HAPPENINGS TEN YEARS TIME AGO
April 30 to May 6, 1997
The first issue of Uncut – the UK’s first music and movie magazine – is published
With a cover story that revisits Elvis Costello’s calamitous 1979 Armed Forces tour of America. Also featured in our first issue are Bob Dylan in Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid, a major retrospective on Billy Mackenzie, Counting Crows, Clint Eastwood and Taxi Driver. Albums reviewed in the issue include a Jam 20th anniversary box set, described by guest reviewer Alan McGee as “drop dead punk rock genius”, Foo Fighters, Paul McCartneyJimi Hendrix, Iggy And The Stooges and Morrissey’s Viva Hate.
Nine Inch Nails lynchpin Trent Reznor is an unlikely inclusion in Time magazine's annual list of the 25 most influential Americans. "Reznor's music is filthy, brutish stuff, oozing with aberrant sex, suicidal melancholy and violent misanthropy," claims the accompanying article, "but to the depressed, his songs proffer pop's perpetual message of hope." Other entertainment figures in the list are producer Kenneth 'Babyface' Edmonds, X-Files creator Chris Carter, movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, actress and talk show host Rosie O'Donnell, and comic strip hero Dilbert.
HAPPENINGS TEN YEARS TIME AGO
March 26 to April 1, 1997
MTV fire a string of onscreen presenters, after US ratings drop by 20 per cent. The station's facelift, which it claims will result in the screening of about 20 extra hours of videos a week, with a stronger emphasis on indie, electronica and dance artists, is also believed to have been prompted by a hugely critical music biz poll. The survey, by the Record Industry Association of America, suggests that MTV has become "surprisingly irrelevant" to consumers.
The big film this week is 300, director Zack Snyder’s gory and rabid retelling of the battle of Thermopylae, where 300 brave Spartan soldiers faced down the massed ranks of the mighty Persian Empire in 480BC.
HAPPENINGS TEN YEARS TIME AGO
March 12 to 18, 1997
Jermaine Stewart, the 80s soul star whose biggest hit was "We Don't Have To Take Our Clothes Off", dies of AIDS-related liver cancer, aged 39. Initially finding fame as a dancer on the long-running TV show Soul Train, Stewart also sang backing vocals for the likes of The Temptations, Tavares, Shalamar and Culture Club.
HAPPENINGS TEN YEARS TIME AGO
March 5 to 11, 1997
The Notorious B.I.G. is shot dead as he sits in a car outside the Soul Train Music Awards in Los Angeles. Police confirm they are investigating links between the killing and the slaying of Tupac Shakur in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas six months earlier, fuelling tabloid stories of a feud between the East Coast and West Coast rap communities. Biggie's demise comes just days after Death Row Records president Marion 'Suge' Knight receives a nine-year sentence for parole violations.
