Like everything else, Noel Gallagher had an opinion about debut albums. “Definitely Maybe was the young, eager, wanting to get out there and fucking blow the world away album,” he told Uncut in 2000. As Gallagher claimed on many occasions, he’d been strategising a debut album, in whatever form, since his teenage years. With such apparent forethought, it’s no wonder that when Definitely Maybe appeared in August, 1994 it redrew the parameters of indie rock, filling a void left by The Stone Roses and gave Alan McGee’s Creation Records a world-class act.
Eric Clapton has announced the release of a tribute album to mark the first anniversary of the death of JJ Cale.
The album, called Eric Clapton & Friends: The Breeze, An Appreciation Of JJ Cale, will be released on July 29 and will feature reinterpretations of 16 Cale tracks, performed by Clapton and Tom Petty, Willie Nelson, Mark Knopfler and more.
Cale died of a heart attack in San Diego last July, at the age of 74.
The tracklisting for Eric Clapton & Friends: The Breeze, An Appreciation of JJ Cale is:
As Damon Albarn prepares to release his debut solo album, Everyday Robots, on Monday, and 20 years since the release of Parklife is celebrated, we delve back into the Uncut archive (July 2009, Take 146) and go behind the scenes of the sessions that produced Blur’s classic albums and reveal the conflicts that nearly destroyed the band… Interviews: Nick Hasted
St Vincent releases her self-titled fourth album on Monday (February 24) – here, from the Uncut archives (October 2012, Take 185), is a reminder of Annie Clark’s last project – Love This Giant, created with David Byrne. Gather round, then, as Byrne and Clark reveal the secrets of a successful art-rock team-up, swish parties at the French Ambassador’s residence, and being “allergic to cymbals”... Words: Peter Shapiro___________________
After Lou Reed died on October 27 last year we began discussing how best we could commemorate the man and his tremendous body of work. The natural solution presented itself in the form of an Ultimate Music Guide.
Early on in Lawrence Of Arabia, the head of the Arab bureau, Mr Dryden, calls Lawrence into his office and invites him to investigate the progress of the Arab Revolt against Constantinople and to appraise the strength of the Arab tribes.
To get to the Clyde Auditorium - the 3,000-seat venue crouched on the riverbank beside the SECC, which Glaswegians only ever refer to as The Armadillo - you have to traverse a long, wormy, weather-beaten covered walkway that bridges a motorway.
In an archive piece taken from Uncut’s January 2005 issue (Take 92), we look back at Dylan in 1975, when he turned the crisis of a deteriorating relationship into one of rock’s most compelling dramas. This is the story of Blood On The Tracks, the album that marked the demise of Dylan’s marriage – and his artistic rebirth. Words: Nick Hasted
