Before Melody Maker swept me off the street in the manner of a benevolent old codger taking a pallid waif into his kindly, white-haired care in something written to make you weep by the venerable Dickens, I worked for a bleak season or two in the mail order department of a bookstore near Piccadilly Circus.
The director of a new film profiling Ginger Baker is interviewed in the new issue of Uncut (dated January 2013, and out now), explaining why the Cream drummer broke his nose during filming… As a companion piece, this week's archive feature finds Baker's former bandmate, Eric Clapton, providing a painfully frank account of his days in Cream – psychedelic drugs, 24-hour confrontations and their love of Pet Sounds included. From Uncut's May 2004 issue (Take 84). Interview: Nigel Williamson
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The Who have paid tribute to their former manager Chris Stamp, who died of cancer on Saturday (24 November), aged 70.
At a concert in Detroit on Saturday night, Roger Daltrey paid tribute to Stamp, calling him a man "without whom we wouldn't be the band we were," Billboard reports. He added: "Chris, we can never thank you enough - well, I can't, for what you brought to my life".
The new issue of Uncut, out today, features Bruce Springsteen, The Black Keys, Bryan Ferry and the Uncut review of 2012.
Bruce Springsteen is on the cover, and inside we catch up with The Boss live in Pittsburgh and tell the story of his incredible year – including Wrecking Ball, his longest ever show and that cut-off Paul McCartney duet…
Oscar-nominated filmmaker Lee Daniels is in talks to direct a Janis Joplin biopic starring Amy Adams.
Adams became attached to the project, titled Get It While You Can, back in 2010. Before Adams, Renee Zellweger had been lined up to play Joplin.
This month’s issue of Uncut (September 2012, Take 184) features Joe Strummer on the cover – inside is an in-depth exploration of his secret history, after The Clash split up to his redemption in the late ’90s. To complement this, our archive feature this week finds Strummer looking at the demise of The Clash – from their epic Sandinista! album to their bitter disintegration. This excerpt is taken from a longer piece in the September 1999 (Take 28) issue of Uncut. Words: Gavin Martin
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“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.
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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