Paul McCartney unveiled three new videos for his track "My Valentine" at a world premiere held by his daughter Stella in Los Angeles on Friday [April 13].
One features Johnny Depp, while the other stars Natalie Portman. A third clip combines the Hollywood pair's contributions into one video.
Depp plays guitar in his video and recorded the solo in the track live. Portman, who previously starred in McCartney's "Dance Tonight" video in 2007, mimes along to the song in her video.
Graham Coxon’s new album A+E is reviewed in the latest Uncut (May 2012, Take 180), out now – so we thought we’d revisit the last time the guitarist featured in our pages. In 2009, John Robinson met the guitarist at his Camden home to find out about his folk-infused solo album The Spinning Top, and hear all about the little matter of his old band’s reunion… Picture: Essy Syad
“I feel like a stand-up comic who’s not getting any laughs,” says Patti Smith self-deprecatingly, as she presents a playback of her new album, Banga, to a specially invited audience in London. This is the first time anyone has listened to the record, she tells us – not even the band or Patti's record company have yet had the privilege of hearing it. The venue for this auspicious event is the old Scotch Of St James club in Mayfair, the principal hang out for Swinging London’s finest.
Among the residents of Treme, David Simon’s HBO drama series about the inhabitants of New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, you’ll find a character called Delmond. Delmond, a talented jazz trumpeter, is a deeply conflicted individual. In the person of his father, he is tied to the ruined city, its historic music and its obscure ritual cultures. And yet, he is drawn to the East coast, where the ensemble in which he plays is in considerable demand.
Alex Chilton’s wild, idiosyncratic life after Big Star is examined in the new issue of Uncut (Take 180, May 2012), out now. But what happened before the demise of Chilton’s greatest group? They should have been rock superstars, but Rob Jovanovic explains how drugs, in-fighting and personal tragedy meant Big Star had to settle for being the biggest cult band of all time (from Uncut's Take 94, March 2005).
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Neil Young has penned brief historical details about each of the songs on Americana, his forthcoming album with Crazy Horse.
Comprised on classic American folk songs including “Clementine”, “She’ll Be Coming Round The Mountain” and “Gallow’s Pole”, it features some arrangements originally made by The Squires, the band Neil Young formed in 1963 while at High School in Winnepeg.
As guitarist Lee Ranaldo is in Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes in this month's new issue (April 2012, Take 179), we thought we'd share a Sonic Youth piece from our archive. In this feature, published in 2009, Marc Spitz finds the band (who've just finished what we now know could be their final album, The Eternal) ageing with more dignity than most, but still finding time to lash out at Oasis, Madonna and U2, and order a baby pig with a donut in its mouth… Picture by Pieter M Van Hattem.
