The deluxe reissue of Saint Julian is reviewed in the new issue of Uncut, dated March 2013, and out now, so it seemed time to revisit October 2007's issue (Take 125), when the always-enlightening Julian Cope answered questions from readers and famous fans… Words: John Lewis / Photo: Sam Jones____________________
50 years is a long time to wait for a book. In September 1956, Alan Garner started writing his debut novel, a children’s book set among the landscape and folklore he’d known all his life – Alderley Edge in Cheshire, 12 miles south of Manchester. First published in 1960, The Weirdstone Of Brisingamen followed the adventures of 12 year-old twins, Colin and Susan, on the Edge – “a long-backed hill… high and sombre and black.”
In tribute to the late Band legend, who died in April 2012, this week’s archive feature is a fascinating piece from October 2009’s Uncut (Take 149) – Barney Hoskyns travels to Levon Helm’s Woodstock barn for one of his Midnight Rambles, a musical hogroast-cum-celebration of the drummer’s life and legacy. “To me,” says Helm, “it’s just rock’n’roll…”
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The announcement came at the very end of last week that the novelist Alan Garner has written the third instalment of a story he began in 1960 with The Weirdstone Of Brisingamen. To anyone raised in the Seventies like me, the news might have prompted a sudden, sharp reconnection with their childhood; The Weirdstone, and its 1963 sequel The Moon Of Gomrath, were touchstones of my adolescent reading.
