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John Sebastian: “The Lovin’ Spoonful never did anything the way anyone else did”

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John Sebastian: “The Lovin’ Spoonful never did anything the way anyone else did”
John Sebastian takes us through the creation of his greatest records in the new Uncut, out now. The singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist describes the making of his solo albums, as well as those by The Lovin’ Spoonful, The Even Dozen Jug Band and The Doors’ Live In New York, which he ...

John Sebastian takes us through the creation of his greatest records in the new Uncut, out now.

The singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist describes the making of his solo albums, as well as those by The Lovin’ Spoonful, The Even Dozen Jug Band and The Doors’ Live In New York, which he played harmonica on.

“We never did anything the way anyone else did,” Sebastian tells Uncut.

“I’ve always felt like what I was doing wasn’t that heavy… All the time we were just trying to write good songs and have some fun.”

The new Uncut, dated June 2014, is out now.

Photo: GAB Archive/Redferns

The Afghan Whigs – Do To The Beast

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The Afghan Whigs – Do To The Beast

It will never be over. Greg Dulli’s emotional return... Ted Demme’s 1996 movie Beautiful Girls contains a scene in which two characters decide to go to a Massachusetts bar on the strength of the band that’s playing there. “What kind of band is it?” asks one. “A soul band,” says the other. The band, of course, is the Afghan Whigs, a point probably much gratifying to the band’s leader, Greg Dulli – an identification flattering simultaneously to the masculinity, cinematic aspirations and the musical passions of his band. “Soul band” was possibly a bit of a stretch, but from the late 1980s to their 2000 disbanding, Afghan Whigs spent time painting a funky and even menacing picture of love: in passion, Clavinet and compelling drama, if not always melody. In Dulli’s hands cupid’s arrow was an offensive weapon, and love a psychological illness. He summarized his position succinctly on “Neglekted” from their last album 1965: “You can fuck my body, baby/But please don’t fuck my mind…” The band’s return, 16 years after their ostensible split (guitarist Rick McCollum is not present here), serves to prove an important emotional lesson: that time isn’t necessarily a great healer. On the opening track, “Parked Outside”, enormous guitar riffs and strings announce a revenge on the point of being enacted. Elsewhere in the album, kisses are poison. Ex-lovers are stalked, seemingly only to refine the observer’s masochism. Key words include “fear”, “burning” and “tourniquet”. There are very few glimmers of consolation and offers of rest to be found here. One small example of such is “Can Rova”, where a couple’s moonlight flit is accompanied by an accordion drone and a distant dancefloor beat. At a time of life, in fact, when no-one would condemn Dulli for making a mature, considered and inward-looking record, he has in fact made an untamed, passionate and occasionally brilliant one. “Matamoros”, early in the album, shows a wonderful command of old and new modes. What begins with a version of the band’s default guitar chop ends with a superb shifting up into a new palette, concluding with a swooning violin meltdown – it’s Balkansploitation, in fact. If there’s consolation to be taken from Do To The Beast, above all, it’s that the Afghan Whigs remains a high-stakes band, conducting business not with a eye on self-preservation, but in the heat of the moment. There’s something to be said for the accomplishment of songs like the closing “These Sticks”, which sounds a bit like Radiohead’s “Street Spirit (Fade Out)”, or “Lost In The Woods”, with its U2-reminiscent chorus, but for a band who has made its bed in confusion the plot feel a little too tidily wrapped up here. On the ambiguous “Algiers”, however, we get a fuller depiction of the band’s blood and guts approach. The song commences with Dulli singing in a pitch that is clearly too high for comfort, but which he pursues to its painful and dramatic end. Ultimately, that’s the always been the band’s larger point. You might objectively know something might not work out. But since when has anyone been able to govern their passions as clinically as that? You go with your heart and do it anyway, whatever the consequences. “Royal Cream”, towards the album’s close, digs just as satisfactorily into Dulli’s paranoid but compelling beat, the fucked mind. A strange mixture of grinding alt-rock guitar (the verse) and an upbeat pop chorus (almost like the Pop/Bowie “China Girl”, in fact), the song confronts a betrayal that feels positively Miltonian as Dulli seethes: “I know you’re sleeping with another demon….” Crimes of passion is what the Afghan Whigs have historically dealt in – the torment, the deed, the terrible consequences. Perversely, from all this disorder the band have created, whether by happy accident or high design, magnificent, and often conceptual work: the lyrical, cathartic Gentleman from 1993, or their career-best Black Love from 1996. It’s tempting – what with the runic artwork, songs like “I Am Fire” and so on – to imagine that this album is part of some similarly novelistic design. If anything, though, these songs seem too savage – and if we know one thing about Dulli’s beast, after all, it’s that it won’t easily be tamed. John Robinson Q&A GREG DULLI How did you name the record? My friend Manuel had never heard beatboxing before and he thought I was saying “Do the beast what you do to the bush” – I loved the Do to the Beast part. It’s no deeper than that. Don’t get me wrong – that the phrase landed on the word “beast”? Not unattractive to me. Has your writing about love and passion changed down the years? It’s hard to step out of yourself and say “You’re much more accommodating than you were as a 26 year-old.” I think as a human being I have hopefully evolved to the point where I can understand both sides of the issue I’m speaking about. What can you do with the Whigs you can’t do anywhere else? I never feel constrained by the environment – I go for it equally in all of my groups. I have a long history with John Curley, there’s telepathy there. There’s a supernatural quality to proceedings, a comfort – to jump off the cliff, so to speak. Are you happy to rock in your 40s? Absolutely! I will point to Nick Cave, a perfect example. Not only was he rocking out in his own band, he decided to form another band in order to rock out even harder. What are you supposed to do. Just shuffle off? Not going to happen. INTERVIEW: JOHN ROBINSON

It will never be over. Greg Dulli’s emotional return…

Ted Demme’s 1996 movie Beautiful Girls contains a scene in which two characters decide to go to a Massachusetts bar on the strength of the band that’s playing there. “What kind of band is it?” asks one. “A soul band,” says the other.

The band, of course, is the Afghan Whigs, a point probably much gratifying to the band’s leader, Greg Dulli – an identification flattering simultaneously to the masculinity, cinematic aspirations and the musical passions of his band. “Soul band” was possibly a bit of a stretch, but from the late 1980s to their 2000 disbanding, Afghan Whigs spent time painting a funky and even menacing picture of love: in passion, Clavinet and compelling drama, if not always melody. In Dulli’s hands cupid’s arrow was an offensive weapon, and love a psychological illness. He summarized his position succinctly on “Neglekted” from their last album 1965: “You can fuck my body, baby/But please don’t fuck my mind…”

The band’s return, 16 years after their ostensible split (guitarist Rick McCollum is not present here), serves to prove an important emotional lesson: that time isn’t necessarily a great healer. On the opening track, “Parked Outside”, enormous guitar riffs and strings announce a revenge on the point of being enacted. Elsewhere in the album, kisses are poison. Ex-lovers are stalked, seemingly only to refine the observer’s masochism. Key words include “fear”, “burning” and “tourniquet”. There are very few glimmers of consolation and offers of rest to be found here. One small example of such is “Can Rova”, where a couple’s moonlight flit is accompanied by an accordion drone and a distant dancefloor beat.

At a time of life, in fact, when no-one would condemn Dulli for making a mature, considered and inward-looking record, he has in fact made an untamed, passionate and occasionally brilliant one. “Matamoros”, early in the album, shows a wonderful command of old and new modes. What begins with a version of the band’s default guitar chop ends with a superb shifting up into a new palette, concluding with a swooning violin meltdown – it’s Balkansploitation, in fact.

If there’s consolation to be taken from Do To The Beast, above all, it’s that the Afghan Whigs remains a high-stakes band, conducting business not with a eye on self-preservation, but in the heat of the moment. There’s something to be said for the accomplishment of songs like the closing “These Sticks”, which sounds a bit like Radiohead’s “Street Spirit (Fade Out)”, or “Lost In The Woods”, with its U2-reminiscent chorus, but for a band who has made its bed in confusion the plot feel a little too tidily wrapped up here.

On the ambiguous “Algiers”, however, we get a fuller depiction of the band’s blood and guts approach. The song commences with Dulli singing in a pitch that is clearly too high for comfort, but which he pursues to its painful and dramatic end. Ultimately, that’s the always been the band’s larger point. You might objectively know something might not work out. But since when has anyone been able to govern their passions as clinically as that? You go with your heart and do it anyway, whatever the consequences.

“Royal Cream”, towards the album’s close, digs just as satisfactorily into Dulli’s paranoid but compelling beat, the fucked mind. A strange mixture of grinding alt-rock guitar (the verse) and an upbeat pop chorus (almost like the Pop/Bowie “China Girl”, in fact), the song confronts a betrayal that feels positively Miltonian as Dulli seethes: “I know you’re sleeping with another demon….”

Crimes of passion is what the Afghan Whigs have historically dealt in – the torment, the deed, the terrible consequences. Perversely, from all this disorder the band have created, whether by happy accident or high design, magnificent, and often conceptual work: the lyrical, cathartic Gentleman from 1993, or their career-best Black Love from 1996. It’s tempting – what with the runic artwork, songs like “I Am Fire” and so on – to imagine that this album is part of some similarly novelistic design. If anything, though, these songs seem too savage – and if we know one thing about Dulli’s beast, after all, it’s that it won’t easily be tamed.

John Robinson

Q&A

GREG DULLI

How did you name the record?

My friend Manuel had never heard beatboxing before and he thought I was saying “Do the beast what you do to the bush” – I loved the Do to the Beast part. It’s no deeper than that. Don’t get me wrong – that the phrase landed on the word “beast”? Not unattractive to me.

Has your writing about love and passion changed down the years?

It’s hard to step out of yourself and say “You’re much more accommodating than you were as a 26 year-old.” I think as a human being I have hopefully evolved to the point where I can understand both sides of the issue I’m speaking about.

What can you do with the Whigs you can’t do anywhere else?

I never feel constrained by the environment – I go for it equally in all of my groups. I have a long history with John Curley, there’s telepathy there. There’s a supernatural quality to proceedings, a comfort – to jump off the cliff, so to speak.

Are you happy to rock in your 40s?

Absolutely! I will point to Nick Cave, a perfect example. Not only was he rocking out in his own band, he decided to form another band in order to rock out even harder. What are you supposed to do. Just shuffle off? Not going to happen.

INTERVIEW: JOHN ROBINSON

Neil Young: “Jack White is a very talented man, it was fun to work with him”

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Neil Young: “Jack White is a very talented man, it was fun to work with him”
Neil Young expands on his upcoming projects in the new Uncut, dated June 2014, and describes working with Jack White on new acoustic album A Letter Home, which was released last weekend. “When you listen to [A Letter Home], it sounds like it was made a long, long time ago,” Young says. “We ...

Neil Young expands on his upcoming projects in the new Uncut, dated June 2014, and describes working with Jack White on new acoustic album A Letter Home, which was released last weekend.

“When you listen to [A Letter Home], it sounds like it was made a long, long time ago,” Young says. “We had a good time, and it was fun to work with Jack as a co-producer. Jack is a very talented man.

“[Elvis Presley] made one like that,” he adds. “[Recording] A Letter Home in a ’40s recording booth is an historic art project. Actually, in all ways it’s superior to a CD, or an MP3. Because it’s an analogue, full-fidelity production.”

To read more from Young about his future work, get the new Uncut, dated June 2014, and out on Friday (April 25).

Photo: Aaron Farley

Hear Mazzy Star’s Record Store Day single, “I’m Less Here”

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Hear Mazzy Star’s Record Store Day single, “I’m Less Here”
Mazzy Star have shared their Record Store Day release, "I'm Less Here". Scroll down to hear it. The track has previously been performed live under the name "It Speaks Of Distance". It was released today on 7 inch vinyl for Record Store Day, marking its first release despite dating back to 2000. Th...

Mazzy Star have shared their Record Store Day release, “I’m Less Here”. Scroll down to hear it.

The track has previously been performed live under the name “It Speaks Of Distance”. It was released today on 7 inch vinyl for Record Store Day, marking its first release despite dating back to 2000.

The b-side to the record is also a new song, titled “Things’. The vinyl is pressed on “coke bottle clear” vinyl and is limited to 3000 copies.

Last year, Mazzy Star released their first album in 17 years, Seasons Of Your Day.

The Kinks’ Dave Davies sends message of support to Malcolm Young

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The Kinks’ Dave Davies sends message of support to Malcolm Young
Dave Davies has issued a message of support to AC/DC's Malcolm Young, who is rumoured to have experienced a stroke. Writing on his Facebook page on April 17, Davies offered some advice to Young: "Malcolm Young - never give up - and remember all the important 'tricks' you learnt and keep going over...

Dave Davies has issued a message of support to AC/DC’s Malcolm Young, who is rumoured to have experienced a stroke.

Writing on his Facebook page on April 17, Davies offered some advice to Young:

“Malcolm Young – never give up – and remember all the important ‘tricks’ you learnt and keep going over and over them in your mind- always excerise your hands and fingers- picking coins from the floor- picking up pins from a flat surface-constantly touch the tips of your fingers with the thumb and try to do it faster and faster- image playing your best solos ever in your mind before you go to sleep-daily – Dave Davies”

In a second post on April 21, he wrote:

“I have no idea exactly what physical state Malcolm Young is in but the public sending out negative vibes about the whole thing is not going to help at all. It really does not help by people taking a negative view that his career is over. Part of the healing process is convincing the brain and MIND that it is capable of anything. I wish him well. I was afraid my first shows last year might have been my last but sometimes you have to have blind faith with the support of people around you which I was fortunate to receive. Positive thoughts and encouraging support of others are paramount in the healing process. Love, Dave”

Davies suffered a stroke on June 30, 2004, when he was 57.

Meanwhile, although AC/DC have confirmed Young will take a hiatus from the band, they have not confirmed the specific reasons why. “Malcolm … is taking a break from the band due to ill health,” AC/DC said in a statement. “In light of this news, AC/DC asks that Malcolm and his family’s privacy be respected during this time.”

Listen to Jack White’s Record Store Day single, “Lazaretto”

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Listen to Jack White’s Record Store Day single, “Lazaretto”
Jack White has shared the record-breaking song "Lazaretto", aka the world's fastest record. Scroll down to listen now. The track was recorded by White on Record Store Day (April 19) at his Third Man studio in Nashville, Tennessee. Recorded straight to vinyl, the masters were then rushed over to Uni...

Jack White has shared the record-breaking song “Lazaretto”, aka the world’s fastest record. Scroll down to listen now.

The track was recorded by White on Record Store Day (April 19) at his Third Man studio in Nashville, Tennessee. Recorded straight to vinyl, the masters were then rushed over to United Record Pressing plant in Nashville, which began pressing the 45s before they were delivered back to hundreds of fans queuing outside Third Man, some of whom had queued all night to be there. Read a full report here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYF0LtfUvJs

White will release his new solo album, also Lazaretto, on June 9. White’s second solo album is the follow up to his 2012 debut Blunderbuss and will be released by White’s own label Third Man and XL Recordings.

The full tracklisting for the album has now been revealed and is as follows:

‘Three Women’

‘Lazaretto’

‘Temporary Ground’

‘Would You Fight For My Love?’

‘High Ball Stepper’

‘Just One Drink’

‘Alone In My Home’

‘Entitlement’

‘That Black Bat Licorice’

‘I Think I Found The Culprit’

‘Want And Able’

June 2014

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June 2014
We've got reviews in this issue of two Wreckless Eric albums that you may have missed when they were originally released, and which are now being re-released to coincide with Eric's 60th birthday in May, when he will also be having a celebratory bash at the Lexington on May 17. I was duly reminded ...

We’ve got reviews in this issue of two Wreckless Eric albums that you may have missed when they were originally released, and which are now being re-released to coincide with Eric’s 60th birthday in May,

when he will also be having a celebratory bash at the Lexington on May 17.
I was duly reminded of the excitement of hearing his first single for Stiff, “Whole Wide World”, rarely off the turntable when it was released in August 1977, and me, shortly after it came out, on my way to meet him in a pub in Wandsworth.

Anyway, I walk into his local and Eric’s sitting over there in a corner wearing a white mac and dark glasses, patting the head of – what’s this? His guide dog, apparently, though no-one had told me he was blind. And of course he’s not. As I realise when the dog, harness trailing behind him, trots off to sit at the feet of an old chap in a parka, tapping the leg of the table at which he’s sitting with a white stick.

It looks like Eric’s had a few to drink, possibly more, but I get us a couple of pints, the first of rather too many for our own good, the afternoon going on for what seems a very long time indeed. I sit opposite Eric, who takes off his sunglasses and looks at me with some intensity.
“I was born in Newhaven, lived next to the railway station,” he suddenly announces, taking me by surprise. I ask him why he’s telling me this.
“Because I’ve never been interviewed before and I don’t know what I’m supposed to tell you,” he says. “Ask me a question. I’ll tell you anything you want to know.” OK. What was he doing before signing to Stiff and making “Whole Wide World”, with Nick Lowe at the controls? “I was a quality control inspector in a lemonade factory,” he says, and I wonder if he’s making this up. “But I had to leave because I was going deaf. The bottles made such a noise coming down the conveyor belts. There’d be three miles of bottles, rattling. I’d go home every night shaking, with the noise ringing in my head.”

Previously, it now transpires, Eric had also been an art student in Hull. “I had ambitions to be a sculptor,” he says. “But I spent most of my time playing rock’n’roll or on the council rubbish tip, collecting things. I’ve got a letter that says I have the freedom of the Hull Corporation Rubbish Tip.”

At art school, he was in a ’60s covers band called Addis & The Flip Tops and also worked with free jazz drummer Eddie Prévost: “I knew a lot of free jazz musicians then. I played guitar in a trad jazz band, delved a bit in freeform and that. They thought I was a bit strange, though. One day, I threw a chair at a wall and after that I didn’t go back.”

Moving to London, he got a job as part-time cleaner at BHS, followed by the gig at the lemonade factory. This is when he decided it was time to launch his pop career by getting a recording contract. “I read about Stiff,” he says, “and they sounded pretty gullible so I spent the weekend getting pissed and made this demo on the Monday morning.”

Then he went back to the pub, got even drunker and later that afternoon went off in search of Stiff’s west London HQ. “I thought they’d have a big office in a big office block, but when I got there it was only this grotty little shop front, full of these people. So I walked straight past. But they’d all seen me. They were gawping out the window. I was trying to act sensible, but I was a bit pissed. But they’d seen me, so I couldn’t go away. I walked in like a clockwork man. This big bloke came up and said, ‘What can I do for you?’ And I looked up at him and I just said, ‘I’m one of those cunts who bring tapes into record companies.’ Then I turned around and walked out.” Two days later, Stiff called and not long after that he was in the studio with Nick, cutting “Whole Wide World”. We talk a little about what gives him ideas for songs.

“I read a lot,” he says. “And I get inspiration from that. Have you seen this week’s Woman’s Own? There’s an article on Max Bygraves, who I think is marvellous. The trouble is,” he adds, “I tend to read things as I find them. Last week, I caught myself reading a copy of The Daily Express from April 1974. I found it at the bottom of the wardrobe. Still,” he says, “it’s nice to keep up with what’s going on in the world.”

Enjoy the issue…

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Jack White makes history with world’s fastest released record

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Jack White makes history with world’s fastest released record
Jack White made history yesterday by producing the world's fastest released record during a day of festivities to mark Record Store Day at his Third Man studio in Nashville, Tennessee. At 10am on Saturday (April 19), the singer took to the stage in the Blue Room of his studio to record a limited ed...

Jack White made history yesterday by producing the world’s fastest released record during a day of festivities to mark Record Store Day at his Third Man studio in Nashville, Tennessee.

At 10am on Saturday (April 19), the singer took to the stage in the Blue Room of his studio to record a limited edition direct-to-acetate single. The room is the only live venue in the world where artists can record live shows straight to vinyl. The masters were then rushed over to United Record Pressing plant in Nashville, which began pressing the 45s before they were delivered back to hundreds of fans queuing outside Third Man, some of whom had queued all night to be there.

At the morning gig, White walked onto stage flanked by two men in helmets dressed like characters from 1970s cop programme Chips for the intimate studio show, tickets for which had sold out in 23 seconds. He began with the title track and first single from his forthcoming second solo album Lazaretto, the A-Side to the Record Store Day single. He then recorded a cover of Elvis Presley’s ‘The Power Of My Love’ for the B-Side.

During the performance, a screen to the right of the stage showed a close up of the acetate template for the record being produced before an announcement declared that “the records have left the building!”

“Originally, we were gonna play these two tracks then go back to sleep,” White told the crowd. “But we thought you’d like it if we played a couple more.”

He then launched into The White Stripes’ ‘Dead Leaves And The Dirty Ground‘ before heading straight into ‘Freedom At 21’ and ‘Three Women’ – two tracks from his 2012 debut solo album ‘Blunderbuss’. He then picked up an acoustic guitar for more solo tracks – ‘Weep Themselves to Sleep’ and ‘Love Interruption’. A rendition of The White Stripes’ ‘Ball And Biscuit’ saw the crowd sing all the vocals as White jammed along.

“We’re gonna try a new song,” he then told the audience, before premiering honky tonk rock track ‘Just One Drink’. White Stripes track ‘Hotel Yorba‘ was followed by another new track, ‘Would You Fight For My Love’ – a brooding number about a relationship breakdown, which culminates in White shrieking “I want you to fight for my love”.

After the show, White then rushed off to the United Record Pressing to oversee the pressing process as more fans queued outside to get a copy in the sunshine.

Some 3 hours, 55 minutes and 21 seconds later, White returned in a black car flanked by the two men on motorbikes dressed as police officers to sell the first copy of the 7″ on the specially constructed stall outside the Third Man shop. The first customers were Whirlwind Heat – who then went inside to play their first gig in eight years in the Blue Room for a one-off reunion to mark the re-issue of their 2003 LP Do Rabbits Wonder?.

“I woke up at about 4 in the morning last night, and I thought, ‘Wow. I think there’s about 12 or 13 things that could really go wrong tomorrow,’ he told a press conference. “I just thought how difficult it would be to explain to people if we didn’t pull it off, so thank God we did.”

“When you just go gangbusters and attack something, it just seems to work out. All the molecules line up or something,” he added.

Speaking about Record Store Day generally, he said: “It’s bigger than ever. Every neighbourhood wants to have one [an independent record store] and the thousands of people you see here at Third Man and Grimeys and record stores all around Nashville even – you can see how popular and important that is to people.”

Jack White played:

‘Lazaretto’

‘The Power Of My Love’

‘Dead Leaves And The Dirty Ground’

‘Freedom At 21’

‘Three Women’

‘Weep Themselves to Sleep’ and ‘Love Interruption’

‘Ball And Biscuit’

‘Just One Drink’

‘Hotel Yorba’

‘Would You Fight For My Love’

Rubin Carter, boxer who inspired Bob Dylan’s “Hurricane”, dies aged 76

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Rubin Carter, boxer who inspired Bob Dylan’s “Hurricane”, dies aged 76
Rubin 'Hurricane' Carter, the boxer whose wrongful murder conviction was the subject of Bob Dylan song "Hurricane", has died. Carter, who had prostate cancer, died in his sleep at home in Toronto, aged 76. The news was confirmed by his friend and former co-defendant John Artis, reports BBC News. C...

Rubin ‘Hurricane’ Carter, the boxer whose wrongful murder conviction was the subject of Bob Dylan song “Hurricane”, has died.

Carter, who had prostate cancer, died in his sleep at home in Toronto, aged 76. The news was confirmed by his friend and former co-defendant John Artis, reports BBC News.

Carter spent 19 years in prison for three murders which took place in 1966. His imprisonment in the same year ended a promising boxing career. He was eventually freed in 1985 after years of appeals and public protests, including Dylan’s 1975 song.

Dylan met Carter before writing “Hurricane”, which he performed on his Rolling Thunder Revue tour in 1975. The song includes the lines: “That’s the story of the Hurricane/But it won’t be over till they clear his name/And give him back the time he’s done/Put him in a prison cell but one time he could-a been/The champion of the world.”

Later in life Carter campaigned for wrongfully imprisoned people to be freed, most recently advocating the release of David McCallum, convicted of a kidnapping and murder in 1985.

Billboard reports that Thom Kidrin, who became friends with Carter after visiting him several times in prison, has confirmed that Carter would be cremated, with some of the ashes given to his family.

Meanwhile, Bob Dylan will no longer face charges of incitement to hatred in France following comments he made about Croatians in a 2013 interview with Rolling Stone France. Dylan is no longer the focus of the charges with French law officials turning instead to the publication for publishing the remarks.

Quincy Jones – Complete Recordings 1955 – 59 / 1960 – 1962

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Quincy Jones – Complete Recordings 1955 – 59 / 1960 – 1962

Bargain priced boxsets showcasing the early genius of Mr Jones... Before he started writing for Hollywood, and long before his protégé Michael Jackson was even born, Quincy Jones enjoyed a colourful career. He spent his 1950s playing trumpet with Ray Charles and Lionel Hampton, writing arrangements for the likes of Sarah Vaughan, Count Basie and Dizzy Gillespie, and charming his way into senior management positions at major labels. But even the most diligent jazz collectors will be surprised at quite how many albums he released under his own name in between the mid 50s and mid 60s – LPs undocumented by most jazz encyclopaedias, most remaining out of print long after Thriller had made Quincy the most successful producer on the planet. It makes these two box-sets particularly welcome releases, especially given that both comprise out-of-UK-copyright recordings and retail for the criminally cheap sum of £7. Complete Recordings 1955-59 (8/10) crams the first seven first albums he recorded for ABC-Paramount and Mercury onto four CDs. Best of the bunch is 1956’s This Is How I Feel About Jazz, a mix of bop swagger and West Coast cool-school featuring stellar names (Charles Mingus and Hank Jones are all on board). There are a couple of bombastic big-band LPs with Art Farmer and Harry Arnold but, by 1959, the hard bop was being adulterated with daft novelty arrangements and pedestrian reworkings of standards. By the 1960s, the movie world proved to be Quincy’s salvation, both financially and creatively. Complete Recordings 1960-62 (/10) contains his first soundtrack –Pojken I Tradet (The Boy In The Tree) is an obscure 1961 Swedish movie about a rebellious rural teenager, and Quincy’s dramatic orchestral score seems to alter the way he worked, even with ostensibly mainstream jazz sessions. Although albums like 1961’s The Quintessence feature some breezy section work from top players (Freddie Hubbard, Clark Terry, Phil Woods), the improvisation has been replaced by tighter and more elaborately arranged charts. Quincy had an ear for hip trends – confronted with 1962’s bossa nova craze, he removed the pianos, the acoustic guitars and any pretence at subtlety and invented Big Band Bossa Nova, the results either comical (as with Austin Powers’ fave, “Soul Bossa Nova”) or thrilling (the rambunctious version of Mingus’s “Boogie Stop Shuffle”). A package of albums like this contains too much overlap. But one can’t really complain too much – this is one of the twentieth century’s finest canons of work. John Lewis

Bargain priced boxsets showcasing the early genius of Mr Jones…

Before he started writing for Hollywood, and long before his protégé Michael Jackson was even born, Quincy Jones enjoyed a colourful career. He spent his 1950s playing trumpet with Ray Charles and Lionel Hampton, writing arrangements for the likes of Sarah Vaughan, Count Basie and Dizzy Gillespie, and charming his way into senior management positions at major labels. But even the most diligent jazz collectors will be surprised at quite how many albums he released under his own name in between the mid 50s and mid 60s – LPs undocumented by most jazz encyclopaedias, most remaining out of print long after Thriller had made Quincy the most successful producer on the planet.

It makes these two box-sets particularly welcome releases, especially given that both comprise out-of-UK-copyright recordings and retail for the criminally cheap sum of £7. Complete Recordings 1955-59 (8/10) crams the first seven first albums he recorded for ABC-Paramount and Mercury onto four CDs. Best of the bunch is 1956’s This Is How I Feel About Jazz, a mix of bop swagger and West Coast cool-school featuring stellar names (Charles Mingus and Hank Jones are all on board). There are a couple of bombastic big-band LPs with Art Farmer and Harry Arnold but, by 1959, the hard bop was being adulterated with daft novelty arrangements and pedestrian reworkings of standards.

By the 1960s, the movie world proved to be Quincy’s salvation, both financially and creatively. Complete Recordings 1960-62 (/10) contains his first soundtrack –Pojken I Tradet (The Boy In The Tree) is an obscure 1961 Swedish movie about a rebellious rural teenager, and Quincy’s dramatic orchestral score seems to alter the way he worked, even with ostensibly mainstream jazz sessions. Although albums like 1961’s The Quintessence feature some breezy section work from top players (Freddie Hubbard, Clark Terry, Phil Woods), the improvisation has been replaced by tighter and more elaborately arranged charts. Quincy had an ear for hip trends – confronted with 1962’s bossa nova craze, he removed the pianos, the acoustic guitars and any pretence at subtlety and invented Big Band Bossa Nova, the results either comical (as with Austin Powers’ fave, “Soul Bossa Nova”) or thrilling (the rambunctious version of Mingus’s “Boogie Stop Shuffle”).

A package of albums like this contains too much overlap. But one can’t really complain too much – this is one of the twentieth century’s finest canons of work.

John Lewis

Alex Turner: “In the longterm? Maybe I’ll go off and make furniture…”

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Alex Turner: “In the longterm? Maybe I’ll go off and make furniture…”
Alex Turner discusses Arctic Monkeys’ past, present and future in the new issue of Uncut, dated June 2014. The band, their friends and collaborators talk about their roots, how living in America has affected them and whether the group are ready to take their place in the rock pantheon. Asked a...

Alex Turner discusses Arctic Monkeys’ past, present and future in the new issue of Uncut, dated June 2014.

The band, their friends and collaborators talk about their roots, how living in America has affected them and whether the group are ready to take their place in the rock pantheon.

Asked about the band’s longterm plans, Turner says: “It’s foggy out there. Maybe I’ll go off and make furniture…”

Of their career so far, he explains: “It feels like a quest, it doesn’t feel like there’s a beginning or end to this thing.”

The new Uncut, dated June 2014, is out on Friday (April 25).

Neil Young releases new album A Letter Home on Record Store Day

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Neil Young releases new album A Letter Home on Record Store Day
Neil Young has released his long-awaited new album A Letter Home on Record Store Day [April 19, 2014]. The album, which was produced by Jack White is available now from Third Man records and select record shops. A Letter Home was recorded at White's Third Man studios and consists entirely of cover...

Neil Young has released his long-awaited new album A Letter Home on Record Store Day [April 19, 2014].

The album, which was produced by Jack White is available now from Third Man records and select record shops.

A Letter Home was recorded at White’s Third Man studios and consists entirely of cover versions.

The idea for the album appears to have been hatched after Young recorded a version of Bert Jansch‘s “Needle Of Death” for Record Store Day 2013 in White’s 1947 Voice-o-Graph booth at the Third Man store in Nashville.

The tracklisting for A Letter Home is:

A Letter Home Intro

Changes (Phil Ochs)

Girl From The North Country (Bob Dylan)

Needle Of Death (Bert Jansch)

Early Morning Rain (Gordon Lightfoot)

Crazy (Willie Nelson)

Reason To Believe (Tim Hardin)

On The Road Again (Willie Nelson)

If You Could Read My Mind (Gordon Lightfoot)

Since I Met You Baby (Ivory Joe Hunter)

My Hometown (Bruce Springsteen)

I Wonder If I Care (Everly Brothers)

LCD Soundsystem: “That guy who cared? He quit! Now you get me!”

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LCD Soundsystem: “That guy who cared? He quit! Now you get me!”
The live album of LCD Soundsystem's final gig at Madison Square Garden is finally being released tomorrow (April 19) for this year's Record Store Day, in full, as a 5LP set. Back in Uncut's November 2012 issue (Take 186), we met LCD's James Murphy to hear his thoughts on their farewell concert, his ...

The live album of LCD Soundsystem’s final gig at Madison Square Garden is finally being released tomorrow (April 19) for this year’s Record Store Day, in full, as a 5LP set. Back in Uncut’s November 2012 issue (Take 186), we met LCD’s James Murphy to hear his thoughts on their farewell concert, his reasons for breaking up the band, and the plans he has for a post-LCD career: “I don’t,” he says. “And it’s terrifying!” Words: Stephen Troussé

_____________________________

James Murphy is straight off a transatlantic flight, installed in a corner of the London offices of the production company behind Shut Up And Play The Hits, the film about the last days of his band, LCD Soundsystem. He is crumpled, unshaven and nursing a painfully gammy foot.

“Ultimate fighting injury?” Uncut enquires, referring to the mixed martial art for which he’s an unlikely evangelist. “Ultimate drinking injury,” he groans. Nevertheless, even an under-the-weather James Murphy is a force to be reckoned with. Shut Up And Play The Hits centres around LCD’s spectacular swansong at Madison Square Garden in April last year. It’s ironically titled because, through backstage chatter, frontman humility, TV interviews and post-show hangover, Murphy just can’t stop justifying, eulogising, wisecracking, pondering the peculiar history of his band. He was well into his thirties before forming LCD, with years of life experience as provincial punk, literature student, indie scenester, jobbing engineer. Consequently, when success eventually called, he was thoroughly prepared.

His three albums – LCD Soundsystem, Sound Of Silver and This Is Happening – add up to something like the Great New York Novel of the noughties, incorporating the desperate hedonism, high anxiety, self-conscious snark, whipsmart wit and post-Imperial melancholy of that curdled decade. Still fulfilling promotional obligations 18 months after he supposedly quit, Murphy occasionally plays at being jaded, but his beautiful, lively mind is relentless. In the course of an hour’s conversation, he’s part-Louis CK schlubby idealist, part-Lester Bangs gonzo philosopher and part-Sam Lipsyte scabrous cynic. The epigram to Shut Up And Play The Hits says, “If it’s a funeral… let’s have the best funeral ever.” Does it feel like it’s turning into the longest wake ever? “Holy shit, yes,” he says with a wry smile. “It’s a very long march to the barrow ground.”

_____________________________

Is it weird, having to obsessively rake over the embers of the last day of your band?

It’s not that weird. Everything weird really happened early on in the band. And everything after that, that’s supposed to seem weird, just never seems weird, relative to the band happening at all. Raking over it? This is my job! My job is fucking weird.

What were the weird things about LCD Soundsystem?

Just the band being successful. Or before the band started, the things that prompted me to start writing “Losing My Edge” were so weird. Being a DJ suddenly, being invited to parties, and having something to lose. After playing music and being involved in music my whole life, and failing comically. Or not even failing grandiosely – just sinking. Failing mediocrely! Nothing prepared me for having my moment in the sun. Which I considered to be before the band. New York likes art stars. It doesn’t like movie stars. So I was an art star, and we were weird and cool and ephemeral. That was so weird that everything that subsequently happened has seemed like a tiny ripple effect of that big bang, that cataclysmic event.

You played your first gig in London. Did you ever have an inkling that this might be, if not a career, an ongoing project?

I don’t know. I was pretty aggressive then and pretty crazy. Yeah, fuck it! We’re going to do things weird, we’re going to do things our way! I’m not working a tour, we’re doing some weird shows. Let’s do it! Then I made an album, gave it to the Soulwax guys and they were like, “Your life is over, dude.” And I was like, “Why?” They said, “It’s good. You’re going to be on tour.” So I said, “I’m not going to fucking do that.” “You say that. But we don’t want to DJ, and here we are.”

In the movie, the author Chuck Klosterman wonders what the defining failure of the band was. Was it that you couldn’t escape that treadmill or bend it to your will? Is quitting a way of getting the craziness back?

Yeah, it definitely is. I try to take people equally seriously. I try to take fans seriously, even if they’re fucking crazy. I try to take people at the record company seriously, sometimes though they behave in ways that prohibit you from taking them seriously. So I always try to err on the side of “We-ee-eelll… maybe you have a point.” That makes a lot of things difficult. It’s one of those jobs like being a triage doctor. What you want to do is perform microsurgery to save that knee… but that guy over there was just SHOT! In the FACE! So you have to know that you can’t give 100 per cent ever. You’re just running around trying to save lives.

And you never get the satisfaction of saying, “The last stitch – can we take that off?”

“Oh, beautiful scar, Dr White.” “Thank you!” That wore me out. Leaving the record company meeting and they’re saying, “OK, well, there’s no extra tracks? You’re only going to make one video? Is there anything three-and-a-half-minutes long? The song people respond to most is almost nine minutes long and it’s got a three-minute, almost inaudible, intro? Ugh.” You’re just like: arghhh. You go on tour and people are emailing: “Why aren’t you in Des Moines, Iowa? You only play where people think you’re cool?” You’re constantly disappointing people. That wears you out, if you care. If the other alternative is that you don’t care, I can’t do that. People say, “Well, don’t do Facebook, don’t look at it, let the people do their job!” But I can’t. This represents me. LCD Soundsystem represents me. No person is going to answer questions for me on the email interview! No-one’s going to post things on my website that are supposed to be from me! Because then you’re like, what’s the fucking point? If I start complaining, I should quit. So we quit. Because it was too much.

How did the movie come about?

Before the decision to end the band, someone told me, “Oh, the BBC wants to do something on you, they have these directors who did a Blur thing.” So we met up with them a couple of times and I really liked them. The BBC thing didn’t work out, so we decided to do it ourselves. At one point we thought, let’s just do a fiction movie. The movie was called What It’s Like To Make Things. It would just be all these weird dream sequences. I was trying to get Kanye to be in all my dreams. I didn’t want to see the band play, I just wanted one scene from the concert, the shot of the balloons dropping. And we were like, cool, let’s get a permit to shoot in Madison Square Garden. But the permit was, like, the budget. For the whole movie. We’re like, “OK, if we’re going to spend this money, let’s shoot the concert at least.” We wanted something that could be the whole arc if we needed it to be. Rather than trying to shoot a movie but only having half of it, and because of budget pressures having to cobble something together and release it.

How much input did you have?

Nothing in the narrative. I was really there for the concert footage and the concert itself. I know who plays what, what’s important to me. Naturally, the editor is picking a few shots that seem a little too rockstarry for me. I don’t like those. I like it to look like a street fight. And I think it does a good job of looking like a street fight! There are moments that are quite beautiful. I like early ’70s American films and I think they’re beautiful in a rough way, and when the beauty happens you’re unprepared for it.

Is there a danger that the movie replaces your memories?

That’s not even a danger, it’s totally replaced my memory. I don’t remember the show. I remember polaroids. The moment when I first crinkled up a lyric sheet and threw it away. I always have my lyrics in a pile in case I get stuck. Very rarely actually looked at them. The first time I was about to put it under I thought I will never, ever have to sing that again. I’ll never sing this again! To have these beat-up, five-year-old lyric sheets which have notes on, to know that you’re destroying something that might be important to someone else. Or it might be important to you later… I remember when I threw out my school yearbooks. I knew – ‘I’m going to regret this.’ I threw out all my Smiths shirts – this is a regret in the making. You should do stuff you regret. Don’t look back? A little bit. More like look back in anger!

When you think of bands quitting at the top, you think of Ziggy Stardust or The Jam. Rarely American bands…

No, because we don’t fucking stop. We keep chasing the paycheck. The Rolling Stones took more than the blues from America. I just wanted to have all the bad ideas fully realised. Why don’t we do a balloon drop? Or why don’t we build a spaceship made out of cardboard and make shitty video visuals with models on strings? Why not? That’s like 15 bucks, let’s do that. I loved fully blowing out all the dumb ideas we’d never had time to do. If we’d done that at the beginning of the tour we would have had all these beautiful set pieces that would have made economic sense. Instead we burned almost all the money we made that year. We lost everything! It was brutal. That show lost so much money. People on the internet are like – oh, I get it, you’re going to cash in at Madison Square Garden. You have NO IDEA how this business works. You don’t make anything for playing at Madison Square Garden! They keep all the money because they’re Madison Square Garden. What are you going to do? Go to the OTHER Madison Square Garden? To put on a show like that there are 1,500 union guys. That’s going to a 1,000 bucks per head. You get the balloon truck – the balloon truck held my landing dock hostage for hours and took us for an extra $5,000 on the day! We couldn’t get our gear. Shit like that – hilarious. We barely got a soundcheck and then I pulled the band off early so Liquid Liquid could get a soundcheck because they played first. I was so angry and then I was like – that’s our band! Our band doesn’t get a soundcheck for our last show at Madison Square Garden and I drag us off because Liquid Liquid – who we love – has to get a soundcheck. That’s a pretty big eulogy for us.

Do you have your post-LCD career as carefully planned as the farewell?

That’s the beauty of it, I don’t, and it’s terrifying. I felt like the band was born out of a weird miasmic sludge of time and influence and fucking around and all this stuff. Ironically, the band born out of this created less craziness and more and more order. Then I was like: what if I go and make a fourth record and I don’t know what to do? That’s not a big deal. But what’s the point? Why don’t I just go back to that chaos? That mass of energy. The only fears you have when you get bigger are – what if you fail? That’s boring. Now I’m like – who knows? People tell me people are going to remember your band forever! No, they’re not! People barely remember Kurt Cobain. He was in a huge band and he killed himself? That’s the way you never die. People won’t say, hey, remember that guy who was sad so he quit, but maintained friendships with the people he worked with? What an epic tragedy! It’s almost Greek!

You seem busier than when you were in the band…

I am. It’s been an unexpectedly difficult year. I’m building a new studio. I’m trying to open a store. It’s time-consuming. It’s also expensive. I have found no-one is willing to do construction for free. So I am DJing a LOT. It’s my job now – I DJ. I have the jumpsuit to prove it.

So what happens if you wake up with an awesome idea for an LCD song?

I just write a song. What’s the difference, man? This is the epic joke! LCD is a bunch of things. It’s me in the studio making a record. Two: it’s that group of people touring. Thirdly, it was the thing signed to EMI. And four, it was an entity that fans had varying relationships with and understandings of. I wanted to stop the train of the mass of those things. So I’m no longer signed. I’ve said “I’m done!” so we can memorialise that this is the end of LCD. It’s like I have a manufacturing plant but I don’t want to make plastic bags anymore. But I still have this plant. I’ll make music. I still DJ with Pat [Mahoney]. I see all my friends. Nothing happened. I just wanted to get off the train. A friend asked me to cover a song for a movie recently, and I was calling everyone up and said, you wanna do this? One guy was like – you’d do that? Use the LCD name? But if it’s the same group of us covering a song? If I call it James Murphy And The Murphtones, is that better? Who cares? And they’re like, people will get upset! Um, that’s the beauty of quitting! I don’t give a shit! That guy who cared? He quit! Now you get me!

_____________________________

I Can Change: five post-LCD career options, by the man himself

1: Novelist

Is writing the ultimate freedom? More like the ultimate nightmare. I have no delusions about looking out of the window wistfully and jotting my thoughts while someone brings me tea. I said once that I was working on something and that’s been turned into I’m writing a novel. I take “I’m writing a novel” as a phrase very seriously. I am not Writing A Novel. I am working on something, sporadically taking notes. I’ve written scenes out. I know what the principal themes are. I know the settings and characters. But I think it’s a big ’un.

2: Soundtrack composer

Working on Greenberg was great but people say “Do you want to do more?” and I say NO. I did it because Noah and I had a good relationship and he was working across the street from my studio. So I dealt with Noah. I could put my ego aside because it’s like I’m helping him paint his house. At the same time, I don’t have eight people saying, “I think it’s too mauve. What do you think?” Most of that job, you have one note from the producer saying make it more lively. One note from the music supervisor saying mellow it out a little. One note from the director saying don’t listen to those guys. Nuh-uh. I have no interest in that world. If someone asks me to make a soundtrack I will make music. If you would license that for your film, please do.

3: Mom and pop store owner

We’re going to open this store in Brooklyn. What’s it going to sell? Stuff my girlfriend and I like! Coffee. Old ’50s and ’60s wristwatches. It’s going to be a personality store. There might be a record store downstairs. A coffee shop out front. But it’s expandable. Sometimes it’ll be tiny, it’ll just be a coffee shop and magazines. Other times it might be a showroom. Just a space to do stuff. I want to be able to make things and design things and have space for that.

4: Ultimate fighter

I really almost did it. I put some money away, I live cheaply. I can train. I’m quick. I’m flexible. My problem’s going to be my weight-to-strength ratio. I’m hypermobile, which means my ligaments are too long, so I use a lot of muscle to stabilise myself. So I can’t get any lower than 170lbs and survive. 170lbs is still a big fighter.

5: Watchmaker

I really want to do a watch. I’m not kidding myself that I’m going to make the fucking watches. I’m not a fucking idiot. But I’m fascinated by those guys who sit at the tables with the magnifying glasses. I know that I can’t do it. But if I can make one watch with some help – and say, look at this! The watch I made! That would be so cool!

Gruff Rhys: “Super Furry Animals have done too much to not do more stuff”

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Gruff Rhys: “Super Furry Animals have done too much to not do more stuff”
Gruff Rhys tells Uncut about his new American Interior venture – a film, book and new album – and the future of Super Furry Animals, in the new issue, dated May 2014 and out now. “I think we’ve done too much to not do more stuff,” says Rhys of SFA. “We’ve all got kids and I’ve been ...

Gruff Rhys tells Uncut about his new American Interior venture – a film, book and new album – and the future of Super Furry Animals, in the new issue, dated May 2014 and out now.

“I think we’ve done too much to not do more stuff,” says Rhys of SFA. “We’ve all got kids and I’ve been at home for two years – I’ve hardly had to tour, happily. I hadn’t been off tour since I was 16. It’s healthy to not be part of an industrial touring life.

“But we’re all extremely close and it’s bizarre because we’ve never made a load of money, so it’s not as if we can retire.

“It seems to be an indefinite hibernation, God knows when we’ll start again,” Super Furry Animals’ drummer Dafydd Ieuan says. “Everybody needed a break, the chance to try their own things out.”

“I certainly hope we’ll play again soon, I’m sure we will,” bassist Guto Pryce adds, more encouragingly. “We’ll do something in a while, but I wouldn’t like to say when.”

The new Uncut, dated May 2014, is out now.

Photo: Chris McAndrew

The Rise And Fall Of The Clash

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The Rise And Fall Of The Clash

...but mostly, the fall. An awkward, insightful account of how it all went sour for Strummer & Co... We don’t need another Clash documentary. There will never be a better profile than Don Letts’s superb Westway To The World. The story has been told and retold to death. All the same, every year some new Clash cash-in pops up. Here’s another. Miraculously, it turns out to be vital. The first directing effort by Spanish Clash fan Danny Garcia, The Rise And Fall… scores because it’s about the messy, inconvenient part of the story Letts’s great film shies away from. Specifically: the end. And, more specifically, after the end, when that other Clash thing staggered on zombielike for a while, releasing Cut The Crap, the awful 1985 album which, true to stubbornly contradictory form, contained the last great Clash song, “This Is England”. Garcia’s film is no great shakes as a cinematic experience. Mostly, it’s meat-and-potatoes rock doc stuff, low-budget talking heads interviews, interspersed with archive footage. It should also be noted it is no place for your Clash neophyte to begin. Those unacquainted with names like Kosmo Vinyl, or unfamiliar with the elusive ways of Svengali-like manager Bernie Rhodes, may find it heavy going. For those who know, though, Garcia’s film overcomes its rudimentary style because the substance becomes so involving. He begins in 1981, with Rhodes being begged to return to manage the band he’d helped create, having been sacked in 1978. In his absence, The Clash had recorded arguably their greatest album, London Calling, and their most ambitious, Sandinista. With America beginning to break, they stood poised to become one of the world’s biggest groups – but they also, it’s claimed, were half-a-million dollars in debt. The pressing issue became how to make money, while still talking the radical talk. The new Rhodesian era began in triumph, with the fabled Bonds residency in New York, but soon fell apart, first with the sacking of Topper Headon, then, as the group tried to reconcile their espoused beliefs with the realities of playing Shea Stadium alongside The Who, the notorious ousting of Mick Jones, for “rock star tendencies.” This is well-worn territory, but Garcia teases life from it, focussing on the band’s inner split: Joe and Paul Simonon in a Bernie-led Stalinist bootcamp on one side; Mick on the other, in a huff. Of the surviving members of the classic line-up, only Jones agreed to be interviewed, and, while funny, careful and gentlemanly, he gives away something of the bad moods and division. Not to mention his balking at Rhodes’s plan for them to start playing “New Orleans music.” Rhodes refused to participate, but he can be heard in enigmatic audio clips, and his presence is everywhere, as contributors debate whether he is a maverick pop Situationist genius, or, as Clash security man Ray Jordan suggests, “an asshole.” It’s the second half that becomes compulsive, as Garcia builds a sobering, nightmarish picture of life in the post-Jones The Clash Mk II, through the weary, vivid testimony of drummer Pete Howard and Nick Shepherd and Vince White, the hapless guitarists drafted to fill Mick’s shoes. We learn details of Rhodes’s heavy manners management, and Strummer’s curious willingness to go along with it, despite rising despair about where it was going. While public bollocks were spouted about getting “back to basics” and the new band being all for one, White recalls the new members being treated by “The Clash machine” as hired help, there to “sweep the floors,” and handed weekly wages of £150. As rhetoric and hypocrisy flew about their heads, and Rhodes issued diktats on approved rebel rock attire (“A checked shirt, what do you think this is, Big fucking Country?”), Howard recalls how he and White secretly shared the love that dared not speak its name in Clashland, by both being fans of Yes. How did it happen? Ever-insightful Strummer biographer Chris Salewicz points to Joe being in crisis – his father had died, his mother was dying – and clinging to Rhodes’s manifestos and manipulations as the pressure of his own legend mounted, hoping against hope it was the right thing. “Joe was naive,” Salewicz sums up, nailing a simple truth often unrecognised, one that explains as much about why Strummer was great as it does his flaws. Garcia ends with a brief account of how, following Strummer’s departure, Rhodes seriously considered keeping a Clash going, putting together new bands under the brandname, and running things like a football manager. None of this is official Clash history; Cut The Crap itself was airbrushed from existence on the canonical Sound System box set. But Garcia’s film is a useful supplement to Westway To The World. It’s important to remember this thorny, shabby, sad and stupidly funny flameout. It was never slogans or even ideals that mattered, so much as The Clash’s very human passion, the messy confusion that drove them to try, to fall, and to try again. EXTRAS: None. Damien Love

…but mostly, the fall. An awkward, insightful account of how it all went sour for Strummer & Co…

We don’t need another Clash documentary. There will never be a better profile than Don Letts’s superb Westway To The World. The story has been told and retold to death. All the same, every year some new Clash cash-in pops up. Here’s another. Miraculously, it turns out to be vital.

The first directing effort by Spanish Clash fan Danny Garcia, The Rise And Fall… scores because it’s about the messy, inconvenient part of the story Letts’s great film shies away from. Specifically: the end. And, more specifically, after the end, when that other Clash thing staggered on zombielike for a while, releasing Cut The Crap, the awful 1985 album which, true to stubbornly contradictory form, contained the last great Clash song, “This Is England”.

Garcia’s film is no great shakes as a cinematic experience. Mostly, it’s meat-and-potatoes rock doc stuff, low-budget talking heads interviews, interspersed with archive footage. It should also be noted it is no place for your Clash neophyte to begin. Those unacquainted with names like Kosmo Vinyl, or unfamiliar with the elusive ways of Svengali-like manager Bernie Rhodes, may find it heavy going.

For those who know, though, Garcia’s film overcomes its rudimentary style because the substance becomes so involving. He begins in 1981, with Rhodes being begged to return to manage the band he’d helped create, having been sacked in 1978.

In his absence, The Clash had recorded arguably their greatest album, London Calling, and their most ambitious, Sandinista. With America beginning to break, they stood poised to become one of the world’s biggest groups – but they also, it’s claimed, were half-a-million dollars in debt. The pressing issue became how to make money, while still talking the radical talk.

The new Rhodesian era began in triumph, with the fabled Bonds residency in New York, but soon fell apart, first with the sacking of Topper Headon, then, as the group tried to reconcile their espoused beliefs with the realities of playing Shea Stadium alongside The Who, the notorious ousting of Mick Jones, for “rock star tendencies.”

This is well-worn territory, but Garcia teases life from it, focussing on the band’s inner split: Joe and Paul Simonon in a Bernie-led Stalinist bootcamp on one side; Mick on the other, in a huff. Of the surviving members of the classic line-up, only Jones agreed to be interviewed, and, while funny, careful and gentlemanly, he gives away something of the bad moods and division. Not to mention his balking at Rhodes’s plan for them to start playing “New Orleans music.”

Rhodes refused to participate, but he can be heard in enigmatic audio clips, and his presence is everywhere, as contributors debate whether he is a maverick pop Situationist genius, or, as Clash security man Ray Jordan suggests, “an asshole.”

It’s the second half that becomes compulsive, as Garcia builds a sobering, nightmarish picture of life in the post-Jones The Clash Mk II, through the weary, vivid testimony of drummer Pete Howard and Nick Shepherd and Vince White, the hapless guitarists drafted to fill Mick’s shoes. We learn details of Rhodes’s heavy manners management, and Strummer’s curious willingness to go along with it, despite rising despair about where it was going.

While public bollocks were spouted about getting “back to basics” and the new band being all for one, White recalls the new members being treated by “The Clash machine” as hired help, there to “sweep the floors,” and handed weekly wages of £150. As rhetoric and hypocrisy flew about their heads, and Rhodes issued diktats on approved rebel rock attire (“A checked shirt, what do you think this is, Big fucking Country?”), Howard recalls how he and White secretly shared the love that dared not speak its name in Clashland, by both being fans of Yes.

How did it happen? Ever-insightful Strummer biographer Chris Salewicz points to Joe being in crisis – his father had died, his mother was dying – and clinging to Rhodes’s manifestos and manipulations as the pressure of his own legend mounted, hoping against hope it was the right thing. “Joe was naive,” Salewicz sums up, nailing a simple truth often unrecognised, one that explains as much about why Strummer was great as it does his flaws.

Garcia ends with a brief account of how, following Strummer’s departure, Rhodes seriously considered keeping a Clash going, putting together new bands under the brandname, and running things like a football manager. None of this is official Clash history; Cut The Crap itself was airbrushed from existence on the canonical Sound System box set. But Garcia’s film is a useful supplement to Westway To The World. It’s important to remember this thorny, shabby, sad and stupidly funny flameout. It was never slogans or even ideals that mattered, so much as The Clash’s very human passion, the messy confusion that drove them to try, to fall, and to try again.

EXTRAS: None.

Damien Love

Bob Dylan: ‘racial hate’ lawsuit dropped

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Bob Dylan: ‘racial hate’ lawsuit dropped
Bob Dylan will not face charges of incitement to hatred in France following comments he made about Croatians in a 2013 interview. The charges were initially brought forward by French judges and related to an interview Dylan gave in the French version of Rolling Stone magazine. In the article, he m...

Bob Dylan will not face charges of incitement to hatred in France following comments he made about Croatians in a 2013 interview.

The charges were initially brought forward by French judges and related to an interview Dylan gave in the French version of Rolling Stone magazine. In the article, he mentioned Croatia in the same sentence as the Nazi party and the Ku Klux Klan.

However, Wall Street Journal reports that Dylan is no longer the focus of the charges with French law officials turning instead to the publication for publishing the remarks. Rolling Stone‘s France publisher Michael Birnbaum still faces anti-discrimination charges and could be sentenced to up to one year in jail and a fine of €45,000 (£37,000).

Dylan’s quotes came in response to a question about whether he sees parallels between Civil War-era America and the US of today. “This country is just too fucked up about colour. It’s a distraction. People at each other’s throats just because they are of a different colour. It’s the height of insanity, and it will hold any nation back – or any neighbourhood back. Or any anything back. Blacks know that some whites didn’t want to give up slavery – that if they had their way, they would still be under the yoke, and they can’t pretend they don’t know that.

“If you got a slave master or Klan in your blood, blacks can sense that. That stuff lingers to this day. Just like Jews can sense Nazi blood and the Serbs can sense Croatian blood.”

Win tickets to Ginger Baker’s 75th birthday gig!

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Win tickets to Ginger Baker’s 75th birthday gig!
Ginger Baker will celebrate his 75th birthday with a very special concert at London's Islington Academy in London on May 3. We're delighted to be able to offer a pair of tickets to the show. To enter, just tell us: What was the name of the first band to feature both Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce? ...

Ginger Baker will celebrate his 75th birthday with a very special concert at London’s Islington Academy in London on May 3.

We’re delighted to be able to offer a pair of tickets to the show.

To enter, just tell us:

What was the name of the first band to feature both Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce?

Send your entries to uncutcomp@ipcmedia.com. Please include your full name, address and a daytime phone number. The competition closes at noon GMT on Friday, April 25, 2014. The editor’s decision is final.

Baker is also releasing a career-spanning anthology called A Drummer’s Tale. You can find more about it here.

Tickets to Ginger Baker’s show at the Islington Academy are on-sale now priced £30.00 (subject to per-ticket charge plus order processing fee) and are available from www.livenation.co.uk or www.ticketmaster.co.uk.

Reviewed: Respect Yourself: Stax Records And The Soul Explosion by Robert Gordon

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Reviewed: Respect Yourself: Stax Records And The Soul Explosion by Robert Gordon

As Robert Gordon reminds us in Respect Yourself: Stax Records And The Soul Explosion, his terrific account of the rise and fall of the great Memphis soul imprint, the Stax story is more than a record-label history. “It is an American story,” Gordon writes,” where the shoe-shine boy becomes a star, the country hayseed an international magnate. It’s the story of individuals against society, of small business competing with large, of the disenfranchised seeking their own tile in the American mosaic.” The success of Stax in its heyday was astonishing. Between 1960 and 1975, it released 800 singles and 300 albums, a huge proportion of them major hits on both the R&B and pop charts, the label making international stars of Otis Redding, Isaac Hayes, Sam and Dave, Booker T & The MG’s, Wilson Pickett and The Staple Singers, the label growing from homespun beginnings to a major money-making conglomerate with breath taking velocity. For Gordon, who grew up in Memphis as Stax was establishing its commercial supremacy, it remains nothing less than miraculous that a label that recognised no racial boundaries, whose founders were white but whose talent pool was largely drawn from the local black communities, should have flourished in a place where deep into the 20th century “plantation prejudices still prevailed”. As was the case with so many cities in America’s Deep South, racism in Memphis was deeply institutionalised. US President Lyndon Johnson may have introduced the Civil Rights Act in 1964, but Memphis simply ignored it, as if federal legislation had no legitimacy here and would therefore not be heeded or obeyed. The black population of Memphis thus remained unrecognised and unrepresented in local government, and was allowed no municipal voice. Its grievances and claims for equality were routinely brushed aside, an unwelcome chorus of complaint. In the converted cinema at 926 East McLemore Avenue in South Memphis where Stax built the legendary studio where in time it cranked out hit after hit after hit, young black and white musicians worked together freely. But outside, they were separated by the imperatives of strict and unforgiving segregation. In the circumstances, Stax, in Gordon’s words, became “an accidental refuge that flourished… nourished by a sense of decency” whose music “became the soundtrack for liberation, the song of triumph, the sound of the path toward freedom”. Such aspirations were not paramount in Jim Stewart’s ambitions when he modestly started Satellite Records in 1957. Stewart was 27 years old, working in a bank, studying law at night on the GI Bill and playing fiddle in a country band at weekends. Encouraged by the recent local example of Sam Phillips, a former mortuary assistant and radio technician who had made such a spectacular success of Sun Records, Stewart launched his own label as a side line that quickly became an obsession, an opportunity to make a few quick bucks that within a few years became the all-conquering Stax juggernaut. With crucial investment from his sister, Estelle Axton, Stewart moved Satellite from the rural garage where he recorded the label’s first records to the site of the old Capitol movie theatre on McLemore Avenue, changing the label’s name to Stax (a conflation of Jim and Estelle’s surnames, STewart/AXton) in the process. Gordon warmly relates the label’s initial rise, as Stewart and Axton, with vital initial input from engineer Chips Moman (subsequently ousted in an early power struggle), attracted and encouraged what turned out to be a torrent of interracial local talent, a seemingly inexhaustible tide of gifted songwriters, arrangers and musicians, including The MG’s, who became the Stax house band, most of whom were still in high school when the label started. Drawing on a vast archive of vivid interviews originally conducted for a PBS documentary on Stax, Gordon allows us to relive these exciting times. The fledgling label’s early success brought it to the attention of Jerry Wexler at Atlantic, whose distribution network brought Stax product to a national audience as part of a production deal that would eventually cost the Memphis label dearly. When the hits started coming, there seemed to be no end to them. The company grew quickly, many of its major artists discovered by its open door policy, aspiring talent often just walking in off the street, into the studio and onto the charts. These were heady times, with hits for Sam and Dave, Booker T & The MGs, William Bell, Rufus and Carla Thomas, Eddie Floyd, Wilson Pickett and, of course, Otis Redding, who after his incendiary performance at the Monterey festival introduced him to a huge new white audience was on his way to becoming an international superstar when he was killed in a plane crash that also claimed the lives of most of his backing band, The Bar-Kays. Many would later claim that Stax never recovered from the loss of Otis and it was further deeply demoralised when Warner Bros bought out Atlantic who it now turned out owned their entire back catalogue, the result of an overlooked clause in their original agreement of which Wexler later unconvincingly argued he had no knowledge. Martin Luther King’s assassination in Memphis early the following year further soured the atmosphere between black and white employees at Stax who previously had given no thought to race. Former Memphis DJ Al Bell had been brought to Stax by Jim Stewart in 1965 as national promotions director now became increasingly influential, introducing a bold new programme of expansion that included the almost-instant creation of a whole new catalogue, funded by heavy duty loans that put the company hugely in debt but made a superstar of Isaac Hayes, who briefly brought Stax even greater riches, even as the label’s original creative core began to splinter, in often bitter circumstances as Bell brought in his own people, including the gun-toting enforcer Johnny Baylor, whose criminality presaged the widespread corruption revealed in the company’s subsequent fall from grace amid a tsunami of litigation and unpaid debts, the label’s decline as spectacular in every instance as its brief but incredible ascendency.

As Robert Gordon reminds us in Respect Yourself: Stax Records And The Soul Explosion, his terrific account of the rise and fall of the great Memphis soul imprint, the Stax story is more than a record-label history. “It is an American story,” Gordon writes,” where the shoe-shine boy becomes a star, the country hayseed an international magnate. It’s the story of individuals against society, of small business competing with large, of the disenfranchised seeking their own tile in the American mosaic.”

The success of Stax in its heyday was astonishing. Between 1960 and 1975, it released 800 singles and 300 albums, a huge proportion of them major hits on both the R&B and pop charts, the label making international stars of Otis Redding, Isaac Hayes, Sam and Dave, Booker T & The MG’s, Wilson Pickett and The Staple Singers, the label growing from homespun beginnings to a major money-making conglomerate with breath taking velocity. For Gordon, who grew up in Memphis as Stax was establishing its commercial supremacy, it remains nothing less than miraculous that a label that recognised no racial boundaries, whose founders were white but whose talent pool was largely drawn from the local black communities, should have flourished in a place where deep into the 20th century “plantation prejudices still prevailed”.

As was the case with so many cities in America’s Deep South, racism in Memphis was deeply institutionalised. US President Lyndon Johnson may have introduced the Civil Rights Act in 1964, but Memphis simply ignored it, as if federal legislation had no legitimacy here and would therefore not be heeded or obeyed. The black population of Memphis thus remained unrecognised and unrepresented in local government, and was allowed no municipal voice. Its grievances and claims for equality were routinely brushed aside, an unwelcome chorus of complaint. In the converted cinema at 926 East McLemore Avenue in South Memphis where Stax built the legendary studio where in time it cranked out hit after hit after hit, young black and white musicians worked together freely. But outside, they were separated by the imperatives of strict and unforgiving segregation. In the circumstances, Stax, in Gordon’s words, became “an accidental refuge that flourished… nourished by a sense of decency” whose music “became the soundtrack for liberation, the song of triumph, the sound of the path toward freedom”.

Such aspirations were not paramount in Jim Stewart’s ambitions when he modestly started Satellite Records in 1957. Stewart was 27 years old, working in a bank, studying law at night on the GI Bill and playing fiddle in a country band at weekends. Encouraged by the recent local example of Sam Phillips, a former mortuary assistant and radio technician who had made such a spectacular success of Sun Records, Stewart launched his own label as a side line that quickly became an obsession, an opportunity to make a few quick bucks that within a few years became the all-conquering Stax juggernaut. With crucial investment from his sister, Estelle Axton, Stewart moved Satellite from the rural garage where he recorded the label’s first records to the site of the old Capitol movie theatre on McLemore Avenue, changing the label’s name to Stax (a conflation of Jim and Estelle’s surnames, STewart/AXton) in the process.

Gordon warmly relates the label’s initial rise, as Stewart and Axton, with vital initial input from engineer Chips Moman (subsequently ousted in an early power struggle), attracted and encouraged what turned out to be a torrent of interracial local talent, a seemingly inexhaustible tide of gifted songwriters, arrangers and musicians, including The MG’s, who became the Stax house band, most of whom were still in high school when the label started. Drawing on a vast archive of vivid interviews originally conducted for a PBS documentary on Stax, Gordon allows us to relive these exciting times. The fledgling label’s early success brought it to the attention of Jerry Wexler at Atlantic, whose distribution network brought Stax product to a national audience as part of a production deal that would eventually cost the Memphis label dearly.

When the hits started coming, there seemed to be no end to them. The company grew quickly, many of its major artists discovered by its open door policy, aspiring talent often just walking in off the street, into the studio and onto the charts. These were heady times, with hits for Sam and Dave, Booker T & The MGs, William Bell, Rufus and Carla Thomas, Eddie Floyd, Wilson Pickett and, of course, Otis Redding, who after his incendiary performance at the Monterey festival introduced him to a huge new white audience was on his way to becoming an international superstar when he was killed in a plane crash that also claimed the lives of most of his backing band, The Bar-Kays. Many would later claim that Stax never recovered from the loss of Otis and it was further deeply demoralised when Warner Bros bought out Atlantic who it now turned out owned their entire back catalogue, the result of an overlooked clause in their original agreement of which Wexler later unconvincingly argued he had no knowledge. Martin Luther King’s assassination in Memphis early the following year further soured the atmosphere between black and white employees at Stax who previously had given no thought to race.

Former Memphis DJ Al Bell had been brought to Stax by Jim Stewart in 1965 as national promotions director now became increasingly influential, introducing a bold new programme of expansion that included the almost-instant creation of a whole new catalogue, funded by heavy duty loans that put the company hugely in debt but made a superstar of Isaac Hayes, who briefly brought Stax even greater riches, even as the label’s original creative core began to splinter, in often bitter circumstances as Bell brought in his own people, including the gun-toting enforcer Johnny Baylor, whose criminality presaged the widespread corruption revealed in the company’s subsequent fall from grace amid a tsunami of litigation and unpaid debts, the label’s decline as spectacular in every instance as its brief but incredible ascendency.

Malcolm Young to take break from AC/DC due to ill health

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Malcolm Young to take break from AC/DC due to ill health
AC/DC's Malcolm Young is to step down from the band due to ill health. Rumours have circulated in the past few days that the band might be forced to call it quits, with Choirboys frontman and friend of the band Mark Gable saying that the guitarist is seriously ill and will not be able to perform an...

AC/DC‘s Malcolm Young is to step down from the band due to ill health.

Rumours have circulated in the past few days that the band might be forced to call it quits, with Choirboys frontman and friend of the band Mark Gable saying that the guitarist is seriously ill and will not be able to perform any more.

A statement published on AC/DC’s Facebook page yesterday afternoon (April 16) confirms that Young will take a break from the group after four decades as a member.

“After 40 years of life dedicated to AC/DC, guitarist and founding member Malcolm Young is taking a break from the band due to ill health,” it reads. “Malcolm would like to thank the group’s diehard legions of fans worldwide for their never-ending love and support. In light of this news, AC/DC asks that Malcolm and his family’s privacy be respected during this time. The band will continue to make music.”

Yesterday, Brian Johnson also denied rumours suggesting the band would split but did confirm that a member of the band was ill and revealed that the band hope to record new music in May.

Nirvana approached PJ Harvey for Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony

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Nirvana approached PJ Harvey for Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony
Dave Grohl has revealed that Nirvana approached PJ Harvey and a number of male rock stars to fill in for Kurt Cobain at the band's Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame induction ceremony. The event, which took place at Brooklyn's Barclays Center on April 10, saw four female performers stand in for Cobain: St...

Dave Grohl has revealed that Nirvana approached PJ Harvey and a number of male rock stars to fill in for Kurt Cobain at the band’s Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame induction ceremony.

The event, which took place at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center on April 10, saw four female performers stand in for Cobain: St Vincent, Joan Jett, Kim Gordon and Lorde.

But Grohl told Rolling Stone that a number of A-list male rock stars were originally in the frame. “Some of them were nervous,” he said. “I think some of them were maybe apprehensive because of how heavy the whole thing is.”

After Joan Jett signed up, the band next approached PJ Harvey. Grohl said: “Kurt loved PJ Harvey. We had always imagined playing our song ‘Milk It‘ from In Utero with her. It’s a twisted song, almost like something that could have been on her record Rid Of Me, which was also produced by Steve Albini. It just seemed to pair up so well. Unfortunately, she couldn’t make it.”

It was at that point, Grohl said, that the idea to use only female singers was hatched.

This wasn’t the first time PJ Harvey has been invited to join the remaining Nirvana members on stage. In February 2013, Harvey was invited to join the band’s surviving members at a concert in London for a performance of “Milk It”. The event was a show by Grohl’s freeform supergroup, Sound City Players.

“We were thinking about musicians that we could invite,” Grohl told NME. “Someone came up with the idea of doing a Nirvana song with PJ Harvey. Kurt loved her and we love her and we thought, ‘Yeah, what would we do?'”

“I said: ‘God, what if we were to do ‘Milk It’ from In Utero, with Polly singing?'” he recalled. “We all looked at each other, like, ‘Whoa, that would be amazing!’ … And then she couldn’t do it!”

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