iceland to affirm the country’s identity, then moves seamlessly through soundscapes punctuated by metallic clangs and more conventional electro-assisted soul songs. Throughout, Egilsson’s high-register voice suggests a fondness for Curtis Mayfield. A journey, then, one exploring the psyche of a man and his relationship with the world. Kieron Tyler

Peter Oren

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Anthropocene WESTERN VINYL. CD/DL/LP

Dark times given dulcet treatment by baritone songsmith. The title of 25-year-old Indiana singer/ songwriter Oren’s second album refers to an era during which mankind’s impact on the planet can be felt most forcefully – and, perhaps, calamitously. And there’s a dark, apocalyptic shadow hanging over these 10 wonderful, spooked and captivating songs, as Oren trawls across the parched Midwest, drowsy on diesel fumes from his truck cab, and chronicling America’s death throes with blackened humour, not a little humanity, and a droll, dry, deadpan style that suggests Bill Callahan crooning alongside the pedalsteel lushness of prime Lambchop. If the album’s title and subject matter suggest a terminal bleakness, Anthropocene is rich with stark beauty and wry smiles hidden among Oren’s observations of “billboard signs touting God’s designs”, and “the Bible belt talking to itself all night on the FM waves”. If this were your chosen soundtrack to the apocalypse, chances are you’d go with a blissful smile across your face. Stevie Chick

Legendary Shack Shakers

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After You’ve Gone LAST CHANCE. CD/DL

Ninth album from the band Robert Plant once personally chose to open for him. Sad times for JD Wilkes, leader of this goth-abilly outfit hailed by such as Stephen King and Jello Biafra. With his bass-playing ex-wife Jessica Lee Wilkes out of his life, he’s grieving and symbolically wearing his heart on his album sleeve. The music deviates from raw rock and country through to blues, as Wilkes regales his audience with such wails of lost love as the title song, Single Boy, and Garden Of Delights in which he emotes on how he was once in a marvellous place before Jessica Lee headed for a solo life. A couple of piano-backed items tone things down a little but, on the whole, it’s a torrid, enjoyable, sometimes saxbooted affair, deliberately recorded with such a degree of distortion that you might imagine it was a bootleg. Fred Dellar

Mammal Hands

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Shadow Work GONDWANA. CD/DL/LP

Norwich trio’s third and best album so far. Norfolk hasn’t produced many musicians of world renown – excepting Queen’s Roger Taylor, James Blunt, and even Cathy Dennis, perhaps – but Mammal Hands look set to add their name to what is a small but exclusive list of notable East Anglians. After a fine debut, 2014’s Animalia, and a solid 2015 follow-up, Floa, the trio return with a hugely satisfying 10-tracker for Matthew Halsall’s Manchester-based Gondwana label. Though they share a stylistic affinity with Portico Quartet and Go Go

LRKA (Lydia-und-Roland-Kayn-Archiv)

Mammal Hands: warm-blooded East Anglians.

Penguin – delivering mesmeric, Steve Reichian streams of constantly moving sound – the trio has found a unique, almost cinematic style. Central is the perpetual motion of Nick Smart’s acoustic piano, and the plaintive lyricism of his brother Jordan’s saxophone, while drummer/percussionist Jesse Barrett propels the music with intertwining polyrhythmic currents. Charles Waring

And Yet It Moves

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Free Pass To The Future AND YET IT MOVES. CD/DL/LP

Murderous sounding Scandinavian-Scots noir mayhem. Sometime stonemason Dale Barclay cut a menacing and charismatic figure as frontman of volatile Glaswegian greasers The Amazing Snakeheads, who imploded in 2015 just as success was looming. Joined by Danish/Norwegian musicians in new outfit And Yet It Moves, Barclay now dwells in a nightmarish Lynchlike lounge whose walls are painted a tartan noir. Tenminute opener Critical is a murder ballad, at first simmering and then ferocious, down-turned and disorientating. On Brother Henry and The Bitter Party, Barclay’s menacing vocals and the band’s violent and muscular baroque’n’roll workouts most recall The Sensational Alex Harvey Band, albeit squeezed through a stoner rock mincer. Second Earth Song offers deranged vocoder funk, I Ain’t No Cowboy council tenement country blues. This is music that wants to cut you a new smile; temperamental, malevolent and quite brilliant. Ben Myers

Snow Palms

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Origin And Echo VILLAGE GREEN. CD/DL/LP

Non-rock atmosphericists coalesce circular musical motifs on this alluring second album. More about atmosphere than melodic assertiveness, Origin And Echo’s 11 instrumentals evoke the nexus of John Carpenter’s soundtrack music, early Ryuichi Sakamoto and German titans Harmonia at their most pastoral. Themes are introduced on harp, marimba, prepared piano and xylophone, and then deftly shaded with other (mostly) non-rock instruments. At its most potent, on Vostok and Everything That Happened, Snow Palms posit themselves as a more reflective, Philip Glass-infused counterpart to Citaay. While linchpin David Sheppard’s lengthy musical résumé includes Ellis Island Sound, State River Widening and The Wisdom Of Harry (as well as contributing to MOJO). Knowledge of any of this is irrelevant to an immersion in his second outing as Snow Palms. Less percussionfocused than debut album Intervals, the seductive Origin And Echo stands on its own. Kieron Tyler

Charles Hayward And Thurston Moore

Roland Kayn

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A Little Electronic Milky Way Of Sound FROZEN REEDS. CD/DL

Epic 16-CD journey into the ghostly language of an electronic visionary. IN 2009, two years before his death, German composer Roland Kayn presented Dutch radio station Concertzender with a collection of DAT tapes. Somewhat ironically titled A Little Electronic Milky Way Of Sound, the work ran to almost 14 hours and appeared to reference his entire life’s work as a sonic explorer. A founder member of Il Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza with Ennio Morricone, influenced by the information theory of philosopher Max Bense, Kayn devised what he called “cybernetic music”. Using hand-built modular synthesizers to create closed systems of feedback, Kayn documented the music “composed” by his machines, routed through frequency shifters and tape decks. Digitally restored by Jim O’Rourke, the sounds contained on these 16 CDs are forlorn, unnerving and immense, unearthly ghost wails, deep space reverberations, and industrial feedback, suggesting alien black metal of a most sublime and confounding nature.

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Improvisations CARE IN THE COMMUNITY. LP

This Is Not This Heat and Sonic Youth stalwarts unite for guitar and drum odyssey. When they played together recently as one quarter of Rhys Chatham’s eight-person 40th anniversary Guitar Trio, these two éminences grises of art rock did the one chord tango to gleefully pulsating effect. This album, recorded in a single afternoon earlier this year on the BBC’s old 1969 Neve console, showcases a different aspect of their potential. On first hearing, it could be two Metallica roadies checking the levels – out go the skittering polyrhythms with which Charles Hayward’s name is usually synonymous, in comes his inner Lars Ulrich; while Thurston Moore is basically shredding like the Yngwie Malmsteen fan he presumably isn’t, with only the odd chiming harmonic interlude to pacify disgruntled Sonic Youth fans. Yet on subsequent listens how little else there is going on becomes perversely thrilling, especially in the car. Ben Thompson

Crys Cole & Oren Ambarchi

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Richard Horowitz

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Eros In Arabia

Hotel Record

FREEDOM TO SPEND. CD/DL/LP

BLACK TRUFFLE. DL/LP

Stunning reissue of a 1981 self-released LP from the Hollywood composer and Middle East music expert, where Turkish ney cane flute, Prophet-5 synthesizer, echo-delayed Bendir frame drums, and the voice of Iranian performance artist Sussan Deyhim overlap and interweave to create circular trance-like rhythms of a beguiling ethereal beauty.

Part love-letter, part field recording, part holiday postcard, this collaboration between the musical and romantic duo of Cole and Ambarchi is a dreamily seductive four-part suite, in which blissful organ drones blend with murmured whispers, cicadas and streams babble over treated voices, and glistening electronics punctuate sweet vocoder prayers.

Áine O’Dwyer

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Gallarais MIE. DL/LP

Recorded in Rotherhithe’s Brunel tunnel and inspired by the ancient Irish art of keening, O’Dwyer’s songs of mourning, for the labourers who died during the tunnel’s construction, are heartrendingly eerie, a voice adrift in echo and decay, merging with overhead trains, wheezing air pumps and her own funerary harp patterns.

Erik Honoré

### Unrest

HUBRO MUSIC. CD/DL

From improv performances by Sidsel Endresen, Eivind Aarset, Arve Henriksen, Stian Westerhus, Jan Bang, and Erland Dahlen captured at Punkt live sampling festivals, in Kristiansand, Molde and Prague, sound engineer Erik Honoré assembles an hallucinatory dub collage of artistry and unease, voices, strings, trumpet and guitars tumbling softly between harmony and discord. AM

MOJO 91

Poignant first step: Virgil (left) and Steve Howe.

Family ties Instrumental collaboration from the Yes guitarist and his multitalented son. By Mike Barnes.

Virgil & Steve Howe

### Nexus

INSIDEOUT CD/DL/LP

TO SHOO the elephant out of the room before we even start, Nexus arrives in the grimmest of circumstances. Virgil Howe died unexpectedly on September 11 hours after having OK’d the

draft press release. Steve Howe decided to honour the project and his son by going ahead with the album’s release. Virgil had already compiled an impressive and unusually wide-ranging CV, having drummed on sessions with the Pet Shop Boys and performed live with Amorphous Androgynous, and also played drums and keyboards on some of his father’s solo albums. He was most recently the drummer in Little Barrie. What immediately strikes about Nexus is how concise the material is, with the majority of the tracks clocking in at under four minutes – there are no proggy longueurs to be heard. All the pieces originated from Virgil’s piano compositions. Steve overdubbed acoustic and electric guitars and Virgil further transformed them, adding drums, bass and extra keyboards. Steve Howe has been one of the foremost UK

testament, Funambulist… finds BOHJ’s convictions burning with brimstone and intensity. Andy Cowan

VILLAGE GREEN. CD/DL/LP

flourishing climax, and the cello-caressed Vraisemblance nods to Philip Glass in its everevolving rhythmic iterations, and to early Penguin Cafe Orchestra in its decorous counter-melodies. Respiro’s ethereal flutes and vocoder’d ululations, meanwhile, carve a contrastingly contemplative oasis – like an ambient Can channelling Debussy. David Sheppard

Esoteric, accessible modern composition from erstwhile Piano Magic chanteuse.

Electric Eye

Angèle David-Guillou

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En Mouvement

Band Of Holy Joy

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Funambulist We Love You TINY GLOBAL PRODUCTIONS. CD/DL/LP

Glenn Gottlieb

Revived tightrope walkers tackle Brexit, Trump and the erosion of liberal values. The mile-wide humanist streak that characterised Band Of Holy Joy’s ’80s pop portraiture has cannonballed since singer Johny Brown revived the franchise in the late 2000s. Now operating as an againstthe-grain beat quintet, their spirited compound of ’60s psych, jangle-pop, agitprop and crying soul scrabbles to unearth cracks of light in the present global dark. The hope for redemption looms large in the evangelically-driven A Revivalist Impulse and hornblasted To Leave Or Remain, its DNA still detectable amid the controlled tension of The Song Of Casual Indifference and a title track as tight and taut as Stutter-era James. A renewed

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Angèle DavidGuillou’s second solo album finds the French singer-turned composer in a musical orbit even more rarefied than that of its predecessor, 2013’s Kourouma. The latter’s intimate chamber arrangements embraced David-Guillou’s melodically rich piano constructions. En Mouvement, inspired by everything from early Minimalism to Sufism, is a more ambitious affair, its meticulously deployed saxes, woodwinds, strings and keyboards parlaying a beguiling, ingenuous music that sounds simultaneously modernist and baroque. Thus, the brisk V For Visconti blends cadenced saxes, regal French horns and swooning violins with playful, Michael Nymanlike brio en route to a

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From The Poisonous Tree JANSEN PLATEPRODUKSJON. CD/DL/LP

Psych-rock Norwegians set controls for Krautheart of sun. For half a century plus, the horizonwide explorations of early-’70s Floyd have cast an inescapable shadow across rock’s more experimental terrain – nowhere more than in Scandinavia, where a lively prog scene flourished, back in the day. By the ’90s, Trondheim titans Motorpsycho transcended punk-grunge for more visionary prog-scapes. Now these fellow Norsemen from Bergen strip away Motorpsycho’s fuzz, while

guitar virtuosos since playing with Tomorrow in 1967, and under the name The Verge, Virgil has remixed his work with Yes. Some of these reconstructions were so radical that, initially, Howe Senior didn’t actually recognise them. So as well as being a father and son venture, this is the product of two strong and distinct musical personalities. The title track sets the tone. Beginning with elegant piano figures and light, syncopated drumming, it shifts into chorus-like hooks with searing steel guitar from Steve. It’s evocative, melodic and instantly memorable. Nick’s Star is similarly a balladic songwithout-words, with Steve’s smooth fuzz-tone lines cutting through swathes of sumptuous synths. Hidden Planet explores a different mood with Virgil’s low rolling piano figures sitting in rhythmically with chattering breakbeats, while Steve launches off into an exultant, speedy solo. His playing is subtle and incisive throughout and one of his most telling contributions are the sparse, sitar-like lines he adds to the bubbling synths and ambient electronics of Passing Titan. But as Nexus draws towards a close it inevitably takes on a cumulative emotional weight. There’s an understandable empathy between the two musicians, creating a spontaneity and at times a sketchiness about the album – which is also part of its charm. Overall, the record feels like a first step, a platform for future musical adventures, which will sadly now never happen. Nexus concludes with the two-minute, ambient Freefall, with Steve’s twangy guitar and Virgil’s synths signalling through space. And with great poignancy given the circumstances, it seems just about to develop before it unexpectedly cuts into silence.

retaining their motorik propulsion, for an extra-tight Kraut-Floyd odyssey that’s hard to beat for genre excellence. Their third album opens ear-catchingly, with the pulsating pop of Sometimes You Got To Jump To Lift Your Feet, before corralling an expert Can groove (Invisible Prison), then striking off into Rock På Norska’s dazzling dual-guitar stratosphere. What unfolds is a stringently structured, flab-free journey through virtuoso fireworks, dramatic mood/tempo changes and trance-out nirvana. Their narrative of cosmic self-realisation may be a touch familiar, but overall Electric Eye are mightily far-sighted. Andrew Perry

Alvarius B

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With A Beaker On The Burner And An Otter In The Oven ABDUCTION. LP

Sun City Girls vocalist and Sublime Frequencies label’s Alan Bishop (aka Alvarius B). Its lyrical references to Viagra, identity theft and NGOs notwithstanding, Alan Bishop’s sprawling, triple-disc grand opus comes wrapped in distinctly late-’60s countercultural vestments –

gum-chewing vocals, cryptic, Dylanesque wordplay and opiated, third-eye mysticism rubbing up against giving-itto-the-man protest. Recorded in Cairo with Egyptian and American musicians, the 35-track odyssey serpentines on an exotic carpet of plangent electric and acoustic guitar sounds through whimsical, sub-Basement Tapes Americana (Mark Twain August, Living On A Train), languorous, Grateful Dead-like psych-folk (Sentimentalitis) and hallucinogenic, Lennonesque-pop (If You’re Gone). There are also a clutch of winning instrumentals, notably the desert rock-tinged Open, and The Fort, with its weaving organs and memorable, spy-theme guitar twang. For all its pawky wit, nonchalant eclecticism and Eastern leanings, Bishop’s way with an earworm melody is this ambitious project’s most enduring hallmark. As for the title: me neither. David Sheppard

Jaws Of Love

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Tasha Sits Close To The Piano K-RIZZLA/HOUSE ARREST. CD/DL/LP

Shimmering, eccentric debut from Local Natives mainman. When the Los Angeles-based Local Natives covered Talking Heads’ Warning Sign on their 2009 debut album, Gorilla Manor, they made their intent clear; suffusing the jerky East Coast-ness of the Heads with their West Coast airiness. Jaws Of Love – the solo moniker of Natives’ writer and keyboard player Kelcey Ayer – smooths away his group’s quirkiness, leaving a warm, gentle record, not originally intended for public consumption. Ayer has said that he has “dark piano music in my heart and soul” which manifests itself here with pleasing eccentricity. His simple, direct songwriting is best heard on Love Me Like I’m Gone and (the track) Jaws Of Love. Hawaiian License Plates shimmers, while the repetition of Before The Hurting Lands and Microwaves are cumulatively mesmeric. Recorded largely on antique, analogue equipment, Tasha Sits Close To The Piano occupies an outlandish, crepuscular world; laments from somewhere beyond. Daryl Easlea

Keyon Harrold

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The Mugician SONY/LEGACY. CD/DL/LP

Rising trumpet star’s major label debut. As a sideman, Missouri-born Harrold has lit up records by Beyoncé, 50 Cent and, more recently, Gregory Porter with his burnished horn lines. The 36-year-old also won acclaim for his trumpet work portraying Miles Davis’s sound in actor/director Don Cheadle’s biopic, Miles Ahead. This, the horn blower’s follow-up to a 2009 indie label debut, is a sonic smorgasbord of styles, as jazz collides with R&B, funk, reggae, blues, and hip-hop. Unifying the disparate

Deneka Peniston

Keyon Harrold: still miles ahead.

elements is Harrold’s lyrical horn, which coolly floats over a blend of musical backdrops, from cinematic soundscapes to thumping dance grooves. Although striking cameos from keyboardist Robert Glasper, rapper Pharoahe Monch, reggae singer Josh David Barrett, neo-soul man Bilal, and blues maven Gary Clark Jr, threaten to push Harrold into the background, his glistening horn is an eloquent and charismatic voice throughout. Charles Waring

Karine Polwart With Pippa Murphy

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A Pocket Of Wind Resistance HUDSON. CD/DL

Elegiac song cycle of childbirth, survival, Augustinian monks and geese. Long established as a glorious singer, enquiring songwriter and enlightened mind, Karine Polwart’s theatrical show – from which this album is taken – has already received endless plaudits for its sensitive depiction of migrating geese as a metaphor for life’s challenges. “A little bit of music, a little bit of politics, a little bit of moss” is Polwart’s own wry analysis of her collaboration with sound designer Pippa Murphy, which allows her to forage far into wide-ranging territories. Scottish traditional song, African choral sounds, Robbie Burns and medieval balladry all blend subtly with her innate gift for storytelling. In a work like this the recorded form can never be expected to match the stark emotion of live performance but, whether through spoken word, gentle vocals or atmospheric soundscape, Polwart conveys contrasting themes of tragedy, redemption, hope and homecoming with immensely affecting guile. Colin Irwin

Martin Hayes Quartet

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The Blue Room MH. CD/DL

Great Irish fiddler steps out from The Gloaming to embrace fresh territory. The Martin Hayes story is already deeply etched into Irish music legend. From the strict tempo Tulla Céilì Band to wild American bar bands, solo epiphany in the Clare fiddle tradition, a long and glorious collaboration with American guitarist Dennis Cahill and groundbreaking explorations with The Gloaming have made Hayes something of a musical messiah. He and Cahill are joined here by Liz Knowles, who plays the Norwegian hardanger d’amore fiddle similar to that used by Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh in The Gloaming, and New York clarinettist Doug Wieselman, the inspirational joker in the pack, providing mellow context as they improvise elaborately around a series of traditional themes like Carrickfergus. Recorded in an 18th century house in Bantry Bay, it yields looseness and free-form spontaneity but, as ever, Hayes’s hypnotic bow sucks you in and holds you hostage to its rambling charm. Colin Irwin

Christian Garrick/ David Gordon

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Paper Jam FLYING BLUE WHALE. CD/DL

Knockout, knockabout duets by British masters. HUGELY VERSATILE players as individuals (violinist Garrick’s range includes gypsy swing and outré fusion, pianist Gordon is a baroque harpsichordist and contemporary jazz specialist), these duets reveal musicians perfectly suited both musically and temperamentally. Characterised by a bold, empathetic playfulness and a kid-in-a-sweetshop approach to repertoire, the set bounces from the joyful township sounds of Dollar Brand’s Msunduza to a poker-faced Close To You via bebop (Shearing’s Conception, Bud Powell’s Celia) and Latin jazz (Baden Powell’s Samba Em Prelúdio, Chucho Valdez’s Mambo Influenciado). Two highlights, and inspired choices, are folk fiddler Jay Ungar’s gorgeous Ashokan Farewell and John Taylor’s magnificently elliptical Coffee Time. This is easy-going virtuosity, full of humour, excitement and beauty.

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Namvula

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Quiet Revolutions NMR. CD/DL

Building bridges, not walls, but quietly. Three years after her impressive debut, Zambian-Scot Namvula Rennie makes light of the difficult-second-album syndrome with 12 songs inspired by her other passion, as a photographer, and a series of pictures she took of women and girls around the globe. Musically, there is a conscious flaunting of focus, as Rennie flits across boundaries, using different languages and musical styles to bind thoughts together: there are hints of Afrobeat, the transatlantic jazz of Cape Verde and even a nod in the direction of Manu Dibango (from deepvoiced Eugene Makuta). Language and communication are key to Quiet Revolutions: on Mbuya, she sings to a (living) grandmother with whom she cannot speak, on Njishe, granny gets her revenge; on Kolomfula, Rennie sings in English while uncovering a tale of transAfrican slavery. Here is a star undoubtedly on the rise. David Hutcheon

Joy Ellis

Gary Husband

Life On Land

A Meeting Of Spirits

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F-IRE. CD

EDITION. CD/DL

Startling debut from British singerpianist-songwriter who sets her cool, poetic meditations on urban living to a suitably restless, sophisticated jazz soundscape, all asymmetrical grooves, harmonic density and courageous melodies. There’s a flavour of jazz-era Joni in the sheer musical facility and lyrical candour, but largely, this is highly original work that creates a world of its own.

A world-class drummer and keyboardist, Husband is a oncein-a-generation talent. Here he shares his rarely spotlighted acoustic piano skills on an affecting set of originals and interpretations of John McLaughlin themes. Originally a US-only release in 2005, this has been sweetly remixed and is by turns dynamic, brooding, liquid and grooving. A multi-hued revelation; more please.

Dave O’Higgins

Leo Richardson Quartet

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It’s Always 9.30 In Zog

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JVG. CD

The Chase

O’Higgins’ tremendous straight-ahead quartet (with pianist Graham Harvey, bassist Geoff Gascoyne and drummer Sebastiaan De Krom) have a reputation as a hardswinging standards group, but this raises the bar. The saxophonist has fashioned eight memorable themes with inviting harmonic structures, perfectly suited to the leader’s robust, intrepid style and the rhythm section’s discreet swagger. Top-class modern swing.

UBUNTU. CD/DL

Passionate hard bop from young British tenorist Richardson who balances fiery exuberance with relaxed precision. The ghosts of Horace Silver and Art Blakey are proudly summoned, Richardson’s wily originals are from a parallel Blue Note universe and his full-blooded tone recalls Dexter Gordon and 1950s Coltrane. Rick Simpson (piano), Mark Lewandowski (bass) and Ed Richardson (drums) stoke the boiler superbly. CI

MOJO 93

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Imprints BAHLA.CO.UK. CD/DL

Strikingly diverse and widescreen debut from London jazz quintet. As the unique sound of this album reveals, even though they describe their music as “cinematic jazz”, Bahla can’t be comfortably pigeonholed. Theirs is an alluring collision of diverse sonic influences, that include not just jazz but also folk, Latin, Middle Eastern, and Jewish prayer music. Formed by English guitarist Tal Janes, and Venezuelan pianist Joseph Costi, Bahla made a big impression with their debut gig at the 2015 BBC Late Proms. This, their first recording, finds Janes and Costi communicating almost telepathically, interweaving delicate melodic tendrils over which wafts Ines Loubet’s incantatory voice, while underneath the sound is anchored by Andrea Di Biase’s resonant double bass, and drummer Ben Brown’s fluid polyrhythms. Though their music is predominantly ethereal, Bahla are not averse to serving up a simmering groove with fiery improv, as their longest tune, Aman, reveals. Arrestingly different. Charles Waring

Billy Bragg

###

Bridges Not Walls COOKING VINYL. CD/DL/LP

Welcome return from Comrade Bragg, scourge of the right. If the lyrics of opening track The Sleep Of Reason – “In the end, the greatest threat, faced by democracy,

Butcher Brown: headnod and headspin funk, punk and jazz.

94 MOJO

Butcher Brown

####

Live At Vagabond GEARBOX. CD/DL/LP

Virginia’s ‘hip-hop Mahavishnu’ fusionists let rip at a hometown show. Momentum is with Butcher Brown. Masters of full-on soulkissed, garage punk-funk and jazz grooves, they’ve amassed credits for Nicholas Payton, Bon Iver, Matthew E. White and Kendrick Lamar that merely hinted at their instrumental force. This timely recording captures them in their element, with Morgan Burrs’ rocked-up wailing guitar leading the charge on the stomping Tomahawk and Billy Cobham-esque jazz funk of Cairo, before Marcus Tenney’s soprano sax steals the show across Moses’ exquisite slow headnod. It hits a grandstand finish on fusion head-spinner Tunnelvision – a not-so distant cousin of Herbie Hancock’s Butterfly that finds their wild brinkmanship teetering on the verge of chaos. As with Kamasi Washington, BADBADNOTGOOD or labelmates Binker & Moses, progressive rappers should be queuing out the door for their blessing. Andy Cowan

Lawrence Rothman

###

The Book Of Law DOWNTOWN/INTERSCOPE. CD/DL/LP

A blues/disco confessional. Lawrence Rothman: LA producer, singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist using this, his debut, to step out of the closet on his ‘gender fluid’ sexuality and past years of depression, and celebrate a righteous turning point. He does it in a series of nine alter egos, a dancefloor Cindy Sherman, and a variety of styles that loosely swirl around disco king and soulsearching R&B loveman. Opener Descend is supper-club piano with low-key Sondheimstyle lyrics; Wolves Still Cry begins with Herb Alpert cornet and develops into fluid funk disco. There’s a murky middle tranche before a clutch of brooding numbers where Rothman channels a more gravelly vocal style. Ain’t Afraid Of Dying, with Marissa Nadler, is a gloriously funereal beauty. Tempting to ask for more of this dark night of the soul. Glyn Brown

Giggs

###

Wamp 2 Dem NO BS/ISLAND. DL

Holding mixtape that maintains the Peckham rapper’s upwards traje

y

GIGGS CONTINUES to defy the odds. Never the most technical MC, his conversational monotone has connected through sheer force of personality in spite of a narrow worldview that rarely looks far beyond cash, girls, hustling or brutal one-upmanship. While last year’s independent epic Landlord was lissom proof of his renewed powers, prompting Drake to rope Giggs onto his More Life playlist, he’s at his best on sparse, pond-straddling trap anthems like Gully Niggaz, Ultimate Gangsta or Horror Movie. Although duets here with international big-hitters Popcaan, Donae’O and Young Thug often fall flat, and Moist Pussy’s base instincts take proceedings to an embarrassing Weinstein-ish low, the surprise self-reflection of The Essence (“I’m mentally sad/I’m mentally fucked”) suggests there’s a homely rival to Jay-Z’s soulsearching 4:44 lurking somewhere deep within.

ALSO RELEASED

Jonti

Hello Skinny

Tokorats

Watermelon Sun

#### Nicki LeightonThomas

###

The New Enzyme Detergent Demise NICKILEIGHTONTHOMAS.COM. CD/DL

The Dory Previn songbook reimagined by missing-inaction jazz chanteuse. A regular on the ’90s London jazz scene singing alongside Georgie Fame, Jack Bruce and Gary Husband, LeightonThomas was ‘the epitome of hip’ when she put a crystal clear spin on Fran Landesman’s bittersweet bohemian dramas on 1997’s debut Forbidden Games. Shortly after, she took a break to have kids, supplying backing vocals for Belinda Carlisle before reuniting with pianist/composer Simon Wallace for another interpretative left-swerve. Leighton-Thomas’s poise, power and control contrast smartly with Previn’s fragile, troubled muse on unvarnished confessionals Her Mother’s Daughter, Don’t Put Him Down and the title track’s spooky kabuki. And if her slightly stagey theatrics resemble Hazel O’Connor circa Breaking Glass, all involved still let Previn’s bruised and brooding songs breathe again. Andy Cowan

###

STONES THROW. CD/DL/LP

BROWNSWOOD. CD/DL/LP

The live guitarist for The Avalanches shares his comrades’ fanatical pursuit of perfection. After five years and many junked versions, the Sydney-based producer’s Moebius-inspired second outing expands on the grand designs of 2012’s aural smorgasbord with a feast of sonic juxtapositions, whimsical beats and massed vocal harmonies. It’s further enhanced by stellar turns from Odd Future’s Hoagy and the bubbly Sampha The Great.

Borne from improvised sessions between Sons Of Kemet’s drummer Tom Skinner and Arthur Russell trombonist Peter Zummo, Hello Skinny’s alchemy subsumes house and footwork into atmospheric avant-garde jazz. An experimental edge pervades the ghostly, displaced rim-shots of Bluebells and Signs’ thwacks and disengaged vocals (“I’m into forestry now!”), while Skinner’s love of 5/4 time doesn’t stop Hello Skinny building something universal on its allpersuasive title track.

Yung Lean

###

Stranger YEAR0001. CD/DL/LP

Like Giggs, Young Lean is a divisive figure. At the cutting edge of the early ’10s viral meme phenomenon, the melancholic Stockholm rapper sparked the admiration of R&B god Frank Ocean (featuring on 2016’s Blonde). Lean’s creative risk-taking continues on third outing Stranger. And while his alienated, laissez-faire flow disguises sly pop sensibilities on the smoked-out, funereal-paced Red Bottom Sky and Silver Arrows, it’s bare-bones lament Agony that sums up his charm.

Noya Rao

### Icaros

GONDWANA. CD/DL/LP

Named after a sacred tenet of Amazonian plant medicine said to produce prophetic dreams, this Leeds quartet creates bass-prodded electronic soul-jazz. Olivia Bhattacharjee’s spooked vocal timbres are at its core, at ease on direct pop (I Feel, Golden Claw) or more gothic territory (two-part Dreaming). Imagine Little Dragon or Poliça’s dreamscapes spiked with homespun hippy idealism and you’re barking up the right tree. AC

Credit in here

Bahla

isn’t fascism or fanaticism, but our own complacency” – suggest that Billy Bragg has got his dander up, you’d be right. Bridges Not Walls is Bragg back to his most politically direct. The Sleep Of Reason and cover of Anais Mitchell’s Why We Build The Wall – both directed at the lunacy of Donald Trump’s presidency – are as arrowed as anything he’s recorded, just him and his buzzing guitar of old, but there is more nuance on the Hammond-led Saffiyah Smiles, written for the EDL protest-defying Saffiyah Khan, while melancholy hymn Full English Brexit speaks of Little England’s basest prejudices. At just 23 minutes long this has all the hallmarks of a stop-gap album, but it’s great to hear the fire in his belly once more. Andy Fyfe

OUT 1ST DECEMEBER Amazon, the Amazon logo and Amazon.co.uk are registered trademarks of Amazon EU SARL or its affiliates. Free Super Saver Delivery and Unlimited One-Day Delivery with Amazon Prime are available on eligible orders. Terms and Conditions apply. See Amazon.co.uk for details.

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Reflection Of Youth BIG DADA. CD/DL/LP

Welcome to Anna Lena Bruland’s land of ice and fire. There is something of Polly Harvey to EERA’s debut: volatile mood swings, acute melody, a freedom to adopt different identities. But EERA could well be a disciple too of fellow Norwegian Susanne Sundfør, vocally and in her displays of nervous passion. Reflection Of Youth swoops through grandiose, visceral and skeletal arrangements (producer-engineer Nick Rayner is a revelation): full-tilt rock on (the ironically titled) I Wanna Dance; warped folk bleeding into orchestrated glitch on Christine; steely, shivery ballad Survived. The lyrics document early adulthood, “when you’re supposed to figure everything out”, and it doesn’t sound like EERA has managed that yet, judging by Watching You’s relationship game: “Thirst for lonely guys/ Don’t lie/They’re all gonna die.” A midnight-black title track opens with, “Please make love to me/I need some weight on me.” The intensity never lets up, either. Martin Aston

Mista Savona

####

Havana Meets Kingston VP. CD/DL

This ambitious hybrid hits all bases. Melbournebased Jake Savona has worked in Jamaica with Big Youth and Sizzla. For the elaborate Havana Meets Kingston, he brought Sly and Robbie and other reggae stalwarts to Havana to work at Egrem with Buena Vista and Afro-Cuban All Stars alumni, later adding overdubs by Cornell Campbell,

Reflecting on youth: EERA is watching you.

96 MOJO

Leroy Sibbles and upcoming artists like Aza Lineage and Exile Di Brave. Things are at their most integrated when Ernest Ranglin graces the proceedings of 410 San Miguel, his scintillating guitar lines nicely offset by son piano breaks and a range of percussive styles; El Cuarto De Tula goes ragga with Turbulence and El Medico, and both Carnival and Candela shift between British reggae crooner Randy Valentine and Cuban counterpart Solis, though other tracks keep to either side of the fence. The high production values and top-notch musicianship yield a unique and captivating set. David Katz

Jack Cheshire

####

Black Light Theatre LOOSE TONGUE. CD/DL/LP

Fourth album by the acclaimed and exploratory singer songwriter. To write Black Light Theatre, Cheshire went into monastic seclusion, turned off the e-chatter and didn’t speak to anyone for a few weeks. It worked, as this new material is lyrically, melodically and sonically compelling. He has been described as quintessentially English and has a curious and precise diction, but his music’s ‘psychedelic’ characteristics evoke the shifting, multifaceted Grizzly Bear as much as anyone from these shores. Idler cuts between faux Eastern guitar outbursts and a series of reflective verses and bridges, with groaning strings and sweet vocal harmonies. Join The Dots borrows the drum groove from Can’s Oh Yeah and overlays it with a feisty band performance of strident guitars and edgy strings. Grandfather Clock, with Cheshire singing of “windowsill delirium” and sighing his goodbyes, feels like a haunting love song, but one born out of strange and altered inner states. Mike Barnes

Orchestre Les Mangelepa

###

Last Band Standing STRUT. CD/DL/LP

Eastern promise meets western nostalgia. Rescued from semi-obscurity, Mangelepa were one of East Africa’s biggest big bands in the 1970s, when rumba ruled the scene and pirated cassettes had yet to destroy the economics that kept big bands viable, yet their fame hardly spread beyond the continent. There is plenty of evidence, though, that the world’s loss was Nairobi’s gain, as the Congolese musicians who relocated to Kenya – home to better equipment, labels and studios – could have cut it on the global stage. Four decades on, vocalist Evany Kabila Kabanze guides a tighter ship, with the emphasis on nimble rhythmic interplay. If you like old-school Congolese rumba, there’s little here to suggest the 1980s and 1990s ever happened, and the classic, singing guitar lines of Kavungu Landu Kimakesa and Monga John are the stars of a set that includes a reworking of 1978’s hit Maindusa. David Hutcheon

Tom Rogerson With Brian Eno

###

Prins Thomas

####

Prins Thomas 5 PRINS THOMAS MUSIKK. DL/LP

Nordic disco maven spreads his wings. INSPIRATION FOR the new album from Norwegian cosmic disco standard bearer, ‘Prins Thomas’ Moen Hermansen, came in a multitude of forms – some more unlikely than others. They include Teenage Fanclub’s Bandwagonesque (the glitterball stomp of Here Comes The Band), Plaid and Pat Metheny (London ’Til Lisboa’s shimmering, freeform soundtrack to a sunrise). Elsewhere, the downsides of being a DJ – endless international flights (the smoky ’80s electro funk of A0nva), regular bouts of illness (Æ’s low-end acidic grumble) and separation from family (Aske Hermansen and its fluttering, beatless analogue synth loveliness) – loom large. But the contents of Prins Thomas 5 are far from tiresome bellyaching. Rather, with the tumbling psychedelic disco that made his name reduced to a murmur, this feels like Hermansen’s most charming and wide-ranging collection yet.

Finding Shore ALSO RELEASED

DEAD OCEANS. CD/DL/LP

Ex-Three Trapped Tigers pianist and ambient grandee in littoral harmony. A one-time student of Harrison Birtwistle, hotel accompanist, New York jazzer and noisy postrocker Tom Rogerson was searching for his true compositional ‘voice’ when Eno stepped in as facilitator, subjecting the pianist’s by turns-delicate and ostentatiously tumbling keyboard style to both discreet electronic modifications and more conspicuous digital interventions. Informed by, and evocative of, the glinting Suffolk coast, from whence both protagonists hail, essays like Motion In Field, with its pulsing synth waves and electronics shards lapping against elegant piano arpeggios, the exquisitely drifting, cloud-like Quoit Blue and The Gabbard, with its ominous anchor throbs and glacial note clusters, feel like bold, modern updates of Eno’s immersive collaborations with Harold Budd. That said, a sprinkling of more angular, dissonant tracks, like the clanging Eastern Stack, may sail a little too close to his soi-disant ‘jazz that nobody asked for’ for some tastes. David Sheppard

Bibio

OPUS 3000

Phantom Brickworks

Benevolence

####

###

WARP. CD/DL/LP

INRI CLASSIC. DL/LP

Stephen Wilkinson’s pervading MO has been evocative, frazzled organic electronica. It’s often whimsical, but Phantom Brickworks is Bibio in glacial, awe-inspiring ambient mode. Incorporating field recordings compiled during visits to, among other locations, the site of submerged Snowdonia village Capel Celyn, its exquisite ghostly piano and hypnotic loops transport you to a gauzy, fantastical netherworld.

There are moments when OPUS 3000’s music sits squarely in the neoclassical territory ruled by Frahm, Arnalds and co, but this Italian trio frequent more expansive, often disturbing places. A collaboration between techno artist Francesco Leali, pianist Gloria Campaner and cellist Alessandro Branca, it balances its fragility with skirls of white noise and full-blown symphonic grandeur.

Renart

###

Fragments Séquencés CRACKI. DL/LP

By day, Frédéric Destres is a professor at the Sorbonne, but he has a significant sideline making warped techno as Renart. On Musette Pénitence, he serves up shotgun beats and quasi acid trills with max brainaddling potential, but Destres is most effective when dialling down the tempo, as evinced by Souvenirs Miroirs’ ever-pulsating psychedelic throb.

Kaukolampi

####

Kaukolampi – 1 SVART. CD/DL/LP

With Finnish trio K-X-P, Timo Kaukolampi makes Krautronica with a goth metal aesthetic. There are dark forces at play in his solo work, as the title Public Execution Of The Sleeping Lotus Eater – a hulking slab of saturnine sound design – bluntly demonstrates. An album that welds together sedate ambient techno and grand Radiophonic Workshop-style analogue experimentation. SW

Alice Rainis, Ragnhild Fors

####

Credit in here

EERA

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Recommended Retailers Here’s the exclusive monthly guide to the country’s most mouthwatering independent record emporia. Chosen for their knowledge of both current releases and specialist areas, they’re guaranteed to provide the personal touch you won’t find elsewhere. And they stock MOJO too. All where you see this sign. Altrincham WA14 0161 929 1432

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Assai

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SCOTLAND

1 Grindlay Street, Edinburgh EH3 9AT 01382 477443

Barnstorm Records 128 Queensbury Court, Dumfries DG1 1BU 01387 267894

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Record Collector

Action

Record Revivals

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Unit 12 (Level 1), Corbett Court Shopping Centre, Williamsgate Street, Galway 091507963

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NORTH WALES

Vod Music 28 New Street, Mold, Flintshire CH7 1NZ 07904688739 / www.vodmusic.co.uk

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Head

14 Lower Mall, Royal Priors, Unit 15, Liffey Valley Shopping Leamington Spa CV32 4XU 01926 887 870 Centre, Fonthill Road, Clondalkin, Dublin 22 Left For Dead 00353 (0)16236661 14 Wyle Cop, Shrewsbury SY1 1XB 01743 247777 / N. IRELAND www.leftfordeadshop. Head Belfast co.uk Unit 28, Castlecourt, Music In The Green Belfast BT1 1DD Rutland Square, Buxton road, 02890 237226 Bakewell DE45 1BZ 07929 282 950

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98 MOJO

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EAST Compact Music

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22 The Broadway, Leigh On Sea SS9 1AW 01702 711 629

Off The Beaten Tracks

56 St Johns Street, Bury St Edmunds IP33 1SN 01284 725410

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Gatefeld Record Lounge

HP6 5BX 01494 433311

The Drift Record Shop

The Record Corner

103 High Street, Totnes TQ9 6SN 01803 866828 / www.thedriftrecordshop. co.uk

Pound Lane, Godalming GU7 1BX 01483 422 006 / www.therecordcorner. co.uk

Resident 28 Kensington Gardens, Brighton BN1 4AL 01273 606312

Revolution Vinyl Café 8 Trinity Road, Weymouth DT4 8TJ 01305 788664

Slipped Discs 57 High Street, Billericay CM12 9AX

Smugglers Records

61 Hermitage Road, Hitchin SG5 1DB 0779 3029754

9 King Street, Deal CT146HX 07500114442

Gatefold Sounds

South Records

70 High Street, Whitstable CT5 1BD 01227 263337

Southend 01702 826166 / www.southrecordshop. com 

Heathen Chemistry

The Vault

130 West Street, Fareham PO160EL 074822 12656

1 Castle Street, Christchurch Dorset, BH23 1DP 01202 482134

Hot Salvation

Vinilo

32 Rendezvous Street, Folkestone CT20 1EY 01303 487657

55 Queensway, Southampton SO14 3BL 07825 707369

House of Martin

The Vinyl Frontier

60 High Street, Broadstairs CT10 1JT 01843 860949

35 Grove Road, Eastbourne BN21 4TT 01323 410313

Hundred Records

Vinyl Matters

47 The Hundred, Romsey SO51 8GE 01794 518655

Music Box 14 Market Place, Wallingford OX10 AD 07704 637789

Music’s Not Dead 71 Devonshire Road, Bexhill On Sea TN40 1BD 07903 731371

Pebble Records The Basement, 14 Gildredge Rd, Eastbourne BN21 4RL 01323 430 304 / www.pebblerecords.co.uk

Pie & Vinyl 61 Castle Road, Southsea PO5 3AY 07837 009587

The Record Centre 37 Hill Avenue, ham

Bakers Lane, Chapel Street, Petersfield GU32 3DY 07720 244849

Vinyl Revolution 33 Duke Street, Brighton BN1 1AG 0333 323 0736

Vinylstore Jr 20 Castle Street, Canterbury CT1 2QJ 01227 456907

Viva Vinyl 63 Queen Victoria Avenue, Hove BN3 6XA 07786 332975

SOUTH WEST

Friendly Records 8 North Street, Bedminster, Bristol BS3 1HT 07701 027824

Jam 32 High Street, Falmouth TR11 2AD 01326 211722 / www.jamrecords.co.uk

Longwell Records

NEW FROM PROPER MUSIC BUFFY SAINTE-MARIE MEDICINE SONGS Coming off her critically acclaimed, the 2016 Spirit Of Americana Award and Polaris Prize winning album Power In The Blood, Buffy Sainte-Marie has delivered her new album Medicine Songs. She has made it her mission to educate and inform the world using her strongest tool – her music, by – in her own words – “putting the songs to work”. TRUE NORTH

36 Temple St. Keynsham BS31 1EH 077954 72504

Phoenix Sounds Unit 6, Pearl Assurance House, Queen Street, Newton Abbot TQ12 2AQ 01626 334942

Raves From The Grave 20 Cheap Street, Frome BA11 1BN 01373 464666 / www. ravesfromthegrave.com

Red House Records 21-23 Faringdon Road, Swindon SN1 5AR 01793 526393 / www.redhouserecords. co.uk

THE WAILIN’ JENNYS FIFTEEN Now celebrating their fifteenth year together with an album appropriately called Fifteen. The Wailin’ Jennys again bring their own arrangements and harmonies to some of their favorite covers. Available on CD and Vinyl. TRUE NORTH

Replayed Records 3 Daisy May Arcade, Swanage, Dorset BH19 1

Retro Sounds Unit 7, Morfa Hall, Cliff Road Newquay, TR7 1SG 07964 043364

Room 33 Records 2, Market House Arcade, Bodmin, Cornwall PL31 2JA 01208 264754

Rooster Records 98 Fore Street, Exeter EX4 3HY 01392 272009 / www.roosterrecords. co.uk

Shiftys 169 High Street, Street BA16 0ND 07722 906366

LUTHER ALLISON A LEGEND NEVER DIES The box set celebrating the 20th anniversary of the passing of blues legend Luther Allison. This release is limited and numbered to 1500 CD sets; containing the essential albums Luther recorded after his Motown years. The box-set includes an 88page coffee book by Art Tipaldi featuring Luther’s inspiring story, comments from his friends and associates, as well as many rare and private photos. Plenty of video footage is included on four DVDs. RUF RECORDS

Sound Knowledge 22 Hughenden Yard, Marlborough SN8 1LT 01672 511106

The Collectors Room

Vinyl Collectors and Sellers

3 Endless Street, Salisbury SP1 1DL 01722 326153

Cross Keys Arcade, Queen Street, Salisbury SP1 1EY 01722410660

Haystacks & More 2 Castle Wall, Blackfold, Hay-on Wye HR3 5EQ. 075272 98199 The wellington boots filled with flowers standing either side of the doorway of this quirky emporium are a sign of what lies further within this delightful record shop. To approach the racks of vinyl, you must pass a diverse array of distractions. Pink wigs psychedelic dresses, lava lamps, wildlife paintings, a large sign declaring, ‘Turn Off, Re-Tune and Drop in’ and a copy of an Andy Warhol print of The Beatles are just a few of the things on show. Great selection of new and used vinyl. For any vinyl fans paying a visit to the town for its celebrated book festival you will be well rewarded by making a detour to this fascinating shop.

VARIOUS ARTISTS BRIGHTONSFINEST VOLUME 2 Brightonsfinest Volume 2 is the second compilation album in series from the recently formed Brighton based label. Available as a 2LP Set and Digitally, the release features 21 tracks from some of the most prominent new and emerging bands in the UK (including The Big Moon, Blossoms). The series will represent a real snapshot of what’s up and coming in British alternative and independent music. www.brightonsfinest.com BRIGHTONSFINEST PRESENTS

FOR MORE MUSIC NEWS VISIT: WWW.PROPERDISTRIBUTION.COM MOJO 99

The bald facts Isaac Hayes

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The Spirit Of Memphis (1962-1976) CRAFT. CD

here he stood, big and bald, hooded robe discarded to reveal a powerful body draped in chains – shackles to break free from or gold links to cling to? – murmuring a nuzzling, romantic rap before his supertight band locked cogs and drove the arrangement home. From the late 1960s, Isaac Hayes wrote the template for the unlikely frontman as sex symbol, nurtured through the ’70s by Barry White and others. Released under the umbrella of the Stax label’s 60th anniversary, this 4-CD book/box celebrates the wide-ranging, innovative talents of Hayes as a musician, songwriter, producer, arranger, bandleader and singer, one of the Southern soul label’s driving forces during its fluctuating peaks and troughs until its collapse in 1976. The first CD, Soul Songwriter, Soul Producer, traces his work with others. Through that work, the style emerges as shown by the solo recordings on Volt & Enterprise Singles and Cover Man. Finally, seven long workouts on Jam Master, five previously unreleased, listen in on rehearsals as songs are developed for stage and studio. After several rejections (see Back Story), Hayes got to Stax via baritone saxophonist Floyd Newman’s group. “And when I got there, [founder] Jim Stewart offered me a staff position as one of the musicians. I was thrilled to death.” Booker T. Jones was about to start at Indiana University, leaving the Hammond/piano seats vacant. “And they kinda threw me in the fire. The first session was an Otis Redding session. I would have been around 21 or 22.” Hayes survived those flames but it took some years for him to create heat of his own. The journey on CD1 starts as a mixture of audition tape and school report. An BACK STORY: uncredited organist on his first PRE-STAX recorded Stax date – Newman’s PROPHETS G Born north of Memphis jaunty, swinging 1964 instrumental in 1942, orphaned at the Sassy – when he began writing age of two, raised by his melodies for David Porter’s lyrics grandparents, working as a boy on farms, Hayes’s later that year he’s credited as ‘Lee’, story at Stax began in his middle name. By January ’65, 1962. “I had had three on Porter’s single Can’t See You auditions,” he told me in the late ’90s. “One was When I Want To, the rough with Calvin Valentine & potential is audible. (Porter’s 1970 The Swing Cats, I was the remake, also here, is much better.) vocalist. One was with The Ambassadors, a doo wop In February ’65, another co-write, group, and another was a the early US pop and R&B hit How group called The Teen Do You Quit (Someone You Love) Tones, another doo wop group. I sang bass with by Carla Thomas, is audibly rooted those groups. And we was in Curtis Mayfield’s I’m So Proud; turned down each time. in May, Ike is working with Steve Everybody wanted to be at Stax, especially all the Cropper on The Astors’ Candy, a blacks, because Stax was R&B Number 12 that again owes happening.” something to Mayfield.

T

100 MOJO

KEY TRACKS

G Homer Banks – Fighting To Win (CD1) G Isaac Hayes – By The Time I Get To Phoenix (CD2) G Isaac Hayes – Walk On By (CD3) G Isaac Hayes – Man’s Temptation (CD3)

“THOSE FAMILIAR WITH HAYES THROUGH THE SOUTH PARK CHEF’S SALTY CHOCOLATE BALLS ARE IN FOR A MUCH TASTIER TREAT.”

From spring ’65 his confidence as a producer soars, helped by finding the best Hayes/Porter interpreters: Johnnie Taylor (I Had A Dream; Little Bluebird) and the unfettered Sam & Dave (Hold On! I’m A Comin’, their first US Number 1 R&B hit; Soul Man; I Thank You) – are head and shoulders above the rest. At a label where almost all the mainstays were male, Hayes worked hard to break female acts – Ruby Johnson, Mable John, Judy Clay, The Charmels, The Emotions, Carla Thomas. In the context of his solo evolution, the arrangement on The Soul Children’s The Sweeter He Is Parts I & II and the mature, silky tones of Billy Eckstine over a rich orchestration on the standard Stormy were untypical of Stax in 1970, but blazed neon-lit signposts to Ike’s solo emergence on CD2. His own singles start in ’65 with Sir Isaac And The Do-Dads’ confident instrumentals, but after the double whammy of Otis Redding’s death in December 1967 (see MOJO 288) and the loss of the label’s catalogue to Atlantic in May 1968, Stax laid ambitious plans to launch 27 albums in the year to mid-’69. Hayes had already released Presenting…, but 1968’s Hot Buttered Soul and, featuring his band, The Isaac Hayes Movement shattered the Stax mould. Heavily orchestrated instrumental sections set up a warm vocal, with rap. Not every vocal has aged well – Isaac was never the very best singer – but By The Time I Get To Phoenix, with its establishing rap, the de-discoing of Never Can Say Goodbye, Dale Warren’s monumental arrangement for Walk On By, Ike’s confident, unexpected flights into falsetto (Man’s Temptation, the live Stormy Monday) all find Love Man Hayes at his unexpected best. Rarities on CD2: Ike’s 1969 Christmas single and a Hayes/ Porter 45 as a soul duo. Nice, but they’re no Sam & Dave. His soundtrack to Shaft, represented here by the iconic Theme From… and driving Do Your Thing (which crops up again on CD4 as a 33-minute jam), was one of the most popular and profitable in blaxploitation and paved the way for further adventures in movies and TV: he redid The Main Ingredient’s Rollin’ Down A Mountainside for Wattstax, but his original Theme From The Men is better. (Title Theme (From Three Tough Guys), promised in the booklet as track 20 on CD2, is absent. A “metadata mishap” say the label, the errant CDs will be replaced.) Unheard material can be a disappointment, but there are real potent reminders and intriguing discoveries here. CD3’s six tracks recorded live at Operation PUSH Black Expo in Chicago in 1972 is a testament to his on-stage command of band and audience – women squeal at Black Moses, but all applaud the finale, gospel song His Eye Is On The Sparrow, ending CD3 in a mood not dissimilar to that struck by its piano-trio opener, When I Fall In Love. On Jam Master, Hayes and band create moods, build tension, stretch arrangements or seamlessly join segments, with guitarists Michael Toles and Charles ‘Skip’ Pitts starring, while drummer Willie Hall holds it all in place. Try Hung Up On My Baby from his Three Tough Guys soundtrack or the 33-minute revisit to Do Your Thing. A 1962 7-inch of his Laura, We’re On Our Last Go-Round/ C.C. Rider recorded at American Studios when vocalist Hayes, yet to learn to play piano, had a wife, child and job in a meat-packing factory, completes an excellent package. Those only familiar with Hayes through the South Park Chef’s Chocolate Salty Balls are in for a much tastier treat.

Gettyy Images

A 4-CD box celebrates one of the Stax label and Southern soul’s great all-rounders. By Geoff Brown.

intensity, the seven-piece, three-drummer group whipped along by monstrous mellotron fanfares. A yearning encore version of Bowie’s ‘Heroes’ is a wonderful bonus, with Fripp’s beautiful guitar lines arcing skyward. Mike Barnes

Playgroup King Crimson

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Live In Chicago PANEGYRIC. CD

Double CD of the original progressive rockers on magnificent 2017 live form. When Robert Fripp gave what was supposedly his last interview to MOJO in 2012, he had retired from performing music and was embittered and mired in litigation. In an extraordinary turnaround the guitarist is back is his favourite ever incarnation of King Crimson, and leading this “reimagining” of their eclectic back catalogue. There’s new material like the characteristically angular, carbon-hard guitar riffing of Radical Action II, while the sax-driven Pictures Of A City sounds ever more like a soundtrack to a burlesque act in a sleazy sci-fi nightclub. Many other ’70s tracks are imaginatively recast, like the jazzy, pastoral Islands, while the suite of music from 1970’s Lizard peaks at a thrilling

Habibi Funk brother Ahmed Malek.

####

Previously Unreleased Volume 2

fidgety techno, before breaking down into a frenzied tabla assault. They sound like longlost dancefloor rarities, dug up from a David Mancuso time capsule, but such is Jackson’s skill, they’re the very antithesis of pastiche. Stephen Worthy

Abboud’s bland, overworked Games and Gharbi Sadock & Georges Garzia’s sickly slapbass odyssey Lala Tibiki, both prove rare exceptions. Andy Cowan

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Habibi Funk

YES WAVE. DL/LP

HABIBI FUNK. CD/DL/LP

Faithful recreation of the 1980s club underground.

Hitherto forgotten ’60s, ’70s and ’80s Arab sounds.

This batch of lopsided postpunk, proto house and out-there funk from the archives of dancefloor multidisciplinarian and Playgroup figurehead Trevor Jackson mines a similar seam to last year’s first volume. The 20 tracks were recorded between 1997 and 2001, but their sound harks back to a period a decade and half before, when clubland wasn’t divided along the strict party lines that is now the norm. Their primary task is as DJ tools – slabs of disco meat to lock clubbers into the dancefloor – but they’re suffused with nuance too. With its flecks of dub guitar and submerged bass line, Long System is a near-distant relative of This Is Radio Clash; the breathless No Lube channels hi-NRG with

The latest venture of Jakarta Records’ Jannis Stürtz and Malte Kraus takes listeners on a dusty journey into long-lost vinyl exotica from Tunisia, Lebanon, Egypt, Morocco, Algeria and beyond. Dictated by their crate-digging tastes above any defining aesthetic, Habibi Funk starts at almost riot pace with Fadoul’s Bsslama Hbiti, a 7-inch flipside that captures the one-time circus clown’s crying delivery over groovy ’60s guitars and biscuit tin drums. It meets its match in Bob Destiny’s nonsense scat and James Brown scream, Mallek Mohamed’s Les Negresses Vertes-like hornblasted disco and Freh Khodja’s hyper-funky call-and-response antics. Although the quality dips dramatically on Samir &

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Visions In A Plaster Sky: The Complete Recordings 1968-1969 RPM. CD

John Lee Hooker

#### Various

Wild Silk

King Of The Boogie CRAFT RECORDINGS. CD/DL

A box set half-century of Hooker’s highs. “When John Lee Hooker plays,” noted B.B. King, “it’s like writin’ his name: ‘I’m John Lee Hooker.’” With a whisper, moan or growlin’ basso, blues giant Hooker is immediately identifiable. Noted for his ability to boogie by riding one chord like a wild horse, his powerful, trancelike rhythm was a rock’n’roll precursor. This 5-CD set celebrating his centennial traverses his career from his first recording and US Number 1 R&B hit Boogie Chillen’ in 1948 to a version of the same towards life’s end in 1998 with a cat named Clapton. In between we get Dimples, Boom Boom and other Hooker hits. The most recorded artist in blues history is joined by devotees including Van Morrison and Bonnie Raitt, but his stark solo work – with an amplified wood board for footstompin’ – remains the stuff that’ll Hook ya. Michael Simmons

Shel Talmy-championed UK harmony poppers. Wild Silk’s creamy, early 1969 harmonydrenched pop-psych single (Vision In A) Plaster Sky is the crown jewel of this 24-track comp which marries the Luton outfit’s 45s with unreleased material from producer Shel Talmy’s archives. It’s so exhaustive that the multitracks have been revisited to mix what was issued in mono into stereo for the first time. With The Kinks and The Who behind him, Talmy felt the quartet would click with the US market. He gave them a Tokens’ song to cover as their first single – their vocals were what interested him. Despite a couple of US singles, it was as it was in the UK: they missed out. A pity, as they were as good as the similarly inclined Tremeloes and more assured vocally than stylistic kinfolk Grapefruit. Kieron Tyler

The Voltags

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Hot Flash – Best Of The Voltags PERFECT TOY. CD/DL/LP

Unreleased 1980 sessions from lost US new wavers. Washington DC quartet The Voltags released one single in 1979, Electric Jungle/ Son Of Sam, before singer/ writer David Bennett couldn’t handle “working so closely together”. His decision to leave stands in opposition to his creative indecision. Son Of Sam was a strange little gem, a serial killer’s lament, and queasily breezy considering the subject, though the coda’s crazed vocal overlaps fit the bill. But Electric Jungle, like half of the projected album, comes from a different place: The Cars’ brittle, cold powerpop synthesis. Of the albumto-be, ’50s influences on Chained are more aligned to UK pub rock; ska/reggae inflections abound; one live cut mangles James Brown’s I Got You (I Feel Good). Its casual misogyny aside – sadly typical of its day – the shiny, happy Shut Up might have been the next single, but Bennett pulled the plug. Martin Aston

Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats

#### Vol. 1

RISE ABOVE. CD/DL/LP

Pop-metallers’ 2010 debut, salvaged from Discogs unaffordability. For a fittingly cult audience so far, Cambridge’s KR Starrs-led Deadbeats have coined a dream-ticket breed of metal, which spurns the macho grind of most contemporary subgenres to evoke the golden age of heavy rock (Sabbath, Slade, Saxon – read: melody!) with doses of Cramps B-movie fixation, and post-millennial doom. Their three official LPs present a fully-realised, if ever murky analogue soundworld; one imagined that this preceding gambit, hitherto only ever on a CD-R pressing of 20 copies (online cost: £300plus), was either too embryonic, or deviated too far from the script for wider consumption. In fact, with production only a shade grubbier than usual, it’s another belter, packed with mighty tunes: Vampire Circus fabulously fuses Barrett-era Floyd with NWOBHM boogie, while Wind Up Toys closes with Tabasco-hot soloing to rival primetime Neil Young. KR was the lost rock star time forgot. Andrew Perry

Almost grown: the young Rolling Stones in the studio, August 1963 (from left) Bill Wyman, Mick Jagger, Brian Jones, Keith Richards.

Top gear A door finally opens on the most elusive ’60s archive of all with a trove of BBC recordings. By Mark Paytress.

The Rolling Stones

#### On Air

Alamy

POLYDOR. CD/2-CD/DL/LP

A BATTLE of wills between The Rolling Stones and ABKCO, the copyrights empire built up by the band’s one-time business manager Allen Klein, has not served the band’s legacy especially well. When ABKCO release perfectly good remasters of the material they control – recordings made for Decca between 1963 and ’69 – the band ignore them, diminishing their impact. When fans clamour for bonus tracks, info-filled packaging or a Beatles‘ Anthologystyle vaults series, the corporate stand-off is such that serious discussion is a non-starter. And now this: a collection of BBC recordings taped between 1963 and ’65, the first bona fide archive release from the Stones’ golden era, and one over which ABKCO had no control. On Air kicks off with a version of debut 45 Come On, which rings with a new-found clarity

that belies its 1963 vintage. After that, the 32-track two-disc set discards all sense of historical integrity. Next up is (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction. Recorded in September 1965, the performance marks the end of the Stones’ association with BBC Radio. It’s the obvious setcloser. But no: sequential chaos ensues. Loading up the big-hitters and better-sounding performances on the single disc edition supports the idea that On Air is intended as a companion piece to Blue & Lonesome as much as a purist-pleasing archive release. It may work. But making chronological sense never did The Beatles’ 1 much harm. Then there’s that sonic upgrade. Each track has apparently been “rebuilt, rebalanced and remixed to achieve a fuller, more substantial sound” using the ‘audio source separation’ method. Initially, this seems to have been welljudged. Come On compares favourably with the official studio version. And the four songs taped at the Camden Theatre and broadcast in May 1964 as an experiment in ‘Stereophony’ are the best we’ll ever get to hearing the early Stones at their blueswailing best. Yet on performances derived from lesser sources than original tapes and transcription discs, the new technique is less successful. While good for low and high tones, isolating bass, vocals, harmonica and guitar breaks, too often everything else sits stodgily in the middle of the mix. The combined effect is mildly kaleidoscopic. Happily, the performances – much

bootlegged since the ’70s – are pure delight. The Camden Theatre set (which sneaked out on a deluxe edition of the GRRR! compilation in 2012) boasts set highlight Cops And Robbers. A Bo Diddley original, it’s performed as an homage to the young Stones’ spiritual home, a fantasyland of chunky R&B riffery and big screen Hollywood noir. Jagger devours the slang with such evangelical zeal it verges on camp. Cops And Robbers is one of eight songs across the two discs not released by the Stones at the time. Two titles from that first October ’63 Saturday Club session underline the defining influence of Chuck Berry. Keith Richards’ solo on Roll Over Beethoven remains the template for his breaks to this day, while Jagger’s mimickry of Chuck’s ‘soft’ voice on Memphis, Tennessee was an early glimpse of a gift that’s served him well. Another rarity, a version of Jimmy Reed’s Ain’t That Lovin’ You Baby recorded for a July 1964 Top Gear broadcast, is oddly miscredited as hailing from a long-lost overseas broadcast. Conversely, the April ’64 version of Not Fade Away from Saturday Club, a bootleg regular, is inexplicably absent. Many of the versions here stick close to the released takes. But when the group starts recording Jagger/Richards singles at RCA in Hollywood in 1965, namely The Last Time and Satisfaction, the lack of US-style reverberations makes for a more revealing listen. At the same time, contemporary US soul, often in the form of a Solomon Burke song (the Stones recorded If You Need Me four times for the BBC), was making inroads into their repertoire. You’ll not discern that from the set’s random sequencing. But don’t let that put you off. This is a hugely enjoyable landmark release.

MOJO 103

Holy barbarians: German Oak come up for air.

Acid volk Definitive 3-disc set of the most misunderstood Krautrock album of all. Andrew Male digs deep.

German Oak

####

Down In The Bunker NOW-AGAIN RESERVE. CD/DL/LP

FEW ALBUMS are more infamous than German Oak’s sole, self-titled 1972 LP. With just 213 copies originally pressed, the record didn’t achieve full notoriety until 1991, when reissued on CD by the Witch & Warlock label. Beyond the band’s name – with its allusions to volk and

The Alan Parsons Project

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empire – rendered in pseudo Fraktur typography and the cover image of a stahlhelmsporting German soldier, was the music itself: murky acid-sludge blues-jams, interspersed with samples of Hitler speeches and shackled with titles such as Swastika Rising, Third Reich, and V1 To London. Understandably, many dismissed the record as a far-right artefact of dubious value, others regarding it as a sickminded hoax. However, some remained intrigued. Krautrock sage Julian Cope wrote enthusiastically of the album’s “barbarian riffs” and “strange skin-ofyour-teeth genius”. Now, thanks to esteemed record collector and Now-Again label owner Eothen Alapatt, the real story emerges. The group’s original name was Reaktor, three working-class Düsseldorf long-hairs – guitarist Wolfgang ‘Cäsar’ Czaika, and brothers Harry and Ulli Kallweit on bass and drums – looking for somewhere cheap to record and settling for a

epitomised this approach. The aroma of ‘70s progressive rock lingers in its Hipgnosisdesigned Eye Of Horus-style artwork, but every song is concise and painstakingly melodic, with one, Mammagamma, suggesting The Moody Blues impersonating Kraftwerk. This new box set expands the original album with a book and two CDs of demos and musical sketches. Think: notes from the musical laboratory. Mark Blake

Eye In The Sky SONY LEGACY. CD/DL/LP/BR

Thirty-fifth anniversary edition of ex-Pink Floyd engineer’s big US hit album. Cursed with the least glamorous band name ever, Alan Parsons’ donnish musical collective still enjoyed several US hits in the early 1980s. By 1982’s platinum-selling Eye In The Sky, the former EMI studio engineer knew how to finesse the languorous experimentation of the previous decade into pinsharp pop rock; essentially, Pink Floyd without the difficult bits for Americans who liked Styx and Kansas. Songs such as Silence And I and the US Top 5 hit title track, featuring vocalist and writer Eric Woolfson,

104 MOJO

Dub Specialist

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Version Dread STUDIO ONE. CD/DL/LP

Delightful dub B-sides from Studio One’s heyday. The lowfidelity output of Jamaica’s foundational recording facility, Studio One, was surprisingly conducive to dub. Studio One dubs are often unjustly overlooked due to the scarcity of the label’s product, much of which was issued in small batches in Jamaica, crediting only the ‘Dub Specialist’ as the engineer behind them. This

sterling compilation of rare dub B-sides was first issued by Heartbeat in 2006 and here has a couple of extra bonus tracks, the material mainly from the 1970s, with a few ’60s gems dubbed up as well. Killer dub cuts of Armagideon Time and Burning Spear’s Creation Rebel contrast nicely with tension-filled dubs of prime cuts by The Heptones, Ernest Wilson and Lloyd Robinson; even Ernest Ranglin’s Surfin’ is dubbed up for good measure. Everything collected here is eminently listenable; play loud to better note the many subtle nuances. David Katz

Esther Phillips

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dank, high-ceilinged war bunker in DüsseldorfHamm. With the heavily-tripping Czaika influenced by Faust and Amon Düül, and the Kallweit brothers more informed by jazz, Hendrix, Sabbath and Colosseum, Reaktor hammered out claustrophobic Ur-riffs of fuzztoned blues-funk, substrata cosmic ooze that slid down the slimy bunker walls and into the built-in microphone on Harry Kallweit’s tape recorder. The stifling air ruined their instruments: guitars rotted, speakers turned mouldy, drums lost their chrome. All three members insist they weren’t political but, says Czaika, “you couldn’t escape the oppressive atmosphere [of that bunker].” Enter the band’s manager, Manfred ‘Warlock’ Uhr, a local Düsseldorf record collector, and parttime Satanist, who, with girlfriend Erika ‘Witch’ Gnotzik, offered Reaktor a record deal. After remixing the bunker sessions, Uhr presented the band with their fait accompli LP, complete with new band name, artwork, and confused concept, based on ideas of young Germany exorcising Nazi ghosts. That semi-legit ’90s CD, reissued by Uhr, hardly helped, adding the Hitler speeches and aforementioned incendiary titles to the mix. “He tried to conjure the devil,” says Czaika, of Uhr. “I think he might have succeeded.” He certainly damned the band’s reputation. Mistaken for terrorists by their ’70s Düsseldorf neighbours, and for Nazis by the ’90s Krautrock fraternity, it’s only now that Reaktor/ German Oak can tell their own story. Yet what astounds is that after the removal of the Nazi speeches, after songs have been retitled, remastered and pitch-corrected, and after the addition of two extra discs of churning psychjam outtakes, what remains is what Czaika referred to as the “oppressive atmosphere” of that bunker, a deep, dark primordial earthgroove that is completely and utterly terrifying.

earlier chart successes. It was while she was with Mercury that she came to Europe in 1978 and performed at the oddly-named Hamburg club that yielded this live recording. Though her voice was little more than a Marge Simpsonesque raspy croak, Phillips was a supremely expressive singer who was steeped in the blues. She was also a charismatic stage performer with a gift for risqué storytelling, as her hilarious 18-minute revamp of Dinah Washington’s Long John Blues, with its dodgy double entendres, reveals here. Also noteworthy is the singer’s elongated mirrorball version of her biggest ’70s hit, What A Diff’rence A Day Makes. Charles Waring

At Onkel Po’s Carnegie Hall

Various

JAZZLINE. CD/DL/LP

Woody Guthrie: The Tribute Concerts

Rare ’70s glimpse of bluesjazz diva in concert. After scoring a clutch of US hit singles for producer Creed Taylor’s indie label Kudu between 1972 and 1976, this Galveston-born singer joined a major label, Mercury, but was unable to replicate her

#### BEAR FAMILY. CD

Songs to Woody by his legendary “children”. Two tributes to quintessential American troubadour Woody Guthrie were held in New York, in 1968, and Los Angeles in 1970. This handsome 3-CD box contains both concerts in their entirety for the first

time, accompanied by two books of essays, lyrics and ephemera. At the heart of the collection is Woody’s music performed by son Arlo Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Joan Baez, Odetta, Judy Collins, Richie Havens, Tom Paxton, Country Joe McDonald and Earl Robinson. The New York show was also Bob Dylan’s first public appearance in 19 months, performing with The Band, (the highlight of their earthy three-song set was an emotional Dear Mrs Roosevelt), while Ry Cooder and others backed up willing LA singers. (Electricity opponent Seeger demurred.) Some listeners will notice that Collins’ and Baez’s two renditions of Deportee – the story of “illegal” Mexican immigrants killed in an accident – ring tragically true today. Michael Simmons

VINYL PACKAGE O China Crisis

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Working With Fire And Steel CAROLINE. CD/DL

Kirkby duo’s gorgeous second LP gets unexpectedly deluxe 3-CD revisit. In 1983 Merseyside was knackered, a city of failing industry, with unemployment figures equivalent to all of Wales. There was defiance however. Liverpool FC won the treble, a Militant council battled Tory cuts and from the local music scene came The Lotus Eaters, Icicle Works, Wah! and It’s Immaterial, bands plying a curious strain of wistful melodic pop. Fronted by Gary Daly and Eddie Lundon, China Crisis were, perhaps, the most catholic of the groups, influenced as much by the Average White Band as Tangerine Dream, and Working… captures them at their experimental best. A part-concept LP about working class life in ’80s Merseyside, Working… benefits hugely from this 3CD reissue, showcasing forlorn instrumentals, rough synthpop sessions, high-strung rangy funk, introspective pop ballads, and skeletal exotic demos capturing a band at their creative peak, completely in-tune with the romantic melancholy of the times. Andrew Male

Dub Syndicate

interface between ambient, electro and dub on 1982’s King Tubby-inspired debut The Pounding System. They finessed its echoing ambience and hardnosed drums on ROIR cassette One Way System before a curious hook-up with melodica ace Doctor Pablo summoned 1984’s mass wigout North Of The River Thames, replete with a gently mentalist take on the Dr Who theme. Within months Dub Syndicate were trading licks with PiL’s Jah Wobble and Keith Levene on the future-shocked Tunes From The Missing Channel, exploring fresh pastures on the silky, sitar-laced Ravi Shankar and Geoffrey Boycott’s pugnacious Hammond thrust. Meanwhile, Lee Perry hovered in the shadows, awaiting collaboration. Andy Cowan

John McLaughlin, John Surman, Karl Berger, Stu Martin & Dave Holland

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Where Fortune Smiles

ON-U-SOUND. CD/DL

John McLaughlin had already been in the studio with Miles Davis, recording In A Silent Way and Bitches Brew, when he participated in this session in New York during May 1970 with fellow Brits and erstwhile sparring partners John Surman and Dave Holland, together with German vibes player Karl Berger and ex-Count Basie drummer Stu Martin. Given that the album’s five tracks were recorded in someone’s apartment – at one point the

What started as tape exchanges between late Roots Radics/ Creation Rebel percussionist Style Scott and UK dub doyen Adrian Sherwood straddled the gauzy

Burkina Faso sound: Georges Ouédraogo unleashing the power of Volta Jazz.

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The Original Sound Of Burkina Faso Choice 16-track introduction to the golden age of Burkinabe music.

ESOTERIC. CD/DL

Box set of first four albums plus rarities disc – also issued individually on vinyl – from ’80s low-end masters.

Various

MR BONGO. CD/DL/LP

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Ambience In Dub 1982-1985

neighbours compla noise – the quality of recording is remarkable and, even more so, the performances, which are vividly brought to life on this first-ever remastered version. Still amped up from playing with his hero Miles, McLaughlin is in scintillating form, firing off incandescent solos that anticipate the brooding majesty and jazz-meets-rock aesthetics of the shortly-tobe-formed Mahavishnu Orchestra. Charles Waring

First reissue of significant but largely unheralded jazzrock album from 1970.

The series of military coups that has defined Burkina Faso’s modern history has made the music of the landlocked West African country less familiar than that of neighbours such as Mali, Ghana, and Guinea. Thankfully, this well-assembled compilation is an excellent primer of music from the ’70s, showcasing the virtuosity of guitarist Amadou Balaké, saxophonist Idrissa Koné and drummer Georges Ouédraogo in foundational backing band, Volta Jazz. The material gathered has surprising variance, with Mangue Kondé Et Les 5 Consuls’ Pop Kondé and Bozambo’s Kombissé strongly influenced by funk, Balaké’s Whisky Et Coca-Cola in full Fania salsa mode, John Oumar Nabollé’s M’ba Lalé a disco transplantation, and Abdoulaye Cissé’s stunning Jeunesse Wilila somewhere between Senegalese mbalax and the adapted traditional guitar odes of Guinea’s Bembeya Jazz. There’s plenty to discover here, and the detailed linernotes help with navigation. David Katz

MONTH

Wilco Being There RHINO

riginally released in 1996, the second Wilco album represents Jeff Tweedy’s great leap forward, serving notice that his post-Uncle Tupelo band had alchemical designs on the shape and sound of rock in the roots tradition. Wilco would eventually morph into arch experimentalists – in which only Tweedy and bassist John Stirratt remained from the original line-up – but Being There is still fondly regarded by many fans, both for its eclectic 19-song spew and an organic weave of abrasive, trippy textures into ostensibly straightforward material: Misunderstood and Sunken Treasure are totemic dares to never stop believing while simultaneously lighting a fire under those rock’n’roll dreams. The big draw for this new 4-LP deluxe edition are 15 unreleased outtakes, including seven previously unheard songs – one, Capitol City, would be re-recorded for 2010’s The Whole Love – plus four tracks from a KCRW radio session. Essential. (The CD version adds a 20-song November ’96 LA Troubadour set.) KC

O

Sharon Van Etten

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(It Was) Because I Was In Love VINYL ME PLEASE. LP

Fractured debut harbours surprising strengths.

Ut

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Ut/Confidential OUT. CD/DL/LP

Two early EPs reveal the no wave shape-shifters as a bridge between Yoko Ono and Sonic Youth. Initially part of New York’s late ’70s no wave scene, Ut, a selfstyled “all girl electric band playing outrock”, found more common ground in Britain, where outrock was the bedrock of the independent boom, and The Slits and Raincoats explored gendered approaches to sound. Ut did that too, and in 1981, they relocated to London. Not for them the conventional forms peddled by the predominantly male indie newcomers. Instead, the instrumentswapping trio – Nina Canal, Jacqui Ham and Sally Young – constructed their sound around gut-level rhythms, atonal guitars, multiple voices and raw/roar power. The seven tracks here, part ecstasy, part exorcism, ferociously distil the end-of-tether attack of Plastic Ono-era Yoko Ono, the extemporising of early Patti Smith and The Fall at their most crushing. Well, what are you waiting for? Mark Paytress

Juvenilia rarely warrants revisiting. But Sharon Van Etten’s 2009 debut, Because I Was In Love, both illuminates the New Jersey songwriter’s future promise and crystallises a key moment of transition in her life. Having escaped an abusive relationship in Tennessee, her artistic idiosyncrasies (guiding organ drones, beautifully imprecise harmonies) and personal power start to manifest here. These are gallingly sad, often crudely simple folk songs, interlaced with menace (“The moral of the story is don’t walk away again,” she sings on Consolation Prize), though her assertions of agency are just as bracing as the dark parts. “I’m a tornado,” she insists on Tornado, with soft but sure conviction. You could easily prefer the chilly, haunting Because… to Van Etten’s later, more heavily produced breakout efforts; either way, it’s as vital to her catalogue as Myra Lee is to Cat Power’s. Laura Snapes

MOJO 105

Birth Control

Bobby Byrd

Backdoor Possibilities

Help For My Brother

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BOUTIQUE. LP

Back on vinyl from ’76, multisuite conceptual fusion-prog about a breadhead suit who meets a sticky end. Conny Plank’s production and Zeus B. Held’s synths add a curious robotic sheen. IH

#### BGP. CD/DL

Don’t let the Pre-Funk Singles 1963-68 subtitle fool you – I’m Lonely, cut in ’64, the year of bro’ James Brown’s Out Of Sight, is funky as get-down, while You Gave My Heart A Song To Sing and Funky Soul boogaloo hard. GB

FILEUNDER

R U ready, Steve? Every Sweet note. “All right fellas, let’s go!” says Jim Irvin. n 1973, Steve Priest, the Sweet’s bassist, summed up everything we knew then about “gender fluidity”. When he turned his cherubic, made-up chops to the Top Of The Pops camera during Blockbuster and gulped camply, “We haven’t got a clue WHAT to do”, you could hear generations spluttering with either outrage or delight at the proposition: bubblegum pop with rock poses, while dressed up in their sisters’ cast-offs. Sweet, indeed. Apart from that time Priest did it in Nazi uniform on TOTP’s Christmas Special. After a lengthy period of neglect, the complete works of (The) Sweet return in a punchily remastered ninedisc box, Sensational Sweet: Chapter One: The Wild Bunch (Sony, ####), six albums with bonus tracks, plus discs scooping up the singles, BBC sessions and a live show. Sweet stomped onto the glam bandwagon hoping to Trojan horse their tougher stage sound into teenybop hearts. Kids who loved Brian Connolly’s blond bangs and sweetly Scottish delivery on

Gered Mankowitz

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Raising hell: the classic Sweet line-up (from left) Steve Priest, Brian Connolly, Mick Tucker, Andy Scott.

“SWEET STOMPED ONTO THE GLAM BANDWAGON… LOUD ENOUGH TO INSPIRE KISS TO FORM IN THE US.”

Co-Co, Funny Funny and Little Willy, written by pop svengalis Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman (and played by session musicians), weren’t ready for the band’s raucous live sets, loud enough to inspire Kiss to form in the US. Sweet had hits globally, but outside of Germany couldn’t get serious appreciation for their enjoyable, boisterous albums Sweet Fanny Adams, Desolation Boulevard, Give Us A Wink and Off The Record. Then punk and NWOBHM hit, Connolly fell into alcoholism and by 1979 the “wild bunch”, their own name for that key quartet, Priest, Connolly, drummer Mick Tucker and guitarist Andy Scott, was over. Cherry picking reveals good things on every disc. Hear Sweet foresee Queen’s way with stacked vocals and tight riffs on 1971 track Spotlight then develop it on self-composed singles Fox On The Run and Action. Sweet Fanny Adams’ beefy title song (sample lyric: “Never gonna make it, people think we fake it.”) sums up their dilemma. Give Us A Wink may be their strongest album of originals, with hints of The Who, Argent and Zeppelin in the writing. Off The Record’s Live For Today is a punk-paced hit that never was. The near Floyd-y Air On A Tape Loop from last gasp Level Headed is remarkable; the same album’s Top 10 Love Is Like Oxygen (their chart swansong) a soft rock classic. Sweet will never be cool again. People of a certain vintage, thumbs slipping into belt loops for a school-disco headbang, could care less.

The Flamingos

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Collection 1953-61 ACROBAT. CD/DL

All you’ll ever want or need to know about the smooth ’50s doo-wop group via 80 songs on 3-CDs, from prime smoocher I Only Have Eyes For You to album tracks like Chickie Umbah and cheesy Music Maestro Please. GB

Stray

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All In Your Mind

Frankie Goes To Hollywood

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Welcome To The Pleasuredome BMG. CD/LP

Not even the filler and longgone topical 1984 references can wither the Trevor Hornproduced epics of sex and war on this engorged debut. IH

Pauline Anna Strom

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ESOTERIC/CHERRY RED. CD/DL

Trans-Millenia Music

Four-CD comp charting the overlooked Acton heavy psych four-piece’s 1970-74 tenure at Transatlantic: over-amped raw power of their self-titled debut to heavy prog of later releases. Pretty damn essential. AM

RVNG INTL. CD/DL/LP

Various

Various

Black Man’s Pride

Let's Do The Boogaloo

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SOUL JAZZ. CD/DL/LP

This latest sift of Studio One’s vaults yields a vivid proto roots set, as top JA singers rode the black consciousness wave. Alton Ellis, Horace Andy, John Holt and Sugar Minott all burn; not every cut fits the early ’70s frame, but who’s arguing? KC

Eighty gorgeous minutes of pulsing, blissed-out electronic space music by blind Bay Area composer, 1982-88. Will transport listener to states of heightened consciousness. AM

#### BGP/ACE. CD/LP

Groovy comp celebrates a journey from 1965 NY dance fad to funky pop mutation and, ultimately, Latin-soul-jazz crossover smash – only to discover Mongo Santamaria had already got there in ’63. PG

Bread

Come On

The Darkside

Detroit Emeralds

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Complete Studio Masters

The Westbound Singles 1969-75

The Durutti Column ####

The Elektra Years

1976-1980

ELEKTRA. CD/DL

MANUFACTURED RECORDINGS LP

Six-CD discount box set giving everybody the chance to reassess the soft-rock mastery of David Gates and Jimmy Griffin, from the gentle psych vibes of their 1969 debut to the AM Mogadon of 1977’s Lost Without Your Love. AM

Subtitled Downtown NYC Art Rock, the slender oeuvre of the CBGB’s/Max’s also-rans who promised ‘Nervous Rock Music’. Terse post-punk and mundane/ berserk lyrics – songs include Housewives Play Tennis, Mom And Dad and Old People. IH

BEGGARS BANQUET/CARGO. CD

WESTBOUND/ACE. CD/DL

FACTORY BENELUX. CD/LP

With Spacemen 3 alumni Pete Bain and Sterling Roswell, early ’90s Rugby quartet had spacerock kudos but their lysergic jangling lacked sonic wow factor. This 5-CD box boasts an unreleased third album. KC

Like many ’60s Detroit acts, the Emeralds hailed from further South but their music, the best written by member Abe Tilmon, was Northern. Opener Holding On’s ebullience, big hit Feel The Need, plus 21 other As/Bs. GB

From 1987, Vini Reilly explores sequencers to make beatdriven frames for his eloquent, guitar frescos. CD2 gathers up rarities and alternate mixes, disc three finds the group live in NYC and at WOMAD. IH

Chuck Jackson

Roy Orbison

Penguin Café Orchestra

The Pretty Things

Ranny Sinclair

Big New York Soul

Dream Baby

Greatest Hits

Another Autumn

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####

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KENT SOUL. CD/DL

HOODOO. CD/DL

The 24 Wand ’61-66 recordings here include eight previously unissued. The best: opener Things Just Ain’t Right; Meet Me Half Way’s gospel-blues; All About You’s Big Apple soul; Anymore, a duet with Dionne Warwick. A superb big voice. GB

Perfect antidote to recent orch meddlings, these 32 tracks offer The Complete Sun, RCA, & Monument 1956-62 Singles. No Blue Bayou, Pretty Woman or It’s Over, then, but enough moments of transcendent pop to fit any mood. Masterful. GB

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Union Café ERASED TAPES CD/DL/LP

Final studio album from the eccentric ensemble beloved of soundtrack compilers. This vinyl upgrade befits the quirky and cosmic blend of classical piano, strings, folk, world and inner consciousness. CP

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The Guitar And Other Machines

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MADFISH. CD

SUNDAZED. DL/LP

Not all of CD1’s 25 tracks were actually hits as the edgy Brit R&B rockers morphed into psych travellers, but album tracks are far from makeweight. CD2 is the December 2010 100 Club show, the Phil May/Dick Taylor core still compelling. GB

LP debut for four super-rare Teo Macero-produced early ’60s singles (plus unissued recordings) by the whispery jazz vocalist who later married Wolves boss Sir Jack Hayward and became philanthropist Frances Hayward. AM

96 Mista Savona Moore, Thurston & Hayward, Charles 91 Namvula 93 Orchestre Les Mangelepa 96 Oren, Peter 90 Out Lines 89 Parsons, Alan, Project 104 Phillips, Esther 104 102 Playgroup Polwart, Karine 93 Prins Thomas 96 Rogerson, Tom & Eno, Brian 96 Rolling Stones, The 103 Rothman, Lawrence 94 91 Snow Palms Sweet, The 106 U2 86 Uncle Acid 102 Ut 105

VA Habibi Funk 102 VA Original Sound Of Burkina Faso 105 VA Woody Guthrie Tribute 104 Van Etten, Sharon 105 Voltags, The 102 White, Jim 90 Wilco 105 Wild Silk 102 Wilson, Cindy 90 89 Zombie Zombie

FILTERINDEX

Sun Ra

Tears For Fears

Exotica

Rule The World

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SUNDAZED. DL/LP

VIRGIN/EMI. CD/DL/LP

Beautifully packaged, Irwin Chusid-assembled triple-vinyl of Ra works that might easily fit into the bracket of ethnic exotica, from intergalactic Honolulu romanticism to languid harmonic discordia, off 11 LPs recorded 1956-70. AM

Non-chron overview of Bath duo’s trek from iconic synth pop (Mad World etc), through a hi-gloss late-’80s imperial phase and beyond, plus the generic 2017 euphoria of the all-new I Love You But I’m Lost and more intriguing Stay. DE

Various

Various

Looking At Pictures In The Sky

One Way Glass

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GRAPEFRUIT. CD

Contact-high Brit-psych from ’68. Coconut Mushroom, Sadie’s Expression and The Orange Seaweed join Procol Harum, The Move, and future Deep Purple and Rubettes on 3-CDs. Serviceable. IH

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RPM/CHERRY RED. CD/DL

From the geezers who brought you the wondrous Dust On The Nettles and I’m A Freak Baby comps, three CDs of wah wah and groove-heavy early ‘70s Brit jazz, prog and folk, that crossed the bridge from the squat to the dancefloor. AM

Alvarius B 92 And Yet It Moves 91 Bahla 94 92 Band Of Holy Joy Björk 89 Blau, Karl 90 Boothe, Ken 88 94 Bragg, Billy Butcher Brown 94 Chapman, Michael 88 Cheshire, Jack 96 China Crisis 105 Crowley, Adrian 90 Dahlen, Erland 90 David-Guillou, Angèle 92 Dub Specialist 104 Dub Syndicate 105 EERA 96 Electric Eye 92 Finley, Robert 89 Garrick, Christian & Gordon, David 93 Gelb, Howe & Kelly, Lorna 89 German Oak 104 Giggs 94 Harrold, Keyon 93 Hayes, Isaac 100 Hayes, Martin, Quartet 93 Högni 90 Hooker, John Lee 102 Howe, Virgil & Steve 92 Iqbal, Nabihab 88 James, Jim 88 Jaws Of Love 93 Kayn, Roland 91 King Crimson 102 Legendary Shack Shakers 91 Leighton-Thomas, Nicki 94 Love, Mike 88 Mammal Hands 91 McLaughin, John 105

COMING NEXT MONTH Chris Thile, Calexico, Erykah Badu, Fela Kuti, King Crimson, Skids, The Breeders (below), Pharaoh Sanders, Thelonious Monk, Wanda Jackson, Nico and more.

that it was going to be a Prince-like trajectory to fame and success, but none of my life choices had worked out.” Scared, out of rehab, still selfmedicating with booze, Douglas began work on what he knew would be his swansong. Wharton Tiers, who’d mixed Vegetarian Meat’s 1995 LP Let’s Pet, was Statecraft’s producer: Meat’s Manish Kalvakota and Pixies’ Joey Santiago came in on guitars. Staying at the run-down Gramercy Park Hotel in New York, Douglas immersed himself in the studio process. “I recorded in a bunch of studios simultaneously, and CREDITS none of the tapes would fit Tracks: Free At Last / the machines from the Crackerjack / Ancient Mysteries / Blues For different studios. Plus, I’d Catalina / Beneath The been prescribed a lot of Flowers / The Island / downers. Then, to numb the Splitting The Atom / I fiddly element of recording, Don’t Care / Close To Me / I entered into this alcohol Revelation In Chapel Hill / problem, unfortunately.” The Day Of Creation / Statecraft / Take It Off/ As a result, Statecraft is Game Over / Chan / The one of the most heartbreakRabbit Never Gets The ing pop-punk LPs you’ll ever Carrot, Part Two hear. Behind these playfully Personnel: Charles skewed indie-rock melodies, Douglas (vcls, gtr, bs, biggest band in the world.” and Santiago’s chewy riffs, drms, synth, vibes), Self-medicating to stave are autobiographical lyrics of Manish Kalvakota (gtr, off boredom and anxiety, and bs), Jerry Kee (congas), crack-up and alienation. “I am Kirsten McCord (cello), to facilitate the “total creative alone and insane,” sings Elizabeth Stasse (bckng isolation” he needed to Douglas on the Hawaiian surf vcls), Wharton Tiers, Clem “become the next Prince”, pop of Beneath The Flowers, Waldman (drums), Dottie Douglas spent all of his “I tried to expand my mind Bea (vcls), Kurt Ralske Vegetarian Meat advance on and it didn’t work.” The (strings), Fletcher Buckley drugs, and recorded the LP in (sax), Jerry Kee (pedal glistening, ragged Prince steel), Joey Santiago, Phil his parents’ basement. So funk of Chan is a worrying Costello (lead guitars) began a problematic love letter to Chan ‘Cat Power’ Producer: Charles relationship with Elektra. Marshall in which a Douglas Douglas; Wharton Tiers When Vegetarian Meat proxy “subjects her music to Recorded: Fun City, New disbanded, Douglas started an inquisition/So that he can York; Duck Kee Studio in work on a solo album, The work through his suspicions.” North Carolina Lives Of Charles Douglas. Told “Joey liked the songs,” Chart peak: None he needed to enlist a says Douglas, “but none of Current availability: drummer, Douglas presented Two-CD expanded edition, them came out how I Broken Horse (2017) the label with three options: envisioned them. I’d get Ringo Starr, Charlie Watts or fixated on a song with limited Moe Tucker (he got Moe). potential and ignore the one everyone Produced by Tucker, The Lives… was saying might be a radio hit. I had no is one of the most joyous pop-punk perspective at all. I was still relatively records of the late ’90s, but few got to young, I’d exhausted a lot of people’s hear it. Whacked out and in label patience, and I realised nobody really deadlock, Douglas recorded three cared about these records.” more cracked garage-pop masterpieces, Worried that he might relapse if he The Burdens Of Genius, The Spiders Are continued, Douglas walked out. Wharton Getting Bigger and Haunting And Tiers ended up mixing and sequencing Daunting (the latter two given away 16 of the songs for a 2004 release. on home-dubbed cassette). The album quickly disappeared, “That was a fuzzy period,” Douglas despite a fan letter from David Bowie. admits, with considerable under“The letter arrived in a large white statement. “I always related to the envelope like some sort of bizarre fucked-up psychopathic loners in J.G. wedding invitation,” says Douglas. “It Ballard’s books and I kept lying to myself said that he loved Statecraft, and that I must keep up the good work, and make more music for him to enjoy.” Instead, Douglas sold all his instruments, went back to Brown to finish his degree, and, as Alex McAulay, started a second career as a writer, author and scriptwriter. A film based on his script, Flower, that was on the 2012 Black List of best unproduced screenplays, is due for release later this year. “I’m very happy,” he says, “I feel that I would have been really unhappy if I’d carried on in music. But I haven’t stopped writing songs. If an eccentric millionaire offers me studio time tomorrow, I’m ready.” Andrew Male

Touch Me I’m Civic This month’s hot potato grown on the rock obscuria plains of Mars, outsider pop-punk grandeur enjoyed by Bowie.

“I realised nobody cared”: (above) Charles Douglas puts a brave face on it; (below) working on a guitar part.

Charles Douglas Statecraft ENABLER, 2004

hen Charles Douglas began his 2004 album, Statecraft, he’d just left the Arsha Vidya Gurukulam, an institute of Hindu philosophy in Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains. An alnumnus of Ivy League Brown University, at 27 Douglas already had four LPs under his belt, the first recorded for Elektra in 1994 when he was just 17. But Statecraft would be Charles Douglas’s final record, because Charles Douglas was a total mess. “There’d been multiple rehab and hospital visits before the Poconos,” explains Douglas. “But because of all the drugs, I was such a mess that I was a happy camper to go.” For Douglas, music and drugs had always gone hand-in-hand. Born in Seattle in 1977, he grew up in Texas and Ohio, moving around because of his father’s job as a mechanical engineer. “I’d get obsessed with my parents’ Beatles and Dylan records and try to play along on piano,” he explains. “Then, in Dallas, when I was six or seven, the Texas State Fair had a Prince impersonator. I wasn’t sure whether he was an impersonator or the real Prince, but it opened this door.” A super-introverted fantasist, Douglas read that Prince played all the instruments on his records, and set out to emulate him. After moving to Dayton, Ohio, the teenager formed Butthole Surfers-like basement slacker punks Vegetarian Meat. They were signed to Elektra by A&R man Terry Tolkin after a “high-as-a-kite” Douglas sent him a “20-page letter in magic marker explaining how we’d be the

Courtesy Broken Horse Records (2)

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WITH SPECIAL GUESTS

Walker Pola X 10Scott BARCLAY 1999 £25

You Say: “He’s propelled by an inner need to keep asking questions.” Max Richter, London The soundtrack to Leos Carax’s film of the same name – itself an adaption of Herman Melville’s 1852 gothic incest novel Pierre; Or, The Ambiguities – finds orchestral composer Scott in an unfamiliar late-period guise. Beside contributions from Sonic Youth, Smog and others, compositions including Light and Meadow are mature, silvered takes on the kind of beauteous symphonic sound-paintings found on Scott 3 and 4. The avalanche of percussion and corroded guitars that is The Church Of The Apostles, meanwhile, is an essential piece of post-Tilt punishment. See also his score for the 2015 movie The Childhood Of A Leader for starker Bernard Herrmann-like staccato cues and themes for tension and terror.

ENGELGRINDER

Voice of heartbreak and terror. By Ian Harrison. ew singers have had as strange or tortuous an evolution as Scott Walker. Born Scott Engel in 1943 in Ohio, the one-time child actor and singer had heavyweight tastes in progressive jazz and arthouse cinema even as a teen. A timely move to Britain as the voice of golden mid-’60s chart-smashers The Walker Brothers brought delirious, if fleeting, stardom: after that, it seemed this genius but somehow uneasy balladeer was set to become a giant of light entertainment. He had other ideas. As well as possessing a liquid baritone that wept and soared – one of the greatest voices to ever sing of pain and despair, in short – he also had a powerful, restless musical imagination. His repute still rests upon four intense, sumptuously orchestrated solo albums of the late ’60s, lent pungency and direction by their covers of Belgian chansonnier Jacques Brel (in 1984, critic and Walker-head Richard Cook said of them, “they inspire fanaticism”). After a time, however, this existentialist loner

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Extensions through dimensions: (above) Scott in late-’60s majesty; (far right) at the time of 2014’s Sun O))) collaboration, Soused.

“THESE RECORDS… INSPIRE FANATICISM.” Richard Cook, critic

CAST YOUR VOTES! This month you chose your Top 10 Scott Walker LPs. Next month we want your Françoise Hardy Top 10. Send your selections to www. mojo4music.com or e-mail your Top 10 to [email protected] with the subject ‘How To Buy Françoise Hardy’. We’ll print the best comments.

Walker Scott 2 4Scott PHILIPS 1968, FONTANA REMASTER 2000 £5.99

You Say: “If that doesn’t grab you, give up.” John Henske, MOJO Facebook From the galloping vulgarity of the opening take on Brel’s Jackie, there’s something euphoric about Scott 2 and the young artist running free. A refining of the Scott model, it sees the filth, wit and vigour of Brel contrasting absurdly with Vegas-friendly mellowness by Henry Mancini and Bacharach & David. Four prime Scott compositions tip the balance, with the epic, soaring disgrace of The Girls From The Streets imparting advice our hero would never be able to act upon: “Don’t look sad, things aren’t so bad, they’re just more wrong than right.” The album got to Number 1, but the harmony couldn’t last: the following year he was splitting his solo compositions and MOR for the mums and dads over different albums.

Getty Images, Alamy

Scott Walker

in shades was unable to take his audience with him, and as the ’60s ended, so did his chart career. He would crank out MOR covers until 1978, when a sudden reignition of his songwriting talent on the reunited Walker Brothers’ final album, Nite Flights, meant all bets were off, again. Since then, Scott Walker has acted as a renegade, in the purest sense of the world. There has been no cashing in on his ’60s fame, no comeback album with guest spots for admirers like Eno or Radiohead. He has instead struck out into increasingly nightmarish sonic and thematic extremes, at his own unpredictable pace. For all the drifting and tilting, though, it’s still the work of one man. “No matter how far you move on,” he told me in 2012, “if you look, you can still find whoever that young guy was.” Time, then, to take the soundings.

Walker Brothers 9AfterThe The

Scott Walker Walker Walker Walker + Sunn O))) 8Soused The Drift Tilt Climate 7Scott 6Scott 5OfScott Hunter

Lights Go Out

4AD 2014, DOWNLOAD £6.49

FONTANA 1990, CD £5.99

You Say: “Still going where others fear to tread.” Geoff Prowse, via e-mail When Scott found common cause with Seattle’s experimental doom-droners, the results were invigorating, with the suspended, discordant string lines of his orchestral work replaced by unrelenting molten reverb. This primordial, harsh soundworld provides a suitably hellish setting for Scott’s ruminations on assisted suicide, child-snatching and, on brooding/overwrought Bull, what he described as “crusades against existence”. It also adds extra immediacy: opener Brando (Dwellers On The Bluff) may be a whiplashing rumination on film scenes of Marlon getting beaten up, but it also has echoes of Guns N’Roses’ Sweet Child O’ Mine. Note: Scott has admonished some listeners for not seeing the humour in his recent work.

You Say: “Knowing where he came from helps you understand where he went later.” Richie Jenkins, via e-mail Californian pseudo-siblingsin-London The Walker Brothers were extant from 1964-67, and their skyrocketing hits – the main ones being Numbers 1s Make It Easy On Yourself and The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore, plus Number 3 My Ship Is Coming In – were among the era’s greatest. Scott’s voice is central to these Spectoresque expressions of hysteric romance, and this well-curated comp also gives examples of his early songwriting, such as the devastating Archangel and the mocking, libidinous Orpheus. Or you could download the 10 songs Scott wrote, add superior covers (Dylan, Randy Newman) and make your own playlist.

4AD 2006, DOWNLOAD £7.99

FONTANA 1995, DOWNLOAD £5.99

You Say: “Like the weirdest dream remembered in astonishing detail.” Michael O’Neill, via e-mail

You Say: “Treat it as an opera and it all makes wonderful, brilliant sense.” Garry Brogden, MOJO Facebook

The dense and diabolic successor to 1995’s Tilt, here is the avant-rock-band-meetsorchestra model taken to even further extremes. Walker’s avowed intent – to express concepts that cannot be said in words – is revealed in visions of disease, atrocities and terror, and aural sculptures that bleed, suffer and die. This is eerily manifest on the near-13 minute Clara, which centres on the grisly fate of Italian fascist dictator Mussolini’s concubine, and involves an oppressive centrifuge of strings, empathic moonlit respite and the nowinfamous beating of a side of pork. It’s a huge and involving work that will keep you guessing for years; the knifesharpening hellishness of 2012’s Bish Bosch is, if anything, even more uncompromising.

Something had clearly shifted in the decade since he’d last recorded. Here was the singer employing a higher, more operatic style of singing and amping up both the modern classical influences of dissonance and alien texture, and harsher avant-rock moves (he cited Nine Inch Nails as an influence). Designed to unnerve and disturb, and seemingly beyond final interpretation, here were nagging abstractions that touched on the final moments of Italian film director Pier Paolo Pasolini, the international arms trade and the Holocaust. Yet in Patriot (A Single), Manhattan and the title song are glimpses of traditional song structure and melody that only enhance and illuminate the weird desolation of the whole.

VIRGIN 1984, EMI REMASTER 2006 £5.99

You Say: “I love… the experimentation.” Blair McQuarrie, MOJO Facebook On resurfacing in the ’80s, Climate Of Hunter initially seemed an abstract and foreboding leap in the dark, albeit one with guest spots for Billy Ocean and Mark Knopfler. Three decades on, its dreamlike half hour seems more appealing and makes increased sense. As Walker plumbs the velvet depths of his voice for the last time, oblique lyrics of disappearance, stars and skeletal remains recur over ambient strings, synthesizer drones and the playing of a deconstructed rock band. It reaches its apogee in Sleepwalkers Woman, an incandescent vision for voice and orchestra that ranks as one of his finest recordings. That this direction was not explored further feels criminal.

NOWDIG THIS

Walker Walker Scott 4 Scott 3Scott 2Scott PHILIPS 1969, FONTANA REMASTER 2000 £7.24

PHILIPS 1967, FONTANA REMASTER 2000 £7.24

You Say: “Best LP overall… every track is excellent.” Paul Mitchell, MOJO Facebook

You Say: “Montague Terrace (In Blue) is one of his greatest songs.” Tom Williams, via e-mail

Credited to Scott Engel, his third album of 1969 – it was preceded by an MOR set which accompanied his BBC TV series – dispensed with cover versions and, he said later, any pretensions to actually entertain his audience. The fateful first foot wrong, it failed to chart and was soon deleted. But forget pop taste vicissitudes: with the Sergio Leone/Ingmar Bergman fusion of The Seventh Seal, Boy Child’s exquisite night sky communion, and the unbearably tender country ballad Duchess, this was a talent in full flight. 1970’s ’Til The Band Comes In tried to turn back the tide, but in truth, there wouldn’t be another true solo Scott long-player for 15 years.

Released six months after The Walker Brothers split following a time-calling package tour with Jimi Hendrix and Engelbert Humperdinck, Scott’s solo debut revealed an erratic mix of pop balladry, covers of Jacques Brel’s sex and death dramas, and his own brooding Brel-influenced compositions. With songs wrapped in romantic, orchestral arrangements, a cracked synthesis of art and showbiz resulted. Each thread has a peculiar brilliance, as Scott brings out the wild deeps of Wayne Shanklin’s The Big Hurt, loses it completely with Brel’s glorious, hopeless Amsterdam and expresses midnight interior states on the sublime Montague Terrace (In Blue). If nothing else, it’s a profound dismissal of the All-YouNeed-Is-Love spirit of ’67.

Walker Scott 3 1Scott PHILIPS 1969, FONTANA REMASTER 2000 £8.99

You Say: “Combines his incredible voice with beautiful ensembles.” Stephen Gallagher, MOJO Facebook Featuring a cover showing the glum-looking singer reflected in a heavy mascara’d eye, Scott 3 is where the mature artist ignored his light entertainment audience to cater for the Sartre buffs. An outstanding set of character-based mini-movies with luminescent orchestral accompaniment, it examines the plight of the lost and the lonely (Big Louise, reputedly written for an ageing cross-dresser who “cries ’cos the world’s passed her by” is particularly affecting) alongside something approaching acceptance, with vaporous transient’s reverie It’s Raining Today and apparently sincere love song Copenhagen expressing a rare equanimity. Three final Brel covers deal with – what else? – death and the finality of loss.

Serious parties will need ’Til The Band Comes In (Philips, 1970) and The Walker Brothers’ Nite Flights (GTO, 1978); 2003 Scott-box 5 Easy Pieces suffers from brave but flawed thematic sequencing. On film, Stephen Kijak’s 30 Century Man (Verve Pictures, 2006) artfully recounts the history, talks to fans and collaborators including Bowie and Scott’s old arranger, Angela Morley, and, crucially, interviews its subject. Scott did not cooperate with Paul Woods’ The Curious Life And Work Of Scott Walker (Omnibus, 2011), the most current biog; Rob Young’s No Regrets: Writings On Scott Walker (Orion, 2012) collects essays and analysis.

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WHAT WE’VE LEARNT

Small screen hero Frank, engrossing and occasionally gross memoir by Television guitarist and co-founder. By Paul Trynka.

Everything Is Combustible Television, CBGB’s And Five Decades Of Rock And Roll

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Richard Lloyd BEECH HILL. £20

t was Keith Richards’ Life that kickstarted a publishing phenomenon of rock star memoirs, most of which follow a similar, professional template. But not this one. Charmingly egotistical, inspiringly disorganised, Everything Is Combustible easily surpasses most of its rivals in giving a full sense of a creative life, in all its intensity and random thrills. Perhaps it’s the lack of a ghostwriter, with that veneer of professionalism, that gives this memoir its charm and energy. Perhaps it’s the absence of that fake modesty that permeates so many books.

© Godlis

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Lloyd actually finds himself fascinating, and encourages the reader to share that view, right from the moment he describes his childhood experiments in electrocuting himself, or walking around with one nostril blocked up to see how it felt. The overall narrative follows a vaguely logical trend, starting with the young Richard’s explorations in music and drugs and encounters with various rock stars before he moves in with Terry Ork and helps build the CBGB’s scene. Generally, though, it unfolds in one disorganised, random rush – yet this gives the sense that this is really how life rolls, and in its visionary, picaresque about-turns, rather like Voltaire’s Candide, it approaches being great literature. There’s many a sucker punch: for instance, Lloyd’s encounter with Jimi Hendrix, where he describes what seems a profound meeting of minds before it takes a random, scary turn. Similarly, we go from the philosophy behind the (perfect) guitar solo on See No Evil, to the scientific problems of washing wine glasses in fluorescent light. Or you’ll be engrossed in a section on Television’s first forays into Europe when, all of a sudden, a chapter lavishly depicts the many muggings and scams Lloyd witnessed or was subjected to. There’s plenty of trauma here – incarceration in mental institutions,

Switched on: Television (from left) Fred Smith, Tom Verlaine, Richard Lloyd, Billy Ficca; (inset right) Lloyd on-stage.

“TOM’S INSISTENCE THAT RICHARD INSPECT HIS NOSTRILS FOR BOGEYS…”

G

Lloyd turned tricks on

friends coughing 53rd and 3rd, like Dee Dee Ramone, to tide him up bits of stomach over when necessary. lining, the G Lloyd got to take moment when guitar solos for songs in Lloyd’s heart quits the key of G; Tom Verlaine working after a liked to solo in D. heroin session G Guardian sportswriter – and MOJO contributor with Peter Perrett – Richard Williams was – but never do we the first music business sense self-pity, or executive to talent-spot even self-justificaTelevision, unsuccessfully attempting to sign them tion. Musicians to Island Records. often complain their work wasn’t appreciated; Lloyd simply lays out his achievements, unequivocally and unapologetically, and is equally frank about the contributions of others. His description of attending an early Tom Miller, AKA Verlaine, show is masterfully lucid, with a ready acceptance Tom was special; later we hear of Tom’s miserliness, his insistence that Richard inspect his nostrils for bogeys, and of his ‘universal contempt’ for lesser beings, all delineated with the same stark simplicity. A valid comparison here might be with Richard Hell’s book, based around the same scene; Hell’s book is good, but what Hell tells us, Lloyd shows us. The ending’s a little messy, and you’re left with a sadness that we haven’t heard enough of this great guitarist’s work. Likewise, those who aren’t already interested in Television’s short but incandescent career are unlikely to become converts. Otherwise, this book as is vital as they come.

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Barrett Martin SUNYATA BOOKS. £23

Former Screaming Tree’s memoir also recalls travels far from Seattle. Sticksman with the godlike Screaming Trees during their major label-era, and one quarter of Seattle supergroup Mad Season, Barrett Martin has lived a life, though this amiably rambling tome is only part autobiography, lending equal spotlight to Martin’s anthropological theories on musical history and ecology, and chronicling his subsequent wanderings across the globe in search of the perfect groove. The result is a book that doesn’t entirely satisfy – his tales of fisticuffs and musical glory with the Trees, and the tragic story of Mad Season, are gripping but over all too quickly, and while his own global travels are recalled in a thoughtful tone that is a pleasure to read, his whistle-stop précis of musical history gets caught between hard academic theory and Wikipedia entry. Still, Martin makes for great company, insightful and empathetic, while an accompanying ‘soundtrack’ CD, including highlights from his varied career, delivers a previouslyunheard Mad Season jam that completists will covet. Stevie Chick

Chuck D Presents This Day In Rap And Hip-Hop History

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Chuck D CASSELL. £30

Public Enemy leader’s bold but deeply flawed stab at a chronological hip-hop anthology. What started life as a daily segment of Chuck D’s online AndYou Don’tStop! radio show, alongside Canadian DJs Duke Eatmon and Ron Maskell, barely translates to the printed page. While raking over rap’s formative days unearths the odd lesser-told gem – how mass looting during 1977’s NYC blackout gave cash-strapped

Live Wires: A History Of Electronic Music

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Daniel Warner

Major Dudes: A Steely Dan Companion

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My Book Of Genesis

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Edited By Barney Hoskyns

Richard Macphail With Chris Charlesworth

CONSTABLE. £20

ARGYLL & BUTE PUBLISHING. £15

Forty-two years’ worth of writing about rock’s great odd couple.

Warm and charming insider insight into the machinations of prog’s stateliest outfit.

William Burroughs, the author whose fictitious sex aid famously gave Steely Dan their name, once heard their music and complained that they were “doing too many things at once”. Part of the appeal of Donald Fagen and the late Walter Becker’s songwriting was its many layers. Nothing was ever quite what it seemed in a Steely Dan song, and that ambiguity extended to their relationship with the press. There is some fine insightful writing here from this century, including editor Barney Hoskyns’ review of a 2007 London show (“Fagen reels in his 61 years… like some Hebraic Ray Charles”). But its most revealing interviews are from the ’70s, before the myth had fully formed. Melody Maker’s Michael Watts’ 1976 encounter in LA, asking the questions as Becker scoffs grapes and Fagen grunts his approval, is especially good. For all their evasiveness and wise-alec remarks, a conversation with Steely Dan was never less than fascinating. Mark Blake

Road manager Richard Macphail was a fellow pupil at Charterhouse school with Peter Gabriel, Tony Banks, Mike Rutherford and Anthony Phillips. Macphail’s departure from the school in 1966 left the gap for Banks and Gabriel to join his band, Anon, which soon became Genesis. By 1969, Macphail’s parents’ house was the crucible for the group. This is a tale of a most unlikely band getting their break, with a bit of sex and a few drugs but it depends on one’s view as to what constitutes rock’n’roll. Best anecdote: when working for Peter Gabriel in his shavenheaded era, he and the band were mistaken for BaaderMeinhof terrorists in Switzerland, having to sing barbershop harmonies to prove their identities. Macphail left the music industry in the ’80s and became one of the country’s leading lights in solar energy. Now retired, he has written the sort of tale only a pal can;

detailed, quaint, some passages better than others, but never less than interesting. Daryl Easlea

Lou Reed: A Life

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Anthony DeCurtis JOHN MURRAY. £25

A perceptive biography, shedding light on the contradictions that made the artist. The author, a writer and editor at Rolling Stone, first met his subject in 1995 at an airport lounge in Cleveland while they both waited for a delayed flight. A personal friendship was struck that lasted until Lou Reed’s death in 2013. DeCurtis, then, is well placed to trace Reed’s five-decade career, drawing on insider knowledge but skilfully balancing it with detailed research and fascinating interviews, with Reed himself plus a great many associates including John Cale, Bob Neuwirth, Danny Fields, Lenny Kaye and Laurie Anderson. What emerges is a man seemingly always in conflict. Insecurity and loneliness framed Reed’s early days in New York. “He was always looking for nurturing,” says Lou’s former girlfriend Shelley Albin. “The war between two competing drives – to reject success and to court it,” meanwhile, defined his later ones. Lois Wilson

REAKTION. £16

Brisk, Suicide-free circuit of pioneers and key machines makes handy beginners’ manual. Massachusetts professorcomposer Daniel Warner deftly balances academic analysis with human endeavour in this ambitious chronicle of electronic music’s innovators, movements and emerging technologies. Functionally divided into chapters for tape recorder, circuit, turntable, microphone and computer, Warner’s mission to straddle all this in only 170 pages can see him covering Pierre Schaeffer’s magnetic tape innovations on the same page as Strawberry Fields Forever’s use of mellotron, helpfully accompanied by simplified technical explanations. Frank Sinatra’s microphone technique, Grandmaster Flash inventing turntablism and Juan Atkins blueprinting techno whizz by so briskly enthusiasts will find few revelations and may bemoan Walter Carlos’s Switched-On Bach being touted as the Moog synthesizer’s popular culture debut when Paul Beaver had planted that flag 18 months earlier with The Zodiac’s Cosmic Sounds, or even the absence of key mavericks such as Silver Apples. Warner deserves praise nonetheless for rewiring such a tangled genre so concisely. Kris Needs

Peter Gabriel, once of Genesis, rehearses Baader-Meinhof flight.

Credit in here

The Singing Earth

DJs an illicit kick-start; Lou Reed’s love of Biz Markie – consistently dry reportage (seismic events such as 1992’s LA riots and the 2Pac/Notorious B.I.G. slayings are robotically rendered) and an overriding focus on important releases (many highly contestable) quickly palls. Chuck’s great proselytising gifts (“Ice-T is simply the Johnny Cash of hip-hop… Kendrick Lamar is hip-hop’s hashtag challenge”) are sadly kept soundbite-short, while text is bulked-out with cheapas-chips illustrations that owe an unctuous debt to PhotoShop’s Filter Gallery. Not the “mandatory must-have” promised; more a basic primer whose even-handedness proves its undoing. Andy Cowan

MOJO 113

Leaving some heaven behind: John Coltrane.

L7: Pretend We’re Dead

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Director: Sarah Price

even Dylan spoke out about the Vietnam War,” observes Miles, in a typically simple but challenging line. “The Beatles were the first.” Interesting… Pat Gilbert

BLUE HATS CREATIVE. C/DVD

Supreme leader Jazz giant John Coltrane gets a fitting film tribute. By Michael Simmons.

Chasing Trane Director: John Scheinfeld

#### DECCA. DVD/BR

Credit in here

COMING AT a time when the most despicable people increasingly seem to become the most successful, the John Coltrane story is an inspiration and a relief. Coltrane was a musical missionary driven by the noblest of pursuits. “I know that there are bad forces that bring suffering to others,” the legendary saxophonist famously said. “I want to be the opposite force that is truly for good.” Director John Scheinfeld’s (The US vs. John Lennon) expansive film is built around standard documentary language: archival footage and photos, talking heads, Coltrane’s words read by Denzel Washington. But the moving testimony combined with Trane’s unequalled work transcends these familiar methods. By the end, viewers may find themselves questioning their own choices in life. Born in 1926, Coltrane survived segregation and family tragedy with music and church providing sanctuary and spirituality. As a young tenor saxophonist, he was hired by three bona fide jazz genii in a row: Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk. After kicking heroin, he led his own group, releasing a series of

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albums that established him as a major composer, a musical innovator and an instrumental virtuoso with an utterly singular tone. With chordally complex compositions on 1960’s Giant Steps, 1961’s modal masterpiece My Favorite Things and 1965’s hymn to Him (i.e. God) A Love Supreme, he kept upping the artistic ante. His music became increasingly dissonant, as if searching for higher consciousness through new combinations of notes. Considered unlistenable by some, others were likewise seeking revolutionary evolution – in music and everything else. His death from liver cancer in 1967 was a shock to his admirers; by then he was not only considered a major visionary of the 1960s, but one of the greatest musicians of all time. Chasing Trane is a primer – there are few revelations for devotees, but there’s a solid argument that this approach reaches a larger audience. Scheinfeld stresses the depth of the artist’s humanity: walking home from a gig so he could afford shoes for his stepdaughter; composing Alabama, about the 1963 church bombing that killed four children, based on Martin Luther King’s speech patterns; performing in Nagasaki to pay tribute to victims of the atom bomb. Reflections from musicians Sonny Rollins, Wayne Shorter, Wynton Marsalis and John Densmore juxtapose with surprising observations from former President Bill Clinton, clearly a passionate, knowledgeable fan. Despite Trane’s later, less accessible “free jazz”, his hope was to move everyone. Fifty years after his death, Chasing Trane continues that mission. As flamboyant renaissance man Cornel West exultantly testifies, “He left some heaven behind!”

Guitarist Suzi Gardner pithily describes L7’s 16-year trajectory as “rags to riches, to rags”. But this documentary chronicling those years is thoroughly enjoyable, not least because, as they prepared to record their breakthrough second album, Bricks Are Heavy, the quartet invested in a Hi-8 video camera, yielding much ribald footage. Pretend We’re Dead thus offers ringside seats as L7 experience Beatlemanic scenes in Brazil, hurl tampons at a truculent Reading Festival audience, dance in their Lollapalooza tour bus with Nick Cave and mock a media desperate to pigeonhole them as a “girl band”, with the quartet offering hindsight-heavy narration from the present day. “We were aware of the scrutiny we were getting for being all gals – we wished we would be seen as musicians,” offers Gardner, and it’s this wilful misinterpretation that wears them down, along with a never-materialising payday (as Donita Sparks muses, near the end, “When you’re ahead of your time, you’re behind on your rent”). The reunion circuit, however, delivers L7 the overdue respect they deserve. Stevie Chick

How The Beatles Changed The World

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Director: Tom O’Dell SYMETTRICA. DVD

Exploring the Fabs’ relationship with the ’60s. In the wake of Ron Howard’s Eight Days A Week, another film about The Beatles’ impact on the ’60s might seem unnecessary. But though lacking Howard’s budget, director and producer O’Dell makes a good fist of re-telling the story of how, once wowing America after Kennedy’s shocking death, the group’s growing political, cultural and musical advancement sparked a conservative backlash they would never really survive. The bountiful period footage illustrating the Fabs’ social context – grammar schools, art schools, Swinging London, psychedelic happenings – is joyful, while the talking heads, including critics Robert Christgau, Anthony DeCurtis, Miles and MOJO’s own Chris Ingham and Mark Paytress, provide an informed commentary on events. “Not

Bang! The Bert Berns Story

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Director: Brett Burns ABRAMORAMA. DVD

Brill Building songwriterproducer’s amazing tale. One of America’s biggest hitmakers in the early ’60s, Bert Berns has always been a shadowy figure, but the roll-call of greats interviewed for this hypnotic doc – Van Morrison, Solomon Burke, Mike Stoller, Macca, Ben E. King – testify to his huge impact on pop and soul. His son Brett, who directs, pulls no punches in exploring Berns’ connections with the Mafia, which helped him jump from co-writer of perennials like Twist And Shout and Everybody Needs Somebody to Atlantic’s chief hit-manufacturer and, ultimately, to heading up his own Bang Records. That last move came via a gigantic, Mob-entangled bust-up with his old Atlantic boss Jerry Wexler; but not long after, in December 1967, the pistolpacking, pill-guzzling Berns succumbed to a heart attack. Steven Van Zandt narrates in his best Sopranos drawl. Pat Gilbert

The Ballad Of Shirley Collins

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Directors: Rob Curry & Tim Plester FIRE FILMS. C/DVD

The renaissance and legacy of the legendary folk singer. This film is refreshingly free from celebrity endorsements. Instead, the directors build up a finely nuanced character portrait. Articulate and engaging, Shirley talks to friends including Current 93’s David Tibet, folk singer Elle Osborne and Stewart Lee about her wartime childhood, her love of English folk music, her late sister and musical partner Dolly, and losing her voice to dysphonia in the 1980s. Her remarkable return following a 30-year retirement culminates in footage of her recording her 2016 comeback album Lodestar at home in Hastings. But the most compelling stories are of her song-collecting trip with Alan Lomax to the US in 1959 to record the likes of Texas Gladden and Almeda Riddle, which remind us how culturally vital it is for folk tradition to be preserved. Mike Barnes

Chuck Stewart

Underrated grunge-metal titans’ career revisited.

Pound for pound BRIT and Grammy-winning indie rockers defend their latest concept on-stage. Is it a win, Win? By Chris Nelson.

Arcade Fire Key Arena, Seattle

Nate Watters (6)

T

he stage is heavy well before the expanded nine-member Arcade Fire climb through boxing-ring ropes to mount it. Fictional business logos have been circling the arena light display for nearly an hour, while video screens loop kitschy adverts for products named after songs on Everything Now. Banners hang from rafters festooned with Everything Now corporate globes, which also adorn roadie uniforms. It’s enough to make you brace for a U2 PopMart redux, and it all feels too clever not by half, but by a half-dozen. Then the band emerge through the crowd, pugilist-style (cf., again, Bono), launch into the new album’s jubilant title track, and everything feels – er, well, rather work-like, really. To look at front-couple Win Butler and Régine Chassagne you’d think they’d just clocked in at Disinterested & Co. Chassagne casts side-eye looks that seem to signal discomfort with something. Perhaps the denim, satin, and leather EN gear weigh more than we suspect. Everything Now works in part because its critiques of our dopamine days are fuelled by their own addictive sounds. If you can’t have fun with that, maybe it’s all too meta? But there are good times afoot. Seeding them is auxiliary player Stuart Bogie on sax, dancing, bouncing, strutting and grooving through Signs Of Life. Close on his heels is Win’s brother, Will, who, by the climax of Rebellion (Lies), has abandoned all musicianly duties to run, literally, laps around the stage, which is set in the centre of the arena. It’s as if the two, abetted by Richard Reed Parry, have accepted for themselves the role of ombudsmen, prodding their bandmates to remember what this adoring crowd have come for: connection, release, communion. It’s not as if Win’s not making an effort. His climbing and dismounting from risers, amps and keyboard benches, even as they rotate, might give other singers vertigo. What’s ambiguous is his motivation. Is it a duty to capital-R Rock, or a service to the audience? Tonight, he feels more duty-bound labourer than joyous servant. After praising the Emerald City’s music history, he warns us, “Don’t let the Silicon [Valley] fuckers run you out of town.” Given the cost of living in tech-saturated Seattle has nearly doubled since 2001, it’s an astute comment – maybe even pretty punk rock, given that a lot of fans here tonight likely spend their days employed by Amazon, Google and Facebook. Win earns huge cheers for cursing President Trump’s

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Tour of duty: (clockwise from right) Win Butler; the stage set for a brawl; content manager Régine Chassagne; Will Butler and Richard Reed Parry make a connection; Win and Régine take centre-stage; Will, drumming up support.

“RÉGINE, HIGH ON THE RISER, WAVING HER HANDS LIKE SHE WAS TELEPORTED FROM ’80s MTV.”

crackdown on immigrants. But later, he’ll only get half-hearted participation attempting to lead the crowd on Neon Bible’s refrain, “Not much chance for survival.” Plenty abstain, as if saying, “Dude, we know. We’ve gathered here today to forget that.” When Chassagne takes the reins for Electric Blue, it’s a different story: the whole band locks in, with each other and with the room. The stage becomes a club floor for nine dancers, Chassagne at the centre, releasing the tension high on the riser while waving her hands in fingerless red leather gloves like she was teleported from ’80s MTV. Per band tradition, the multiple multiinstrumentalists play musical chairs between songs. On the beloved Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels), drummer Jeremy Gara picks up a guitar and Chassagne takes command of his kit. For The Suburbs, they’re both pounding full sets, as if having two completely outfitted drummers wasn’t at all a hoary jam band ploy. Before the night’s out, Chassagne will conjure the melody of We Don’t Deserve Love out of a series of mallet-struck wine and vodka bottles. If the players are chameleons, so are the songs. Everything Now and Reflektor earned obvious comparisons to Blondie and Talking Heads; tonight, Put Your Money On Me is a long-lost Eurythmics cut and Infinite_Content sounds like it was nicked from Wilco. By Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains), everything aligns. Chassagne waves ribbons from her centre perch. Floor lights shoot beam-bridges out to the crowd and mirror balls wash the room in aqua and orchid light. We’ve all boarded the ship from Close Encounters and there’s an alien soiree in full swing. This was the destination all along, and it’s a relief we’ve arrived. As the band digs into Creature Comfort we’re back to Win. “On and on, I don’t know if I want it,” he sings, “On and on, I don’t know what I want.” There’s not much question about what Win wants. He wants the kind of rock’n’roll that saves lives. He and his bandmates can deliver it. But whether that’s a burden or a blessing isn’t always clear.

SETLIST

Everything_Now (Continued) / Signs Of Life / Rebellion (Lies) / Here Comes The Night Time / Haïti /No Cars Go / Electric Blue / Put Your Money On Me / Neon Bible / Infinite_Content / My Body Is A Cage / Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels) / The Suburbs / Ready To Start / Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains) / Reflektor / Afterlife / Creature Comfort / Neighborhood #3 (Power Out) / We Don’t Deserve Love / Everything Now (Continued) / Wake Up

SETLIST

Totally boss Bruce on Broadway is a truly transcendent performance, says Jim Farber.

Bruce Springsteen Walter Kerr Theatre, New York ingling aspects of a therapy session, church confessional, stand-up comedy, mission statement, poetry slam and magic trick, Springsteen On Broadway defies and blurs every category of performance. It’s its own revealing beast. At the start of the two-hour performance, whose script and songs will remain fixed through its entire run, Springsteen ticks off a list. It’s a litany of his professional motivations, a swirl of lust, greed, fear, insecurity, inspiration and love, together fired by the most airily romantic notions of rock’n’roll imaginable. Early on, Springsteen admits the

Rob DeMartin (2)

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contrivance behind his creations. “Yes, the guy who wrote Racing In The Streets never had a driver’s licence,” he says. More, the guy who tirelessly writes about working men, says he “never worked an honest job in my life”. Springsteen repeatedly references his first musical role model, Elvis, positioning him as Moses, leading the lost and loathed into the promised land. Of course, his hometown also comes into play, casting Freehold, New Jersey as the dire place he couldn’t wait to ditch, as well as the one he couldn’t leave behind. Bruce now lives within miles of where he was raised. Naturally, he invokes his parents, including a funny story about his fear and fascination with his dad’s holy preserve (the neighbourhood bar), and a reverent one recounting his mother’s graceful view of work. Springsteen offers an obvious soundtrack to these yarns, songs like Growing Up, My Hometown, My Father’s House, and The Wish (for his mom). Yet, none of their arrangements on acoustic

Bruce almighty: Springsteen at his one-man Broadway show; (below) with his one and only guest, Patti Scialfa.

“A SWIRL OF LUST, GREED, FEAR, INSECURITY, INSPIRATION, AND LOVE.”

Growing Up / My Hometown / My Father’s House / The Wish / Thunder Road / The Promised Land / Born In The USA / Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out / Tougher Than The Rest / Brilliant Disguise / Long Walk Home / The Rising / Dancing In The Dark / Land Of Hope And Dreams / Born To Run

guitar and piano, or any of his vocal inflections, match any we’ve heard before, including those from earlier acoustic performances. The context alone provides its own overhaul of the songs. Likewise, the pin-drop quiet tone Springsteen sets throws fresh focus on the lyrics, while the softer arrangements allow him to rediscover a beauty in his voice bigger shows coarsen. The stories Springsteen tells are drawn from his autobiography, Born To Run, often quoted verbatim. But they feel nothing like they did on the page. While parts of the book felt self-glamorising or over-protected by an accent on analysis over anecdotes, in performance every line sings. Springsteen cherry-picks choice passages of his prose with thought to how they fall against each other and build, as well as how they integrate into the songs, together sustaining the spark of poetry. Like hip-hop, every line beats with the power of rhyme in the cadence of his delivery. The lines thrive through the weight of his reading. There’s a depth of engagement in this performance only the wisest actors can tap. Springsteen is threateningly present in this show, living in the moment with a solo concentration no band performance can match. Of course, the E Streeters are invoked, including a lengthy salute to Clarence Clemons that doubles as an honest address on race. The show does include one guest, his wife Patti Scialfa, harmonising on Tougher Than The Rest and Brilliant Disguise. The latter speaks of the masks and armour that help us evade love. Here, transparency takes their place, illuminating the lone Springsteen with an intensity that allows us to feel his soul.

Presented by the Forestry Commission by arrangement with CODA

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SETLIST

Bandaged ’90s garage-punk revisionists blow curfew-hit NOLA. By Andrew Perry

The Mummies Ponderosa Stomp Festival, Ace Hotel, New Orleans ince 2001, the ’Stomp has been “celebrating the unsung heroes of American music”, with a site-specific accent on Southern roots, and with increasing international renown. For this thirteenth two-day bonanza, there’s a necessary step up to the Big Easy’s swanky Orpheum Theatre, and all is proceeding according to plan on the opening Friday night, thanks to a soul revue variously fronted by Archie Bell

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and Barbara Lynn, and Doug Kershaw’s Cajun-country hoedown. Then, news breaks that New Orleans’ mayor has announced a city-wide curfew for 7pm the following evening as Hurricane Nate approaches, scuppering Day Two. But by Saturday lunchtime a partial bill is underway in a tiny club within the festival-affiliated Ace Hotel, and the assembled Stompers seem far happier escaping meteorological anxieties in these scaled-down confines. “Out of this turd of a hurricane, a beautiful flower is growing,” announces Tom Kenny, the voice of Spongebob Squarepants, guesting with masked surf instrumentalists Los Straitjackets. Tokyo’s explosive Stompin’ Riffraffs further raise the roof, and the stage is set for a rare – and fittingly guerrilla-style – appearance by The Mummies. At the turn of the ’90s, this pseudo-embalmed quartet from San Bruno,

“RUANE HOISTS HIS CHEAPO ORGAN ATOP HIS BROW FOR A SMATTERING OF MUMMIES HITS.”

California, applied stringent garage aesthetics to straight-downthe-line neo-1965-66 rock, when neither were de rigueur. “Fuck CDs!” they protested, as meticulously carved grunge dominated popular music. After just one album and a splurge of 45s, they disbanded in ’94, only to reunite 10 years later, post-White Stripes, for the odd annual engagement. Their hectic breed of no-fi, ‘budgetrock’ chaos begins with 20-second instro Introduction To The Mummies, and as they whizz through the accelerated, obnoxious I’m Gonna Kill My Baby Tonight, the way the four eerily faceless figures comport themselves bespeaks an influence – obvious on reflection, but less so on their tinny recordings – from American hardcore. Think Nuggets by a bandaged, pre-Rollins Black Flag. Between-song banter scorns the usefulness of monitor mixing, and New Orleans’ rep for culinary excellence. “I went to McDonald’s earlier,” notes chief bawler Trent Ruane after a breath-robbing Come On Up. “Yeah, it’s pretty good food here”. Amid much confusion, Ruane soon hoists his cheapo organ atop his brow, and there follows a smattering of Mummies ‘hits’ – a clankingly Count Five-esque I’m Bigger Than You, the baying, moronic Food, Sickles & Girls, and Stronger Than Dirt’s filthy romance – all at extra-adrenalised tempo. Yet there’s no airing of best-known tune (You Must Fight To Live) On The Planet Of The Apes. As if to halt any such requests, The Mummies race out with a terse Shut Your Mouth – 33 minutes, 16 songs, no encore. In the ensuing hours, pesky Nate blows straight past NOLA, hitting Biloxi, Mississippi instead. On a sonic level, the damage has already been done.

Emily Beaver Photography, Joseph Rosen, Edgar Mata

Hurricane horror!

Exhumed again!: The Mummies, with chief bawler Trent Ruane (main pic and inset below), go down a storm at Ponderosa Stomp.

Introduction To The Mummies / I’m Gonna Kill My Baby Tonight / Rosie / Red Cobra #9 / Come On Up / In And Out / You Should Have Known Better / I’m Bigger Than You / Just One More Dance / Little Miss Tee-N-T / Food, Sickles & Girls / Stronger Than Dirt / That Girl / Route 66 / Shut Your Mouth

PRESENTS

Coming up Thu 30 Nov

Mon 18 Dec

Martha High with Osaka Monaurail

Bad Manners

Fri 12 Jan

Sat 20 Jan

Oneness of Juju

Atomic Rooster

Fri 2 + Sat 3 Feb

Thu 8 Feb

Live Dead 69

Josh Smith

Mon 23 Feb

Fri 18 May

Cindy Wilson

Nine Below Zero

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lead vocal – Marc Bolan and Metal Guru springs to mind (only because I still have the evidence recorded on my cassette machine!). However, as a fledgling bedroom guitarist and band gear obsessive, I distinctly remember seeing Stevie Wonder and band in 1974 performing on TOTP, with a fully-miked backline and a slightly different arrangement of Living For The City. I’m also convinced the DJ presenter stressed that it was a live performance. Malcolm Jones, via e-mail Fred says: While I still believe Tam White’s TOTP appearance to be the first full live performance, Malcolm Jones’s e-mail raises several interesting points. Anyone?

WHITHER THE JERRY LEE LEWIS FILM OUTTAKES? What happened to all the unseen footage from the film The London Rock And Roll Show, which documented the 1972 event with Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Bill Haley etc.? Nick Evans, via e-mail Fred says: Another reader asked the same question earlier but I had no luck with the answer until recently when I caught up with the film’s director, Peter Clifton, who replied, “The outtakes were lost.” Cue long faces. But, he adds, “recently I scanned the 35mm film onto a 2K hard drive and it looks better than ever. The London Rock And Roll Show film had no special effects, opticals, dissolves, freeze frames, fades to black, just the simple idea, showing it the way it was, through the naked eye, an accurate timeless record of those legendary original rock’n’rollers – it also saved money as the budget was stretched to the limit.” Clifton revealed how Paul McCartney and George Martin helped mix the live performances. “We transferred the 24-track recordings at George Martin’s Air Studios on Oxford Street; Paul was next door working with George and popped in throughout the afternoon offering invaluable advice about balancing our star vocalists with [backing band] The Houseshakers’ instrumental backing tracks. That saved me hours of work.” Clifton, who also directed Led Zeppelin’s concert film The Song Remains The Same and produced The Punk Rock Movie, is currently writing a book about his various involvements.

WHO CAN TELL WHO WROTE BO’S SONG? Van Morrison credits his version of I Can Tell on his new album Rolling With The Punches to Sam Smith. Some people might think from that that it is by the modern-day British singer. But I always thought it was a Bo Diddley song. Can you

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tell us who wrote it and who Samuel Smith was? Maurice Chittenden, via e-mail Fred says: The original, the B-side of 1962’s You Can’t Judge A Book By The Cover, was listed as a team effort, the songwriting credits naming Bo Diddley and Samuel Smith as co-writers. Who this particular Sam Smith was remains a mystery to me – he doesn’t appear to have penned any further song with Bo and I can find no mention of him in any Bo Diddley files. But I Can Tell has been recorded by a whole range of Diddley devotees over the years, some bearing an Elias McDaniel (Bo’s real name)/Samuel Smith credit, while others have been attributed to Samuels.

MORE ON TOTP LIVE Re the “Who was first live on TOTP?” question (MOJO 287) and the answer naming fellow-Scot Tam White (1975), I began thinking about an alternative answer. While appreciating that 99 per cen f f Pops performances were mimed, my understanding is that originally either the Musicians Union or the BBC insisted that the original studio recordings should not be used and live performance was expected. In reality, full live performance was deemed impractical, indeed undesirable for most bands and often the compromise was to record a new backing track, with the lead vocal sung live on the night. Even this was frowned upon by bands, especially when promoting particularly complex recordings – eg Bohemian Rhapsody, I’m Not In Love etc., and I beli blind eye was turned to ba d miming to the entire studio version of the song, which became the norm. I’m convinced that on occasion a live vocal was sung over the full studio recording, including vocals, creating a pseudo double-tracking effect on the

KEEP BUGGLE-ING ON

Crepe shifter: (clockwise from top) Jerry Lee Lewis live at Wembley in ’72; the crowd; T.Rex; Diddley wax; Buggles 45; when U2 supported themselves.

Further to MOJO 283’s Eyewitness on Video Killed The Radio Star by Buggles: is it true that there is an error in the recording that the group were unhappy with, but it was too late to change it? Dan Thompson, via e-mail Fred says: There was. As Trevor Horn revealed: “I was actually worried because we’d made one mistake in the mix – at the end where the girl comes in singing, ‘You aaarreee a radio star’ in the distance, initially when she comes in she’s just coming from the reverb plate, but the problem was we had a tape delay running and it meant she was basically out of time. I only heard it when we were doing the cut, when it was too late, so I was kind of dreading that bit. But the funny thing was the fact that she was a bit delayed sounded better. So I was relieved.”

HELP FRED… I recently watched U2 on the Jimmy Kimmel Live! show where they talked about how the band opened for themselves during the 1987 Joshua Tree tour. Apparently, their opening act, Los Lobos, did not show up and so U2 disguised themselves with wigs and western clothing, and opened for themselves as The Daltons. Also, there was a tour where Devo opened for themselves as DOVE – The Band Of Love. Are there other examples of bands as their own opening acts? Michael AS Smith, Culver City, California

CONTACTFRED Write to: Ask Fred, MOJO, Fourth Floor, Academic House, 24-28 Oval Road, London NW1 7DT. OR email Fred Dellar direct at [email protected]

Getty Images (3)

Cometh the hour… to get hip to Dellar’s rockin’ ted, synth symphony and arcane reverb wisdom.

ANSWERS MOJO 288 Across: 1 Mick Fleetwood, 9 Love In An Elevator, 10 Pilot, 12 A Passion Play, 15 Otis, 16 Tammy Wynette, 19 Eric, 21 Dr Dre, 22 Harp, 23 Parchman Farm, 27 Toys, 29 Yah, 30 Ode, 32 Remain In Light, 34 Asher, 36 Toni, 38 New Morning, 40 Tropico, 41 Prine, 42 Apache, 43 Earl Okin, 44 Drama, 45 Dio, 46 Pimp, 47 Shuggy, 50 Coyne, 51 Real, 53 Especially, 54 OMD, 56 Out, 57 Apple Venus, 60 Blur, 61 Cud, 62 Airwaves, 63 Days, 64 Dry Down: 1 Malcolm McLaren, 2 Cave, 3 Fripp, 4 Evans, 5 The Nice, 6 Ocean Spray, 7 Deadlier Than The Male, 8 Woody, 11 Ira Hayes, 12 Amy, 13 Axel F, 14 Nimrod, 15 Ochs, 17 Wyman, 18 Tyr, 20 R.E.O., 24 Nun, 25 Alicia Keys, 26 Mahogany, 28 Yeh, 30 Ordinary World, 31 End Of A Century, 33 In Our Gun, 35 Sire, 36 Tramp, 37 Spider, 38 Nicola, 39 Weeks, 48 Get Low, 49 Scenes, 50 Cycles, 52 Lorca, 55 Dada, 58 Viv, 59 Sad

AUDIO A-GO-GO Fill your home with music with a boomin’ TIBO Alchemy Mini-System!

M

OJO has teamed up again with the sound specialists at TIBO Electronics, to offer three lucky readers the chance to each win a covetable TIBO Alchemy Mini-System, worth £300 each. The TIBO Alchemy Mini-System is a superb piece of audio kit which boasts two 50 watt RMS speakers with four direct presets for internet radio and playlists. You can connect a line-in source and play in group mode: as well as being equipped for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth streaming, it can also A

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be controlled by the FREE TIBO App (downloadable on to most iOS and Android devices) or remote control. It comes in a fine walnut finish. And! Readers who enter the special competition discount code tibomojo25 at will receive a 25 per cent discount on the Tibo Alchemy speakers. So fill in Way-Ahead Fred, The Well-Read Head’s crossword and send it to Audio A-Go-Go, MOJO, Academic House, 24-28 Oval Road, London NW1 7DT. Please include your home address, e-mail address and phone number. The closing date for entries is January 2. For the rules of the quiz, see www. mojo4music.com.

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ACROSS 1 His hometown of Warren, Ohio, honoured him with some 400kg drum sticks (4,5) 5 Prison sung in and sung about by Johnny Cash (6) 10 A Leonard Cohen LP – the one that spawned Hallelujah (7,9) 11 Folk icon who co-wrote Turn! Turn! Turn! and Where Have All The Flowers Gone? (4,6) 14 The Cult’s Temple (5) 17 Country singer Keith or The Verve’s Hymns (5) 19 Georgia band lost amid The Tremeloes (1.1.1) 21 King Creosote & Jon Hopkins’ Mercury nominated album (7,4) 23 Adam Horovitz as you know him best (2-4) 24 Did Roger Chapman fill this band with relatives? (6) 26 The --- (Nico album) (3) 27 Folk-rockers whose Seasons album charted in 1970 (5,5) 28 Billy, central to suicidology (4) 29 Lionel Richie’s big welcome (5) 30 Laugh out loud for saxman Coxhill (3) 31 When Metallica covered Thin Lizzy (7,2,3,3) 35 Ms Allen, did The Who admire her pictures? (4) 36 Canada’s Steal My Sunshine hit-makers (3) 39 They declared they were Part Of The Union (7) 40 Influential bluesman who popularised Key To The Highway (3,4,7) 43 It was the first commercially successful solid-body electric guitar (10) 45 Occasionally, like a Carpenters album (3,3,4) 46 Yanovsky of The Lovin’ Spoonful (3) 48 Look ----- (10cc album) (4) 50 A Guns N’Roses hit or Take That’s comeback single (8) 51/28D It was the first rap album to top the US Billboard charts (8,2,3) 55 See photoclue A (4,5) 57 She was the first British artist to sign to Motown (4,3) 58 The Eagles lyin’ optics (4) 59 Confused Merle Tent creates a vocal harmony trio that first formed in 1959 (9) 60 ------- And Bonnie (7) 61 Roam around for a British soul singer (4)

DOWN 1 See photoclue B (4,7) 2 Norman Granz’s jazz label (5) 3 The real fifth Beatle? (6,6) 4 Marti Pellow’s feeling of expectation. (4) 6 Hall And ----- (5) 7 Prefab Sprout’s debut album (5) 8 The Band’s hailed from Big Pink (5) 9 The Manics’ great stormer (7) 12 It’s a Madonna movie (5) 13 What wild things do on a Joni Mitchell album (3,4) 15 Neil Young’s 1999 ways (3) 16 Is this Abba’s most agreeable song? (1,2,1,2,1,2,1,2,1,2,) 18 Thesp Stephen who appeared on David Holmes’s Late Night Tales mix (3) 19 He believed he could fly (1,5) 20 A Pink Floyd album or a Little Boots single (6) 22 Canadian band whose All The Right Reasons album went multi-platinum (10) 23 Avant-garde jazz saxophonist Albert (5) 25 Frankie Beverley’s soul band (4) 27 Motown label with a sense of direction? (6) 28 See 51 Across 29 Jerry, once Mrs Jagger (4) 32 1980 Siouxsie single (6) 33 Jon Anderson & co (3) 34 Sammy the Red Rocker who’s fronted Montrose and Van Halen (5) 37 It worked its magic for Steve Miller (11) 38 Ezra at Mecca collapses into Roddy Frame’s band (5,6) 41 ----- City Blues (Marvin Gaye) (5) 42 See photoclue C (5) 43 Sly & Robbie’s label, did it feature Cab Calloway? (4) 44 The returning sound of a Tom Petty album (4) 47 The Mavericks’ 2013 album (2,4) 49 ------- To Death (Roger Waters album) (6) 52 Folk singer and Wayward Daughter Carthy (5) 53 Piece of music usually performed at the start of films (5) 54 Machine utilised by a Depeche Mode album (5) 56 Man From ---- (Scott Walker) (4)

MOJO 127

Music and Entertainment Auction 21st February

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We hold six sales a year, each packed with interesting lots for the collector and enthusiast. They include autographs and memorabilia from The Beatles and other legendary musicians, collectable vinyl, film memorabilia and posters, guitars and other musical instruments and hi-fi. We are taking in consignments now for our next fine sale on 21 st February. Please contact David Martin on + 44 (0)1635 580595 [email protected]

81 Greenham Business Park, Newbury RG19 6HW www.specialauctionservices.com

ity in viewing ALL qual We are interested ANYWHERE l records and CDs to you. collections of viny Ireland. We’ll travel d an UK e th ut ho throug ld like to Machine if you wou d un So e Th t ac nt ea Co ialists or to arrang ec sp r ou of e on talk with t. viewing appointmen

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THISMONTH

GARY LUCAS AND CAPTAIN BEEFHEART It began piecemeal, using Exploding Notes: but when Don Van Vliet decided to paint, it had to end.

Ken Schreiber, Glenn Kolotkin

HELLO APRIL 1980 I saw Captain Beefheart And His Magic Band at his first show in New York [at Ungano’s] in early 1971. I thought it was the greatest thing I’d ever seen. They looked like mythical creatures with Don [Van Vliet, AKA Captain Beefheart] as the ringmaster. I made a vow to myself that if I ever do anything in music I want to play in this band, and I’m a very strong-willed person. I was the music director of WYBC, Yale’s radio station, and six months later the programme director asked me to interview Don on the phone in preparation for a show at Woolsey Hall, up at Yale. I had my trepidations as I’d read about him and he seemed otherworldly and authoritative, but he was friendly and charming. We met and bonded there and I made a point of seeing him whenever he came to the New York area to do a show. In 1975 Don was playing with [Frank] Zappa on the Bongo Fury Tour in Syracuse NY, and I told him I was a guitarist and wanted to play with him. I’d been working on his music and a week later I auditioned for him. He was complimentary but vague, and so I went to work for my father’s import-export business in Taipei. When I came back two years later with my new wife Ling, I got back in

130 MOJO

The past sure is tense: (above) Beefheart and The Magic Band on the Ice Cream For Crow video shoot, 1982 (from left) Richard ‘Midnight Hatsize’ Snyder, Gary Lucas, Cliff R Martinez (rear), Don Van Vliet, Jeff Moris Tepper; (bottom right) Van Vliet and Lucas, 1980; (below) Gary today.

touch with Don. He was delighted to hear from me. In late 1979 he said, “OK, I want to do music with you now and I also want you [and Ling] to manage me.” In April he sent me a guitar piece to learn from the unreleased Bat Chain Puller album, originally played by John French, called Flavor Bud Living. He then said, “You’re playing it too religiously, like French did. It was smothered in heavy syrup. I want you to use my Exploding Note Theory.” He said to play it like each note had got no relation to the previous note, like fireworks, very staccato.

GOODBYE SEPTEMBER 1982

“I DIDN’T WANT TO BE DON’S ART PIMP.’”

I was a featured soloist on [1980 album] Doc At The Radar Station and played on the 1980-81 tour. When I got us a deal with Epic and Virgin for Ice Cream For Crow [1982], Don said, “Now I want you to be a full member of the band.” When we did Evening Bell, it was a through-composed piano piece, but I had to learn it exactly note for note, which really stretched me – I had to develop a whole new technique. Don once said that, “A guitar is just a stand-up piano.” I was hoping we were going to tour. When I brought the subject up, Don was non-committal. There was no effort to rehearse any new music and no gigs, so essentially the band was over once Ice Cream For Crow came out. Don kept writing songs, but I never got an instruction to learn them

on the guitar. The last time I went to see him, in January 1984, I brought my guitar with me on his request. A couple of times I brought it out, but he said, “No, no.” He couldn’t focus on it. Don could be quite a handful and I never felt comfortable being his art pimp, which is what it seemed my task had become. I had other dreams of doing my own music. He said, “I don’t want to be Captain Beefheart any more; I just want to be Don Van Vliet and paint,” so after five years working closely with him, I resigned. I still love the guy, I’m proud of what I’ve done and part of me is still on a mission to tell people how great it is. Hence the record with Nona Hendryx, because it’s a new take on the music. Nona loves his music and Don told me a couple of times, “I’m trying to sound like a black female blues singer – there’s a woman thing in my voice.” As told to Mike Barnes The World Of Captain Beefheart featuring Nona Hendryx & Gary Lucas is released on Knitting Factory Records.