Thanks to the star guests on albums such as The Healer and Mr Lucky, John Lee Hooker sold more records in the final decade of his life than he had in the previous 40 years. Face To Face was in the making when he died in 2001, and includes collaborations with Johnny Winter, Robert Cray, Canned Heat, George Thorogood and Van Morrison. The delay in its release suggests a certain posthumous touching-up was required, and his voice was clearly in decline.
DIRECTED BY Ridley Scott
STARRING Sigourney Weaver, John Hurt, Ian Holm, Yaphet Kotto, Hatry Dean Stanton
Opened October 31, Cert 15, 115 mins
Scott's franchise-launching 1979 future-shocker is one of those rare, pure, primal films that works as both highbrow modern myth and trouser-soiling midnight movie.
This legendary album, the centrepiece of the so-called "Doom Trilogy", has waited nearly 30 years to be issued on CD, such has been its author's reputed disenchantment with it. Over that time, On The Beach has become a sort of Holy Grail to Neil Young CD buyers, its continuing unavailability adding to a notoriety which began with the first round of reviews the album received in summer 1974. Early reaction to On The Beach was almost entirely negative and it was only after a certain amount of hindsight had set in that it was accorded any respect, let alone admiration.
