Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger, Ringo Starr, Ron Wood and Elton John are among the artists who have paid tribute to Prince, who died yesterday [April 21], aged 57.
Aretha Franklin called him a “a one-of-a-kind”.
Franklin said that Prince’s death was “such a blow. It’s really surreal. It’s just kind of unbelievable,” in an interview on MSNBC which you can watch below.
She went on to describe Prince as “a very, very unique musical individual who was so into his music – he was music to the max.
“I think that he was a very explorative and as I said he was one of those artists that go into the studio and stayed in the studio – he would sleep in the studio.”
“Myself when I finish recording as an artist I go home and I am through with it until it’s time for me to go back in the studio but some artists just stay in the studio because they love music like that,” she continued.
Saddened by Prince's death. Proud to have seen in the New Year with him. He seemed fine and played brilliantly funky music.
Associated Press reports that he was found dead at his home on Thursday [April 21] in suburban Minneapolis, according to his publicist, Yvette Noel-Schure.
No details were immediately released.
Prince has been hospitalised last week after his plane was forced to make an emergency landing in Moline, Illinois.
Released a few hours later, a rep told TMZ that he had been battling a bad case of flu.
The news of Prince’s death was broken by TMZ who cited ‘Multiple sources connected to the singer confirmed he had passed. We’ve obtained the 911 call deputies received for a “male down, not breathing.'”
Deputies are on scene of a death investigation at Paisley Park in Chanhassen. More info to follow. -814
During his career, the artist born Prince Rogers Nelson released 39 solo studio albums; last year, he released four new full-length records with his latest band, 3rd Eye Girl.
He won seven Grammy Awards, and has received 30 nominations.
Brian Eno has released his cover of The Velvet Underground‘s song, “I’m Set Free”.
The track is taken from Eno’s forthcoming album, The Ship, which is released by Warp on April 29.
Eno explains, “The first time I ever heard [The Velvet Underground] was on a John Peel radio show… it was when their first album came out and I thought “This I like! This I want to know about!”. I was having a huge crisis at the time. Am I going to be a painter or am I somehow going to get into music. And I couldn’t play anything so music was the less obvious choice. Then, when I heard The Velvet Underground I thought, “you can do both actually”. It was a big moment for me.
“That particular song always resonated with me but it took about 25 years before I thought about the lyrics. “I’m set free, to find a new illusion”. Wow. That’s saying we don’t go from an illusion to reality (the western idea of “Finding The Truth”) but rather we go from one workable solution to another more workable solution.
Subsequently I think we aren’t able and actually don’t particularly care about the truth, whatever that might be. What we care about is having intellectual tools and inventions that work. [Yuval Noah Harari in his book “Sapiens”] discusses that what makes large-scale human societies capable of cohering and co-operating is the stories they share together. Democracy is a story, religion is a story, money is a story. This chimed well with “I’m set free to find a new illusion”. It seems to me what we don’t need now is people that come out waving their hands and claiming they know the Right Way.”
Eno discusses his love of The Velvet Underground, as well as his collaborative relationship with David Bowie and his solo career in an extensive interview in the June 2016 issue of Uncut, which is on sale from Tuesday, April 25
Roger Daltrey appears to have confirmed reports that a mega festival is being arranged featuring Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Paul McCartney, the Rolling Stones, The Who and Roger Waters.
Last week, The LA Times reported that Goldenvoice Entertainment, the promoters behind Coachella Festival, were looking to hold the event in Indio, California – the same site as Coachella – this year between October 7 and 9.
Daltrey has now appeared to confirm the reports, telling Canada’s Postmedia Network: “I think it’s us and Roger Waters on the same day. It’s a fantastic idea for a festival. It’s the greatest remains of our era.”
“I hope a lot of normal fans can get tickets before they get snatched up,” he added.
Reports have suggested that two acts will each night of the festival: Bob Dylan and Paul McCartney on the first, the Rolling Stones and Neil Young on the second, and The Who and Roger Waters on the third.
Neil Young’s longtime manager Elliot Roberts had previously spoken on the reports, telling The LA Times: “It’s so special in so many ways. You won’t get a chance to see a bill like this, perhaps ever again. It’s a show I look forward to more than any show in a long time.”
Freddie Mercury‘s lyric notebook is up for auction.
The notebook was used between 1988 and 1990 and includes the original lyrics for “I Want It All“, “Too Much Love Will Kill You” and ‘The Show Must Go On“.
It will be sold by Bonhams at their upcoming Entertainment Memorabilia sale, taking place at Bonhams Knightsbridge on June 29, 2016.
It is estimated at £50,000-70,000.
“Freddie Mercury was a brilliant musician, lyricist and performer,” said Katherine Schofield, Bonhams Head of Entertainment Memorabilia. “He once said of himself, ‘I am not going to be a star. I’m going to be a legend’, and indeed that’s what he became.
“The notebook was used by Freddie for writing his own songs, as well as noting down the words to songs written or co-written by guitarist Brian May. The lyrics, such as for ‘Too Much Love Will Kill You’, and ‘The Show Must Go On’, are both beautiful and sad, as on reflection, we know Mercury was battling HIV at the time. This knowledge makes the words all the more poignant.”
End Of The Road have announced the line-up for the Comedy stage at this year’s festival.
Along with Stewart Lee – who has already been announced – the line-up includes Arthur Smith, Josie Long, Bridget Christie, Andy Zaltzman, John Finnemore and Hardeep Singh Kohli.
They join the festival’s musical bill who include Teenage Fanclub, Thurston Moore, Savages and Scritti Politti.
This year’s headliners are Joanna Newsom, Animal Collective and Bat For Lashes.
The festival takes place between September 2 – 4 at its ususal home in Larmer Tree Gardens.
Uncut will be hosting events in the Tipi Tent Stage again this year; check back here for updates.
You can find more details about tickets and the line-up at the festival’s website.
The full line-up for the Comedy Stage at this year’s End Of The Road Festival is:
Bridget Christie
Josie Long
Stewart Lee
Arthur Smith
Bec Hill
Andy Zaltzman
John Finnemore
Hardeep Singh Kohli
Knightmare Live: Festival Expansion Pack
Lolly Adefope
Adam Bloom
Pappy’s
Bucket
Tom Bell
Stephen Carlin
Katie Mulgrew
Garrett Millerick
Joanna Neary
Lazy Susan
Sarah Bennetto
Hell To Play
Paul Flannery’s MMORPG Show
Storytellers’ Club
Political Animal
Tom Parry
Matthew Crosby
Paul Savage
Alexander Bennett
Joe Hart
Such are the caprices of time that Grant-Lee Phillips is probably better known in the US for his recurring role on Gilmore Girls than he is for leading one of the ’90s finest exports, Grant Lee Buffalo. TV fame may have brought him a different audience in recent years, but his USP remains pretty much the same: thoughtful, erudite roots-rock that pulls from long-held traditions of folk, country and blues.
The eighth album of his solo career often feels like a very personal portrait of selfhood and loss. It’s mainly informed by both the death of his father, in 2013, and his own Native American heritage (Phillips is from Creek and Cherokee descent), a connection that’s deepened since his recent move to Tennessee from California. This in turn has led to a fuller immersion in the music that moves him most. The Narrows, he says, is “the most Southern record that I’ve made, allowing me to wear my influences on my sleeve more gallantly.”
Heading up a core trio of bassist Lex Price and drummer Jerry Roe, whose father Dave played bass with Johnny Cash, Phillips has created a warm, intimate record with an agreeably grainy veneer. The gorgeous “Moccasin Creek” is an imagistic ancestral piece – full of old arrowheads, wildwood flowers and overgrown burial plots – that acts as a corollary to the familial themes explored on 2012’s Walking In The Green Corn. Likewise, “Yellow Weeds” pokes through a sepia past, guided by pedal steel and some filmy acoustic blues.
“Cry Cry”, meanwhile, is an impassioned commentary on the Indian Removal of the 1800s that saw generations of Native Americans forcibly ejected from the South, thousands dying in the process. A political element also surfaces in “Holy Irons”, which interweaves Southern history with the plight of an innocent draftee sucked into a war that’s not of his choosing. Like most everything on The Narrows, it’s a bittersweet study of fate and circumstance that continues to resonate long after it’s over.
Robin Pecknold has shared a previously unreleased solo track, “Swimming”.
He uploaded the song – which you can hear below – to Soundcloud yesterday [April 19].
According to Pecknold’s post, the song was originally intended for a short film, A Study In Time Travel, directed by his brother, Sean.
“Swimming” features Neal Morgan on percussion and was engineered by Gabe Wax. Aside from Pecknold, Morgan has played with Bill Callahan and Joanna Newsom.
Writing in Rolling Stone, Waits admitted, “When I was a teenager I was listening to songs like they were books and studied them to learn how to write songs of my own. Who ever thought that something great could come out of Bakersfield? It made me feel a whole lot better about living in a place called National City.”
Waits goes on to say that he admires how Haggard “takes the lives of common ordinary folks who we had all stopped seeing and put them in songs and gave them a voice, and kept them alive.”
He adds: “‘Haggard songs’ are lived in, broke in and filled with longing – his last name will always be an adjective.”
It is directed by Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, who directed Me And Earl And The Dying Girl.
Waits is set to play the role of a priest named Cesar. At his church in Boyle Heights, he runs a guerrilla humanitarian operation, which is described as “legally dubious”.
Most of us generally assume that the story of Ardent Records, crucible of Memphis rock, begins at John Fry’s studio in the early ’70s, around the time Alex Chilton ambled his way into Big Star. In reality, though, Fry had been releasing 45s out of Ardent Studios since 1959 (The Ole Miss Downbeats’ honking version of “The Hucklebuck” being the first).
What came between primitive rock’n’roll and genre-defining power-pop is a little murkier, but the first full-length album planned for release on Ardent was, of all things, a proto-ambient collection of guitar instrumentals, played by a jobbing musician-cum-guitar maker called Larry “Gimmer” Nicholson. Nicholson moved in a local music scene populated by rowdy figures like Jim Dickinson, Sid Selvidge and Ronnie Milsap, but it seems he had an epiphany at some point in the mid-’60s, when he witnessed a Memphis show by John Fahey in his Blind Joe Death phase. “Gimmer saw that,” remembers Jimmy Crosthwait, a musician, artist, and puppeteer quoted in Andria Lisle’s superlative sleevenotes, “and he went off by himself for about a year and re-emerged with the ability to play circles around Fahey.”
A bold claim; and while Christopher Idylls doesn’t quite bear it out, Nicholson does come across as a remarkably sensitive and innovative musician, suddenly at odds with the Southern music tradition that surrounded him. The six pieces were actually composed and demoed in San Francisco, where Nicholson moved for a while. In 1968, his brother Gary handed the tapes to Terry Manning at Ardent, who recalled Nicholson to Memphis and recorded the album using a few guitars and a new delay pedal. Listening to the aqueous, courtly likes of “Charon’s Crossing” now, they sound less like a product of the late ’60s, more a New Age project from a decade later – as if Fahey had become beatific rather than ornery, perhaps, and found a place on the Windham Hill label alongside Robbie Basho.
As the first album release on Ardent, Christopher Idylls would certainly have been incongruous, but it was Nicholson himself rather than Fry and Manning who pulled the release, reputedly unhappy with the mix. In the intervening five decades, the album has briefly surfaced twice: in 1981, on Selvidge’s Peabody label alongside Chilton’s Like Flies On Sherbert; and in 1994, on Manning’s Lucky 7 imprint, with Nicholson’s full collaboration. The guitarist died, a marginal figure to the end, on December 30, 2000.
Before that, though, Nicholson’s masterpiece caused discreet reverberations across the musical landscape. Manning recalls a night in April 1970 at his apartment, playing Christopher Idylls to Jimmy Page (who would return to Ardent in the autumn, to mix Led Zeppelin III) and Chris Bell. On one level, Nicholson’s intimate meditations are a world away from the punch of early Big Star. On another level, though, they act as a kind of ghostly pre-echo of, say, “Watch The Sunrise”; “Here’s the deal,” John Fry told Andria Lisle, before he died, “music brings people together.”
Brian Johnson has released a statement following the news that Axl Rose is to takeover as vocalist on the remaining dates of AC/DC‘s current world tour.
“As many AC/DC fans know, the remaining shows for the 2016 AC/DC Rock or Bust World Tour, including 10 postponed U.S. shows, are being rescheduled with a guest singer,” writes Johnson.
“I want to personally explain the reason because I don’t believe the earlier press releases sufficiently set out what I wanted to say to our fans or the way in which I thought it should be presented.
“On March 7th, after a series of examinations by leading physicians in the field of hearing loss, I was advised that if I continue to perform at large venues, I risked total deafness. While I was horrified at the reality of the news that day, I had for a time become aware that my partial hearing loss was beginning to interfere with my performance on stage. I was having difficulty hearing the guitars on stage and because I was not able to hear the other musicians clearly, I feared the quality of my performance could be compromised.
“In all honesty this was something I could not in good conscience allow. Our fans deserve my performance to be at the highest level, and if for any reason I can’t deliver that level of performance I will not disappoint our fans or embarrass the other members of AC/DC. I am not a quitter and I like to finish what I start, nevertheless, the doctors made it clear to me and my bandmates that I had no choice but to stop performing on stage for the remaining shows and possibly beyond. That was the darkest day of my professional life.
“Since that day, I have had several consultations with my doctors and it appears that, for the near future, I will be unable to perform on stage at arena and stadium size venues where the sound levels are beyond my current tolerance, without the risk of substantial hearing loss and possibly total deafness. Until that time, I tried as best as I could to continue despite the pain and hearing loss but it all became too much to bear and too much to risk.
“I am personally crushed by this development more than anyone could ever imagine. The emotional experience I feel now is worse than anything I have ever in my life felt before. Being part of AC/DC, making records and performing for the millions of devoted fans this past 36 years has been my life’s work. I cannot imagine going forward without being part of that, but for now I have no choice. The one thing for certain is that I will always be with AC/DC at every show in spirit, if not in person.
“Most importantly, I feel terrible having to disappoint the fans who bought tickets for the canceled shows and who have steadfastly supported me and AC/DC these many years. Words cannot express my deep gratitude and heartfelt thanks not just for the recent outpouring to me personally of kind words and good wishes, but also for the years of loyal support of AC/DC. My thanks also go to Angus and Cliff for their support.
“Finally, I wish to assure our fans that I am not retiring. My doctors have told me that I can continue to record in studios and I intend to do that. For the moment, my entire focus is to continue medical treatment to improve my hearing. I am hoping that in time my hearing will improve and allow me to return to live concert performances. While the outcome is uncertain, my attitude is optimistic. Only time will tell.
“Once again, my sincere best wishes and thanks to everyone for their support and understanding.
“Love,
“Brian”
Over the weekend, AC/DC confirmed that Axl Rose will replace Brian Johnson for the remaining dates of their Rock Or Bust tour.
“AC/DC will resume their Rock Or Bust World Tour with Axl Rose joining on vocals,” the band announced in a statement Saturday.
The band’s tour was halted in March after doctors had advised Brian Johnson to stop touring immediately or “risk total hearing loss”.
“AC/DC band members would like to thank Brian Johnson for his contributions and dedication to the band throughout the years. We wish him all the best with his hearing issues and future ventures,” the statement continued.
“As much as we want this tour to end as it started, we understand, respect and support Brian’s decision to stop touring and save his hearing. We are dedicated to fulfilling the remainder of our touring commitments to everyone that has supported us over the years, and are fortunate that Axl Rose has kindly offered his support to help us fulfill this commitment.”
The band continued, “The European stadium tour dates begin on May 7 in Lisbon, Portugal and run through June 12 in Aarhus, Denmark as previously announced. Following this European run of dates with AC/DC, Axl Rose will head out on his Guns N’ Roses, ‘Not In This Lifetime’ Summer Stadium Tour.”
Ushered in by The Velvet Underground and intensified by the New York Dolls, the NYC rock underground in the early 1970s was a bubbling cauldron, about to explode in a dozen different directions. As the decade wore on, CBGB opened and punk arrived, it did, bringing the world such wildly diverse talents as the Ramones, Television, Blondie and Talking Heads.
Milk ‘n’ Cookies, already bar-scene upstarts by 1973, arguably influenced them all. But timing is everything in such a high-stakes pressure cooker, and within the Cookies’ weird story the quintet’s timing was all wrong exactly when it seemed to be just right. Hit producer Muff Winwood came calling, inserting Roxy Music bassist Sal Maida into the lineup, and whisking them to London to record their Island debut. A series of misunderstandings and record company manoeuvres later, the band was dropped, and the record slipped out two years later as an afterthought, essentially shredding – reversing even – their once cutting-edge reputation. Milk ‘N’ Cookies’ moment vanished.
That ill-fated LP, a curious few would eventually learn, is grand, ahead of its time, a brash, genre-bending testament to the effervescence of youth. The group gleefully anticipated punk, dancing upon every non-conformist theme roiling through glam-drenched 1974: the Raspberries’ sturdy, melody-based pop, the Dolls’ hard-driving, sexually ambivalent rock’n’roll and T.Rex’s sly irony, plus David Bowie, Sparks and others – wrapping it all in a bubblegum sheen.
Singer Justin Strauss led the fray. A fascinating tangle of contradictions, he was poised yet impetuous, fey yet audacious, naïve yet knowing, with an edgy, theatrical, sexually ambiguous air. Songwriter Ian North, later a solo artist, answers Strauss’ persona with enveloping keyboard flourishes and snaking guitars. They had an experimental edge, too, with some odd time signatures and occasional bouts of minimalism – see the stop-start-stutter of their most risqué track, “Rabbits Make Love”.
At their most gripping, though, Milk ‘n’ Cookies penned pulsing guitar-pop anthems about impulsiveness, sex and youth: “Little Lost And Innocent”, “Not Enough Girls In The World” and “Just A Kid” all peer into that ephemeral moment when life feels wide open.
This special edition immaculately rights the band’s sad narrative, adding 20 unheard tracks, including a pugnacious 1976 Warner Brothers demo that both confirms Winwood’s original instincts and hints as to their would-be evolution. A 120-page hardbound book, recounting their Shakespearean twists and turns, treats the group with a reverence denied them in their prime.
Aretha Franklin has confirmed that she is “ready to sign” a deal to allow a biopic to go ahead.
The project has been in development since at least 2011.
Speaking at her 74th birthday at New York’s Ritz-Carlton Hotel, she told AP, “Good news, we’re ready to sign for the movie.
‘We’ve agreed on all the key points. There’s very little left now (to negotiate), very little. They have given me creative control and that’s all I wanted.”
“I’ve talked to the person that is going to play me,” quotes People magazine. “I’m not going to say who I chose, but I’ve talked to her and she’s ready and I’m happy with her.”
Plans for a biopic date back to at least 2011, when Franklin announced she wanted Halle Berry to star. Jennifer Hudson is now reportedly being considered for the lead.
Kurt Cobain’s black-and-white Fender Stratocaster from Nirvana’s final tour is projected to sell for upwards of $140,000 (£97,681) at auction.
The guitar was used during the band’s February 16, 1994 gig in Rennes, France.
According to CooperOwen Auctions, the guitar was given to the seller following the band’s February 16, 1994 gig in Rennes, France.
“I’ve been doing a lot of research about this guitar,” the seller writes. “According to James ‘Jim’ Vincent, Kurt’s guitar tech from Dec. 93 onwards, Kurt had five of these lefty black and white Strats, shipped by Fender specifically for the end-of-set jamming and destruction, as they were cheap and they were scared he would otherwise smash his new Mustangs.
The selling continues, saying that the guitar wasn’t used during the band’s European tour but dates back to Nirvana‘s final American tour the previous year.
Two of the five Strats were destroyed, although the pieces were later sold by Vincent. One of the five guitars remained unused, while two were smashed, repaired and still playable; of those two guitars, Vincent still has custody of one, and the other is in the Cooper Owen auction.
The online auction runs at CooperOwen‘s until May 20.
Jack White has become a partner in Warstic – an independent sporting goods company that makes wood and metal baseball and softball bats.
He joins founder and former minor league baseball player Ben Jenkins, as well as Detroit Tigers second baseman Ian Kinsler.
“I discovered the Warstic company through my love of design,” he said in a statement. “I was drawn to what Ben Jenkins was doing at Warstic by the simplicity and harshness of the designs. Most baseball bats and equipment in the sports world do not impress me much, but I think that there is a lot of room to explore aesthetic ideas in just baseball alone that can bring beauty and purpose to the weapons that athletes use to accomplish their goals. This can be accomplished not only through form following function, but also to bring in outsider ideas into the zone of athletics steeped in history and sometimes bogged down by its own weight.
“Warstic is incredibly inspiring to me in this fashion, and I think we can make beautiful objects for not only professionals, but also young children just beginning to understand how important the tools of the trade are to their passion for competition.”
Last year, White got his own baseball card commemorating his 2014 first pitch at a Tigers game.
It’s a week ’til the next issue of Uncut officially hits the shops in the UK (if you subscribe, your copy will hopefully turn up a day or two earlier than that). I should keep quiet about the substantive contents of the issue for a little while yet – maybe I’ll post something on Twitter when the advance copies arrive in the office – but it occurred to me that, as a preview of sorts, I could belatedly post my review of the Chris Robinson Brotherhood’s debut London show from a few weeks back…
In 2012, around the time that the first Chris Robinson Brotherhood album was released, their frontman was asked when the band would visit the UK. Robinson might have spent 20 years headlining some of the planet’s bigger venues with The Black Crowes but, at that point, his new project showed little inclination to leave their home state. “It’s hard,” Robinson told Uncut’s Graeme Thomson. “People asked us, ‘Why did you play so many dates in California?’ Well, because you can drive around with a pound of weed and not get in trouble. Let’s face it, we have priorities as a band.”
Four years, three albums and, one might confidently assume, a few more pounds of weed down the line, the Chris Robinson Brotherhood have finally made it to London. Behind them, a flag of California hangs resplendent, a marijuana leaf embroidered on one corner. Beneath their feet, there are Persian rugs. On the amps, a ceramic owl, named Possible Dust Clouds, holds a clutch of joss sticks. The hair is all long, while the beards have a certain unmediated quality that make them unlikely to be mistaken as hipster affectation. The vibes – and there are emphatically vibes – suggest five men fantastically unafraid of clichés in their wholehearted embrace of a vintage counterculture. As Robinson expressed it in another Uncut interview, “Whatever name you wanna put on me, hippie, beatnik, bohemian, demure anarchist – I don’t know what to call it, but I know there’s lots of us out there.”
An evening with the Chris Robinson Brotherhood, then, works out as a celebration of how American musical traditions can be at once honoured and psychedelically expanded. It would be no disservice to this exceptional group, as they rattle through covers of Dylan, Slim Harpo, JJ Cale and more, to think of them as a kind of cosmic bar band: here to jam on some favourite tunes, make their people dance, and keep going for as much of the night as The Man will allow.
The most obvious antecedent to all this is The Grateful Dead (The CRB have just been recording their fourth album in the Dead’s old neighbourhood of Marin County), and it’s striking to note how the Brotherhood engage with that heritage in comparison with the more uptight reinventions of the new Day Of The Dead compilation (I reviewed that for the new issue of Uncut as well, actually). There are no anxieties here about whether choogling and extensive guitar solos are suitable fare for a 2016 indie-rock constituency. Instead, the show takes the shape of a classic Dead gig: two long sets, of eight long songs apiece, where old chestnuts are interspersed with bold, freeform manoeuvres. A masterclass in good-time virtuosity, in which the transcendent, communitarian possibilities of rock’n’roll are dusted down for one more unself-conscious boogie round the block. “Time to hear the music emitted from the spheres,” as Robinson sings in “Vibration And Light Suite”, “Time to dance like children on our diamond tears.”
For all his historically well-documented love of these esoteric rituals, Robinson is still an unlikely ringleader of such an easy-going band. While The Black Crowes always seemed to be a mess of tension and volatility, the Brotherhood appear more of a freewheeling coalition. No longer a preening lord of misrule, Robinson has mostly traded in his old strutting for a rhythm guitar and an air of the benign paterfamilias; as if Mick Jagger, in middle age, had decided to recreate himself as Jerry Garcia.
Confusingly, though, it is the guy to Robinson’s right, looking a little like Bob Weir, whose rococo lead lines bring Garcia to mind. This is Neal Casal, formerly a solo practitioner of artisanal Americana, now a spectacular guitarist who can sometimes be found in the company of Phil Lesh and Cass McCombs as well as the Brotherhood. It is Casal who sends burnished country-soul ballads like “Reflections On A Broken Mirror” and “Star Or Stone” into the ionosphere. Even at their most ornate, Casal’s extrapolations never seem self-indulgent. Rather, like a member of the very best improvising collectives, he seems merely one of a group of players who can fall in and out of each other’s orbits with an intuitive grace.
That skill is in no small part bolstered by the CRB’s rhythm section of Mark Dutton on bass and newish drummer Tony Leone, whose limber momentum means they could efficiently sub for either The Band’s Danko/Helm axis or The Meters’ George Porter Jr and Zigaboo Modeliste. Black Crowe alumnus Adam MacDougall, meanwhile, is a more divisive figure. While he appears capable of turning his hand to anything on the keyboards, the gloopy Moog settings that he favours force one impassioned audience member to compare them to the Grange Hill theme. MacDougall is at his best when he swivels round to attack a clavinet, driving “After Midnight” – frantic where JJ Cale’s original moseyed – into an exuberantly funky Stevie Wonder zone.
It’s easy, as you can probably tell, to reduce a Brotherhood show to an ecstatic grid of reference points: how it begins with a version of Mac Davis and Delaney Bramlett’s “Hello LA, Bye Bye Birmingham” that could pass for a resurrected Burrito Brothers; how my notebook, where legible, also contains allusions to Clarence White-era Byrds, Funkadelic, Ned Lagin and The Allman Brothers, a virtual index of Uncut touchstones. Nevertheless, some of the gig’s highlights draw attention to another continuum between the past and the present – between The Black Crowes and the Chris Robinson Brotherhood.
“I Aint’t Hiding”, for instance, is one of a clutch of songs in the CRB repertoire that date from the dog days of the Crowes, specifically from their final album, 2009’s Before the Frost…Until the Freeze, recorded live at Levon Helm’s Woodstock Barn. Perhaps there’s a little more innate menace to “I Ain’t Hiding” than might be detected in more recent Robinson songs, but the swing, the effortlessly-deployed classicism, reveals a throughline between his superstar years and this humbler, unencumbered new age.
Likewise “Rosalee”, the first set’s rapturous closer. “Rosalee” comes from the CRB’s first and best album, 2012’s Big Moon Ritual, evolving from choppy funk, through rich a capella harmonies, into passages of deep space skronk and back again. At its core, though, is a song bold enough, with a few subtle adjustments, to pass as an anthem from the Black Crowes’ commercial heyday. Robinson’s unreconstructed lyrics could possibly benefit from a 2016 refresh, in a way that his music would not, but the refrain still acts as a sort of mission statement, from a band instinctually too amorphous to admit anything so formal.
“Is the air getting thinner,” emotes Robinson, joyfully, “or are we getting high?” The freak flag’s been planted in foreign soil and, finally, the supply lines are open once again.
Until the 1930s, for nearly half a century there was a parliamentary constituency in Liverpool that chose to ignore the prevailing British political trends and returned an Irish Nationalist MP to Westminster. This regional bloodymindedness has long been a fixture of the city’s music scene. When punk hit, Liverpool’s hipsters were listening to baritone crooners such as Jim Morrison and Scott Walker; at the height of synth pop and New Romanticism, Scousers dug deep into the jangly guitars of 1960s psychedelia. As the 1980s wore on, Merseyside’s young football fans were wearing flares and listening to Pink Floyd and Frank Zappa.
The Coral are reluctant to see themselves as a Liverpool band – they’re from Hoylake, across the Mersey at the tip of the Wirral – but they seem to embody the sonic otherness of this weird maritime city state. Even when they released their first album in 2002 – as teenagers who still trundled around on BMX bikes and lived with their parents – they were gleefully citing contrary influences such as Nat King Cole, Johnny Mathis and The Four Freshmen to bewildered journalists.
Now, on their first album in six years, their interests in freak folk, doo-wop and skiffle have been replaced by other influences – the sludge rock of Black Sabbath, the trance metal of Hawkwind, the metrical beats of Krautrock. Assisting them in this change is the slightly wayward guitar playing of Paul Molloy, formerly of kindred spirits The Zutons, who joined the band halfway through the LP to replace guitarist Lee Southall, currently on hiatus.
The band have still been active throughout this apparent furlough. In 2014 they quietly released The Curse Of Love, a “lost” album originally recorded in 2006, while most of the band have been active in each other’s recent solo projects – James Skelly’s backing band The Intenders featured most of The Coral at some point, as has The Serpent Power (a project led by drummer Ian Skelly and Molloy).
Distance Inbetween is very much the hardest and heaviest thing that The Coral have ever put down on tape. The opening tracks set out their stall. “Connector” is a wonderfully hypnotic three-chord groove, based around a machine-like beat and some pitch-shifted Bollywood strings. “White Bird” is tremendous – an insistent, pulsating Motown-meets-Krautrock beat topped by spooky Mellotrons and wobbly guitars.
The band have always been good on imaginative vocal harmonies, orchestrated by bassist Paul Duffy, and this album is no exception. On “White Bird”, or the spooky, drumless folk-style song “She Runs The River”, or the one-chord boogie of “Million Eyes”, the close vocal harmonies initially sound like Crosby Stills & Nash or America, but start to become slightly sinister, using the kind of intervals you associate with Gregorian chants. And even the more meat-and-potatoes heavy boogie numbers – the bubblegum freakbeat of “Holy Revelation”, the 12-bar stomp of “Fear Machine – the drums sound fantastic – wild and thunderous yet also tight and hypnotic.
As you’d imagine, the band still hit some of those Liverpudlian touchstones. “Chasing The Tail Of A Dream” is a sped-up ringer for Pink Floyd’s “Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun”, based around the same pounding tom-tom gallop, played with beaters rather than drumsticks. That Scouse love of baritone crooners is never far – the dreamy, piano-led title track is a ballad where James Skelly’s croon strays into Scott Walker territory; among the woozy organs and grungy guitars of “It’s You”, he’s a ringer for Jim Morrison. “Miss Fortune”, meanwhile, sounds like a potted history of Merseybeat – a Teardrop Explodes-ish motorik beat, a Bunnymen-like melody and a terrific backwards “Taxman” guitar solo from Molloy.
On paper, stripped back to its constituent elements, it sounds somewhat derivative, an exercise in retro box-ticking. But the garbled way in which The Coral piece these disparate elements together creates an odd, timeless and cosmic music, buzzing with energy, and very much their own.
Q&A
James Skelly
How much do you see yourself as part of any Liverpool sound?
Well, when we started we were definitely influenced by stuff like the Bunnymen and Shack. But we’re kinda halfway between Liverpool and Wales – you can pretty much see the Welsh coast from Hoylake. And a big part of us was just as influenced by Welsh bands like Gorky’s and Super Furry Animals.
Is analogue recording important to you?
We’re not fetishistic about it at all. When it’s a really busy recording with loads of layers of instruments, digital recording is way better. But, for this album, we really wanted that soggy drum sound you get on tape. Digital can be a bit dry, but we wanted the drums to really bleed and soak into everything else.
The harmonies are weirder than usual here…
Yeah, they sound quite complicated but often they’re much simpler than our usual harmonies – often we’re just singing the root note and maybe a fifth. It’s a bit medieval, innit? Like those medieval beards some of us have been trying out lately, ha ha. Actually, I had an album of Gregorian plainsong as a teenager. Maybe that’s rubbed off.
What influenced the change in direction?
Well, we were listening to stuff like Can and Hawkwind and Black Sabbath. But our influences are less about music, more about other stuff. Richard Yates’ books, particularly Revolutionary Road, Alan Moore comics, and this amazing American photographer called Gregory Crewdson, who does these really beautifully lit pictures of mundane streets. A lot of the lyrics are influenced by Mad Men – the way you’ve got something very straight on the surface that’s actually very dark. I love how someone like Ian Curtis is able to be both domestic and apocalyptic, all at once.
INTERVIEW: JOHN LEWIS
AC/DC have confirmed that Axl Rose will replace Brian Johnson for the remaining dates of their Rock Or Bust tour.
“AC/DC will resume their Rock Or Bust World Tour with Axl Rose joining on vocals,” the band announced in a statement Saturday.
The band’s tour was halted in March after doctors had advised Brian Johnson to stop touring immediately or “risk total hearing loss”.
“AC/DC band members would like to thank Brian Johnson for his contributions and dedication to the band throughout the years. We wish him all the best with his hearing issues and future ventures,” the statement continued.
“As much as we want this tour to end as it started, we understand, respect and support Brian’s decision to stop touring and save his hearing. We are dedicated to fulfilling the remainder of our touring commitments to everyone that has supported us over the years, and are fortunate that Axl Rose has kindly offered his support to help us fulfill this commitment.”
The band continued, “The European stadium tour dates begin on May 7 in Lisbon, Portugal and run through June 12 in Aarhus, Denmark as previously announced. Following this European run of dates with AC/DC, Axl Rose will head out on his Guns N’ Roses, ‘Not In This Lifetime’ Summer Stadium Tour.”
Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Paul McCartney and the Rolling Stones are in negotiations to appear at a mega concert to be held later this year.
The Who and Roger Waters are also reportedly in the frame for the event which is being organized by Goldenvoice, the Los Angeles-based promoter that stages the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival.
The Los Angeles Times reports that the concert will be held between October 7 to 0 at the Empire Polo Field in Indio.
The LA Times claims that Dylan and the Stones would play back to back on October 7. They would be followed on Octover 8 by Young and McCartney.
The Who and Waters would play on October 9.
“It’s so special in so many ways,” the paper quotes Neil Young’s longtime manager, Elliot Roberts. “You won’t get a chance to see a bill like this, perhaps ever again. It’s a show I look forward to more than any show in a long time.”
The LA Times story says an official announcement is expected in coming weeks.
Bob Seger has just moved house. “We needed a new house, and I went on tour for 51 days and we never moved in,” the Detroit-born singer explains. “I’m so far behind, I got boxes on boxes.” We’re pleased, then, he’s taken time out from the unpacking to talk us through his career as one of America’s most enduring blue-collar rockers. “I wanted to be as rhythmic as James Brown, as deep as Bob Dylan and as fiery as Little Richard,” Seger tells us. It’s a strategy that’s found him considerable success while also attracting plenty of famous admirers, including Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan and another Detroit rocker: “Jack White keeps calling my office…” Interview: Jaan Uhelszki. Originally published in Uncut’s June 2012 issue (Take 181).
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Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Man CAPITOL, 1969 The veteran of local Detroit groups including The Last Heard – whose 1967 single “Heavy Metal” featured Jim Osterberg, later known as Iggy Pop, on drums – Seger and his band turned down an offer from Motown to join the Capitol roster as The Bob Seger System. Future Eagle Glenn Frey guested on their debut’s title track.
SEGER: We changed our name from The Last Heard because if you said it too fast, it came out bad. I’d been sitting on the song “Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Man” for a long time, but the rest of it, I wrote in five days and recorded in about five days. My manager’s done this to me down through the years, where he says, “We’ve got to have an album now.” Meanwhile I’m playing five or six nights a week. Worse, I did not know how to write songs. We recorded it in the basement of a bowling alley over Pampa Lanes over in East Detroit. We used that place a lot. I ended up buying the piano out of there. It’s a 1968 Bosendorfer. It’s still sitting in my house. Glenn Frey sang back-ups on “Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Man”. I met him when I was 19 and he was 16. The Eagles are all over my shit. As for the song “2+2=?”, I was talking about the Vietnam War. It didn’t make sense to me. During the 1960s, I saw the protests on the University of Michigan campus. I got tear-gassed a couple of times. Most of these songs, I threw together really quick. You know who loved that stuff, is Jack White. He keeps calling my office, saying, “Tell Bob I want to remix it. I want to redo it.” He wants to play on it, too.
