As AC/DC announce Malcolm Young's retirement and the release of a new album, Rock Or Bust, we look back at the life of former frontman Bon Scott in a piece taken from Uncut's December 2013 issue (Take 199). A street poet who’d been inside for ‘carnal knowledge’? A teenybop idol and hippy seer? A tearaway who swam with jellyfish and rode motorbikes naked? “A fantastic guy, a real human, so different to what people thought…” Words: Peter Watts_________________________
With the remastered “fictional documentary” Feast Of Friends set to be released properly for the first time on November 11, here’s a piece from the Uncut archives (February 2007 issue, Take 117) – a look at how The Doors created the epic closer to their final studio album, LA Woman, which would prove to be Jim Morrison’s haunted, spiritual swansong. Ray Manzarek, Robby Krieger and John Densmore tell the story… Words: Mick Houghton
All Leonard Cohen wants for his 80th birthday is a cigarette. He smoked, he estimates, for around 50 years, before he gave up a decade or so ago. “I think a lot about smoking,” he reflects. “I’m thinking about it right now.”
U2’s shock-released new album, Songs Of Innocence, is largely themed around the band’s childhoods and adolescence in Dublin, according to Bono. Well, here’s what came next… This is the full story, as told by those who were there, of U2’s rise from indie hopefuls to becoming the Biggest Rock Band On The Planet. Written by Stephen Dalton, and originally published in Uncut’s December 1999 issue (Take 31).
Robert Fripp showcases the revitalised King Crimson, complete with a brand new, three-drummer lineup, at their first show in Albany, New York, on September 9. In this feature from Uncut’s July 2012 issue (Take 182), Rob Young asks Fripp and many of his former bandmates how they gave birth to a bright and extravagant series of albums and – inadvertently – to a whole new genre: prog rock. Surprising, desperate – and shocking...
Even Jimi Hendrix was taken aback!
As The Felice Brothers tour the UK and perform at End Of The Road festival this weekend, it seems a good time to battle through the Uncut archives and see how the group were doing back in August 2009 (Take 147). Marc Spitz heads out to upstate New York to see how these self-mythologising drifters created a glorious new take on roots rock from the comfort of a chicken coop. Just don’t, whatever you do, mention Bob Dylan and The Band...
Tonight, August 26, Kate Bush returns to the stage for her first live shows in 35 years. To celebrate, here’s our cover story from the archives (June 2010, Take 157), in which Uncut takes a phantasmagorical trip into suburbia to learn the untold story of Kate Bush’s masterpiece, Hounds Of Love. "She ain’t daft. People shouldn’t be fooled by the mystical hippy stuff, this girl is very, very tough." Story by: Graeme Thomson__________
