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Independent record shop sales up 44 per cent thanks to vinyl boost

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Independent record shop sales up 44 per cent thanks to vinyl boost
Independent record shops sales soared by 44 per cent in the first half of 2013 compared with the same period in 2012. According to an analysis of Official Charts Company data by the Entertainment Retailers Association, indies have seen a huge increase in sales, despite an overall decline in the sa...

Independent record shops sales soared by 44 per cent in the first half of 2013 compared with the same period in 2012.

According to an analysis of Official Charts Company data by the Entertainment Retailers Association, indies have seen a huge increase in sales, despite an overall decline in the sale of albums over the same period by 1.5 per cent.

The ERA, which represents music retailers in the UK, says that increased sales of vinyl albums – boosted by Record Store Day – is a key factor to the increase. As previously reported, UK vinyl sales were up 78 per cent in the first quarter of 2013. In 2012, vinyl sales across all music genres surged by 15 per cent to 389,000 copies sold, the highest level since 2004.

Although independent record shops only accounted for 3.2 per cent of the total albums sold over the first six months of 2013, 50 per cent of all vinyl album sold were in indies. Around one in seven albums sold in independent record shops are sold on vinyl, while in major retailers and online, only one in 250 albums sold is on LP.

The biggest selling album through independent stores in the first half of 2013 was David Bowie‘s The Next Day. The album is the 15th biggest selling album of the year, and overall indies accounted for 5 per cent of the album’s sales. Meanwhile, independent shops accounted for 35 per cent of sales for the new Boards Of Canada album Tomorrow’s Harvest and 31 per cent of sales for Savages’ debut Silence Yourself.

The 10 best-selling albums in independent record shops in the first half of 2013 are:

1. ‘The Next Day’, David Bowie

2. ‘Tomorrow’s Harvest’, Boards of Canada

3. ‘Graffiti On The Train’, Stereophonics

4. ‘Random Access Memories’, Daft Punk

5. ‘Anna’, Courteeners

6. ‘Push The Sky Away’, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

7. ‘AMOK’, Atoms For Peace

8. ‘Like Clockwork’, Queens Of The Stone Age

9. ‘Tape Deck Heart’, Frank Turner

10. ‘Trouble Will Find Me’, The National

James Murphy confirms he has finished work on new Arcade Fire album

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James Murphy confirms he has finished work on new Arcade Fire album
James Murphy has said that Arcade Fire's new album has been "the food I eat and the air I breathe" and that he has now finished his work on the record. The band, who teamed up with Murphy to record their forthcoming studio album, will release the new record in October. Speaking to Billboard about ...

James Murphy has said that Arcade Fire’s new album has been “the food I eat and the air I breathe” and that he has now finished his work on the record.

The band, who teamed up with Murphy to record their forthcoming studio album, will release the new record in October.

Speaking to Billboard about his role in making the album with the band, Murphy said: “Producing is always really hard, and you can never tell who’s going to be easy to get along with and who’s going to be difficult. So I wasn’t sure what was going to be the case, since there’s a lot of them. I figured, they’re all super talented, do they need another dude there with his opinions? It turned out it was really nice, and everyone was amazingly respectful of one another.”

Elaborating further on the album, which was recorded between Murphy’s hometown of New York and Arcade Fire‘s native Montreal, he continued: “When you work on a record you don’t know any of the things around it. So when it comes out I’ll just be like, ‘The Arcade Fire record’s out — oh, right!’ It’s been the food I eat and the air I breathe for a long time now. That happens with my own records. I am officially done with it, we’ve just been passing things back and forth making choices on mixes.”

Earlier this month Murphy spoke to NME about the new Arcade Fire album, which he is helping produce. Quizzed on what it sounds like, Murphy said: “It sounds like Arcade Fire in the way that only Arcade Fire sound like Arcade Fire, you know? It’s really fucking epic. Seriously. I mean, I feel at this point like I’m too close to it to really talk it up and do it justice. You know?”

Arcade Fire announced the news of the record’s release last week by replying to a fan on Twitter who wrote “you’re my favourite”.

Watch Bob Dylan, Jeff Tweedy and Jim James cover The Band’s “The Weight”

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Watch Bob Dylan, Jeff Tweedy and Jim James cover The Band’s “The Weight”
Bob Dylan was joined on stage by Jeff Tweedy and Jim James last night [July 24] for a cover of "The Weight" by The Band. The performance took place on the AmericanaramA tour at Farm Bureau Live, Virginia Beach. You can watch footage of the performance below. This is not the first time The Band's ...

Bob Dylan was joined on stage by Jeff Tweedy and Jim James last night [July 24] for a cover of “The Weight” by The Band.

The performance took place on the AmericanaramA tour at Farm Bureau Live, Virginia Beach.

You can watch footage of the performance below.

This is not the first time The Band‘s presence has been felt on the AmericanaramA tour.

On July 20, at the Comcast Center, Mansfield, Massachusetts, guest opener Ryan Bingham joined My Morning Jacket for a cover of “Don’t Do It” – an arrangement of Marvin Gaye’s “Baby, Don’t You Do It” recorded by The Band.

On July 22, Band keyboardist Garth Hudson joined Wilco at Saratoga PAC in Saratoga Springs, New York, where he played on “California Stars”, The Band-adopted “Long Black Veil”, “Genetic Method” and “Chest Fever”.

Meanwhile, Dylan recently confirmed details of The Bootleg Series, Vol. 10 – Another Self Portrait (1969-1971).

You can read the story of The Band in this month’s Uncut on sale now.

Bob Dylan’s set list for the Virginia Beach show was:

Things Have Changed

Love Sick

High Water (For Charley Patton)

Soon After Midnight

Early Roman Kings

Tangled Up In Blue

Duquesne Whistle

She Belongs To Me

Beyond Here Lies Nothin’

A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall

Blind Willie McTell

Simple Twist Of Fate

Summer Days

The Weight

All Along the Watchtower

Blowin’ In The Wind

Atoms For Peace, London Roundhouse, July 24, 2013

John Mulvey
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Atoms For Peace, London Roundhouse, July 24, 2013

At 7pm on the first night of Atoms For Peace’s London residency, the Amok Drawing Room has already sold out of commemorative mugs. The Enterprise pub across the road from the Roundhouse has been rebranded in expressionist monochrome, and an upstairs room has been upholstered in Stanley Donwood wallpaper, the better to sell exquisite £500 prints, t-shirts screenprinted while-you-wait, and a pointedly apocalyptic jigsaw puzzle. There are 12”s too, great racks of DJ-friendly vinyl that assert, boldly, how Atoms For Peace are embedded in the culture of dance and electronic music. Radiohead shows might still attract a rump of gig-goers who will be frustrated by the band’s focus on their 21st century music. These people do not, one suspects, come too close to Thom Yorke’s extra-curricular activities. Atoms For Peace represent the triumph of his latterday aesthetic, where his music can be finally untethered from those expectations and from the weight of Radiohead’s early legacy. For those of us who only started really warming to Radiohead’s music around the time of “Kid A”, and who believe the band, together and apart, have gone from strength to strength with more or less every subsequent record, this is all good news. A sceptic might perceive Atoms For Peace as either a solo vanity project, or else a supergroup, chiefly thanks to Yorke’s recruitment of Flea, a gifted bassist whose creative brilliance so often comes with the caveat “…even if he is in the Red Hot Chili Peppers.” (Only Flea’s decision to highkick in a sarong hints at that band’s more dubious charms.) As “Before Your Very Eyes” kicks into perpetual motion, though, the five members reveal themselves to be, essentially, a kind of ornate pararhythmical unit, with Joey Waronker and Mauro Refosco plotting endless percussion circles around one another, and Flea finding elaborate basslines that carry a lot of melodic as well as rhythmic thrust. There’s a weird parallel with Phil Lesh at times, albeit immeasurably funkier, in the way Flea takes charge of the spaces where, in more orthodox rock bands, lead guitar and keyboard lines might sit more prominently. In Atoms For Peace, Yorke’s voice (all those epically wrought sighs and extended vowels) and guitar, and Nigel Godrich’s contributions on keyboards and guitar, mostly provide slow, ebbing melodies that slide over each other, ceding the foreground to a barrage of rhythmic intricacies. If “Amok”’s antecedents often suggested themselves to be the likes of Caribou and Four Tet, many of these songs tonight – “Default”, say, or “Amok” itself – have a dynamic that more closely resembles an older Yorke touchstone, Autechre. It’s a structural comparison rather than a precise one, of course. If Autechre derived their beat science from hip hop and the electronic avant-garde, the roots of Atoms For Peace’s jitter and throb seem to be as much a sort of extrapolated worldbeat, of global learning being channelled and accelerated into a relentless techno cascade. So “Before Your Very Eyes” and “Stuck Together Pieces” are a sort of hyperdetailed Afrobeat – though it’s unclear whether a washboard, which is what Refosco seems to be playing on the latter – ever got much of a workout at The Shrine. Refosco’s instrumental choices often provide a clue as to at least part of the influences on specific tracks. During “Unless”, he wanders into Flea’s performance space with a drum, for what might be a kind of batucada workout. For “The Clock”, he has a stringed gourd which brisk internet research possibly identifies as a berimbau, another hint of his Brazilian roots – though the song itself has a faint North African feel to it, too. “The Clock” is one of six songs from “The Eraser” that are treated to the full band upgrade, austere digitalia given a skittering new complexity. The transition works brilliantly for the most part: “Cymbal Rush” and “Black Swan”, which close the main set and the encores respectively, are two of the show’s highlights; and only “Harrowdown Hill” misfires slightly, overdriven to the point where Yorke’s vocal line becomes frayed and strained, the whole construct a little too fragile to withstand the battering. It’s a solitary miscalculation, though. In general, Yorke’s gauzy melodies prove a lot more robust than they first appear, and if the percussive assault visited upon Satie-esque piano figures in “Cymbal Rush” and “Ingenue” on one level seem perverse – a calculated attempt to undermine Radiohead’s sombre prettiness, perhaps – it’s also immediately, pulverisingly effective. Ironically, the most becalmed part of a frantic night comes when Yorke exhumes his first (if memory serves) public negotiation with electronica; “Rabbit In Your Headlights”, a DJ Shadow collaboration from Unkle’s bloated and mostly ghastly “Psyence Fiction” album (1998). Out of its original context, “Rabbit…” turns out to be a decent song, even if it feels like Yorke is rootling around to find anything but Radiohead songs to play (One piece of Radiohead marginalia, “Paperbag Writer”, has found its way into some Atoms For Peace gigs, though it’s been literally struck off tonight’s setlist). There are also two fine songs from the 2009 solo single, “The Hollow Earth” and “Feeling Pulled Apart By Horses”, the latter recalling – probably thanks to the massive bassline of Flea, a noted post-punk/punk-funk scholar – 23 Skidoo. Before they play “Feeling…”, Yorke makes a droll aside, the gist of which is that they’re going to make a “workout video”. The prospect seems reasonable, actually, given that Yorke, with topknot, vest and taut demeanour, looks very much like a yoga instructor (a bikram specialist, maybe, given the venue temperature). Yorke’s interpretive dancing has sometimes seemed an odd, even uncomfortable mixture of the self-conscious and the abandoned, but tonight it feels more forceful and necessary; an essential physical response to the orchestrated frenzy of the band’s music. It also reflects a sense that Atoms For Peace’s music is exhilarating and liberating, while always following its own fastidious set of rules – even when those rules are being processed with an astonishing, breakneck fluidity. At the centre of it all, Yorke has every reason to feel proud and fulfilled: a pan-global techno yogi, achieving transcendence through discipline. Follow me on Twitter: www.twitter.com/JohnRMulvey SETLIST 1. BEFORE YOUR VERY EYES 2. DEFAULT 3. THE CLOCK 4. INGENUE 5. STUCK TOGETHER PIECES 6. UNLESS 7. AND IT RAINED ALL NIGHT 8. HARROWDOWN HILL 9. DROPPED 10. CYMBAL RUSH # 11. THE HOLLOW EARTH 12. FEELING PULLED APART BY HORSES 13. RABBIT IN YOUR HEADLIGHTS 14. AMOK # 15. ATOMS FOR PEACE 16. BLACK SWAN

At 7pm on the first night of Atoms For Peace’s London residency, the Amok Drawing Room has already sold out of commemorative mugs. The Enterprise pub across the road from the Roundhouse has been rebranded in expressionist monochrome, and an upstairs room has been upholstered in Stanley Donwood wallpaper, the better to sell exquisite £500 prints, t-shirts screenprinted while-you-wait, and a pointedly apocalyptic jigsaw puzzle.

There are 12”s too, great racks of DJ-friendly vinyl that assert, boldly, how Atoms For Peace are embedded in the culture of dance and electronic music. Radiohead shows might still attract a rump of gig-goers who will be frustrated by the band’s focus on their 21st century music. These people do not, one suspects, come too close to Thom Yorke’s extra-curricular activities. Atoms For Peace represent the triumph of his latterday aesthetic, where his music can be finally untethered from those expectations and from the weight of Radiohead’s early legacy.

For those of us who only started really warming to Radiohead’s music around the time of “Kid A”, and who believe the band, together and apart, have gone from strength to strength with more or less every subsequent record, this is all good news. A sceptic might perceive Atoms For Peace as either a solo vanity project, or else a supergroup, chiefly thanks to Yorke’s recruitment of Flea, a gifted bassist whose creative brilliance so often comes with the caveat “…even if he is in the Red Hot Chili Peppers.” (Only Flea’s decision to highkick in a sarong hints at that band’s more dubious charms.)

As “Before Your Very Eyes” kicks into perpetual motion, though, the five members reveal themselves to be, essentially, a kind of ornate pararhythmical unit, with Joey Waronker and Mauro Refosco plotting endless percussion circles around one another, and Flea finding elaborate basslines that carry a lot of melodic as well as rhythmic thrust. There’s a weird parallel with Phil Lesh at times, albeit immeasurably funkier, in the way Flea takes charge of the spaces where, in more orthodox rock bands, lead guitar and keyboard lines might sit more prominently.

In Atoms For Peace, Yorke’s voice (all those epically wrought sighs and extended vowels) and guitar, and Nigel Godrich’s contributions on keyboards and guitar, mostly provide slow, ebbing melodies that slide over each other, ceding the foreground to a barrage of rhythmic intricacies. If “Amok”’s antecedents often suggested themselves to be the likes of Caribou and Four Tet, many of these songs tonight – “Default”, say, or “Amok” itself – have a dynamic that more closely resembles an older Yorke touchstone, Autechre.

It’s a structural comparison rather than a precise one, of course. If Autechre derived their beat science from hip hop and the electronic avant-garde, the roots of Atoms For Peace’s jitter and throb seem to be as much a sort of extrapolated worldbeat, of global learning being channelled and accelerated into a relentless techno cascade. So “Before Your Very Eyes” and “Stuck Together Pieces” are a sort of hyperdetailed Afrobeat – though it’s unclear whether a washboard, which is what Refosco seems to be playing on the latter – ever got much of a workout at The Shrine.

Refosco’s instrumental choices often provide a clue as to at least part of the influences on specific tracks. During “Unless”, he wanders into Flea’s performance space with a drum, for what might be a kind of batucada workout. For “The Clock”, he has a stringed gourd which brisk internet research possibly identifies as a berimbau, another hint of his Brazilian roots – though the song itself has a faint North African feel to it, too.

“The Clock” is one of six songs from “The Eraser” that are treated to the full band upgrade, austere digitalia given a skittering new complexity. The transition works brilliantly for the most part: “Cymbal Rush” and “Black Swan”, which close the main set and the encores respectively, are two of the show’s highlights; and only “Harrowdown Hill” misfires slightly, overdriven to the point where Yorke’s vocal line becomes frayed and strained, the whole construct a little too fragile to withstand the battering.

It’s a solitary miscalculation, though. In general, Yorke’s gauzy melodies prove a lot more robust than they first appear, and if the percussive assault visited upon Satie-esque piano figures in “Cymbal Rush” and “Ingenue” on one level seem perverse – a calculated attempt to undermine Radiohead’s sombre prettiness, perhaps – it’s also immediately, pulverisingly effective.

Ironically, the most becalmed part of a frantic night comes when Yorke exhumes his first (if memory serves) public negotiation with electronica; “Rabbit In Your Headlights”, a DJ Shadow collaboration from Unkle’s bloated and mostly ghastly “Psyence Fiction” album (1998). Out of its original context, “Rabbit…” turns out to be a decent song, even if it feels like Yorke is rootling around to find anything but Radiohead songs to play (One piece of Radiohead marginalia, “Paperbag Writer”, has found its way into some Atoms For Peace gigs, though it’s been literally struck off tonight’s setlist). There are also two fine songs from the 2009 solo single, “The Hollow Earth” and “Feeling Pulled Apart By Horses”, the latter recalling – probably thanks to the massive bassline of Flea, a noted post-punk/punk-funk scholar – 23 Skidoo.

Before they play “Feeling…”, Yorke makes a droll aside, the gist of which is that they’re going to make a “workout video”. The prospect seems reasonable, actually, given that Yorke, with topknot, vest and taut demeanour, looks very much like a yoga instructor (a bikram specialist, maybe, given the venue temperature). Yorke’s interpretive dancing has sometimes seemed an odd, even uncomfortable mixture of the self-conscious and the abandoned, but tonight it feels more forceful and necessary; an essential physical response to the orchestrated frenzy of the band’s music.

It also reflects a sense that Atoms For Peace’s music is exhilarating and liberating, while always following its own fastidious set of rules – even when those rules are being processed with an astonishing, breakneck fluidity. At the centre of it all, Yorke has every reason to feel proud and fulfilled: a pan-global techno yogi, achieving transcendence through discipline.

Follow me on Twitter: www.twitter.com/JohnRMulvey

SETLIST

1. BEFORE YOUR VERY EYES

2. DEFAULT

3. THE CLOCK

4. INGENUE

5. STUCK TOGETHER PIECES

6. UNLESS

7. AND IT RAINED ALL NIGHT

8. HARROWDOWN HILL

9. DROPPED

10. CYMBAL RUSH

#

11. THE HOLLOW EARTH

12. FEELING PULLED APART BY HORSES

13. RABBIT IN YOUR HEADLIGHTS

14. AMOK

#

15. ATOMS FOR PEACE

16. BLACK SWAN

First look – Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa

Michael Bonner
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First look – Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa

For Steve Coogan, Alan Partridge’s big screen debut represents a pivotal moment in the actor’s relationship with his most famous creation. You sense that Coogan has been trying to escape Alan's gravitational pull for some years now, and not always successfully. From the range of characters he presented in Coogan’s Run – his first attempt to extend his repertoire after the success of Knowing Me, Knowing You – the most memorable was regional salesman Gareth Cheeseman (best line: “A wank, I think”), essentially a Partridge clone. Tony Ferrino, The Parole Office and Dr Terrible’s House Of Horror were all equally unsuccessful attempts to move Coogan’s career out of Norwich’s finest Travelodges. Critically, they just weren’t funny. It was only really when he worked with Michael Winterbottom for the first time, in 24 Hour Party People, that Coogan found a way to move forward – his other collaborations with the director on A Cock And Bull Story and The Trip numbering among his career highs. But as the box office failure of yet another non-Partridge project (this year’s enjoyable Paul Raymond biopic The Look Of Love, also for Winterbottom) proved, audiences find it difficult to separate Coogan from Alan. So is Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa a testimony to Alan timelessness, or an admission that Coogan will never manage to shake off the character? In many respects, Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa feels very much like a straight continuation of the TV series. Alan is unchanged by the upgrade to the big screen: as ever, what drives the film are his grotesque and clumsy attempts to further his career. Where perhaps the film doesn’t quite work is moving Alan into what you might loosely term a “real world” situation. For the most part, Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa takes place in the offices of North Norfolk Digital, where Alan currently broadcasts his Mid-Morning Matters show. As Alan’s co-creator Armando Iannucci explained to me recently, “The key to Alan is keeping his attitude and his world small, even though we’re on a big screen.” As the film opens, we find Alan moithering over predictable concerns – “Which is the worst monger?” he asks listeners. “Fish, iron, rumour or war?” But North Norfolk Digital has been taken over, its core brand values reimagined; it has been renamed Shape and given a particularly meaningless new tag-line: “The way you want it to be”. This leads to presenter Pat Farrell, who’s been sacked in the takeover, laying armed siege to the station’s offices, holding a group of hostages to randsom. Alan, inexplicably, finds himself liaising between the police and Pat. (For the record, Alan’s favourite siege is the Iranian embassy). What follows is mostly very funny, in particular the jaw-dropping awfulness of Alan’s attempts to use his role as hostage negotiator to his own ends. Fans of the show will be pleased to see the return of Alan’s long-suffering assistant Lynne as well as Geordie Michael and rival DJ Dave Clifton. I remember, ahead of the release of In The Loop, discussing with Armando Iannucci the problems a showrunner might encounter attempting to transform a successful TV sitcom into a full length feature film. We both had grim memories of films like Holiday On The Buses and Are You Being Served?, which relocated the action from their natural setting to - traditionally - a poorly constructed holiday resort in Spain, where many misunderstandings regarding language, diet and sex would inevitably follow. For the record, it's worth pointing out that Iannucci and the rest of the Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa writers know their geographical limits. Thus it is, that the furthest Alan travels during the course of this film is the pier at Cromer. Follow me on Twitter @MichaelBonner.

For Steve Coogan, Alan Partridge’s big screen debut represents a pivotal moment in the actor’s relationship with his most famous creation.

You sense that Coogan has been trying to escape Alan’s gravitational pull for some years now, and not always successfully. From the range of characters he presented in Coogan’s Run – his first attempt to extend his repertoire after the success of Knowing Me, Knowing You – the most memorable was regional salesman Gareth Cheeseman (best line: “A wank, I think”), essentially a Partridge clone.

Tony Ferrino, The Parole Office and Dr Terrible’s House Of Horror were all equally unsuccessful attempts to move Coogan’s career out of Norwich’s finest Travelodges. Critically, they just weren’t funny. It was only really when he worked with Michael Winterbottom for the first time, in 24 Hour Party People, that Coogan found a way to move forward – his other collaborations with the director on A Cock And Bull Story and The Trip numbering among his career highs.

But as the box office failure of yet another non-Partridge project (this year’s enjoyable Paul Raymond biopic The Look Of Love, also for Winterbottom) proved, audiences find it difficult to separate Coogan from Alan. So is Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa a testimony to Alan timelessness, or an admission that Coogan will never manage to shake off the character?

In many respects, Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa feels very much like a straight continuation of the TV series. Alan is unchanged by the upgrade to the big screen: as ever, what drives the film are his grotesque and clumsy attempts to further his career. Where perhaps the film doesn’t quite work is moving Alan into what you might loosely term a “real world” situation. For the most part, Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa takes place in the offices of North Norfolk Digital, where Alan currently broadcasts his Mid-Morning Matters show. As Alan’s co-creator Armando Iannucci explained to me recently, “The key to Alan is keeping his attitude and his world small, even though we’re on a big screen.”

As the film opens, we find Alan moithering over predictable concerns – “Which is the worst monger?” he asks listeners. “Fish, iron, rumour or war?” But North Norfolk Digital has been taken over, its core brand values reimagined; it has been renamed Shape and given a particularly meaningless new tag-line: “The way you want it to be”. This leads to presenter Pat Farrell, who’s been sacked in the takeover, laying armed siege to the station’s offices, holding a group of hostages to randsom. Alan, inexplicably, finds himself liaising between the police and Pat. (For the record, Alan’s favourite siege is the Iranian embassy). What follows is mostly very funny, in particular the jaw-dropping awfulness of Alan’s attempts to use his role as hostage negotiator to his own ends. Fans of the show will be pleased to see the return of Alan’s long-suffering assistant Lynne as well as Geordie Michael and rival DJ Dave Clifton.

I remember, ahead of the release of In The Loop, discussing with Armando Iannucci the problems a showrunner might encounter attempting to transform a successful TV sitcom into a full length feature film. We both had grim memories of films like Holiday On The Buses and Are You Being Served?, which relocated the action from their natural setting to – traditionally – a poorly constructed holiday resort in Spain, where many misunderstandings regarding language, diet and sex would inevitably follow. For the record, it’s worth pointing out that Iannucci and the rest of the Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa writers know their geographical limits. Thus it is, that the furthest Alan travels during the course of this film is the pier at Cromer.

Follow me on Twitter @MichaelBonner.

Bobby Whitlock – The Bobby Whitlock Story: Where There’s A Will, There’s A Way

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Bobby Whitlock – The Bobby Whitlock Story: Where There’s A Will, There’s A Way

It’s not only who you know, it’s what you know, too... Bobby Whitlock’s story is a classic rock’n’roll saga about a guy who was in the right place at the right time and made the most of it. The son of a preacher man, the Memphis native would sneak out of his father’s services to revel in the ecstatic sounds of the choir at a nearby black church. Already an accomplished pianist by this teens, Whitlock became a fixture at Stax studios, where he learned the nuances of R&B from the masters, released a couple of singles and hung with Steve Cropper and Duck Dunn. When the latter brought Delaney and Bonnie Bramlett to Stax to record what would be their first album, Home, for the label, early in 1969, Whitlock was enlisted as the first of Delaney & Bonnie’s Friends. Later that year, Eric Clapton became so taken with the band that he brought them to the UK for a tour, becoming an unofficial band member and persuading George Harrison to jump on board as well. Following the run of dates (documented on 1970’s On Tour With Eric Clapton), the whole crew contributed to Clapton’s self-titled first solo album, after which D&B&F splintered, several of them joining Mad Dogs and Englishmen while Clapton grabbed Whitlock, bassist Carl Radle and drummer Jim Gordon and formed Derek And The Dominos. After playing on George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass, they headed to Miami and recorded the one-off masterpiece Layla And Other Assorted Love Songs, Whitlock co-writing and harmonizing with Clapton as well as playing keys. Booking studio time at London’s Olympic Studios in April 1972, the month before Derek And The Dominos were scheduled to record their second album at the facility, Whitlock cut his self-titled solo debut (which shares a single disc with follow-up Raw Velvet on this reissue) in front of a mind-blowing studio band: Clapton and Harrison on guitars, Gordon on drums and Beatles buddy Klaus Voormann on bass, with Andy Johns co-producing. Fronting a band for the first time, the expat Southerner unleashes his rich, fervent, gospel-rooted baritone on the soulful rockers “Where There’s A Will” (written with Bonnie Bramlett) and the made-up-on-the-spot “Back In My Life Again”. He’s even more striking as an R&B balladeer on tracks like “A Game Called Life” (featuring a flute solo by Traffic’s Chris Wood) and “The Scenery Has Slowly Changed”, which recaptures the dusky melancholy of his Layla closer “Thorn Tree In The Garden”. After finishing the album in LA, Whitlock turned it in to his label, Atlantic, which rejected it despite the record’s all-star cast. It was picked up and released in the US by ABC Dunhill but sank without a trace. That wasn’t the only disappointment for Whitlock, as Clapton pulled the plug on the sessions for the second Dominos LP. Determined to turn around his recent run of bad luck, Whitlock formed a new band in LA with lead guitarist Rick Vito (who’d be on the Stones’ shortlist following the departure of Mick Taylor and would later briefly replace Lindsey Buckingham in Fleetwood Mac), bassist Keith Ellis and drummer David Poncher, and went right back into the studio with Stones producer Jimmy Miller. They emerged with Raw Velvet, a far more uptempo record overall than its predecessor, featuring the guitar interaction of Vito on lead and Whitlock on rhythm. They revisit Layla with a blistering “Tell The Truth” and summon up the intensity of the Dominos on “Write You A Letter” and “If You Ever”, all featuring jaw-dropping solos from Vito, who also plays a rhapsodic, Clapton-esque slide on the yearning “Dearest I Wonder”. Slowhand himself, Gordon and the Bramletts appear on Delaney and Mac Davis’ rousing “Hello LA, Bye Bye Birmingham”, which sounds like an outtake from On Tour. The album closes with “Start All Over”, Whitlock wailing on Leslie guitar and singing his heart out, though hardly anyone would hear him do so. He had no choice but to start all over following his brush with fame – playing music was the only thing he knew how to do, and he’s continued making records in semi-obscurity over the decades. But for those three remarkable years, Bobby Whitlock was swept up in history, serving as an essential, if unsung, participant in its making. Bud Scoppa

It’s not only who you know, it’s what you know, too…

Bobby Whitlock’s story is a classic rock’n’roll saga about a guy who was in the right place at the right time and made the most of it. The son of a preacher man, the Memphis native would sneak out of his father’s services to revel in the ecstatic sounds of the choir at a nearby black church. Already an accomplished pianist by this teens, Whitlock became a fixture at Stax studios, where he learned the nuances of R&B from the masters, released a couple of singles and hung with Steve Cropper and Duck Dunn. When the latter brought Delaney and Bonnie Bramlett to Stax to record what would be their first album, Home, for the label, early in 1969, Whitlock was enlisted as the first of Delaney & Bonnie’s Friends.

Later that year, Eric Clapton became so taken with the band that he brought them to the UK for a tour, becoming an unofficial band member and persuading George Harrison to jump on board as well. Following the run of dates (documented on 1970’s On Tour With Eric Clapton), the whole crew contributed to Clapton’s self-titled first solo album, after which D&B&F splintered, several of them joining Mad Dogs and Englishmen while Clapton grabbed Whitlock, bassist Carl Radle and drummer Jim Gordon and formed Derek And The Dominos. After playing on George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass, they headed to Miami and recorded the one-off masterpiece Layla And Other Assorted Love Songs, Whitlock co-writing and harmonizing with Clapton as well as playing keys.

Booking studio time at London’s Olympic Studios in April 1972, the month before Derek And The Dominos were scheduled to record their second album at the facility, Whitlock cut his self-titled solo debut (which shares a single disc with follow-up Raw Velvet on this reissue) in front of a mind-blowing studio band: Clapton and Harrison on guitars, Gordon on drums and Beatles buddy Klaus Voormann on bass, with Andy Johns co-producing. Fronting a band for the first time, the expat Southerner unleashes his rich, fervent, gospel-rooted baritone on the soulful rockers “Where There’s A Will” (written with Bonnie Bramlett) and the made-up-on-the-spot “Back In My Life Again”. He’s even more striking as an R&B balladeer on tracks like “A Game Called Life” (featuring a flute solo by Traffic’s Chris Wood) and “The Scenery Has Slowly Changed”, which recaptures the dusky melancholy of his Layla closer “Thorn Tree In The Garden”. After finishing the album in LA, Whitlock turned it in to his label, Atlantic, which rejected it despite the record’s all-star cast. It was picked up and released in the US by ABC Dunhill but sank without a trace.

That wasn’t the only disappointment for Whitlock, as Clapton pulled the plug on the sessions for the second Dominos LP. Determined to turn around his recent run of bad luck, Whitlock formed a new band in LA with lead guitarist Rick Vito (who’d be on the Stones’ shortlist following the departure of Mick Taylor and would later briefly replace Lindsey Buckingham in Fleetwood Mac), bassist Keith Ellis and drummer David Poncher, and went right back into the studio with Stones producer Jimmy Miller. They emerged with Raw Velvet, a far more uptempo record overall than its predecessor, featuring the guitar interaction of Vito on lead and Whitlock on rhythm. They revisit Layla with a blistering “Tell The Truth” and summon up the intensity of the Dominos on “Write You A Letter” and “If You Ever”, all featuring jaw-dropping solos from Vito, who also plays a rhapsodic, Clapton-esque slide on the yearning “Dearest I Wonder”. Slowhand himself, Gordon and the Bramletts appear on Delaney and Mac Davis’ rousing “Hello LA, Bye Bye Birmingham”, which sounds like an outtake from On Tour. The album closes with “Start All Over”, Whitlock wailing on Leslie guitar and singing his heart out, though hardly anyone would hear him do so.

He had no choice but to start all over following his brush with fame – playing music was the only thing he knew how to do, and he’s continued making records in semi-obscurity over the decades. But for those three remarkable years, Bobby Whitlock was swept up in history, serving as an essential, if unsung, participant in its making.

Bud Scoppa

First picture released of Andre 3000 as Jimi Hendrix in All Is By My Side biopic

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First picture released of Andre 3000 as Jimi Hendrix in All Is By My Side biopic

The first picture of Andre 3000 as Jimi Hendrix in the forthcoming biopic has been released. The picture is taken from the website for the Toronto International Film Festival, where the biopic - titled All Is By My Side - will receive its world premiere in September. The festival has also released a new synopsis for the biopic. It reads: "Jimmy James, an unknown backup guitarist, left New York City for London, England in 1966. A year later he returned — as Jimi Hendrix. All Is By My Side brings authenticity and poignancy to the story of the man behind the legend, and of the people who loved and inspired him." All Is By My Side will not feature any songs recorded or composed by Hendrix himself, as the late guitarist's estate declined permission. Instead, the film will see Andre 3000 perform songs by The Beatles and Muddy Waters that Hendrix himself covered in the '60s. The supporting cast includes Hayley Atwell, Imogen Poots, Burn Gorman and Ashley Charles, who plays a young Keith Richards. Although All Is By My Side focuses on Hendrix's period in England over 1966-7, director John Ridley shot the film in Wicklow, Ireland last summer. A UK release date has yet to be announced.

The first picture of Andre 3000 as Jimi Hendrix in the forthcoming biopic has been released.

The picture is taken from the website for the Toronto International Film Festival, where the biopic – titled All Is By My Side – will receive its world premiere in September. The festival has also released a new synopsis for the biopic.

It reads: “Jimmy James, an unknown backup guitarist, left New York City for London, England in 1966. A year later he returned — as Jimi Hendrix. All Is By My Side brings authenticity and poignancy to the story of the man behind the legend, and of the people who loved and inspired him.”

All Is By My Side will not feature any songs recorded or composed by Hendrix himself, as the late guitarist’s estate declined permission. Instead, the film will see Andre 3000 perform songs by The Beatles and Muddy Waters that Hendrix himself covered in the ’60s.

The supporting cast includes Hayley Atwell, Imogen Poots, Burn Gorman and Ashley Charles, who plays a young Keith Richards. Although All Is By My Side focuses on Hendrix’s period in England over 1966-7, director John Ridley shot the film in Wicklow, Ireland last summer. A UK release date has yet to be announced.

Prefab Sprout announce long-awaited new album

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Prefab Sprout announce long-awaited new album
Prefab Sprout release a new album, Crimson/Red, on October 7. The band's first record of new material for over a decade, the album was conceived, written and recorded by Paddy McAloon over the last 18 months – McAloon plays all the instruments on the recording. Subjects tackled on the album in...

Prefab Sprout release a new album, Crimson/Red, on October 7.

The band’s first record of new material for over a decade, the album was conceived, written and recorded by Paddy McAloon over the last 18 months – McAloon plays all the instruments on the recording.

Subjects tackled on the album include Bob Dylan on “Mysterious”, songwriting on “The Best Jewel Thief In The World” and, on “The Songs Of Danny Galway”, a 1991 meeting between McAloon and Jimmy Webb.

The group rose to prominence with their mid-’80s albums Swoon, Steve McQueen and From Langley Park To Memphis, but have released no genuinely new material since 2001’s The Gunman And Other Stories.

The tracklisting for Crimson/Red is:

The Best Jewel Thief In The World

The List Of Impossible Things

Adolescence

Grief Built The Taj Mahal

Devil Came A Calling

Billy

The Dreamer

The Songs Of Danny Galway

The Old Magician

Mysterious

Michael Eavis on David Bowie playing Glastonbury: “I’m sure he could come back again”

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Michael Eavis on David Bowie playing Glastonbury: “I’m sure he could come back again”

Michael Eavis has said that he is sure David Bowie could headline Glastonbury again. The singer is being strongly tipped to play the 2014 event, having previously headlined the festival in 1971 and 2000. Speaking to the Central Somerset Gazette, Eavis said: "The younger ones sort out most of the music, but I like to book the headline names...I can't tell you at the moment who that will be as we're still talking to people. David's done it a couple of times before but I'm sure he could come back again." Last month, Eavis confirmed that he has already booked three headliners for next year's festival, but refused to name any, saying that the bands would only be announced once tickets were on sale. Eavis said that picking headliners is difficult because "there aren't many left...There were maybe a dozen headliner potentials so we’re running out of headliners but we've got the last three for next year". This year's event was headlined by Arctic Monkeys, The Rolling Stones and Mumford & Sons. Last week (July 16), David Bowie unveiled the new video for his track 'Valentine's Day'. The song is the fourth single from his album 'The Next Day', which was released on March 8. It was his first album of new material since 2003's 'Reality'.

Michael Eavis has said that he is sure David Bowie could headline Glastonbury again.

The singer is being strongly tipped to play the 2014 event, having previously headlined the festival in 1971 and 2000.

Speaking to the Central Somerset Gazette, Eavis said: “The younger ones sort out most of the music, but I like to book the headline names…I can’t tell you at the moment who that will be as we’re still talking to people. David’s done it a couple of times before but I’m sure he could come back again.”

Last month, Eavis confirmed that he has already booked three headliners for next year’s festival, but refused to name any, saying that the bands would only be announced once tickets were on sale. Eavis said that picking headliners is difficult because “there aren’t many left…There were maybe a dozen headliner potentials so we’re running out of headliners but we’ve got the last three for next year”. This year’s event was headlined by Arctic Monkeys, The Rolling Stones and Mumford & Sons.

Last week (July 16), David Bowie unveiled the new video for his track ‘Valentine’s Day’. The song is the fourth single from his album ‘The Next Day’, which was released on March 8. It was his first album of new material since 2003’s ‘Reality’.

Channel 4 to air Björk and David Attenborough documentary this Saturday (July 27)

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Channel 4 to air Björk and David Attenborough documentary this Saturday (July 27)

The nature documentary uniting Bjork and legendary broadcaster David Attenborough will be aired on Channel 4 this Saturday (July 27). 'Attenborough And Bjork: The Nature Of Music' looks at the evolution of music, our relationship with music and how technology could impact this relationship in the future, and will be shown on Channel 4 at 7pm. It airs as part of Channel 4's Mad4Music season. Scroll down for a short clip of the film. Bjork's multimedia 'Biophilia' project will feature strongly in the film, and Attenborough will show how music exists in the natural world, using footage of the lyre bird, reed warbler and blue whales. The film's executive producer, Lucas Ochoa, has said of the documentary: "Born from Björk's revolutionary music project [2011's 'Biophilia'], we are thrilled to be able to document this incredible journey with her; she is undeniably one of the most iconic figures in popular culture and truly pushes boundaries like no other artist does." Bjork and Attenborough first collaborated in 2011 when the BBC presenter and naturalist provided an introduction and narration to Bjork's three-week Manchester International Festival residency. Bjork has previously declared her admiration for Attenborough in a Rolling Stone interview, describing him as "my rock star". http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTZXAgPJnhs

The nature documentary uniting Bjork and legendary broadcaster David Attenborough will be aired on Channel 4 this Saturday (July 27).

‘Attenborough And Bjork: The Nature Of Music’ looks at the evolution of music, our relationship with music and how technology could impact this relationship in the future, and will be shown on Channel 4 at 7pm. It airs as part of Channel 4’s Mad4Music season. Scroll down for a short clip of the film.

Bjork’s multimedia ‘Biophilia’ project will feature strongly in the film, and Attenborough will show how music exists in the natural world, using footage of the lyre bird, reed warbler and blue whales.

The film’s executive producer, Lucas Ochoa, has said of the documentary: “Born from Björk’s revolutionary music project [2011’s ‘Biophilia’], we are thrilled to be able to document this incredible journey with her; she is undeniably one of the most iconic figures in popular culture and truly pushes boundaries like no other artist does.”

Bjork and Attenborough first collaborated in 2011 when the BBC presenter and naturalist provided an introduction and narration to Bjork’s three-week Manchester International Festival residency. Bjork has previously declared her admiration for Attenborough in a Rolling Stone interview, describing him as “my rock star”.

The 28th Uncut Playlist Of 2013

John Mulvey
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The 28th Uncut Playlist Of 2013

Gearing up for the Atoms For Peace show tonight with this lot: please note (and in some cases listen to) new Forest Swords, Feral Ohms (another Ethan Miller band, this one very much in the Comets On Fire zone) and a reissue for Robbie Basho’s long-unavailable first Windham Hill album. The Desert Heat record sounds better with every play, too… Follow me on Twitter: www.twitter.com/JohnRMulvey 1 Forest Swords – Excavations (Tri Angle) 2 Mazzy Star – Seasons Of Your Day (Rhymes Of An Hour) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEf1Qq6upEU 3 Elvis Costello & The Roots – Wise Up Ghost (Blue Note) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lfhafgiONU 4 5 Toiling Midgets – Live At The Old Waldorf, July 21, 1982 (Ektro) 6 Tony Joe White – Hoodoo (Yeproc) 7 Mark Kozelek (And Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy) - I Can’t Live Without My Mother’s Love (Caldo Verde) Listen here… 8 Manic Street Preachers – Rewind The Film (Columbia) 9 Oneohtrix Point Never – R Plus Seven (Warp) 10 Robbie Basho – Visions Of The Country (Gnomelife) 11 Thom Yorke – The Eraser (XL) 12 Quasi – Mole City (Domino) 13 Feral Ohms – Living Junkyard (Valley King) 14 Wooden Wand & The World War IV - Wooden Wand & The World War IV (Three Lobed Recordings) 15 Tim Hecker – Virgins (Kranky) 16 Various Artists – Inside Llewyn Davis: Original Soundtrack Recording (Nonesuch) 17 Promised Land Sound - Promised Land Sound (Paradise Of Bachelors) 18 Danny Paul Grody – Between Two Worlds (Three Lobed Recordings) 19 The Groundhogs – Split (Liberty) 20 Desert Heat – Cat Mask At Huggie Temple (MIE Music) 21 Sidi Touré – Alafia (Thrill Jockey)

Gearing up for the Atoms For Peace show tonight with this lot: please note (and in some cases listen to) new Forest Swords, Feral Ohms (another Ethan Miller band, this one very much in the Comets On Fire zone) and a reissue for Robbie Basho’s long-unavailable first Windham Hill album. The Desert Heat record sounds better with every play, too…

Follow me on Twitter: www.twitter.com/JohnRMulvey

1 Forest Swords – Excavations (Tri Angle)

2 Mazzy Star – Seasons Of Your Day (Rhymes Of An Hour)

3 Elvis Costello & The Roots – Wise Up Ghost (Blue Note)

4

5 Toiling Midgets – Live At The Old Waldorf, July 21, 1982 (Ektro)

6 Tony Joe White – Hoodoo (Yeproc)

7 Mark Kozelek (And Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy) – I Can’t Live Without My Mother’s Love (Caldo Verde)

Listen here…

8 Manic Street Preachers – Rewind The Film (Columbia)

9 Oneohtrix Point Never – R Plus Seven (Warp)

10 Robbie Basho – Visions Of The Country (Gnomelife)

11 Thom Yorke – The Eraser (XL)

12 Quasi – Mole City (Domino)

13 Feral Ohms – Living Junkyard (Valley King)

14 Wooden Wand & The World War IV – Wooden Wand & The World War IV (Three Lobed Recordings)

15 Tim Hecker – Virgins (Kranky)

16 Various Artists – Inside Llewyn Davis: Original Soundtrack Recording (Nonesuch)

17 Promised Land Sound – Promised Land Sound (Paradise Of Bachelors)

18 Danny Paul Grody – Between Two Worlds (Three Lobed Recordings)

19 The Groundhogs – Split (Liberty)

20 Desert Heat – Cat Mask At Huggie Temple (MIE Music)

21 Sidi Touré – Alafia (Thrill Jockey)

Van Morrison on Moondance reissue: “I did not endorse this”

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Van Morrison on Moondance reissue: “I did not endorse this”
Van Morrison has spoken out about the forthcoming reissue of his album, Moondance. The album is due for a deluxe reissue on September 30 through Warner Bros. However, in a statement posted on his website, Van Morrison has this to say about the reissue. "Yesterday Warner Brothers stated that 'Van ...

Van Morrison has spoken out about the forthcoming reissue of his album, Moondance.

The album is due for a deluxe reissue on September 30 through Warner Bros.

However, in a statement posted on his website, Van Morrison has this to say about the reissue.

“Yesterday Warner Brothers stated that ‘Van Morrison was reissuing Moondance‘. It is important that people realise that this is factually incorrect. I did not endorse this, it is unauthorised and it has happened behind my back.

“My management company at that time gave this music away 42 years ago and now I feel as though it’s being stolen from me again

“18th July 2013”

Sinatra, Brando, Elvis, James Dean, Buddy Holly, Orson Welles , Miles Davis Alfred Hitchcock and the 1950s in music and movies

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Sinatra, Brando, Elvis, James Dean, Buddy Holly, Orson Welles , Miles Davis Alfred Hitchcock and the 1950s in music and movies

One of the projects we have just finished working on for the next issue of Uncut, on sale next week, was a special promotional feature we have produced in association with hmv, which is newly returned to robust high street health after recent rough times. In other words, hmv’s music and film catalogues music are back to full strength, its stock of classic albums and movies rebuilt. What better moment, then, for hmv in collaboration with Uncut to celebrate ‘six decades of unforgettable entertainment’, with great prices on many albums and films that have defined the times and continue to inspire and excite. In our next issue, we look at 60 of the albums and films that have shaped popular culture and with it our lives, since the 1950s, that decade of dramatic change and upheaval that saw the birth of rock’n’roll, a cool new modernism introduced to jazz and the first fault lines appear in the Hollywood studio system. To preface the appearance of the feature in our next issue, and coincide with the launch this week of hmv’s special offers on thousands of albums and films, I’ve made up my own 50s’ playlist, as follows, just to get, you know, in the mood. Music Frank Sinatra In The Wee Small Hours (1955) Elvis Presley Elvis Presley (1956) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uke1B0FpIZ8 Little Richard Here’s Little Richard (1957) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7pjP_XkK4U Buddy Holly Buddy Holly (1958) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0VPxYAM698 Billie Holiday Lady In Satin (1958) Bo Diddley Bo Diddley (1958) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeZHB3ozglQ Jerry Lee Lewis Jerry Lee Lewis 1958 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yRdDnrB5kM Miles Davis Kinda Blue (1959) Howlin’ Wolf Moanin’ In the Moonlight (1959) Chuck Berry Chuck Berry Is On Top (1959) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLMK9-Ns-TY Films Sunset Boulevard Billy Wilder 1950 On The Waterfront Elia Kazan 1954 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QsNXd57Ppw Night Of The Hunter Charles Laughton 1955 Rebel Without A Cause Nicholas Ray 1955 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpm4NGSWH2I The Searchers John Ford 1956 Invasion of the Body Snatchers Don Siegel 1956 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuL2QwsNeM8 12 Angry Men Sidney Lumet 1957 Touch Of Evil Orson Welles 1958 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yg8MqjoFvy4 Vertigo Alfred Hitchcock 1958 Have a good week.

One of the projects we have just finished working on for the next issue of Uncut, on sale next week, was a special promotional feature we have produced in association with hmv, which is newly returned to robust high street health after recent rough times.

In other words, hmv’s music and film catalogues music are back to full strength, its stock of classic albums and movies rebuilt. What better moment, then, for hmv in collaboration with Uncut to celebrate ‘six decades of unforgettable entertainment’, with great prices on many albums and films that have defined the times and continue to inspire and excite.

In our next issue, we look at 60 of the albums and films that have shaped popular culture and with it our lives, since the 1950s, that decade of dramatic change and upheaval that saw the birth of rock’n’roll, a cool new modernism introduced to jazz and the first fault lines appear in the Hollywood studio system.

To preface the appearance of the feature in our next issue, and coincide with the launch this week of hmv’s special offers on thousands of albums and films, I’ve made up my own 50s’ playlist, as follows, just to get, you know, in the mood.

Music

Frank Sinatra

In The Wee Small Hours

(1955)

Elvis Presley

Elvis Presley

(1956)

Little Richard

Here’s Little Richard

(1957)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7pjP_XkK4U

Buddy Holly

Buddy Holly

(1958)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0VPxYAM698

Billie Holiday

Lady In Satin

(1958)

Bo Diddley

Bo Diddley

(1958)

Jerry Lee Lewis

Jerry Lee Lewis

1958

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yRdDnrB5kM

Miles Davis

Kinda Blue

(1959)

Howlin’ Wolf

Moanin’ In the Moonlight

(1959)

Chuck Berry

Chuck Berry Is On Top (1959)

Films

Sunset Boulevard

Billy Wilder

1950

On The Waterfront

Elia Kazan

1954

Night Of The Hunter

Charles Laughton

1955

Rebel Without A Cause

Nicholas Ray

1955

The Searchers

John Ford

1956

Invasion of the Body Snatchers

Don Siegel

1956

12 Angry Men

Sidney Lumet

1957

Touch Of Evil

Orson Welles

1958

Vertigo

Alfred Hitchcock

1958

Have a good week.

“What did I say that for?”: 25 minutes with Mick Jagger

Michael Bonner
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“What did I say that for?”: 25 minutes with Mick Jagger
Yesterday's news that the Stones have released an album of material drawn from their recent Hyde Park shows reminded me to dust down this interview I did last year with Mick Jagger, which ran in our December 2012 issue. I had 25 minutes with Mick - about as long an interview as he'll do these days -...

Yesterday’s news that the Stones have released an album of material drawn from their recent Hyde Park shows reminded me to dust down this interview I did last year with Mick Jagger, which ran in our December 2012 issue. I had 25 minutes with Mick – about as long an interview as he’ll do these days – ostensibly to chat about Crossfire Hurricane and GRRR!, which were both about to be released. Along the way, we chatted about fighting in train carriages, writing with Keith and whether or not Mick is comfortable watching himself on television…

What did you want to achieve with Crossfire Hurricane?

It’s a big leap of faith choosing the director, ’cos I’m not going to sit there in LA telling him what to do. It’s not my job and I’m too close to the material. If you’re making a film that’s got lots of you in it, you’ve got to let someone contribute their ideas. You’re gonna chip in comments, but not sit there overseeing the minutiae. Obviously, you say, “Oh, I love that bit…” But they always end up being too long at the start and unmanageable, mostly.

The film covers 1962-1981. Why just focus on those years?

We didn’t have enough time. We’d have needed another six months to go up to the present. I was disappointed we weren’t going to do the whole story, but Brett [Morgen, director] was more interested in the early history. If we want to do a second part, then we can.

Keep something in your back pocket for later?

Exactly.

What stories from the ’62-’81 period appealed most to you?

One is how the band made a breakthrough in the early days. How they saw themselves, how people thought they should be positioned, how much was a set-up, how much of that was pure chance. The ups and downs, the successes and failures, the buffets of outside and inside influence. How you made it through to the other side. It’s not an upward graph! It’s got downward bits.

Has watching the film made you nostalgic for a particular period in 
The Rolling Stones’ history?

You have a laugh at some of the footage, but you get over it when you’ve seen it quite a few times. You’ve got to take a step back, which is easy to say but not always easy to do, and start referring to yourself in the third person. “Take that bit of Mick out, put that bit in here, then leave that until later.”

Do you have a favourite “Mick” in the film?

There are some pretty funny Micks in there. The very young one is so odd. One minute, he’s completely there, the next he says something so stupid… I suppose you’re watching yourself getting used to dealing with the media. Mostly, when you see yourself in these clips, you’re either being interviewed or on stage. On stage, you can kind of control things, but it was quite hard dealing with those media people. It’s easy to laugh now and say, “What did I say that for?” But people used to say the stupidest things then, compared to now. It was idiotic…

It was all new territory to bands, back then. Now everyone’s media trained 
to within an inch of their life…

Yes, exactly. So it’s very naïve, the press people trying to be clever, but they’re pretty idiotic, and we respond in quite idiotic ways, and rise to the bait and come off with a few good replies. It’s mostly quite combative. It makes you remember how antagonistic some people were.

In the film you say, “If you’ve got heroes, you’ve got an anti-hero, so it’s good to have an actor who can play the part.” At what part do you think it stopped being an act and became real?

Or it was real, and then it became an act. There was so much media scrutiny. You’re finding your feet, being questioned in very odd ways and you have to try to protect yourself, to keep yourself a bit shrouded. People were very, very hard hitting. It wasn’t a tough life, but you had to be on your guard.

Are you comfortable watching yourself?

I don’t enjoy it that much, to be honest [laughs]. I wouldn’t play it over and over. I wouldn’t say I’m jumping up and down every time I see myself going, “Yeah, you’re great! You look fantastic! Why did you wear that jacket? The check tweed?”

Tweed is in this season, Mick.

I got a new check tweed jacket the other week… It’s always a bit cringey, but there are some very funny moments.

Is there anything particularly that stands out to you?

We’re fighting this guy on a train. Not physically, but batting this guy. Then Brian says something about Georgia. It’s a kind of a Punch & Judy thing… everyone’s having a go at him. All in this very tight compartment. Hilarious. It’s hard to believe you’d put yourself in that position, of having this guy in your face like that. Why? Who convinced you it was a good idea? It’s very funny.

Were there any topics you found it difficult to address in the film?

We did a lot of interviews with Brett, and like all film directors, he brought up things he thought would get a reaction. But you weren’t on live TV, you had time to bat them off or delay your answer. But he didn’t hold back, just because it’s our film. There were a lot of moments. In the end, I answered them all, either truthfully or untruthfully. As you would.

Moving on to GRRR!, when you put together a compilation album is it always obvious to you which tracks will be on there? Or do you look on some songs afresh and think – yes, that one should definitely be included this time?

It’s not always completely obvious. This is available in three versions. The two-CD, 24-track version. Then there’s a long version and a very long version. The 24-song one is a bit obvious, the slightly expanded one gets a few less obvious things in, and then the 50-track version gets a few oddball things in it. That’s quite a nice package. And then there’s the two tracks we recorded last month.

Yes, “Doom And Gloom” and “One Last Shot”. What can we expect from those?

They’re both quite up-tempo rockers. “Doom And Gloom” is a bit faster. We recorded them in Paris in a few days then mixed them in LA. I hope you like them. They’re quite spirited, which is what you want, quite full of energy. Can I sing them to you? [laughs – starts going up and down a scale – there is some kind of singing – more laughter].

How do the Stones write these days?

These two were done separately. We came together to do this very quickly. Keith said, “I’ve got this one song I think you’re gonna like.” I said, “Well, how fast is it?” It’s sort of medium fast. So I thought I’ll pick one more up-tempo. I didn’t think a ballad would be suitable. It needed to be two energetic songs. It was a good process, in the studio, it was easy and fun. No hanging about, which is good.

How has songwriting changed for you over 
the years?

You can write songs in a lot of different ways. You can write songs sitting waiting for a train on the back of an envelope, then you can put it to music on your own. Or you can sit down with Keith and have nothing, and I’ll just fill in the verses or I can play a song to Keith on a guitar or a piano or just sing it and ask if he’s got suggestions. As many permutations as you can think of, really.

Do you have a preferred way of working?

I like doing it all different ways. If I get an idea for a song after I get off the phone with you, I’m not going to wait to have someone to work with, I’m going to sit down and finish it. But then I might sit down with Keith for a session where you start from scratch, trying to write a song from nothing. As a writer, you keep writing all the time. I don’t live anywhere near Keith, so I don’t have time to sit down and write with him unless we make writing dates. When we were on the road all the time, we had a lot of time to do that. But we’re not like that any more, so we don’t do it.

Talking of dates. Any plans to tour, or at least play some shows?

I think we’re going to do some dates this year, and very soon we’ll be trying to 
firm them up. Ask Ronnie, he’ll tell you [laughs].

Any idea when and where they’re likely to be?

Well, it’s going to be this year! We’re in October, so it has to be quite soon.

Keith recently published his autobiography, as you’ve been asked to do on several occasions. Do you think the time will come when you’ll want to write your own account?

No, I don’t think so… I’d have to do it again! I was offered a huge sum of money… I don’t think so at the moment. Is that alright?

You can read our round up of the Stones’ recent 50 & Counting tour here, which includes reviews of both the July 6 and 13 Hyde Park shows.

Follow me on Twitter @MichaelBonner.

Sacha Baron Cohen quits Freddie Mercury biopic over creative differences with Queen

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Sacha Baron Cohen quits Freddie Mercury biopic over creative differences with Queen
Sacha Baron Cohen has reportedly quit the forthcoming biopic of Freddie Mercury over creative differences with Queen. The actor has been attached to star as Mercury since September 2010, but Deadline reports that he's now pulled out of the project because he and Queen, who have script and director ...

Sacha Baron Cohen has reportedly quit the forthcoming biopic of Freddie Mercury over creative differences with Queen.

The actor has been attached to star as Mercury since September 2010, but Deadline reports that he’s now pulled out of the project because he and Queen, who have script and director approval, can’t agree on the type of movie they want to make.

The band apparently want the biopic to be a PG affair, while the actor is keen to delve into the grittier aspects of Mercury’s lifestyle.

In March 2013, it was reported that The King’s Speech director Tom Hooper, who recently worked with Baron Cohen on Les Misérables, was eyeing the project. However, Deadline says that Queen failed to approve him and also turned down Peter Morgan, the Oscar-nominated screenwriter behind The Queen and Frost/Nixon. Morgan’s script, it was reported in March, would begin with the formation of Queen in the early ’70s and end with their Live Aid set in 1985.

Watch Elvis Costello and the Roots video for “Walk Us Uptown”

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Watch Elvis Costello and the Roots video for “Walk Us Uptown”
Elvis Costello and the Roots have released a new lyric video for "Walk Us Uptown," the first single from their forthcoming album, Wise Up Ghost. Wise Up Ghost, which will be released on September 16 on Blue Note Records, will be Costello's first since 2010's National Ransom. Speaking to Rolling St...

Elvis Costello and the Roots have released a new lyric video for “Walk Us Uptown,” the first single from their forthcoming album, Wise Up Ghost.

Wise Up Ghost, which will be released on September 16 on Blue Note Records, will be Costello’s first since 2010’s National Ransom.

Speaking to Rolling Stone about the album in June, Costello said, “We had no deadline, no labels involved. We were just doing it on our own.”

Atoms For Peace exhibition to take place during London residency

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Atoms For Peace exhibition to take place during London residency
Atoms For Peace are set to stage a pop-up exhibition while their three London shows take place this week. The Atoms For Peace Drawing Room has been created by the band's collaborator, artist Stanley Donwood, and will take place Upstairs at The Enterprise, opposite The Roundhouse in Camden, where At...

Atoms For Peace are set to stage a pop-up exhibition while their three London shows take place this week.

The Atoms For Peace Drawing Room has been created by the band’s collaborator, artist Stanley Donwood, and will take place Upstairs at The Enterprise, opposite The Roundhouse in Camden, where Atoms For Peace play their first UK shows on July 24-26. The exhibition will be open from midday-8pm [BST] from July 24-27.

The exhibit will see the room turned into a gallery and a shop as well as a ‘hanging-out space’, featuring vinyl and ‘live-printed’ posters for sale, which will be made on a specially-installed silkscreen printing press. A handwritten note regarding the exhibition from Donwood states: “…At the moment I’m in a room full of Atoms For Peace artwork, merchandise, records and all I feel is trepidation and perhaps mild peril. But I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

Atoms For Peace will broadcast two of their upcoming gigs at London’s Roundhouse via the new mobile app Soundhalo. The Soundhalo app, which was premiered by Alt-J in May of this year and is aimed at discouraging gig-goers from recording concerts on their phones, allows users to download high quality MP4 videos and audio tracks to their phones as the show they are attending is taking place. Fans are then able to download each track to a desktop or portable device, for 99p per track or £9.99 for the whole performance.

The Rolling Stones release ‘Hyde Park Live’ album on iTunes

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The Rolling Stones release ‘Hyde Park Live’ album on iTunes
The Rolling Stones today announce the exclusive iTunes release of The Rolling Stones – Hyde Park Live album, taken from their two concerts in London’s Hyde Park on July 6 and 13. The album is now available to download from today exclusively from the band's iTunes store. You can read our round ...

The Rolling Stones today announce the exclusive iTunes release of The Rolling Stones – Hyde Park Live album, taken from their two concerts in London’s Hyde Park on July 6 and 13.

The album is now available to download from today exclusively from the band’s iTunes store.

You can read our round up of the Stones’ recent 50 & Counting tour here, which includes reviews of both the July 6 and 13 Hyde Park shows.

The tracklisting for Hyde Park Live is:

Start Me Up

It’s Only Rock ‘N’ Roll

Tumbling Dice

Emotional Rescue

Street Fighting Man

Ruby Tuesday

Doom And Gloom

Paint It Black

Honky Tonk Women

You Got The Silver

Before They Make Me Run

Miss You

Midnight Rambler

Gimme Shelter

Jumpin’ Jack Flash

Sympathy For The Devil

Brown Sugar

You Can’t Always Get What You Want

(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction

The Shouting Matches – Grownass Man

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The Shouting Matches – Grownass Man

Justin Vernon's trio of old compadres play Southern blues-rock under jazz conditions... Justin Vernon has not said much publicly about The Shouting Matches, his collaboration with Megafaun’s Phil Cook and Brian Moen of Peter Wolf Crier/Laarks. But the little he has said, via Twitter, is eloquent enough. As the album was released, he Tweeted a note of thanks from “Brian and Phil and I’s band” adding the hashtags #trio, #notasideproject, #beenaroundlongerthanbon. Later, as early reviews appeared, he added, sarcastically, “I love being in a band with three people in it, but really I’m the only one.” So, to be clear. Grownass Man is not a Bon Iver record (the title is a clue). It is not Justin Vernon’s Tin Machine. It is a collaboration in a career full of collaborations (see Volcano Choir, Gayngs, Anais Mitchell). And, it’s a reunion of sorts. The Shouting Matches do predate Bon Iver. They flickered for an evening in 2006. Moen was the second person to hear Bon Iver’s debut album For Emma, Forever Ago when he visited Vernon’s Wisconsin cabin for a Shouting Matches rehearsal. Cook also laboured in Vernon’s pre-Bon Iver outfit, DeYarmond Edison. But it is hard to resist the suggestion that Vernon’s decision to reunite with his old compadres is a reaction to the success of Bon Iver, and the expectations aroused by it. Bon Iver's second, self-titled album was every bit as personal as that cabin-recorded debut, though Vernon employed a private language to mask his intentions (or, more charitably, to make then universal). It won him two Grammies, and made him a mainstream star, an unlikely outcome for a musician whose approach is almost anthropological, even when he’s goofing around. (And, contrary to the public perception, he likes to goof). But this is a trio, a band with three people in it. And if Grownass Man doesn’t sound like Bon Iver, it doesn’t sound like Megafaun either. Or Peter Wolf Crier. On first impressions, which are misleading, it sounds like a bar band in Clarksdale, Mississippi playing for beer. Generically, it is blues-rock, though over the full span of the album, that definition is stretched to include bursts of Afro-pop (‘’I’ll Be True”) and fairground Northern Soul (“New Theme”). Vernon chooses not to employ his falsetto, falling back into a soulful growl or, when he does go high (on “Three Dollar Bill”) delivering the vocal through a hail of distortion. “Heaven Knows” is ZZ Top at 16 rpm. The closing ballad, “I Need A Change” could, just about, fit on a Bon Iver record, though the lyrics are more generic, and there’s a playful Prince impersonation halfway through. Generally, the playing is under-rehearsed and agreeably rough. It’s a jam. Moen’ s drums don’t drive the beat so much as shuffle sideways, and Cook’s organ adds a playful note, pitched somewhere between the church and the carnival. The biggest surprise, at least for listeners who only know Vernon through his work with Bon Iver, is the guitar. True, there’s a hint of Fleetwood Mac’s Albatross circling around the standout track, “Gallup NM”, but the guitar break is exhilarating and beautiful. The song itself explores the poetry of place names – maybe it’s a road song – but Vernon’s solo drives it. You can hear a bit of Neil Young in there, and that’s a name worth remembering in any consideration of the shape of Vernon’s career. Respecting the muse is clearly more important to him than sticking to the grid. What’s it’s all about? Well, on the surface, it seems as if The Shouting Matches is primarily about the underrated joy of making music with friends. But it’s also similar to the experiments Vernon and Cook used to employ in DeYarmond Edison, where they would select a genre, and perform in that vein: today’s dish being Southern blues. It’s rock’n’roll, played under jazz conditions: spontaneous, under-thought, fast. At most, it’s a sketch for a concept which is unlikely to be fleshed-out. It’s nostalgic, and frivolous, and surprisingly endearing. Alastair McKay

Justin Vernon’s trio of old compadres play Southern blues-rock under jazz conditions…

Justin Vernon has not said much publicly about The Shouting Matches, his collaboration with Megafaun’s Phil Cook and Brian Moen of Peter Wolf Crier/Laarks. But the little he has said, via Twitter, is eloquent enough. As the album was released, he Tweeted a note of thanks from “Brian and Phil and I’s band” adding the hashtags #trio, #notasideproject, #beenaroundlongerthanbon. Later, as early reviews appeared, he added, sarcastically, “I love being in a band with three people in it, but really I’m the only one.”

So, to be clear. Grownass Man is not a Bon Iver record (the title is a clue). It is not Justin Vernon’s Tin Machine. It is a collaboration in a career full of collaborations (see Volcano Choir, Gayngs, Anais Mitchell). And, it’s a reunion of sorts. The Shouting Matches do predate Bon Iver. They flickered for an evening in 2006. Moen was the second person to hear Bon Iver’s debut album For Emma, Forever Ago when he visited Vernon’s Wisconsin cabin for a Shouting Matches rehearsal. Cook also laboured in Vernon’s pre-Bon Iver outfit, DeYarmond Edison.

But it is hard to resist the suggestion that Vernon’s decision to reunite with his old compadres is a reaction to the success of Bon Iver, and the expectations aroused by it. Bon Iver‘s second, self-titled album was every bit as personal as that cabin-recorded debut, though Vernon employed a private language to mask his intentions (or, more charitably, to make then universal). It won him two Grammies, and made him a mainstream star, an unlikely outcome for a musician whose approach is almost anthropological, even when he’s goofing around. (And, contrary to the public perception, he likes to goof).

But this is a trio, a band with three people in it. And if Grownass Man doesn’t sound like Bon Iver, it doesn’t sound like Megafaun either. Or Peter Wolf Crier. On first impressions, which are misleading, it sounds like a bar band in Clarksdale, Mississippi playing for beer. Generically, it is blues-rock, though over the full span of the album, that definition is stretched to include bursts of Afro-pop (‘’I’ll Be True”) and fairground Northern Soul (“New Theme”). Vernon chooses not to employ his falsetto, falling back into a soulful growl or, when he does go high (on “Three Dollar Bill”) delivering the vocal through a hail of distortion. “Heaven Knows” is ZZ Top at 16 rpm. The closing ballad, “I Need A Change” could, just about, fit on a Bon Iver record, though the lyrics are more generic, and there’s a playful Prince impersonation halfway through.

Generally, the playing is under-rehearsed and agreeably rough. It’s a jam. Moen’ s drums don’t drive the beat so much as shuffle sideways, and Cook’s organ adds a playful note, pitched somewhere between the church and the carnival. The biggest surprise, at least for listeners who only know Vernon through his work with Bon Iver, is the guitar. True, there’s a hint of Fleetwood Mac’s Albatross circling around the standout track, “Gallup NM”, but the guitar break is exhilarating and beautiful. The song itself explores the poetry of place names – maybe it’s a road song – but Vernon’s solo drives it. You can hear a bit of Neil Young in there, and that’s a name worth remembering in any consideration of the shape of Vernon’s career. Respecting the muse is clearly more important to him than sticking to the grid.

What’s it’s all about? Well, on the surface, it seems as if The Shouting Matches is primarily about the underrated joy of making music with friends. But it’s also similar to the experiments Vernon and Cook used to employ in DeYarmond Edison, where they would select a genre, and perform in that vein: today’s dish being Southern blues. It’s rock’n’roll, played under jazz conditions: spontaneous, under-thought, fast. At most, it’s a sketch for a concept which is unlikely to be fleshed-out. It’s nostalgic, and frivolous, and surprisingly endearing.

Alastair McKay

Marc Bolan’s son sues music publisher over alleged T Rex copyright violation

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Marc Bolan’s son sues music publisher over alleged T Rex copyright violation

The son of Marc Bolan is suing a music publisher, claiming they have violated copyright laws regarding his late father's music. Rolan Seymour Feld has filed a case against Westminster Music Limited, after stating he is the sole owner of his father's back catalogue, claiming the publishers did not renew their one year contract with the singer, which was signed in 1968. Feld is suing for $2m (£1.3m), reports BBC News. The case is being filed in Los Angeles and Feld's court documents claim that the publishers falsely attempted to renew copyright on the music. The papers allege: "In an attempt to cover up their conduct and mislead the public as to the true owner and administrator of the United States copyright in and to each of the Compositions, Defendants falsely registered with the Copyright Office a claim to the renewed and extended term of copyright for each of the Compositions." The documents add that Feld "has been damaged in an amount that is not as yet fully ascertained but which Plaintiff believes exceeds $2,000,000". Marc Bolan died in 1977, a year after the birth of his son.

The son of Marc Bolan is suing a music publisher, claiming they have violated copyright laws regarding his late father’s music.

Rolan Seymour Feld has filed a case against Westminster Music Limited, after stating he is the sole owner of his father’s back catalogue, claiming the publishers did not renew their one year contract with the singer, which was signed in 1968. Feld is suing for $2m (£1.3m), reports BBC News.

The case is being filed in Los Angeles and Feld’s court documents claim that the publishers falsely attempted to renew copyright on the music. The papers allege: “In an attempt to cover up their conduct and mislead the public as to the true owner and administrator of the United States copyright in and to each of the Compositions, Defendants falsely registered with the Copyright Office a claim to the renewed and extended term of copyright for each of the Compositions.”

The documents add that Feld “has been damaged in an amount that is not as yet fully ascertained but which Plaintiff believes exceeds $2,000,000”.

Marc Bolan died in 1977, a year after the birth of his son.

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