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Introducing the Deluxe Ultimate Music Guide to Bob Marley

John Robinson
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Introducing the Deluxe Ultimate Music Guide to Bob Marley

Buy a copy of Uncut’s Deluxe Ultimate Music Guide to Bob Marley by clicking here

For anyone who – like me – first became aware of Bob Marley when the artist was a recently-deceased musician lately become a benign and spiritual presence over pop music, his album Legend a fixture at the top of the album charts, the story of his journey from longtime music business trier to global superstar is an utterly compelling one.

Recent celebrations of what would have been his 75th birthday have occasioned an opportunity to tell in detail the story of that remarkable transformation. As you might hope, there have been deluxe editions of his incendiary, uplifting catalogue. As you might expect, there’s been a new apparel line.

In late summer, there was also a touching BBC documentary, When Bob Marley Came To Britain, which did a great job of showing just how far Marley and the UK were interlinked. Marley at the Lyceum, and later at the punky reggae party perhaps we knew about. But Marley in Neasden in 1972? At a school in Peckham? A pub backroom in Southampton? These were perhaps less charted territories on the map of the musician’s unfolding greatness.

Our expanded, deluxe Ultimate Music Guide is your essential companion on that adventure. In addition to in-depth reviews of every album in Marley’s catalogue, we’ve gone back into the archives to uncover some of our own pivotal meetings with the man. Reporters from NME and Melody Maker became trusted witnesses to Bob’s progress, present as The Wailers laid down tracks in Kingston for what would become the Catch A Fire album (MM’s Richard Williams, in Jamaica to check out the scene with Chris Blackwell, presciently noted that this singer/composer could well be a genius to match a powerhouse like Sly Stone in the USA). A year later Williams was in London joining Bunny Wailer for fish and chips, and observing a session where Marley and band were mixing “I Shot The Sheriff”.

Much like Richard Williams, NME’s Neil Spencer first met Marley in the early 1970s and became a key conduit through which a wider British audience might come to understand something about Bob’s music and the culture which had helped give rise to it. Whether reporting from punk London, or the Harlem Apollo, Neil’s writing recounted the rapturous reception given to Marley’s music but also the problems associated with the growth of his empire – and with being a semi-religious/political figurehead presiding over a travelling Rasta court around the world.

As you’ll read here, amid the growing madness of fame, Bob’s message remained ultimately a simple and relatable one: keep your heart and your mind open. As he tells Neil in 1979: “The spirit is stronger than the flesh, which means the flesh is nothing for the spirit to carry. That mean there’s a way to live. There’s a way man, it can be done.”

Enjoy the magazine. You can get it, with free UK P&P by clicking here.

Mary Wilson of The Supremes has died, aged 76

Sam Richards
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Mary Wilson of The Supremes has died, aged 76

Mary Wilson, co-founder of The Supremes, has died aged 76. According to her publicist, she passed away suddenly at her home near Las Vegas, Nevada.

Wilson successfully auditioned for Detroit vocal group The Primettes in 1959 and was still at school when they signed to Motown, changing their name to The Supremes.

By 1962 the group had become a trio – Wilson, Florence Ballard and Diana Ross – embarking on a run of hits that would make them the most successful Motown act of the 1960s and one of the best-selling girl groups of all-time. 1964’s “Where Did Our Love Go” was the first of 12 US No. 1 singles.

Wilson stayed with The Supremes after the departures of Ballard in 1967 and then Ross in 1970, finally quitting in 1977, at which point the group disbanded. She went on to record two solo albums, before becoming a regular performer in musical theatre and in Las Vegas. She was also an author, activist and motivational speaker.

At the time of her death, Wilson was working on new music. She was also hoping to issue some of her previously unreleased 1970s solo material.

Motown founder Berry Gordy Jr said in a statement that he was “extremely shocked and saddened” to hear of Wilson’s death. “I was always proud of Mary. She was quite a star in her own right and over the years continued to work hard to boost the legacy of the Supremes. Mary Wilson was extremely special to me. She was a trailblazer, a diva and will be deeply missed.”

Goat Girl – On All Fours

Tom Pinnock
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Goat Girl – On All Fours

Those casting a casual glance at Goat Girl’s arrival a few years back might have thought of them as gothic punks, mixing the Bad Seeds and The Libertines on singles like “The Man” and “Cracker Drool”. Exploring the patchwork quilt of their self-titled debut, though – 19 songs in 40 minutes – stranger worlds might have revealed themselves. It all began with a nightmarish minute of queasy synth, piano and drum machine on “Salty Sounds”, and even evoked The Residents on interludes “Dance Of Dirty Leftovers” and “Hank’s Theme”. It was lo-fi, awkward and charming.

For their second effort, the quartet – currently consisting of Lottie Pendlebury (aka Clottie Cream), Ellie Rose Davies (LED), Rosy Jones (Rosy Bones) and Holly Mullineaux (Holly Hole) – have emerged from what now seems like their pupal stage into glorious, colourful flight. On All Fours is defiantly hi-fi, yet, as Berlin School synths and saxophones burble under warped guitar riffs, we’re reminded (with help from the likes of Low and Remain In Light) that glossy and crisp doesn’t always mean superficial or safe.

Goat Girl are working again with Dan Carey, but their writing process has changed as significantly as his production. Previously, Pendlebury brought in the bones of their songs, but here each member has contributed the kernels of tracks, and some, such as “Badibaba” and “Jazz (In The Supermarket)”, were created through group jams in Carey’s second studio, Davies’ mum’s garage or in the wonderfully named Yoghurt Rooms in Sussex.

On All Fours’ opener, the subtle, moody “Pest”, is the first example of Goat Girl’s predilection for gorgeously sour chord progressions, and the earliest instance of synth arpeggios, which provide a bedrock through many of these 13 tracks. There’s little of the swampy side of their debut here, with Cramps/Gun Club staggers replaced with tauter, funkier rhythms, reminiscent of ESG on the bass-heavy “Once Again”, LCD Soundsystem on first single “Sad Cowboy”, which dissolves into a beatific Café del Mar coda, and Tame Impala on the psych groove of “Bang”.

Pendlebury cites Broadcast and Stereolab as two of her personal inspirations, and those artists’ successful melding of rock and electronics seems to have been an influence on On All Fours. Even more heavily inspirational, perhaps, are Laetitia Sadier’s lyrics, with Goat Girl taking a similarly strident left-wing approach to global and social justice. So “Badibaba” finds them highlighting the hypocrisy of the West, which still benefits from the environmentally damaging industrial revolution, in criticising third-world countries for their own industrial development. The grungy “They Bite On You” finds Pendlebury equating the bites of scabies mites with the bloodsucking of capitalist parasites, while “The Crack” takes on, among other things, organised religion: “The people didn’t listen/They were singing worship songs.”

Elsewhere, there are more personal songs; on “PTS Tea”, a spiralling, darker cousin of Metronomy’s “Everything Goes My Way”, Rosy Jones tells a true story of being badly burnt by a stranger’s hit-and-run tea spill on a ferry, and expands it into an examination of wider issues about her identity and society’s expectations of it. The duo of “Closing In” and “Anxiety Feels” find Pendlebury investigating depression and attempting to make peace with her feelings – her mention of the ghost that “rushes round in and out” is inspired, she tells Uncut, by Vera, the spectre that haunts hers and Jones’s Lewisham house.

Taken as a whole, On All Fours is an impressive balancing act, creating something fresh from the group’s diverse influences, and managing to remain subversive even while it embraces Technicolor production techniques. Most enticing of all, there’s an infectious sense of freedom here; the idea that this democratic collective know they can do almost anything, that ideas can stem from any of them, and that they can take on any subject or style and effortlessly remain themselves. Right on.

Nancy Sinatra – Start Walkin’: 1965-1976

Jason Anderson
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Nancy Sinatra – Start Walkin’: 1965-1976

Quentin Tarantino scored the opening moments of 2003’s Kill Bill: Volume 1 to Nancy Sinatra’s forlorn performance of “Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)”. It’s a canny pick, even if the title of the Sonny Bono-penned number made it an obvious choice for Hollywood’s pre-eminent record-nerd auteur, who’d just given his viewers their first glimpse of Uma Thurman’s character as she’s shot in the head by her unseen lover. While Sinatra’s voice possesses a delicacy that starkly contrasts with the bloodshed to come, the lyrics hint at darker things, as do the feelings of love, hurt and resignation she conveys so chillingly alongside the trembling tremolo of Billy Strange’s guitar.

As the first of the 23 songs on Start Walkin’: 1965-1976, “Bang Bang” is again being used to begin a story about a woman who should not be underestimated. The compilation inaugurates a reissue campaign by Light In The Attic that continues later this year with newly remastered editions of Sinatra’s 1966 debut long-player Boots, 1968’s majestic Nancy & Lee and 1972’s more autumnal Nancy & Lee Again.

Covering Sinatra’s most productive years with her primary collaborator Lee Hazlewood (already the subject of his own lavish Light In The Attic campaign), Start Walkin’ relates a narrative arc that may be familiar to those who’ve long considered the Chairman of the Board’s eldest daughter to be one of the coolest women to walk the Earth. But the choice of opening note here is as significant for the compilation’s purposes as it was for Tarantino’s. Like the tale of Thurman’s assassin, this one is about earning some payback. This time it’s for a performer whose versatility and artistry have long been overshadowed by the contributions of her illustrious collaborators and by Sinatra’s own celebrity. Indeed, by leading with “Bang Bang” and closing with little-heard marvels made after the hits ran out, Start Walkin’ presents a wider, richer view of a singer who may finally be regarded as more than Hazlewood’s modeling clay or, worse yet, a well-born starlet remembered for those thigh-high go-go boots.

At the very least, the new collection trumps the umpteen greatest-hits albums that preceded it. If Start Walkin’ were more like those sets, it would’ve opened with the song that made Sinatra a star. Initially released at the tail end of 1965 and a chart-topper in the US and UK soon afterward, “These Boots Are Made For Walking” followed Sinatra’s run of singles for her father’s label Reprise that had some chart success in Europe and Japan but made little impact at home. It was Sinatra Sr who connected the singer with Hazlewood, then best known for his work with Duane Eddy. Though the rangy Oklahoman had no lack of opinions, the “skinny Italian girl” – as Hazlewood initially called her to Strange, cheekily avoiding the surname – had a will of her own. It was she who convinced Hazlewood that the lyrics to “Boots” were brutal when he sang them but empowering if she did instead (she also had to lobby to make it an A-side.) The result was a natural-born No 1, its swagger fuelled in equal part by Sinatra’s fierce yet playful delivery and the indelible double-bass hook by Chuck Berghofer, one of the Wrecking Crew greats indispensable during Sinatra’s imperial phase.

The song remains an irresistible display of pop-feminist bravura. As such, it provided a formula for the many similarly strident numbers that can be found throughout the six Sinatra albums that arrived in quick succession through 1966 and 1967. Yet Start Walkin’ emphasises the team’s many deviations from the mean, demonstrating how inventive and subversive Sinatra’s music could be even before her music with Hazlewood took a more avidly idiosyncratic direction with Nancy & Lee. Just consider the decidedly weird nature of 1966’s “Sugar Town”, a dreamy shuffle that hit the Top 10 in the US and the UK which Sinatra later described as Hazlewood’s own “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds” due to its coy acid references.

The same year’s “Friday’s Child” captures Sinatra in a more dramatic mode, casting herself as a distraught diva in a smoky cabaret. Her power as a vocalist will surprise anyone who figured her skill set was limited to ethereal softness and Sunset Strip sass. After going the full Shirley Bassey on her 1967 Bond theme “You Only Live Twice” – included here in the punchier version cut with the Wrecking Crew in LA rather than John Barry’s orchestra in London – she trumps even the shrieking strings on “Lightning’s Child”, a 1967 single whose synthesis of Wagnerian grandeur and cowboy-musical panache would be campy if not delivered with such ferocity.

On songs like these, Sinatra is indisputably the star of the show. It’s harder to assert that for some of her most famous pairings with Hazlewood. While she’s an amiable sparring partner on their version of “Jackson”, her partner’s bullfrog voice and drawling delivery gives Sinatra less room to manoeuvre in 1966’s “Summer Wine”, the first of their duets to hit the charts, and “Some Velvet Morning”, the mythopoetic masterstroke that Hazlewood originally wrote for the most Ingmar Bergman-esque sequence in 1967’s Movin’ With Nancy TV special.

That’s why some of their lesser-celebrated duets are the greater standouts on Start Walkin’. Shimmering and cosmic, “Sand” is an astonishing demonstration of the balance they could achieve with two voices that no-one in their right mind would have paired. The selections from 1972’s Nancy & Lee Again are similarly extraordinary as examples of how deeply she immersed herself in the songs’ characters. In the almost unbearably poignant “Arkansas Coal (Suite)”, she deftly shifts between the roles of three women in a family blighted by tragedy. And her breakdown at the end of “Down From Dover” – perhaps the most wrenching of the many heartstring-pullers written by Dolly Parton – could make a stone cry.

Sinatra was herself heartbroken when Hazlewood abruptly departed for Sweden in 1968, reportedly fleeing his problems with the IRS and the prospect of a draft letter for his son. Though Sinatra’s career never really recovered from the end of the team’s original run, Start Walkin’ shows she was hardly down for the count. Produced by Jimmy Bowen for her 1972 album Woman, “Kind Of A Woman” has much of the same magic of yore, and the outtake “Machine Gun Kelly” is even better. Released as a single in 1976, Sinatra and Hazlewood’s gorgeous cover of French singer Joe Dassin’s hit “(L’été Indien) Indian Summer” was one in the series of reunions that continued with their tours in the ’90s and 2004’s Nancy & Lee 3.

Knowing that the music business found her “passé”, Sinatra largely left it behind in the ’70s, devoting her energy to her young family instead. The latter-day contents of Start Walkin’ invites thoughts of the music that might’ve been. Given her affinity for then-emergent country-music talents like Mel Tillis and Mac Davis, it’s certainly easy to imagine Sinatra in rhinestones as a strong yet soft-hearted songstress in the vein of Parton and Loretta Lynn. Any further adventures with Hazlewood through the decade would only have gotten weirder if the hypnagogic haze of “Indian Summer” was a fair indication.

But those stories are only of the speculative variety. More compelling by far is the one that’s told here, in 23 concise chapters that are thrilling, surprising and sometimes sublime. You could call the whole saga ‘Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood’ if Tarantino hadn’t gotten there first.

Sonny Rollins: “Musicians can live a charmed life”

John Lewis
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Sonny Rollins: “Musicians can live a charmed life”

The current issue of Uncut – in shops now or available to buy online here, with no delivery charge to UK addresses – features a rare interview with 90-year-old saxophone colossus Sonny Rollins. In the extract below, the last living legend of bebop discusses the 52nd Street jazz scene, his stint in Rikers Island prison for armed robbery, and how Charlie Parker helped him kick heroin…

You were born in Harlem in 1930, during what was known as the Harlem Renaissance. What kind of place was it in your childhood?
It was an extraordinary environment. We were surrounded by giants of the black community. You know the writer WEB Du Bois? He lived on our block. Slightly more expensive digs than my family, but literally on the same block. There were other key people in the civil rights movement. Paul Robeson, Duke Ellington, Coleman Hawkins, Don Redman. All pillars of the black community; they lived in our neighbourhood. Sugar Hill was our Park Avenue. We used to see Coleman Hawkins going to the store to buy groceries. Or Roy Eldridge. It was incredibly inspiring.

Going to Greenwich Village or 52nd Street must have seemed like a different planet.
It was somewhat of a world away. I started going to clubs on 52nd Street in my late teens. These were small clubs. You had to look old enough to get in there, otherwise they’d lose their licence. So I had to put black makeup around my lips to make out I had a moustache! I don’t know if I fooled anybody, but the proprietors let us in anyway. It was when I met Coleman Hawkins in person – and Charlie Parker and Billie Holiday. If you hung out on 52nd Street for a few hours, they were all on that street. Art Tatum. Erroll Garner. Count Basie’s orchestra. It was fantastic.

What was the atmosphere like at one of these jazz clubs in the early 1950s?
These clubs were wonderful. It was a panorama, a pageantry, looking back at it – all the people who came to listen to great music. The audience was there to listen. That’s the thing with live music – everybody has a role, even the audience. The guy nodding his head, the girl who’s smiling, the sceptic who’s not impressed – they all make you play better. I was just getting old enough to play on 52nd Street when 52nd Street was in its decline. Then Birdland started – that was like the last of the 52nd Street clubs.

How close was the link between jazz and the civil rights movement?
The saxophonist James Moody, who was one of the many black musicians who served in the US Army during the war, remembers being transported with German prisoners of war who were being treated better than him. All these black soldiers who fought in the war, they didn’t want to come back and be treated like second-class citizens. Jazz musicians were important for black people. Charlie Parker represented a different kind of mentality for jazz musicians. Until that point, jazz musicians had to be entertainers as well as artists. You had to be a song-and-dance man as well as a musician. But Charlie Parker was the opposite. He didn’t dance or sing. He stood up straight. He was playing great music; people had to accept it and applaud him, therefore they had to accept black musicians as equal. Times were moving on.

You served 10 months at Rikers Island prison in 1950 for armed robbery. What do you remember about Rikers?
In retrospect, it was the first of my sabbaticals! Unlike the others, it wasn’t self-imposed. But it was a learning place. There was a priest in the prison – I can’t recall what denomination – who tried to give the prisoners some kind of musical outlet. So I got involved. There were some very fine musicians in Rikers, like Elmo Hope, the pianist. The prison was a brutal place, but fortunately I was involved in the music, and I largely avoided the brutality. In Eastern religions they say that people who play music are conferred with a special dispensation. Their lives are different to other people’s. Yes, we can live a charmed life, in many ways.

Your friend Jackie McLean talks about heroin descending over the jazz scene like a tidal wave in the 1950s. How do you think this happened?
The first heroin user I met in the jazz world was Billie Holiday. She was married to a trumpet player, Joe Guy. I recently learned that he was a heroin addict, and he turned Billie onto it. I was getting out of high school. We were smoking pot. But heroin was another step. Billie Holiday did it and then Charlie Parker was known to use it. We’d say, “Man, Charlie Parker uses drugs. If you want to play like him, you gotta do it too!” Some of us fell into that trap. Myself included. It was quite a devastating trip. I was fortunate to have emerged from it alive, thanks to Charlie himself.

How did Charlie Parker help you kick heroin?
He didn’t want to see his young followers doing it. He considered himself too far gone. That’s what hastened the end of his life. When he found out that I was using drugs, he was heartbroken. When I saw how upset he was I thought, ‘Wow, I’m killing Charlie Parker.’ So that got me to finally go to different places. I went into rehab, early 1955. Got myself straight. It’s not easy. It was one of the positive things in my life.

You can read much more from Sonny Rollins in the March 2021 issue of Uncut, out now with Leonard Cohen on the cover and available to buy direct from us here.

Peggy Seeger announces “probably” her final album, First Farewell

Sam Richards
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Peggy Seeger announces “probably” her final album, First Farewell

85-year-old folk legend Peggy Seeger has announced what is “probably” her final album.

Her 24th solo album First Farewell will be released on April 9 via Red Grape Music. Watch a live performance of first single “The Invisible Woman”, featuring her sons Neill and Calum MacColl, below:

“The Invisible Woman” was co-written with Neill. “He was hesitant for ages about co-writing with me,” says Seeger. “He turned up at my home one day, laid his 6’1” self along my two-seater sofa and laconically offered a possible subject for a song. ‘The Invisible Woman’ strolled in gradually, wearing clown shoes and lace underwear. We ended up with a song that expressed an uncomfortable new feeling that was creeping up on us both but that echoed the folk songs that I’d sung to him since birth.”

New Joe Strummer solo compilation unveiled

Sam Richards
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New Joe Strummer solo compilation unveiled

A new Joe Strummer solo compilation entitled Assembly will be released by Dark Horse/BMG on March 26.

The 16-track album features a mix of singles, fan favourites and rarities, plus three previously unreleased versions of classic Clash tracks, including an acoustic “Junco Partner” and live performances of “Rudie Can’t Fail” and “I Fought The Law”, performed by Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros at London’s Brixton Academy on November 24, 2001.

Assembly includes exclusive liner notes by lifelong Strummer fan, Jakob Dylan.

Pre-order Assembly here and check out the tracklisting below:

Coma Girl
Johnny Appleseed
I Fought The Law (Live at Brixton Academy, London, 24 November 2001) *
Tony Adams
Sleepwalk
Love Kills
Get Down Moses
X-Ray Style
Mondo Bongo
Rudie Can’t Fail (Live at Brixton Academy, London, 24 November 2001) *
At The Border, Guy
Long Shadow
Forbidden City
Yalla Yalla
Redemption Song
Junco Partner (Acoustic) *
* PREVIOUSLY UNRELEASED

The Clash feature prominently in the latest issue of Uncut, where you can read all about their astonishing 1981 takeover of New York’s Bond International Casino.

The Besnard Lakes – Are The Last Of The Great Thunderstorm Warnings

Louis Pattison
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The Besnard Lakes – Are The Last Of The Great Thunderstorm Warnings

A sprawling, symphonic rock ensemble from a country that has come to be known for them, The Besnard Lakes have been a constant at the coalface of Canadian independent music for some 15 years now. In this time, the group – which revolves around the creative and romantic partnership of husband and wife Jace Lasek and Olga Goreas – have created a respectable body of work, five albums of dense, textured progressive music, two of which have been nominated for Canada’s Mercury equivalent, the Polaris Prize.

Fifteen years, of course, is a long time to have been in a rock group, a period long enough to weed out all but the most committed. By that point, the early hype has reduced to all but embers, elder statesman status is at least a decade off – truly, these are the marathon years. Had The Besnard Lakes not have gone the distance, it would have been understandable. Some five years have passed since their last album, 2016’s A Coliseum Complex Museum – a perfectly serviceable piece of work that was dismissed in some quarters for being, well, yet another Besnard Lakes album. Following its release, they separated from their long-time label Jagjaguwar, with them since 2007’s The Besnard Lakes Are The Dark Horse. Lasek, meanwhile, has a productive side-hustle, working as a producer for groups like Wolf Parade and Stars at the studio he co-owns, Breakglass, in Montreal.

At this point, Jace and Olga might have called it a day. But instead, The Besnard Lakes have somehow pulled off a remarkable resurrection. Their sixth album – the audaciously titled The Besnard Lakes Are The Last Of The Great Thunderstorm Warnings – is an astonishing return, up there with their best records to date. Clocking in at 72 minutes, it’s an album replete with echoes and allusions to the band’s history, grappling with themes of death and renewal. “Things have been changing/Breathing new life into our heads”, sings Goreas to a fanfare of horns on “Our Heads, Our Hearts On Fire Again”. Here is a band back in love with the idea of being a band.

How did this happen? In part, The Besnard Lakes’ rebirth is down to a return to first principles. There is the album title – the return to a naming convention that began with 2007’s The Besnard Lakes Are The Dark Horse and 2010’s The Besnard Lakes Are The Roaring Night. There are songs here from throughout the band’s lifespan, tracks like “New Revolution” that were set aside for whatever reason but, heard with fresh ears, suddenly felt right. And there are, of course, more “spy songs” – curious narratives rooted in Lasek’s love for the shadowy world of international espionage. The opening “Blackstrap” tells the story of an agent who climbs a mountain in search of signal, hoping to contact his lost love. The band lock into a sort of seasick melody, as a dial tone rings, rings, rings, rings, and the track ends on a cliffhanger of sorts. “All your gods will grow up tonight”, sings Lasek, enigmatically, as the ashes fall back to earth.

Like his musical hero Brian Wilson, Lasek is enamoured with the idea that the studio itself is the most important instrument. The Besnard Lakes have long had a certain widescreen aspect to their sound, but on …Last Of The Great Thunderstorm Warnings, we hear a new sense of spaciousness and ebb and flow. Lasek mentions Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side Of The Moon as a possible touchstone, and there is that sense of scale here. The album is divided into four sides – “Near Death”, “Death”, “After Death” and “Life” – and each one brings in shifts in mood and tone, sometimes subtle, at times astonishing. Take that moment six-and-a-half minutes into “Christmas Can Wait”, where after a period of synth-powered stargazing, the drums start up, Lasek’s falsetto swoops out of the darkness and guitar notes blaze through
the sky like meteorites breaching the outer atmosphere.

“Christmas Can Wait” is a song about death – explicitly, the death of Lasek’s father, who while dosed up with morphine in his final days, experienced dramatic hallucinations that he communicated to his son. Thoughts of death permeate …Last Of The Great Thunderstorm Warnings – not in a sophomoric or gothic way, but as a sort of weighing of something gigantic and profound. One is reminded of the fact that a dose of DMT is supposed to mimic a near-death experience; here, The Besnard Lakes employ psychedelia as a means of approaching and coming to terms with the unfathomable.

Two other tracks explicitly pay tribute to lost heroes of The Besnard Lakes’ musical firmament. “Raindrops” is a psychedelic flight of fancy with a lyric (“Garden of Eden, spirited/Did it need to be protected?”) that makes oblique reference to Talk Talk’s Mark Hollis, who passed away in 2019. “The Father Of Time Wakes Up”, meanwhile, is more explicitly a tribute to Prince. The lyrics are littered with Easter eggs – “Jamie Starr would steal everything you wore”, sings Lasek, a reference to Prince’s production pseudonym – while the song ends with a distinctly Purple guitar solo, played with requisite flash by the band’s friend Mark Cuthbertson of the
group Fantasticboom.

If …Last Of The Great Thunderstorm Warnings starts in a dark and somewhat muted place, it grows into one of the most upbeat and optimistic albums of the band’s career. “Feuds With Guns” is another spy song, some sort of ambush “on the dark side of town” – but musically, it’s a sweet thing, all soaring falsettos and warm mellotron. “The Dark Side Of Paradise” is a dreamy, shoegaze-tinted love song from Jace to Olga that recalls something of the twilit indulgence of Mercury Rev’s All Is Dream. And “New Revolution”, a revived offcut from the Until In Excess, Imperceptible UFO sessions, glows with positivity. “There’re so many ways of creation/So let’s write the world in our lifetime”, they sing, before a squalling synth solo draws the song to a close.

The final side – lest we remember, “Life” – is entirely dedicated to a title track that clocks in close to 18 minutes in length. It starts in a place of desperation. “Oh mother could you make the moon talk to me?” sings Jace. “Cos everybody here they hate my dream/Could you tear apart the world and make them see?” Come the end, though, the lyric is speaking the language of resolve and commitment: “Leave a light on for me love/No one else will take me now…” Then, after seven minutes of fireworks, the track dissipates into a gentle, undulating space drone that persists for 10 minutes, a deep cleanse for the brain.

On …Last Of The Great Thunderstorm Warnings, we hear The Besnard Lakes make a very contemporary take on psychedelic music; wise to rock history but not in thrall to it, more interested in asking the big questions than senselessly adding to the canon. They are far from the first psychedelic band to step up and attempt to pierce the veil of reality, in the hope of glimpsing what lies beyond. But by asking real and profound questions – and by making music with enough grace and power to carry at least some of that profundity – it cannot be denied that they have got a lot closer than most.

Neil Young teases lost 1982 album, Johnny’s Island

Sam Richards
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Neil Young teases lost 1982 album, Johnny’s Island

Neil Young has hinted that a ‘lost’ 1982 album called Johnny’s Island is likely to be released soon.

The album was recorded with the ‘Transband’ – who included Nils Lofgren on guitar, Ralph Molina on drums and Bruce Palmer on bass – at Commercial Recorders in Honolulu prior to Young’s 1982 European tour. According to a post on Neil Young Archives, it includes a majority of unreleased songs including “Big Pearl”, “Island In The Sun” and “Love Hotel”, “plus others you may have heard before”.

Young has previously referred to Johnny’s Island as Island In The Sun, saying that it was rejected by Geffen at the time. Three of the songs from that album – “Like An Inca”, “Hold On To Your Love” and “Little Thing Called Love” – ended up on Trans, which was released later in 1982.

Regarding specific release details, Young says only that Johnny’s Island is “being prepared for released at NYA” and is “coming to you soon”.

Alice Cooper on The Stooges and MC5: “We were three different types of theatre”

Peter Watts
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Alice Cooper on The Stooges and MC5: “We were three different types of theatre”

When Alice Cooper and his band arrived in Detroit in 1969, they found their natural home: “Freaky people doing freaky things with a big powerful sound!” As Cooper prepares for a spiritual return to his roots on his new album, the latest issue of Uncut – in shops now or available to buy online by clicking here! – winds the clock back to the Motor City’s wild heyday where Motown, high-energy rock’n’roll and radical politics ruled and Cooper unleashed the full power of his shocking “improv, guerrilla theatre”.

“Playing with Iggy and MC5 was great for us,” says Cooper. “We’d got so used to following Spirit or somebody like that. They were great musicians but didn’t have that electricity and drama. The MC5 were just pure Detroit. They were a little bit R&B, they were hard rock, they were politically charged and they were all such good musicians. The Stooges were so hypnotic. They would just sit there and they never got in the way of Iggy’s theatrics, who was as nasty as it got. I saw we could do something like that. Darker, dangerous, more blood, more force. The way that works is the band just attacks the audience, the band has to be merciless with the crowd. All those three bands – MC5, Stooges and Alice Cooper – worked so well together because we were three different types of theatre.”

Alice Cooper’s theatrics became legendary. The descent into the dark side began with the infamous incident at the Toronto Rock’n’Roll Revival, where a live chicken Cooper threw into the audience met a grisly end. Alice Cooper shows would later involve electric chairs, straitjackets and gallows. It was partly about survival, a way to keep up with the MC5 and Stooges. “The Detroit groups, I called them the Motor City Bad Boys, they let us into the circle,” says Alice Cooper bassist Dennis Dunaway. “We were very different but they accepted us. Playing in Detroit, we realised we had to get more energy into our music, which we did, but how do you out-power those bands? You can’t. So we decided to execute our singer.”

In the early days in Detroit, the stage shows were more limited. “We couldn’t afford TNT or gallows, so it was whatever we found,” says Cooper. “It was improv, guerrilla theatre. One night, I found a mop. That mop could go be a girl, it could be something to swing around, it could be a weapon, it could be something I ride on, it could go be a crutch, it could be a guitar. But the feather pillow was always a good one.”

The feather pillow became Alice Cooper’s trademark. At the finale, Cooper would tear it open and guitarist Michael Bruce would spray it with a CO2 canister, covering the audience in feathers like an indoor snowstorm. “We played a lot of shows together and I saw the theatrical side of their band really emerge and blossom,” says Kramer. “They were trying to create as much theatrically dramatic chaos as they could. It wasn’t really dangerous. It didn’t scare you. It was crazy and wild and fun, but it wasn’t Iggy. He was really scary, dancing like a dervish, possessed. You never got the sense with Iggy it was for show. It was a way of life.”

You can read much more about Alice Cooper, The Stooges and MC5 in the March 2021 issue of Uncut, out now with Leonard Cohen on the cover – buy a copy direct from us here, with free P&P for the UK!

Stax legend Steve Cropper announces new solo album, Fire It Up

Sam Richards
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Stax legend Steve Cropper announces new solo album, Fire It Up

Booker T & The MG’s guitarist Steve Cropper has announced a new album – what he’s calling his first ‘proper’ solo album since 1969.

Fire It Up will be released by Provogue on April 23. Listen to the first track to be taken from it, “Far Away”, below:

The album features The Rascals’ Felix Cavaliere and vocalist Roger C Reale, and was produced by Cropper with long-time collaborator Jon Tiven.

“I haven’t heard myself this way since the ’60s,” says Cropper. “It’s made from old grooves, because during a lockdown, you work on stuff that’s been in your head for years.” Pre-order Fire It Up here.

The 2nd Uncut Playlist Of 2021

Michael Bonner
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The 2nd Uncut Playlist Of 2021

I keeping saying this, but 2021 really is shaping up to be a good year for new music. Lots to enjoy here – and plenty of variety too, including the first fruits of the Jakob Bro/Arve Henriksen/Jorge Rossy collaboration, the soulful return of Valerie June, an unexpectedly brilliant hook up between Pino Palladino and Blake Mills, some cosmic pastoral goodness from Field Works and the VUisms of Whitney K. Plus the Coral, Teenage Fanclub, Femi Kuti and more.

Follow me on Twitter @MichaelBonner

GETTING YOUR COPY OF THIS MONTH’S UNCUT DELIVERED STRAIGHT TO YOUR DOOR IS EASY AND HASSLE FREE – CLICK HERE FOR MORE DETAILS


1.
CLARK
“Small”
(Deutsche Grammophon)


2.
JAKOB BRO / ARVE HENRIKSEN / JORGE ROSSY
“To Stanko”
(ECM)


3.
FIELD WORKS
“La’āli’”
(Temporary Residence Ltd)


4.
VALERIE JUNE
“Call Me A Fool” [feat. Carla Thomas]
(Fantasy)


5.
MASON LINDAHL
“Outside Laughing”
(Tompkins Square)


6.
FRUIT BATS
“Holy Rose”
(Merge)


7.
FEMI KUTI
“As We Struggle Everyday”
(Partisan)

8.
THE PEACERS
“Blexxed Rec”
(Drag City)

9.
NATALIE BERGMAN
“I Will Praise You” [Live]
(Third Man Records)

10.
MATTHEW E WHITE & LONNIE HOLLEY
This Here Jungle of Moderness/Composition 14
(Spacebomb/Jagjaguwar)

11.
PINO PALLADINO AND BLAKE MILLS
“Just Wrong”
(New Deal / Impulse!)

12.
VAGABON
“Reason Ro Believe” [feat. Courtney Barnett]
(Nonesuch)

13.
WHITNEY K
“Maryland”
(Maple Death Records)

14.
TEENAGE FANCLUB
“I’m More Inclined”
(PeMa)

15.
BILL MacKAY & NATHAN BOWLES
“Joy Ride”
(Drag City)

16.
JENNY LEWIS & SERENGETI
“Vroom Vroom”
(self-released)

17.
THE CORAL
“Faceless Angel”
(Run On Records/Modern Sky UK)

GETTING YOUR COPY OF THIS MONTH’S UNCUT DELIVERED STRAIGHT TO YOUR DOOR IS EASY AND HASSLE FREE – CLICK HERE FOR MORE DETAILS

Yola and Courtney Marie Andrews triumph at UK Americana Awards

Sam Richards
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Yola and Courtney Marie Andrews triumph at UK Americana Awards

Courtney Marie Andrews was one of the big winners at last night’s UK Americana Awards, which took the form of a virtual ceremony with performances by Elvis Costello, Steve Earle and Gillian Welch.

The Arizona singer-songwriter was crowned International Artist Of The Year and also won Best International Album for Old Flowers.

Merseyside blues and country singer Robert Vincent was named UK Artist Of The Year as well as winning Best UK Album for In This Town You’re Owned.

Yola won Best UK Song for “I Don’t Wanna Lie” written with Dan Auerbach and Bobby Wood, while Laura Marling won the Best-Selling Americana Album Award.

As previously announced, Elvis Costello and Mavis Staples picked up lifetime achievement awards. See the full list of winners and nominees below:

UK Song Of The Year
“I Should Be On A Train” by Ferris and Sylvester (Written by Issy Ferris and Archie Sylvester)
“Ain’t One Thing” by Lady Nade (Written by Lady Nade )
“Thin (I Used To Be Bullet Proof)” by Our Man In The Field (Written by Alexander Ellis)
“I Don’t Wanna Lie” by Yola (Written by Yola, Dan Auerbach, Bobby Wood) WINNER

UK Album of the Year
A Dark Murmuration of Words by Emily Barker (produced by Greg Freeman)
Song For Our Daughter by Laura Marling (Produced by Ethan Johns, Laura Marling)
In This Town You’re Owned by Robert Vincent (Produced by Ethan Johns) WINNER
Hannah White and The Nordic Connections by Hannah White (Produced by Hannah White and The Nordic Connections)

UK Artist of the Year
Emily Barker
Laura Marling
Robert Vincent WINNER
Yola

UK Instrumentalist of the Year
Anna Corcoran WINNER
Lukas Drinkwater
Martin Harley
Michele Stodart

International Song of the Year
“Welcome to Hard Times” by Charley Crockett (Written by Charley Crockett)
“Brightest Star” by Lilly Hiatt (Written by Lilly Hiatt)
“Already Dead” by Austin Lucas (Written by Austin Lucas)
“Hand Over My Heart” by The Secret Sisters (Written by Elizabeth Rogers, Lydia Lane Rogers) WINNER

International Album of the Year
“Lamentations” by American Aquarium (Produced by Shooter Jennings)
“Old Flowers” by Courtney Marie Andrews (Produced by Andrew Sarlo) WINNER
“That’s How Rumors Get Started” by Margo Price (Produced by Sturgill Simpson with co-production by David R. Ferguson and Margo Price)
“Expectations” by Katie Pruitt (Produced by Michael Robinson, Katie Pruitt)

International Artist of the Year
Courtney Marie Andrews WINNER
Jason Isbell
Gillian Welch and David Rawlings
Lucinda Williams

Best-Selling Americana Album: Laura Marling – Song For Our Daughter

Lifetime Achievement Award: Elvis Costello

International Lifetime Achievement Award: Mavis Staples

Trailblazer Award: Christine McVie

International Trailblazer Award: Steve Earle

Songwriter Legacy Award: John Prine

Bob Harris Emerging Artist Award: Robbie Cavannagh and Demi Marriner

Grassroots Award: Music Venue Trust – Mark Davyd and Beverly Whitrick

Send us your questions for Toyah Willcox

Sam Richards
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Send us your questions for Toyah Willcox

By now, you can’t have failed to become aware of Toyah Willcox and Robert Fripp’s Sunday lunch lockdown videos. Their weekly kitchen-based renditions of rock classics – Willcox’s enthusiastic performances of “School’s Out”, “Paranoid” or “Smells Like Teen Spirit” often reducing her husband to a fit of giggles – have gone viral, reminding everyone that this sometime TV host is a performer first and foremost.

Inspired by the punk scene, Toyah first rose to prominence as an actor in Derek Jarman’s Jubilee and Quadrophenia. Her theatrical instincts served her well as she became one of the biggest British pop stars of the early-’80s, a vibrant new wave Boudicca blazing a trail for independent female artists.

In fact as Willcox transferred her talents to stage and TV, she even delivered a creative retelling of the Boudicca story for the BBC, alongside Tony Robinson. At one point in the ’90s, Toyah became so ubiquitous on telly that she could be spotted presented both Songs Of Praise and The Good Sex Guide Late.

However, the popularity of 2019’s reissue of In The Court Of The Crimson Queen (spoken word intro, of course, by Fripp) followed by last year’s Toyah Solo box set has reignited interest in her music; a reissue of 1980’s breakthrough album The Blue Meaning is due this spring.

So what do you want to ask the warrior rocker and current queen of the internet? Send your questions to audiencewith@www.uncut.co.uk by Monday (Feb 1), and Toyah will answer the best ones in a future issue of Uncut.

Hear Teenage Fanclub’s new single, “I’m More Inclined”

Sam Richards
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Hear Teenage Fanclub’s new single, “I’m More Inclined”

Teenage Fanclub’s new album Endless Arcade will now be released on April 30, via PeMa.

Hear the latest single to be take from it, the Norman Blake-penned “I’m More Inclined”, below:

Says the band’s Raymond McGinley: “When we first starting talking about getting songs together for a new album, Norman said, ‘I have one ready to go now!’— and that was ‘I’m More Inclined.’ He played it to us, we loved it, and that got us started on the whole thing that became Endless Arcade.”

Pre-order Endless Arcade on translucent green, pink or clear vinyl, as well as CD and limited cassette, here.

Peruse Teenage Fanclub’s rescheduled UK and European tourdates below, and buy tickets here.

7th September 2021 – Manchester – Academy 2
8th September 2021 – London – Forum
14th September 2021 – Edinburgh – Usher Hall
15th September 2021 – Aberdeen – Music Hall
16th September 2021 – Glasgow – Barrowland

8th April 2022- Sheffield – Leadmill
9th April 2022 – Leeds – Beckett’s
10th April 2022 – Nottingham – Rock City
12th April 2022 – Birmingham – Institute
13th April 2022 – Norwich – Waterfront
14th April 2022 – Bath – Komedia
16th April 2022 – Brighton – Chalk
17th April 2022 – Portsmouth – Wedgewood Rooms
20th April 2022 – Belfast – Empire Music Hall
21st April 2022 – Dublin – Academy
23rd April 2022 – Gothenburg, SE – Pustervik
24th April 2022 – Oslo, NO – Vulkan
25th April 2022 – Copenhagen, DK – Pumpehuset
27th April 2022 – Hamburg, DE – Knust
28th April 2022 – Berlin, DE – Columbia Theater
29th April 2022 – Dusseldorf, DE – Zakk

1st May 2022 – Munich, DE – Strom
2nd May 2022 – Mannheim, DE – Alte Feuerwache
4th May 2022 – Lyon, FR – Épicerie Moderne
5th May 2022 – Nantes, FR – Stereolux
6th May 2022 – Rouen, FR – Le 106
7th May 2022 – Paris, FR – La Gaîté Lyrique
8th May 2022 – Eindhoven, NL – Effenaar
9th May 2022 – Utrecht, NL – De Helling

David Bowie – Ultimate Record Collection: Part 3 (1990-2016)

Uncut
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David Bowie – Ultimate Record Collection: Part 3 (1990-2016)

The last part of our Ultimate Record Collection: David Bowie trilogy is here now. Beginning with Bowie’s rediscovery of his past in 1990, and progressing all the way to his final album Blackstar, it’s the definitive timeline of his final decades.

Buy a copy by clicking here.

Welcome to Ultimate Record Collection: David Bowie – Part 3 (1990-2016)

John Robinson
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Welcome to Ultimate Record Collection: David Bowie – Part 3 (1990-2016)

BUY THE ULTIMATE RECORD COLLECTION: DAVID BOWIE SERIES HERE

In the two volumes of Ultimate Record Collection: David Bowie so far, we’ve had the pleasure of conducting you through a chronology of the artist’s work – seen through the eyes of the musicians who were there with him making the music.

Through new interviews with early collaborators like Phil Lancaster, Woolf Byrne and Mike Vernon in Part 1, we built an unrivalled oral history of Bowie’s early adventures, and his breakthrough to mature creativity and superstardom. In Part 2 (1977-1989), we uncovered new stories and first-hand accounts about the “Berlin trilogy” and beyond.

Now, as we move to the last decades of Bowie’s lifetime, we find that while some of the personnel remain the same – Mike Garson, one of our most generous interviewees, is often there; Eno returns, as does Tony Visconti, who joins us for some new recollections on Bowie’s later work – Bowie continued to thirst after fresh experience and new directions in his music. We’re particularly privileged to hear from Reeves Gabrels, who can be credited for reminding Bowie that above all, his fans wanted to hear him do exactly what he wanted.

As this volume of Ultimate Record Collection proceeds, it becomes obvious how Bowie’s new music also enjoyed a knowing relationship with his past. This might be obvious on the likes of the VH1 Storytellers album, where Bowie reaches back as far as “Can’t Help Thinking About Me”. Elsewhere though, there’s grounds for thinking that the knowing glances to his earlier self (on the “Buddha Of Suburbia” single, say) ultimately build towards a wonderful circularity.

Designer Jonathan Barnbrook helped develop this self-reference in the brace of sleeve art from The Next Day, an album in which Bowie explicitly referenced his past work. Musically, Bowie’s last works, Blackstar and the Lazarus musical referenced his earliest. He left us much as he found us as an emerging talent in the late 1960s: a musician with a deep affinity for jazz and with an interest in developing some strong ideas for musical theatre. As the artwork of his latest lifetime compilation had it, clearly everything had changed – but at the same time, in the fundamentals of the man’s enthusiasms and passion, nothing had changed at all.

As musical director Henry Hey tells us of Bowie’s work on Lazarus: “I was aware it might be his last project, but I never thought of it like that. Just like he didn’t want his fame to define him when he was working with people, he didn’t want his illness to define him. He was only about positive energy and excitement for the creative process. He would bring this beautiful energy to it.”

Buy a copy of the magazine here. Missed one in the series? Bundles are available at the same location…

Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells revived for summer concert series

Sam Richards
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Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells revived for summer concert series

Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells album turns 50 in 2023. Starting the 50th anniversary celebrations early, the album will be performed in an “expansive” live show for nine dates at London’s Royal Festival Hall this August.

Tubular Bells – Live In Concert will feature musical direction from Oldfield’s long-time collaborator Robin A Smith, alongside a visual interpretation by Circa Contemporary Circus led by Artistic Director Yaron Lifschitz, and a new scenic design by William Reynolds.

“It’s amazing to think that it’s 50 years since I started writing Tubular Bells, and I am touched that my music has reached so many people, all over the world, during that time,” says Mike Oldfield. “I have worked with Robin A Smith for almost 30 years, since we presented Tubular Bells together at Edinburgh Castle, through lots of different performances and recordings culminating in the London Olympics in 2012. When I started thinking about reinventing Tubular Bells for live performance with dancers and acrobats—and of course live music, it was Robin who I knew could realise this vision. I am thrilled that this is finally coming to the stage and I trust no-one more to reimagine my work in this way.”

After the Southbank run, the performance will then tour the world until 2023.

Tickets for Tubular Bells – Live In Concert go on general sale here on Friday (January 29) with a pre-sale from Wednesday (January 27). Prices range from £29.50 to £99.50 (plus booking fee).

The Clash in New York: “De Niro took us out clubbing”

Rob Hughes
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The Clash in New York: “De Niro took us out clubbing”

The new issue of Uncut – in shops now or available to buy online by clicking here, with no delivery charges for the UK – features an astonishing oral history of The Clash’s 17-date residency at Bond International Casino in New York, during which they caused riots in Times Square, went clubbing with Robert De Niro and kicked off a “punky hip-hop thing” with the city’s newest underground scene. Here’s a little taster:

DON LETTS (DJ/filmmaker): They were like four sticks of dynamite on stage. It was a beautiful thing to see these guys in sync. Off stage there was some friction here and there – a clash of identities, because they were very different people – but on stage it was like the whole Magnificent Seven thing. You do the fucking job. You draw fast, shoot straight and don’t hit the bystanders.

CHRIS SALEWICZ (NME journalist): I hadn’t seen The Clash for some time and I was stunned by their energy on stage. They were really firing, I’d never seen them as good or as powerful. I was there for about nine shows and the whole thing was just steaming. It was all part of how they just took New York. You’d turn on the TV and there’d be Joe and Paul, like some kind of royalty.

JOE ELY (singer-songwriter and guest artist): The sheer power of those shows blew everybody away. Of course the songs were good, but they were showing no mercy. That got around town, which only made the mayhem bigger and louder than it already was. Then there was the social scene that always goes with music events like that. Afterwards everyone would hang out at the Gramercy Park Hotel or another one down on 8th Street. Or the Chelsea Hotel, which was Joe’s favourite because it had so much history.

CHRIS SALEWICZ: There was a bar across the road from Bond’s called Tin Pan Alley, which had been used for one of the scenes in Raging Bull. That became Clash Central for three weeks. Joe and Kosmo [Vinyl, The Clash’s right-hand man] would hang out there. It was run by a lesbian bankrobber, which all added to the weirdness. At one point I remember meeting Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese, who both thought the whole Bond’s thing was fantastic. That’s how The Clash’s appearance in The King Of Comedy came about. One night, Mick threw a birthday party for [girlfriend] Ellen Foley at Interferon. I remember looking over at Joe and Mick and they just seemed like blood brothers, really tight. They were really enjoying themselves in New York.

DON LETTS: There was a club called Negril that we all used to go to, where Kosmo used to DJ. That’s where we met Rick Rubin, The Beastie Boys, Russell Simmons and Afrika Bambaataa.

PEARL HARBOUR (DJ/singer): The Beastie Boys would be drinking backstage and smoking. They were so young then, just funny guys who were all bowled over by The Clash. John Lydon was a good friend of Paul’s at that time, so he was with us a lot. We’d go to lots of different bars, drinking cocktails we’d never heard of, like Brandy Alexanders – chocolate milkshake with brandy.

PENNIE SMITH (photographer): Everybody popped in all the time, it was mayhem being around The Clash. I remember Scorsese having an oxygen cylinder sitting on the settee. I think he was asthmatic. I took a picture of De Niro talking to Strummer. He was just as much a fan of Joe’s as the other way round. It was a sort of parallel universe.

PEARL HARBOUR: De Niro and Scorsese came out with us a couple of times. Scorsese took us to a really posh Indian restaurant with [then-wife] Isabella Rossellini. When we were all sitting down for dinner, Joe said to Isabella: “Does everybody tell you that you look just like Ingrid Berman?” She said, “Yeah, that’s my mother.” Joe got so embarrassed, because he didn’t know. That was sweet. She and Scorsese thought it was cute. De Niro took us out clubbing one night and also gave us free tickets for a boxing match. He had these fancy $100 seats. I think he just wanted to show us a good time. He became a friend after that. He and Christopher Walken came to visit us in London not long after. We took them out with Joe and Kosmo and all got drunk at Gaz’s Rockin’ Blues. That all happened because of New York.

You can the full story of The Clash’s 1981 Bond Casino shows in the March 2021 issue of Uncut, out now with Leonard Cohen on the cover – buy a copy here!

Genesis reschedule The Last Domino? tour to Autumn 2021

Sam Richards
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Genesis reschedule The Last Domino? tour to Autumn 2021

Genesis have been forced to reschedule their upcoming UK and Ireland tour for September and October 2021.

The Last Domino? tour – their first in 14 years – was originally due to take place in 2020 before being postponed to April 2021. Given the ongoing uncertainty surrounding Covid restrictions, it’s now been moved back again. The new dates are as follows:

Wednesday 15th September Dublin 3 Arena
Thursday 16th September Dublin 3 Arena
Saturday 18th September Belfast SSE Arena
Monday 20th September Birmingham Utilita Arena
Tuesday 21st September Birmingham Utilita Arena
Wednesday 22nd September Birmingham Utilita Arena
Friday 24th September Manchester AO Arena
Saturday 25th September Manchester AO Arena
Monday 27th September Leeds First Direct Arena
Tuesday 28th September Leeds First Direct Arena
Thursday 30th September Newcastle Utilita Arena
Friday 1st October Newcastle Utilita Arena
Sunday 3rd October Liverpool M & S Bank Arena
Monday 4th October Liverpool M & S Bank Arena
Thursday 7th October Glasgow The SSE Hydro
Friday 8th October Glasgow The SSE Hydro
Monday 11th October London O2
Tuesday 12th October London O2
Wednesday 13th October London O2

Existing tickets remain valid, and ticket holders will be contacted by their ticket agent. New tickets are available here.

In a joint statement, Tony Banks, Phil Collins and Mike Rutherford said: “Well let’s just forget about that last year and focus on 2021 shall we! We can’t wait to finally get this show on the road, but we feel the decision to move the tour is the best one for those planning on attending and for us as a band and crew. We hope now we can all relax a little more and focus on the music and having a good night.”

Watch a new clip of Genesis rehearsing for the tour below:

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