It seems that both guitarist Che Chen and percussionist Rick Brown baulk at their music being described as blues; but it’s not because they have lofty pretensions or lack respect for the most elemental, culturally pliable and migratory of genres – they just see it as category error. Minor pentat...
It seems that both guitarist Che Chen and percussionist Rick Brown baulk at their music being described as blues; but it’s not because they have lofty pretensions or lack respect for the most elemental, culturally pliable and migratory of genres – they just see it as category error. Minor pentatonic scales – common to the folk music of places as unalike as Bamako and Chongqing, Kilkenny and Kabul – are a key element of the New York duo’s intensely absorbing instrumentals, more familiar due to their migration to the Southern US states and reincarnation as what we call the blues. Chen’s time in Mauritania in 2013, where he studied guitar with master Jeiche Ould Chigaly, has clearly made its mark, too.
But however you label it, there’s no denying the ecstatic power of Brown’s deceptively simple, plywood-crate thwackings, bells and rattles, with Chen’s subtle but insistent manipulations of drones, open tunings and overtones, exercised in a seemingly infinite number of patterns and at frequently epic length. Wrangled over two full-length official LPs – 2015’s Wooden Bag and Wood/Metal/Plastic/Pattern/Rhythm/Rock from 2016 – theirs is a particular kind of elegant primitivism, both trippily transcendental and rooted to the earth in a truly profound way. Despite loose kinship with the likes of Sir Richard Bishop, Steve Gunn and Henry Flynt, 75DB are really out there on their own. Their sound hypnotises in much the same way as a car’s headlights fatally hypnotise a deer: the mesmerism is pure, neuro-physical reaction, not a choice.
On I Was Real (not a Zen koan but the misremembering of an old Motown song title, apparently) they shift ground significantly while cleaving to their core, in changes that are as much operational as conceptual. Most significantly, maybe, there are eight extra players in various combinations, including repeat collaborators Steve Maing (quarter-tone guitar), Sue Garner (guitarist/bassist and Brown’s wife) and saxophonist Cheryl Kingan.
The set runs at 79 minutes over nine tracks, was recorded over a four-year period and sees the pair cannibalising and/or reconfiguring earlier material for major studio in(ter)ventions. “C Or T (verso)” was “realised” by the pair – both reject the title of producer and the album credits deliberately omit any mention – using what Chen calls “spare parts” from the backwards intro to opener “Every Last Coffee Or Tea”, while “New New/The Worm/Like Laundry” is a suite of sorts, connecting several sections of the album in different keys with an extended chord change. And the intro of “WZN#3 (verso)” is a “ghost” of the outro – what remained when the original double guitar/bass part that several players overdubbed was removed. Which seems like both a wilfully awkward way of making a few minutes of new music and exactly the kind of thing that would please veteran explorers.
These studio techniques are quite a shift from 75DB’s usual unmediated sound, but the results are absolutely one with the set’s overall sensual delirium. The centrepiece is the title track – at 17 minutes comparatively short, given that live, it’s sometimes stretched out to 30 – and it’s a triumph of almost funereal drone featuring two super-subtle tonal shifts on Chen’s 12-string, the whole anchored by Brown’s nimble, polyrhythmic pulse.
Equally strong and dizzyingly pleasurable is “Every Last Coffee Or Tea”, which is from their 2013 self-released Cassette, but rearranged here for six players. It features a multiplicity of overlapping and heavily rhythmic, improv guitar, upright bass and amplified viola parts, plus a reassuringly thumping pulse – together, a masterclass in delayed gratification that conjures up a desert ceilidh. “Tetuzi Akiyama” (after the Japanese avant guitarist) is very different, with its unarguably bluesy, percussive stomp and hammered central riff leading what you’d swear was a dozen guitars, as is the uncharacteristically frantic “There’s No Such Thing As A King Bee”, an impromptu studio jam with hissing hi-hat.
The album’s closer is the terrific “WZN#3”, which is a reference to Chen’s time in Mauritania and has been played by more band permutations than any other 75DB piece. In tunings so open you can almost feel a breeze blow through, Chen’s and Maing’s guitars establish a thrillingly repetitive, seesaw dynamic whose relaxed feel belies the intuitive control needed to sustain it, twangling away as if in a trance and connecting West Africa to the Appalachians.
These are ageless, thrillingly energised devotionals for our secular and fast-moving times, full of euphonious noise and the dust kicked up by their deep-dug grooves. Somehow, 75 Dollar Bill push forward even while their music hovers in the eternal present.
A lot to recommend - not least the Michael Kiwanuka, Big Thief, Kacy & Clayton and Simon Joyner tracks. Plenty else besides. Should quickly mention we have a marvellous new issue out - Patti Smith on the cover - which you can buy in the shops or direct from our friends here. Free P&P, I shou...
A lot to recommend – not least the Michael Kiwanuka, Big Thief, Kacy & Clayton and Simon Joyner tracks. Plenty else besides. Should quickly mention we have a marvellous new issue out – Patti Smith on the cover – which you can buy in the shops or direct from our friends here. Free P&P, I should mention, too.
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In memory of Peter Fonda, who died on August 16, 2019; this was originally published in Uncut's January 2002 issue (Take 52)
RETURN OF THE WILD ANGEL
Two years after he became a counterculture star with Easy R...
Fonda recalls an incident during filming on The Hired Hand that curiously, comically foreshadowed how Easy Rider would come to eclipse the achievement of his directorial debut. The sun had gone down, and he was out directing Oates and Bloom through one of the film’s key scenes, a fragile twilight dialogue when the unspoken attraction between Hannah and Arch is made explicit.
“I was sitting there, and it was the night scene on the porch and, whilst waiting for the set to get ready, I kept hearing this music from somewhere, and I thought, well, when we call for quiet they’ll turn it off. So, quiet was called, we were ready to roll, and they had rehearsed a bit, and I could see they were going to have a good time together as actors, they were going to really work, they knew this was one of their meaty scenes. So I’m sitting there, watching them work – and I still kept hearing this music.
“I called for quiet again…and we’re rolling… and then I hear ….Getcha motah runnin’… Get out on the hiiiigh-way…!!!’
“A drive-in theatre, I dunno, three miles away, was running Easy Rider at full tilt. And I thought, eh, this is far out. I haven’t been paid to do the film I’m doing right now– but I’m getting paid by that film over there.”
Three years after The Hired Hand had been and gone, Fonda appeared in Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry (1974), a fast-driving, easy-riding rebels on the road movie.
“Yeah. And ALL the reviews said ‘HE’S BACK!!!’ heh-heh. In other words, I’m back being a bad boy, y’know, I’m out there doing weird things and doing them with machinery and wild and y’know, this kinda anti-establishment figure. And audiences went nuts. It’s one of Quentin Tarantino’s favourite films. Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry…”
Today, he keeps busy teaching – Fonda lectures in Media and Theatre Arts at universities in Montana and San Diego – and acting, operating as a fleeting totemic presence on the independent film scene: his fantastically nutty Van Helsing in Michael Almereyda’s Nadja (1994); his detailed, Oscar-nominated performance as the bee-keeping Vietvet in Victor Nunez’s fine Ulee’s Gold (1997); and his light-footed, self-mocking turn as the ponytailed record producer still coasting the Sixties vibe in Stephen Soderbergh’s The Limey (1999), a sly performance that stands in a similar corrupted relation to Captain America as his father’s cold-eyed sadist in Once Upon A Time In The West (1968) did to Tom Joad in The Grapes Of Wrath (1940).
Fonda mentions a project he’s currently developing (“a very bizarre, wonderful story”), but since The Hired Hand, he has directed only twice, the low-budget environmental sci-fi parable The Idaho Transfer (1975) and Wanda Nevada (1979), an amiable ramble that marked the only time he acted, briefly, with his dad.
By then, through Peter’s persistence, father and son had drawn very much closer. Henry Fonda died in 1982, the same year as Warren Oates. His last words were: “I want you to know, son, I love you very much.”
Of course: Jesse James (1939), The Ox-Bow Incident (1942), My Darling Clementine (1946), Fort Apache (1948), Warlock (1959), Once Upon A Time In The West – Fonda, Snr made a few decent Westerns himself. I have to ask: did his son ever show the man from the movie screen his own first attempt at making a cowboy picture?
“Uh, yeah,” Fonda pauses. “Yeah. Finally, I made him come see The Hired Hand. Quite late. Must have been in 1981 or ’82. 1981, probably. I had been amazed that he hadn’t gone to see it at first, y’know, or ever asked me to show it to him.”
He pauses again, savouring the memory.
“But he came out, he said to me: ‘Now, that’s my kind of western.’
Neil Young has announced that his new album with Crazy Horse is called Colorado, and that it's due for release in October.
It will be preceded later this month by the single "Rainbow Of Colors", which was premiered at the Crazy Horse shows earlier this year.
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Neil Young has announced that his new album with Crazy Horse is called Colorado, and that it’s due for release in October.
“10 new songs ranging from around 3 minutes to over 13 minutes, will be coming your way,” writes Young on Neil Young Archives. “We hope you love this new album as much as we do.
Colorado will be released on double vinyl (three sides plus a 7” exclusive two-sided single not on the album) as well as CD and digital formats.
In addition, a film documenting the making of of Colorado – entitled Mountaintop Sessions and directed by CK Vollick – will be screened in over 100 cinemas worldwide in the week of the album’s release. “It is a wild one folks, no holds barred,” writes Young. “You will see the whole process just as it went down! I don’t think a film about this subject with the openness and intensity we have captured has ever been seen.”
Bruce Springsteen has unveiled details of his Western Stars film, coming to select cinemas this autumn following a world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival in September.
Springsteen co-directed the film (alongside longtime collaborator Thom Zimny). It features him performing all 13 songs on the ...
Bruce Springsteen has unveiled details of his Western Stars film, coming to select cinemas this autumn following a world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival in September.
Springsteen co-directed the film (alongside longtime collaborator Thom Zimny). It features him performing all 13 songs on the album, backed up by a band and a full orchestra, under the cathedral ceiling of his historic nearly-100-year-old barn.
Seeing Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon A Time In... Hollywood the other night reminded me to dust down this interview I did with the director many moons ago. It first ran in Melody Maker -I'm guessing it was done around the time of Pulp Fiction, so 1994 - and then again in the first issue of Uncut.
A...
Seeing Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time In… Hollywood the other night reminded me to dust down this interview I did with the director many moons ago. It first ran in Melody Maker -I’m guessing it was done around the time of Pulp Fiction, so 1994 – and then again in the first issue of Uncut.
Anyway, here you go: Quentin Tarantino on his 10 favourite records.
Bob Dylan
Blood On The Tracks
“This is my favourite album ever. I spent the end of my teenage years and my early twenties listening to old music – rockabilly music, stuff like that. Then I discovered folk music when I was 25, and that led me to Dylan. He totally blew me away with this. It’s like the great album from the second period, y’know? He did that first run of albums in the Sixties, then he started doing his less troublesome albums – and out of that comes Blood On The Tracks. It’s his masterpiece.
Bob Dylan
“Tangled Up In Blue”
“OK, maybe I’m cheating here. I know this is off Blood On The Tracks, but it’s my all-time favourite song. It’s one of those songs where the lyrics are ambiguous you can actually write the song yourself. That’s a lot of fun – it’s like Dylan fooling around with the listener, playing on the way he or she interprets the lyrics. “It’s very hard to take individual songs off Blood On the Tracks, because itworks so well as an entire album. I used to think ‘If You See Her, Say Hello’ was a more powerful song than ‘Tangled Up In Blue’ but, over the years I’ve kinda realized ‘Tangled…’ has the edge, just for the fun you can have with it.’
Freda Payne
“Band Of Gold”
“I’m a gigantic music fan. I love fifties rock‘n’roll, Chess, Sun, Motown. All the Merseybeat bands, Sixties girl groups, folk. This is just so cool: it’s a combination of the way it’s produced, the cool pop/R&B sound, and Freda’s voice. Its kinda kitschy in a way – y’know, it’s got a really up-tempo tune – and, the first few times I heard it, I was, like, totally into the coolness of the song. It was only on the third or fourth listen I realised the lyrics were so fucking heartbreaking.”
Elvis Presley
The Sun Sessions
“This has been a hugely important album to me. I was always a big rockability fan and a big Elvis fan, and to me this album is the purest expression of Elvis there was. Sure, there are better individual songs – but no one collection ever touched the album. When I was young, I used to think Elvis was the voice of truth. I don’t know what that means, but his voice… shit man, it sounded so fucking pure. If you grew up loving Elvis, this is it. Forget the Vegas period: if you really love Elvis, you’re ashamed of that man in Vegas. You feel like he let you down. The hillbilly cat never let you down.”
Phil Ochs
“I Ain’t Marching Anymore”
“OK, from now on these aren’t in any order. It’s the same with movies: I have my three favourite – Taxi Driver, Blow Out and Rio Bravo – and after that it depends on my mood. This is one of my favourite protest/folk albums. While Dylan was a poet Ochs was a musical journalist: He was a chronicler of his time, filled with humour and compassion. He’d write songs which would seem very black and white, and then , in the last verse, he’d say something which, like, completely shattered you. A song I love very much on this album is ‘Here’s To The State of Mississippi’ – Basically, it’s everything the movie Mississippi Burning should have been.”
Phil Ochs
“The Highwayman”
“I’m cheating again. This is an Alfred Noyes poem, which Ochs arranged for music. The vocal has made me burst into tears more times than I care to remember.”
Elmer Bernstein
The Great Escape
“I used to have a huge collection of film soundtracks. I don’t get enthusiastic about them any more, though, because now most soundtracks are just a collection of rock songs, half of which don’t even appear in the movie. This is a real classic. It has a great min theme which brings the movie right into your head. All the tracks hold up – it’s so damn effective. It took me ages to get hold of a copy, and, Jeez, I almost wept when I finally did.”
Bernard Herrmann
Sisters
“This is from a Brian De Palma movie. It’s a pretty scary film, and the soundtrack… ok if you want to freak yourself out, turn out all the lights and sit in the middle of the room and listen to this. You won’t last a minute. When I’m first thinking about a movie I’ll start looking for songs that reflect the personality of the movie, I’ll start looking for songs which can reflect the personality of the movie. The record I think most about is the one which plays during the opening credits, because that’s the one which sets the tone of the movie. Like in Reservoir Dogs, when you see the guys all walking out of the diner, and that bass line from ‘Little Green Bag’ kicks in – you just know there’s gonna be trouble.”
Jerry Goldsmith
Under Fire
“‘The Main Theme’ is one of the greatest pieces of music written for a movie. It’s so haunting, so beautiful, – full of pan flutes and stuff. It’s shattering y’know – like a Morricone theme. Oddly enough, ‘The Main Theme’ works really well, but they never play it over the opening credits. They play it over the middle and during the closing credits, which is very strange.”
Jack Nitzsche
Revenge
“Out of all the soundtracks, this is the best. It’s from a Tony Scott movie – he directed True Romance – and it’s a very lush, elegant score. You don’t need to know the film to enjoy the soundtrack: It works in its own right.”
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Originally published in Uncut's May 2013 issue (Take 192)
His drummers needed to make him laugh. His manager needed to keep hold of the corkscrew. Yet somehow, in the early ’70s, Kevin Ayers made four extrao...
After Shooting At the Moon, Peter Jenner relinquished production duties on Ayers’ last two Harvest albums to his partner, Andrew King, whose tweedy bonhomie was perhaps more compatible with Ayers’ preference for good wine to hard work.
“I’d got a bit frustrated with Kevin,” Jenner admits. “I couldn’t quite see how you could make him work, how you could get through to him. I always found him very pleasant, but evasive in that wonderfully English manner. ‘Oh, yes. Jolly good idea.’ And then that was that. I can’t remember ever having a row with him. He was extraordinarily easy to get on with. I remember saying things like, ‘Come on. Pull your finger out, old boy, stiff upper lip and all that.’ But there was sometimes no getting through to him. But he was always so charming you couldn’t really be annoyed or grumpy with him. I think that was part of the trouble.”
The Whole World had split by now, but David Bedford, Robert Wyatt and Mike Oldfield were at hand in June 1971, when Ayers started the sessions for the album many regard as his masterpiece, Whatevershebringswesing.
“I don’t recall doing very much at all,” King recalls of his role as producer. “We had a great studio, a great engineer. Kevin had written some great songs and worked out all the arrangements with David Bedford. It was all pretty effortless. I’ve always said I got two points [on the album’s sales] for owning a corkscrew. All I did was keep a corkscrew handy and open a bottle of wine every now and then.”
After the sometimes brutal sounds of Shooting At The Moon, the new album was in places lushly orchestrated, as on the opening “There Is Loving/Among Us/There Is Loving”, and awash with some of Kevin’s most glorious melodies – “Margaret” was an especially honeyed love song, among Ayers’ most generously affecting. “Song From The Bottom Of A Well” explored darker recesses, but the album was on the whole aglow, nowhere brighter than on the title track, with Wyatt providing delicate wistful harmonies and Oldfield contributing a wonderfully evocative guitar solo. On the almost-hit single “Stranger In Blue Suede Shoes”, Ayers sounded like a home counties Lou Reed on a track you could put alongside David Bowie’s “Queen Bitch” and Anthony Moore’s “Time Less Strange” as among the best-ever Velvet Underground homages.
“He liked to do things in an elegant and stylish way and that can be mistaken for being casual,” says King. “But he was pretty serious and hard-working, in a way. It’s one of those popular illusions that rock stars don’t do any work, but most of them work bloody hard. It always annoys me when people talk about Syd, as if he’d roll up at lunchtime, take some acid and write a wonderful song. Of course, it’s not like that at all. He worked very hard. And I’m sure Kevin did, too.”
In September 1972, King was back in the studio, corkscrew in hand, to produce Ayers’ final album for Harvest. Released the following May, Bananamour was perhaps the most conventional of his first four solo albums, replete with robust rockers like “Don’t Let It Bring You Down” and “When Your Parents Go To Sleep” (sung by his new musical partner, bassist Archie Leggett), driven by horns and adorned with backing singers that gave the record a more determinedly commercial sound. There were quaint oddities, too, like Kevin’s touching tribute to Syd Barrett, “Oh! Wot A Dream”. The woozily atmospheric “Decadence”, a song inspired by Nico with something of the musical chill of her Marble Index or Desertshore albums, was a career highlight.
“After that,” King remarks tartly, “he signed to Island, which in those days was quite a big deal. But actually, it was downhill all the way for Kevin from that point. It’s often the case that you sign to a label and there’s great optimism and then the first single is a bit of a disappointment and doesn’t go Top 10 and after that the whole deal is seen as a bit of a failure. At Island, I think Kevin was seen as not as good as they thought he was.”
Most bizarrely, Ayers was taken on by Elton John’s manager, John Reid, for 1975’s misguided Sweet Deceiver, ending his relationship with Blackhill. It was a move Ayers subsequently regretted. “I think he took me on as a pretty young boy,” he told Uncut in December 2008, the year after his last LP, The Unfairground, was released. “I felt as if I’d been bought by this rich and powerful person as a kind of token.”
“We were furious when John Reid nicked him from us,” Peter Jenner says. “That was awful. Kevin was seduced by cocaine and champagne and the promise that John Reid would make him a star, which obviously never happened.”
“I would say signing with John Reid ruined his life,” says Andrew King. “I would say John Reid has a lot to answer for. I think he’s a wicked person.”
There is little rancour, however, when King reflects on the music Ayers made on those four Harvest albums. “They’re his best work, don’t you think?” he asks. “They’re a bit ragged at the edges, not perfect, could have done with a bit more discipline maybe. But they’re brilliant, wonderful, eccentric and full of English charm. Almost like Danny Boyle’s Olympics opening ceremony in their very English eccentricity.
“I don’t think you should look back at a career like his and say, ‘Oh, what a shame, he could have been so much bigger.’ So what if he could have been so much bigger, does it matter? I don’t think so. Kevin is what he was and those records are what they are. Love them or leave them. There’s no spilt milk to be cried over when you consider Kevin’s career and the music he made, on those first four albums especially. They’re little islands floating in the Caribbean Sea, a little belt of islands of pleasure and fun and palm trees. We need,” he says, “more Kevins.”
Additional reporting by Michael Bonner
_________________
“His role models weren’t healthy” Robert Wyatt on Kevin Ayers’ legendary lassitude
“He was 10 years ahead of punk in seeing no particular reason why one should tune a guitar. And in retrospect, we can see, why bother sometimes? You can get wonderful records out of it. So Kevin was ahead of the curve on that one. But to a certain extent, I don’t think Kevin took himself seriously enough as a musician and songwriter. I think perhaps his role models weren’t terribly healthy. They were people like Jeffrey Bernard [writer, gambler, Soho drinking legend], you know that whole Soho scene, eccentrics who would hang around the pubs and became legendary hanger-outers. People would say, ‘He’s a writer, you know,’ or, ‘He’s a painter, you know.’ And in a way they were, but in a way you’d think, ‘Oh, when do they do that, because they seem to be spending an awful lot of time in this pub?’ But they were legendary people. In the ’50s, especially while there was still conscription, all the healthy young men were off doing National Service. So Soho became full of people who weren’t allowed in the army because they were mad, or because they were homosexual, or something or other. Soho became this gravitational place of army rejects, apart from anything else, where you saw people with very long hair doing astrology in a corner of a café or listening to strange jazz records on jukeboxes that you’d never hear anywhere else. These people were Kevin’s role models. They were his idea of how to be, which had nothing to do with a sense of industry or getting product to market. It was when the underground really was the underground, and you did art or whatever, as and when you felt like it, and not otherwise.”
_________________
How to buy… Kevin Ayers’ Harvest Albums 1969-1973
Joy Of A Toy (1969)
Written and recorded in the aftermath of his sudden departure from Soft Machine the previous year, Ayers’ solo debut was a sly conflation of pastoral folk, jazz and avant-rock, aided by various ex-bandmates. The laissez-faire richness of his voice heightened the dream-like whimsy of two of his most celebrated tunes, “Girl On A Swing” and “The Lady Rachel”.
8/10
Shooting At The Moon (1970)
A successful tour with his new backing band, The Whole World, provided the impetus for Ayers’ return to the studio. The result was a heady rush of styles that gambolled freely between a remake of the Soft Machine reverie “Clarence In Wonderland” to the proggish cut-up experimentalism of “Rheinhardt And Geraldine/Colores Para Dolores” and comely folk duet “The Oyster And The
Flying Fish”, recorded with singer-songwriter Bridget St John.
8/10
Whatevershebringswesing (1971)
Perhaps the pick of Ayers’ first spell with Harvest, this expansive beauty is further enhanced by Robert Wyatt’s harmonies on the eight-minute title track and the orchestral daring of David Bedford. Two other standouts highlight the dual aspect of Ayers’ best work: the forlorn, ravishing drama of “There Is Loving/Among Us/There Is Loving” and the rock’n’roll of live staple, “Stranger In Blue Suede Shoes”.
9/10
Bananamour (1973)
Heading up a new trio with bassist Archie Leggett and drummer Eddie Sparrow, Ayers’ Harvest swansong found him newly energised. Gong guitarist Steve Hillage does a killer turn on the explosive “Shouting In A Bucket Blues”, while Ayers provides terse six-string muscle to the terrific “Interview”, alongside pluming organ lines from the Softs’ Mike Ratledge. Also includes “Oh! Wot A Dream”, an affectionate tribute to old pal Syd Barrett.
8/10
“Walkin’ My Cat Named Dog”, the debut single by Norma Tanega as well as the title track of her 1966 debut album, was an act of small but ingenious rebellion. The singer-songwriter had gone from playing at a summer camp in the Catskills to working with Bob Crewe, head songwriter for The Four Se...
“Walkin’ My Cat Named Dog”, the debut single by Norma Tanega as well as the title track of her 1966 debut album, was an act of small but ingenious rebellion. The singer-songwriter had gone from playing at a summer camp in the Catskills to working with Bob Crewe, head songwriter for The Four Seasons, and her sudden professional advancement had prompted a move to the city. As the possibly apocryphal story goes, her new apartment building didn’t allow dogs. To work around that restriction, Tanega got a cat and named it Dog. She wasn’t marching in the streets or bombing army recruitment centres or occupying the dean’s office at Berkeley. Instead, hers was a more personal act of dissent, playful and almost surrealist: Magritte by way of Haight-Ashbury.
Flaunting her lease inspired a short and nonchalantly innovative tune that became her biggest hit, melding folk ponderings, pop melodies, girl-group vocals, a “Love Me Do” harmonica theme, and a follow-the-bouncing-ball guitar lick. The single peaked just outside the Top 20 in the US and the UK and briefly established Tanega as a rising star on the folk scene. More than 50 years later, it remains a perfect introduction to this imaginative artist, who comes across as a one-woman counterculture on this vinyl reissue of Walkin’ My Cat Named Dog. “Happy, sad, and crazy wonder,” she sings to a jump-rope melody. “Chokin’ up my mind with perpetual dreamin’.”
For Tanega, music was a vehicle for self-definition, and she had no interest in defining herself by anyone else’s conventions. Born in Vallejo, California, to Panamanian-Filipino parents, she studied classical music and visual art as a teenager, backpacked around Europe, protested the Vietnam War, painted enormous canvases with mythological beasts, was loosely associated with the Greenwich Village folk scene, and even found a job playing her songs to patients at a psychiatric hospital in New York. It’s tempting to say Tanega was “discovered” playing at that summer camp up in the Catskills, but the force of personality that emerges in her music suggests that she knew who and where she was all along. Herb Bernstein – a producer for Bob Dylan, Laura Nyro and The Monkees, among others – was impressed enough to sign her to Crewe’s New Voice label and produce her debut.
Her career took many twists and turns, producing only two solo albums but a lot of stories along the way. During a promotional tour of Europe for Walkin’ My Cat Named Dog, Tanega met Dusty Springfield and began a long romantic and creative relationship with the pop icon, even writing a handful of songs for her [see side panel]. Theirs was a tumultuous affair, and after they split, Tanega returned to America and released a second album in 1971 called I Don’t Think It Will Hurt If You Smile. It’s tempting to say that she “vanished” from the music industry, but that’s about as true as saying she was “discovered”. She has continued making music throughout her life, gradually gravitating away from the guitar towards percussion, away from folk pop towards something much more avant-garde and experimental. Over the past 30 years she has released a handful of recordings with an assortment of stylistically divergent groups including HybridVigor, Latin Lizards and The Ceramic Ensemble.
Like Vashti Bunyan or Karen Dalton, Tanega has remained something of a cult influence, her albums discovered by cratediggers and decoded by subsequent generations of listeners. Shortly after its run up the pop charts, “Walkin’ My Cat Named Dog” was covered by Barry “Eve of Destruction” McGuire and even Art Blakey, and more recently her songs have been recorded by They Might Be Giants, Yo La Tengo and Thee Oh Sees. Her strident, spooky “You’re Dead” is currently the theme to the TV adaptation of the vampire farce What We Do In The Shadows. While Real Gone Music’s new vinyl reissue of Walkin’ My Cat Named Dog includes no bonus material – no archival tracks, no new liner notes – it’s enough just to have this remarkable debut back in print.
The chart success of her debut single meant Tanega was pressured to record a full-length very quickly, but nothing on Walkin’ My Cat Named Dog sounds rushed or underthought. It may have been conceived to take advantage of her sudden ascent, but the album sounds purposeful, confident, adventurous and perfectly idiosyncratic. There’s some wordplay on these songs that recall the language games and in-jokes that were already showing up in Dylan’s songwriting, although Tanega is never quite as obscure. She prefers long melodic lines that jostle against the metre, and on “A Street That Rhymes At 6am” her back-up singers barely have time to get one line out of their mouths before the next one begins. It’s a sly trick that underscores the song’s sentiment about living on your own terms. “Syncopate your life and move against the grain,” she sings. “Don’t you let them tell you that we’re all the same.”
Her rhythms are jangly, her time signatures tricky. In fact, on tour for this album Tanega’s backing band The Outsiders had trouble mastering her zigzagging arrangements, so she had to bring in a crew of professional session musicians. “No Stranger Am I” (later covered by Springfield) is written in 5/4 time, its tempo set by what sounds like a pair of scissors snipping fabric, but that gives Tanega a little more room to unspool her melodies and only adds to the stateliness of the ballad. On the spirited gospel number “Treat Me Right” and the austere march “I’m The Sky”, she builds small symphonies out of just a few sounds. “What Are We Craving?” poses serious questions about materialism and contentment over a curious snare-and-tambourine march, while “Jubilation” pins a warm invitation (“Come be one two three/With me, you, and I and us!”) to a gently swooping melody punctuated by a simple yet lovely oboe solo.
One of Tanega’s boldest moves here is “Hey Girl”, which slyly reconsiders the blues standard “In The Pines”, made famous by Bill Monroe, Lead Belly, The Louvin Brothers, and – much later – Nirvana. She asks the same questions those men have asked countless times: “Hey girl, don’t lie to me/Tell me where did you go last night?” But she bends her voice, almost flattening it out at times, in order to undercut her accusations and ease up on the song’s misogyny. Given how public Tanega’s history with Springfield has been, it’s tempting to hear this cover as a queer reinterpretation that infuses the song with a very different kind of desire. When she sings that she “shivered the whole night through”, the line takes on radically new possibilities.
The inventive musical flourishes on Walkin’ My Cat Named Dog are not unlike the way in which Tanega actually named her cat Dog. Each knotty rhythm and each unexpected melody amounts to a small subversion of the conventions of pop and folk in the mid-1960s, as though she is constantly working to define herself against the industry, to carve out a place for herself without losing herself in the process.
Fifty years later, these rebellious gestures have lost little of their power, accumulating into a complex and compelling personality that emerges on this unique album.
The new issue of Uncut – in UK shops now and available to buy online by clicking here – features Patti Smith as its defiant cover star.
Inside, we investigate her latest memoir Year Of The Monkey while looking back over her storied career via candid, unpublished interviews with Jaan Uhelszki, o...
The new issue of Uncut – in UK shops now and available to buy online by clicking here – features Patti Smith as its defiant cover star.
Inside, we investigate her latest memoir Year Of The Monkey while looking back over her storied career via candid, unpublished interviews with Jaan Uhelszki, one of Smith’s greatest champions.
During an intense meeting in San Francisco in 1996, 18 months after the death of her husband, Smith talks about her role as a bellwether – more of an oracle than a rock’n’roll star. “The mission to me is communication,” she says. “What you’re communicating changes nightly. Some nights seem like an antiwar rally. Some nights seem like a comedy-club night, because I just joke around a lot and tell stories. Some seem like classic rock shows. The mission, though, is to communicate, and you have to pay attention to the people’s needs. Sometimes people really want you to talk to them.”
Which is true whether on stage or off. When people encounter Smith, they want to engage. She reveals that when she walks around New York’s Lower East Side, garbage men hail her, waitresses always want to give her free pastries, ladies in flowered hats smile at her and well-dressed strangers would come up to tell her how sorry they were to hear about the death of her husband. No-one is neutral about Patti Smith.
“I have always elicited strong reactions,” she acknowledges. “People have either been drawn [to me] or repelled by me. I was like that even as a kid. I think that’s only magnified a little bit because I’m somewhat known. But I think even if I wasn’t known that quality would remain. There’s obviously something about me that people either feel like they’ve known me all their lives or they don’t want to. It’s just this innate quality I have, it’s like this certain kind of charisma, which sometimes works against me or sometimes works for me. I was a born outsider. I’m so used to being on the outside for whatever reason, even as a kid, so I don’t even look any more for people to understand me.”
On stage, she is so casual, so intimate, so unscripted, admitting her mess-ups and laughing at her false starts and forgotten lyrics, that people love her more for those human moments than if she delivered a seamless performance. She’s never been averse to admitting she has had a real tough time that day, or acknowledging that ongoing irritation at photographers when they break her concentration. Since she has little personal vanity and is a photographer, one wonders if it’s because they break the spell of performance, that trancelike state she admits she has gone into while on stage. “William Burroughs and I used to talk about it,” she says. “That sort of a shamanistic arena that one enters. You bridge the worlds.
“It does happen,” she continues. “I have had enough proof of that that I don’t think of it as being… odd. It’s like some people are good at gardening and some people are mathematical geniuses. Somebody like Einstein, he bridged these other worlds. It’s part of our humanity, and these things happen to me.”
You can read much more from Patti Smith in the new issue of Uncut, in shops now.
Prolific psych-rockers Oh Sees release a new double album called Face Stabber on Friday (August 16).
In the new issue of Uncut – in UK shops tomorrow or available to order online now by clicking here – we write that "Face Stabber constitutes [jazz] elements' deepest incursion into Oh Sees prope...
Prolific psych-rockers Oh Sees release a new double album called Face Stabber on Friday (August 16).
In the new issue of Uncut – in UK shops tomorrow or available to order online now by clicking here – we write that “Face Stabber constitutes [jazz] elements’ deepest incursion into Oh Sees proper with thrilling results”.
Watch a video for the album’s opening track “The Daily Heavy” below:
Of the song, chief Oh See John Dwyer says: “Earth is smacked by a bacterium from outer space which leads to dancing, fornication, gluttony and ultimately the coming apart of human systems.”
Check out Oh Sees’ tour itinerary below, including a date at London’s Troxy on September 6 supported by Träd, Gräs Och Stenar.
08/23 Charleville, France – Cabaret Vert festival
08/24 Guéret, France – Check-in Festival
08/27 Ravenna, Italy – Hana-Bi (Free)
08/29 Vienna, Austria – Arena
08/30 Munich, Germany – Strom
08/31 Berlin, Germany – Kreuzberg Festsaal
09/01 Brussels, Belgium – Les Botaniquesen
09/03 Bordeaux, France – BT 59
09/04 Toulouse, France – Le Bikini
09/05 Paris, France – Le Bataclan 09/06 London, England – Troxy
09/07 Amsterdam, Netherlands – Paradiso
09/30 San Francisco, CA – The Chapel *
10/01 San Francisco, CA – The Chapel *
10/02 San Francisco, CA – The Chapel *
10/04 Portland, OR – Crystal Ballroom *
10/05 Seattle, WA – Neumos *
10/06 Seattle, WA – Neumos *
10/07 Vancouver, British Columbia – Rickshaw Theatre *
10/10 Minneapolis, MN – First Avenue Ballroom *
10/11 Chicago, IL – Thalia Hall *
10/12 Chicago, IL – Thalia Hall *
10/13 Cleveland, OH – Beachland Ballroom *
10/14 Toronto, Ontario – Danforth Music Hall *
10/15 Montreal, Quebec – Le National
10/16 Cambridge, MA The Sinclair
10/18 Brooklyn, NY – Warsaw *
10/19 Brooklyn, NY – Warsaw *
10/20 Brooklyn, NY – Warsaw *
10/22 Philadelphia, PA – Union Transfer *
10/23 Carrboro, NC – Cat’s Cradle *
10/24 Nashville, TN – Mercy Lounge *
10/25 New Orleans, LA – One Eyed Jacks *
10/26 Austin, TX – Hotel Vegas
10/27 Austin, TX – Hotel Vegas
10/29 Albuquerque, NM – Sister Bar
10/31 Los Angeles, CA – Teragram Ballroom *
Michael Kiwanuka will release his third album, simply titled Kiwanuka, on October 25 through Polydor.
It was recorded in New York, LA and London with Danger Mouse and Inflo, the same production team that worked on his previous album Love & Hate. Hear the first single, "You Ain’t The Problem",...
Michael Kiwanuka will release his third album, simply titled Kiwanuka, on October 25 through Polydor.
It was recorded in New York, LA and London with Danger Mouse and Inflo, the same production team that worked on his previous album Love & Hate. Hear the first single, “You Ain’t The Problem”, below:
Says Michael Kiwanuka: “The last album came from an introspective place and felt like therapy, I guess. This one is more about feeling comfortable in who I am and asking what I want to say. Like, how could I be bold and challenge myself and the listener? It is about self-acceptance in a more triumphant rather than melancholy way. It’s an album that explores what it means to be a human being today.”
Pre-order the album – including the pink double vinyl version – here and check out Kiwanuka’s touring schedule below:
30th August – End of the Road Festival, UK
1st September – Electric Picnic, Ireland
23rd November – La Salle Pleyel, Paris
24th November – Ancienne Belgique, Brussels
26th November – AFAS Live, Amsterdam
27th November – Essigfabrik, Cologne
29th November – K.B Hallen, Copenhagen
30th November – Gota Lejon, Stockholm
1st December – Rockefeller Music Hall, Oslo
3rd December – Huxleys Neue Welt, Berlin
4th December – Batschkapp, Frankfurt
6th December – Stadthalle Halle F, Vienna
7th December – Fabrique Milano, Milan
2nd March – O2 Guildhall, Southampton
3rd March – O2 Academy, Bournemouth
5th March -O2 Academy Brixton, London
6th March – O2 Academy, Birmingham
7th March – O2 Apollo, Manchester
9th March – Corn Exchange, Cambridge
10th March – De Montford Hall, Leicester
12th March – O2 Academy, Leeds
13th March – O2 Academy, Newcastle
14th March – Barrowlands, Glasgow
The Clash: London Calling is a new free exhibition celebrating the 40th anniversary of the classic album, due to open at the Museum Of London on November 15 and running through until spring 2020.
Items on show include Paul Simonon's Fender Precision bass guitar that he can be seen smashing on the a...
The Clash: London Calling is a new free exhibition celebrating the 40th anniversary of the classic album, due to open at the Museum Of London on November 15 and running through until spring 2020.
Items on show include Paul Simonon’s Fender Precision bass guitar that he can be seen smashing on the album’s cover image; Joe Strummer’s notebook showing the lyrics for “Ice Age”, that was to become “London Calling”; a handwritten album sequence note by Mick Jones; Joe Strummer’s typewriter; and Topper Headon’s drum sticks.
To coincide with the opening of the exhibit on November 15, Sony Music will release the London Calling Scrapbook – a 120-page hardback companion which comes with the album on CD and contains handwritten lyrics, notes, photos and previously unseen material from the period when the record was made.
Prior to this, on October 11, London Calling will be reissued on CD, vinyl and cassette, in a special sleeve highlighting the layers of the iconic artwork by Ray Lowry with photograph by Pennie Smith.
If you score a Billboard No 1 with one of your first singles, it's inevitably going to overshadow the rest of your career somewhat. That's just the way it is – some things will never change.
But, as evidenced by this year's excellent Absolute Zero, Bruce Hornsby has travelled a long way since bre...
If you score a Billboard No 1 with one of your first singles, it’s inevitably going to overshadow the rest of your career somewhat. That’s just the way it is – some things will never change.
But, as evidenced by this year’s excellent Absolute Zero, Bruce Hornsby has travelled a long way since breaking out with The Range in the mid-’80s. The album combines the smooth yet subtle complex heartland rock he’s best known for, with neo-classical, jazz, funk and avant-garde flourishes, reflecting a long and varied career.
For years, the singer and pianist has been part of the Grateful Dead family, playing with the band for 12 years and continuing to perform with a variety of Dead spin-off projects. His own solo albums have incorporated everything from bluegrass to jazz, with guests of the calibre of Wayne Shorter and Eric Clapton. He’s played on records by everyone from Bob Dylan to Chaka Khan, and formed fruitful creative partnerships with the likes of Ricky Skaggs and Spike Lee, who’s recruited Hornsby to provide music for numerous film and TV projects, most recently Blackkklansman.
And while his signature blend of piano-led Southern rock and smooth jazz was, for years, considered a little unfashionable, a new generation led by Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon has reappraised the music’s subtle complexities and emotional resonance. Vernon guests on Absolute Zero, with Hornsby returning the favour on Bon Iver’s new one, i,i.
So what do you want to ask Bruce Hornsby? Send your questions to audiencewith@www.uncut.co.uk by Thursday (August 15) – please note the new email address – and Bruce will answer the best ones in a future issue of Uncut. You can also peruse his 2019 tour dates below:
01/11/19 Glasgow Royal Concert Hall
03/11/19 London O2 Shepherd's Bush Empire
04/11/19 Cologne Theater Am Tanzbrunnen
07/11/19 Berlin Admiralspalast
08/11/19 Antwerp De Roma
11/11/19 Utrecht Tivoli
Following hot on the heels of the acclaimed UFOF, Big Thief have announced that their next album Two Hands will be released by 4AD on October 11.
Listen to lead single "Not" below:
Order the latest issue of Uncut online and have it sent to your home!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIcVwH47uxQ&am...
Following hot on the heels of the acclaimed UFOF, Big Thief have announced that their next album Two Hands will be released by 4AD on October 11.
Two Hands was recorded at Sonic Ranch studios, 30 miles west of El Paso in Texas, with engineer Dom Monks and producer Andrew Sarlo. The band describe the album as the “earth twin” to UFOF’s “celestial twin”.
“Two Hands has the songs that I’m the most proud of; I can imagine myself singing them when I’m old,” says frontwoman Adrianne Lenker. “Musically and lyrically, you can’t break it down much further than this. It’s already bare-bones.”
Pre-order Two Handshere and check out Big Thief’s current tour itinerary below:
August 14-17 – SAINT MALO, FR, La Route Du Rock Festival
August 15-18 – BRECON BEACONS, GB, Green Man Festival
August 16 – HASSELT, BE, Pukkelpop Festival
August 19 – LONDON, GB, Bush Hall
October 9 – BROOKLYN, NY, Brooklyn Steel
October 10 – NEW YORK, NY, Webster Hall
**SOLD OUT** October 11 – NEW YORK, NY, Webster Hall **SOLD OUT**
October 12 – SOUTH BURLINGTON, VT, Higher Ground
October 13 – BOSTON, MA, Wilbur Theatre
**SOLD OUT** October 15 – MONTREAL, QC, La Tulipe **SOLD OUT**
**SOLD OUT** October 16 – TORONTO, ON, Phoenix Concert Theatre **SOLD OUT**
October 17 – DETROIT, MI, Majestic Theatre
**SOLD OUT** October 18 – CHICAGO, IL, Metro **SOLD OUT**
October 19 – MADISON, WI, The Sylvee
October 21 – MINNEAPOLIS, MN, First Avenue
October 24 – PORTLAND, OR, Crystal Ballroom
October 25 – VANCOUVER, BC, Vogue Theatre
October 26 – SEATTLE, WA, Moore Theatre
**SOLD OUT** October 28 – SAN FRANCISCO, CA, The Fillmore **SOLD OUT**
October 29 – OAKLAND, CA, Fox Theater
October 30 – SANTA ANA, CA, The Observatory
November 1 – PHOENIX, AZ, Crescent Ballroom
November 2 – ALBUQUERQUE, NM, Sister
November 4 – AUSTIN, TX, Stubb’s Waller Creek Amphitheatre
November 5 – DALLAS, TX, Trees
November 7 – ATLANTA, GA, Variety Playhouse
**SOLD OUT** November 8 – SAXAPAHAW, NC, Haw River Ballroom **SOLD OUT**
November 9 – PHILADELPHIA, PA, Union Transfer
November 10 – WASHINGTON, DC, 9:30 Club
November 11 – COLUMBUS, OH, The Athenaeum Theatre
February 17 – LISBON, PT, LAV
February 18 – PORTO, PT, Hard Club
February 19 – MADRID, ES, Joy Eslava
February 20 – BARCELONA, ES, La 2 de Apolo
February 22 – BOLOGNA, IT, Locomotiv
February 23 – MILAN, IT, Magnolia
February 24 – LYON, FR, Epicerie Moderne
February 25 – PARIS, FR, Cabaret Sauvage
February 27 – LONDON, GB, Eventim Apollo
February 29 – NOTTINGHAM, GB, Rock City
March 1 – MANCHESTER, GB, Albert Hall
March 2 – GLASGOW, GB, Old Fruitmarket
March 5 – BRUSSELS, BE, AB Ballroom
March 6 – AMSTERDAM, NL, Paradiso
March 7 – COLOGNE, DE, Luxor
March 8 – HAMBURG, DE, Uebel & Gefährlich
March 9 – BERLIN, DE, Astra
March 11 – COPENHAGEN, DK, Vega Main Hall
March 12 – GOTHENBURG, SE, Pustervik
March 13 – STOCKHOLM, SE, Debaser
March 14 – OSLO, NO, Rockefeller
March 15 – AARHUS, DK, Voxhall
At the risk of sounding needlessly hifalutin, this issue of Uncut contains some discussion about the transformative nature of music. Here’s Justin Vernon, for instance, talking to Stephen Deusner about the new Bon Iver album. “I’ve always been obsessed with music and what it does to people,”...
At the risk of sounding needlessly hifalutin, this issue of Uncut contains some discussion about the transformative nature of music. Here’s Justin Vernon, for instance, talking to Stephen Deusner about the new Bon Iver album. “I’ve always been obsessed with music and what it does to people,” he says. “Bob Marley was a huge thing for me – wow, he actually changed the political landscape in Jamaica. I like the idea of the power that prayer has. If music is the religion, then these songs are prayer to simply being people on Earth.”
Elsewhere, between anecdotes about Dylan, Scorsese and The Band, Robbie Robertson tells Nick Hasted about the deeply spiritual link between music and the natural world he experienced during childhood, visiting family on the Six Nations Reserve outside Toronto. “They had this connection with the wilderness and the earth,” he recalls. “They know how to grow things and make a weapon in a minute, and they all carry knives. Everybody played music, and knew how to run into the fields and pick wild strawberries. There was a beauty to that.”
And then there is this month’s cover star, Patti Smith, who has spent the last half century seeking to bring spiritual wisdom and prophetic power to rock’n’roll. “I didn’t enter rock’n’roll to say, ‘Hey, brothers and sisters, put your hands together,’” she reveals to Jaan Uhelszki. “I always felt that rock’n’roll was a forum for spiritual issues, political issues, revolutionary issues.”
Jaan first met Patti in Detroit in the early ‘70s, when she was writing for the legendary Creem magazine. Jaan was also there when Patti first met her future husband, Fred “Sonic” Smith at the Lafayette Coney Island hot dog emporium. Jaan has spoken with Patti on many occasions since then and our exceptional cover story – which consists of previously unpublished interview material – presents a series of unique snapshots of Smith during critical moments in her life and times.
There is more, of course. Tom Pinnock charts the magical prowess of Jeff Buckley, song-by-song, with help from his closest friends and collaborators, John Lewis digs deep to unearth the amazing story of a lost Miles Davis album and The Hollies regale us with tales involving Jack Bruce, Burt Bacharach and day jobs at the Burco Dean appliance factory in Burnley.
There are further new interviews with Brittany Howard, Devendra Banhart and Bat For Lashes. We salute the return of Betty Davis, check out a new film about record shops and hear all about Paul McCartney’s attempts at perfectionism during The Beatles‘ sessions for Abbey Road. Our 15 track CD brings you some of the month’s best new music, including Oh Sees, Wilco, Hiss Golden Messenger, Jenny Hval, One Eleven Heavy and Gruff Rhys.
As ever, let us know what you think: letters@www.uncut.co.uk.
Patti Smith, Bon Iver, Robbie Robertson and Miles Davis all feature in the new Uncut, dated October 2019 and available to buy from August 15.
PATTI SMITH: The Godmother of punk is on the cover, and she relives her wild career through previously unpublished interview material. “My relationship to ...
Patti Smith, Bon Iver, Robbie Robertson and Miles Davis all feature in the new Uncut, dated October 2019 and available to buy from August 15.
PATTI SMITH: The Godmother of punk is on the cover, and she relives her wild career through previously unpublished interview material. “My relationship to rock’n’roll is like military duty,” she tells us.
NEW MUSIC CD: Our great free CD, Radio Uncut, compiles 15 tracks of the month’s best new music, including Bon Iver, Oh Sees, Wilco, Gruff Rhys, Hiss Golden Messenger, Jenny Hval, Tinariwen, Mike Patton & Jean-Claude Vannier and CFM.
Plus! Inside the new issue you’ll find…
BON IVER: As he returns with a new album, i,i, Justin Vernon discusses the record and the importance of defying expectations: “Maybe subconsciously I didn’t want to be beholden to what people expected.”
ROBBIE ROBERTSON: Uncut meets the songwriter to talk about working with Scorsese and Dylan, and of course, provide some inside stories on The Band.
MILES DAVIS: As the jazz legend’s “lost” ’80s album Rubberband is finally released, we speak to those in the know about his process in the studio (and his prowess in the kitchen).
JEFF BUCKLEY: 25 years after Grace, we discover how the mercurial performer created his greatest recordings – his friends, family and collaborators share their insights on “Grace”, “Hallelujah”, “So Real”, “Everybody Here Wants You” and more.
DEVENDRA BANHART: The singer-songwriter takes us through all his albums so far, from recording acoustic snippets in Parisian toilets to capturing the sound of the Big Sur waves.
THE HOLLIES: Graham Nash, Allan Clarke, Tony Hicks, Graham Gouldman and Bobby Elliott recall the making of “Bus Stop”.
In our expansive albums section, we take a look at new releases from Brittany Howard, Oh Sees, Wilco, Jenny Hval, Tinariwen, Iggy Pop, Gruff Rhys and more, and archival treasures from Peter Laughner, Manu Chao and the Ann Arbor Blues Festival 1969. Nick Lowe features on our books page, while our films, TV and DVD offerings include Kiss Me Deadly, John Lennon & Yoko Ono and new films from Quentin Tarantino and Pedro Almodóvar. We caught the biggest recent gigs too, and you can read all about them in our extended live special, from Neil Young and Bob Dylan at Hyde Park to the WOMAD and Bluedot festivals.
Plus Bat For Lashes’ Natasha Khan answers your questions, and Cabaret Voltaire’s Richard H Kirk reveals eight albums that changed his life. Meanwhile, our Instant Karma front section features Betty Davis, Anna Calvi on her new music for the returning Peaky Blinders, The Beatles and Altin Gün.
Not necessarily stoned, but beautiful… The full, deluxe, ULTIMATE MUSIC GUIDE to JIMI HENDRIX: from the Experience to Band Of Gypsys and beyond, with in-depth reviews, and packed with revelatory archive interviews. Now featuring additional revolutionary fireworks, and three days of Jimi’s Woodst...
Not necessarily stoned, but beautiful… The full, deluxe, ULTIMATE MUSIC GUIDE to JIMI HENDRIX: from the Experience to Band Of Gypsys and beyond, with in-depth reviews, and packed with revelatory archive interviews. Now featuring additional revolutionary fireworks, and three days of Jimi’s Woodstock!
The fourth of our very Fab Four Ultimate Music Guides to the solo Beatles: Ringo Starr. From thrilling archive features on his early days as America’s favourite Beatle to deep new writing on his film career, and his successful, hit single and Beatle-strewn 50 year solo albums, we present the Ultim...
The fourth of our very Fab Four Ultimate Music Guides to the solo Beatles: Ringo Starr. From thrilling archive features on his early days as America’s favourite Beatle to deep new writing on his film career, and his successful, hit single and Beatle-strewn 50 year solo albums, we present the Ultimate Music Guide to the work of Ringo Starr. Choose it – and choose love!
“I was still living at home, and Phil Spector came over for a spaghetti dinner,” recalls Nino Tempo. “We went into the piano room after dinner and he said, ‘This is a song I’m gonna record.’ He played and sang it, and he looked up and said, ‘I know it doesn’t sound very good, but it ...
TEMPO: They liked recording for Phil. They respected him greatly, and the hits then came mostly from Phil – you could get the same Wrecking Crew on a record where the song was a flop, and the same Wrecking Crew couldn’t make it a hit. It’s all about the song – song first, production second, singer third. Phil would record it in stereo, but he would at the same time record it with all the echo in monaural, and invariably he would use the monaural recording because that was what was best, certainly in those days. He’d bring the singer in at another time, ’cause then he could just concentrate on them.
SPECTOR: I remember so much about “Be My Baby” especially, when Hal Blaine went ‘boom boom boom bow’ and I came in: [sings] “The night we met…” We did one song a day – you can do two or three or four now, but back then you didn’t have the equipment to do all that. It took a long time to do “Be My Baby”.
TEMPO: Ronnie was pretty consistent – I think sometimes Phil went a little overboard with the vocals, because usually after three or four or five attempts, they had it.
SPECTOR: All of the musicians said, “Now, wow, that’s a voice”, you know, that can go with our stuff! And it just worked – I’d learn my songs in the hotel, ’cause they had a piano there, and then I’d go over to Gold Star, and they went nuts.
TEMPO: We always worked in the evening, and we often wouldn’t finish until early in the morning, that’s the way it was. Phil and I would often go to a deli or Pink’s hot dog stand at three or four in the morning. When Phil would mix, the sound would sometimes begin ringing back, there was so much echo, and that’s the point where most of the hits came from. You couldn’t separate anything, but you could control it by how much echo you’d put on this track or that track. You’d bury the horns and make the drums louder. He also controlled it by having tape echo, which was very important to Phil – tape echo plus the echo chamber. One time we were in the studio running it down and it went from sounding great to terrible. “What happened?” I said. And [engineer] Larry Levine said, “Oh, we ran out of tape on the [echo] tape machine, I’ll roll it back and start the tape again”, and the minute that sounded, it became good again.
LOVE: How was Phil then? Well, it was a whole lot normal in the studio for those sessions, because the Blossoms would not have stood for it. By the time Phil got really crazy, we weren’t recording or having anything to do with him. He went to Europe after all the success and that’s when he became nuts. I could never testify that I saw him with a gun. I went to sessions and they said he had a gun, so I’d get in my car and go back home – I was there to record and sing, not to see no fool with no gun. I used to tell the musicians, “Guns don’t kill, men kill! Why you sitting in here with some crazy person with a gun?” I used to tell him that all the time, “You’re crazy, and so are the people in this studio – you know I’m not coming in here with you with no gun.” There’s always accidents, that’s why they say ‘accidental shooting’, and I wasn’t going to be one of those.
TEMPO: I had always been a gun collector. But sometimes you’d get tired of it and see another gun that you like more. So you sell that one to somebody and you buy another one. Over the years, I wound up selling several to Phil, so I would say I’m probably the source that most of his guns came from. I’m not happy about that, but how could I know that he was going to use them in the wrong way? Was Phil more eccentric later on? Yes, but he was always pretty eccentric. I was in the studio for “River Deep Mountain High”, and the echo had taken it to a place where it no longer made sense to me. I said, “Phil, I think the echo may be overdone.” He said, “No no, it’s fine, it’s fine.” He wasn’t listening any longer, I guess he was so impressed with his success that he felt he knew it and you didn’t.
SPECTOR: If you’re a girl like I was, who grew up with very humble beginnings, to have a hit record and to get in your car or go to a radio store and hear your record, it was like, “What?!” You’re in shock. It was the greatest time to have a hit record. Wherever I went, whoever I saw, everybody talked about “Be My Baby”.
TEMPO: I knew it would be a hit when we left the studio! At the end of the record, where it broke down to the drumbeat and then boom, the band hit, I said, “That is fantastic!” I knew it was gonna be a smash. Of course, it still sounds great today – it’s a great song and I’m glad to have been a part of it.
SPECTOR: It was just the greatest fun time, I wish that I could bring back those days, the early ’60s where everybody was just so excited to have a hit record, they were so excited to be onstage. Brian Wilson played “Be My Baby” a hundred times every single day – he’s told me that. Brian wrote “Don’t Worry Baby” for me. I thought that was the greatest follow-up to “Be My Baby”, but of course I couldn’t record it because other people wanted to write all my songs… so I didn’t get to do that. But I sing it in my show now.
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FACTFILE
Written by: Jeff Barry, Ellie Greenwich, Phil Spector
Performers include: Ronnie Spector (lead vocals), Darlene Love, Fanita James, Gracia Nitzsche, Nino Tempo, Cher, Sonny Bono (backing vocals), Hal Blaine (drums), Carol Kaye (bass), Al De Lory, Don Randi, Leon Russell (keyboards), Ray Pohlman (bass), Bill Pitman, Tommy Tedesco (guitar)
Produced by: Phil Spector
Recorded at: Gold Star Studios, Los Angeles, California
Released: August 1963
Highest chart positions: UK 4; US 2
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TIMELINE
1957
Ronnie Spector forms an early version of The Ronettes
EARLY 1963
The group sign to Phil Spector’s Philles label after auditioning for him in New York
JULY 1963
Ronnie Spector and the Wrecking Crew record the song at Gold Star Studios, Los Angeles
AUGUST 1963
“Be My Baby” is released, rising high up the charts in the UK and the US
Britain has produced plenty of great jazz musicians over the years – from Victor Feldman to Stan Tracey, from Courtney Pine to Andy Sheppard, from John McLaughlin to Shabaka Hutchings – all of whom have left a mark on the world. But few have been quite as celebrated as the saxophonist Tubby Haye...
Britain has produced plenty of great jazz musicians over the years – from Victor Feldman to Stan Tracey, from Courtney Pine to Andy Sheppard, from John McLaughlin to Shabaka Hutchings – all of whom have left a mark on the world. But few have been quite as celebrated as the saxophonist Tubby Hayes. Born in 1935 in London, he was one of that generation of musicians who learned his craft purely by listening to his American heroes – there were no jazz conservatoires or workshops where you could learn jazz theory – and ended up becoming so good that visiting American jazz royalty (Miles Davis, Cannonball Adderley, Dexter Gordon, Gerry Mulligan, Paul Desmond) would make a point of checking him out or sitting in with him when they came to London. Indeed, when Sonny Rollins and Benny Golson heard Tubby’s 1961 album Tubbs being played on an American radio station, they thought it was a new Coltrane release.
But in the depressing pattern common to the jazz genius, Hayes’ career was blighted by drug and alcohol abuse (he was one of the celebrity victims of the infamous drug squad detective Norman “Semolina” Pilcher), ill health, clinical depression, suicide attempts and a tempestuous relationship (in Tubby’s case with the American singer Joy Marshall). He’d be dead by 1973, aged only 38.
By that time, Hayes’ star had been on the wane, but not necessarily through his own fault. By the end of 1960s the revolutionary sound of hard bop was seen as a bit passé. On both sides of the Atlantic, jazz musicians were growing their hair, donning bell bottoms and playing over rock beats, often being encouraged to add the obligatory Bacharach or Beatles song to their repertoire. Tubby was no different – in 1969 Fontana’s head honcho Jack Baverstock commissioned an album credited to the Tubby Hayes Orchestra, featuring campy big-band versions of hits like “These Boots Are Made For Walking”, “Hey Jude” and “This Guy’s In Love With You” that matched the Austin Powers-ish flared collars and fulsome sideburns that Tubby was sporting at the time. Almost simultaneously – in one of those “one for you, one for me” agreements – Fontana also let Tubby record a straight-ahead jazz quartet album.
Unfortunately, in 1970, the only British “jazz” album that seemed to interest the world was Ringo Starr’s collection of standards, Sentimental Journey (on which Tubby features quite prominently as a session man). The Tubby Hayes Orchestra album flopped, and Fontana never even bothered releasing the quartet sessions, which languished in a German warehouse belonging to their parent company, Philips, untouched until last year.
Fifty years on, the Grits, Beans And Greens album is something of a revelation, and one that shows Tubby Hayes at his imperious best. He is a garrulous performer, who plays fast and clean, with sparing vibrato, rattling out 16th-note phrases like a machine-gunner. He’s particularly good at using “triangles” – that old jazz player’s trick where, when playing an upwards scale, he plays a note either side of each rising note, to create this kaleidoscopic blur of noise. On a rare ballad, Duke Pearson’s “You Know I Care”, you hear him, for once, reducing the pace, adding some wobble and gliding between notes with the ease of a trombonist.
This was a time when British jazz musicians were still in a thrall to their American heroes. On the title track you can hear obvious nods to Art Blakey, Horace Silver and John Coltrane; while “Rumpus” sounds like all the best bits from Coltrane’s Giant Steps album knitted into a single seven-and-a-half-minute take. But where Coltrane’s tenor playing is steely and impassive, Tubby’s is filled with sly, puckish slurs, as if he’s playing with a grin on his face while dangling a lit roll-up from the side of his mouth.
Crucially, Grits, Beans And Greens sees Hayes fronting his finest quartet, one that features new recruit Spike Wells on drums. Wells was only 23 at the time and had just dropped out of a philosophy PhD at UCL, but he plays with the energy and verve of a seasoned hard bop veteran. He approaches each song as if performing one constant drum solo. His performance on the opening track, “For Members Only”, is a series of fills, flickers and polyrhythms that ensure he never plays the same four beats identically, interlocking perfectly with bassist Ron Mathewson.
This album comes in two packages – a five-track single CD and an 18-track double-CD package. The latter features multiple takes of each song as well as some “breakdowns” (interrupted takes) which are all a little excessive, but a huge advantage is hearing an incarnation of the Tubby Hayes Quartet where pianist Mick Pyne is substituted for the Irish guitarist Louis Stewart, one of the finest jazz players these islands ever produced. On a bossa-tinged version of the Cy Coleman standard “Where Am I Going”, Stewart is usually content to play smart, funky, Brazilian-style rhythm playing in an accompanying (or “comping”) role. But when Stewart switches to playing single-note solo runs, he is one of the few non-American frontline players who could hold a candle to Tubby – funky and hard grooving like Grant Green, but with the Bach-like complexity of Charlie Parker. Throughout the second take of the song, you can almost hear them urging each other on, taunting each other into more and more audacious territory. A real treat.
