This month’s Uncut (dated February 2013) features the story behind Gram Parsons’ landmark solo albums, GP and Grievous Angel. His closest collaborator during this period, Emmylou Harris, has her own amazing tales to tell, so it seemed time to bring out this archive feature, originally in Uncut’s August 2007 issue, where Harris takes us through the making of her greatest records. Interview: Bud Scoppa__________________
Lincoln begins with the Battle of Jenkin’s Ferry in Arkansas in April, 1864, at the height of the American Civil War. It is a messy, close-quarter scrap in the mud between black and Confederate soldiers, with men shooting, stabbing, punching, flailing and gouging at each other. The rest of Spielberg’s film is about conflict, too, but of a less visceral kind: the constitutional battles Lincoln faces on screen, and the tussle off-camera between Spielberg’s ropey tendencies to mythologise and Tony Kushner’s scrupulous screenplay that strives for fact and precision.
The Mars Volta have split, after singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala posted a letter to fans appearing to accuse fellow bandmember Omar Rodriguez-Lopez of not being committed enough.