U2’s shock-released new album, Songs Of Innocence, is largely themed around the band’s childhoods and adolescence in Dublin, according to Bono. Well, here’s what came next… This is the full story, as told by those who were there, of U2’s rise from indie hopefuls to becoming the Biggest Rock Band On The Planet. Written by Stephen Dalton, and originally published in Uncut’s December 1999 issue (Take 31).
This is the full text of my interview with Hurray For The Riff Raff in New Orleans, that appeared in the print edition of Uncut a couple of months ago. I've added a lot of music to listen to as you read; not just by Alynda and the Riff Raff, but by some of the other New Orleans musicians who are critical to the story.
With a new Nick Cave documentary, 20,000 Days On Earth, due to open in the UK next month, I thought it a good time to dust down a piece I wrote on Cave's film career for our 2013 Ultimate Music Guide dedicated to Cave.
How does the most innovative guitarist of his generation spend his spare time? By writing masterful film scores and trying to reinvent how music sounds, it seems. Jonny Greenwood’s There Will Be Blood soundtrack is performed at London’s Roundhouse on August 6 and 7, and here, in this piece from Uncut’s April 2011 issue (Take 167), Rob Young penetrates Greenwood’s studio lair and discovers, among other things, what Radiohead have been up to of late...
It is hard to tell where Neil Young and what we can just about call Crazy Horse end their main set in Hyde Park, Saturday night. "Rockin' In The Free World" has spluttered to a conclusion, of sorts, and the band appear to have left the stage. Then, you notice Young remains amidst the debris, pointing agitatedly at the word printed across his new t-shirt: "EARTH".
