Patti Smith has said that on-off Hollywood lovers Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattison could have 'easily' played her and the late photographer Robert Mapplethorpe in Just Kids, the film adaptation of her own memoir.
Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, Smith said: "I remember the very first time I saw...
Patti Smith has said that on-off Hollywood lovers Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattison could have ‘easily’ played her and the late photographer Robert Mapplethorpe in Just Kids, the film adaptation of her own memoir.
Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, Smith said: “I remember the very first time I saw Kristen Stewart and Rob Pattinson together, when they were younger, and I thought, ‘Those two kids could have easily played us when they were first starting. There’s something in his eyes. And Robert [Mapplethorpe] was also a bit shy, and a bit stoic. Kristen has a very special quality. She’s not conventionally beautiful, but very charismatic.”
Smith is currently adapting her 2010 autobiographical story for the big screen. Of casting the film, she added: “Robert and I were very young. We were 20. We were unknowns, and I think it should be unknowns in the film, and young.”
Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea recently revealed that Patti Smith will appear on his new solo EP. In a series of tweets, he wrote that the proceeds from the self-recorded EP, Helen Burns, will go towards Silverlake Conservatory for Music, the Los Angeles music school he set up in 2001.
Smith meanwhile released her latest LP, Banga, this summer. The album is her 11th and features a cover of Neil Young‘s “After The Gold Rush”.
Stevie Nicks has confirmed that Fleetwood Mac will embark on a reunion tour from April next year.
The band behind iconic 1977 album Rumours put an end to months of speculation by confirming their reunion, with Nicks also revealing the band are in talks about recording new music to coincide with the...
Stevie Nicks has confirmed that Fleetwood Mac will embark on a reunion tour from April next year.
The band behind iconic 1977 album Rumours put an end to months of speculation by confirming their reunion, with Nicks also revealing the band are in talks about recording new music to coincide with the live dates.
Speaking to ABC News Radio, Nicks said: “We go into rehearsals somewhere around the end of February. So… if everything goes to plan, we should probably be out [on the road] by end of April [or] May, I would think.”
Nicks added that the reunited group are working on new music, though nothing is official yet.Well, actually, maybe like two songs, maybe four, who knows? We don’t really know yet ‘cos we’re not in the world of Fleetwood Mac yet. We’re just still in talks about that.
Fleetwood Mac are one of a number of names rumoured to be headlining Glastonbury when the festival returns. Speaking to NME about the rumours, festival organiser Emily Eavis said: “I think Fleetwood Mac would be amazing to get, I’ll be totally honest we haven’t had any conversations with them yet but, you know, it is still early days. We’re just talking to some headliners now. For us it’s about getting the balance of heritage bands, legends and new bands – just keeping that balance.”
A member of rock'n'roll star Jerry Lee Lewis' band was killed in a shootout on Sunday (October 14) in Memphis.
Seventy-year-old bass player BB Cunningham was working as a security guard at an apartment complex when he went to investigate a gunshot noise nearby.
Witnesses say they then heard further gunshots and Cunningham, along with an unidentified 16-year-old, was found dead at the scene.
Police are currently investigating the incident. Judy Baladez, a resident of the apartment buildings told WMCTV:
"I just like kind of stayed down in my bed and laid quiet and still because I didn't know if more shooting was going to continue." She added that the gunshots sounded "very loud, like they were very close by, they didn't sound like they were being shot in the air. They sounded close by like they were being shot at somebody."
BB Cunningham was also a former member of Memphis band The Hombres, but, reports Rolling Stone, he moved to Los Angeles in the early 1970s to work at Independent Recorders as a chief engineer, working with the likes of Billy Joel and Elton John.
Cunningham joined Lewis' band in 1997 and released his own solo album in 2003, called Hangin' In.
Jerry Lee Lewis married for the seventh time earlier this year. In 2010, Lewis announced a book deal with It Books, an imprint of HarperCollins. Alberto Rojas, director of publicity for It Books, said in March of this year that the book deal is still on, and that Lewis' memoir will be released in 2013.
A member of rock’n’roll star Jerry Lee Lewis‘ band was killed in a shootout on Sunday (October 14) in Memphis.
Seventy-year-old bass player BB Cunningham was working as a security guard at an apartment complex when he went to investigate a gunshot noise nearby.
Witnesses say they then heard further gunshots and Cunningham, along with an unidentified 16-year-old, was found dead at the scene.
Police are currently investigating the incident. Judy Baladez, a resident of the apartment buildings told WMCTV:
“I just like kind of stayed down in my bed and laid quiet and still because I didn’t know if more shooting was going to continue.” She added that the gunshots sounded “very loud, like they were very close by, they didn’t sound like they were being shot in the air. They sounded close by like they were being shot at somebody.”
BB Cunningham was also a former member of Memphis band The Hombres, but, reports Rolling Stone, he moved to Los Angeles in the early 1970s to work at Independent Recorders as a chief engineer, working with the likes of Billy Joel and Elton John.
Cunningham joined Lewis’ band in 1997 and released his own solo album in 2003, called Hangin’ In.
Jerry Lee Lewis married for the seventh time earlier this year. In 2010, Lewis announced a book deal with It Books, an imprint of HarperCollins. Alberto Rojas, director of publicity for It Books, said in March of this year that the book deal is still on, and that Lewis’ memoir will be released in 2013.
A stripped-down - yet chart friendly - return...
When Bat For Lashes’ darkling “What’s A Girl To Do?” showed up in Brett Easton Ellis’s 2010 novel Imperial Bedrooms - his neo-noir high-school reunion sequel to Less Than Zero - it seemed like a significant artistic coup. Short of retconning your way onto a John Hughes soundtrack or a David Lynch commercial, it represents a pinnacle of a certain kind of 21st century pop ambition. Florence Welch, for one, was chartreuse with envy. But it also brought into focus the oddly precarious state of Natasha Khan’s career: was she already a charming period reference - part of the late-noughties UK tulip craze for pop wonkettes, Kate Bush-babies and La Roux? Or a more resonant, ongoing artistic presence? Less Than Zero’s soundtrack, after all, referenced The Little Girls as well as Elvis Costello.
In some way it feels counterintuitive to talk of the precarity of an artist whose first two albums were both nominated for the Mercury Prize. But The Haunted Man certainly feels like a make or break release, the moment Khan establishes whether she can outlast the whim of pop fashion. Though the cover - a Ryan McGinley portrait featuring a discreetly naked Khan gallantly giving a fireman’s lift to a similarly naked pal - feels on one level shamelessly calculated to generate daft controversy, it also seems intended as a statement of artistic sincerity: enough of theatrical contrivance (the cover of 2009’s Two Planets looked like a Mighty Boosh dream sequence, while the songs featured a bewildering array of personas) - now this, as Mike Yarwood used to say, is me.
“Laura”, the first song to emerge from the album (though not, apparently, a single) gives substance to this intention. Only composed at the label’s insistence, when they felt Khan hadn’t written enough hits, it’s a collaboration with Justin Parker, the co-writer of Lana Del Rey’s “Video Games”, and evidently this year’s go-to guy for swooning, widescreen balladry. From the opening piano twinkles you initially fear an Adelatrous bid for the bland heart of the Radio 2 A-list, but somehow, through the force of her singing and the classic but compelling songcraft, by the time it builds to the chorus - “you’re the train that crashed my heart / you’re the glitter in the dark” - you’re sold. It may be the first Bat For Lashes song to be unashamedly moving.
The song’s bold simplicity isn’t entirely representative of the rest of the album, however, which is lush and cinematic, albeit in the classic manner of say David Lean (Ryan’s Daughter was reportedly an influence) rather than Donnie Darko. Opener “Lilies” floats in on plangent waves of Cocteausish guitar before blooming into a sumptuous synthetic chorus (replete with this season’s must-have retro-accessory: the bass sound from Berlin’s “Take My Breath Away”), while “Marilyn” is a similarly lavish Lynchian powerballad.
It occasionally feels a little too clinically tasteful, as severely and determinedly classic as Khan’s newly bobbed hair. At times, especially on “Oh Yeah” you might be reminded of crystalline geometries of Annie Lennox’s solo Diva-dom. You miss her earlier wildness, even when it risked gauchness. Some songs feel a little too eager to please, too anxious to build to the obvious - “Horses Of The Sun” rides in with an unsettling, vaguely martial verse, like something from Portishead’s Third (and indeed Adrian Utley plays on the track) but then abruptly cuts to a bombastic chorus that seems to belong to another song entirely.
But on the title track Khan comes into her own: stuttering morse code beats give way to the ratatat of musket, fife and drums, heralding the entrance of the male voice choir of some ghostly WW1 division, before erupting into an astonishing symphonic climax. Casting about for reference points you can only think of Kate Bush or Jane Siberry’s more epic moments. But crucially it’s reminiscent of their ambition rather than their stylistic tics. In the past Khan laboured in the long shadows of her obvious influences: on The Haunted Man she’s exorcised some of those ghosts and gone some way to becoming her own woman.
STEPHEN TROUSSE
Q+A
Natasha Khan
Do you think The Haunted Man is your strongest album yet?
I think it’s certainly the most consistent in terms of vision. I wrote about 30 songs and I think the fact it took two and half years to make really paid off. I really pushed myself - my critical voice is quite strong!
Did working with Justin Parker on “Laura” influence the writing of your own songs?
“Laura” was actually the very last song that we wrote. The record company kind of pressured me into writing it because they thought there weren’t enough singles. I thought, I feel really good about what I’ve written so far but if I’m going to do a collaborative thing it’s not going to be with just anyone. And I really liked “Video Games’ from quite early on. So I used my time with Justin to get him to teach me about songwriting things like middle eights.
How did the male voice choir on the title track come about?
“The Haunted Man” was one of the first songs I wrote for the album. It was quite a long piece of music - I was thinking of it as film music or a musical. And I kept hearing male voices. And I went out to Italy to work with Rob Ellis and while were out there he introduced me to a choral master, and we had a fantastic day out in the mountains working out all these crazy harmonic intervals, listening to the Beach Boys and old monks. We actually projected it out of an amp out over a canyon to get that amazing slapback echo, to get that feeling of soldiers coming back from war.
A stripped-down – yet chart friendly – return…
When Bat For Lashes’ darkling “What’s A Girl To Do?” showed up in Brett Easton Ellis’s 2010 novel Imperial Bedrooms – his neo-noir high-school reunion sequel to Less Than Zero – it seemed like a significant artistic coup. Short of retconning your way onto a John Hughes soundtrack or a David Lynch commercial, it represents a pinnacle of a certain kind of 21st century pop ambition. Florence Welch, for one, was chartreuse with envy. But it also brought into focus the oddly precarious state of Natasha Khan’s career: was she already a charming period reference – part of the late-noughties UK tulip craze for pop wonkettes, Kate Bush-babies and La Roux? Or a more resonant, ongoing artistic presence? Less Than Zero’s soundtrack, after all, referenced The Little Girls as well as Elvis Costello.
In some way it feels counterintuitive to talk of the precarity of an artist whose first two albums were both nominated for the Mercury Prize. But The Haunted Man certainly feels like a make or break release, the moment Khan establishes whether she can outlast the whim of pop fashion. Though the cover – a Ryan McGinley portrait featuring a discreetly naked Khan gallantly giving a fireman’s lift to a similarly naked pal – feels on one level shamelessly calculated to generate daft controversy, it also seems intended as a statement of artistic sincerity: enough of theatrical contrivance (the cover of 2009’s Two Planets looked like a Mighty Boosh dream sequence, while the songs featured a bewildering array of personas) – now this, as Mike Yarwood used to say, is me.
“Laura”, the first song to emerge from the album (though not, apparently, a single) gives substance to this intention. Only composed at the label’s insistence, when they felt Khan hadn’t written enough hits, it’s a collaboration with Justin Parker, the co-writer of Lana Del Rey’s “Video Games”, and evidently this year’s go-to guy for swooning, widescreen balladry. From the opening piano twinkles you initially fear an Adelatrous bid for the bland heart of the Radio 2 A-list, but somehow, through the force of her singing and the classic but compelling songcraft, by the time it builds to the chorus – “you’re the train that crashed my heart / you’re the glitter in the dark” – you’re sold. It may be the first Bat For Lashes song to be unashamedly moving.
The song’s bold simplicity isn’t entirely representative of the rest of the album, however, which is lush and cinematic, albeit in the classic manner of say David Lean (Ryan’s Daughter was reportedly an influence) rather than Donnie Darko. Opener “Lilies” floats in on plangent waves of Cocteausish guitar before blooming into a sumptuous synthetic chorus (replete with this season’s must-have retro-accessory: the bass sound from Berlin’s “Take My Breath Away”), while “Marilyn” is a similarly lavish Lynchian powerballad.
It occasionally feels a little too clinically tasteful, as severely and determinedly classic as Khan’s newly bobbed hair. At times, especially on “Oh Yeah” you might be reminded of crystalline geometries of Annie Lennox’s solo Diva-dom. You miss her earlier wildness, even when it risked gauchness. Some songs feel a little too eager to please, too anxious to build to the obvious – “Horses Of The Sun” rides in with an unsettling, vaguely martial verse, like something from Portishead’s Third (and indeed Adrian Utley plays on the track) but then abruptly cuts to a bombastic chorus that seems to belong to another song entirely.
But on the title track Khan comes into her own: stuttering morse code beats give way to the ratatat of musket, fife and drums, heralding the entrance of the male voice choir of some ghostly WW1 division, before erupting into an astonishing symphonic climax. Casting about for reference points you can only think of Kate Bush or Jane Siberry’s more epic moments. But crucially it’s reminiscent of their ambition rather than their stylistic tics. In the past Khan laboured in the long shadows of her obvious influences: on The Haunted Man she’s exorcised some of those ghosts and gone some way to becoming her own woman.
STEPHEN TROUSSE
Q+A
Natasha Khan
Do you think The Haunted Man is your strongest album yet?
I think it’s certainly the most consistent in terms of vision. I wrote about 30 songs and I think the fact it took two and half years to make really paid off. I really pushed myself – my critical voice is quite strong!
Did working with Justin Parker on “Laura” influence the writing of your own songs?
“Laura” was actually the very last song that we wrote. The record company kind of pressured me into writing it because they thought there weren’t enough singles. I thought, I feel really good about what I’ve written so far but if I’m going to do a collaborative thing it’s not going to be with just anyone. And I really liked “Video Games’ from quite early on. So I used my time with Justin to get him to teach me about songwriting things like middle eights.
How did the male voice choir on the title track come about?
“The Haunted Man” was one of the first songs I wrote for the album. It was quite a long piece of music – I was thinking of it as film music or a musical. And I kept hearing male voices. And I went out to Italy to work with Rob Ellis and while were out there he introduced me to a choral master, and we had a fantastic day out in the mountains working out all these crazy harmonic intervals, listening to the Beach Boys and old monks. We actually projected it out of an amp out over a canyon to get that amazing slapback echo, to get that feeling of soldiers coming back from war.
The classic '86 solo album, lavishly packaged with extras...
A pop star isn’t supposed to have his biggest hit at the age of 36, 16 years after his debut and six albums into his solo career. And, as we’re constantly told, prog rock dinosaurs were supposed to have been slain in the evenements of 1977. Peter Gabriel, of course, seemed magnificently unconcerned by such details. So is the sound of a man who has slowly absorbed each new wave – post-punk, New Pop, synth pop, Afrobeat – and syncretised them into an album that would transform this cult experimentalist into one of the big beasts of global pop.
Has it dated? So much 80s music – or, to be specific, pop recorded between those wilderness years of 1983 and 1988 – is rendered almost unlistenable today, due to those hallmarks of high 80s production: gated reverb on the snare, glutinous DX7 pianos, Simmons electric tom-toms, heavily chorused guitars, and so on. From the thunderous Linn drums and fretless bass that open “Red Rain” much on So can certainly be carbon-dated by these tropes, although it’s not always a problem.
Sometimes the state-of-the-art production is part of the appeal. The digi-funk bombast of “Big Time” is a defining totem of high-end 80s production, pitched somewhere between Scritti Politti’s “Wood Beez” and Trevor Horn’s “Owner Of A Lonely Heart”. And the funk shuffle of “Sledgehammer” now sounds almost timeless, thanks to it being a much-sampled hip hop fixture. Elsewhere the production interferes, like the bell-like Fairlight sounds that mar “That Voice Again”, or the whistling ambient accompaniment on “Mercy Street” (the orchestral recreation of the latter track on last year’s New Blood is possibly preferable). Laurie Anderson’s co-write “This Is The Picture (Excellent Birds)” is a series of jerky abstractions in search of a song and never really fitted on here; conversely, it’s the oft-overlooked “We Do What We’re Told (Miligram’s 37)” that’s one of the best tracks: an Eno-esque miniature that ends just as it starts getting interesting.
This is a lavish package, with extras including a two-hour Live In Athens DVD and a second DVD featuring the excellent hour-long “Classic Albums” documentary on the making of So. But the most interesting disc is the “DNA CD”, tracing the “audio evolution of So”. Each track glues together several different versions of each song, taken from various stages in their development. We start with the rawest demo – usually just Gabriel accompanying himself on a digital piano – and then, with every verse, gradually revert to subsequent, more polished demos of the song until, by the end of the track, we are left with a rough template for the finished version.
They are unique glimpses into the recording process, a format that you can expect to be copied on other reissue packages. “Red Rain” and “Sledgehammer” both start with just a spartan, clunky piano riffs, with Gabriel singing gibberish, wordless lyrics. “Big Time” starts as a jangly gospel piano instrumental, then mutates into a guitar-led funk jam, slowly adding garbled synth horns. You can hear a ghostly tenor saxophone wailing in the background of “Mercy Street”, and you can hear how Tony Levin’s syncopated, kora-like fretless bass line, which now sounds so central to “Don’t Give Up”, turns out to have been a last-minute addition to a song which started out as a country Baptist hymn (with Dolly Parton initially earmarked for Kate Bush’s role).
The package also includes a 12” single featuring three tracks. There’s an intriguing piano-led gospel version of “Don’t Give Up”, and two previously unheard tracks: “Courage” is a weirdly appealing Talking Heads pastiche that wouldn’t sound out of place on Remain In Light (“I’ve been beating my head against a rubber wall”), while “Sagrada Familia” is another promising unused demo, mixing African high-life guitar, Tony Levin’s rubbery bass and some frenetic Latin percussion with an intriguing lyric about Antonio Gaudi and Sarah Winchester. Both sound utterly untouched by any of the high-80s tropes mentioned earlier – it would be fascinating to hear an entire album like this.
John Lewis
Q&A
DANIEL LANOIS
Was So a conscious attempt to make a “pop” record?
Not in a cynical way, but Peter definitely wanted to make proper songs. I said to Peter, early in the session, “I know you hate hi hats and cymbals, but you’ve made five fucken’ albums without them, so just get over it! Some of us actually like records that groove, ferchrissakes!” And I think that liberated Peter to explore a funkier, more soulful, more playful, more emotional side to his character.
Was it a laborious process?
I was living in Peter’s house for a year, in what I call the Bell Tower. We spent nearly six month on preps: not only setting up sounds but also providing Peter with rock solid advice about which way to go and what we might need. And we wrote the songs as a tight trio – just me, guitarist David Rhodes and Peter with his beatbox. We only proceeded with ideas if there was a spark of magic in that format. The bass and drums came much, much later, which is the opposite of how you’d usually work.
It sounds like there were dozens of versions of each song recorded...
When you work with Peter, there are lots of ideas flying around all the time. You have to become a master librarian just to keep track of the best stuff. He actually did have a library – not a hard-drive, but a physical librarly, a big closet filled with two-inch tapes! – and you’d store stuff there. I was an obsessive notekeeper in those days, so I logged every take and every synth sound, which mean that I was able to get back to any sound that Peter liked. So every one of these songs you can find at least
a dozen versions.
INTERVIEW: JOHN LEWIS
The classic ’86 solo album, lavishly packaged with extras…
A pop star isn’t supposed to have his biggest hit at the age of 36, 16 years after his debut and six albums into his solo career. And, as we’re constantly told, prog rock dinosaurs were supposed to have been slain in the evenements of 1977. Peter Gabriel, of course, seemed magnificently unconcerned by such details. So is the sound of a man who has slowly absorbed each new wave – post-punk, New Pop, synth pop, Afrobeat – and syncretised them into an album that would transform this cult experimentalist into one of the big beasts of global pop.
Has it dated? So much 80s music – or, to be specific, pop recorded between those wilderness years of 1983 and 1988 – is rendered almost unlistenable today, due to those hallmarks of high 80s production: gated reverb on the snare, glutinous DX7 pianos, Simmons electric tom-toms, heavily chorused guitars, and so on. From the thunderous Linn drums and fretless bass that open “Red Rain” much on So can certainly be carbon-dated by these tropes, although it’s not always a problem.
Sometimes the state-of-the-art production is part of the appeal. The digi-funk bombast of “Big Time” is a defining totem of high-end 80s production, pitched somewhere between Scritti Politti’s “Wood Beez” and Trevor Horn’s “Owner Of A Lonely Heart”. And the funk shuffle of “Sledgehammer” now sounds almost timeless, thanks to it being a much-sampled hip hop fixture. Elsewhere the production interferes, like the bell-like Fairlight sounds that mar “That Voice Again”, or the whistling ambient accompaniment on “Mercy Street” (the orchestral recreation of the latter track on last year’s New Blood is possibly preferable). Laurie Anderson’s co-write “This Is The Picture (Excellent Birds)” is a series of jerky abstractions in search of a song and never really fitted on here; conversely, it’s the oft-overlooked “We Do What We’re Told (Miligram’s 37)” that’s one of the best tracks: an Eno-esque miniature that ends just as it starts getting interesting.
This is a lavish package, with extras including a two-hour Live In Athens DVD and a second DVD featuring the excellent hour-long “Classic Albums” documentary on the making of So. But the most interesting disc is the “DNA CD”, tracing the “audio evolution of So”. Each track glues together several different versions of each song, taken from various stages in their development. We start with the rawest demo – usually just Gabriel accompanying himself on a digital piano – and then, with every verse, gradually revert to subsequent, more polished demos of the song until, by the end of the track, we are left with a rough template for the finished version.
They are unique glimpses into the recording process, a format that you can expect to be copied on other reissue packages. “Red Rain” and “Sledgehammer” both start with just a spartan, clunky piano riffs, with Gabriel singing gibberish, wordless lyrics. “Big Time” starts as a jangly gospel piano instrumental, then mutates into a guitar-led funk jam, slowly adding garbled synth horns. You can hear a ghostly tenor saxophone wailing in the background of “Mercy Street”, and you can hear how Tony Levin’s syncopated, kora-like fretless bass line, which now sounds so central to “Don’t Give Up”, turns out to have been a last-minute addition to a song which started out as a country Baptist hymn (with Dolly Parton initially earmarked for Kate Bush’s role).
The package also includes a 12” single featuring three tracks. There’s an intriguing piano-led gospel version of “Don’t Give Up”, and two previously unheard tracks: “Courage” is a weirdly appealing Talking Heads pastiche that wouldn’t sound out of place on Remain In Light (“I’ve been beating my head against a rubber wall”), while “Sagrada Familia” is another promising unused demo, mixing African high-life guitar, Tony Levin’s rubbery bass and some frenetic Latin percussion with an intriguing lyric about Antonio Gaudi and Sarah Winchester. Both sound utterly untouched by any of the high-80s tropes mentioned earlier – it would be fascinating to hear an entire album like this.
John Lewis
Q&A
DANIEL LANOIS
Was So a conscious attempt to make a “pop” record?
Not in a cynical way, but Peter definitely wanted to make proper songs. I said to Peter, early in the session, “I know you hate hi hats and cymbals, but you’ve made five fucken’ albums without them, so just get over it! Some of us actually like records that groove, ferchrissakes!” And I think that liberated Peter to explore a funkier, more soulful, more playful, more emotional side to his character.
Was it a laborious process?
I was living in Peter’s house for a year, in what I call the Bell Tower. We spent nearly six month on preps: not only setting up sounds but also providing Peter with rock solid advice about which way to go and what we might need. And we wrote the songs as a tight trio – just me, guitarist David Rhodes and Peter with his beatbox. We only proceeded with ideas if there was a spark of magic in that format. The bass and drums came much, much later, which is the opposite of how you’d usually work.
It sounds like there were dozens of versions of each song recorded…
When you work with Peter, there are lots of ideas flying around all the time. You have to become a master librarian just to keep track of the best stuff. He actually did have a library – not a hard-drive, but a physical librarly, a big closet filled with two-inch tapes! – and you’d store stuff there. I was an obsessive notekeeper in those days, so I logged every take and every synth sound, which mean that I was able to get back to any sound that Peter liked. So every one of these songs you can find at least
The Rolling Stones have announced two London dates for November – scroll down to watch a video of the announcement.
The Stones will play London's O2 Arena on November 25 and 29 to celebrate their 50th anniversary. They will also be playing two New York shows on December 15 and 13. Tickets go on s...
The Rolling Stones have announced two London dates for November – scroll down to watch a video of the announcement.
The Stones will play London’s O2 Arena on November 25 and 29 to celebrate their 50th anniversary. They will also be playing two New York shows on December 15 and 13. Tickets go on sale this Friday, October 19, at 9am.
The band made the announcement via a video posted to their Facebook page.
Teasing the announcement earlier on this morning, they wrote “IS EVERYBODY READY? WE’RE SORRY FOR THE DELAY…IS EVERYBODY READY?” with a picture of the sleeve to their new greatest hits compilation ‘GRRR’ on the band’s flight cases.
The dates have long been rumoured, with frontman Mick Jagger claiming in July that they were planning on sharing a stage together this autumn. Last week (October 8), Keith Richards spilled the beans that the rockers would be playing shows in the UK ad US, but didn’t reveal when the dates would take place.
The band’s long-term sax player Bobby Keys then let slip last week (October 10) that he was gearing up to play shows in November.
The Rolling Stones will release a brand new Greatest Hits compilation in November titled GRRR!. The collection, which is being released to coincide with the band’s 50th anniversary, will feature two brand new songs, “Doom And Gloom” and “One More Shot”, which were recorded in Paris last month. This is the first new material the band have recorded since their 2005 album A Bigger Bang.
J Mascis' guitar was stolen after a Dinosaur Jr gig in Oregon, USA earlier this week (October 11).
A statement posted on the singer's Facebook account revealed that his prized instrument – a white Squier Jazzmaster guitar – had been pinched by someone after their show at the city's W.O.W Hall, ...
J Mascis‘ guitar was stolen after a Dinosaur Jr gig in Oregon, USA earlier this week (October 11).
A statement posted on the singer’s Facebook account revealed that his prized instrument – a white Squier Jazzmaster guitar – had been pinched by someone after their show at the city’s W.O.W Hall, and asked people with knowledge of the incident to come forward and help him retrieve it.
Describing the guitar, it said: “Some characteristics that make this guitar unique: re is a dent in the neck, the pickups have no screws as they usually do and the action is currently set high. The guitar was in a soft gig bag. Please contact band@dinosaurjr.com or call 303-998-0001 if you have any information about this guitar.”
Mascis is not the only musician to have been targeted by opportunist punters in recent weeks – in August, Grimes, aka Claire Boucher, was forced to launch an appeal on Twitter after all of her gear was stolen following a show at the HMV Ritz in Manchester.
Earlier this month, Mascis claimed that he had nearly joined Nirvana on two occasions, revealing that he missed out on playing with the iconic grunge group as both guitarist and drummer in the late 80s and early 90s.
Dinosaur Jr released their tenth studio album I Bet On The Sky on September 17. Speaking about the LP, J Mascis told NME: “There’s a couple of songs with more of a groove, a little bit mellower, but there’s some heavier stuff on it too.”
He added: “It’s funky for us, but not that funky. I like the first song ‘Don’t Pretend You Didn’t Know’ the best, that’s one of the funkier numbers, it seemed to come together in a good way.”
Elvis Presley's Beverly Hills house has been put up for sale.
The singer's home, which he lived in with his wife Priscella, has been put on the market for a cool $12.9million, according to real estate operator Truila.
The listing states that the four bedroom, five bathroom French regency-styled es...
Elvis Presley‘s Beverly Hills house has been put up for sale.
The singer’s home, which he lived in with his wife Priscella, has been put on the market for a cool $12.9million, according to real estate operator Truila.
The listing states that the four bedroom, five bathroom French regency-styled estate sits on a 1.18 acre property and boasts panoramic views of Los Angeles and the Pacific Ocean.
Elvis’ former estate was previously available to rent for a lease of $25,000 a month. The home was built in 1958 and, like the singer’s Graceland home, fans often flock to its gates to sneak a look. The property has changed since Elvis bought it in 1967. The listing says the gated, remodeled home has a new kitchen and laundry room, and the pool and spa have been resurfaced.
This sale comes hot on the heels of the failed auction of the singer’s stained underpants. The pants, which were worn by Presley underneath one of his jumpsuits during a performance in 1977, hadn’t been washed since Elvis took them off, and featured a suspicious yellow stain on the front of the crotch.
The 35th anniversary of the death of Elvis Presley was recently marked by a candlelit vigil at his Graceland home in Memphis. It was attended by an estimated 75,000 fans.
Elvis Presley died on August 16, 1977 at the age of 42 after suffering a heart attack. He is buried in the grounds of Graceland alongside his parents and grandmother. There is also a memorial headstone for his twin, Jesse Garon.
Led Zeppelin's Robert Plant has revealed that he once lied about working for NME to gain access to a festival in Marrakech.
The singer pretended he was a journalist for the magazine so that he could get down the front of the barrier and record the folklore music that was being played by the band on stage.
Plant told The Guardian: "Every year there was a folklore festival in Marrakech and I got a press pass. I said I was working for the NME. And I could get right to the front with my recorder, and there were a lot of Berber rhythms that were spectacular."
Plant went on to say that he believes he and his bandmate Jimmy Page introduced rock music to India by playing an intoxicated jam in a club while high on "illicit substances".
He added: "Jimmy and I played in a club in Bombay in 1972. I played drums and he played guitar and it was the only club in Bombay that had a drum kit. Somehow or other we ended up in there with loads and loads of illicit substances.
"Some guy is writing a book about rock in India – and apparently it was born in this club with Page and me wired out of our faces. I'm not a very good drummer, to say the least, but for some reason or another it left a mark."
Led Zeppelin release Celebration Day, a concert film shot at the band's 2007 reunion gig at London's 02 Arena, in cinemas on October 17. The film will then get a general DVD release on November 19. A deluxe edition will also include footage of the Shepperton rehearsals, as well as BBC news footage.
Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant has revealed that he once lied about working for NME to gain access to a festival in Marrakech.
The singer pretended he was a journalist for the magazine so that he could get down the front of the barrier and record the folklore music that was being played by the band on stage.
Plant told The Guardian: “Every year there was a folklore festival in Marrakech and I got a press pass. I said I was working for the NME. And I could get right to the front with my recorder, and there were a lot of Berber rhythms that were spectacular.”
Plant went on to say that he believes he and his bandmate Jimmy Page introduced rock music to India by playing an intoxicated jam in a club while high on “illicit substances”.
He added: “Jimmy and I played in a club in Bombay in 1972. I played drums and he played guitar and it was the only club in Bombay that had a drum kit. Somehow or other we ended up in there with loads and loads of illicit substances.
“Some guy is writing a book about rock in India – and apparently it was born in this club with Page and me wired out of our faces. I’m not a very good drummer, to say the least, but for some reason or another it left a mark.”
Led Zeppelin release Celebration Day, a concert film shot at the band’s 2007 reunion gig at London’s 02 Arena, in cinemas on October 17. The film will then get a general DVD release on November 19. A deluxe edition will also include footage of the Shepperton rehearsals, as well as BBC news footage.
Bruce Springsteen is set to join Barack Obama on the campaign trail this week (October 18).
The rocker will join the President as he campaigns for his re-election at a rally in Parma, Ohio on Thursday, and later on the same day in Ames, Iowa, Rolling Stone reports.
Springsteen had previously clai...
Bruce Springsteen is set to join Barack Obama on the campaign trail this week (October 18).
The rocker will join the President as he campaigns for his re-election at a rally in Parma, Ohio on Thursday, and later on the same day in Ames, Iowa, Rolling Stone reports.
Springsteen had previously claimed that despite supporting Obama at a series of rallies in 2008 and Democratic candidate John Kerry in 2004, he would not be campaigning at this election. In 2004, he joined other rockers including Pearl Jam, Death Cab For Cutie and R.E.M for a series of Vote For Chance shows across swing states in support of Kerry.
Springsteen joins a host of artists showing their support for Obama in the forthcoming US election, which will take place on November 6. Beyonce and Jay Z recently raised $4 million (£2.46 million) for the campaign at a New York fundraiser.
Meanwhile, Brooklyn band The National played a rally for the incumbent president in Iowa and the Foo Fighters dedicated their track “My Hero” to Obama when they played a two-song acoustic set at the Democratic National Convention.
James Bond at 50 seems in pretty good shape.
Much as the Rolling Stones have marked their half-century with a new single, “Doom And Gloom”, celebrating all that’s best about the band’s musical heritage, so the producers of Skyfall have set out to commemorate James Bond’s 50th anniversary on screen by stacking up reminders of the franchise’s most successful tropes. So we get a pre-credits chase sequence round an exotic foreign location, a ballsy theme song, the return of several familiar characters from the franchise and, in Javier Bardem, a deliciously larger-than-life villain of the kind not seen since Roger Moore’s heyday on the series.
But for all that is familiar about Skyfall, the idea of change is also floated quite freely here. One of the recurring themes in this, the 23rd official film in the series, is that the world is moving forward. There is much talk about “the inevitability of time” and, as Bardem’s Raoul Silva leers at Bond, “England, the Empire, MI6. You’re living in a ruin.” Indeed, this is a world where the conventional methods of espionage are, we’re told, redundant. The plot of Skyfall hinges – Wikileaks style – on a stolen hard drive containing a list of Nato operatives embedded in terrorist cells that Silva proceeds to leak online in batches, a week at a time. Judi Dench’s M is hauled in front of a parliamentary committee. Ralph Fiennes’ government bod suggests she step down. Can Bond adapt to the modern world? Is he an analogue agent in a point-and-click digital age? You can almost see the winds of change ruffling through Daniel Craig’s bristly buzzcut. As Q (Ben Wishaw, playing the part like a hipster version of Moss from The IT Crowd) tells 007, “We don’t make exploding fountain pens anymore.”
As well-paced as it as, this first hour – shot washed out blues and steely greys, like Christopher Nolan's Gotham – feels like a little like an episode of Spooks. On the other hand, Craig is a splendid, sinewy Bond, scowling and authoritative, like a bulldog in a tuxedo. Bardem is a great match for him: sporting a ridiculous nicotine-yellow dye-job, his Silva is grotesque, playful, an MI6 agent gone rogue who’s surfaced with the intention of bringing down M, his former boss in pre-handover Hong Kong. Bardem has a strange, watchable face – thick lips, equine teeth, a round jaw, buggy eyes. One of the pleasures of Skyfall is watching a number of very good actors – chief among them, Bardem, Dench and Fiennes – in some meaty scenes. If there’s one thing Skyfall does well, it’s actually allow its actors space in between chases, explosions and gunfights to talk and breathe.
A lot of this, I suspect, is down to Sam Mendes. Unusually, the producers have chosen a ‘name’ director for the franchise - perhaps it's a present for their birthday boy - but as you’d hope Mendes has chops. A recurring criticism I have of Mendes is that I don’t think he’s a particularly good director of actors. I reminded of the scene in Road To Perdition, where Paul Newman is gunned down, at night, in the rain, in slow-motion, and what should have been a moment of shocking violence – a turning point in the film – became instead all about fetishizing Conrad Hall’s cinematography. Similarly, in Revolutionary Road, the final image of Kate Winslet standing in her living room, looking out of the window, a small patch of blood blossoming on the back of her nightdress was so much more about Mendes’ painterly eye for composition, robbing the shot of its emotional heft.
Here, Mendes and Coens’ regular Director of Photography Roger Deakins conspicuously deliver high-end, memorable visuals. A night sequence in Shanghai, with Bond and his opponent fighting in a glass-fronted skyscraper, lit by a wash of neon light from the giant advertising signs outside is stunning, like a clean Blade Runner. A detour to a casino in Macau is shot in luxurious golds and yellows. The oranges and reds he washes over the final act give a striking sepia glow, but again you feel that the drama unfolding on screen is given second place to how its being presented.
Mendes, though, satisfactorily pulls his plot threads together. It comes as a surprise when you realize that the “Bond girl” in Skyfall isn’t really Naomi Harris’ shonky MI6 operative or Bérenice Marlohe’s femme fatale – but M herself, and the interplay between her and Bond is very much at the centre of the film. Indeed, for this anniversary film, the producers have dug a little into Bond’s personal history. The final third, set in the Scottish glens, where Bond's back story is touched on, suggests at one point that Skyfall is going to go down the road of recent Doctor Who stories and get bogged down in overblown notions of its own inner-history. Fortunately, Mendes pulls its back before it navel gazes too deeply. M’s line – “Orphans make the best agents” – plainly delivered by Dench says enough, really, about why Bond is Bond.
I guess Skyfall feels quite personal. It’s not just the gentle prods into Bond’s own history, or the unspoken headmistress/pupil relationship between him and M, but the relatively parochial settings (mostly London and Scotland) and the make-do Straw Dogs finale that combined create a unusually intimate film, one that pays tribute to the series' heritage but also confidently shows us the way forward. The message is: sometimes you have to go back to go forward.
Skyfall is released in the UK on October 26; the OST by Thomas Newman is released on October 29 by Sony Classical
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScsNCHY-bYU
James Bond at 50 seems in pretty good shape.
Much as the Rolling Stones have marked their half-century with a new single, “Doom And Gloom”, celebrating all that’s best about the band’s musical heritage, so the producers of Skyfall have set out to commemorate James Bond’s 50th anniversary on screen by stacking up reminders of the franchise’s most successful tropes. So we get a pre-credits chase sequence round an exotic foreign location, a ballsy theme song, the return of several familiar characters from the franchise and, in Javier Bardem, a deliciously larger-than-life villain of the kind not seen since Roger Moore’s heyday on the series.
But for all that is familiar about Skyfall, the idea of change is also floated quite freely here. One of the recurring themes in this, the 23rd official film in the series, is that the world is moving forward. There is much talk about “the inevitability of time” and, as Bardem’s Raoul Silva leers at Bond, “England, the Empire, MI6. You’re living in a ruin.” Indeed, this is a world where the conventional methods of espionage are, we’re told, redundant. The plot of Skyfall hinges – Wikileaks style – on a stolen hard drive containing a list of Nato operatives embedded in terrorist cells that Silva proceeds to leak online in batches, a week at a time. Judi Dench’s M is hauled in front of a parliamentary committee. Ralph Fiennes’ government bod suggests she step down. Can Bond adapt to the modern world? Is he an analogue agent in a point-and-click digital age? You can almost see the winds of change ruffling through Daniel Craig’s bristly buzzcut. As Q (Ben Wishaw, playing the part like a hipster version of Moss from The IT Crowd) tells 007, “We don’t make exploding fountain pens anymore.”
As well-paced as it as, this first hour – shot washed out blues and steely greys, like Christopher Nolan‘s Gotham – feels like a little like an episode of Spooks. On the other hand, Craig is a splendid, sinewy Bond, scowling and authoritative, like a bulldog in a tuxedo. Bardem is a great match for him: sporting a ridiculous nicotine-yellow dye-job, his Silva is grotesque, playful, an MI6 agent gone rogue who’s surfaced with the intention of bringing down M, his former boss in pre-handover Hong Kong. Bardem has a strange, watchable face – thick lips, equine teeth, a round jaw, buggy eyes. One of the pleasures of Skyfall is watching a number of very good actors – chief among them, Bardem, Dench and Fiennes – in some meaty scenes. If there’s one thing Skyfall does well, it’s actually allow its actors space in between chases, explosions and gunfights to talk and breathe.
A lot of this, I suspect, is down to Sam Mendes. Unusually, the producers have chosen a ‘name’ director for the franchise – perhaps it’s a present for their birthday boy – but as you’d hope Mendes has chops. A recurring criticism I have of Mendes is that I don’t think he’s a particularly good director of actors. I reminded of the scene in Road To Perdition, where Paul Newman is gunned down, at night, in the rain, in slow-motion, and what should have been a moment of shocking violence – a turning point in the film – became instead all about fetishizing Conrad Hall’s cinematography. Similarly, in Revolutionary Road, the final image of Kate Winslet standing in her living room, looking out of the window, a small patch of blood blossoming on the back of her nightdress was so much more about Mendes’ painterly eye for composition, robbing the shot of its emotional heft.
Here, Mendes and Coens’ regular Director of Photography Roger Deakins conspicuously deliver high-end, memorable visuals. A night sequence in Shanghai, with Bond and his opponent fighting in a glass-fronted skyscraper, lit by a wash of neon light from the giant advertising signs outside is stunning, like a clean Blade Runner. A detour to a casino in Macau is shot in luxurious golds and yellows. The oranges and reds he washes over the final act give a striking sepia glow, but again you feel that the drama unfolding on screen is given second place to how its being presented.
Mendes, though, satisfactorily pulls his plot threads together. It comes as a surprise when you realize that the “Bond girl” in Skyfall isn’t really Naomi Harris’ shonky MI6 operative or Bérenice Marlohe’s femme fatale – but M herself, and the interplay between her and Bond is very much at the centre of the film. Indeed, for this anniversary film, the producers have dug a little into Bond’s personal history. The final third, set in the Scottish glens, where Bond’s back story is touched on, suggests at one point that Skyfall is going to go down the road of recent Doctor Who stories and get bogged down in overblown notions of its own inner-history. Fortunately, Mendes pulls its back before it navel gazes too deeply. M’s line – “Orphans make the best agents” – plainly delivered by Dench says enough, really, about why Bond is Bond.
I guess Skyfall feels quite personal. It’s not just the gentle prods into Bond’s own history, or the unspoken headmistress/pupil relationship between him and M, but the relatively parochial settings (mostly London and Scotland) and the make-do Straw Dogs finale that combined create a unusually intimate film, one that pays tribute to the series’ heritage but also confidently shows us the way forward. The message is: sometimes you have to go back to go forward.
Skyfall is released in the UK on October 26; the OST by Thomas Newman is released on October 29 by Sony Classical
ELO man upgrades his hits and re-imagines his youth...
At a certain point in their career, the successful rock star naturally leans towards a touch of retrospection, whether by way of an autobiography (as with Dylan’s Chronicles Vol. 1), a variously revised, remixed or re-recorded edition of their oeuvre (as with Kate Bush’s Director’s Cut), or a sentimental indulgence in the kind of greasy-kidstuff radio fodder that first drew their attention to music (as in McCartney’s Kisses On The Bottom). Never one for half measures, Jeff Lynne has opted for two out of the three, with the simultaneous release of a re-recorded greatest hits album and an album of teen favourites from the dawn of rock’n’roll. Can his life story be far behind, one wonders?
Unlike Kate Bush’s career retrospective, Mr. Blue Sky (in which Lynne replays and re-records his old songs), doesn’t seek to find new depths in any of ELO’s classic hits, or re-contextualise them in the light of subsequent musical developments. The new versions are, to all intents and purposes, exactly the same as the old versions, they’re just more so, if that makes sense. Like many a musician forever encountering their own back catalogue on random radio broadcast, Lynne seems to have become able to hear only the imperfections: rather than an ego-boost, it afforded him instead the nagging irritation that, surely, these tracks could sound so much better? And being a top studio boffin type and all-round musical polymath with state-of-the-art equipment at his everyday disposal, he realised he was perfectly placed to give these old hits the presence and pizzazz he felt they lacked.
One by one, the ELO songs were given the musical equivalent of a software upgrade. The effect is understandably more noticeable on the older tracks, like “Showdown” and “10538 Overture”, than on the later material: the latter song, for instance, now has a spangly presence that distances it slightly from its Walrusian origins. But in general, this is a subtle restoration exercise that shouldn’t annoy even the most obsessive of anorak fans. The bonus track “Point Of No Return”, with its arpeggiated guitar figures, melodic logicality and sleek harmonies, sounds like a refugee from Tom Petty’s Lynne-produced Full Moon Fever, which is fine by me.
Long Wave – named after the wireless waveband that carried the BBC Light Programme of Lynne’s youth – takes a very different approach to its source material, which is re-imagined in ways that set it sometimes strikingly apart from the original versions. The older, pre-rock crooner tracks like “She” and “If I Loved You” are reminiscent more of the early Beatles covers of things like “Bésame Mucho”, with arrangements stripped back to guitars and piano, and chiming harmonies illuminating complex melodies. Lynne’s version of “Beyond The Sea” prances along on his swaggering bassline where Bobby Darin’s glides, and there’s a similarly lollopy bonhomie to his take on Charlie Chaplin’s “Smile”, a sort of lazy cowpoke trot that suits the song perfectly. The tone of relaxed confidence extends to Chuck Berry’s “Let It Rock”, which accrues a low-slung gangster lean through being taken as a lazily galloping boogie rather than a motorvating rocker. And there’s an interesting adaptation of Etta James’s R’n’B inflections to suit Lynne’s milder pop intonations on his version of “At Last”. The most drastic re-imagining occurs on a version of Don Covay’s “Have Mercy” that harks back to Lynne’s own youth in The Idle Race: here, there’s a brash, primitive beat-boom attack to the guitar and drum groove that recalls The Spencer Davis Group’s “Keep On Running”, no mean thing to pull off on your own. Elsewhere, his take on Roy Orbison’s “Running Scared” is suitably respectful as it climbs to its operatic climax, while the harmonies on the Everlys’ “So Sad” are so spot-on it’s as if Lynne has located his inner Don for one pass, followed by his inner Phil for another. All in all, an interesting exercise, far less arch and shamateurish than Kisses On The Bottom.
Andy Gill
Q&A
Jeff Lynne
Did you play all the ELO parts?
Yes, I played all the instruments myself, except for the string lines, played by Mark Mann.
Didn’t you once play strings?
Not really. I could scrape out a crummy tune on a cello. Then I had frets put on my cello, to make it more tuneful. I used to love doing slides, but you could hear it on the frets: badumbadumbrrrrrup!
It’s interesting how the earlier, pre-rock’n’roll songs are more reliant on melody than rhythm, compared to the rock songs.
Those chord structures are very, very complex. You have to do a kind of tunnel-hearing thing, just listen to an individual instrument and think away those big arrangements that are fluffing all around it, with all those flutes and clarinets that obscured what the real chords were. If you listen in a different mode and just learn the guitar chords, they’re actually very simple songs – but you would never know that from hearing those old recordings of them.
“Have Mercy” is effective in beat-boom style.
I tried to get a live feel, which is difficult to do when you’re playing it all yourself – you can’t really bounce off yourself: once you’ve laid down one track you can’t think about it again, because you’ve got to try and get the next one to bounce against that one. The reason I know that song so well is that it was one of my favourites when we used to play it in The Idle Race, in the pubs and clubs of Birmingham.
INTERVIEW: ANDY GILL
ELO man upgrades his hits and re-imagines his youth…
At a certain point in their career, the successful rock star naturally leans towards a touch of retrospection, whether by way of an autobiography (as with Dylan’s Chronicles Vol. 1), a variously revised, remixed or re-recorded edition of their oeuvre (as with Kate Bush’s Director’s Cut), or a sentimental indulgence in the kind of greasy-kidstuff radio fodder that first drew their attention to music (as in McCartney’s Kisses On The Bottom). Never one for half measures, Jeff Lynne has opted for two out of the three, with the simultaneous release of a re-recorded greatest hits album and an album of teen favourites from the dawn of rock’n’roll. Can his life story be far behind, one wonders?
Unlike Kate Bush’s career retrospective, Mr. Blue Sky (in which Lynne replays and re-records his old songs), doesn’t seek to find new depths in any of ELO’s classic hits, or re-contextualise them in the light of subsequent musical developments. The new versions are, to all intents and purposes, exactly the same as the old versions, they’re just more so, if that makes sense. Like many a musician forever encountering their own back catalogue on random radio broadcast, Lynne seems to have become able to hear only the imperfections: rather than an ego-boost, it afforded him instead the nagging irritation that, surely, these tracks could sound so much better? And being a top studio boffin type and all-round musical polymath with state-of-the-art equipment at his everyday disposal, he realised he was perfectly placed to give these old hits the presence and pizzazz he felt they lacked.
One by one, the ELO songs were given the musical equivalent of a software upgrade. The effect is understandably more noticeable on the older tracks, like “Showdown” and “10538 Overture”, than on the later material: the latter song, for instance, now has a spangly presence that distances it slightly from its Walrusian origins. But in general, this is a subtle restoration exercise that shouldn’t annoy even the most obsessive of anorak fans. The bonus track “Point Of No Return”, with its arpeggiated guitar figures, melodic logicality and sleek harmonies, sounds like a refugee from Tom Petty’s Lynne-produced Full Moon Fever, which is fine by me.
Long Wave – named after the wireless waveband that carried the BBC Light Programme of Lynne’s youth – takes a very different approach to its source material, which is re-imagined in ways that set it sometimes strikingly apart from the original versions. The older, pre-rock crooner tracks like “She” and “If I Loved You” are reminiscent more of the early Beatles covers of things like “Bésame Mucho”, with arrangements stripped back to guitars and piano, and chiming harmonies illuminating complex melodies. Lynne’s version of “Beyond The Sea” prances along on his swaggering bassline where Bobby Darin’s glides, and there’s a similarly lollopy bonhomie to his take on Charlie Chaplin’s “Smile”, a sort of lazy cowpoke trot that suits the song perfectly. The tone of relaxed confidence extends to Chuck Berry’s “Let It Rock”, which accrues a low-slung gangster lean through being taken as a lazily galloping boogie rather than a motorvating rocker. And there’s an interesting adaptation of Etta James’s R’n’B inflections to suit Lynne’s milder pop intonations on his version of “At Last”. The most drastic re-imagining occurs on a version of Don Covay’s “Have Mercy” that harks back to Lynne’s own youth in The Idle Race: here, there’s a brash, primitive beat-boom attack to the guitar and drum groove that recalls The Spencer Davis Group’s “Keep On Running”, no mean thing to pull off on your own. Elsewhere, his take on Roy Orbison’s “Running Scared” is suitably respectful as it climbs to its operatic climax, while the harmonies on the Everlys’ “So Sad” are so spot-on it’s as if Lynne has located his inner Don for one pass, followed by his inner Phil for another. All in all, an interesting exercise, far less arch and shamateurish than Kisses On The Bottom.
Andy Gill
Q&A
Jeff Lynne
Did you play all the ELO parts?
Yes, I played all the instruments myself, except for the string lines, played by Mark Mann.
Didn’t you once play strings?
Not really. I could scrape out a crummy tune on a cello. Then I had frets put on my cello, to make it more tuneful. I used to love doing slides, but you could hear it on the frets: badumbadumbrrrrrup!
It’s interesting how the earlier, pre-rock’n’roll songs are more reliant on melody than rhythm, compared to the rock songs.
Those chord structures are very, very complex. You have to do a kind of tunnel-hearing thing, just listen to an individual instrument and think away those big arrangements that are fluffing all around it, with all those flutes and clarinets that obscured what the real chords were. If you listen in a different mode and just learn the guitar chords, they’re actually very simple songs – but you would never know that from hearing those old recordings of them.
“Have Mercy” is effective in beat-boom style.
I tried to get a live feel, which is difficult to do when you’re playing it all yourself – you can’t really bounce off yourself: once you’ve laid down one track you can’t think about it again, because you’ve got to try and get the next one to bounce against that one. The reason I know that song so well is that it was one of my favourites when we used to play it in The Idle Race, in the pubs and clubs of Birmingham.
The Rolling Stones are being lined up to headline next year's Glastonbury festival, according to reports.
With the band's guitarist Keith Richards letting slip that they had been booked to play live shows in London and New York, and sax player Bobby Keys later claiming that the shows would take pl...
The Rolling Stones are being lined up to headline next year’s Glastonbury festival, according to reports.
With the band’s guitarist Keith Richards letting slip that they had been booked to play live shows in London and New York, and sax player Bobby Keys later claiming that the shows would take place in November, the legendary rockers look set to finally hit the road and celebrate their 50th anniversary.
Now, according to the Sun, a source has claimed that Glastonbury boss Michael Eavis is desperate to convince the band to top the bill at Worthy Farm in 2013. “The band are gearing up for a load of live dates but tend to leave big decisions like this until the last minute,” they said. “Michael Eavis is desperate to get the band confirmed and has made initial contact with their people.”
“It would be a massive coup to get the band playing Glasto on what could be their last round of live dates,” they added. “Getting a decision from the whole band can be tough and at the moment they are without an agent for live shows, which is not helping the situation. But there is a good chance 2013 will finally be the year they make it,”
Yesterday (October 11), the band debuted a new track titled “Doom And Gloom“. Recorded in Paris and produced by Don Was, “Doom And Gloom” is one of two brand new songs taken from the forthcoming hits collection GRRR!, which will be released on November 12. The other new track, titled “One More Shot”, is still under wraps, but “Doom And Gloom” is available to buy now.
The Who's Pete Townshend has said he feels "the ghosts" of drummer Keith Moon and bassist John Entwistle onstage.
The guitarist, who publishes his long-awaited memoir Who I Am yesterday (October 11), told Rolling Stone that he and singer Roger Daltrey feel the presence of their former band mates.
Speaking about the difficulty he faced continuing the band after John Entwistle's death in 2002, he said: "We feel the ghosts of Keith and John. The second phase of The Who in a sense was really when we started to tour again around the year 2000, 2001. We were still able to evoke the sound, particularly with Zak Starkey. Now it's much more difficult even though Zak's there. John's sound was very big and rich and organic."
He added: "When John died, there was a hole in the sound onstage and I was able to grow into that and find space. And I have to say as a guitar player, I prefer working without John. But as a member of The Who creating the incredible, powerful, driving, visceral sound, he's gone. I can't really do that again."
The rocker also said that Daltrey had been pushing the band to take risks lately, adding that he had given the singer control of production and video for their up-coming North American Quadrophenia tour. "He's working on a new dramatic scenario for it, working on a new video, trying to find a way to be comfortable being the narrator," he said.
Last month, Townshend broke his silence on the child pornography scandal that engulfed him in 2003. He said his his decision to investigate child pornography was a product of "white knight syndrome, an attempt to be seen to be the one that's helping", adding: "I had experienced something creepy as a child, so you imagine: what if I was a girl of nine or 10 and my uncle had raped me every week? I felt I had an understanding and I could help."
Townshend - who is the founder of sexual abuse charity Double O - paid a £7 charge to a child pornography site, which he cancelled straight away, to expose the financial chain of child abuse from Russian orphanages. When police discovered the files, he was cautioned and placed on the sex offenders register for five years after he admitted to breaking the law.
The Who’s Pete Townshend has said he feels “the ghosts” of drummer Keith Moon and bassist John Entwistle onstage.
The guitarist, who publishes his long-awaited memoir Who I Am yesterday (October 11), told Rolling Stone that he and singer Roger Daltrey feel the presence of their former band mates.
Speaking about the difficulty he faced continuing the band after John Entwistle‘s death in 2002, he said: “We feel the ghosts of Keith and John. The second phase of The Who in a sense was really when we started to tour again around the year 2000, 2001. We were still able to evoke the sound, particularly with Zak Starkey. Now it’s much more difficult even though Zak’s there. John’s sound was very big and rich and organic.”
He added: “When John died, there was a hole in the sound onstage and I was able to grow into that and find space. And I have to say as a guitar player, I prefer working without John. But as a member of The Who creating the incredible, powerful, driving, visceral sound, he’s gone. I can’t really do that again.”
The rocker also said that Daltrey had been pushing the band to take risks lately, adding that he had given the singer control of production and video for their up-coming North American Quadrophenia tour. “He’s working on a new dramatic scenario for it, working on a new video, trying to find a way to be comfortable being the narrator,” he said.
Last month, Townshend broke his silence on the child pornography scandal that engulfed him in 2003. He said his his decision to investigate child pornography was a product of “white knight syndrome, an attempt to be seen to be the one that’s helping”, adding: “I had experienced something creepy as a child, so you imagine: what if I was a girl of nine or 10 and my uncle had raped me every week? I felt I had an understanding and I could help.”
Townshend – who is the founder of sexual abuse charity Double O – paid a £7 charge to a child pornography site, which he cancelled straight away, to expose the financial chain of child abuse from Russian orphanages. When police discovered the files, he was cautioned and placed on the sex offenders register for five years after he admitted to breaking the law.
The Black Keys and RZA of the Wu Tang Clan have teamed up for a new song, "The Baddest Man Alive".
The song is taken from the soundtrack to the forthcoming movie The Man With The Iron Fists, which was written and directed by RZA, real name Robert Fitzgerald Diggs.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1...
The Black Keys and RZA of the Wu Tang Clan have teamed up for a new song, “The Baddest Man Alive”.
The song is taken from the soundtrack to the forthcoming movie The Man With The Iron Fists, which was written and directed by RZA, real name Robert Fitzgerald Diggs.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1VillVWmxE
The kung-fu movie is set for a US release next month (November 2).
The Black Keys and RZA have collaborated before, on 2009’s Blakroc album, which also saw the blues rock duo teaming up with Mos Def, Q-Tip, Raekwon, Ludacris and Pharoahe Monch.
The album also featured vocals from the late Wu-Tang Clan member Ol’ Dirty Bastard.
The Black Keys return to the UK later this year for a full arena tour. They will kick off their six-date trek at Newcastle Metro Radio Arena on December 7, before playing Glasgow SECC on November 8, Birmingham NIA on December 9 and Manchester Arena on December 11. The tour will conclude at London’s O2 Arena on December 12 and 13.
In this archive feature from December 2008 (Take 139), we get the inside story from Cohen’s bandmates on their extraordinary year with the singer-songwriter that even Bob Dylan calls “a real poet”. Interviews: Michael Bonner, Nick Hasted and John Lewis. Photograph: Lorca Cohen
____________...
GLASTONBURY, PILTON, ENGLAND, JUNE 29, 2008
Charley Webb: We stood there all together, and he peeked round the curtain, and said: “There’s a few people here tonight, friends…” And there were 100,000 people in front of us. I think he’s often a little nervous. Every time we walk on, he says: “Come on, friends, let’s go!” I think he feels an obligation to all of us. So he doesn’t like to show his nerves too much.
Mark Radcliffe [BBC presenter]: He was the only person at Glastonbury who refused to be televised. The excuse he gave was that the cameras interfere with his connection with the audience. Some people were thinking that was a little precious. But having seen that connection, you couldn’t argue.
Roscoe Beck: Someone called us “the world’s quietest band”, and it is the quietest band I’ve ever played in. He was concerned about whether it would work in front of 100,000 people. He’s a very humble man. It makes him want to give even more. He just wants to make sure everyone leaves with something they’ll never forget.
Charley Webb: Leonard will always choose the smallest or least comfortable seat in the room or on the plane, and he’ll always leave the nicest ones to other people. He insists on that, and if you try to change it he goes: “No, please, after you…” Total graciousness and gentlemanliness, all the time. But then surprising openness, with very amusing stories. He doesn’t make any apologies for the way he feels, and he’s not nervous to say what he thinks.
Hattie Webb: One time we were on the plane and it was incredibly bumpy, and all the people around me were very frightened. I was gripping hold of my drink and seeing my life flashing before my eyes, and I looked over at Leonard. He was completely and utterly calm, and said: “Don’t worry, darling, nothing can happen to you – it’s just the way it is.” That’s what we take from Leonard. He worries about the small things and deals with those. And with the big things, he lets nature take its course.
_____________________
THE LAST SHOW OF THE SUMMER TOUR: THE BIG CHILL FESTIVAL, LEDBURY, ENGLAND, AUGUST 3, 2008
Hattie Webb: Charley and I went into the festival a little early, and I walked backstage in a hippy festival dress, and Leonard said to me: “You’d better cover up your knees, darlin’, because there are old men in here!”
Charley Webb: I think everybody was quite happy to play that festival, but also happy that it was the last of the leg. We had been out for what seemed to be too long. Too long, certainly, for Leonard. When he was onstage you’d never have known, because he’s so professional. But offstage, he and all of us were weary.
Sharon Robinson: We were somewhat anxious to get back to our lives, and families and take care of things. It was time to go home. And so we went our separate ways. And reconvened at rehearsal.
_____________________
THE FIRST SHOW OF THE AUTUMN TOUR: ARCUL DE TRIUMF, BUCHAREST, ROMANIA, SEPTEMBER 21, 2008
Roscoe Beck: We took three or four weeks off, then we reconvened in Los Angeles again at the SIR studio for two weeks, just to brush up.
Charley Webb: The first show back was his 74th birthday. It was a good birthday. We talked the day before, as a band: “What shall we do on Leonard’s birthday?” And we agreed “nothing” was the right response. But people in Bucharest were charming and the show was punctuated with “Happy Birthday to you,” over and over. And then some people came up onstage with some enormous cakes that were heavier than Leonard, which he held for a few minutes, ’til we rescued him. He always tastes, but he never really indulges in an enormous portion.
Sharon Robinson: The set has changed a little on this leg. Leonard has added “The Partisan” to the show, and “Famous Blue Raincoat” is coming back in. There are no new songs, not yet.
Roscoe Beck: Well, he’s already got some things written. He’s played me two new songs. And there are more. I saw him writing on the plane yesterday, in his notebooks. And he’s talked to me about wanting to do a new record. But it will probably be when the touring’s done. We’ll break for Christmas, then I think we’re going to Hawaii, New Zealand, Australia and the Far East. After that will be the US and Western Canada. So there’s at least that much touring before we can start on a record. That will take us to at least October 2009 before we can even think about recording.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvpoiiBW9bc
Jack White has unveiled his new video for 'I'm Shakin'' – watch it above.
In it, two Jack Whites – one in a pale blue suit, one in a dark blue suit – duel face-to-face in a rehearsal space, backed up by their correspondingly-dressed bands. The trac...
Jack White has unveiled his new video for ‘I’m Shakin” – watch it above.
In it, two Jack Whites – one in a pale blue suit, one in a dark blue suit – duel face-to-face in a rehearsal space, backed up by their correspondingly-dressed bands. The track is the fourth single to be taken from White’s debut solo album, Blunderbuss.
The seven-inch vinyl single will be available to pre-order from October 16 and will feature the B-side ‘Blues On Two Trees’. It will be released digitally on October 30.
The guitar virtuoso and former White Stripes man will return to the UK and Ireland this month for a string of live dates across October and November.
The run of dates begins at Dublin’s O2 Arena on October 31 and runs until November 8 when White headlines Edinburgh’s Usher Hall.
Freed Pussy Riot member Yekaterina Samutsevich has vowed to continue the group's fight against Russian authorities.
Samutsevich was released from jail yesterday (October 10) after a Moscow court accepted her appeal on the grounds that she had been thrown out of Moscow's main catherdral before she could remove her guitar from its case for the Pussy Riot's "punk prayer" protest against Putin.
"We are not finished," she said in her first interview since leaving jail. "We have to act in such a way so that they (Russian authorities) do not learn about the concerts ahead of time, and be caught and jailed afterwards," she added.
Three members of Pussy received two-year prison sentences on August 17 after being found guilty of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred after they were arrested following an anti-Putin gig in Moscow's main cathedral. While Samutsevich has been freed on appeal, the other two women - Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova - have had their jail terms upheld.
Although two of Samutsevich's bandmates remain behind bars, she says she has reunited with other members of Pussy Riot and will continue to take part in the movement that cast a global spotlight on Russia's political situation, telling journalists that Pussy Riot is "more united than ever … fighting for the freedom of Masha and Nadia!"
In an interview last night with CNN, Samutsevich said: "We are not finished, nor are we going to end our political protest...The situation in the country has deteriorated since our performance and the trial itself is a testimony to that."
Although she said she will be "more cautious" in her actions going forward, her "negative" attitude toward Vladimir Putin and what she calls his "mega authoritarian project" remains unchanged.
Freed Pussy Riot member Yekaterina Samutsevich has vowed to continue the group’s fight against Russian authorities.
Samutsevich was released from jail yesterday (October 10) after a Moscow court accepted her appeal on the grounds that she had been thrown out of Moscow’s main catherdral before she could remove her guitar from its case for the Pussy Riot’s “punk prayer” protest against Putin.
“We are not finished,” she said in her first interview since leaving jail. “We have to act in such a way so that they (Russian authorities) do not learn about the concerts ahead of time, and be caught and jailed afterwards,” she added.
Three members of Pussy received two-year prison sentences on August 17 after being found guilty of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred after they were arrested following an anti-Putin gig in Moscow’s main cathedral. While Samutsevich has been freed on appeal, the other two women – Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova – have had their jail terms upheld.
Although two of Samutsevich’s bandmates remain behind bars, she says she has reunited with other members of Pussy Riot and will continue to take part in the movement that cast a global spotlight on Russia’s political situation, telling journalists that Pussy Riot is “more united than ever … fighting for the freedom of Masha and Nadia!”
In an interview last night with CNN, Samutsevich said: “We are not finished, nor are we going to end our political protest…The situation in the country has deteriorated since our performance and the trial itself is a testimony to that.”
Although she said she will be “more cautious” in her actions going forward, her “negative” attitude toward Vladimir Putin and what she calls his “mega authoritarian project” remains unchanged.
The giant US concert venue company that runs London's O2 Arena is up for sale.
Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG), who own a stake in David Beckham's football team LA Galaxy, also owns AEG Live – the world's second biggest ticket and live music company behind Live Nation, the Evening Standard reports.
The firm's owners said it was "an appropriate time" to sell up as the company could "maximise value for all concerned". It has been speculated that the whole company could fetch £4.25 billion.
The O2 arena is one of AEG's biggest venues after it turned the Millennium Dome into a massive gig arena. In the next few months alone it will host Muse, The Killers, Mumford and Sons, Florence and the Machine and The Black Keys.
The Government sold the £850 million Dome for the reported sum of £1. AEG subsequently invested in the space to create the 20,000 seater venue, for which O2 pays a reported £6 million per year for the site's name.
The giant US concert venue company that runs London’s O2 Arena is up for sale.
Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG), who own a stake in David Beckham’s football team LA Galaxy, also owns AEG Live – the world’s second biggest ticket and live music company behind Live Nation, the Evening Standard reports.
The firm’s owners said it was “an appropriate time” to sell up as the company could “maximise value for all concerned”. It has been speculated that the whole company could fetch £4.25 billion.
The O2 arena is one of AEG’s biggest venues after it turned the Millennium Dome into a massive gig arena. In the next few months alone it will host Muse, The Killers, Mumford and Sons, Florence and the Machine and The Black Keys.
The Government sold the £850 million Dome for the reported sum of £1. AEG subsequently invested in the space to create the 20,000 seater venue, for which O2 pays a reported £6 million per year for the site’s name.
Tim Burton's kid friendly Frankenstein opens this year's London Film Festival...
It’s true, there is very little that's unfamiliar about Tim Burton’s Frankenweenie. The obsessive references to RKO horror movies, Ray Harryhausen and Edgar Allen Poe, designs that are pitched somewhere between Edward Gorey and Rod Sterling, the ongoing devotion to Vincent Price, an angry mob carrying flaming torches. Never let it be said that Tim Burton shies away from wearing his influences on his sleeve: Frankenweenie is a Frankenstein movie, sewn together from parts of other films, comic books, TV shows, and whatever vintage pop cultural detritus clutters up Burton’s mind. Weirdly, it’s also the filmmaker’s most straightforwardly enjoyable film in a long while.
In its earliest incarnation, Frankenweenie was a live action 30 minute short, made in 1984 while Burton was working at Disney, which the studio rejected as being too scary for children. Resurrected now as a full-length, stop-motion feature, this new Frankenweenie is an amiable piece of kiddie-Gothery, not remotely scary but certainly a vast improvement on Burton’s last film, the wretched Dark Shadows. We’re in a suburban America town called New Holland – a black and white Twilight Zone of small-minded prejudice, picket fences and robust housewives that feels stuck in the 1950s. Young Victor Frankenstein makes Super 8 monster movies starring his cheery pup, Sparky. When Sparky is run over and killed, the enterprising Victor – inspired by the school science teacher and Vincent Price lookalike, Mr Rzykruski (Martin Landau) – retrieves the corpse from the pet cemetery and wires him into a Heath Robinson-style contraption and a handy thunderstorm revives him. See! He rises! Soon, the local school kids are all bringing their own deceased animals back to life, and before long, the horrified townsfolk are being terrorised by a roving band of zombie pets: a tortoise, Sea Monkeys, a hamster and a weird cat/bat hybrid. Clearly, no good will come of this.
While enjoying his most commercially successful period, Tim Burton’s trajectory in the last ten years has also resembled a career in creative decline. His projects have been so-so remakes and adaptations that have gradually chipped away at the goodwill he’d earned up to the end of the Nineties. I’m aware that Alice In Wonderland was a massive box office hit for Burton – but I suspect that had more to do with the pull of Carroll’s book than Burton himself. The last Burton film I remember enjoying was 2005’s Corpse Bride –also a stop-motion animation, and another film in which a dead dog features prominently. It had a lightness of touch and, perhaps because of its brisk 77-minute running time, its felt focussed: particularly when compared to the cumbersome, rudderless Dark Shadows. I quite liked the swagger of Sweeney Todd, but it lacked any sense of danger.
Frankenweenie is also Burton’s first film without Johnny Depp in almost a decade. Coincidentally, it’s also the first since Edward Scissorhands in 1990 to feature Winona Ryder (voicing Victor’s neighbour, called – what else? – Elsa Van Helsing). Hooking up with Ryder after a gap of 20 years and returning to a decades-old project might suggest Burton is tacitly acknowledging that he was at his most creative in his youth. Indeed, how much does Burton see of himself in Victor, the unconventional boy trapped in a conventional town, who dreams of being a filmmaker?
Frankenweenie's narrative has an undeniably strong pull – the desire to bring back something that is gone forever. Yes, the film is sentimental; but it never quite slips into Spielbergian hokum. One of the film’s best scenes – where Victor, believing his attempts to resurrect Sparky have failed, embraces the dog, only for Sparky’s tail to slowly twitch back to life – is nicely understated. But the overwhelming vibe here of innocent fun; childlike, but not childish. Perhaps by going back to the very start of his career, Burton can now move forward.
Frankenweenie opens in the UK on October 17
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cqI6hPra7c
Tim Burton’s kid friendly Frankenstein opens this year’s London Film Festival…
It’s true, there is very little that’s unfamiliar about Tim Burton’s Frankenweenie. The obsessive references to RKO horror movies, Ray Harryhausen and Edgar Allen Poe, designs that are pitched somewhere between Edward Gorey and Rod Sterling, the ongoing devotion to Vincent Price, an angry mob carrying flaming torches. Never let it be said that Tim Burton shies away from wearing his influences on his sleeve: Frankenweenie is a Frankenstein movie, sewn together from parts of other films, comic books, TV shows, and whatever vintage pop cultural detritus clutters up Burton’s mind. Weirdly, it’s also the filmmaker’s most straightforwardly enjoyable film in a long while.
In its earliest incarnation, Frankenweenie was a live action 30 minute short, made in 1984 while Burton was working at Disney, which the studio rejected as being too scary for children. Resurrected now as a full-length, stop-motion feature, this new Frankenweenie is an amiable piece of kiddie-Gothery, not remotely scary but certainly a vast improvement on Burton’s last film, the wretched Dark Shadows. We’re in a suburban America town called New Holland – a black and white Twilight Zone of small-minded prejudice, picket fences and robust housewives that feels stuck in the 1950s. Young Victor Frankenstein makes Super 8 monster movies starring his cheery pup, Sparky. When Sparky is run over and killed, the enterprising Victor – inspired by the school science teacher and Vincent Price lookalike, Mr Rzykruski (Martin Landau) – retrieves the corpse from the pet cemetery and wires him into a Heath Robinson-style contraption and a handy thunderstorm revives him. See! He rises! Soon, the local school kids are all bringing their own deceased animals back to life, and before long, the horrified townsfolk are being terrorised by a roving band of zombie pets: a tortoise, Sea Monkeys, a hamster and a weird cat/bat hybrid. Clearly, no good will come of this.
While enjoying his most commercially successful period, Tim Burton’s trajectory in the last ten years has also resembled a career in creative decline. His projects have been so-so remakes and adaptations that have gradually chipped away at the goodwill he’d earned up to the end of the Nineties. I’m aware that Alice In Wonderland was a massive box office hit for Burton – but I suspect that had more to do with the pull of Carroll’s book than Burton himself. The last Burton film I remember enjoying was 2005’s Corpse Bride –also a stop-motion animation, and another film in which a dead dog features prominently. It had a lightness of touch and, perhaps because of its brisk 77-minute running time, its felt focussed: particularly when compared to the cumbersome, rudderless Dark Shadows. I quite liked the swagger of Sweeney Todd, but it lacked any sense of danger.
Frankenweenie is also Burton’s first film without Johnny Depp in almost a decade. Coincidentally, it’s also the first since Edward Scissorhands in 1990 to feature Winona Ryder (voicing Victor’s neighbour, called – what else? – Elsa Van Helsing). Hooking up with Ryder after a gap of 20 years and returning to a decades-old project might suggest Burton is tacitly acknowledging that he was at his most creative in his youth. Indeed, how much does Burton see of himself in Victor, the unconventional boy trapped in a conventional town, who dreams of being a filmmaker?
Frankenweenie‘s narrative has an undeniably strong pull – the desire to bring back something that is gone forever. Yes, the film is sentimental; but it never quite slips into Spielbergian hokum. One of the film’s best scenes – where Victor, believing his attempts to resurrect Sparky have failed, embraces the dog, only for Sparky’s tail to slowly twitch back to life – is nicely understated. But the overwhelming vibe here of innocent fun; childlike, but not childish. Perhaps by going back to the very start of his career, Burton can now move forward.
