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REM – The Warner Back-catalogue

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REM – The Warner Back-catalogue

As the 1980s wound down, REM found themselves in an awkward but promising position. The elliptical jangle that clouded their early records had cleared, to reveal a band with a purpose and directness few could have foreseen. Their first records had marked out REM as part of the upsurge in American underground music alongside the likes of Sonic Youth and Husker Du; albeit with a sound more identifiably rooted in rock tradition. Slowly, though, it became obvious that REM’s ambition – and, critically, their potential for universality – reached far beyond that of their peers. If Peter Buck, Mike Mills and Bill Berry appeared to be modest, courteous artisans, and Michael Stipe a strategically odd art-rocker, they had worked out a way to bring these values to stadium-sized audiences and compete with U2 rather than Miracle Legion. 1987’s 'Document' presented a band ready to make the move from Miles Copeland’s IRS (hardly a homespun indie label, but an indie nevertheless) into the covetous arms of Warner Brothers. It may not have been quite the end of the world as they knew it. But plenty of REM’s fans had reason to worry that their cultish heroes would lose even more of the mystique that had made them so appealing. They did, of course. Diehards may argue that REM never bettered their first three albums. Nevertheless, as they became, for a time, the biggest rock band in the world, they were also riven by an internal war: between brash, muscular, marginally eccentric rock, the music a band of REM’s size felt obliged to make; and subtler, acoustically-driven music which, perversely, brought them their biggest successes. The dichotomy is most glaring on 'Green', their Warners debut released on American election day, 1988. From the opening song, “Pop Song ‘89”, the dilemma is hammered home by Stipe, seemingly unsure now who he wants – or who he’s meant - to be. “Hello, I’m sorry I lost myself,” he sings, caught between superstardom and introversion. Where the band had embraced clarity as early as 'Lifes [NB NO APOSTROPHE] Rich Pageant' in ’86, Stipe was only belatedly bringing his words and opinions into focus. 'Green' was designed as a punchy, uplifting, politically mobilising record and, to that end, songs like “Stand” were clarion calls wedded to goofy pop-rock. Greenpeace stalls stood in the foyers of REM gigs now, and the band sounded precariously liberated, confident enough to transmit less ambiguous messages. The beautiful political allegory “World Leader Pretend” even had its lyrics printed on the album sleeve – a previously unthinkable concession. Still, the songs that resonated most on 'Green' were the anomalies: the brittle mandolin sketches “You Are The Everything”, “Hairshirt” and “The Wrong Child”. As REM became major players, few could have imagined that these were establishing a template for the band’s most auspicious success. That became clearer on 1991’s 'Out Of Time', when “Losing My Religion” outperformed its daft single sibling, “Shiny Happy People”. 'Out Of Time' saw the band trying out new directions: rap-rock (the KRS One-augmented “Radio Song”), exuberant dumb pop (“Shiny Happy People”), and, most propitiously, a way of making their folky digressions and Stipe’s paradoxical relationship with fame into something quietly anthemic (“Losing My Religion”). For all its general lushness, it also feels like a record where Stipe is trying to claw back some of his enigmatic status. The explicit politics were dropped – Stipe’s popularity brought him a platform beyond music to express his opinions – and the singer briefly suggested that the album should be called 'The Return Of Mumbles'. On the outstanding track, a stream-of-consciousness meditation called “Country Feedback”, he happily sublimated himself back into the music. Consequently, Stipe scrupulously avoided interviews throughout the early ‘90s, and misinformed rumours proliferated that he had contracted the HIV virus. To many, 1992’s extraordinary 'Automatic For The People' seemed to confirm them, as the singer contemplated mortality from diverse perspectives. “Try Not To Breathe” even suggested that the singer was musing on suicide, until he belatedly revealed that the song came from the perspective of a geriatric woman drawn to euthanasia. Finally, the album found REM concentrating on their mature strengths: dignity, mandolins, sombre brown textures (with string arrangements by John Paul Jones), unblinking seriousness of intent, giant consolatory hugs in “Everybody Hurts” and “Find The River”. It sold extravagantly – 12 million copies worldwide. But even before its release, REM had resolved to undo its good work and make an all-electric album. 'Monster' (1994), designed to give the band some crude, glammy songs to play on their first world tour in half a decade, was not quite as trashy as its reputation suggests. Its best song, “Let Me In”, was a moving requiem for Kurt Cobain constructed out of feedback played by Mike Mills on one of Cobain’s old guitars. But predominantly, 'Monster' was anti-compassionate, and this time Stipe’s narrators were jealous obsessives – stalkers, even - fixated on sex over spiritual consolation. Momentarily free from being totemic bleeding hearts, REM took to the road. Berry had an aneurysm. Mills collapsed with abdominal pains. Stipe had a hernia. And somehow, they also recorded an album in transit, 'New Adventures In Hi-Fi' (1996). Just before its release, Warners renewed their contract, advancing them $80 million for the next five albums: an outlay which, when 'New Adventures' fell well short of its predecessors’ sales, looked a tad overgenerous. Artistically, though, it proved a triumph. If the previous two albums had isolated the acoustic and electric strands of their make-up, 'New Adventures' mixed them up again. At times – notably on “E-Bow The Letter”, a revisiting of “Country Feedback” featuring Patti Smith - a satisfying murk reappeared around the band, as if by returning to heavy touring the band had closed up again. Soon after, physically spent, Bill Berry quit the band, and the remaining trio ignored their long-held pledge to split should any member leave. Instead, they took the opportunity to rethink how an REM record should sound. “Airportman” begins 'Up' (1998) subversively, with drum machines, vintage synths and Stipe intoning, “Great opportunity awaits”. But while they could change the palette and make their songs sound like pretty, occasionally sinister trinkets, REM were incapable of changing their fundamental nature. And once the more experimental tracks on 'Up' drifted away, the overlong album revealed a band perilously close to a pastiche of their younger selves. 'Reveal' (2001) confirmed as much: on “Disappear”, Stipe ruefully noted, “The crushing force of memory, erasing all I’ve been.” A sunny, lavish production also seemed rather stifling. Nevertheless, some fine songs lurked in this polished environment; “Beachball”, in particular, perfected the heat-hazed Beach Boy reverie the band had been fine-tuning for some years. On last year’s 'Around The Sun', however, the lack of substance was more troubling. Stipe’s return to political engagement had undoubted elegance, but the music which accompanied it – a plush, keyboard-heavy updating of 'Automatic'’s gravitas – mostly lacked the craftsmanship and resonance of this enduring band’s best work. Worst of all, 'Around The Sun' felt calculated and over-anxious, when even through the ‘90s REM were reassuringly contrary, constantly veering away from a sensible career path. Peter Buck once called his band, “The acceptable edge of the unacceptable,” but now they seemed orthodox, conservative, content to play the hits on lucrative tours and blandly recycle them for new material. It took REM 12 years to make a commercially exigent follow-up to 'Automatic For The People'. As they probably would have predicted themselves, it wasn’t worth the wait. By John Mulvey

As the 1980s wound down, REM found themselves in an awkward but promising position. The elliptical jangle that clouded their early records had cleared, to reveal a band with a purpose and directness few could have foreseen. Their first records had marked out REM as part of the upsurge in American underground music alongside the likes of Sonic Youth and Husker Du; albeit with a sound more identifiably rooted in rock tradition.

Slowly, though, it became obvious that REM’s ambition – and, critically, their potential for universality – reached far beyond that of their peers. If Peter Buck, Mike Mills and Bill Berry appeared to be modest, courteous artisans, and Michael Stipe a strategically odd art-rocker, they had worked out a way to bring these values to stadium-sized audiences and compete with U2 rather than Miracle Legion. 1987’s ‘Document’ presented a band ready to make the move from Miles Copeland’s IRS (hardly a homespun indie label, but an indie nevertheless) into the covetous arms of Warner Brothers. It may not have been quite the end of the world as they knew it. But plenty of REM’s fans had reason to worry that their cultish heroes would lose even more of the mystique that had made them so appealing.

They did, of course. Diehards may argue that REM never bettered their first three albums. Nevertheless, as they became, for a time, the biggest rock band in the world, they were also riven by an internal war: between brash, muscular, marginally eccentric rock, the music a band of REM’s size felt obliged to make; and subtler, acoustically-driven music which, perversely, brought them their biggest successes.

The dichotomy is most glaring on ‘Green’, their Warners debut released on American election day, 1988. From the opening song, “Pop Song ‘89”, the dilemma is hammered home by Stipe, seemingly unsure now who he wants – or who he’s meant – to be. “Hello, I’m sorry I lost myself,” he sings, caught between superstardom and introversion.

Where the band had embraced clarity as early as ‘Lifes [NB NO APOSTROPHE] Rich Pageant’ in ’86, Stipe was only belatedly bringing his words and opinions into focus. ‘Green’ was designed as a punchy, uplifting, politically mobilising record and, to that end, songs like “Stand” were clarion calls wedded to goofy pop-rock. Greenpeace stalls stood in the foyers of REM gigs now, and the band sounded precariously liberated, confident enough to transmit less ambiguous messages. The beautiful political allegory “World Leader Pretend” even had its lyrics printed on the album sleeve – a previously unthinkable concession. Still, the songs that resonated most on ‘Green’ were the anomalies: the brittle mandolin sketches “You Are The Everything”, “Hairshirt” and “The Wrong Child”. As REM became major players, few could have imagined that these were establishing a template for the band’s most auspicious success.

That became clearer on 1991’s ‘Out Of Time’, when “Losing My Religion” outperformed its daft single sibling, “Shiny Happy People”. ‘Out Of Time’ saw the band trying out new directions: rap-rock (the KRS One-augmented “Radio Song”), exuberant dumb pop (“Shiny Happy People”), and, most propitiously, a way of making their folky digressions and Stipe’s paradoxical relationship with fame into something quietly anthemic (“Losing My Religion”). For all its general lushness, it also feels like a record where Stipe is trying to claw back some of his enigmatic status. The explicit politics were dropped – Stipe’s popularity brought him a platform beyond music to express his opinions – and the singer briefly suggested that the album should be called ‘The Return Of Mumbles’. On the outstanding track, a stream-of-consciousness meditation called “Country Feedback”, he happily sublimated himself back into the music.

Consequently, Stipe scrupulously avoided interviews throughout the early ‘90s, and misinformed rumours proliferated that he had contracted the HIV virus. To many, 1992’s extraordinary ‘Automatic For The People’ seemed to confirm them, as the singer contemplated mortality from diverse perspectives. “Try Not To Breathe” even suggested that the singer was musing on suicide, until he belatedly revealed that the song came from the perspective of a geriatric woman drawn to euthanasia. Finally, the album found REM concentrating on their mature strengths: dignity, mandolins, sombre brown textures (with string arrangements by John Paul Jones), unblinking seriousness of intent, giant consolatory hugs in “Everybody Hurts” and “Find The River”.

It sold extravagantly – 12 million copies worldwide. But even before its release, REM had resolved to undo its good work and make an all-electric album. ‘Monster’ (1994), designed to give the band some crude, glammy songs to play on their first world tour in half a decade, was not quite as trashy as its reputation suggests. Its best song, “Let Me In”, was a moving requiem for Kurt Cobain constructed out of feedback played by Mike Mills on one of Cobain’s old guitars. But predominantly, ‘Monster’ was anti-compassionate, and this time Stipe’s narrators were jealous obsessives – stalkers, even – fixated on sex over spiritual consolation.

Momentarily free from being totemic bleeding hearts, REM took to the road. Berry had an aneurysm. Mills collapsed with abdominal pains. Stipe had a hernia. And somehow, they also recorded an album in transit, ‘New Adventures In Hi-Fi’ (1996). Just before its release, Warners renewed their contract, advancing them $80 million for the next five albums: an outlay which, when ‘New Adventures’ fell well short of its predecessors’ sales, looked a tad overgenerous. Artistically, though, it proved a triumph. If the previous two albums had isolated the acoustic and electric strands of their make-up, ‘New Adventures’ mixed them up again. At times – notably on “E-Bow The Letter”, a revisiting of “Country Feedback” featuring Patti Smith – a satisfying murk reappeared around the band, as if by returning to heavy touring the band had closed up again.

Soon after, physically spent, Bill Berry quit the band, and the remaining trio ignored their long-held pledge to split should any member leave. Instead, they took the opportunity to rethink how an REM record should sound. “Airportman” begins ‘Up’ (1998) subversively, with drum machines, vintage synths and Stipe intoning, “Great opportunity awaits”. But while they could change the palette and make their songs sound like pretty, occasionally sinister trinkets, REM were incapable of changing their fundamental nature. And once the more experimental tracks on ‘Up’ drifted away, the overlong album revealed a band perilously close to a pastiche of their younger selves.

‘Reveal’ (2001) confirmed as much: on “Disappear”, Stipe ruefully noted, “The crushing force of memory, erasing all I’ve been.” A sunny, lavish production also seemed rather stifling. Nevertheless, some fine songs lurked in this polished environment; “Beachball”, in particular, perfected the heat-hazed Beach Boy reverie the band had been fine-tuning for some years. On last year’s ‘Around The Sun’, however, the lack of substance was more troubling. Stipe’s return to political engagement had undoubted elegance, but the music which accompanied it – a plush, keyboard-heavy updating of ‘Automatic’’s gravitas – mostly lacked the craftsmanship and resonance of this enduring band’s best work.

Worst of all, ‘Around The Sun’ felt calculated and over-anxious, when even through the ‘90s REM were reassuringly contrary, constantly veering away from a sensible career path. Peter Buck once called his band, “The acceptable edge of the unacceptable,” but now they seemed orthodox, conservative, content to play the hits on lucrative tours and blandly recycle them for new material. It took REM 12 years to make a commercially exigent follow-up to ‘Automatic For The People’. As they probably would have predicted themselves, it wasn’t worth the wait.

By John Mulvey

The Yes Men

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In 1999, anti-corporate pranksters Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno started running a website, purported to be that of the pernicious World Trade Organisation. In fact, the website slyly exposed the various ways in which the WTO allows corporations to operate unhampered by international law, human rights or environmental strictures. All very clever - but some visitors didn't realise the site was a spoof, and the duo found themselves invited to represent the WTO and speak at conferences around the world. This documentary duly follows the pair around as they deliver preposterous "lectures" to the great and good of the international business community. It's almost impossible to believe how easily the pair are allowed to carry out their charade. All they need do, it seems, is deliver their spiel in the bland cadence and jargon of corporate-speak. At a Finnish conference, none of the audience bat an eyelid as they deliver a presentation explaining how slavery is no longer necessary since it's more convenient for pittance workers to be kept in their own countries. When they demonstrate a "management leisure suit", featuring a TV monitor attached to a phallic protrusion enabling managers to keep employees under surveillance as they work out, they provoke snickers but no outrage. Only when they deliver a powerpoint presentation to a group of young students explaining how First World excrement can be converted into burgers for Third World countries do they excite indignation. But still, no one cottons onto the joke, provoking them into their ultimate stunt - announcing the disbanding of the WTO. And even then, they're taken seriously. The Yes Men is extremely funny, yet underlying it is a feeling of despair - not only at the apparent worldwide sense-of-irony shortage, but that the grey ranks of the corporate have become so dulled to the outrageous moral implications of their quotidian iniquity that they can barely recognise it, even when it's waved so blatantly in front of their faces. Superb. By David Stubbs

In 1999, anti-corporate pranksters Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno started running a website, purported to be that of the pernicious World Trade Organisation. In fact, the website slyly exposed the various ways in which the WTO allows corporations to operate unhampered by international law, human rights or environmental strictures. All very clever – but some visitors didn’t realise the site was a spoof, and the duo found themselves invited to represent the WTO and speak at conferences around the world. This documentary duly follows the pair around as they deliver preposterous “lectures” to the great and good of the international business community.

It’s almost impossible to believe how easily the pair are allowed to carry out their charade. All they need do, it seems, is deliver their spiel in the bland cadence and jargon of corporate-speak. At a Finnish conference, none of the audience bat an eyelid as they deliver a presentation explaining how slavery is no longer necessary since it’s more convenient for pittance workers to be kept in their own countries. When they demonstrate a “management leisure suit”, featuring a TV monitor attached to a phallic protrusion enabling managers to keep employees under surveillance as they work out, they provoke snickers but no outrage. Only when they deliver a powerpoint presentation to a group of young students explaining how First World excrement can be converted into burgers for Third World countries do they excite indignation. But still, no one cottons onto the joke, provoking them into their ultimate stunt – announcing the disbanding of the WTO. And even then, they’re taken seriously.

The Yes Men is extremely funny, yet underlying it is a feeling of despair – not only at the apparent worldwide sense-of-irony shortage, but that the grey ranks of the corporate have become so dulled to the outrageous moral implications of their quotidian iniquity that they can barely recognise it, even when it’s waved so blatantly in front of their faces.

Superb.

By David Stubbs

Oscar Winners in Full

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Best film Million Dollar Baby The Aviator Finding Neverland Ray Sideways Best director Clint Eastwood - Million Dollar Baby Martin Scorsese - The Aviator Alexander Payne - Sideways Taylor Hackford - Ray Mike Leigh - Vera Drake Best actor Jamie Foxx - Ray Clint Eastwood - Million Do...

Best film

Million Dollar Baby

The Aviator

Finding Neverland

Ray

Sideways

Best director

Clint Eastwood – Million Dollar Baby

Martin Scorsese – The Aviator

Alexander Payne – Sideways

Taylor Hackford – Ray

Mike Leigh – Vera Drake

Best actor

Jamie Foxx – Ray

Clint Eastwood – Million Dollar Baby

Don Cheadle – Hotel Rwanda

Johnny Depp – Finding Neverland

Leonardo DiCaprio – The Aviator

Best actress

Hilary Swank – Million Dollar Baby

Imelda Staunton – Vera Drake

Kate Winslet – Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Annette Bening – Being Julia

Catalina Sandino Moreno – Maria Full of Grace

Best supporting actress

Cate Blanchett – The Aviator

Virginia Madsen – Sideways

Laura Linney – Kinsey

Sophie Okonedo – Hotel Rwanda

Natalie Portman – Closer

Best supporting actor

Morgan Freeman – Million Dollar Baby

Alan Alda – The Aviator

Clive Owen – Closer

Jamie Foxx – Collateral

Thomas Haden Church – Sideways

Best foreign language film

The Sea Inside – Spain

As it is in Heaven – Sweden

The Chorus – France

Downfall – Germany

Yesterday – South Africa

Best original screenplay

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

The Aviator

Hotel Rwanda

The Incredibles

Vera Drake

Best adapted screenplay

Sideways

Before Sunset

Finding Neverland

Million Dollar Baby

The Motorcycle Diaries

Best music (song)

Al Otro Lado Del Rio – The Motorcycle Diaries

Accidentally in Love – Shrek 2

Believe – The Polar Express

Learn to be Lonely – The Phantom of the Opera

Look to Your Path (Vois Sur Ton Chemin) – The Chorus

Best music (score)

Finding Neverland

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events

The Passion of the Christ

The Village

Best documentary short subject

Mighty Times: The Children’s March

Autism is a World

The Children of Leningradsky

Hardwood

Sister Rose’s Passion

Sound editing

The Incredibles

The Polar Express

Spider-Man 2

Best sound mixing

Ray

The Aviator

The Incredibles

The Polar Express

Spider-Man 2

Best cinematography

The Aviator

House of Flying Daggers

The Passion of the Christ

The Phantom of the Opera

A Very Long Engagement

Best animated short film

Ryan

Birthday Boy

Gopher Broke

Guard Dog

Lorenzo

Best short film

Wasp

Everything in This Country Must

Little Terrorist

7:35 in the Morning

Two Cars, One Night

Best visual effects

Spider-Man 2

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

I, Robot

Best documentary feature

Born into Brothels

The Story of Weeping Camel

Super Size Me

Tupac: Resurrection

Twist of Faith

Film Editing

The Aviator

Collateral

Finding Neverland

Million Dollar Baby

Ray

Best costume design

The Aviator

Finding Neverland

Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events

Ray

Troy

Best make-up

Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events

The Passion of the Christ

The Sea Inside

Best animated feature film

The Incredibles

Shark Tale

Shrek 2

Best art direction

The Aviator

Finding Neverland

Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events

The Phantom of the Opera

A Very Long Engagement

Lifetime Achievement Award

Sidney Lumet

The Woodsman

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The Woodsman

Sure to send the usual self-appointed moral guardians into screaming apoplexy, this daring, feature debut about a recovering paedophile adopts a sensitive and intelligent approach to its provocative subject matter. Produced by hip hop entrepreneur Damon Dash, this finds Kevin Bacon plays Walter, returning to his Philadelphia hometown after spending 12 years in prison for molesting young girls and trying to restore some semblance of normality to his life: "Normal is when I can be near a girl, talk to a girl, and not think about..." Most of his family have shut him out. He's got a detective (Mos Def, sly and shifty) on his back, just waiting for him to re-offend: "I don't know why they keep letting freaks like you out - it only means we have to catch you again." Matters aren't helped much when he finds he can only get lodgings over the road from a grade school, and his colleagues at the local lumber mill respond aggressively when his past leaks out. Pushed from all sides, you wonder whether he'll cave in. Only Vickie (Sedgewick, Bacon's real life wife), a co-worker at the lumber mill who becomes his lover, offers any understanding: she was abused by her three elder brothers "in chronological order." Adapted from Steven Fechter's play, Kassell's sombre, minimalist film inevitably makes for difficult viewing. How much sympathy are we meant to have for a character responsible for such horrific crimes? But Kassell is less interested in why he committed those offences, or drawing you towards making moral judgements, but whether Walter is capable of changing his nature. In the film's pivotal scene, Walter the Woodsman follows a Little Red Riding Hood of his own into the local park. Has his resolve snapped, or is he testing himself? When he asks her to sit on his lap, your stomach plummets. Bacon - an underrated actor - here turns in a performance that's unsettling and complex; he's neither villain nor victim. With Walter totally withdrawn into himself, Bacon still manages to convey the character's deep-seated self-loathing. "When will I be normal?" he growls at his therapist, both impatient and scared. It's a career peak. There are a few weak links (how in God's name did anyone let a convicted paedophile live opposite a school?). But let them slide. This is a bold, uncomfortable piece of cinema. By Michael Bonner

Sure to send the usual self-appointed moral guardians into screaming apoplexy, this daring, feature debut about a recovering paedophile adopts a sensitive and intelligent approach to its provocative subject matter.

Produced by hip hop entrepreneur Damon Dash, this finds Kevin Bacon plays Walter, returning to his Philadelphia hometown after spending 12 years in prison for molesting young girls and trying to restore some semblance of normality to his life: “Normal is when I can be near a girl, talk to a girl, and not think about…” Most of his family have shut him out. He’s got a detective (Mos Def, sly and shifty) on his back, just waiting for him to re-offend: “I don’t know why they keep letting freaks like you out – it only means we have to catch you again.” Matters aren’t helped much when he finds he can only get lodgings over the road from a grade school, and his colleagues at the local lumber mill respond aggressively when his past leaks out. Pushed from all sides, you wonder whether he’ll cave in. Only Vickie (Sedgewick, Bacon’s real life wife), a co-worker at the lumber mill who becomes his lover, offers any understanding: she was abused by her three elder brothers “in chronological order.”

Adapted from Steven Fechter’s play, Kassell’s sombre, minimalist film inevitably makes for difficult viewing. How much sympathy are we meant to have for a character responsible for such horrific crimes? But Kassell is less interested in why he committed those offences, or drawing you towards making moral judgements, but whether Walter is capable of changing his nature. In the film’s pivotal scene, Walter the Woodsman follows a Little Red Riding Hood of his own into the local park. Has his resolve snapped, or is he testing himself? When he asks her to sit on his lap, your stomach plummets.

Bacon – an underrated actor – here turns in a performance that’s unsettling and complex; he’s neither villain nor victim. With Walter totally withdrawn into himself, Bacon still manages to convey the character’s deep-seated self-loathing. “When will I be normal?” he growls at his therapist, both impatient and scared. It’s a career peak.

There are a few weak links (how in God’s name did anyone let a convicted paedophile live opposite a school?). But let them slide. This is a bold, uncomfortable piece of cinema.

By Michael Bonner

The Life Aquatic

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The Life Aquatic

Once you accept that this isn't quite a comedy and isn't exactly a tragedy, The Life Aquatic is a mischievous and melancholy thing of wonder. A post-modern Moby Dick with some moping and much dicking around, it's daring, different and memorable. Ideas run like water, the cast are decidedly odd, and Anderson confirms himself as the palatable, fashionable face of slightly askew weirdness. It's I Heart Huckabees with a story (of sorts), or Punch Drunk Love with more defeatism and depth. Lots of depth, almost despite itself. Like dolphins, dolphins can swim. The liberal use throughout of Portuguese acoustic versions of Bowie classics (sung by City Of God actor Seu Jorge) is just one of its sweetly challenging quirks. Anderson's third film with Murray (following Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums) is arch, deadpan and, for all the water, dry. This can be annoying or exhilarating: Murray's adept at this glazed gaze, others less so. Payback comes when a late pathos seeps through the studied surrealism and cold, clever comedy. The film sneaks up on you, decks you with an after-burn concerning mortality, having spent the best part of two hours convincing you it's a dark Dada farce. It's again about both misfits and families. Those not fond of Anderson's techniques will find it smart-ass and chilly. Those attuned to his bends will follow it down, leagues. Murray leaves much open to translation as expressionless oceanographer Steve Zissou. Acclaimed for his underwater documentaries, ageing Zissou is hitting hard times. Funding's scarce (from scatty producer Michael Gambon), and his name doesn't wow the world the way it used to. When the mysterious - feasibly non-existent - Jaguar Shark kills a colleague, he peps up the crew of his ship The Belafonte (a dazzling construction) for another exploratory mission. "What would be the scientific purpose?" asks a reporter. "Revenge", he answers. So Team Zissou - a queerly-uniformed crew that can only be described as motley - embark on their make-or-break voyage, the odds against them. They include airline pilot Ned (Wilson), who introduces himself as "possibly" Steve's long-lost son: Steve's stoned when they meet, and enjoys the notion, warms to the kid's enthusiasm. English journalist Jane Winslett-Richardson (Blanchett) tags along for an interview, heavily pregnant. She's soon disillusioned by her jaded idol. "We're being led on an illegal suicide mission by a selfish maniac," mutters the usually topless script girl. Noah Taylor, background-funny as ever, composes the unutterably bad electro score for Steve's films. The comic jewel on board however is blindly loyal German engineer Klaus (Dafoe): a smitten, nodding puppy. Dafoe's rarely been looser. Steve's estranged wife Eleanor (Huston), "the real brains", hovers, ready to help or hinder, while his nemesis/rival (Jeff Goldblum) sniggers and mocks. The interplay between all these eccentrics is half the film. When "action" kicks in, though, Anderson doesn't hesitate to dive overboard. Recklessly sailing uncharted waters, The Belafonte's attacked by pirates, forcing Steve into a heroic shoot'-em-up rescue to the strains of Iggy's "Search And Destroy". Goldblum and bond company rep Bud Cort are kidnapped; our lunatic seamen go in pursuit. There are McGuffins about money, and Steve's dead rapport with Eleanor flickers. But he's really in love with the aloof Jane. Who's in love with Ned. For all his dumb courage, Steve senses a midlife crisis. He must find the Jaguar Shark to give his life meaning, to prove to those he values that for all his impotence in other areas - "Do you not like me any more?" he gruffly sighs - he's still the best at what he does. There's a lovely grace note at the ending. The interiority of Tenenbaums is opened out, with chases, gunplay, sharks and wild, animated underwater creatures. But it's still very Anderson, with jokes emphasised in the "wrong" places, and rhythms wilfully off the beat. Murray's so dour that Wilson's cloned blankness is too much. Blanchett's boldly bizarre, and the rest of the team are allowed camp, broad humour. Twisting like an eel from tired narrative conventions, coining its own metre, this bends your brain till the finale makes perfect, poignant sense. Floats like a jellyfish, stings like a ray. Jacques Cousteau was never like this. By Chris Roberts

Once you accept that this isn’t quite a comedy and isn’t exactly a tragedy, The Life Aquatic is a mischievous and melancholy thing of wonder. A post-modern Moby Dick with some moping and much dicking around, it’s daring, different and memorable. Ideas run like water, the cast are decidedly odd, and Anderson confirms himself as the palatable, fashionable face of slightly askew weirdness. It’s I Heart Huckabees with a story (of sorts), or Punch Drunk Love with more defeatism and depth. Lots of depth, almost despite itself.

Like dolphins, dolphins can swim. The liberal use throughout of Portuguese acoustic versions of Bowie classics (sung by City Of God actor Seu Jorge) is just one of its sweetly challenging quirks. Anderson’s third film with Murray (following Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums) is arch, deadpan and, for all the water, dry. This can be annoying or exhilarating: Murray’s adept at this glazed gaze, others less so. Payback comes when a late pathos seeps through the studied surrealism and cold, clever comedy. The film sneaks up on you, decks you with an after-burn concerning mortality, having spent the best part of two hours convincing you it’s a dark Dada farce. It’s again about both misfits and families. Those not fond of Anderson’s techniques will find it smart-ass and chilly. Those attuned to his bends will follow it down, leagues.

Murray leaves much open to translation as expressionless oceanographer Steve Zissou. Acclaimed for his underwater documentaries, ageing Zissou is hitting hard times. Funding’s scarce (from scatty producer Michael Gambon), and his name doesn’t wow the world the way it used to. When the mysterious – feasibly non-existent – Jaguar Shark kills a colleague, he peps up the crew of his ship The Belafonte (a dazzling construction) for another exploratory mission. “What would be the scientific purpose?” asks a reporter. “Revenge”, he answers.

So Team Zissou – a queerly-uniformed crew that can only be described as motley – embark on their make-or-break voyage, the odds against them. They include airline pilot Ned (Wilson), who introduces himself as “possibly” Steve’s long-lost son: Steve’s stoned when they meet, and enjoys the notion, warms to the kid’s enthusiasm. English journalist Jane Winslett-Richardson (Blanchett) tags along for an interview, heavily pregnant. She’s soon disillusioned by her jaded idol. “We’re being led on an illegal suicide mission by a selfish maniac,” mutters the usually topless script girl. Noah Taylor, background-funny as ever, composes the unutterably bad electro score for Steve’s films. The comic jewel on board however is blindly loyal German engineer Klaus (Dafoe): a smitten, nodding puppy. Dafoe’s rarely been looser.

Steve’s estranged wife Eleanor (Huston), “the real brains”, hovers, ready to help or hinder, while his nemesis/rival (Jeff Goldblum) sniggers and mocks. The interplay between all these eccentrics is half the film.

When “action” kicks in, though, Anderson doesn’t hesitate to dive overboard. Recklessly sailing uncharted waters, The Belafonte’s attacked by pirates, forcing Steve into a heroic shoot’-em-up rescue to the strains of Iggy’s “Search And Destroy”. Goldblum and bond company rep Bud Cort are kidnapped; our lunatic seamen go in pursuit. There are McGuffins about money, and Steve’s dead rapport with Eleanor flickers. But he’s really in love with the aloof Jane. Who’s in love with Ned. For all his dumb courage, Steve senses a midlife crisis. He must find the Jaguar Shark to give his life meaning, to prove to those he values that for all his impotence in other areas – “Do you not like me any more?” he gruffly sighs – he’s still the best at what he does. There’s a lovely grace note at the ending.

The interiority of Tenenbaums is opened out, with chases, gunplay, sharks and wild, animated underwater creatures. But it’s still very Anderson, with jokes emphasised in the “wrong” places, and rhythms wilfully off the beat. Murray’s so dour that Wilson’s cloned blankness is too much. Blanchett’s boldly bizarre, and the rest of the team are allowed camp, broad humour. Twisting like an eel from tired narrative conventions, coining its own metre, this bends your brain till the finale makes perfect, poignant sense. Floats like a jellyfish, stings like a ray. Jacques Cousteau was never like this.

By Chris Roberts

Interview: Wayne Kramer

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Interview: Wayne Kramer
UNCUT: You're performing a special concert with Sun Ra Arkestra this month. What kind of set can we expect? KRAMER: Y'know, its hard to say. What we're aiming at, is being true to the spirit of the MC5 and true to the spirit of experimentation and pure rock and roll. We've never been a band for doi...

UNCUT: You’re performing a special concert with Sun Ra Arkestra this month. What kind of set can we expect?

KRAMER: Y’know, its hard to say. What we’re aiming at, is being true to the spirit of the MC5 and true to the spirit of experimentation and pure rock and roll. We’ve never been a band for doing things half heartedly and we don’t intent to start now just because we’re older. I just spoke to one of the Arkestra a few minutes ago and we’re looking at the possibility of joining each others sets at some point and coming together at the end.

Will you be playing any Arkestra compositions during DKT / MC5 set?

I’m certain we’ll be performing Starship which is an MC5 / Sun Ra composition from Kick Out The Jams, but we haven’t discussed the rest of the set yet. We’re just so excited about being able to pick up where we left off in the sixties and continue this effort to push music further and further into the future.

Sun Ra loved to dress up in wild, flamboyant costumes. Will you be dressing up for the show?

I hadn’t really thought about it, but now you’ve mentioned it we’ d better put some effort into that. After all, the whole point of this gig is to raise the bar and remind people that MC5 was always about participating in an on-going experiment in life and music and the possibilities of creative power. If you keep an open mind, great things can happen!

Your label suggested you might be accompanied by a few special guests…

We’ve been talking to a bunch of people including Handsome Dick Manitoba (The Dictators), Lisa Kekaula (Bellrays), Billy Duffy (The Cult) and Mick Jones (The Clash). Mick said he would love to do it, but it looks like he might not be able to make it because of his work schedule. One friend we definitely have joining us is David Thomas from Pere Ubu. I’ve asked him to compose something special for the event and I’ m confident he’ll come up with something wonderful.

Are there any plans to record the show for a live DVD or album?

We’ll be filming the whole thing, but we won’t know til afterwards if it’s any good or not. I’m keeping my fingers crossed it will be a fantastic night, but I can’t predict if we’ll manage to capture that on film or if someone ends up with their thumb over the lens. What I can tell you, is we’re making a conscious effort to archive everything we do from now on. If the London show goes well, there’s also a possibility we might do a similar thing in the States. We haven’t made any plans yet, but its a very compelling idea.

Why do you think free jazz has such a bad reputation?

I have a theory about this and the theory is that free jazz lost its focus when John Coltrane, Albert Ayler and Sun Ra died. They were the ones that really pushed the music to new places and when they went there was no-one left to carry the torch. Of course there were talented players like Archie Shepp, Pharaoh Sanders and Cecil Taylor, but they didn’t have the personality of Trane or Ra. Something else had to fill in the vacuum left by those artists and that is what I call the curse of Miles Davis. I love Miles, but unfortunately his cool and cerebral music inspired a whole generation of musicians to start making fusion.

Just hearing the word fusion conjures images of noodling instrumentals and self-indulgent solos.

Hahaha. It was a terrible name for a terrible genre where nothing really fused. To make matters worse, the records just got quieter and lamer until we were left with smooth jazz. Which, lets be honest, is neither smooth nor jazz. It’s just elevator muzak. My point is, after Albert, Coltrane and Sun Ra were gone there was nobody radical left on the frontlines.

Have you been working on any new DKT / MC5 material since you reformed?

We actually haven’t done any writing together yet. We’ve been talking about it, but we didn’t know if we could play together until we did that show in London. We were so humbled by the response that night and the world tour we did last summer, that we’ve been thinking we should try and do some new songs. Maybe this gig will be the incentive we need?

What’s been on your turntable recently?

A wonderful instrumental group called the Nils Klein Singers and lots of old records by Cole Porter and George Gershwin. I’ve been going back to the great American composers and studying how they wrote their songs. Most of my work today is music for film and television so I’m keen to understand more about symphonic arrangements. In fact, I think I’m going to take some classes so I know how to write for violins and french horns. Real life is in session and I want to participate in it!

Are you working on any film material at the moment?

I’ve got a couple of different projects on the back burner, but the main thing I’ve been doing is music for extreme sports programmes. Its great fun because they let me do exactly what I want. I hate corny,gladiatorial tracks with lots of trumpets, so I try to put lots of other elements in there and use the job skills I have in a way thats outside the world of rock. I’ m a middle age man now and although I’ll always play in bands, there’s many other things I would like to do.

Interview by Sarah-Jane

DKT / MC5 & Sun Ra Arkestra play the Royal Festival Hall, London on Friday 25 February

Julian Cope – Citizen Cain’d

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Julian Cope – Citizen Cain’d

For music fans who once worshipped at the pop altar of Saint Julian, the past eight years haven't been easy. Books the size of breezeblocks on pagan burial grounds in the Outer Hebrides that have sold, remarkably, in their thousands. Pseudonymous, mail-order-only, instrumental prog-jams in praise of Norse Gods. The patience of those who like their Julian Cope singing, like, songs, with tunes, has been tested beyond all reasonable endurance. Fuck the druid. Whatever happened to the songwriter? The good news is he's here on Citizen Cain'd, Cope's most coherent musical dispatch yet since vetoing the mainstream record industry in the late-'90s and retreating into his own cyber-haven of maximum creative freedom with all its attendant pitfalls of quality control. The bad news is that the first of the album's two, markedly different discs is very much a false start, tapping into the same regressive Stooges squeal of his latter LAMF/Brain Donor side-projects (opener "Hell Is Wicked" even takes the Iggy schtick as far as mimicking the stabbing, monotone piano of "I Wanna Be Your Dog"). Still, there's one good joke: "I'm Living In The Room They Found Saddam In". Reads like a Half Man Half Biscuit song. Plays like "Gimme Danger" from Raw Power with added Bontempi. You get the picture. We don't really see the back of Iggy Cope until part two where, at last, the melodic Julian of old returns to haunt us. "Feels Like A Crying Shame" is pure stoner-stuck-in-a-soulful-groove, but the voice is unmistakably that of the man who induced goosebumps on Peggy Suicide‘s “Pristeen“ or, further back still, The Teardrops‘ "The Great Dominions". It gets better: "World War Pigs" overcomes such titular schoolboy politics in a brawny, rumbling acoustic mantra; "Stomping Dionysus" has all the sparkle of "Jellypop Perky Jean"; "Homeless Strangers" is a beautifully sung, grand ‘70s country-rock lament; and though it lurches into cod-cosmic babbling, the plodding "Edge Of Death" is worth sticking with for its barmy, melodramatic crescendo. By the skin of its teeth, in extra time Citizen Cain'd manages to claim “best Cope album in a decade” (since 1995's 20 Mothers). But it’s a scrappy victory from an audibly flawed (not floored) genius. By Simon Goddard

For music fans who once worshipped at the pop altar of Saint Julian, the past eight years haven’t been easy. Books the size of breezeblocks on pagan burial grounds in the Outer Hebrides that have sold, remarkably, in their thousands. Pseudonymous, mail-order-only, instrumental prog-jams in praise of Norse Gods. The patience of those who like their Julian Cope singing, like, songs, with tunes, has been tested beyond all reasonable endurance. Fuck the druid. Whatever happened to the songwriter?

The good news is he’s here on Citizen Cain’d, Cope’s most coherent musical dispatch yet since vetoing the mainstream record industry in the late-’90s and retreating into his own cyber-haven of maximum creative freedom with all its attendant pitfalls of quality control. The bad news is that the first of the album’s two, markedly different discs is very much a false start, tapping into the same regressive Stooges squeal of his latter LAMF/Brain Donor side-projects (opener “Hell Is Wicked” even takes the Iggy schtick as far as mimicking the stabbing, monotone piano of “I Wanna Be Your Dog”). Still, there’s one good joke: “I’m Living In The Room They Found Saddam In”. Reads like a Half Man Half Biscuit song. Plays like “Gimme Danger” from Raw Power with added Bontempi. You get the picture.

We don’t really see the back of Iggy Cope until part two where, at last, the melodic Julian of old returns to haunt us. “Feels Like A Crying Shame” is pure stoner-stuck-in-a-soulful-groove, but the voice is unmistakably that of the man who induced goosebumps on Peggy Suicide‘s “Pristeen“ or, further back still, The Teardrops‘ “The Great Dominions”. It gets better: “World War Pigs” overcomes such titular schoolboy politics in a brawny, rumbling acoustic mantra; “Stomping Dionysus” has all the sparkle of “Jellypop Perky Jean”; “Homeless Strangers” is a beautifully sung, grand ‘70s country-rock lament; and though it lurches into cod-cosmic babbling, the plodding “Edge Of Death” is worth sticking with for its barmy, melodramatic crescendo.

By the skin of its teeth, in extra time Citizen Cain’d manages to claim “best Cope album in a decade” (since 1995’s 20 Mothers). But it’s a scrappy victory from an audibly flawed (not floored) genius.

By Simon Goddard

Queen on Screen

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Queen on Screen

They're responsible for the Britain's favourite song, 'Bohemian Rhapsody', as well as its favourite live performance - 'Live Aid in '85'. Now, more than a decade after the death of Freddie Mercury. Queen have returned for a world tour, with a new lead singer. In Uncut Take 94 (March 2005), Uncut magazine charts the rise of one of the world's biggest bands, while Brian May and new boy Paul Rodgers reveal all about the comeback of 2005. Get information on Uncut subscriptions. At Uncut.co.uk we've compiled a collection of ten of the finest Queen anthems on Video, simply click the links and you can watch all ten in whichever order you prefer. You'll need Realplayer from realnetworks.com/freeplayer.

They’re responsible for the Britain’s favourite song, ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, as well as its favourite live performance – ‘Live Aid in ’85’. Now, more than a decade after the death of Freddie Mercury. Queen have returned for a world tour, with a new lead singer.

In Uncut Take 94 (March 2005), Uncut magazine charts the rise of one of the world’s biggest bands, while Brian May and new boy Paul Rodgers reveal all about the comeback of 2005.

Get information on Uncut subscriptions.

At Uncut.co.uk we’ve compiled a collection of ten of the finest Queen anthems on Video, simply click the links and you can watch all ten in whichever order you prefer.

You’ll need Realplayer from realnetworks.com/freeplayer.

Bohemian Rhapsody

high | low

A capella intro, lush ballad sequence, operatic wig-out and air-guitar finale make for an Olympian six-minute concept that’s buried deep in the hard-drive of your soul – whether you like it or not.
I Want To Break Free

high | low

Starts with the band dressed as Coronation Street characters. Then we’re transported to a Queen concert with suspect Nuremberg overtones. Banned by MTV
Bicycle Race

high | low

Fifty lovely ladies riding around Wembley stadium in the buff. That’s all you need to know.
Radio Ga Ga

high | low

Queen Superimposed over Fritz Lang’s ‘Metropolis’ – but Deacon’s towering Afro steals the show.
The Miracle

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Four children perform as Queen. Most memorable for the sight of the kid playing Mercury in his gay clone phase.
I’m Going Slightly Mad

high | low

Mercury as Lord Byron, May in a penguin costume, and Taylor riding a tricycle with a kettle strapped to his head.
Killer Queen

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Glam meets music hall, with a chorus infectious as SARS. Altogether now: “She’s a killer qu-eeeeeeeeeeeeen”.
It’s A Hard Life

high | low

Mercury in a giant prawn outfit, Taylor as an Elizabethan prince, May playing guitar on an elongated human skull and Deacon looking uncomfortable as a silver unicorn.
Somebody To Love

high | low

Forget the George Michael remake. Go to the original if layer upon layer of muscular longing is what you’re after. No office party is complete without it.
We Are The Champions

high | low

Lock arms, sway from side to side and sing-along-a-Freddie. The “We Shall Overcome” of rock, and the alternative national anthem at big sporting events.

For more information on Queen, go to queenonline.com. If you’d like to buy Queen material, go to shop.queenonline.com

Hunter S Thompson 1937-2005

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Hunter S Thompson 1937-2005

Hunter S. Thompson died at his Colorado home on February 20 from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The legendary Rolling Stone reporter, counter-culture chronicler, "gonzo" journalist, pro-drug campaigner, and author of Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas was just 67. At the time of writing, no motive has been given for his apparent suicide. A natural born writer, Hunter Stockton Thompson performed stunning acts of violation on the English language, penning flamethrower polemics on American politics and culture that seemed to roar off the page and engulf the reader. He also dabbled in real-life politics in 1970, standing for Sheriff of Colorado’s Pitkin County on a drug decriminalisation platform under the Freak Power Party banner. After spotting the Republican candidate’s buzz cut, the reckless author shaved his head entirely and referred to his rival as “my long-haired opponent” throughout the campaign. He lost by a few votes. Sadly, Thompson’s fiercely funny and hallucinatory prose proved notoriously difficult to capture on screen. Bill Murray made a bold fist of playing the gonzo author in Art Linson’s cult 1980 biopic Where The Buffalo Roam, but Doctor Gonzo's acerbic energy was largely absent. Eighteen years later, Terry Gilliam made a doomed but impressive attempt at filming Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas. Johnny Depp shaved his head in the Thompson role, while Benicio del Toro bulked out to play his "Simoan" lawyer sidekick, Oscar Acosta. The hyperkinetic movie was a fascinating, acid-fried mess, but it bombed at the box office. All the same, Depp and Del Toro became firm friends with Thompson. When Depp visited the author at his fortified compound in Colorado, the two Kentucky-born outlaws bonded by blasting shotguns at gas canisters topped with nitro-glycerine, detonating giant fireballs in the Rocky Mountain night. Thompson later shaved Depp's head for Gilliam's film, and even made a brief cameo. Bored during the shoot, the mischievous author phoned a bomb scare through to Depp’s club, The Viper Room. "Man, he's a sickness," Depp told Rolling Stone. "He's a fucking disease that has penetrated my fucking skin." Depp and Del Toro are also planning a film version of the author’s debut novel, The Rum Diaries, written in 1959. Del Toro disputes accounts of Thompson’s creative decline, telling Uncut last year: "You should read some of his letters, they’re pretty damn good. People who say he was great back in 1972 – they don’t know anything, in my opinion. He hasn’t written a novel or a book in a while, but still he’s very sharp. You probably have to experience it, but he’s very strong and he can run circles around you when it comes to language." Journalistic fashion may have moved beyond Thompson’s ranting style in recent years, but he could still hit the target like a smart bomb, even in his supposedly declining years. His 1994 obituary for Richard Nixon in Rolling Stone defied polite convention by eviscerating the late president as "a liar, a quitter and a bastard... a cheap crook and a merciless war criminal." Seven years later, just days after the 9/11 attacks, Thompson began his weekly column for the US sports news website ESPN by astutely predicting "a sort of Christian Jihad, fueled by religious hatred and led by merciless fanatics on both sides... it will be guerrilla warfare on a global scale, with no front lines and no identifiable enemy." That was Thompson’s enduring gift. He was always much sharper, smarter and funnier than his drug-damaged public caricature suggested. The world of high-octane literary fireworks will a poorer, drabber and – let’s face it – less dangerous place without him. By Stephen Dalton

Hunter S. Thompson died at his Colorado home on February 20 from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The legendary Rolling Stone reporter, counter-culture chronicler, “gonzo” journalist, pro-drug campaigner, and author of Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas was just 67. At the time of writing, no motive has been given for his apparent suicide.

A natural born writer, Hunter Stockton Thompson performed stunning acts of violation on the English language, penning flamethrower polemics on American politics and culture that seemed to roar off the page and engulf the reader. He also dabbled in real-life politics in 1970, standing for Sheriff of Colorado’s Pitkin County on a drug decriminalisation platform under the Freak Power Party banner. After spotting the Republican candidate’s buzz cut, the reckless author shaved his head entirely and referred to his rival as “my long-haired opponent” throughout the campaign. He lost by a few votes.

Sadly, Thompson’s fiercely funny and hallucinatory prose proved notoriously difficult to capture on screen. Bill Murray made a bold fist of playing the gonzo author in Art Linson’s cult 1980 biopic Where The Buffalo Roam, but Doctor Gonzo’s acerbic energy was largely absent. Eighteen years later, Terry Gilliam made a doomed but impressive attempt at filming Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas. Johnny Depp shaved his head in the Thompson role, while Benicio del Toro bulked out to play his “Simoan” lawyer sidekick, Oscar Acosta. The hyperkinetic movie was a fascinating, acid-fried mess, but it bombed at the box office.

All the same, Depp and Del Toro became firm friends with Thompson. When Depp visited the author at his fortified compound in Colorado, the two Kentucky-born outlaws bonded by blasting shotguns at gas canisters topped with nitro-glycerine, detonating giant fireballs in the Rocky Mountain night. Thompson later shaved Depp’s head for Gilliam’s film, and even made a brief cameo. Bored during the shoot, the mischievous author phoned a bomb scare through to Depp’s club, The Viper Room. “Man, he’s a sickness,” Depp told Rolling Stone. “He’s a fucking disease that has penetrated my fucking skin.”

Depp and Del Toro are also planning a film version of the author’s debut novel, The Rum Diaries, written in 1959. Del Toro disputes accounts of Thompson’s creative decline, telling Uncut last year: “You should read some of his letters, they’re pretty damn good. People who say he was great back in 1972 – they don’t know anything, in my opinion. He hasn’t written a novel or a book in a while, but still he’s very sharp. You probably have to experience it, but he’s very strong and he can run circles around you when it comes to language.”

Journalistic fashion may have moved beyond Thompson’s ranting style in recent years, but he could still hit the target like a smart bomb, even in his supposedly declining years. His 1994 obituary for Richard Nixon in Rolling Stone defied polite convention by eviscerating the late president as “a liar, a quitter and a bastard… a cheap crook and a merciless war criminal.”

Seven years later, just days after the 9/11 attacks, Thompson began his weekly column for the US sports news website ESPN by astutely predicting “a sort of Christian Jihad, fueled by religious hatred and led by merciless fanatics on both sides… it will be guerrilla warfare on a global scale, with no front lines and no identifiable enemy.”

That was Thompson’s enduring gift. He was always much sharper, smarter and funnier than his drug-damaged public caricature suggested. The world of high-octane literary fireworks will a poorer, drabber and – let’s face it – less dangerous place without him.

By Stephen Dalton

Interview: Juliette Lewis

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Interview: Juliette Lewis

Already notorious for roles in movies like Cape Fear, Husbands And Wives, Natural Born Killers and From Dusk Till Dawn, Juliette Lewis now brings her rock band Juliette Lewis and the Licks to the UK. They’re embarking on a brief tour (beginning at the NME Astoria show tonight) to herald the E.P. “Like A Bolt Of Lightning”. Album “You’re Speaking My Language” follows around May. Uncut spoke to the rock chick as she scrubbed up for the Baftas in London. So all you ever wanted to do was rock? “Oh yeah, man. Ferociously. Our stuff isn’t overly dark or angry or anything, it’s there to energize you. It’s rhythm-driven. If I want it more emotional, I tell the guitarist to make it more dangerous, or make it explode, and he just runs with it. I was singing before I acted, but I was also attracted to drama, and, y’know, I got successful at that, which isn’t a bad thing. Nobody would know it to look at me, but the movies I liked as a kid were musicals - All That Jazz, Hair, Fame, Annie, all that stuff - that’s where my little youthful imagination was. Now I think: Jagger did performance, Iggy does movies. It’s a logistical challenge, as I’ve just finished two movies that’ll be out this year, and I’m absolutely still acting, but music is right now where my focus and attention are.” Did performing those PJ Harvey songs in Kathryn Bigelow’s Strange Days impact upon you? “Yeah, that was a thrill, but the director set a template and I stuck to it. These songs now are my stories, my language. Over time I’ve loved jazz, Miles Davis and Chet Baker, then Janis and Jimi and Creedence, then classic rock. I recommend everyone wakes up in the morning to Bachman Turner Overdrive’s “Taking Care Or Business” - you’ll feel better. Somewhere inside me my spirit is that of a big heavy trucker dude. But I’m also into The Cure, New Order, The Killers, TV On The Radio…” You've already swallowed some fairly fierce reviews as a rock star… “Well, journalists judge me harshly cos they think they know me from the movies. But I don’t mind - it just means we have to be that much better than any other new band! That’s the challenge. We’ve been together two years, we’ll keep working hard. Onstage I’m the opposite of shy. I’m the opposite of the girl who wants to look pretty and be liked. I’m somebody who’s spastic and puts myself out there. My heart’s in it, so it’s fun. Look, these shows will be interesting, exciting and awkward, all rolled into one - which I‘ll love.” Aren’t you a bit too rock’n’roll for The Baftas? “In those scenarios, I’m always a fish out of water. But I have a beautiful purple Julien MacDonald dress, and I’ll behave as I introduce whoever wins whatever. See, London may be boring for you guys, but for me it‘s a new non-American environment.” In Chuck Palahniuk’s last book, you hit him with a bunch of berserk questions. The sanest was: 'Do you like rollercoasters?' “I think the answer to that says a lot about someone. And yes, I do, especially with the jetlag fever I have right now. The Licks will take you take high, take you low, through the roof and through the floor. Check us out. Then come say hi. It‘s not like I have bodyguards!” Interview By Chris Roberts

Already notorious for roles in movies like Cape Fear, Husbands And Wives, Natural Born Killers and From Dusk Till Dawn, Juliette Lewis now brings her rock band Juliette Lewis and the Licks to the UK. They’re embarking on a brief tour (beginning at the NME Astoria show tonight) to herald the E.P. “Like A Bolt Of Lightning”. Album “You’re Speaking My Language” follows around May. Uncut spoke to the rock chick as she scrubbed up for the Baftas in London.

So all you ever wanted to do was rock?

“Oh yeah, man. Ferociously. Our stuff isn’t overly dark or angry or anything, it’s there to energize you. It’s rhythm-driven. If I want it more emotional, I tell the guitarist to make it more dangerous, or make it explode, and he just runs with it. I was singing before I acted, but I was also attracted to drama, and, y’know, I got successful at that, which isn’t a bad thing. Nobody would know it to look at me, but the movies I liked as a kid were musicals – All That Jazz, Hair, Fame, Annie, all that stuff – that’s where my little youthful imagination was. Now I think: Jagger did performance, Iggy does movies. It’s a logistical challenge, as I’ve just finished two movies that’ll be out this year, and I’m absolutely still acting, but music is right now where my focus and attention are.”

Did performing those PJ Harvey songs in Kathryn Bigelow’s Strange Days impact upon you?

“Yeah, that was a thrill, but the director set a template and I stuck to it. These songs now are my stories, my language. Over time I’ve loved jazz, Miles Davis and Chet Baker, then Janis and Jimi and Creedence, then classic rock. I recommend everyone wakes up in the morning to Bachman Turner Overdrive’s “Taking Care Or Business” – you’ll feel better. Somewhere inside me my spirit is that of a big heavy trucker dude. But I’m also into The Cure, New Order, The Killers, TV On The Radio…”

You’ve already swallowed some fairly fierce reviews as a rock star…

“Well, journalists judge me harshly cos they think they know me from the movies. But I don’t mind – it just means we have to be that much better than any other new band! That’s the challenge. We’ve been together two years, we’ll keep working hard. Onstage I’m the opposite of shy. I’m the opposite of the girl who wants to look pretty and be liked. I’m somebody who’s spastic and puts myself out there. My heart’s in it, so it’s fun. Look, these shows will be interesting, exciting and awkward, all rolled into one – which I‘ll love.”

Aren’t you a bit too rock’n’roll for The Baftas?

“In those scenarios, I’m always a fish out of water. But I have a beautiful purple Julien MacDonald dress, and I’ll behave as I introduce whoever wins whatever. See, London may be boring for you guys, but for me it‘s a new non-American environment.”

In Chuck Palahniuk’s last book, you hit him with a bunch of berserk questions. The sanest was: ‘Do you like rollercoasters?’

“I think the answer to that says a lot about someone. And yes, I do, especially with the jetlag fever I have right now. The Licks will take you take high, take you low, through the roof and through the floor. Check us out. Then come say hi. It‘s not like I have bodyguards!”

Interview By Chris Roberts

Interview: Josh Rouse

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UNCUT: Why have you left Nashville for Spain? “I was ready to leave, y’know? I enjoyed being around that environment, where all my friends were musicians or songwriters. That was great, but every once in a while it got to be a little too much. Although, living in Spain now, I’m starting to mi...

UNCUT: Why have you left Nashville for Spain?

“I was ready to leave, y’know? I enjoyed being around that environment, where all my friends were musicians or songwriters. That was great, but every once in a while it got to be a little too much. Although, living in Spain now, I’m starting to miss it a bit, all the talking about microphones and real nerdy bullshit like that, ha! The things you don’t think you’ll miss…

“I’d enjoyed Spain when I’d toured here before. It’d always been somewhere special in the back of my mind. I wanted to learn the language, check out the culture. It’s fun taking my Spanish lessons – as you get older you never seem to do things like that any more. It’s giving my brain a healthy work-out. I had friends here, it seemed like the thing to do. And I can play more. To be honest, I think I’ll probably have a longer career here in Europe. I do pretty well in the States, but over there they’re so fickle, y’know?”

Fickle? You should try Britain!

“Oh, London’s fickle, sure. But Spain, Portugal, France – it’s not like they’re into one or two songs, they’ve got all the records, like as if they were fans of Dylan or Neil Young! They really follow an artist. Whereas in the States – or Britain, sure – there’s just so much coming at you all the time. Here, they concentrate on you.

“And it’s a beautiful place, Altea. Right by the ocean, an hour south of Valencia, just north of Alicante. Although they told me it never rains, and it’s now been raining five days solid.”

The 1972 album marked a departure in sound for you. What’s unique about this record?

“We weren’t so conscious about trying to make it sound ‘70s this time. My stuff’s always had that influence anyway. “Soft rock” is a horrible phrase to some people, but I always like what nobody else does. Hey, it’s coming back! But it’s just folksy songs. It’s mellow, I guess. It’s just nice to put on, listen if you want. If not, you can clean the house or something while it’s playing – that’s the kind of music I like. If I could write a song as basic and sincere as “Woman” by John Lennon I would, but I‘m…well, I‘m not cynical, but I like a little joke every now and then. Like to slip in a line about trying on her clothes. Things you wouldn‘t get with the Eagles.”

Is your music of its time or out of time?

“It doesn’t fit, no, not really. But there’s just so much music in the world now and 70 per cent of it’s the same. If I’m out of step with that, and with the pop charts, OK. And if it does happen that I fall in with all that, I guess I’ll know it’s time to move on again.”

Josh Rouse – Nashville

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Josh Rouse – Nashville

Eighteen months ago Josh Rouse, born in 1972, released a sunbaked album named after that year. It turned out to be prescient nostalgia. Since that mellow, much-acclaimed record, similar blue-eyed soul and knowing but never smart-ass West Coast soft-rock has moved from chronically unhip to only-slightly-ironically in vogue. The ‘70s singer-songwriter thing has been refracted through everything from Dionysian dance samples to the Scissor Sisters’ treacly retreads, from the Guilty Pleasures compilations to the re-imaginings of newcomers The Magic Numbers. If the notion was then a new direction for Rouse after the raggedy Dressed Up Like Nebraska (’98), and spare, introspective Home (’00) and Under Cold Blue Stars (’02) (not forgetting the collaborative EP with Lambchop‘s Kurt Wagner, Chester), you’d have to say he’d be savvy to stick with it now. On Nashville, he does and he doesn’t. This lovely set of songs is clearly au fait with the oeuvres of Bread, America and Carly Simon. But while some numbers borrow their blissed-out glow, others re-introduce the troubled heart which stoked Rouse’s earlier albums. His personal life has seen flux. The soul is skinny-ribbed and of pasty, stoner complexion. It’s whispered, not wailed. Brad Jones’ production is again deft, with a ruthless smoothing of edges which will have you recalling names you’d - for better or worse - forgotten. Let’s get them out of the way: Lobo (of “Me And You And A Dog Named Boo”, er, fame - his influence, and this isn’t something we get to say often, can be felt everywhere), The Eagles, Gerry Rafferty, Eric Carmen, Randy Edelman, and Boz Scaggs. Lots of Boz Scaggs. You’re either nicely warmed up now or running screaming for the hills. Yet Rouse remains Kurt Wagner’s favourite songwriter, and for many is a talent to outrank Ryan Adams or Conor Oberst. As ever, it’s not so much about the sound as what you do within that sound’s parameters. Rouse takes the idea of Nashville - as music nexus, as state of mind - and does everything he can to swerve its inherent cliches and preconceptions. Alongside the warmth, dark wit and wordplay, it ensures this is miles away from Grand Ole Opry corn. Like Robert Altman’s film, Josh’s Nashville is about the Nashville less celebrated in the mythology or tourist guides. After living there for ten years, Rouse, now divorced and tee-total, has moved to Altea in Spain. When he spoke to Uncut back in December ‘03 he’d given up the demon drink - “It was whiskey that did it” - after a three-day hospitalisation with pancreatitis the previous New Year‘s Eve. His band had been “hitting it pretty hard” on the road. Admitting to being “pretty wild” in his younger days with “a lot of girlfriends”, he was married now (his wife took him to the emergency room). The marriage, however, ran its course, and often in his Nashville we glimpse, through half-open windows and doors, regrets and reflections on a completed romance. Rouse retains affection for the city and his experiences there: this is both fond farewell and love letter - presumably to the relationship as much as to the place. His more confessional lyrics are cryptic rather than gut-spilling. In the opening track “It’s The Nighttime”, with its sly chorus, the surprising “We could go to your room/ I could try on your clothes,” subverts any sweetness. For all the ghosts of Dylan and Van seeping through, he also shares the punkier hangovers of Wilco and Bright Eyes. His Nashville is not simply Pleasantville. “Winter In The Hamptons” follows, with subliminal handclaps, layered “ba ba ba”s like Stone Roses without the acid fog, acoustic guitars picking melodies that revere but don’t rip off The Smiths’ “Bigmouth Strikes Again”. “Where do we belong?” he asks, tellingly. “We’ve stayed too long…” He lilts into “Streetlights”, a song about procrastination and self-delusion: “You don‘t have a master plan, but you will start today.” “Carolina”’s an easy shuffle, but “Middle School Frown” echoes Keef’s clipped, reverbed guitar technique of Tattoo You, and tells tales like early Springsteen. “When I moved to California when I was 13 or 14”, Josh recalls, discussing the track, “I became friends with the first New Wave girl I met there, and she was pretty weird. Then at school I met other people who wouldn’t hang out with her. So I fell in with the clique and disowned her, cos I wanted to be cool too. It was exactly like that movie Heathers.” The album’s signposted as having a side A and side B, and B begins with the delicious “My Love Has Gone” - “Love ain’t special, love ain’t great” - which captures long hours of pining while lying Chatterton-like on the sofa. If this is his divorce song, it delicately evades self-pity. “Saturday” slides through arcing melodies before reaching an irresistible falsetto refrain of “woo-hoo-hoo”. Rouse again subverts the form: “I would swim across the ocean, I would lay down on a bed of nails,” he begins, adding, “But I’ll spare you all the bullshit, I will spare you all the desperate details.” The world-weariness, underscored by harmonica, is in itself romantic. “Sad Eyes” is a big piano ballad, a restructuring of timeless motifs in the manner of Rufus Wainwright, complete with strings and a tricksy middle eight which highlights Jones’ knack for grace. The would-be fingersnapping “Why Won’t You Tell Me What” is - again the unfashionable reference point is bang on - Boz Scaggs’ “Lido Shuffle”, right down to the chord changes and the way the piano rocks out as much as a piano can. “Life”, the frail, sappy closer, is Bolan’s “Life’s A Gas” but with even more twee lyrics. For all its faults, needless to say, the playing throughout is sublime. If you liked 1972 in 1972, or liked 1972 in 2003, you’ll find yourself swimming with this. Perhaps he should’ve named it Beyond Nashville, or After Nashville, or even Leaving Nashville. He’s moved on, but his crafted, gorgeous cunning won’t leave that cityscape in your head for a long, long time. By Chris Roberts

Eighteen months ago Josh Rouse, born in 1972, released a sunbaked album named after that year. It turned out to be prescient nostalgia. Since that mellow, much-acclaimed record, similar blue-eyed soul and knowing but never smart-ass West Coast soft-rock has moved from chronically unhip to only-slightly-ironically in vogue. The ‘70s singer-songwriter thing has been refracted through everything from Dionysian dance samples to the Scissor Sisters’ treacly retreads, from the Guilty Pleasures compilations to the re-imaginings of newcomers The Magic Numbers. If the notion was then a new direction for Rouse after the raggedy Dressed Up Like Nebraska (’98), and spare, introspective Home (’00) and Under Cold Blue Stars (’02) (not forgetting the collaborative EP with Lambchop‘s Kurt Wagner, Chester), you’d have to say he’d be savvy to stick with it now.

On Nashville, he does and he doesn’t. This lovely set of songs is clearly au fait with the oeuvres of Bread, America and Carly Simon. But while some numbers borrow their blissed-out glow, others re-introduce the troubled heart which stoked Rouse’s earlier albums. His personal life has seen flux. The soul is skinny-ribbed and of pasty, stoner complexion. It’s whispered, not wailed. Brad Jones’ production is again deft, with a ruthless smoothing of edges which will have you recalling names you’d – for better or worse – forgotten. Let’s get them out of the way: Lobo (of “Me And You And A Dog Named Boo”, er, fame – his influence, and this isn’t something we get to say often, can be felt everywhere), The Eagles, Gerry Rafferty, Eric Carmen, Randy Edelman, and Boz Scaggs. Lots of Boz Scaggs.

You’re either nicely warmed up now or running screaming for the hills. Yet Rouse remains Kurt Wagner’s favourite songwriter, and for many is a talent to outrank Ryan Adams or Conor Oberst. As ever, it’s not so much about the sound as what you do within that sound’s parameters. Rouse takes the idea of Nashville – as music nexus, as state of mind – and does everything he can to swerve its inherent cliches and preconceptions. Alongside the warmth, dark wit and wordplay, it ensures this is miles away from Grand Ole Opry corn.

Like Robert Altman’s film, Josh’s Nashville is about the Nashville less celebrated in the mythology or tourist guides. After living there for ten years, Rouse, now divorced and tee-total, has moved to Altea in Spain. When he spoke to Uncut back in December ‘03 he’d given up the demon drink – “It was whiskey that did it” – after a three-day hospitalisation with pancreatitis the previous New Year‘s Eve. His band had been “hitting it pretty hard” on the road. Admitting to being “pretty wild” in his younger days with “a lot of girlfriends”, he was married now (his wife took him to the emergency room). The marriage, however, ran its course, and often in his Nashville we glimpse, through half-open windows and doors, regrets and reflections on a completed romance.

Rouse retains affection for the city and his experiences there: this is both fond farewell and love letter – presumably to the relationship as much as to the place. His more confessional lyrics are cryptic rather than gut-spilling. In the opening track “It’s The Nighttime”, with its sly chorus, the surprising “We could go to your room/ I could try on your clothes,” subverts any sweetness. For all the ghosts of Dylan and Van seeping through, he also shares the punkier hangovers of Wilco and Bright Eyes. His Nashville is not simply Pleasantville. “Winter In The Hamptons” follows, with subliminal handclaps, layered “ba ba ba”s like Stone Roses without the acid fog, acoustic guitars picking melodies that revere but don’t rip off The Smiths’ “Bigmouth Strikes Again”. “Where do we belong?” he asks, tellingly. “We’ve stayed too long…”

He lilts into “Streetlights”, a song about procrastination and self-delusion: “You don‘t have a master plan, but you will start today.” “Carolina”’s an easy shuffle, but “Middle School Frown” echoes Keef’s clipped, reverbed guitar technique of Tattoo You, and tells tales like early Springsteen. “When I moved to California when I was 13 or 14”, Josh recalls, discussing the track, “I became friends with the first New Wave girl I met there, and she was pretty weird. Then at school I met other people who wouldn’t hang out with her. So I fell in with the clique and disowned her, cos I wanted to be cool too. It was exactly like that movie Heathers.”

The album’s signposted as having a side A and side B, and B begins with the delicious “My Love Has Gone” – “Love ain’t special, love ain’t great” – which captures long hours of pining while lying Chatterton-like on the sofa. If this is his divorce song, it delicately evades self-pity. “Saturday” slides through arcing melodies before reaching an irresistible falsetto refrain of “woo-hoo-hoo”. Rouse again subverts the form: “I would swim across the ocean, I would lay down on a bed of nails,” he begins, adding, “But I’ll spare you all the bullshit, I will spare you all the desperate details.” The world-weariness, underscored by harmonica, is in itself romantic.

“Sad Eyes” is a big piano ballad, a restructuring of timeless motifs in the manner of Rufus Wainwright, complete with strings and a tricksy middle eight which highlights Jones’ knack for grace. The would-be fingersnapping “Why Won’t You Tell Me What” is – again the unfashionable reference point is bang on – Boz Scaggs’ “Lido Shuffle”, right down to the chord changes and the way the piano rocks out as much as a piano can. “Life”, the frail, sappy closer, is Bolan’s “Life’s A Gas” but with even more twee lyrics. For all its faults, needless to say, the playing throughout is sublime.

If you liked 1972 in 1972, or liked 1972 in 2003, you’ll find yourself swimming with this. Perhaps he should’ve named it Beyond Nashville, or After Nashville, or even Leaving Nashville. He’s moved on, but his crafted, gorgeous cunning won’t leave that cityscape in your head for a long, long time.

By Chris Roberts

Interview: The Mayors of Sunset Strip

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Kim Fowley The last of the underground heroes, Kim Fowley is an eccentric producer, writer, singer, publisher and svengali whose career began in 1960 with The Hollywood Argyles’ monster hit “Alley Oop”. Since then, he’s worked with everyone from Lennon and Hendrix to Jimmy Page, Gram Parson...

Kim Fowley

The last of the underground heroes, Kim Fowley is an eccentric producer, writer, singer, publisher and svengali whose career began in 1960 with The Hollywood Argyles’ monster hit “Alley Oop”. Since then, he’s worked with everyone from Lennon and Hendrix to Jimmy Page, Gram Parsons and The Runaways and claims to have shifted 102 million records. As interviewee in George Hickenlooper’s new film The Mayor Of Sunset Strip (about the life of Fowley contemporary Rodney Bingenheimer, see below), he has all the best lines, though he manages to save a few for Uncut:

UNCUT: You had a highly unorthodox childhood. When you came back from a foster home as a six-year-old to live with your father after the war, how did he treat you?

FOWLEY: My Dad said “Let’s see if you have balls. It’s time for you to go to Hollywood.” So he put me in a sailor suit and drove me down to Schwab’s drugstore, sticks me on the soda fountain and says “Everybody gather ’round! This is my son”. And he starts educating me: homosexuals, Mafia guys, prostitutes, out-of-work actors, lawyers. He went through a list of all the human filth, slime and garbage that were there. Then two women came over, started rubbing my six-year-old balls and stuck a candy cigarette in my mouth. And everyone applauded.

In your ‘teens, you found some ‘unusual’ employment.

I was a male prostitute for about two years up until 1959. What it was, I worked for a psychotherapist who helped out burns victims. If you were a woman burns victim and you wanted to be caressed after a skin-graft, or a widow who wanted to be loved again, or you were a blind woman and you’d never had a man’s penis in your mouth or hand, somebody would come in and do all that shit as part of the therapy. And it was me and some others. It was all in the context of a doctor’s office between nine to five. If you’ve ever made love to a woman with burns all over her body, you can make love to any slob anywhere. I know every trick.

When you first came to Britain in 1964, didn’t you get into trouble with Mick Jagger over the alleged size of his manhood?

It wasn’t me, it was PJ Proby who pissed him off. He said his cock was bigger than Jagger’s. Jean Shrimpton’s sister Chrissie was Proby’s girlfriend for about a minute. During the height of passion, she told Proby his cock was bigger than Jagger’s. So Proby ran out of the hotel room and announced it to the press. Allegedly, the press all drove straight over to Jagger’s house, woke him up out of a sound sleep and asked him if it was true. The other thing was, there were two guys: Charlie and Inez Foxx, who’d done “Mockingbird”. Now, Charlie moved like this [gets up and does this straight-backed, rubber-legged shuffle, like a praying mantis on a water bed] and when Leon Russell later saw Jagger on stage, he said he’d stolen his moves from Charlie. Which made Jagger mad. Then Marianne Faithfull told Jagger he sounded like Kim Fowley, vocally. And he slammed the limousine door on her foot. Last time I saw him was in 1965, when I was walking by RCA and he was coming out. He looked at me and said “Fuck you!” and I said “Well, fuck you!” and carried on walking. Mick and Madonna are the same person. They had very little to start with and turned it into a lot.

You also recorded with Andrew Loog Oldham.

Andrew summed me up perfectly on the set of Ready Steady Go!. We were watching the Stones up on stage, when he turned to me and said “Your tragedy is that you could be Mick or you could be me. But because you can do both, you’ll never do either as well as you’ll do one of us”. He summed up my whole life thirty years ago. Fuck you and thank you, Andrew!

You were also next-door neighbour to Hendrix in Bayswater.

Jimi’s own definition of what he did, when I asked him, was “I do Science Fiction Rock’n’Roll”. When he showed up at the Bayswater Hotel in 1965, he had this giant suitcase full of science fiction books. It was full of Ray Bradbury and Philip Jose Farmer. Jimi was a literate, well-read guy. He said “This is the source of my music” and played me “Martian War Machine” on acoustic guitar. People used to say it was all LSD, but it was science fiction.

How do you see your own career?

I’ll paraphrase the Queen of France talking to Cyrano de Bergerac: “Cyrano, you’re a wonderful man”. “No, your majesty. I do wonderful things”. Kim Fowley is probably a piece of shit and an asshole in real life, but I go out of my way to do stuff I find interesting, which often benefits musical people, because I’m a musical person. Then the audience overhears some of this and is entertained. So I perform an important function: I’m an enabler, a mentor, a catalyst. I don’t hang out. I don’t smoke dope, I’m not gay, I’m not black, I’m not Jewish, I’m not in the mafia, I’m not from England, I don’t remix, I don’t go to clubs. So what do I do? I make hit records. I sell product. I’m so empty that I don’t have distractions. If somebody has substance or has developed something, I have the time for them. The guys and girls who make it – whether you like the music or not – do it right. There’s a brain and focus at work. I think Kylie Minogue is as important as BB King. Britney Spears is like Beethoven. At that space in time, when somebody needed to be her, she was there and did it. And you have to respect that. A lot of times, people dismiss categories of music completely.

What are your thoughts on The Mayor Of Sunset Strip?

Rodney Bingenheimer is a victim of ugliness, mediocrity and illusion. And somebody decided that would make a good movie. So they spent $2m over five years, filming Little Rodney. Then they got everybody from David Bowie to Kim Fowley to Brian Wilson to talk about Little Rodney. They put more time into this movie than they did on Star Wars, The Greatest Story Ever Told and Fantasia! The world wants to see Rodney Bingenheimer – with a face somewhere between Rumpelstiltskin and a squashed prune – to sit there and talk about how nobody loves him and how he’s not getting laid. So if somebody wants to spend that sort of time and money on drafting in A-list people to verbally proclaim Rodney as Jesus, then that’s fine. However, if you take a turd and put it in a bag of diamonds, it can still be a good piece of work. My only resentment is that I hate to be joined at the hip to this chihuaha. Kim Fowley, after being identified with Rodney, means I’m not very gracious about sharing this article. I bet your interview isn’t as good as mine, asshole!

Rodney Bingenheimer

One of the most influential figures in American pop, DJ Rodney Bingenheimer started broadcasting on LA’s KROQ-FM in August 1976. He was the first to introduce The Ramones, Sex Pistols, Clash, Smiths, Nirvana and Oasis to the West Coast. From 1972–’75, he ran Hollywood’s hippest rock star hangout, Rodney Bingenheimer’s English Disco. He’s currently the subject of George Hickenlooper’s excellent documentary, The Mayor Of Sunset Strip. Uncut catches up with Bingenheimer at the London premiere.

UNCUT: Are you happy with the final cut?

BINGENHEIMER: I would have wanted more music and a little more about the bands, but of course, they wanted to focus on my life. It was an enjoyable experience. I learnt a lot about movie-making. It could be my next career.

How much access did you allow the filmmakers?

They more or less had access to me all the time. I mean, it took five-and-a-half years to film. I think the only way to make a great documentary is to spend the right amount of time filming it. I wasn’t really allowed to see anything as it was being filmed. There were a couple of things I saw beforehand, but I didn’t see the finished film until I went to the first screening. Basically, it’s all in there. I didn’t have any say in the final edit.

What about the reaction at the premieres?

I got a standing ovation in New York and two in LA. I walked into the room and thought ‘Wow!’ It was something to be proud of. Joan Jett came with me to the New York premiere. Nancy Sinatra came with me in LA. She said the film was OK, so I was happy with that.

It’s all a long way from Mountain View, California – your home town

I grew up near San Francisco. It was a very small town, very quiet. My childhood was amazing. I was always collecting things: ducks, cats and even records back then. That’s when I first saw [producer, occasional friend and …Sunset Strip co-star] Kim Fowley’s name on “Popsicles And Icicles” [by The Murmaids]. And I always listened to the radio. I always knew I wanted to get involved with music later on.

In your ‘teens, your mother abandoned you at the home of actress Connie Stevens, right?

I was around fourteen, and it was the first time I’d been to LA. It was an amazing, H-shaped house. I loved her because of ’77 Sunset Strip and all those TV shows. She was a great singer too, made some amazing albums. There’s one particular album – Connie Stevens Sings The Hank Williams Songbook – that’s just incredible.

What was the appeal of LA?

I had a choice between San Francisco and LA. So it was either drugs or mini-skirts with go-go boots. I knew what I wanted! LA was just beautiful, like a dream. Everything just seemed so bright. I’d go down Sunset Strip where everyone would be walking up and down, smiling, happy. Everyone seemed so friendly. I wanted all of the bright lights. At first, I couldn’t get into any of the clubs – The Whiskey, The Trip – ’cause I looked so young. Later, I’d hang out with The Byrds at Ben Frank’s.

You got the job as Davy Jones’ stand-in on The Monkees TV show. And initially, Sonny and Cher took you in.

When I was a kid, I went to see them open for the Dave Clark Five in Redwood City, just outside of Mountain View. And of course, I had the bangs, the hair, loved the music. They told me ‘If you ever get to LA, look us up’. It seemed like a good enough sign. So I looked them up when I got there and they took me in, took care of me. I really learned from them. They’d take me to Gold Star Studios when they recorded. That’s me playing tambourine on “Bang Bang”. I was in the studio for the whole of The Sonny Side Of Cher and The Good Times soundtrack. I took my Mom to that one.

You became friendly with Phil Spector too. Weren’t you there for the “River Deep Mountain High” sessions?

I was on the corner of Sunset and Vine and met Brian Wilson. When I told him Phil Spector was over at Gold Star with Ike and Tina Turner, Brian said ‘Let’s go!’. So I go into Gold Star with Brian, and we see Mick Jagger sitting there, watching the recording. So we all watched them go through it, take after take. I remember one particular take was truly amazing, but they’d forgotten to turn the machine on. Watching Spector and Jack Nitzsche was incredible. Phil told jokes between takes, trying to keep everyone refreshed. I was there for a lot of the Beach Boys’ sessions too, including the whole of Smile and 20/20. I’m there on “Vegetables”, with Paul McCartney on headphones. I’m yelling out on there. Charles Manson was there. It was quite wild.

By the turn of the decade though, you’d left LA for London.

After the Manson murders, there was a kind of void in LA. The whole thing got kinda boring, so I came to London. I really didn’t like all the new singer-songwriters with sprouting beards. My girlfriend, Melanie McDonald, and I went to the David Bowie recording sessions for Hunky Dory. Around that time, we were all ready to get married. Then Bowie’s manager, Tony DeFries – who’d take us out to dinner every night – eloped with her and she ended up marrying him. I lost my girlfriend to Bowie’s manager. In the meantime, I was staying at Ealing Broadway and we’d go to the Cellar club, where they played this amazing music by Slade and T.Rex. That was where Bowie gave me the idea for doing a nightclub in LA.

When you came back, you opened up Rodney’s English Disco on the Strip.

David Bowie would come, Roxy Music too. It was a much bigger place than the Cellar. We had huge T.Rex and Suzi Quatro posters everywhere and whole lines of booths. [The Runaways’] Joan [Jett] and Jackie [Fox] would always come in. And Marc Bolan. Elvis came in too, for English beer and steak & kidney pie. I’d send English beer to his recording studio. He introduced me to Frank Sinatra. Led Zeppelin heard there were all these beautiful women at my club, so when they were in LA, they’d take the limo directly from the airport to the club, without even going to the hotel. That famous Melody Maker picture at the booth with Lori Lightning and entourage caused a lot of trouble with their wives. They were wild. Then we’d have Iggy and the Stooges. There was nothing like it in LA at all. Everyone looked like miniature rock stars.

Interviews by: Rob Hughes

Interview : Tori Amos

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Interview : Tori Amos
UNCUT: Your new album is called The Beekeeper, how much of it is about making honey? AMOS: There’s honey-making involved, but really it’s about this woman who visits the garden of life and decides to eat from the tree of knowledge. Once she does so, she experiences all kinds of emotions from p...

UNCUT: Your new album is called The Beekeeper, how much of it is about making honey?

AMOS: There’s honey-making involved, but really it’s about this woman who visits the garden of life and decides to eat from the tree of knowledge. Once she does so, she experiences all kinds of emotions from passion to betrayal, to selfless love, to temptation, to seduction, to disappointment and bereavement. The songs capture different stages of her journey and explore her different feelings.

There seems to be a biblical theme running through the album from ‘Original Sinsuality’ to ‘Marys of The Sea.’

I’ve always incorporated religious characters into my music, but they’re particularly prevalent in The Beekeeper, because as I was researching it I started to think about how much attention is focused on religion and the need that people have to argue about their beliefs to the point of war. As I started to dissect the ideas and ideologies behind both parties, I found myself going back to the Bible and some of the stories contained within it.

‘Original Sinsuality’ for example, tells the parallel story of Genesis and suggests it’s not sin you find in the garden, it is original sinsuality.

It’s interesting you’ve written a song about sin and sensuality when the biggest moral debates in the US are about abortion and gay rights…

America is such a land of extremes. On the one hand, you have this puritanical ideology that lots of people have adopted and on the other you have a huge porn industry that exploits everybody and makes lots of money.

The thing that’s missing from both is sensuality and I think that’s the sign of a damaged society. It’s not healthy for sex and sexuality to always be portrayed as dirty or depraved and what it takes to turn people on sometimes shocks me.

There are a lot of damaged women out there who can’t respond unless they take on another character because they haven’t been taught they can just be a worker bee. I’m a worker bee and I love being a worker bee.

There’s a line in The Power of Orange Knickers about not knowing who the real terrorist is…

Yeah. I know some artists prefer not to comment, but I’ve followed the US administration and I genuinely believe they’ve emotionally blackmailed and manipulated the American people. We’re living in a frightening time and I wish people would wake up and realise they’re surrendering their civil liberties.

In Fahrenheit 9/11 Michael Moore basically implies Bush constructed the war to make heaps of money.

I’ve thought about this a lot since I had my daughter and what I find really disturbing about this global war, is you don’t see any of the world leaders sending their children to be butchered. It’s always someone else’s children, someone else’s blood. In ‘Mother Revolution’ the woman realises she cannot fight the patriarchy in the way that they fight and she can’t just turn her back either. In order to be effective she has to come up with a new solution. And sometimes the best solution isn’t to throw a bomb at a balloon, it’s to pop the balloon with a kitty heel!

The Beekeeper is your eighth studio album. Are you past caring how successful your records are or do you secretly hope they’ll fly straight to the top of the Billboard charts?

It’s always a nice surprise if a record does well, but I’ve learn not to value things in terms of commercial success. Sometimes you make a record that taps into the masses and sells thousands of copies and sometimes you don’t. If you want to be a popular artist with every record in the charts then you need to be honest about that and make your records accordingly. You can’t get angry if ten years later you feel like you’ve sold out and disrespected your talent. Personally, I can take or leave success. The most important thing for me as a composer, is that each piece of work I create is one I’m proud of.

Would you say there’s an autobiographical element to everything you write?

Definitely. I write from what I observe and a result, all my songs are an expression of what I’ve experienced or thought or witnessed. Sometimes I write from my own perspective and sometimes I’m hidden in the songs so you might not know I’m even there. In real life I might have been the one that wasn’t so kind, but I’m singing it from the other person’s perspective because it makes it a stronger story.

Does every album you compose have an underlying theme?

The theme might not be as obvious to the listener as it is to me, but each album is usually about a bunch of different things – I like to educate and enlighten myself about the world and the people that live it in, so I usually begin each record by researching and immersing myself in my chosen subject. When I feel like I’ve got to a point of enlightenment, then I lock myself in my studio and start composing. Sometimes I start with a melody, sometimes I just play the piano until I get an idea. The only thing I’m really conscious of is trying to channel the music through my being.

You play both piano and Hammond organ on this album…

Yeah, my husband bought me a B3 Hammond organ for Christmas last year and I fell completely in love with it. It has a very different sound to other organs and I liked the idea of using it alongside the Bosendorfer piano because I wanted the music to represent the pollination that goes on in the garden. To me, the Hammond is a very funky, masculine instrument whilst the piano is more emotive and feminine. On The Beekeeper, they come together to form a perfect union.

Interview by: Sarah Jane

The Beekeeper is released Monday 28 February on SonyBMG. Tori Amos will tour Europe and the UK in May.

Sundance Film Festival 2005 Part 3

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Last year Sundance hits Napoleon Dynamite, Garden State, and Open Water went on to make more than $100 million at the US box office. This year's big deal is Hustle And Flow, a first film produced by John Singleton. Every studio in town passed on the script, and no wonder: it's the sentimental story of a pimp (Terrance Howard) who decides to change his life by cutting a rap record (“Whupp That Trick”). You might think this would make a fun comedy but mostly Hustle and Flow is played straight. It's not very good, but thanks in large part to Howard it’s highly watchable - you haven't lived until you've seen an audience of mormons and film critics mouthing along to the rap “It's hard out there for a pimp!”. Paramount bought it for a reported $10 million, a Sundance record. Miramax spent over $4 million on Wolf Creek a couple of weeks before the festival started - pre-empting their competitors. This Australian horror yarn speculates on the fate of two English backpackers who disappeared in the outback, victims of a crazed Mick Dundee-type, according to a third traveller who escaped to tell his tale. Written and directed by Greg Mclean, it's well crafted but too slow (Miramax are allegedly chopping ten minutes out of it) and ultimately too irritating to do serious damage to the Aussie tourist trade. A 14-year-old castrates a paedophile in Hard Candy, and a middle-aged woman eats her own abortion in an episode of the Asian portmanteau Three Extreme, by Takashi Miike, Fruit Chan and Park Chan-wook. But the most horrific sequence at Sundance is an oblique scene in Werner Herzog's documentary Grizzly Man in which the director puts on headphones and listens to an audio recording of the death of environmental campaigner and bear-nut Timothy Treadwell - a self-styled environmental warrior who filmed himself hanging with grizzlies for years, until one of them got hungry. Herzog listens, trembling, switches off the tape, and tells Timothy's ex girlfriend she must destroy it for her own peace of mind. Even though we haven't heard it ourselves, we know that he's right. Grizzly Man is Herzog's best film in years. The documentary section kept on producing the goods this year. David LaChappelle's Rize was another winner, a euphoric, inspiring film about the roots of Krumping, an electrifying hip-hop dance craze from South Central which he traces back to the influence of one man, Tommy the Clown. Then there was The Aristocrats, in which more than 100 comedians give us their take on the filthiest joke in the world, a backstage gag comics have apparently been telling each other since the vaudeville days. The film is a fascinating and uproarious peek into the art and craft of comedy (and no, I'm not going to tell you the joke). As for Crispin Hellion Glover's aptly-named What Is It?, this is a film so underground it digs its own hole and keeps on tunnelling. A plotless mishmash of avant-garde provocations including the slaughter of snails by salt, hammer and razor-blade; songs by Charlie Manson; a minstrel who calls himself Michael Jackson and wants to be an invertebrate; and amateur dramatics from a retarded cast presided over by Glover himself, What Is It has a certain car-wreck fascination - but like a car-wreck, it's not something you'd want to experience for yourself. Finally, the prize winners: the American documentary award went to Eugene Jarecki's Why We Fight (see part one of our Sundance report). And the American dramatic competition winner was Ira Sachs' Forty Shades of Blue, a lovely, low key character study about the Russian bride of a cantankerous Memphis recording artist who falls in love with his estranged, married son. Immaculately acted by Dina Korzun (from Last Resort), Rip Torn and Darren Burrows, Forty Shades was one of the least hyped movies in the festival, a slow builder that stays with you. By Tom Charity

Last year Sundance hits Napoleon Dynamite, Garden State, and Open Water went on to make more than $100 million at the US box office. This year’s big deal is Hustle And Flow, a first film produced by John Singleton. Every studio in town passed on the script, and no wonder: it’s the sentimental story of a pimp (Terrance Howard) who decides to change his life by cutting a rap record (“Whupp That Trick”). You might think this would make a fun comedy but mostly Hustle and Flow is played straight. It’s not very good, but thanks in large part to Howard it’s highly watchable – you haven’t lived until you’ve seen an audience of mormons and film critics mouthing along to the rap “It’s hard out there for a pimp!”. Paramount bought it for a reported $10 million, a Sundance record.

Miramax spent over $4 million on Wolf Creek a couple of weeks before the festival started – pre-empting their competitors. This Australian horror yarn speculates on the fate of two English backpackers who disappeared in the outback, victims of a crazed Mick Dundee-type, according to a third traveller who escaped to tell his tale. Written and directed by Greg Mclean, it’s well crafted but too slow (Miramax are allegedly chopping ten minutes out of it) and ultimately too irritating to do serious damage to the Aussie tourist trade.

A 14-year-old castrates a paedophile in Hard Candy, and a middle-aged woman eats her own abortion in an episode of the Asian portmanteau Three Extreme, by Takashi Miike, Fruit Chan and Park Chan-wook. But the most horrific sequence at Sundance is an oblique scene in Werner Herzog’s documentary Grizzly Man in which the director puts on headphones and listens to an audio recording of the death of environmental campaigner and bear-nut Timothy Treadwell – a self-styled environmental warrior who filmed himself hanging with grizzlies for years, until one of them got hungry. Herzog listens, trembling, switches off the tape, and tells Timothy’s ex girlfriend she must destroy it for her own peace of mind. Even though we haven’t heard it ourselves, we know that he’s right. Grizzly Man is Herzog’s best film in years.

The documentary section kept on producing the goods this year. David LaChappelle’s Rize was another winner, a euphoric, inspiring film about the roots of Krumping, an electrifying hip-hop dance craze from South Central which he traces back to the influence of one man, Tommy the Clown. Then there was The Aristocrats, in which more than 100 comedians give us their take on the filthiest joke in the world, a backstage gag comics have apparently been telling each other since the vaudeville days. The film is a fascinating and uproarious peek into the art and craft of comedy (and no, I’m not going to tell you the joke).

As for Crispin Hellion Glover’s aptly-named What Is It?, this is a film so underground it digs its own hole and keeps on tunnelling. A plotless mishmash of avant-garde provocations including the slaughter of snails by salt, hammer and razor-blade; songs by Charlie Manson; a minstrel who calls himself Michael Jackson and wants to be an invertebrate; and amateur dramatics from a retarded cast presided over by Glover himself, What Is It has a certain car-wreck fascination – but like a car-wreck, it’s not something you’d want to experience for yourself.

Finally, the prize winners: the American documentary award went to Eugene Jarecki’s Why We Fight (see part one of our Sundance report). And the American dramatic competition winner was Ira Sachs’ Forty Shades of Blue, a lovely, low key character study about the Russian bride of a cantankerous Memphis recording artist who falls in love with his estranged, married son. Immaculately acted by Dina Korzun (from Last Resort), Rip Torn and Darren Burrows, Forty Shades was one of the least hyped movies in the festival, a slow builder that stays with you.

By Tom Charity

Interview : Michael Stipe

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Interview : Michael Stipe
Have you played with the DVD-As yet? “No, I don’t have all the speakers. Do you have to have a bunch of speakers? I’m pretty simple in terms of how I listen to stuff; i-Pod and my computer, basically.” Has it given you an opportunity to look back on 16 years of music? “Yeah, in a way it...

Have you played with the DVD-As yet?

“No, I don’t have all the speakers. Do you have to have a bunch of speakers? I’m pretty simple in terms of how I listen to stuff; i-Pod and my computer, basically.”

Has it given you an opportunity to look back on 16 years of music?

“Yeah, in a way it’s an extension of the greatest hits package. There’s all this extra content, all these little films that maybe people haven’t seen. I think if people like that stuff, there’s a lot there.”

Do you play the old records much?

“No, I don’t really. Sometimes before we make a record I go back and listen to a few. It’s equally humbling and uplifting. But just today there were a couple of songs that we wanted to try out live and we had to go listen to the CDs, songs we haven’t played in some cases for the better part of two decades: “Seven Chinese Brothers” we’ve played twice in the past six days, and we haven’t played that song in 18 years. And today we were trying to dust off “Turn You Inside Out”, just to see what it sounded like.”

‘Green’ sounds like the record where the two distinct sides of the band were most separated; the acoustic side and the heavier, anthemic side.

“Yeah, also on “Turn You Inside Out” we brought in a fellow who did beats and it seems to me a moment where we might have gone more in the direction of Blur, in terms of how they utilise technology. But instead we went the other way.

“We’ve utilised technology like that since our first album, but we’ve always had it as an underpinning, not as a featured instrument. It felt to me like a period of time where everything could have radically changed, and didn’t.”

You were describing it as a very uplifting and anthemic record at the time. . .

“Oh, I always say that. You can’t quote me on just about anything that I say about our records.”

You say every LP is the best one you’ve ever made.

“Well, you know what, that’s always honest. That’s not a line. If I didn’t feel that, believe me, the record would never be released. We have to feel so strongly about the thing, because once it’s pressed, it’s there. There’s no going back.”

It’s ironic that the songs on ‘Green’ people thought were uncommercial – like “The Wrong Child” – proved to be a template for the most successful material.

“We toured that record for a year, which turned out to be the culmination of ten years of being constantly on the road. We were sick to death of touring. Peter was sick of being a pop star, the guitar god, and so he decided to teach himself other instruments. Among the instruments that he picked up was the mandolin, which gave us “Losing My Religion”. It was really a reaction to what we had done for the better part of a decade that led to ‘Out Of Time’ and ‘Automatic For The People’.”

Lyrically, you seem to be waging a constant battle between privacy and stardom, like on “Losing My Religion”.

“That’s not about me. I rarely ever write about myself and when I do, I’m really honest about it. Not only with the band, if anyone else is involved with the song I tell them about it. None of the people have ever had to guess, ‘Is that horribly tragic figure me?’ They would know before the record came out.

“I’m just not that fascinating a person to have had all those lives that I’ve written about.”

But people have only believed that you sing in character since ‘Monster’. You had to portray yourself as a bastard for people to understand that.

“That might have been closer to me than any of the prior songs [laughs].”

You were pretty reclusive in the early ‘90s, compared with how you’re so press-friendly these days.

“I went through a period where I was really tired of seeing and reading about myself. If I’m tired of me, I’m sure the public is as well. For years I would do press for one record, then not do press for the next record. I hopscotched like that for four or five records. I just felt like I’d run out of things to say – in a way I feel like that right now. We’ve been doing promo for the better part of five years and I’m not sure that I have anything really new to say.”

But when you backed off, you reached a commercial highpoint.

“Well, I think the success of that song [“Losing My Religion”] and everything that came from that was way beyond anything that we could calculate. It was going to happen and that was that. I’m really glad it did. That was a really awesome fun time.”

Do you think, looking back, that you’ve had a logical career?

“That would not be the operative term.”

With the possible exception of ‘Around The Sun’, your haven’t done the most expected thing very often.

“Was ‘Around The Sun’ expected? I got the exact opposite impression from some of the stuff that I read. Because I had said that it was a political and angry record, people expected it to be ‘London Calling’. And they got this instead, which is somewhat introspective and much more of a whisper in terms of protest.”

Sure, but tonally it resembles ‘Automatic For The People’, in its gravitas – in a way that ‘Monster’, say, didn’t.

“OK. I sure like the writing on that record. I have to say, I’m still very proud of it.”

It’s interesting that the set’s bookends – ‘Green’ and ‘Around The Sun’ – are both political records.

“Well ‘Green’ was made to be political, because it was released on Election Day – that was the day Warners decided to release it. That was not a calculation on our part.

“In terms of logic, I would say absolutely not. There’s consistency, that some might find tedious. But I think the one thing that I can say about us is that we’re very consistent about certain things and part of that is our desire to do the very best work that we can and not rest on our laurels, or not allow formula to come into what we do. That’s something that’s always pulled us: sometimes in good directions, sometimes not.”

But no matter how much you change instrumentation, you’ve an instantly recognisable way of constructing a song.

“Right. Our limitations are a curse and a blessing.”

How’s the tour going?

”Awesome. This is our sixth show in seven days – I can’t believe we decided to kick off with a week like this. It feels really good to be on the road again. Obviously there’s a different set because it’s a different tour. We’ve got a giant screen, we’re playing with that a lot and having fun with that. We’re trying to change the set around but, again – a curse and a blessing – there are so many songs that everyone loves to hear every night. We’re down to six or seven slots where we can have a revolving door setlist.”

Are you reconciled to the prospect of being on the road for so long?

”Yeah, we made the schedule, we mapped it out, and we signed it off.”

There’s no reticence in the wake of those epic tours which damaged the band?

“The publicity that came out of the ‘Monster’ tour was that it was just a disaster for us. And in fact, only one bad thing happened, and that is that Bill almost died. Outside of that it was just a really successful tour.”

But you had a hernia as well.

“Yeah, but that was minor surgery. My mistake was to agree that I could sing three weeks after on Percodan. I couldn’t walk up a flight of stairs, but I’m up there singing 24 songs a night. That was a little bit stupid.”

Interview By John Mulvey

Interview: Alexander Payne

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UNCUT: Sideways is a multiple Oscar-nominated movie about men and wine. Is it a wine snobs’ film? PAYNE: I don’t know, you’d have to ask a wine snob. Are you a wine snob? I don’t think so. I like wine. I like wine very much, and it’s one of the reasons why I wanted to make the film. But...

UNCUT: Sideways is a multiple Oscar-nominated movie about men and wine. Is it a wine snobs’ film?

PAYNE: I don’t know, you’d have to ask a wine snob.

Are you a wine snob?

I don’t think so. I like wine. I like wine very much, and it’s one of the reasons why I wanted to make the film. But no I don’t think I’m a snob, in fact I hope this film encourages people to have a much more democratic sense about wine, and to jettison any ideas they might have about wine belonging to snobs. Wine belongs to everyone. You don’t have to know anything about it to like it. It’s just like, ‘Hey, this sure tastes good! It sure goes nicely with the food!’

There’s a standout speech in the middle of the movie where failed writer Miles (Paul Giamatti) and student Maya (Virginia Madsen) discuss the merits of pinot noir versus cabernet sauvignon while actually…

No, no, he talks about pinot noir and Maya talks about ‘wine in general.’

Er, sorry.

Go on.

How did you write it?

My writing-partner Jim Taylor and I wrote that pinot speech, and it’s suggested by something in the [original Rex Pickett] novel, as I recall. I wrote Maya’s speech about why she likes wine, because that speech is quite personal to me. Jim and I did some rewriting on it, of course, but that’s largely how I feel about wine.

Are you surprised at how well audiences have reacted to that scene?

I know they all like that scene a lot more than I do. I think it’s a fine scene, but I would never have imagined that people were going to like that scene as much as they seem to. And now what I’m hearing from friends already is that actors are going to use that speech in acting class, when it comes to performing monologues.

Is there a fleeting reference to Little House In The Prairie in the film?

I’ve never seen Little House On The Prairie.

Serious?

Yes I’m serious. I’ve never seen that series. Not even once.

But it’s a great American cultural tradition…

I don’t watch football, I don’t watch baseball, I’ve never seen Little House On The Prairie, I’ve never seen ER, I just don’t care!

OK, so that wasn’t a Little House On The Prairie reference…

What shot are you talking about?

When Miles learns that his ex is getting remarried, then runs madly down hill through the long grasses like Laura Ingalls Wilder in the ’Prairie title sequence.

Oh no, that’s stolen from a film-school friend’s thesis film, back in UCLA. I called him up and even asked him if I could steal that shot.

Is there a sense that your characters, like Matthew Broderick in Election, or Jack Nicholson in About Schmidt, or Paul Giamatti in Sideways, all have to be purified by suffering?

Purified by suffering? Really? Wow! I don’t, er, or, I can’t… You see that in Scorsese’s films, but I’ve never articulated that to myself even once about my films. I just think that these are films where the characters are subjected to quite a bit of pain, but I don’t see redemption or purification at the end of it. But that’s just me, personally.

Interview By Kevin Maher

Derek And The Dominos – Layla & Other Assorted…

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Derek And The Dominos – Layla & Other Assorted…

A funny thing happened to Eric Clapton while he was playing God in Britain's first supergroup, Blind Faith. On the band's only tour of America in 1969, he discovered that there was a lot more fun to be had further down the slopes of Mount Olympus, making music in the foothills with support group Delaney & Bonnie. Clapton had grown obsessed with the kind of rootsy Americana he had first heard in the summer of 1968 on Music From Big Pink. It was a moment of revelation that led to the break-up of Cream: he even paid a call on The Band in Woodstock to ask if they had a place in their line-up for another guitarist. They didn't. But Clapton found an alternative playing behind Delaney and Bonnie Bramlett, a husband-and-wife duo backed by Carl Radle, Jim Gordon and Bobby Whitlock whose engaging American roots-rock drew on a rich mix of country, soul, blues and gospel influences. In effect, Clapton split Blind Faith to elope with Delaney & Bonnie. He continued to tour with them into 1970, by which time their ad hoc backing band had grown to include further disciples such as Leon Russell, Rita Coolidge, Bobby Keys, George Harrison and Dave Mason. At the end of the tour, Clapton went to live with the Bramletts in their home at Sherman Oaks, CA while Delaney produced his self-titled solo debut. Eventually he found his way back home to England, where one day in the early spring of 1970 he received a call announcing that Radle (bass), Gordon (drums) and Whitlock (keyboards) had all quit Delaney & Bonnie in a row over money and were looking for a new gig. Clapton was not planning to form a new group. But he invited them over, anyway. In the account he gave Uncut last May, he claimed they stayed in his house for a year, during which time they evolved into Derek And The Dominos. In fact, it can only have been a few months for, by August, 1970, they were in Criteria Studios, Miami with executive producer Tom Dowd recording their first and, as it turned out, only studio LP together. The pseudonym "Derek" was adopted to reflect Clapton's stated desire to be one of the boys in the band rather than a Zeus-like hero. His new colleagues were a tight unit whose forte was locking into a simmering groove and Clapton slotted in well, content to subdue the showboating of his solos and play as part of an ensemble, just as he had learnt to do when backing Delaney & Bonnie. Despite this, it was still clearly Clapton's band, if only because most of the songwriting impetus came from him. He had never been a prolific songwriter, playing second fiddle to Jack Bruce in Cream and Steve Winwood in Blind Faith. But now, inspired by his unrequited love for George Harrison's then-wife Patti Boyd, he came up with at least four classics in "Bell Bottom Blues", "I Looked Away", "Why Does Love Got To Be So Sad?" and, of course, "Layla". Initially, the album seemed constrained by the low-key modesty Clapton craved. Then, halfway through, the unscripted arrival of Duane Allman turned plans upside down. Within 10 days, they'd completed an inspirational double that wildly exceeded their expectations, a perfect blend of dedicated muso craft and spontaneous creative alchemy that makes Layla & Other Assorted Love Songs one of the landmark albums of Clapton's career. At the time, all Clapton knew about Allman was that he'd played the guitar solo at the end of Wilson Pickett's "Hey Jude". But, by pure chance, the Allman Brothers were performing in Coconut Grove while the Dominos were recording in Miami and Dowd took Clapton to see them. The two guitarists struck up an immediate affinity and, when Allman was invited to join the sessions, his Promethean qualities totally transformed both the ambition and the execution of the record. Clapton had long wanted a guitar partner (he had initially invited Dave Mason to join the Dominos) and Allman fired him up on such blues work-outs as "Have You Ever Loved A Woman?" and a magnificent tribute to Hendrix on "Little Wing". Much of it was spontaneous, first-take stuff and the notion of toning down the solos disappeared out of the studio window as Clapton and Allman circled each other and then soared into the stratosphere. Yet the contribution of Radle, Gordon and Whitlock shouldn't be overlooked, either. Without the solid base they had built with Clapton over several months rehearsing at his Surrey home, the magic dust Allman sprinkled all over the record would have fallen on barren land. Clapton enjoyed one more outrageous stroke of fortune, and it came not from Allman but courtesy of Gordon. Returning unexpectedly to the studio one night after-hours, he found the drummer alone at the piano picking out a haunting, minor-key melody that he was recording for use on a solo album. As Clapton was paying for the studio time, he promptly commandeered the tune and appended it as an instrumental coda to a song he had written called "Layla". The original composition was potent enough to become an FM radio staple on its own. But with the addition of Gordon's plaintive piano movement, over which Clapton and Allman wove filigree guitar lines, it became a staggering piece of music. During the making of Layla..., Clapton and the Dominos began using heroin heavily. It's difficult to discern any specifically narcotic influence on the album, but some sort of curse of doom seems to have been unleashed. On tour, the atmosphere swiftly turned toxic and, soon after they began recording a second Dominos album in London, a disenchanted Clapton walked out. Five tracks from the sessions eventually turned up on his 1988 box set Crossroads, and they confirm how completely the spirit had gone. Allman died in October 1971. Radle followed in 1980 when his kidneys gave up. Gordon's solo album was never completed. Complaining of "hearing voices", he was diagnosed with acute paranoid schizophrenia. In 1983 he murdered his mother and has spent the years since in a mental hospital. Whitlock made a series of unsuccessful solo albums before retiring to spend the '80s and '90s on a farm in Mississippi. And Clapton? Despite his protestations that he wanted to be a team player and just one of the boys, he stole Delaney & Bonnie's band and he stole Jim Gordon's best tune. After she had inspired "Layla", he eventually stole his best friend's wife, too. What good it did him is another matter. He failed to lure Duane Allman away from his family, and Layla & Other Assorted Love Songs failed to chart. After the Dominos split, Clapton's own heroin habit grew to such chronic proportions that he abandoned music for the next three years. By the time he returned, Allman was dead. Clapton never again found such an effective musical foil. by Nigel Williamson

A funny thing happened to Eric Clapton while he was playing God in Britain’s first supergroup, Blind Faith. On the band’s only tour of America in 1969, he discovered that there was a lot more fun to be had further down the slopes of Mount Olympus, making music in the foothills with support group Delaney & Bonnie.

Clapton had grown obsessed with the kind of rootsy Americana he had first heard in the summer of 1968 on Music From Big Pink. It was a moment of revelation that led to the break-up of Cream: he even paid a call on The Band in Woodstock to ask if they had a place in their line-up for another guitarist. They didn’t. But Clapton found an alternative playing behind Delaney and Bonnie Bramlett, a husband-and-wife duo backed by Carl Radle, Jim Gordon and Bobby Whitlock whose engaging American roots-rock drew on a rich mix of country, soul, blues and gospel influences. In effect, Clapton split Blind Faith to elope with Delaney & Bonnie. He continued to tour with them into 1970, by which time their ad hoc backing band had grown to include further disciples such as Leon Russell, Rita Coolidge, Bobby Keys, George Harrison and Dave Mason. At the end of the tour, Clapton went to live with the Bramletts in their home at Sherman Oaks, CA while Delaney produced his self-titled solo debut.

Eventually he found his way back home to England, where one day in the early spring of 1970 he received a call announcing that Radle (bass), Gordon (drums) and Whitlock (keyboards) had all quit Delaney & Bonnie in a row over money and were looking for a new gig. Clapton was not planning to form a new group. But he invited them over, anyway. In the account he gave Uncut last May, he claimed they stayed in his house for a year, during which time they evolved into Derek And The Dominos. In fact, it can only have been a few months for, by August, 1970, they were in Criteria Studios, Miami with executive producer Tom Dowd recording their first and, as it turned out, only studio LP together.

The pseudonym “Derek” was adopted to reflect Clapton’s stated desire to be one of the boys in the band rather than a Zeus-like hero. His new colleagues were a tight unit whose forte was locking into a simmering groove and Clapton slotted in well, content to subdue the showboating of his solos and play as part of an ensemble, just as he had learnt to do when backing Delaney & Bonnie. Despite this, it was still clearly Clapton’s band, if only because most of the songwriting impetus came from him. He had never been a prolific songwriter, playing second fiddle to Jack Bruce in Cream and Steve Winwood in Blind Faith. But now, inspired by his unrequited love for George Harrison’s then-wife Patti Boyd, he came up with at least four classics in “Bell Bottom Blues”, “I Looked Away”, “Why Does Love Got To Be So Sad?” and, of course, “Layla”. Initially, the album seemed constrained by the low-key modesty Clapton craved. Then, halfway through, the unscripted arrival of Duane Allman turned plans upside down. Within 10 days, they’d completed an inspirational double that wildly exceeded their expectations, a perfect blend of dedicated muso craft and spontaneous creative alchemy that makes Layla & Other Assorted Love Songs one of the landmark albums of Clapton’s career.

At the time, all Clapton knew about Allman was that he’d played the guitar solo at the end of Wilson Pickett’s “Hey Jude”. But, by pure chance, the Allman Brothers were performing in Coconut Grove while the Dominos were recording in Miami and Dowd took Clapton to see them. The two guitarists struck up an immediate affinity and, when Allman was invited to join the sessions, his Promethean qualities totally transformed both the ambition and the execution of the record.

Clapton had long wanted a guitar partner (he had initially invited Dave Mason to join the Dominos) and Allman fired him up on such blues work-outs as “Have You Ever Loved A Woman?” and a magnificent tribute to Hendrix on “Little Wing”. Much of it was spontaneous, first-take stuff and the notion of toning down the solos disappeared out of the studio window as Clapton and Allman circled each other and then soared into the stratosphere. Yet the contribution of Radle, Gordon and Whitlock shouldn’t be overlooked, either. Without the solid base they had built with Clapton over several months rehearsing at his Surrey home, the magic dust Allman sprinkled all over the record would have fallen on barren land.

Clapton enjoyed one more outrageous stroke of fortune, and it came not from Allman but courtesy of Gordon. Returning unexpectedly to the studio one night after-hours, he found the drummer alone at the piano picking out a haunting, minor-key melody that he was recording for use on a solo album. As Clapton was paying for the studio time, he promptly commandeered the tune and appended it as an instrumental coda to a song he had written called “Layla”. The original composition was potent enough to become an FM radio staple on its own. But with the addition of Gordon’s plaintive piano movement, over which Clapton and Allman wove filigree guitar lines, it became a staggering piece of music.

During the making of Layla…, Clapton and the Dominos began using heroin heavily. It’s difficult to discern any specifically narcotic influence on the album, but some sort of curse of doom seems to have been unleashed. On tour, the atmosphere swiftly turned toxic and, soon after they began recording a second Dominos album in London, a disenchanted Clapton walked out. Five tracks from the sessions eventually turned up on his 1988 box set Crossroads, and they confirm how completely the spirit had gone. Allman died in October 1971. Radle followed in 1980 when his kidneys gave up. Gordon’s solo album was never completed. Complaining of “hearing voices”, he was diagnosed with acute paranoid schizophrenia. In 1983 he murdered his mother and has spent the years since in a mental hospital. Whitlock made a series of unsuccessful solo albums before retiring to spend the ’80s and ’90s on a farm in Mississippi.

And Clapton? Despite his protestations that he wanted to be a team player and just one of the boys, he stole Delaney & Bonnie’s band and he stole Jim Gordon’s best tune. After she had inspired “Layla”, he eventually stole his best friend’s wife, too. What good it did him is another matter. He failed to lure Duane Allman away from his family, and Layla & Other Assorted Love Songs failed to chart. After the Dominos split, Clapton’s own heroin habit grew to such chronic proportions that he abandoned music for the next three years. By the time he returned, Allman was dead. Clapton never again found such an effective musical foil.

by Nigel Williamson

Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War On Journalism

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Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War On Journalism

Unlike Fahrenheit 9/11, Robert Greenwald's Outfoxed never reached American screens. A shame, as this is a more effective expose of the skewed cathode blare which misguides so many American minds. Fox News claims it is "fair and balanced". But many disaffected ex-Fox journalists here testify to management pressure and memos flagrantly pushing a pro-Republican line. Greenwald also splices together footage which drums home sneaky devices such as presenters' repeated use of the phrase "some people say" as a means of inserting right-wing views into newscasts. Eighty-three per cent of Fox pundits are right-wing, the film finds, the most infamous of these being Bill "Shut Up" O'Reilly, an odious pitbull who is presented by Fox as somehow 'neutral'. Here, we see footage of his savaging of Jeremy Glick, a 9/11 survivor - who should be canonised for not headbutting his host. Depressingly, other networks have looked at Fox's ratings and decided this is the way to go - which is why, for instance, CBS News now has its own O'Reilly-a-like. Outfoxed is raggedly lo-fi, feels occasionally slung together. It features too little of Murdoch, instigator of Fox's pro-Republicanism, while its polemical momentum forbears it from making the ironic observation that Fox is also home to The Simpsons, the most subversive programme on US TV. Still, while polemical, Outfoxed is incontrovertible. Buy it and seethe. By David Stubbs

Unlike Fahrenheit 9/11, Robert Greenwald’s Outfoxed never reached American screens. A shame, as this is a more effective expose of the skewed cathode blare which misguides so many American minds. Fox News claims it is “fair and balanced”. But many disaffected ex-Fox journalists here testify to management pressure and memos flagrantly pushing a pro-Republican line. Greenwald also splices together footage which drums home sneaky devices such as presenters’ repeated use of the phrase “some people say” as a means of inserting right-wing views into newscasts.

Eighty-three per cent of Fox pundits are right-wing, the film finds, the most infamous of these being Bill “Shut Up” O’Reilly, an odious pitbull who is presented by Fox as somehow ‘neutral’. Here, we see footage of his savaging of Jeremy Glick, a 9/11 survivor – who should be canonised for not headbutting his host. Depressingly, other networks have looked at Fox’s ratings and decided this is the way to go – which is why, for instance, CBS News now has its own O’Reilly-a-like.

Outfoxed is raggedly lo-fi, feels occasionally slung together. It features too little of Murdoch, instigator of Fox’s pro-Republicanism, while its polemical momentum forbears it from making the ironic observation that Fox is also home to The Simpsons, the most subversive programme on US TV. Still, while polemical, Outfoxed is incontrovertible. Buy it and seethe.

By David Stubbs

The Bourne Supremacy

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The Bourne Supremacy

Matt Damon is probably the unlikeliest action hero since Nicolas Cage, who, in Sean Penn's famously gruff assessment, gave up acting for the multiplex dollar. But in The Bourne Identity, Damon was perfectly cast as an amnesiac CIA assassin, the product of a covert programme intended to produce invincible, utterly dehumanised killers - astonishingly lethal, absolutely without conscience. Damon is again the eponymous franchise hero, now living in anonymity in Goa, where he's haunted by flashbacks to a past that refuses to assume a clear narrative. He can only remember fragments, most of them violent. His otherwise idyllic isolation is noisily interrupted when a Russian hitman turns up to eliminate him. At which point the film takes off, and doesn't stop for as much as a breather for the next couple of hours. Directing duties fall to Paul Greengrass, the British film-maker responsible for the outstanding Bloody Sunday - much of whose raw energy and gritty dynamism is deployed here to often shattering effect. The Bourne Supremacy goes by in a brilliant blur. It's one extended chase, basically. But who's chasing who? The Russian mafia are in the thick of it, so too rogue elements of the CIA, for whom Bourne is an expendable embarrassment, a loose cannon who may yet blow the doors off their infernal skulduggery. Greengrass directs the thing like his life depends on it, the movie hurtling forward with relentless momentum and a serrated rhythm that pins your attention to the screen. The particularly vicious set-to between Damon and an erstwhile CIA colleague now determined to take him down is, meanwhile, simply the best thing of its kind since Sean Connery and Robert Shaw went at each other with fabulously bone-breaking gusto in From Russia With Love. By Allan Jones

Matt Damon is probably the unlikeliest action hero since Nicolas Cage, who, in Sean Penn’s famously gruff assessment, gave up acting for the multiplex dollar. But in The Bourne Identity, Damon was perfectly cast as an amnesiac CIA assassin, the product of a covert programme intended to produce invincible, utterly dehumanised killers – astonishingly lethal, absolutely without conscience.

Damon is again the eponymous franchise hero, now living in anonymity in Goa, where he’s haunted by flashbacks to a past that refuses to assume a clear narrative. He can only remember fragments, most of them violent. His otherwise idyllic isolation is noisily interrupted when a Russian hitman turns up to eliminate him. At which point the film takes off, and doesn’t stop for as much as a breather for the next couple of hours.

Directing duties fall to Paul Greengrass, the British film-maker responsible for the outstanding Bloody Sunday – much of whose raw energy and gritty dynamism is deployed here to often shattering effect. The Bourne Supremacy goes by in a brilliant blur. It’s one extended chase, basically. But who’s chasing who? The Russian mafia are in the thick of it, so too rogue elements of the CIA, for whom Bourne is an expendable embarrassment, a loose cannon who may yet blow the doors off their infernal skulduggery.

Greengrass directs the thing like his life depends on it, the movie hurtling forward with relentless momentum and a serrated rhythm that pins your attention to the screen. The particularly vicious set-to between Damon and an erstwhile CIA colleague now determined to take him down is, meanwhile, simply the best thing of its kind since Sean Connery and Robert Shaw went at each other with fabulously bone-breaking gusto in From Russia With Love.

By Allan Jones

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