Religious dissidents and juvenile delinquents, Greenwich Village and Potsdamer Platz, doomed soldiers and vacuous celebrities... David Cavanagh files the epic, definitive review of The Next Day. From Uncut's April 2013 (Take 191) issue._______________
So this, I think, might be a new thing: not so much a live recreation of a classic album, but a live recreation of the sessions which resulted in a classic album. A show predicated not just on evocative songs recorded 25-odd years ago, but on a nostalgia for outtakes that – up until a month or so ago, at least – most of the crowd in the Hammersmith Apollo tonight had never even heard.
Today (December 18), Keith Richards is 70 years old – to celebrate the Stone's landmark birthday, here's a classic interview from the Uncut archive (January 2004, Take 80), originally published to mark the guitarist's 60th birthday. Jon Wilde hooks up with Richards to discuss his favourite Rolling Stones songs, the importance of Max Miller jokes and going without sleep for nine days…
As he prepares to release his new film, Only Lovers Left Alive, Jim Jarmusch is set to answer your questions in Uncut as part of our regular Audience With… feature.
So is there anything you’ve always wanted to ask the legendary film director?
Joe Strummer, Tom Waits, Jack White, Iggy Pop... are there any other rock stars he'd like to cast in his films?
What are his memories of the No Wave scene in late Seventies New York?
What was it like working with Neil Young on Dead Man and Year Of The Horse?
If you were a fan, you probably watched with horror, incredulity and fretful concern at the things Lou Reed put himself through in the '70s, especially after the critical and commercial rejection of Berlin hardened an already cynical disposition into an unsparing bitterness and what seemed like a headlong pursuit of self-obliteration. Even more than Keith Richards at the time, Lou seemed the rock star most likely to become a casualty of his addictions.
The Neil Young Ultimate Music Guide that I wrote about here (along with a review of the forthcoming “Live At The Cellar Door” set) is on sale now, so I thought it might be useful to post a sampler of what you might expect in this Uncut special: namely, this piece by me on 1996’s underrated “Broken Arrow”. Every Neil album is reviewed in comparable detail – you can find details of where to buy the mag here…
I wrote a Throwing Muses feature for the November 2013 issue of Uncut, for which I spoke to all Muses past and present. The key interview, of course, was with Kristin Hersh, which ended up taking place over two lengthy sessions.