The 12-12-12: Concert For Sandy Relief took place last night (December 12) at Madison Square Garden in New York, with Sir Paul McCartney performing with Nirvana members Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic.
The director of a new film profiling Ginger Baker is interviewed in the new issue of Uncut (dated January 2013, and out now), explaining why the Cream drummer broke his nose during filming… As a companion piece, this week's archive feature finds Baker's former bandmate, Eric Clapton, providing a painfully frank account of his days in Cream – psychedelic drugs, 24-hour confrontations and their love of Pet Sounds included. From Uncut's May 2004 issue (Take 84). Interview: Nigel Williamson
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The guitar Jimi Hendrix is believed to have set alight in 1967 has been sold at auction for over £200,000.
An important part of rock history, the the black Fender Stratocaster was made famous after Hendrix set fire to it at the Monterey International Pop Festival in 1967. Although, legend has it that the guitar Hendrix was playing onstage was switched with a lesser, cheaper instrument moments before the burning.
The Rolling Stones last night (November 29) played the second of two shows at London's O2 Arena in celebration of the band's 50th anniversary.
As per their show on Sunday, this was to be a hit-packed, guest-filled evening, with the return of Bill Wyman and Mick Taylor plus first-time guests Eric Clapton and Florence Welch of Florence And The Machine. Scroll down the page to see fan shot footage of Florence performing 'Gimme Shelter' with the band.
Billy Bragg delivered the second annual John Peel Lecture earlier today (November 12) at the Radio Festival 2012 at The Lowry in Salford.
Bragg's speech saw him rallying against the decline of state educated musicians in the UK Top 40, highlighting a magazine study which revealed that 80% of artists in the charts in 1990 were state educated, as compared to the charts in 2010 which were dominated by those who had been privately educated.
He said – via The Guardian: "A decent education in the arts will only be available to those able to pay for it."
News from Oliver Gray, who runs The Railway in Winchester, where he has promoted the Uncut Sessions, as a kind of Club Uncut in exile since we quit our original home at London’s Borderline. The Uncut Sessions started a couple of years ago when Oliver booked Richmond Fontaine for two special shows. The first, on what I remember was a rather damp and windswept Saturday afternoon, saw Richmond Fontaine play their brilliant Post To Wire album in its entirety. Their second show, that evening, featured just about every other song the band had ever played, written, recorded, covered or merely just heard, possibly once, blasting out of the radio of a passing car, whistled by a waitress, hummed by a barman or otherwise brought to their passing attention in vague and possibly unremembered ways. The set went on for what people later reckoned was about four hours, although by its end the crowd had in all likelihood have lost all sense of time and the band could have carried on well into the following week without complaint from anyone there.
Allan’s off today – something about a cat in the well, I think – so he’s asked me to write this week’s newsletter blog. It’s not an especially difficult task seeing as a new issue of Uncut goes on sale this week. You might have already caught some of our recent news stories on www.www.uncut.co.uk, in which case you’ll already know that our cover stars this month are the Rolling Stones.
The new issue of Uncut, out today (October 23), features The Rolling Stones, Neil Young, Led Zeppelin, Donald Fagen and Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood.
The Stones are on the cover, and inside, Mick Jagger talks to us about the band’s new film, Crossfire Hurricane, their two new songs, and the future of the band.
The story of the group’s groundbreaking, debauched 1972 tour of the US in support of Exile On Main St is also told by the people who were there on the inside.
