Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy discusses his band’s upcoming new album in the current issue of Uncut (dated February 2013, Take 189), out now – but here, in this piece from Uncut’s August 2009 issue, Tweedy answers questions from fans and famous admirers, and discusses Bob Dylan’s beard, hanging with Neil Young and the recipe for the perfect burger (clue: use cranberries)…
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Bob Dylan’s fantastic new album opens with a train song. Given the wrath to come and the often elemental ire that accompanies it, not to mention all the bloodshed, madness, death, chaos and assorted disasters that will shortly be forthcoming, you may be surprised that what’s clattering along the tracks here isn’t the ominous engine of a slow train coming, a locomotive of doom and retribution, souls wailing in a caboose crowded with the forlorn damned and other people like them.
Lou Reed at 70 arrives onstage at the Festival Hall to do his bit for Antony Hegarty’s Meltdown programme dressed like a stroppy teenager in a baggy black basketball vest, gold medallions around his neck and what looks like a pair of tracksuit bottoms. He looks frail these days, though tonight slightly less so than last year at the Hammersmith Apollo, and perhaps no wonder when you consider what he’s put his body through over the years before he embraced his current sobriety.
15 great tracks by artists who influenced Waits or were inspired by him, including Captain Beefheart, Beirut, Howlin' Wolf, Harry Partch, Johnny Dowd, Frank Sinatra and The Low Anthem
