Wildflowers was not the first Tom Petty album to have had its initial ambitions thwarted somewhat between conception and release. A decade or so earlier, Petty had set about Southern Accents, intended as a double-album state of the nation address surveying the Deep South, commemorating its music and contemplating its contradictions. The finished product was certainly far from bad, but it was nevertheless also a stretch from where Petty had once envisioned it taking him, and his listeners.
Wildflowers, similarly, was originally sketched as a 25-song double album, before being trimmed, at the suggestion of a nervous record label, to a nevertheless generous 15. The entry-level version of this reissue is that aborted 25-track double, scaling up to a 5CD Super-Deluxe edition that includes the extended Wildflowers plus contemporary studio outtakes, home demos, alternative studio cuts and live recordings, some of them previously unreleased.
Wildflowers was billed as a solo album, but this seemed a hair-splitting distinction. All of the Heartbreakers appear thoughout, aside from recently departed drummer Stan Lynch, replaced by Steve Ferrone, who would be formally inducted into the group in short order. Give or take the saxophone section and pedal steel on “House In The Woods”, a few guest sessioneers and a couple of celebrity cameos (Ringo Starr plays drums on “To Find A Friend”, Carl Wilson sings along on “Honey Bee”), Wildflowers is a Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers album in all but name.
By that exacting standard, Wildflowers is a very good Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers album. What the 25-track edition makes thrillingly and bafflingly clear, however, is that it was less than it might have been. It may have been the heedless profligacy often witnessed in people who know they have tapped a rich seam, but a lot of extraordinary material was left lying about.
On its own merits, the 15-track version of Wildflowers holds up well. Petty’s previous solo album, 1989’s Full Moon Fever, had seen production substantially handled by ELO’s Jeff Lynne, one of a procession of relatively genteel British foils – Dave Stewart, George Harrison et al – Petty sought throughout his career, in the manner of an anxious colonial worried that his rough edges would be frowned upon by the aristocracy. Wildflowers was produced by Rick Rubin, who – though he later acknowledged admiring Full Moon Fever to the point of obsession – seemed to get that Petty’s rough edges were his most appealing traits. He recorded Petty (and, to all intents and purposes, the Heartbreakers) live in the studio, and Wildflowers sounds it.
It also stands as something of a classic of the midlife crisis genre. Petty, who was approaching both his mid-forties and a divorce, offers little hollow bravado on this front. He kicks off the pretty acoustic trill “To Find A Friend” with, “In the middle of his life/He left his wife/And ran off to be bad/Boy, it was sad.” Among the last words heard on the album, on the fragile piano ballad “Wake Up Time”, which sounds something of a memo from Petty to himself, are, “You were so cool back in high school… what happened?” (There must have been many put-upon suburban dads among the millions who bought Wildflowers who found themselves thinking, ‘Come on, man, you’re still Tom goddamn Petty.’)
It would be unfair, however, to characterise Wildflowers as nought but Petty’s maudlin description of the view of his own navel. It is rarely a happy record, but when it roars and rages it reminds of what had been instantly arresting about Petty (and the Heartbreakers) when they’d emerged from Gainesville via Los Angeles nearly two decades previously. “You Wreck Me” is a wilful throwback to their first albums, all new wave nerve and Southern rock swagger, a skinny leather tie lashed around a scarlet neck. “Cabin Down Below” is a swampy choogle evocative of prime Creedence Clearwater Revival. “Honey Bee” is a leery boogie which, amid formidable competition, may be the least subtle metaphorical deployment of the titular insect in rock’n’roll history.
But aside from the above, and leaving aside the odd askew excursion, like the bewildering, near-prog “House In The Woods”, the dominant tones of Wildflowers are fretful acoustic guitars and mournful pianos. The title track is neatly illustrative, Petty keening yearningly over a trebly strum, simple piano echo and gently brushed drums. The lyric is notionally an address to someone whom the narrator believes deserves better (“You belong among the wildflowers,” etc), but it’s hard not to hear it as Petty thinking of himself as someone who’d rather, right now, be tiptoeing through the tulips. Similarly, the lead single – and thumping hit – “You Don’t Know How It Feels”, is another melancholy fantasy of escape from loneliness, for all that the first lines of its chorus (“Let me get to the point/Let’s roll another joint”) would subsequently see it semi-mistakenly embraced by arena crowds as a rollicking party anthem.
The 10 tracks eventually sliced from Wildflowers don’t seem to have been culled for any coherent rhyme or reason: the virtues of the original album are abundant among the omitted tracks. “California” is a wry entreaty to Petty’s adopted home state, set to a taut country-rock trundle, and one of a few Wildflowers cast-offs that ended up in Edward Burns’ 1996 film She’s The One. The soundtrack album ended up reaching No 15 in the US, not far off the No 8 managed by Wildflowers.
“Harry Green” is a harmonica-lashed, husky talking blues of Paul Simonesque poise, recalling a childhood friend who, before dying too young, left a lasting impression (“We met in Spanish class/Helped me out of a spot I was in/Stopped a redneck from kicking my ass”). Whether real or fictional, the tale is deftly written and beautifully sung, Petty excavating the depths of his register. “Leave Virginia Alone” might even be the best thing on either disc: a sumptuous, Springsteen-ish elegy to some maddeningly unattainable muse at once “as hot as Georgia asphalt” and “as high as a Georgia palm tree”, which Petty sings with the rueful dolour of a man who has only half-convinced himself he’s best off out of it.
Of the three further discs available for big spenders, the home demos and alternate versions are – as is usually the way of these things – mostly likely to be listened to once, out of curiosity. But there are charming moments among the demos – the wounds that inspired “Leave Virginia Alone” are arguably more exposed in this intimate setting. The alternate versions were mostly designated alternate versions for a reason, though the more acoustic-y “You Wreck Me” emphasises a descendance from “Running Down A Dream”. Predictably, however, the live tracks, recorded between 1995 and what turned out to be Petty’s final tour in 2017, are astounding: on stage, Petty seemed comfortable to slough off the shackles of decorum with which he often encumbered himself in the studio, and remember that he sang in a singularly fabulous rock’n’roll band.
Petty always thought highly of Wildflowers: at his last show, at the Hollywood Bowl on September 25, 2017, just a week before he died, the album furnished five of the 17 songs he and the Heartbreakers played that night. It sounds even better at this extended – and intended – length.
Neil Young has released an unboxing video for his massive upcoming boxset Archives Vol II: 1972-1976, due for release on November 20.
The set contains 131 tracks, 12 never released in any form, and 49 new versions of classic Neil Young songs, plus a 252-page hardbound book. Watch the video below:
Priced at $250, the 10xCD boxset is strictly limited worldwide to 3,000 units, although it will also available digitally on Neil Young Archives and at all major DSPs.
The new issue of Uncut – in UK shops now and available to order online by clicking here – includes an in-depth investigation into the making of The Doors’ 1970 classic Morrison Hotel. Burdened by troubles, legal and otherwise, the group were on the brink of implosion – but instead, band members and eyewitnesses tell Peter Watts how The Doors enjoyed an astonishing burst of unrivalled creativity…
When The Doors arrived at Elektra Sound Studios in Los Angeles in September 1969, it was a homecoming of sorts. The studio was built in a Mission revival style, with cheerful yellow walls and terracotta roofing. It was just a block from the Alta Cienega Motel – where Jim Morrison was living out a bohemian existence – while Morrison’s girlfriend Pam ran a boutique called Themis just down the road. But the band had spent the summer at the studio labouring through gruelling sessions for The Soft Parade, an experience so miserable they nearly split. Would their next album go the same way?
“Actually, most of it was really fun,” recalls Robby Krieger, The Doors’ guitarist, who even now seems surprised to be saying this. “We still didn’t think of it as work. It could be long hours and some of it was boring – getting the right sound from the snare drum for four hours – but once we started playing it was always fun. We were a pretty odd lot, but when you put us all together it made sense.”
For The Doors, 1969 had been one disaster after another. In March, a drunken Morrison was alleged to have flashed his penis during a gig in Miami. He was charged with public indecency and many American venues refused to book the band. The threat of imprisonment hung over the Soft Parade sessions. Then, just as the band began work on Morrison Hotel, Morrison was arrested after getting drunk on a plane on the way to see The Rolling Stones in Phoenix. In a bid to get them to focus, Elektra owner Jac Holzman gave the band a pep talk.
It worked. Although troubled by post-Miami litigation and Morrison’s antics both on stage and off, 1970 was a surprisingly productive period for The Doors. You can get a sense of their creative engagement from the 50th-anniversary reissue of Morrison Hotel. Before the first take of “Roadhouse Blues”, for instance, we find a relaxed Morrison setting the scene. “Gentlemen,” he says, “the subject of this song is something everybody has known at one time or other. It’s an old roadhouse down South or maybe Midwest, perhaps on the way to Bakersfield, and we’re driving in a 57 Chevy –dig it? It’s about 1.30 and we’re not driving too fast but we’re not driving too slow either. We’ve a six-pack of beer, a few joints and we’re just listening to the radio on the way to that old roadhouse.” He hardly sounds like a man preoccupied with his own worries.
“I loved hearing that stuff again,” says Krieger. “That wasn’t something Jim did all the time, but it helped us to get the feel he was after and it’s a great reminder of what we were like in the studio for that album. I know that at the back of his mind he would have been worried about going to jail, but he wasn’t going to let it get in the way. Jim was always in the moment no matter what he was doing.”
“Morrison Hotel was basically about trying to climb up from underneath intense negativity,” says the band’s long-serving engineer, Bruce Botnick. “Jim was under terrific stress waiting to hear what the courts were going to do. But they weren’t creatively bust. Morrison Hotel was a springboard forward.”
Elton John’s new deep cuts and rarities anthology Jewel Box will be released by UMC/EMI on November 13.
Today he’s released a demo of “Here’s To The Next Time”, the finished version of which ended up as the B-side to his rare 1968 debut single “I’ve Been Loving You”. It was recorded at DJM Studios in late 1967 when Elton was still known as Reg Dwight. Listen below:
Also from Jewel Box, you can hear “Billy And The Kids”, a 1986 B-side:
You can peruse the full contents of Jewel Box and pre-order here.
This year’s Secret 7″ exhibition has opened at the NOW Gallery on Greenwich Peninsula, London.
It features 700 unique pieces of art created exclusively for the project by leading artists including Anish Kapoor, Lubaina Himid, Michel Gondry, Gavin Turk, Jeremy Deller… and Uncut’s very own in-house design wizard Marc Jones!
Each artwork comes in the form of a 7″ sleeve housing one of seven classic singles: Aretha Franklin’s “One Step Ahead”, Bob Dylan’s “Blind Willie McTell”, Foo Fighters’ “This Is A Call”, The Internet’s “Come Over”, Koffee’s “Toast”, Miles Davis’s “Miles Runs The Voodoo Down” and Vampire Weekend’s “Harmony Hall”.
When the exhibition closes on November 1, all records will be auctioned (anonymously) on eBay to raise funds for Help Refugees.
Visit the official NOW Gallery site to book a timed entry ticket to the exhibition.
While the previously released singles from Hey Clockface were recorded in Helsinki and Paris prior to the pandemic, the music for “Newspaper Pane” was written and produced in New York by composer/arranger Michael Leonhart in collaboration with guitarist Bill Frisell, with Costello adding his verses remotely. The song was mixed at Bigtop Studio, Woodland Hills, Los Angeles by Sebastian Krys.
The Kinks will reissue their 1970 concept album Lola Versus Powerman And The Moneygoround, Part One in multiple formats on December 11 via BMG.
The newly remastered album will come in 1xLP, 1xCD, 2xCD and digital formats, as well as a limited edition deluxe 10” book pack containing a 60-page book, three CDs, two 7” singles and four colour prints.
Among the bonus tracks is a new Ray Davies remix / medley of “Any Time”, entitled “The Follower – Any Time 2020”. Listen below:
Originally written as a possible B-side for “Apeman”, the track includes previously unreleased versions and excerpts of several tracks from the Lola album as well as added spoken word and sound effects. Says Davies: “I saw a way of making this unreleased 1970s track connect to an audience in 2020. I also saw a way of showing that music can time-travel, that memory is instantaneous and therefore can join us in the ‘now’. I put this together as something surreal then realised that it was really happening. The song has found its place – after its 50th birthday!”
Check out the full contents of the various editions and pre-order here.
In lieu of a 2020 tour to support his recent album On Sunset, Paul Weller has announced an hour-long live special called Mid-Sömmer Musik.
It was recorded at his own Black Barn Studios in August with a full band (Steve Cradock, Andy Crofts, Steve Pilgrim, Ben Gordelier and Tom Van Heel). As well tracks from On Sunset and True Meanings, the set includes brand new never-before-heard tracks that are likely to feature on Weller’s next album, which he started writing and recording during lockdown.
“I wanted to play the new stuff because I’m so into it,” says Weller. “It’s so sad we couldn’t play anything from On Sunset this year, I was really looking forward to playing that live.”
Standard tickets will be available for £15 and ticket/art print bundles for £22.50 (including a limited edition A2 Mid-Sömmer Musik lithograph). They go on sale at 9am on Friday (October 16) from here.
Stevie Wonder has today released two singles, the first music to be issued on his own new imprint So What The Fuss Music, via Republic Records.
“Can’t Put It in The Hands of Fate” is a protest anthem written in support of the Black Lives Matter movement, featuring
rappers Rapsody, Cordae, Chika and Busta Rhymes. “Where Is Our Love Song” is a more reflective number featuring Gary Clark Jr, all proceeds of which will be donated to Feeding America.
I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the responsibilities facing musicians at the moment, in particular how they might address what’s going on in the world right now. Should they offer an escape from reality or should musicians instead hold to account those who seek, in one way or another, to undermine our democracy and broader cultural values?
This month’s Uncut offers a couple of different perspectives on this knotty problem. There’s Drive-By Truckers, who return with their second album of the year, The New OK, which is a fierce response to the strange and terrifying events that have dominated 2020. “I owe it to my kids to do everything in my power to change this shit,” says a typically passionate Patterson Hood. Then there’s Robin Pecknold, whose beguiling new Fleet Foxes album, Shore, offers a warm and optimistic respite from global concerns. “People need to be engaged and active with the world’s problems, that’s definitely necessary,” says Pecknold’s friend Kevin Morby. “But just as necessary is people need to have something to turn to that reminds them that the world can be beautiful.”
Morby’s message is echoed, to some extent, in our cover story, which finds Bruce Springsteen reuniting with the E Street Band for the first time on record since 2014’s High Hopes. The band tell Peter Watts about how their new album, Letter To You, although recorded last year, took on an increasing urgency as lockdown continued. “I think it will be very healing and powerful,” says Nils Lofgren. “Music is the sacred weapon of the planet. It unites and heals billions of people.” Meanwhile, Songhoy Blues explain to Tom Pinnock how their message of unity and positive change resonates across a divided, war-torn Mali. “For us the best thing to do is to be optimistic,” they explain
It’s potent stuff, I think. And there’s plenty more in this issue besides: Rob Hughes’ revelatory Joni Mitchell investigations, out-there dispatches from South California 1970 as The Doors rally themselves for a glorious third act, Paul Weller on The Style Council, Metallica on their greatest albums and Todd Rundgren answering your questions. It’s a typically busy issue, in other words.
Bruce Springsteen, Joni Mitchell, Fleet Foxes, Songhoy Blues, Paul Weller, The Doors, Drive-By Truckers, Kim Gordon, Metallica, Grandaddy, Todd Rundgren and Gwenifer Raymond all feature in the new Uncut, dated December 2020 and in UK shops from October 15 or available to buy online now. As always, the issue comes with a free CD, this time comprising 15 tracks of the month’s best new music.
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: As Bruce and the E Street Band return with Letter To You, we speak to every E Street member about life inside “a benevolent monarchy”, the rigorous discipline behind the album’s “Beatles schedule” and honouring the departed. “It’s a celebration of music and the joy of it…”
OUR FREE CD! GREETINGS FROM UNCUT: 15 fantastic tracks from the cream of the month’s releases, including songs by Elvis Costello, Lambchop, Grandaddy, Gwenifer Raymond, Evie Sands, Jeff Tweedy, Drive-By Truckers, Jennifer Castle, Skyway Man,Sam Coomes, North Americans and more.
This issue of Uncut is available to buy by clicking here – with FREE delivery to the UK and reduced delivery charges for the rest of the world.
Inside the issue, you’ll find:
JONI MITCHELL: As a new boxset sheds light on the earliest part of Mitchell’s career, we investigate how the songwriter is today returning to active service. Stand by for hootenannies, visits from Eric Idle and nights spent dancing in roadhouse bars: “She’s living a very full and creative life…”
FLEET FOXES: 12 years on from their remarkable debut, Robin Pecknold has returned with an excellent new album, Shore. He fills Uncut in on his struggles and triumphs, and on what’s changed over the last decade
SONGHOY BLUES: Uncut meets one of the world’s most exciting rock bands to hear all about coups and civil war in Mali, their powerful new songs and their optimism for the future
PAUL WELLER: Along with his Style Council bandmates, Weller takes us through the making of their classic single, “Walls Come Tumbling Down!”
THE DOORS: Welcome to Morrison Hotel… band members and eyewitnesses tell the tale of The Doors’ 1970, from legal burdens to bursts of unrivalled creativity. “We had to do something different”
METALLICA: Album by album with the Californian thrashers
KIM GORDON: The musician and artist takes us through her inspiring new photo memoir, No Icon
TODD RUNDGREN: The restless rock inquirer answers your questions on AI, hip-hop, crushed velvet pants and philosophical chats with Pete Townshend
In our expansive reviews section, we take a look at new records from Drive-By Truckers, Jeff Tweedy, Gwenifer Raymond, Lambchop, Cabaret Voltaire, Skyway Man, Eels and more, and archival releases from Trees, Pylon, Grandaddy, John Prine, Funkadelic, Donna Summer and others. We catch Devendra Banhart and Frazey Ford live online; among the films, DVDs and TV programmes reviewed are Saint Maud, The Trial Of The Chicago 7, Jimi Hendrix Live In Maui andThe Rolling Stones’ Steel Wheels Live; while in books there’s John Lennon, Peter Frampton and glam metal.
Our front section, meanwhile, features Evie Sands, John Cohen and Sisters With Transistors, and we introduce North Americans. At the back of the issue, The Kinks‘ Dave Davies takes us through his life in his favourite records.
You can pick up a copy of Uncut in the usual places, where open. But otherwise, readers all over the world can order a copy from here.
For more information on all the different ways to keep reading Uncut during lockdown, click here.
It’s been five years since Ride reformed, and according to guitarist and vocalist Mark Gardener, the creative energies sparked by this momentous event are as strong as ever. “When you still have the creative magic, you can just come back and create good music, and I think that’s what’s happened,” he explains. “We could just enjoy the Ride thing again, which is a hell of a thing to be inside.”
The quartet have met up to discuss the brand-new This Is Not A Safe Place LP – their very fine follow-up to 2017’s reunion album, Weather Diaries. They’re also taking Uncut through all the records they’ve produced during their career, including 1990’s shoegaze classic Nowhere, which gave their engineer a nervous breakdown and angered a Del Amitri-loving next-door neighbour, and the controversial West Coast detour, Carnival Of Light. Along the way, the band discuss their lost “ambient reggae” tunes, hanging out with Public Enemy and their disastrous cover of “Windmills Of Your Mind”, which traumatised producer George Drakoulias.
“We were just too shit to play it,” remembers bassist Steve Queralt. “George was tearing his bushy hair out! And then for some reason afterwards he didn’t want to do the album with us…”
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SMILE SIRE, 1990 This American compilation neatly collects their first two EPs, “Ride” and “Play”
ANDY BELL [vocals/guitars]: The first EP was done in Union Street in Oxford, which was a small basement studio that we saved up for. I think we were there for a couple of hours one afternoon. It turned into a hostel in the evening – we came back from getting something to eat and there was a girl with a backpack in the studio.
STEVE QUERALT: At that time, we had no interest from anyone other than Cally Calloman at Warners. He was a great guy, but there was no point putting us out on a major label – the audience would have thought they were being conned. But during this time we had a support tour with The Soup Dragons, and Alan McGee came along to all three shows – at the final show he said he wanted to put our record out on Creation. It was a no-brainer, it was everything we could have possibly dreamed of. Cally was gracious enough to say, “Go with Alan.”
MARK GARDENER: With Creation we had more support, so we were able to get out of Oxford to record “Play”. It was done at Blackwing Studios in London, but we recorded in a similar way to the first one, all live and then a few overdubs. At that point we had no idea that this was something we could make a living from. It just felt great. We were experiencing lots of firsts in life, and it was great having an outlet for our confusion.
BELL: The engineer at Blackwing, Ken, was brilliant – when you fast-forward a DAT it skips through like a tremolo thing, and he was like, “This is what we’re gonna do, fast forward through it and that’ll be the track.” “Right… Ken, take a break!”
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NOWHERE CREATION, 1990 The debut album, a psych-shoegaze classic and Ride’s noisiest effort
BELL: Before Nowhere, me and Mark both got these rack effects units, Roland GP16s. They became a really big part of the Ride sound. You could programme in really complicated multi-effects for one song and then just turn it on with one switch. Towards the end of recording we knew the deadline was coming, so in the last three days we worked days and nights. The engineer, Marc Waterman, had a nervous breakdown. He’s great, but we did push him quite hard. I remember we all stayed in the same flat…
QUERALT: It was in a mews in Paddington. We got back late one night and put a load of music on. Later, we were then woken up at six in the morning by some City guy we’d obviously kept awake. The music he’d chosen to annoy us – and he did really well – was Del Amitri!
GARDENER: The hours just got crazy. It all added to that dark, alienated feeling that I think permeated through Nowhere. We just tried to make the best of it, being guided by instincts. But it was good times, for sure.
LOZ COLBERT [drums]: It was a live sound in the studio, but maybe a bit too live. We needed someone to contain it.
BELL: After Marc left, Alan Moulder came in to mix Nowhere. He said he couldn’t work out which was the bass drum and which was the snare when he pulled the tapes up! So he did a good job of rescuing it. It ended up with its own sound, but it wasn’t intentional exactly.
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GOING BLANK AGAIN CREATION, 1992 The kaleidoscopic second album. A free-flowing triumph, incorporating many different styles. Towering lead-off single “Leave Them All Behind” gave them their highest Top 10 hit
BELL: This was written and recorded in a residential studio in Chipping Norton. We had six weeks there, with catering and a big keg so we could drink draft beer at will from a big free barrel. There was this big bowl of eggs that really concerned me, because it was like, “How do you know when these eggs are going off?” No, it didn’t affect my performance too much!
GARDENER: This was one of the most enjoyable recording processes we’ve had. We weren’t locked away in a dark London studio, and we were only 25 minutes from Oxford too, so I could go and buy pot! We felt confident about where the band was going. I remember going up to bed with the “Time Machine” instrumental on a cassette just going round and round, and putting words down to it there and then. It was a fresh, reactive way of working.
COLBERT: There was a lovely routine and rhythm to it that just went on day after day after day. Everyone had space. It was a great studio, and it was nice working with Alan [Moulder, producer]. We had big charts up on the wall, “Things To Do”. I loved all that!
GARDENER: With “Leave Them All Behind”, we were mucking around with chopping up this Hammond recording, and it worked really well with the way the song evolved through jamming. Lyrically, I was inspired by our first American tour.
QUERALT: It felt like we’d almost established ourselves so that there were no rules to follow – we didn’t have to do a ’gazy album, we didn’t have to have the guitars up full.
BELL: We absolutely weren’t going to do that. We had all these tracks that were conceptual, like “Motorway Madness”, which was like “Drive Blind”’s noisy bit part two. We did some Abbey Road-style medley things and some of it got used at the beginning of “OX4”. There was “King Bullshit”, this ambient reggae thing with an AR Kane vibe that ended up as a part of “Time Machine”. They were all tracks that had their own qualities but we ended up squashing loads of them together. It was all based on the Beatles model: it felt like we had to progress, and make our albums all develop from the last one. That’s why we ended up painting ourselves into a corner.
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READING FESTIVAL 1992 IGNITION, 2001 A stellar live set from the group at the peak of their powers. Originally released as part of the OX4 boxset
GARDENER: I never felt like we were a cool band, but at Reading in 1992 we pulled off a major show on the main stage. It felt like a big moment for the band.
COLBERT: Public Enemy were big heroes of mine, and it was such an honour to be on that bill with them. I offered Chuck D our CD backstage, and he was like, “Thanks, I’ll probably sample some of that shit.” I was thinking, ‘Yeah, great, Public Enemy sampling us!’ After a few years, I realised that it probably just went in the bin.
BELL: We weren’t cool by this stage at all. We were cool in 1990, I think, and possibly 1991, but grunge was already coming then. We were followers of that scene, that pre-grunge American psychedelic rock. Some of that mid-’80s American psychedelic rock, like Screaming Trees, even REM. Sonic Youth and the Valentines would be the two mighty pillars of the temple of rip-offs that we made! Whenever you try and copy something it always comes out different. We’re rubbish at copying.
COLBERT: It’s our biggest strength.
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CARNIVAL OF LIGHT CREATION, 1994 This step away from shoegaze was brave, but fatally harmed the band’s momentum
GARDENER: I felt like we were a great live band, but we didn’t really capture that on record. So I thought someone like George Drakoulias might be able to help with that.
BELL: So we went very West Coast American and ditched a lot of the things that were good about the band, because we felt like we couldn’t repeat ourselves. That was a mistake, because there’s a whole universe within the initial sound we had, we could have taken that a lot of different ways.
QUERALT: George Drakoulias said, “I’ve got a great cover for you guys, ‘Windmills Of Your Mind’, and we were like, “OK…”
BELL: He found it quite frustrating by day four of us trying to learn it… It was supposed to be an example of teaching us how to write a song – he said ours were too linear. So we ended up recording with John Leckie in Cornwall and Oxford instead. He’s a very interesting character, quite strange in a really cool way.
QUERALT: We recorded at Sawmills in Cornwall, quite cut off from the rest of the world. We’d come down in the morning and John would put some music on, stuff we’d never heard, Alice Coltrane, say.
BELL: This would have been the imperial period if we’d made an amazing record! The recording felt imperial, sitting on thrones on a lake getting photographed, having multiple recording sessions at The Manor and Abbey Road and everywhere else we went.
GARDENER: I was expecting the press to knock us down after building us up. Some people are still really annoyed that we don’t play much from that record now, though.
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TARANTULA CREATION, 1996 The swansong, with the group pursuing a louder, punchier sound influenced by ’60s rock and prevailing Britpop sounds
GARDENER: Things weren’t going well. I felt completely marginalised to the point where I didn’t even know what my role was. The band just fragmented. I didn’t feel like we were playing to our strengths, and I didn’t get that record – I couldn’t even tell you the tracklisting!
BELL: Oasis came on the scene when we were about to release Carnival…, and it made it seem out of date immediately. We were courting a cleaner sound, and they came out sounding like the Pistols and the Mary Chain, but with great tunes. Carnival… misfired, and we didn’t get to do a world tour with it. So Tarantula was conceived as, “Right, come on, we’ve been too indulgent, let’s get some of that energy that’s been going around, let’s play in a room together, let’s do songs that are more compact.” But the songwriting wasn’t there, especially on my side, and that let it down. We tried our best.
COLBERT: Tarantula was us squashed into a room in London, really intense, and we didn’t know if people liked us any more. I shaved my head, which was symbolic – all the floppy stuff had gone.
QUERALT: Drum and bass and trip-hop had arrived too, and I think the relationships in the band had got a bit intense. Technically, Tarantula sounds like a good album and I think we played well on it, but maybe the songs weren’t quite strong enough.
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COMING UP FOR AIR RIDE, 2002 A one-day reunion for Channel 4 results in this nimble and epic jam
BELL: I remember getting a phone call from our ex-manager, saying, “This thing has come up, it’s to do with Ride. There’s this programme on Channel 4 called Pioneers…” And I was like, “Oh!” And his next line was, “…it’s about Sonic Youth. They want you to do the music for it.” But we said yes. I think they filmed us rehearsing and recorded it, but we also recorded it with a four-track, and that’s Coming Up For Air, 40 minutes of jamming. So we thought it would be cool to put it out.
COLBERT: The clue’s in the title really. Everyone was busy doing their own thing and it was just a nice break and then back to what we were doing.
BELL: It was a nice day out and I think it shows there wasn’t any bad blood. Once the band broke up, within a few months everyone had taken a deep breath and got over it. We liked the idea of Holger Czukay going through hours of jamming and editing it together to get something like “Mother Sky” out of it, which is just amazing.
GARDENER: I was lost in the medieval world of France then, living in the middle of a walnut orchard, letting nature do its healing, so it was nice to dip in and play with the guys again. After a while you realise that these people are going to be massive parts of your life, and that you’re always going to be known as part of Ride.
COLBERT: Typical Ride to do it without any songs, just turn up and jam. That’s kind of what kicked it all off for us originally, so it’s wonderful that everyone had the bravery to turn up with no plan whatsoever.
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WEATHER DIARIES WICHITA, 2017 A fantastic return, 21 years after Tarantula, with Ride working with mercurial producer Erol Alkan
QUERALT: We’d had a year of playing together live, we were comfortable with each other, and so we thought, ‘We have to make more music.’ Everyone was demoing at home.
COLBERT: This was very much worked on and refined, in a brilliant way, which felt great. That’s the one thing we never felt that we’d had a chance to achieve, a really, really good studio album, even Going Blank Again. But with this one we really had the time, it was great.
QUERALT: Erol was amazing. I only knew him as a DJ, but he was totally hands-on. He’s a complete music head, too. It’s not just about electronic music, there’s no genre he doesn’t know anything about.
COLBERT: As soon as he was in the room, the momentum just went right up. We had a few days without him, but when he was there we were so much more productive. He was such an integral part of the record.
GARDENER: You have to live underground not to be affected by politics now and what goes on, it’s just crazy, so it did reflect on what was happening at the time – lyrics like “Lannoy Point” reflect my depression about the Brexit referendum, and “White Sands” was definitely about the experience of coming back together and making music with your buddies.
BELL: We’ve learnt what our strengths are, and the value of playing to your strengths. Once you know that, you can be adventurous and work to the limits of it.
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THIS IS NOT A SAFE PLACE WICHITA, 2019 Ride pick up where they left off, crafting this more compact, focused effort, again with Erol Alkan behind the desk
COLBERT: With Weather Diaries, we really did try a lot of things, so we got a lot out of our system. For this album, which I think is one of the best things we’ve done, we really did cut to the chase for what we’re good at, what we’re comfortable with, so maybe we had more to draw from. It didn’t feel limiting, just more honest and direct.
GARDENER: When you get more comfortable again as a unit, things can naturally get a bit more experimental. When “Future Love” came along we all picked up on that, and I really like “Kill Switch”. “Shadows Behind The Sun” is a very honest one for me.
BELL: This has got a lot more limited palette of sounds, it’s not so much of a kaleidoscopic array of instruments. It’s guitar, bass and drums on every song, and I tended to use the same guitar in the same open tuning. So that limited it.
COLBERT: We finally changed our approach, just to freshen it up, and started with the drums. We’d never really thought about drum sound in the studio, it was always a bit of an afterthought.
BELL: We rehearsed for the album in a studio, and then we were playing music through the night on the studio system, and we realised we were playing a lot of stuff like Pixies’ Surfer Rosa, Nirvana’s In Utero, with that Steve Albini drum sound. We thought that would be great for our drum sound.
GARDENER: It amazes me and surprises me that Ride has carried on in the way it has. We’re not in it for the money. I’ve done building work, and I’d much rather do this! I don’t feel like I’ve done my best thing yet and that’s what drives me to do more. I hope this album carries on what we did with Weather Diaries. The people decide in the end. I’m already starting to think about new things if we ever make another album.
When Ali Farka Touré died in 2006, Afel Bocoum seemed perfectly placed to take over the great man’s mantle. Touré’s compelling desert blues had earned him a roster of western admirers ranging from Ry Cooder to Jimmy Page to John Lee Hooker, and a trio of Grammy awards – and Bocoum was his most talented protégé.
Hailing from the same town of Niafunké in the Timbuktu region of northern Mali on the River Niger, Bocoum had fallen under Touré’s spell as a boy in the ’60s. He went on to play in Touré’s band for more than 20 years, touring the world with him and playing on his albums in between his day jobs as a civil servant in the agriculture department and a cultural animateur for the Ministry Of Youth.
He made a fine debut solo album for World Circuit in 1999 with Alkibar and perhaps only a lack of ambition subsequently held him back. His first solo album was recorded at the same sessions as Touré’s Grammy-nominated Niafunké album and the motivation for it seemed to come more from his mentor, who played on the record, than from Bocoum himself. “Everybody else seemed to be releasing albums, so it was like, ‘Why not?’” he shrugged self-deprecatingly.
Certainly there was never anything as vulgar as a career plan. Over the next decade there followed two low-key albums on the obscure Belgian label Contre-Jour, but Bocoum seemed happier as a collaborator than as a band leader. After playing on Damon Albarn’s 2002 album Mali Music, he became a regular on board the Blur singer’s cross-cultural Africa Express.
Now in his mid-sixties, in a sense Lindé is the true follow-up to the solo debut he made more than 20 years ago and proves that under the right guidance, Bocoum can be a fine frontman. Here he has two powerful figures to direct his focus in executive producers Albarn, who describes Bocoum’s voice as “one of the treasures of Mali”, and Nick Gold, who produced most of Toure’s greatest recordings as well as Bocoum’s debut. The latter’s long-standing immersion in traditional African music and the restless adventurism of the former is a winning combination that has coaxed something rather special out of Bocoum.
Lindé is steeped in the heritage of the Songhai, the ethnic group whose empire dominated the western Sahel 500 years ago and to which both Bocoum and Touré’s families belong. The core of the sound is built around tribal African instruments – the earthy plunk of the banjo-like ngoni, the drone of the two-string njurkele, the rippling kora and insistent calabash percussion from the late Hama Sankaré.
The songs pack a message that is both specific to Bocoum’s homeland but also universal. In the face of Mali’s crushing struggles with jihad, poverty and tribal war, Bocoum urges hope, solidarity and unity. “If you’re hiding down holes, my brothers/Come out so that we can talk,” he pleads in a direct message to the jihadists on “Sambu Kamba”, while the heartfelt call-and-response lyrics of “Dakamana” translate as “It’s time for us to work together, hand in hand and make 2020 a year for peace in Mali.” The death of Sankaréin March this year underlines the urgency of Bocoum’s message. The calabash player was killed along with eight others when the vehicle in which he was riding was hit by an improvised explosive device close to Bocoum’s hometown.
The traditional instruments are embellished with some exquisitely modern touches. On “Bombolo Liilo” the kora of Sidiki Diabaté (brother of Toumani) and the trombone of the Skatalites’ Vin Gordon dance an irresistible pas de deux to an African reggae beat. “Avion” is a pan-African excursion on which Congolese soukous meets Malian tradition with an added dash of Afrobeat. Elsewhere there are psych guitars courtesy of Mark Mulholland and Garba Touré from Songhoy Blues, and the violin of Joan As Police Woman snakes sinuously around the haunting desert-blues sound of Yoro Cissé’s njurkele on “Fari Njungu” and “Yer Gando”.
The album closes in a clattering symphony of syncopated rhythm on “Djougal”, as the distinctive powerhouse drumming of Tony Allen joins the kinetic beat of Sankare’s chattering calabash. Tragically it would turn out to be their final percussive hurrah. Both died within four weeks of each other, prior to Lindé’s release.
Touched by sadness but tinged with hope, this is a masterful album on which the sound of tradition is rendered vital and visceral in a very present tense.
The mission statement that accompanies this album might seem like an uncharacteristic hippie flex, but anyone who’s paid even slight attention to Thurston Moore’s output down the decades will recognise it. Here, then, is a newly urgent formulation of a long-standing belief in music’s ecstatic power (Sonic Youth, certainly, can be defined as much by their reach for transcendence as by their transgression). “This recording offers songs as flames of rainbow energy,” Moore writes, “where the power of love becomes our call. These are love songs in a time where creativity is our dignity, our demonstration against the forces of oppression.”
So it’s fighting talk from a lover, as these days demand, something reflected in the album’s ambiguous title: “by the fire” is shorthand for domestic contentment but a parenthetical “destroyed” gives it blazing apocalyptic overtones, too. The music emphasises this duality, moving between over-easy, oceanic guitar flows and furious, bass-weighted onslaughts, often in the same song, with retro trash pop and 12-string soloing their foils.
The love in question here is mostly “higher”, in the Albert Ayler and Alice Coltrane sense, rather than intimate, although the latter is obliquely folded into “Cantaloupe” and, more obviously, “They Believe In Love (When They Look At You)”, which seems to concern the adoration of a parent by their children and its contagious nature. “Cantaloupe” is one of just two songs with lyrics by Moore; the rest were written by London poet Radieux Radio, who also worked on 2014’s The Best Day and Rock n Roll Consciousness, from 2017. There’s an obvious shared interest in metaphysics, arcane philosophies, religion and higher consciousness/dream states, with references made to Rimbaud, Baudelaire and Dante. Across the record, the language is elegant and vividly allusive, unembarrassed by its “vibrations” and “essences of chi”. As to the band, it’s The Thurston Moore Group, first convened for The Best Day, with new member Jon Leidecker (of Negativland) on electronics and Steve Shelley depping for regular drummer Jem Doulton on one track.
Unsurprisingly, there are echoes of Moore’s past on By The Fire. Like anyone with almost 40 years of adventuring behind them, his music is now more about the deep, nuanced dig into established territory than striking out to plant a flag someplace new, plus exploring different contexts for his signature sound through continued collaboration. Moore’s workrate has hardly slumped and there’s enrichment from non-musical projects, too, like the radical publishing house co-founded with his partner Eva Prinz, Ecstatic Peace Library, of which the label Daydream Library Series is an offshoot.
These are “songs in the heat of the moment”, not in the sense of being hastily bashed out, but in that they were born of intensified existential concerns. Even if improv played some part in their genesis, they are nothing like jams. The epics – “Breath”, “Siren” and “Venus”, at 11, 12 and 14 minutes, respectively – are considered builds, with surge/retreat clusters combined in thrilling torrents whose pools of calm necessarily have their own tension. “Breath” especially is quite the rapids ride, moving from sweet lyricism through furious, Swans-style pummelling by what sounds like a dozen guitars then back, Deb Googe’s bass ruthlessly pumping until the song sounds fit to explode, which it does, into metallic shards before fading to oblivion.
At the other end of the scale sit irresistibly louche and loping opener “Hashish”, which throws back to Rather Ripped-era Sonic Youth and “They Believe In Love…”, whose math-rock disposition gives way to Can-style insistence. “Dreamers Work” is a solo, chiming electric piece with dreamy chord progressions and a hushed vocal, while alternative tunings lend an edge of American primitivism to “Calligraphy”, the other solo track. “Cantaloupe” is the “straight” number in the pack, with its agreeably heavy, ’70s-rock chug (rewind to “100%”) and matching DayGlo lyrics: “We’re pulsing blue blue to orange/Dripping fire music down yr back/Floating up thru yr skin/White gardenias in yr eyes.”
As a call to the Roman goddess of love, desire, beauty, sex, fertility… the whole nine yards, instrumental closer “Venus” is necessarily sublime and intense, since for Moore it heralds the possibilities of “a future truth of hope and light”. But it also verges on the terrifying, a mass shifting between majesty and dread, hi-hats hissing, like the offspring of Ben Frost, Hildur Guðnadóttir and Mayhem – not exactly a light, promise-filled step on which to exit. But she represents principle energy, so it’s maybe fitting that Venus calls the final shot. And if any invocation is to make itself heard today, it must roar.
Lucinda Williams, Drive-By Truckers, Samantha Crain and Colter Wall have been added to the bill for 2021’s Black Deer Festival, taking place at Eridge Park, Kent on June 18-20.
They join all the acts who previously reconfirmed following the postponement of the 2020 event, including Wilco, The Waterboys and Saving Grace featuring Robert Plant and Suzi Dian.
Check out the new festival poster below, and visit the official Black Deer site for more info and tickets.
Soul and reggae singer-songwriter Johnny Nash has died of natural causes, aged 80.
Born in Houston, Texas, Nash was one of the first non-Jamaicans to make reggae music in Kingston, and scored a huge international hit with 1972’s “I Can See Clearly Now”.
Nash was a big supporter of Bob Marley in his early career, covering several of his songs and bringing Marley to London in 1972 where the pair played a concert together at a Peckham school.
Nash also had a No. 1 hit in the UK in 1975 with “Tears On My Pillow”.
AC/DC have announced that their 17th album, Power Up, will be released on November 13.
It features the return of vocalist Brian Johnson, who has overcome the hearing problems that forced him to stop touring with the band in 2016. There is also a return for drummer Paul Rudd and bassist Cliff Williams, rejoining Angus and Stevie Young on guitars.
Listen to Power Up’s first single “Shot In The Dark” below:
Power Up will be available in multiple formats, including limited edition coloured vinyl, cassette and deluxe CD box with flashing AC/DC logo and built-in speaker. Pre-order here.
Eddie Van Halen, totemic rock guitarist and leader of the band Van Halen, has died aged 65.
His son Wolfgang, who has also played bass for Van Halen since 2006, revealed the news yesterday on Twitter: “I can’t believe I’m having to write this, but my father, Edward Lodewijk Van Halen, has lost his long and arduous battle with cancer this morning.
“He was the best father I could ever ask for. Every moment I’ve shared with him on and off stage was a gift.”
Some of rock’s biggest names lined up to pay tribute. “I’m just devastated to hear the news of the passing of my dear friend Eddie Van Halen,” wrote Tony Iommi. “Eddie was one of a very special kind of person, a really great friend.”
“Just when I thought 2020 couldn’t get any worse, I hear Eddie Van Halen has passed,” added Iommi’s Black Sabbath bandmate Geezer Butler. “So shocking – one of the nicest, down to Earth men I have ever met and toured with. A true gent and true genius.”
Muse hailed Van Halen as “one of the greatest guitarists of all time” while Pearl Jam’s Mike McCready called him “Mozart for guitar”.
I’m just devastated to hear the news of the passing of my dear friend Eddie Van Halen. He fought a long and hard battle with his cancer right to the very end. Eddie was one of a very special kind of person, a really great friend. Rest In Peace my dear friend till we meet again. pic.twitter.com/Qs8tsLPANJ
Just when I thought 2020 couldn't get any worse, I hear Eddie Van Halen has passed. So shocking- One of the nicest, down to Earth men I have ever met and toured with. A true gent and true genius. RIP. So sad.Thoughts go out to his brother Alex, and his family. pic.twitter.com/fwIw040YMX
Meanwhile on BBC Breakfast news this morning, an emotional Gene Simmons urged young people to stop texting and tweeting for a moment and listen to “the wonder of Eddie Van Halen”:
"Force them to sit down and stop texting and tweeting and introduce them to the wonder of Eddie Van Halen" On #BBCBreakfast Kiss singer Gene Simmons urges fans to introduce young people to the rock band Van Halen.https://t.co/hdeRxwV8L4pic.twitter.com/VyM7NZLBlc
The War On Drugs will release the album Live Drugs via bandleader Adam Granduciel’s own Super High Quality Records on November 20.
Rather than a document of a single concert or tour, the album features a selection of key tracks culled from years of live recordings, “sequenced to reflect how a typical 70-minute show would flow”.
Listen to “Pain (Live)” below:
Check out the full tracklisting for Live Drugs below:
1. An Ocean Between The Waves (Live)
2. Pain (Live)
3. Strangest Thing (Live)
4. Red Eyes (Live)
5. Thinking Of A Place (Live)
6. Buenos Aires Beach (Live)
7. Accidentally Like A Martyr (Live)
8. Eyes To The Wind (Live)
9. Under The Pressure (Live)
10. In Reverse (Live)
