discover the best new releases

Hinds Joshua Hedley Walter Wolfman Washington Alison Moyet

I Don’t Run Mr. Jukebox My Future Is My Past The Other Live Collection
out now on CD & vinyl out now on CD & vinyl out now on CD & vinyl out now on CD
The Spanish garage quartet are Signed to Jack White’s Third Man An icon on the New Orleans This live set features songs from
back with the follow-up to 2016’s Records, Joshua’s debut album jazz scene, The Roadmasters’ throughout Moyet’s career, including
Leave Me Alone. Includes features nine originals as well as a Washington returns with this tracks from Other plus reworked
New For You and The Club. cover of When You Wish Upon A Star. stripped-back, intimate album. solo and Yazoo favourites.

We Are Scientists Middle Kids Hailey Tuck Belly

Megaplex Lost Friends Junk Dove
out 27 April on CD & vinyl out 4 May on CD & vinyl out 4 May on CD & vinyl out 4 May on CD & vinyl
The infamous duo once again dazzle Debut album from the Australian On this masterclass in sublime This is the first new full-length
the world with brand new splashes trio - a radiant collection of singing, Hailey puts her own spin on album from legendary New
of colourful and addictive pop. haunting hooks, lyrical poignancy songs by artists like Leonard Cohen, England alternative band Belly
and irresistible indie rock. Pulp and Paul McCartney. in over 20 years.

Gaz Coombes Peace - Kindness Is The Leon Bridges Charles Watson

World’s Strongest Man New Rock And Roll Good Thing Now That I’m A River
out 4 May on CD & vinyl out 4 May on CD & vinyl out 4 May on CD & vinyl out 18 May on CD & vinyl
Three years on from Matador, Following the singles Power and He’s drawn comparisons with Otis As good as any of Slow Club’s
Gaz returns with his most From Under Liquid Glass, the Redding and Sam Cooke and now many highs, Watson has created
ambitious solo release to date. indie rock quartet now unleash Leon makes a welcome return with something modern, fresh,
Includes Walk The Walk. their third album. album #2. exciting and potentially classic.

home of entertainment
 LONDON a MEMPHIS a PA LO A LTO

JUNE 2018 Issue 295

FEATURES
40 STEPHEN
MALKMUS One of ’90s
rock’s originals, the Pavement man
trucks on, trying to not be “self-
conscious or afraid”. He talks Dragnet
and Christian rock with John Mulvey.

46 GRACE SLICK
Jefferson Airplane’s psychedelic
siren on bedding the band and
booting the booze, the music
that soared and the records that
stank. Warning: contains fun.

52 RYLEY WALKER
Guitar music’s tortured explorer
takes us on a tour of his Chicago
manor and its improv scene – if he
can put the drugs aside long enough
to talk sense to Andrew Male.

58 1968: THE BIRTH

OF HEAV Y Jon Savage
selects 12 recordings that reflected
a key year of turmoil in big, dark riffs
and bludgeoning drums. Cream,
Blue Cheer, Iron Butterfly stomp on.

64 ROBERT PLANT
On the road with the Golden God
with a new lease of life, still searching
for new music and fans who “lose
their shit”. And Led Zep? “It makes
me realise how time flies.”

COVER STORY
72 ARCTIC MONKEYS
From Sheffield to… space? Alex
Turner & Co celebrate a decade as
Britain’s top band with a bold new
album exploring exciting new
territory. “There’ll be fans that will
be a bit confused now,” they tell
Danny Eccleston.

“Grace Slick: she drove people

crazy! But give her a mike and
you couldn’t stop her.”
MARTY BALIN, PAGE 46
Getty

MOJO 3
Sofia, so good: Le
Mystère Des Voix
Bulgares showing
up and singing out
in Utrecht, p32.

REGULARS
9 ABTMP In lieu of a lock-in, Shabaka
Hutchings, Bill Wyman and Jennifer Warnes get
the post-pub sounds together.
11 THEORIES, RANTS, ETC
A true Love story, a Fall guy and some Propaganda.
38 REAL GONE Safe travels Mickey Foote,
Claudia Fontaine, Mike Harrison and more.
126 ASK FRED Which was the speediest
re- and de-formation in the history of rock?
Resurrection men:
Bob Weir and Phil 130 HELLO GOODBYE Trevor Burton
Lesh, Lives, p116. joined The Move with every intention of getting
to the top. Assault by hi-hats changed his mind.

WHAT GOES ON!

14 LOU REED When Lou quit rock’n’roll in
1970, he vowed to be a man of letters. He would
change his mind, but in the interim his poetic
muse flamed on. Now his widow Laurie Anderson
presents a volume of verse with a 45.
18 BILL NELSON The six-string master of
Be-Bop Deluxe and beyond is, as ever, hard at it in
his private studio, his workrate a glorious example
to slackers everywhere. He invites MOJO in for a
summit, during which we strive to understand
the secret of unceasing creativity!
23 GRAHAM COXON What blows the
Blur guitarist’s swede? Only one way to find out –
by sweating out of him which jazz, prog and
improv he’d use as psychic weapons.
28 WIRE Pondering the limitations of punk,
these cerebral contrarians found a route to 1977’s
She’ll have you in masterly Pink Flag. Colin Newman and Graham
stitches: Eleanor Lewis recall the gob, the slog and a breakthrough.
Friedberger, Lead
Album, p86. 32 LE MYSTÈRE DES VOIX
BULGARES They wowed the world when
4AD released their open-throated folk singing.
Now the Bulgarian State Radio & TV Female Vocal
Choir return with their first new album in 24 years.

MOJO FILTER
86 NEW ALBUMS Eleanor Friedberger
in flame. Plus Jon Hopkins, Courtney Barnett, Ash,
Leon Bridges, Roger Daltrey, Chvrches and more.
100 REISSUES Ornette Coleman frees jazz.
Plus Neil Young, Prince Buster, Metallica and more.
112 BOOKS Paul Simon says: I did it my way.
Plus, Can, Benjamin Zephaniah and Shirley Collins.
116 LIVES Deadmen Lesh and Weir in NYC.
Hamburg hearts Charlotte Gainsbourg.
THIS MONTH’S CONTRIBUTORS INCLUDE
Jane Sanders Danny Pieter M van Hattem
Jay Blakesberg, Chris Ruiz, Jane Sanders

Jane Sanders, AKA “Stitchin’ Eccleston “Being on the road with Robert
in the Kitchen”, is a textile Danny joined the MOJO team in Plant felt like the last scene in Close
artist based in Newcastle 2004, after stints at Q, the NME Encounters when Richard Dreyfuss
upon Tyne. She has produced and multiple musicians’ mags. walks into the Mothership. Surreal.
a multitude of portraits, all He has since interviewed heroes He surrounds himself with some of
depicting popular musicians. including Van Dyke Parks, the smartest and kindest people I’ve
To connect with Jane, and Peter Perrett, Paul McCartney worked with. When I’m not taking
view her back catalogue and The The. He really does like photographs, you can find me in the
follow her on Instagram synth pop and encounters the Catskills fixing up my cabin. Find my
@stitchin_in_the_kitchen Arctic Monkeys from p72. work at www.pmvhphoto.com.”

4 MOJO
 THE MOJO
MACHINE
TURNS
YOU ON
2018.

“I’m really interested in the An appealingly skewed, twanging

psychology of people,” the masterful rethink of post-punk from Goat Girl, Through a sequence of incrementally
Aussie singer-songwriter told MOJO who’ve emerged these past few Those raised on the pulsating jangles ambitious LPs, Furman has grappled
last month. This tenderly crunching months as one of the most interesting of The Feelies and The Go-Betweens with a twitchy, impassioned and now
highlight from her forthcoming new bands in Britain. Cracker Drool will find much to love in Melbourne’s electro-tinged kind of ramalam.
second album, Tell Me How You relocates spaghetti western ambience Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever. Maraschino-Red Dress works
Really Feel, shows how: a closely to the badlands of south London, No indie gaucheness here, mind; through self-doubt before reaching
observed tale of relationship hiatus, given further droll gravitas by the this teaser from their second album a yelping epiphany that embraces
given shade and uplift by a melody quartet’s singer, Clottie Cream. is racey and fluent where others Furman’s key recurring themes of
worthy of Evan Dando. would shamble. gender and religion.
(Pendlbury, Davies, Jones and Bock) Published by
(Barnett) Published by Third Side Music, Marathon Kobalt Music Publishing. Licensed Courtesy of Rough (White) Published by Mushroom Music Publishing (Furman) Published by Kobalt Music Group.
Artists 2018. Track available as single across all DSPs. Trade Records Limited by arrangement with Beggars under licence to Sub Pop Records. Taken from album Copyright by Bella Union. Track taken from
www.courtneybarnett.com.au Group Media Limited. Taken from the album ‘Goat Hope Downs http://www.rollingblackoutsband.com Transangelic Exodus ezrafurman.com
Girl’ www.roughtraderecords.com

“I didn’t know my actual voice until How to update the desert blues of Almost certainly Texas’s premier
I heard Tim Buckley,” Power told the Tuareg people, as their music Thai-surf band, the Houston trio have
MOJO recently, “and I let go of any exponentially spreads round the discreetly nurtured a cult following From Bloomington, Indiana, Jones
idea of how I should actually sound.” world? Tinariwen’s young associates, since supporting Father John Misty and his troupe are a nuanced R&B
As a consequence, the London-Irish Imarhan, have found the perfect on tour. They also, as seen here, band with deep influences from
singer now sounds revelatory, answer: up the pace, add a touch specialise in the sort of nonchalant forgotten ‘60s soul groups like The
capable of transforming her most of Chic disco, and sing explicitly lounge-funk that the Beastie Boys Echoes and The Icemen. A loving,
Sophie Mulcahy, Getty

harrowing confessions into flights about the displacement caused by used to knock out between hardcore passionate revival comparable to
of uncanny, ethereal beauty. travel in foreign lands. and rap. Khruangbin means the similarly well-observed first
“airplane” in Thai. album by Leon Bridges.
(Mae Power) (ASCAP)Published by Tompkins Square (Moussa, Abderahmane, Abdelkader, Ourzig, Khaldi,
Publishing USA (administered by Concord Sounds) Bouhasse, Akhamouk). Published by Inear Publishing (Speer, Lee) & Warp Publishing. Taken from (Jones, Rhein & Gabriel) Published by Songs In
(ASCAP), from the album The Two Worlds (Tompkins admin. by BMG Rights Management France 2018 album Khruangbin – Con Todo El Mundo www. Numerical Order administered by SC Publishing (BMI)
Square) tompkinssquare.com / brigidmaepower.com Wedge under exclusive license to City Slang. Taken nighttimestories.co.uk & 2018 Dead Oceans / Colemine Records. Taken
from the album Temet https://cityslang.com/ from album Durand Jones & The Indications

6 MOJO
 N 1997, MOJO LAUNCHED A SERIES OF CDs EXCLUSIVELY FOR OUR
subscribers. The MOJO Machine Turns You On was styled in tribute to the
classic label comps of the late ‘60s, but featured an eclectic mix of new
sounds. The idea was simple: to assert that great music was still being
made, by artists who understood and reinvented the traditions we loved.
Twenty-one years later, that mission statement still endures, which is
why we’ve decided to restart the MOJO Machine Turns You On imprint.
Introducing, then, this 2018 edition, a meticulously curated showcase for
some of our favourite songs of the year thus far. Among the 15 tracks
gathered here, you’ll find invigorating rethinks of folk and R&B, plastic
funk and desert rock, Thai-style surf and elevated ramalam. You’ll discover
a song called Curse Of The Contemporary, and ample proof that the gulf
between ancient and modern is nowhere near as wide as some people
would have you believe. Today, as always, we’d love to turn you on…

Though notionally a new band, LUMP “The music sounds like it’s falling An LA craftsman whose roles include Ghosts of the canyons also pass
actually turns out to be a apart, and the words come from production for Father John Misty and through this gem from Canadian
collaboration between the still- a really fragile state of mind,” guitar for Roger Waters, Wilson’s own duo Kacy Anderson and Clayton
prodigious Laura Marling and Chicago’s mercurial guitar star tells solo career has built on vintage, Linthicum. The pair’s roots, though,
folktronica vet Mike Lindsay from MOJO on page 52 this month. burnished Laurel Canyon vibes, tend to be in the California country-
Tunng. Curse Of The Contemporary Telluride Speed, though, confounds growing into the expansive fantasias rock sound of Gram Parsons and
is a first glimpse of their first album Walker’s description, being a fluent that fill his recent Rare Birds album. Emmylou Harris, given crispness and
together, a postscript to Marling’s testimony to his evolving, Exhibit A: the rapturous, subtly clarity by their exceptional producer
California sojourn that’s blessed with adventurous jazz-folk. tweaked classicism of There’s A Light. Jeff Tweedy, from Wilco.
an uncanny warmth recalling,
(Walker and Fredrick Bach) & 2018 Dead Oceans. (Wilson) Published by Jonathan Wilson Big Deal (Anderson, Linthicum) Published by Fir Mountain
auspiciously, Kate Bush circa Aerial.
Published by Covertly Canadian Publishing (BMI) Music. Copyright by Bella Union Records. Track taken Music / Sinking Hill Songs / Songs Of NWIMP (ASCAP).
(Lindsay, Marling) & Domino Music Publishing. administered by Kobalt Music Group Ltd / Come Here from Rare Birds songsofjonathanwilson.com Taken from the album The Siren’s Song http://www.
Taken from the album LUMP out June 1 With That Music (ASCAP). Taken from the album kacyandclayton.com/
Deafman Glance

Breakout star of Matthew E White’s One of the very best techno auteurs
Spacebomb stable, Prass previews currently operating in the UK, Avery
her forthcoming second album, New Zealander Ruban Nielson’s is also a dab hand at the itchier end
The Future And The Past, with this grimy psychedelic R&B has pitched of chill-out. Hence Slow Fade, an
exquisite piece of funk-pop, a mix of his band somewhere between Prince Aphexy dreamscape so beguiling,
organic grooves and contemporary and Beck. But this highlight from the its parent album, Song For Alpha,
smarts, topped off with the Virginian fourth UMO album, Sex & Food, finds could justifiably have been named
singer channelling Janet Jackson at his adjusted falsetto closer in spirit ‘Selected Ambient Works 14-18’.
her most playful. to Scritti Politti and Green Gartside,
a similarly canny subverter of pop/ Written by by Daniel Avery (Avery), published
(Prass) Published by Downtown Music Publishing/50 funk norms. Phantasy Songs admin by Bucks Music Group.
Happy The Kid/50, Natalie Prass/ASCAP Kyle Ryan/ Phantasy Sound under exclusive licence to [PIAS].
ASCAP. Copyright by ATO Records, under exclusive (Nielson) Published by Third Side Music Inc (ASCAP) New album Song For Alpha out now on Phantasy.
licence to [PIAS]. Track produced by Matthew E White & 2018 Jagjaguwar. Courtesy of Jagjaguwar http://www.danielavery.co.uk
 ROBERT SMITH’S

15 – 24 JUNE 2018

C U R Æ T I O N -2 5 | D E AT H C A B F O R C U T I E | D E F T O N E S | T H E L I B E R T I N E S
M A N I C ST R E E T P R E AC H E R S | M O G WA I | M Y B LO O DY VA L E N T I N E | N I N E I N C H N A I LS
PLACEBO | THE PSYCHEDELIC FURS

6 5 D AY S O F S TAT I C | A L C E S T | F R I G H T E N E D R A B B I T | G O D I S A N A S T R O N A U T | K R I S T I N H E R S H
L O W | M AY B E S H E W I L L | M O N O | T H E N O T W I S T | S U Z A N N E V E G A

A DEAD FOREST INDEX | THE ANCHORESS | AND ALSO THE TREES | BLACK MOTH SUPER RAINBOW | THE CHURCH
DOUGLAS DARE | DRAHLA | EMMA RUTH RUNDLE | HILARY WOODS | I LIKE TRAINS | INDIAN QUEENS | JAMBINAI
J O Q U A I L | J Ó N S I , A L E X S O M E R S & PA U L C O R L E Y | J O Y C U T | T H E J O Y F O R M I D A B L E | K A E L A N M I K L A
K AT H R Y N J O S E P H | K I D S M O K E | T H E K V B | L O O P | M AT T H O L U B O W S K I | M O O N D U O | P L A N N I N G F O R B U R I A L
P G . LO ST | P U M A R O S A | T H E S O F T M O O N | T H O U G H T FO R M S | T H E T W I L I G H T S A D | V E X R E D | YO N A K A

Media Partner

# M E LT D O W N F E ST © Andy Vella
 Shabaka Hutchings
JAZZ SAX DYNAMO
What music are you currently Which musician, other than your-
grooving to? self, have you ever wanted to be?
The new Dizzee Rascal [Raskit]has Kebbi Williams, he plays tenor saxo-
been on my phone for the last phone. He’s from Atlanta. I met him
month. Also Earl Sweatshirt’s Doris, when I first moved to London, and
Andy Sheppard’s new album on he played in a way which literally
ECM, and John Surman’s Invisible made me think, That’s how I want to
Threads. I like it if it sounds like an play. I’m awkward when I meet him!
actual person is communicating What do you sing in the shower?
something to me. I’m not a big singer but I’ll hum
What, if push comes to shove, is things, and get ideas. The bass line
your all-time favourite album? for Inner Babylon came from there.
I don’t think there could be an all- What is your favourite Saturday
time favourite. Without analysing, it night record?
would be Vespertine by Björk. It’s the If I’m not working and I’m at home,
emotional areas she gets into, it’s like grooving in my living room, ATLiens
it’s big and small simultaneously. by OutKast. I like the atmosphere;
it’s not too hype. Staying in is great,
What was the first record you ever
especially if you’re a professional
bought? And where did you buy it?
fun-maker five nights a week.
I bought three at the same time –
D’Angelo’s Brown Sugar, Fugees’ The And your Sunday morning record?
Score/Bootleg Versions and Mary J. Maybe Joanna Newsom, Ys. It’s got
Blige’s Share My World. I was living in a good uplifting, reflective and
Barbados, when I was 12 years old. It optimistic vibe to it.
was from a high street store called Sons Of Kemet’s Your Queen Is A Reptile is
Cave Shepherd. out now on Impulse!

IN WHICH THE STARS REVEAL THE SONIC DELIGHTS GUARANTEED TO GET THEM GOING...
Which musician, other than
Jennifer yourself, have you ever Bill Wyman
wanted to be?
Warnes I might have liked to be an
STONE ALONE!
opera singer, one with a happy What music are you currently
WEARER OF grooving to?
marriage and a few healthy
FAMOUS BLUE well-adjusted children! That I’ve just finished mixing and
RAINCOAT said, I’ve always admired my mastering the latest Bill
What music are you currently friend Leah Kunkel’s natural Wyman’s Rhythm Kings stu-
grooving to? vocal tone. She has the warmth dio album, Studio Time, and I’m
Jorge Calderón’s new album, of her sister Cass Elliot’s voice, very proud of it. Apart from
which will be released this but more intimate and soulful. that, I’ve been listening to this
year. I still like a variety of wonderful Norwegian girl sing-
What do you sing in the Which musician, other than
music, but only if it has that er Sigrid, who is fantastic. She
shower? yourself, have you ever want-
ingredient of ‘inner spirit’. has perfect pitch.
Whatever bits of song loops ed to be?
What, if push comes to What, if push comes to shove, For his voice, Chris Rea, my
that remain in my subcon-
shove, is your all-time is your all-time favourite great mate. In another life, Ray
scious from my dreams.
favourite album? album? Charles – the greatest artist
What is your favourite I’m an old sod so my music
I don’t have one favourite, but of the 20th century in my
Saturday night record? tastes go back a good way.
Paul Simon’s Graceland is right eyes. Or, down south, George
up there – along with most of Recordings that help me cry or Ray Charles And Betty Carter – Jones – the Rolls Royce of
Ry Cooder’s albums from the dance, depending on my the vocal intimacy between country singers.
1970s. I sometimes like to listen mood: the Cal theme by Mark them is magic. A close second
Knopfler. Stevie Wonder or is The Best Of Mose Allison, a What do you sing in
to my album Famous Blue the shower?
Curtis Mayfield. Emmylou man who crossed the blues
Raincoat when I’m on a long I don’t waste my voice in
Harris singing Boulder To with a lovely touch of jazz. And
drive, so that falls into the shower. Also, I almost
Birmingham. Doyle Dire Straits’ Communiqué has
‘Favourite Road Records’. NOW drowned as a child and I’m
Bramhall’s Bird Nest On The one of my very favourite tracks,
What was the first record you Ground. The Wild PLAYING Once Upon A Time In The West. scared of water. I get in and
ever bought? And where did ● Sunday a.m. finds out as quickly as possible.
Tchoupitoulas. The New Shabaka Hutchings What was the first record you
you buy it? World Symphony. Sam Cooke. ever bought? And where did What is your favourite
kicking back with
My mother bought music at Joanna Newsom’s you buy it? Saturday night record?
And your Sunday morning
Baton Music Store on Center enchanted 2006 prog- It was in Anerley, south-east Chris Rea – Road To Hell. I’d love
record?
Street in Anaheim, CA, in the folk album Ys. London in 1953. I sold my to do an album with him.
early ’5 Stevie Wonder’s Ave Maria or ● Forced to pick an stamp collection, and with the And your Sunday morning
bough d What all-time fave, Bill little money I got I bought a record?
Brend y of Wyman goes for
sparkling 1961 team-
wind-up record player and an
a, a Dr. John & Rickie Lee Jones –
Pierrick Guidou, Getty (2)

Hank old 78 of Les Paul & Mary Ford

end. up Ray Charles And Makin’ Whoopee. These guys
Willia Betty Carter. singing The World Is Waiting
Harry ets. For The Sunrise. It was the first sing it special. It’s a close-run
● Jennifer Warnes’
Belafo record I heard that featured the thing with the Ray Charles
Saturday night
Mario electric guitar. I was fortunate live version.
nother involves Emmylou
Lanza d Harris’s Boulder To in later life to have Les Paul Bill Wyman’s Rhythm Kings’ Studio
Of Ind Birmingham, her as a friend. Time is released by Edsel/ Demon.
lament for Gram
Parsons from 1975 LP
Pieces Of The Sky.
MOJO 9
 SPRING
EUROPEAN
TOUR 2018
25/5 Sala Rem - Murcia, ES
26/5 Block Party - Castellon, ES
27/5 Auditorio Manuel Falla - Granada, ES
28/5 Sala X - Sevilla, ES
30/5 Loco Club - Valencia, ES
31/5 Porta Caeli - Valladolid, ES

01/6 Southside - Madrid, ES

02/6 Red Rooster Festival - Suffolk, UK
04/6 100 Club - London, UK
05/6 Bitterzoet - Amsterdam, NL
06/6 Le Flow - Paris, FR
07/6 Insomni Festival - Girona, ES
08/6 Escensario Santander - Santander, ES
09/6 S. Liquidos - Lanzarote, ES
13/6 Las Armas - Zaragoza, ES
14/6 Kafe Antzokia - Bilbao, ES
15/6 Helldorado - Vitoria, ES
16/6 Teatro Municipal - Ferrol, ES

OUT APRIL 21ST (RECORD STORE DAY)

ON YEP ROC RECORDS

Robyn Hitchcock
ON TOUR
11/5 Manchester Academy - Manchester, UK (FULL BAND)
12/5 ULU Live - London, UK (FULL BAND)
15/5 Fat Lils - Witney, UK
16/5 The Louisiana - Bristol, UK
17/5 Unitarian Church - Cambridge, UK
18/5 Unitarian Church - Cambridge, UK
19/5 Kino Theatr - St Leonards On Sea, UK
22/5 Fruit - Hull, UK
23/5 Liverpool Philharmonic Music Room - Liverpool, UK
24/5 Oran Mor - Glagow, UK
25/5 The HUBS - Sheield, UK
26/5 More Music - Morecombe, UK
29/5 Kingkerswell Parish Church - Newton Abbot, UK
30/5 The Brooks - Southampton, UK
31/5 Ramsgate Music Hall - Ramsgate, UK
1/6 The Workmans Club - Dublin, IE
2/6 Cyprus Avenue - Cork, IE
 Academic House,
24-28 Oval Road
THEORIES,
RANTS, ETC.
London NW1 7DT
Tel: 020 7437 9011
Reader queries: mojoreaders@
bauermedia.co.uk
Subscriber queries: bauer@
subscription.co.uk
General e-mail: mojo@ MOJO welcomes letters for publication. Write to: MOJO Mail, Academic House,
bauermedia.co.uk
Website: mojo4music.com 24-28 Oval Road, London NW1 7DT. NEW E-mail: [email protected]

Editor
John Mulvey
Senior Editor
ELEVEN YEARS AGO, THE ARCTIC MONKEYS
Danny Eccleston appeared on MOJO’s cover for the first time. Feted as nothing less than the
Art Editor
Mark Wagstaff saviours of guitar music, Alex Turner was garlanded as a songwriter in a great
Associate Editor
(Production)
British tradition. “He reminds me of a rock’n’roll Alan Bennett,” Paul Weller
Geoff Brown told us. “He captures those everyday things that everyone sees.” In the midst of
Associate Editor
(Reviews)
all the fuss, though, the band were notably cautious. “We don’t know what
Jenny Bulley we want to be yet,” admitted guitarist Jamie Cook. Since then, Turner has
Associate Editor
(News) left Sheffield for Los Angeles, found numerous creative strategies to avoid being
Ian Harrison cast as the voice of his generation, and still seen his band become one of the
Picture Editor
Matt Turner biggest on the planet.
Senior Associate Editor
Andrew Male
Where could he go in 2018, to keep confounding expectations? To the moon,
Associate Deputy perhaps. This month, the band unveil to MOJO their most startling reinvention
Art Editor
Russell Moorcroft
yet. The trip stretches from Rio to east London, from a vintage studio outside
Contributing Editors Paris to the louche environs of the Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino. Along the
Phil Alexander,
Keith Cameron, way, you’ll find Turner tuning in to Dion and Serge Gainsbourg, and revealing
Sylvie Simmons
For mojo4music.com contact
more about himself than he’s ever done before. “It’s like the natural place to have
Danny Eccleston gone, after that first record, was somewhere around ’ere,” Turner tells Danny
Thanks for their
Eccleston. A place beyond the earth’s atmosphere, but with maximum gravity…
help with this issue:
Keith Cameron, Fred Dellar,
Del Gentleman, Pat Gilbert,
Anna Wood

Among this month’s

contributors:
Matt Allen, Martin Aston,
Mike Barnes, Mark Blake,
Glyn Brown, Stevie Chick,
Andy Cowan, Fred Dellar, JOHN MULVEY, EDITOR
Tom Doyle, Daryl Easlea,
Paul Elliott, Jim Farber, David
Fricke, Andy Fyfe, Pat Gilbert,
Sophie Harris, David Hutcheon, What is this flash of joy consistently and rightly appears in lists of classic
albums of that era. I was born in ’68, and grew up
Jim Irvin, Colin Irwin, David Katz,
James McNair, Ben Myers,
that’s giving me new life? listening to my parents’ record collection, which
Kris Needs, Chris Nelson, Congratulations on this month’s publication [MOJO naturally included The Beatles, Simon & Garfunkel,
Mark Paytress, Andrew Perry, 294], and especially on the accompanying CD
Jon Savage, Victoria Segal, The Beach Boys and Neil Diamond. I knew nothing
David Sheppard, Michael [Big Sensations], perhaps the finest in the long and much at all of Arthur Lee and Love until the early
Simmons, Sylvie Simmons, distinguished history of the magazine. The music ’90s, when Forever Changes was increasingly being
Jeff Tamarkin, Kieron Tyler, featured did indeed shape London’s Mod scene, but
Charles Waring, Roy Wilkinson,
it was also big in the North-west, notably through cited in the music press as a major influence on
Lois Wilson, Stephen Worthy
The Donays’ Devil In His Heart, the flipside of bands of the day, such as Shack. I had to investigate!
Among this month’s Bad Boy – which I’d never heard (thank you) – So began a hunt for a copy of the album with the
photographers:
and James Ray’s If You Gotta Make A Fool Of multicolour on white, almost African continent-
Cover: Andrew Cotterill
(insets: Getty, Pieter M van Hattem) Somebody, very well covered by the underrated and shaped sleeve art. “That’s my favourite album”: the
Jay Blakesberg, Martin Bostock, surprisingly bluesy Freddie And The Dreamers, and words of the girl in Vibes Records in Bury, as she
Danny Clinch, Caroline Coon, handed me a CD reissue of the record. It’s now
Henry Diltz, Guy Eppel,
tracks like Just A Little Bit, Watch Your Step and I
Annette Green, Steve Gullick, Like It Like That which were staples on the Cavern one of my favourites too, and I was lucky enough
Alexis Maryon, Katja Ruge, scene. It also included the forlornly fabulous The to see Arthur and Love (actually Baby Lemonade)
Mark Seliger, Paul Slattery,
Chuck Stewart, Baron Wolman.
Town I Live In which sold well in the UK, and a few perform the album in full, brilliantly, at the
that I’ve never heard of… wow! Take me back… Manchester Academy in 2003.
MOJO Subscription Hotline Ian MacDonald, via e-mail No doubt there will be much attention later
this year on The Beatles’ White Album, as it too
0844 8488872 We critics… do what we can reaches 50. Yes, it’s an OK album. Probably should
For subscription or back issue queries contact
CDS Global on [email protected] Happy 50th Birthday indeed to that “beautiful have been shorter and more political. I prefer the
To access from outside the UK
Dial: +44 (0)1858 438760
record of a horrible time”: Love’s Forever Changes. beautifully stinging Forever Changes.
I enjoyed Jim Irvin’s reassessment of this LP, which Stephen Gregory, Altrincham ➢

MOJO 11
 Why are you smiling Group Managing Director,
Total guess, but as Roger Daltrey i Advertising
Abby Carvosso
this month’s cover [MOJO 294] Head of Magazine Media
Clare Chamberlain
I presume the quotes above the le Group Commercial Director
are from McVicar? Thanks for Ga Simon Kilby
Head Of Magazine Brands
Coombes’ Self Portrait, by the way Rachel Flower
Confessing to putting out the bins Music Director
Joel Stephan
his underpants and a trilby made m Let us prey: eagle-eyed Mediaplanner
laugh out loud. reader spots Holly has Mollie Smee
a buzzard, not a falcon. Regional Advertising
Neil Martin, Cyprus Katherine Brown
Classified Sales Executive
photo of ‘Mose’ behind the traps on page 7 Philip Nessfield
The vague memories… [MOJO 294] looks rather more like Frank Isola, Classified Sales Manager
Karen Gardiner
In addition to the letter of Hans-Jürgen Klitsch who drummed with Stan Getz, Gerry Mulligan Inserts Manager
[MOJO 294] about the so-called “Scandinavian Simon Buckenham
and (doubtless the source, somehow, of the error) Production Manager
Tour” of Led Zeppelin, I can confirm that the tour Mose Allison. Carl Lawrence
was indeed bigger than one thought. I attended a gig Ad Production Controller
Ruddy Bitch, via e-mail Helen Mear
in September 1968, probably the seventh, by The Creative Solutions Senior Producer
Jenna Herman
New Yardbirds in Lekkerkerk, near Rotterdam, the Thanks for the article on Steeleye Span [How Creative Solutions Art Director
Netherlands. So maybe I was present at their first To Buy, MOJO 294] and choosing the albums I Jon Cresswell
performance ever! produced to be four out of the Top 5 on your list. Chief Executive
Kees Vogel, Sliedrecht Only disappointing thing was you spelt my name Paul Keenan
Group Managing Director
incorrectly. It’s SANDY ROBERTON – no S. Rob Munro-Hall
I’m not afraid to Sandy Roberton, via e-mail Publisher
Patrick Horton
tell the truth now Commercial Marketing Director
Re: The ZTT Label Blows Up!, Eyewitness, MOJO An orgy of brutal realism Liz Martin
Managing Editor
294. Please allow me to add a bit to the comments At the risk of raining on the parade of hyperbole that Danielle O’Connell
MOJO CD and Honours
of my former label colleagues who more or less has marched through the music press since the death Creative Director
Dave Henderson
omitted [journalist and ZTT conceptualist] Paul of Mark E Smith, may I dare offer a little balance Senior Events Producer
Morley from their criticism. For sure, Trevor into proceedings before the funeral caravan rolls Marguerite Peck
on? Although the outpouring of affection for Smith Business Analyst
Horn was a genius and reached his peak in the Clare Wadsworth
first half of the ’80s. And the ZTT contracts were and The Fall was understandable, we surely need Head of Marketing
Fergus Carroll
from another age of exploitation. No doubt about some sense of perspective. After all, it’s doubtful if Senior Marketing Executive
it… But another millstone around the neck of Smith would have broken through in any era other Hope Noel
Direct Marketing Manager
ZTT was Mr Morley, who brought to fall what he than that of punk when, apart from some notable Julie Spires
had helped to build up – at least in the case of exceptions, style decked substance and attitude Direct Marketing Executive
Rebecca Lambert
Propaganda. The way he handled his office affair – trumped ability. Head of Communications
with our singer – seriously harmed our reputation Fans of The Fall are a stubbornly loyal lot who Jess Blake

with record companies on the continent [Claudia tend to rationalise Smith’s tuneless yawping – usually
Brücken married Paul Morley in February 1985]. half-buried under the band’s protracted repetitions Printing: William Gibbons
MOJO (ISSN 1351-0193) is published 12
And it became a total disaster when he started to – as a virtue of pure punk principles. Superannuated times a year by Bauer Consumer Media Ltd.
punks are rather like their earlier Teddy Boy Bauer Consumer Media Ltd is a company
manipulate our artistic vision in his campaigns or registered in England and Wales with company
artwork contributions. Worst and unacceptable for counterparts in the doggedness and sentimentality of number 01176085, registered address Media
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me was when he did not use a quote by [anti-Nazi their devotion to heroes. Peterborough PE2 6EA
Well, bless ’em – but let’s try to keep our feet Airfreight and mailing in the USA by agent named
activist] Sophie Scholl, but one by [terrorist] Ulrike Air Business Ltd, c/o Worldnet Shipping Inc.,
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Credit in here
 THE HOT NEWS AND
BIZARRE STORIES
FROM PLANET MOJO

LYRICVICTORY

REAL GOOD
RHYMES TOGETHER
Unearthed and curated! Lou Reed’s Ode ’ed: (clock-
wise from main) a
prose pieces as read on the night, including the
Velvet Underground track The Murder Mystery.
verse and prose from his early-’70s halo’d Lou enjoys
The publication highlights Reed’s sardonic wit,
a drink; ’60s Reed
sabbatical from rock. photographed including his introductions from the reading. “I don’t
by Moe Tucker; have a pejorative view towards queens,” he observes

“O
ne guy was from Wales,” writes Lou Reed in the book and 45; at one point. “You have to remember that I’m bi.
a new book of his uncollected poetry and Laurie Anderson;
the cassette of That I’m biased. Right?”
other writings, titled Do Angels Need
his NYC poetry The poems display a wide stylistic span. Lipstick
Haircuts? This amused reference to an early encounter reading. could have become a lyric on the Transformer album
with Velvet Underground collaborator John Cale
(“If lipstick were black you’d wear it/If love were
comes in a mid-’60s letter to the writer Delmore
straight you’d curl it”). There’s also the more self-seri-
Schwartz, under whom Reed had studied literature ous oratorical voice of We Are The People (“We are
at Syracuse University. the crystal gaze returned through the density and
After he left the Velvets in August 1970, having immensity of a berserk nation”).
publicly forsaken rock’n’roll for poetry, the written “He was this punk kid finding his way,” says
word was on Reed’s mind again. Do Angels Need Anderson, “but he also saw himself in a line of writers
Haircuts? centres on a reading he gave at St Mark’s – which you can see when he makes a reference to
Church-in-the-Bowery in New York City in March 1971. [James Joyce’s] Ulysses. There were many,
“It’s wonderful to picture that night and to picture many versions [of Lou], as we all are many versions
Lou as a very, very ambitious young poet, very of ourselves.”
arrogant, very nervous, and confident at the same The book also features striking Mick Rock portraits
time,” says Laurie Anderson, Reed’s widow and the and much fascinating ephemera. The initial edition
book’s co-producer. “He was always hilarious. I would of 1,000 adds a 7-inch single featuring unheard
say I was not fully aware of him then. When I met him performances recorded on cassette on the night.
in 1991 I thought he was British!” It’s taken from the now-ongoing Lou Reed Archive,
© 2018 M.Tucker, Andrew Cifranic/Courtesy Plain Dealer Photo Archive

The volume features 12 poems and which sits with New York Public Library, containing
600 hours of audio among masses of print material
“IT’S and other items. This archive will be further drawn
WONDERFUL on, as Anderson explains.
TO PICTURE “I just had a meeting today about doing some
LOU AS A things with drones and his work on Metal Machine
Music,” says Anderson. “We’re also doing The Art Of
VERY, VERY The Straight Line, a book about tai chi. There will be
AMBITIOUS other anthologies as well – poetry and lyrics.”
YOUNG As for Delmore Schwartz, he died in 1966 but was
POET.” celebrated in Reed’s 1982 track My House. “To the end
of his life Lou was quoting Delmore,” says Anderson.
Laurie “I found an account of people who’d spent money on
Anderson the up-keep of Delmore’s grave, and Lou had been
paying $300 a year. I was so touched by that.”
Roy Wilkinson
Do Angels Need Haircuts? is published by Anthology Editions.

MOJO 15
 MOJO
DIARY

APRIL 30
2-DVD package Detroit
Techno (Wienerworld)
collects French director
Jacqueline Caux’s
documentaries Never
Stop – A Music That
Resists (2017) and The
Cycles Of The Mental
Machine (2006). The
former tells techno’s
story, with contributions
from pioneers Juan
Atkins, Derrick May,
Carl Craig and Jeff
Mills; the latter traces
etroit’s interlinking
usical history, with
e help of DJ legend
he Electrifying
ojo and Underground
esistance’s Mad
Mike Banks (above),
nterviewedinshadow…

REVIVALMEETING

FOLK ROOTS,
NEW ROUTES
Guest programmer Rhiannon A new country:
MAY 19
Millie Jackson (above)
plays the O2 Greenwich,
her first London show
for aeons. It’s gearing up
(clockwise to be quite a year for the
Giddens explains her inclusive from top) Kaia ba j g R&B legend: in February
Kater, Rhiannon
vision for this year’s Cambridge Giddens, Yola
on the African-American artists and artists of the Georgia House
Of Representatives
Folk Festival. Carter and colour. It really boils down to the idea of whose passed a resolution
Peggy Seeger. stories are we telling in folk music ?That’s an commending her many

“W
hen the Cambridge organisers issue, because people of colour have been accomplishments.
asked me to be guest curator,” says telling stories through folk music since the In humble mood,
Millie observed, “I do
Rhiannon Giddens, “I said, Does this 1500s, indelibly, in America and the UK. The appreciate this… [there
mean I get to be there the whole time and be story of a nation is a mixture of everybody, have been] times when
around this beautiful vibe? Some festivals, and when we start narrow-ising the narrative, I scratch my head and
people go to hang out and drink beer, maybe say, Why? I haven’t done
“IT’S NOT it does everybody a disservice. It’s not diversify- anything but open my
see a band or two. At Cambridge they really DIVERSIFY- ing. It’s just letting it be the diversity that it is.” mouth and sing and get
want to hear what’s going on.” Broadening the narrative is clearly something paid for doing it.”
A long-standing admirer of the Cambridge ING. IT’S
she enjoys. “They’re all selfish choices, because
Folk Festival, the North Carolina fiddler, banjo JUST LETTING
I love them all!” she says. “The life and the vibe
player and voice will do her bit to enhance the IT BE THE that Yola brings is amazing, and Amythyst is just
experience still further with a specially selected DIVERSITY a powerhouse, she’s tapping into this ancient,
programme of talent playing the Augus tral sound and challenging
event at Cherry Hinton Hall. At Giddens f things, just by being, ha ha! And Ali
invitation, folk elder Peggy Seeger, Can
, from Birds Of Chicago – the emotion
mountain-banjo player Kaia Kater, harm
ack, they’re fearless. Kaia’s very young
married couple Birds Of Chicago, ‘South MAY 29
epresenting a vantage point that’s
Gothic’ guitarist Amythyst Kiah and Bris Jeff Buckley: From
and undertold. Everybody is –
Reto Sterchi, Erika Goldring, John Morgan, Vicki Sharp, Getty (2)

country-soul voice Yola Carter will share Hallelujah To The

bill with First Aid Kit, Patti Smith, John P hing.” Last Goodbye by
Rosanne Cash, Janis Ian and others. ew voices are, of course, part of a the late musician’s
tinuum of the people’s music. manager Dave Lory
“Coming from the black string band and MOJO’s Jim Irvin
tion, from a group like the Carolina Cho Seeger, every generation of music is published by Post
Drops, which began at the feet of an eld learn from just watching her stage Hill Press. Interviews
minutes,” says Giddens. “She always with intimates and
[folklorist and musician Sule Greg Wilso collaborators (some
the thought of community is definitely ories that need to be told and I’ve speaking for the first
something I’ve been connected to,” oked up to her. [Her song] The Ballad time) feature, while Lory
explains Giddens. “It’s that idea of y Massey is about a man who came recalls tour experiences,
m Iraq and it’s beautiful, it does the studio time, the second
creating community and making album Buckley (above)
opportunities happen.” hat ballads have done for hundreds did not live to complete
Part of this involves addressing what rs. The singer gets out of the way and and “what went down
she believes in America and elsewhere tory comes through. That was a very immediately after Lory
got that fateful call, ‘Jeff
is the “very narrow, white idea” of folk ghtful moment for me – you can still is missing.’”
musicians as “a guy with a guitar, or a hat. And she does.”

16 MOJO
 discover the best new releases

Eels Laura Veirs Josh T. Pearson Josh Rouse

The Deconstruction The Lookout The Straight Hits! Love In The Modern Age
out now on CD & vinyl out now on CD & vinyl out now on CD & vinyl out now on CD & vinyl
First new album in four years from This prolific songwriter proves Josh’s second solo album was This infectious collection pushes
the Mark Oliver Everett-fronted the depth of her musical skill on recorded in Texas and includes Rouse’s limits and forges a bold
band. Includes Today Is The Day. this collection of inimitable and Straight To The Top and You Set new chapter more than 20 years
exquisite folk-pop songs. Me Straight. into his career.

Unknown Mortal Orchestra Dylan Carlson Speedy Ortiz DMA’s

Sex And Food Conquistador Twerp Verse For Now
out now on CD & double vinyl out 27 April on CD & vinyl out 27 April on CD & vinyl out 27 April on CD & vinyl
A shapeshifting album that spans Debut solo album from Dylan Speedy’s third album is urgent and Sydney’s DMA’s are back with
battered drum machine funk, Carlson, drone metal pioneer and taut, adding textures like Linn drums their much-anticipated new album.
doomy and thrashing rock and founding member of the iconic and whirled guitar processing to Includes Dawning and In The Air.
psychedelic disco. band Earth. their off-kilter hooks.

Grouper Malena Zavala Ben Glover Simian Mobile Disco

Grid Of Points Aliso Shorebound Murmurations
out 27 April on CD & vinyl out 4 May on CD & vinyl out 4 May on CD out 11 May on CD & vinyl
This series of stark, minimal and Set to take the world by storm, this Here, Ben joins forces with friends on The British electronic duo are back
vulnerable songs, woven with is the debut album from Malena both sides of the Atlantic including with their fifth album which features
emotive silences, is another great Zavala inspired by Beach House, Gretchen Peters, Ricky Ross guest vocals from singing collective
addition to the Grouper canon. Brian Eno and Tame Impala. (Deacon Blue) and Mary Gauthier. Deep Throat Choir.

home of entertainment
 FACT SHEET
Title: Drive This Comet Across
The Sky/ Dynamos And
MOJOWORKING Tremolos
Date: June
Production: Bill Nelson

BILL NELSON
and a Mackie mixing desk, his
Songs: TBC
methods are hands-on. “I like The Buzz: “I don’t sit and
being able to push faders and turn meditate, but making the
knobs,” he says. “It feels more music is like a meditation.”
Hot valves and
The august guitar visionary shows the strange voltag- tangible, like you’re actually in Bill Nelson
dilettantes how it’s done with two new es: Nelson gets touch with the music. Mousing
in on the beam stuff around on a screen doesn’t feel quite
albums of retro dream-futurism. in his secret connected, somehow.”
studio, March
Another reason for his prodigious output is his snug,

“B
ob Dylan has his Never Ending Tour,” says Bill 2018.
Nelson, down the line from north Yorkshire. “This is finely tuned studio, a spare bedroom packed with
a never-ending recording session.” recording gear, vintage sci-fi toys and “retro-kitsch
When he led art rock cults Be-Bop Deluxe in the ’70s, memorabilia” that all have personal relevance. ”I feel like
Wakefield’s foremost guitar hero/ambient explorer said he you need to feel really at ease, and free of time constraints,
wished it were possible to release albums every month, like when you’re recording,” he says. “Being in this room, it’s
a magazine. Having recorded in his home studio and almost outside of time. And wherever I look, I’ll find some
elsewhere since the early ’80s, he’s still aspiring. So far, inspiration. I guess these objects bring a sense of my past,
there are more than 120 albums in the solo Nelson and that ability to dream you have as a child, coming into
canon, a number that will have appreciated by the time the present.”
you read this. When MOJO calls, this mind-opened state is being
“I’ve got 12 albums finished and ready to go,” he says. brought to bear on audio/visual pieces which Nelson will
“Because I record constantly, as soon as I finish one I’ll start debut live – a rare activity since he lost the hearing in his
on something else, and they soon pile up. Some come right ear in 2014 – at his 70th birthday event in December,
together quite quickly, others take ages. I don’t always start when he will play solo and with his improvising trio
“BEING IN Orchestra Futura at Leeds University’s Clothworkers’
off with an album in mind, I just record and one will emerge,
or I’ll sit down with a definite concept.”
THIS ROOM, Centenary Concert Hall. He’s also planning a neo-classical
Currently brewing are the download set Drive This Comet IT’S ALMOST orchestral album with vocals. A musician whose collabora-
Across The Sky – “a vocal album with a twist, more rock than OUTSIDE OF tors have included Yellow Magic Orchestra, Reeves Gabrels,
the instrumental or ambient stuff, louder and more TIME.” David Sylvian, Harold Budd and many more, he says he’d
energetic” – and Dynamos And Tremolos. “That one’s like to work with Bill Frisell in the future.
instrumental, a marriage of contemporary guitar, the “I’m kind of a workaholic,” he admits, “but it’s not like
tremolo, with semi-retro synth sounds, which is the work, it’s more like playing around. I think that’s why I’ve
dynamo side of it,” says Nelson, who starts daily at 11.30am never had a block. I enjoy the process too much.”
and, punctuated by meals and walks, carries on until Ian Harrison
10.30pm-ish. Working with a 24-track hard disc recorder See billnelson.com for more info

ALSOWORKING
…Liverpool electropop oddities “I write songs from a feeling of and others. “I’m still learning,” noted information about new MY
LADYTRON (vocali th folks who feel Herbie …THE CRANBERRIES BLOODY VALENTINE music to
and Helen Marnie, righ olated,” says Case, will finish the album they were NPR. He said he envisaged two EPs
working with produce me in Vermont recording with singer Dolores and an album to be road-tested live. “I
Abbiss (Adele) on the own during the O’Riordan, who died in January. “As want to get… into a more present
new album since 2011 ng …the San this is something that we started as state which I’ve never really been in”
NEKO CASE ’s Union Tribune a band, with Dolo t) cancelled
Hell-On arrives in June. ted last month that push ahead and fi March, but
Martin Bostock, Getty (2)

Recorded in Sweden BIE HAN- explained …VIC plained,

with Peter Bjorn And CK ’s new LP will and the NIGHTI orking in
John’s Bjorn Yttling, ure contributions GALES have rec recording
guests include Mark m Kendrick Lamar, a collaborative alb the follow
Lanegan, Laura yne Shorter, …Kevin Shields ssiah…
Veirs and k.d. lang. masi Washington revealed more

18 MOJO
 FACT SHEET
● For fans of Lizzy Mercier
Descloux, Andy Palacio,
Martha Jean-Claude
● “I cried recording some
of these songs because I
was going through stuff,”
MOJORISING says Laveaux. “I was
singing songs from my
Have cigar, will childhood and it kind of felt
don’t need to sound alike. I can blasphemous to partly fuck
travel: Trump- keep people confused and my
buster Mélissa with them.”
Laveaux, medi- manager frustrated.” ● A siwèl is both a Haitian

cal school’s loss Continuing that theme, her plum and the Creole for an

LAVEAUX and music’s itinerant troubadour.

third album, Radyo Siwèl, finds
gain. KEY TRACKS
Laveaux immersed in the
● Dodo Titit (Camphor
traditional music of Haiti, the
& Copper)
island her teenage parents fled
Canadian-Haitian indie-folk voice and while it was ruled by the tyranni-
● Hash Pipe (Dying Is
A Wild Night)
guitar transmits rights and history. cal Baby Doc Duvalier. She bought ● La Sirèn La Balèn
(Radyo Siwèl)
t a time of turbulence, violence and discord, it makes history books – learning that Haiti

A a change to meet a musician who has a grateful

message for a divisive world leader. Just as Mélissa
Laveaux was wondering how she could market 12
had been occupied by the United
States from 1915 to 1934 was an eye-opener – and relearnt
the songs of the civil rights activist Martha Jean-Claude that
had filled the house she grew up in.
folk-tinged songs influenced by her Haitian heritage, the
American president made his infamous “shithole countries” Surprisingly, her parents were anything but encourag-
comment. “A lot of people couldn’t have found Haiti on a ing. “My dad bought me my first guitar, just after we
map, but he’s selling my album for me,” she reasons. “This returned from a visit to Haiti when I was 12, but my mom’s
idiot, talking about stuff he doesn’t know about. But thank instinct was to say: ‘You’re terrible, your singing’s terrible.’
you, Donald Trump, for doing my job for me.” I sent them a link to my album in September; in March
“I CAN KEEP I found out they hadn’t listened to it. They still want me
The Ottawa-born, now Paris-based singer probably PEOPLE
didn’t need POTUS’s support to get noticed, however. After to go to medical school.”
releasing the album Camphor & Copper in 2006, she had CONFUSED Then Laveaux has to conclude our interview – she’s
been spotted by the Paris-based No Format! label, which AND MY giving a lecture to Paris schoolchildren about punk and
was won over by her dexterous finger-picking, her way with MANAGER marginalised societies. “It’s very exciting because it’s
a Caribbean groove, and her singing in English, French and FRUSTRATED.” messing with their preconceptions of things. Watching
Creole. Her second LP, Dying Is A Wild Night, was an videos of Les Rita Mitsouko – which they think is just 1980s
indie-folk rock collection that demonstrated little desire to French pop music, not ‘punk’ – it’s amazing seeing them
capitalise on what had gone before. having their ideas of a performer destroyed: ‘She [singer
“The label told me that all they wanted me to do was Catherine Ringer] isn’t trying to be pretty or seductive.’ I
write songs that appealed to me, proper songwriting,” she look forward to shattering preconceptions at every corner
says. “As long as they like the root of the work, then they’ll and turn, it’s kind of my job.”
pay for it, and I think that’s fair – and it means my albums David Hutcheon

20 MOJO
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AND MORE
 FLAME 1 FOG
7 Where The Bug and producer Burial find the terror
within urban Britain – worse now Bargain Booze has
closed – on a slo-mo detonation of desolate grind.
Find It: Bandcamp

THE PURPLE PUDDING CLAUSE FALLING

8 Ex-Dolly Mixture Vocalist Rachel Bor and producer-spouse
Steve Lovell bring bucolic inducement to get chemically enhanced.
In the zone of Julian Cope’s Fried, which Lovell produced in 1984!
Find It: Bandcamp

PORT SULPHUR THE LANE

9 Where Vic Godard, Davy Henderson and Sexual Objects’
Douglas MacIntyre team for a gliding indie-synth escapist reverie.
Lyricist Vic lends his dulcet tones to a song for warm evenings.
Find It: YouTube

LEWSBERG TERRIBLE
10 Rotterdam Talking Heads/Television enthusiasts
MOJOPLAYLIST jut out with a riveting chugger of blasé threat and
moral ambivalence, with Moe Tucker drums and
scrabbly guitar solo. From their self-titled debut.
Moisten your reeds for this month s sonic beach party, Find It: Bandcamp
with Afro-fusion, Lone Star roots and UK dub concrète! FANNY WALKED THE EARTH LURED AWAY
11
1KAMASI
AKA pioneering ’70s rockers Fanny, here Jean and June
Millington and drummer Brie Howard reunite for a quietly
anthemic meditation on the importance of buggering on.
Find It: YouTube

WASHINGTON 12 SHAKEY GRAVES MANSION DOOR

Warm-blooded, deftly arranged roots-pop single from Texan
FIST OF FURY Alejandro Rose-Garcia’s fifth album as Shakey Graves. Hits all those
Tom Petty-located big-sky-scraping pleasure centres.
Not one to shirk a challenge, jazz’s Prince Regent follows The Epicc with Find it: Streaming services
another marathon odyssey. Across two CDs, Heaven And Earth pursues
SNAPPED ANKLES ENERGY FLASH!
Washington’s twin themes of social justice and spiritual elevation. Here’s
where it all starts: a ravishing, Latin-tinged cover of the theme from a 13 Joey Beltram’s two-step trance techno monster
re-interpreted with vocals entreatingly high in the mix
1972 Bruce Lee movie, repurposed as a rallying cry for Black Lives Matter. but otherwise faithful to the pulse-altering intensity
“Our time as victims is over,” sing Patrice Quinn and Dwight Trible. of the original. From a Record Store Day covers EP.
“We will no longer ask for justice/Instead we will take our retribution.” Find it: Streaming services
Find it: Spotify/Apple
JESS WILLIAMSON I SEE THE WHITE
BRIAN JOHNSON WITH MICK FLEETWOOD
Action pact: 14 Having relocated to LA to examine her inner-visions,
2 ROUTE 66
AC/DC’s voice and the Mac’s drummer together at last, at the
(above) Kamasi
Washington
returns the
the opener from the Texan singer-songwriter’s excellent
Cosmic Wink comes with an on-beach dance routine video.
punch; (below)
Find it: YouTube
latter’s restaurant in Maui doing Chuck’s rock’n’roll cornerstone in
a swinging blues style. Wasn’t Brian meant to be retiring from live Cheikh Lô is
THE CURE A FOREST (TREE MIX)
work? Not on this evidence.
Find It: YouTube
set for deep
grooves. 15 From Mixed Up, the soon-to-be-reissued prede-
cessor of new Cure remix album Torn Down (Mixed Up
Extras), here’s its dub of 1980’s haunted woods classic.
RAY LAMONTAGNE
3 SUCH A SIMPLE THING
Sharing melodic DNA with Wild Horses (the Burritos’
Find It: YouTube

CÉLIA NA BOCA DO SOL

version, not the Stones’), Reluctant Ray is back with
this heartsore lovely from his seventh album. Its slide
16 Brazilian singer Célia Regina Cruz brings a swish of red velvet
glamour to Arthur Verocai’s hip-hop-sampled original; from her
guitar supplication bodes well for the album, if not for the heart. rare second self-titled 1972 LP, reissued by Mr Bongo next month.
Find it: Various streaming services “FLAME 1 Find it: Soundcloud
SHANNON SHAW BROKE MY OWN FIND THE
4 Shaw’s lead track from her debut solo album adds a lush soul
weepie to the great pantheon of telephonic-pop singles (see also
TERROR
WITHIN
17 AZEKEL MR TAXI MAN
“Twenty-five and I can’t drive,” admits the Gorillaz/Massive
Attack collaborator over a jazz-funk groove. Could be a West Coast
The White Stripes, Blondie, ELO). “Don’t worry about this heart of
mine… you’ll only find static on the line.”
URBAN pool-side jam, except it’s about being driven around London.
Find it: Streaming services
Find it: YouTube BRITAIN.”
EY & BONNIE
CHEIKH LÔ SET LLY THE BRIDGE
5 Featuring fathoms-dee
mentor Youssou N’Dour, ge
covers EP opens with her
s recent Nick Drake CD.
Sufi spiritual depths, here’s ms up with Will Oldham
newly remastered 1996 deb on.
Find it: Streaming services

ORBITAL FT PRO ING

6 HAWKING WHERE
Filmed at the 2012 Summer
HED THE SK Y
-key British outlier lasts 102
ny, the Hartnoll brothers are style commune jams, raga,
visionary Stephen Hawking nd what might be a kora.
specs, explaining why the H
provide us with “a complete
Find It: YouTube ERS BEAR CAGE
Getty, Youri Lenquette

meninblack went to Guildford

heroics from originals Burnel
en Warne and McCauley. This
omp got the tickers moving.

22 MOJO
MINDBLOWERS!

GRAHAM COXON
The Blur and solo guitar brainiac brings
anxiety, filthy prog and laughing demons.

Graham’s OST The End Of The F**king World is out now on Graham Coxon Records.
4WEFOREVER
MORE
SING
5I’LLJACKIE
MCLEAN
KEEP LOVING
(From Yours Forever More, YOU

3 VAN DER
GRAAF
GENERATOR
RCA Victor, 1970)
“I watched this movie
(From Let Freedom Ring,
Blue Note, 1963)
THE LIQUIDATOR Permissive, which is an “There are so many
excellent document of the incredible bebop alto
1 ROBERT WYATT
TO MARK
EVERY WHERE
2 KING CRIMSON
LADIES OF THE
ROAD
(From Time Vaults, Sofa
Sound, 1982)
folk rock era – depressing
scenes of wandering
sax players. But Jackie
McLean, who was a
“It’s quite a jolly song, around central London protégé of Charlie Parker,
(From The End Of An Ear, (From Islands, Island, 1971)
from an album of outtakes in the early hours. This is a hero of mine. It’s just
CBS, 1970) “One of the most and rehearsals from the song was on it – I thought, getting into free jazz,
“This was from a time mind-blowing songs ever. early ’70s. It’s got a noise Crikey, this voice! It was so there’s a few bebop
when I was starting to be It’s phenomenal, it’s got at the beginning like a Alan Gorrie, who also passages getting into bits
in experimental bands the most catastrophically demon laughing, then this played bass. It’s wonderful where he’s just screaming
in Colchester, when I was distorted guitar sounds, really pretty piano tune
Denholm Hewlett

production, with away. It’s a Bud Powell

about 17. Robert Wyatt’s the filthiest sax playing and Guy Evans’ ridiculous Stratocasters and lots of tune, whose life was
being very, very free here. ever, and the production drumming! Peter nice reverb and amazingly particularly tragic, with
He’s got some trumpet is just outrageous. It’s the Hammill’s having a little recorded drums, with tape hassle from the police and
players in and it’s very weirdest song, with pop at the all the guys in echo in the voice and then being put into Bellevue
tone-clustery, with a lot Mellotrons, backwards-y the band, despairing of a tambourine will appear. hospital. It’s pretty loose
of tape slap echo on it, so organ-y bits, incredible them and their situation. I love simple, brilliantly and not recorded that
it’s quite disconcerting, drumming, beautiful Hugh Banton made me recorded music that has a well, but the performance
very repetitive and backing vocals, and it’s realise that the organ can few elements coming in to is so emotional I’m not
mesmerising. The also very dark. I think it’s actually slake my desire tickle your ear hole. Onnie sure they could have done
cataclysms at the end of about women you meet for noisy guitars, quite McIntyre and Alan Gorrie it again. Jackie McLean
the songs on this album on the road – they might awesomely. This is music went on to form Average has this thing in his tone
used to remind me of the be called groupies, I’m not that was instilled in me White Band, which was an where he seemed to pitch
sound I’d experience in sure you really call them when my mind was like an interesting leap.” quite sharp, using
my head when I was that any more – and it open wound – it infected absolutely no vibrato.
coming round from a describes all kinds of it and then I healed over, When I first heard this I
fainting fit, which I used strange stuff, a bit icky at so it’s there forever.” had to listen to it about six
to have quite a lot of. A lot times. I had it on a more times. It’s a real soft
of his sounds are strangely cassette, which I lost for one, slow and pretty with
subconscious, and about 25 years, but when I some bits that make your
unstable. They can make heard it again, the weird eyes well up, because it’s
you feel anxious. It has its few notes Robert Fripp pain all the way through.”
own psychedelic nature. plays instantly transport-
Wyatt’s vocal chords ed me back to being 18.”
sound like they evolved on
another planet – he could
quite easily be something
that came out of the sea
or a cave one day.”

He’s got a hunch:

Coxon ponders
what’s under the
paving stones.
 ROCK’N’ROLLCONFIDENTIAL

OHN PRINE
Diamond in the studio last summer. I think we know a
rough: John person who’s going to see him in
Prine in Atlanta,
Georgia, prison, so I’m hoping to get this record
November 1975; to them so Spector gets to hear it.
The country-folk commen- website calls it “the second oldest (inset) the artist
artist-owned independent label in the today. Does songwriting come to
tator on writing with Phil country”, Dischord being the elder), you easily?
Spector, taking punches and has released nearly 20 studio LPs. I have to work at it. For years before
and calisthenics. His latest, The Tree Of Forgiveness, is his I made a record, and for years after,
first new material for 13 years, and his songwriting was my hobby, my
ack in 1970, everything got crazy

B real fast for emotionally raw yet

puckish Chicagoan John Prine.
“Kris Kristofferson was going ’round
strongest in decades.
So, your first new material in 13
years. What took you so long?
getaway from everything else. Over
the years it turns out this has become
my job and any time something
involves work I tend to run the other
telling everybody that they had to I lost track of time. Over the last 10 way. But I’m on a roll with it just now
listen to this new kid he’d discovered,” years the places we’ve been playing and been writing since we made this
Prine recalls from his home in have been doubling and tripling record, so it won’t be another 13 years
Nashville. “He did that over and over without a new record. I told them, before the next album.
until I got signed up – still does say it! “Things are going too good, don’t ruin
PRINE TONES
John’s five for What’s the biggest change in the
Within three months he’d introduced it with a new record.” the ages.
me to Bob Dylan and a load of my music industry since you started
You co-wrote a track on the album – 1 Johnny Cash The
other heroes. It was a pretty steep Ways Of A Woman
recording?
curve from the off.” God Only Knows – with Phil Spector. In Love (FROM SINGS Independent record companies. I
Prine’s reputation was immediately Isn’t he still in prison? THE SONGS THAT MADE HIM
started my own company 35 years ago
FAMOUS, SUN, 1958)
sealed by his self-titled 1971 debut, It was an unfinished song from way 2 Bob Dylan Love and people thought we were
Danny Clinch, Getty, Mark Seliger

with over half its songs – among them back. We’d already written one song, If Minus Zero (FROM THE
M committing suicide. I was still getting
the Vietnam protest of Sam Stone You Don’t Want My Love, which was a CONCERT FOR BANGLADESH
offers from major labels but I didn’t
REMASTER, CAPITOL, 2005)
(“There’s a hole in daddy’s arm where semi-hit in the UK [for Elaine Paige in 3 Van Morrison want to work that way. Things went so
all the money goes”) and Hello In 1981]. I played it to Spector about a M
Madam George (FROM well for me on the road that I decided
There – now considered standards. year later to show him how it worked T.B. SHEETS, LONDON, 1973) to go directly to my audience. At first I
Now 71, and having faced down two out, and before I left his house we’d 4 Jerry Lee Lewis just sold my stuff by mail, and now
different cancers, Prine officially wrote half of God Only Knows. I just That Lucky Old Sun we’re the second oldest independent
(FROM SUN ESSENTIALS,
founded his Oh Boy label in 1981 (his finished it up before I went into the CHARLY, 2004)
label in the US.
5 Fats Domino
M
Margie (I’M READY B-SIDE,
24 MOJO IMPERIAL, 1959)
Why do you think your career
is having its second wind? LAST NIGHTA RECORD CHANGED MY LIFE
It’s a third wind! I’ve lived in Nashville
promise ‘til death do us part.” My
for 35 years, moved here because I was
a fan of old country music, but since
then it’s become pop and mediocre
rock’n’roll. Now some younger acts I
BETTYE boyfriend’s name was Pinky, and he
was out of school by his own design. I
thought he was going to marry
really like have been talking about me
as an influence: Sturgill Simpson,
Jason Isbell, Margo Price… So that,
coupled with people who were my
LAVETTE
The last woman standing Keep on keeping
Margie Cooper and not me. I broke
down. You would have thought I had
been married to someone for 30
years and they had left me!
It’s because it pulls at the
original fans bringing their children on: (bottom)
and grandkids out to hear me. I guess hails Etta James’s 1960 hit James’s song to heart-strings and makes you cry. You
break down to; know how men always sit, dabbing
I’ve finally caught up with myself. All I Could Do Was Cry. (below) Bettye
LaVette, patron at their eyes, not really breaking

“Y
Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Roger our favourite song. If all the of Mr Jerry’s, down the way women do… it’s the
Waters and Ron Sexsmith all sugar had turned to shit, Detroit. minor key that does it, from Auld
claim you as one of their favourite what would it be? Lang Syne to Amazing Grace. And, I
songwriters. Who’s your go-to It was 1962. My parents sold corn realised I sounded more like James
songwriter? liquor and had a jukebox in the living Brown than Doris Day, so I wanted to
room. My mother was a country and find someone that sounded like I
Well, Bob Dylan has always been a con-
western and gospel groupie, my sounded. So, I gravitated to Etta
stant. Bob opened a huge door that father was a blues and gospel
didn’t even exist before he built it, and James and Bobby Bland and Marvin
groupie. We listened to Ray Charles, Gaye. I kind of drew on them.
he left it open. Johnny Cash’s early Sun B.B. King, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans,
stuff I always like. I got to know John in Pinky, he’s the father of my only
Little Esther… all music. child. He’s in Detroit, and as we’ve
the last 20 years he was alive and he I heard All I Could Do Was Cry at a
was such a colossal figure, it was like gotten older we’ve become certainly
place across the street from my better friends. He turned out to be a
being around Abraham Lincoln. Van school (in Detroit) called Mr Jerry’s.
Morrison I can always depend on, and mechanic, and Margie Cooper
I was in the ninth grade. We went turned out to be assistant district
Gordon Lightfoot. there every day after class and there
You mentioned Ron Sexsmith. He’s attorney of the State Of Michigan!
was a jukebox there, so it must have “IT HIT ME…
one of the real greats, his melodies My husband has wrestled down all
been between 3.30 and 4 o’clock on a
are gorgeous. weekday. We’d have a quarter for the
IT WAS those songs I heard at Mr Jerry’s, and
jukebox, and get a soda and three EASIER TO in my car it sounds like 1962 to 1963.
You often use humour to make a A line on my new CD is ‘Come baby,
serious point in your songwriting. straws and a bag of potato chips. CRY THAN
I guess it hit me. The heartbreak. TO LAUGH.” remind me of where I once begun.’
Yep. I’ve always used humour. It’s a That it was easier to cry than to And that’s what they do.”
great buffer if you’re talking about laugh. The way she sang it and what As told to Ian Harrison
something political with somebody it was about – “She was standing Bettye’s album of Bob Dylan songs
from the opposite point of view. At there with my man/I heard them Things Have Changed (Verve) is out now.
school I was a little skinny guy with a
big mouth and if you can make a big
guy laugh before he punches you in
the face you’ll at least get a softer
punch. If you’re lucky he becomes your
friend and won’t punch you at all.
You appeared in the Billy Bob
Thornton movie Daddy And Them
[2001]. Do you have any more
acting plans?
I’d love to. If there’s anybody out there
wants me, I still have my Actors Guild
card, I’m fully paid up.
How’s your health?
Very good, thanks. I’ve had two cancers
– lung and neck – and I had that thing
where your heart goes out of rhythm
and has to be stopped and started
again. But things are good right now. I
also got a knee replacement five days
ago and I’m recuperating from that
before we go on tour. It’s painful now
but I’ll be dancing by then.
Tell us something you’ve never
told an interviewer before.
I was a star gymnast in high school on
the pommel horse. I beat everyone in
the state but at the finals I fell off the
horse and that was it, done. I loved
gymnastics but I didn’t go to college,
so there was no real place to do
gymnastics except the circus.
Andy Fyfe
 how Love yesterday. Their
smiles seemed so genuine.
J: I cried last night when I
watched Call Me By Your
Name. I’m quite heartbro-
ken right now and the
scene at the end just hit me
really hard.
Vinyl, CD or streaming?
love listening to records,
ugh I do stream most of the
I listen to.
l the way. But I’m constantly
so I mostly stream music .
My most treasured possession is…
First Aid drum
Kit: Klara K: My insulin shots. I’ve been a diabetic
(above) and since I was nine and without them I’d
Johanna (left) literally die. I also have a custom-built
draw heads Gibson from the 1920s.
on heads.
J: A 1929 Gibson mandolin I was gifted
by Jack White in Nashville.
The best book I’ve read is…
K: I really love Raymond Carver. I think
What We Talk About When We Talk
About Love is profound.
SELFPORTRAIT J: My most memorable reading experi-
ence has to be 1984 by George Orwell.

FIRST AID KIT

Stockholm’s folk siblings My biggest vice is…
I read it when I was 12 and it got me
interested in politics.
Is the glass half-full or half-empty?
K: Half-full. I’ve always had this sense
in their own words and K: I value other people’s needs and that things are going to work out.
feelings before my own. I think I’m
by their own hands. being nice but I’m only doing myself,
J: Half-full! I have to say that to have
the strength get up in the morning.
I’d describe myself as… and everyone else, a disservice. Also
I have a really bad sweet tooth. My greatest regret is…
Klara Söderberg: A people-pleasing, K: I didn’t draw a better self-portrait.
emotional, independent, overthinker. J: I say ”I’m sorry” too much.
The last time I was embarrassed J: I regret having been so hard on
Johanna Söderberg: An emotional myself and so shy in my teenage years.
rollercoaster, a cry-baby, perfection- was…
I feel like I missed out on a lot of fun,
ist, angry feminist, day-dreamer. K: Being the centre of attention never just because of fear and pride.
Music changed me because… embarrassed me. I get embarrassed all
the time in smaller groups though. “I MISSED When we die…
K: I can’t remember a life before
J: I find it quite embarrassing to speak OUT ON FUN K: I don’t think anything happens. I
music, it was always such a natural
part of my life. It gives me a sense of Swedish on stage. It feels so private BECAUSE OF would really love to see my grandmas
and naked. When I speak English I can FEAR AND and my cat again, so I hold out hope
purpose and connection to the world.
for some kind of magic somewhere.
J: I think being a musician has made
pretend that I’m a rock star. PRIDE.”
My formal qualifications are… J: I’d like to think I’ll be hanging out in
me a stronger individual and it’s made Johanna a paradise version of Joshua Tree,
me very connected to my emotions. K: None. I quit school when I was 16 Söderberg singing songs with Gram Parsons.
When I’m not making music… to take a year to try to make the music
thing work. Though I have dreams of I would like to be remembered as…
K: I watch a lot of film and TV. I
becoming a dog therapist. K: Hopefully I made the people around
daydream. I pet dogs.
J: I finished high school but that’s it. me feel seen and loved.
J: I go to the cinema or theatre, I go J: A sweet soul who sang sweet songs.
I’d love to study philosophy, history
on long walks in the forest, I shop for
or language at university one day.
clothes, I cook lentil stews, I have First Aid Kit’s Record Store Day/Interna-
board game dinners with my friends, The last time I cried was… tional Women’s Day 45 You Are The
I dog-sit, I eat a lot of cheese… K: Watching the last episode of the Problem Here is out now on Columbia.

MONDOMOJO
…the ’68 release of the MC5’s goal is that the a dience leaves… reported that compared to just 70 levitating turntable”, would certainly
debut will be marked th unifying illegal raves in London in 2016, 2017 impress your guests when you’re
by Wayne Kramer (rig saw 133 of them …last month dreamy playing your Sham 69 45s. See
his Kick Out The Jams: T e Irish Icelanders SIGUR R evaudio.com for info …
50th Anniversary Tour. STING accused, and then cle ornia rapper LIL XAN
Joined by Sound- stry he avoidance. It was an a d out that you don’t go
garden’s Kim Thayil, r Shaggy. error, they explained, d saying TUPAC (left)
Fugazi’s Brendan good this did not stop word boring” in interviews.
Canty and others, , “we both singer Jónsi’s owner t month he was
Brother Wayne will play names” … two motorbikes gett rrounded by fans of the
the album at Euro-festi rdcore Will …need a new record te rap great while eating
and a US tour, ending in The player? The MAG-L acos, and had to call for a
Getty (2)

Detroit on October 27. elegraph or “the world’s first police escort to safety…

26 MOJO
Alexis Taylor
Beautiful Thing
New album
LP / CD / DL

“‘Beautiful Thing’ is house music from

a better parallel universe”
Justus Köhncke

“It’s like the band Can were somehow transported

from 70s Germany to Love Ranch club in 90s
London, spent only a few moments there
then back to 70s... then set about trying to make
what they saw and heard!” Edwin Burdis

“Demonstrates Taylor’s mastery of his peculiar strain

of zonked late-night soul” 8/10 UNCUT
MOJOEYEWITNESS

WIRE ACTIVATE AND

RECORD PINK FLAG
In the broiling milieu of 1976 Watford, a group formed. In a state
of accelerated development, they dismissed punk chaos for
discipline, economy and creative deconstruction, and their
new minimalist model foresaw decades of art-rock to come.
But how did they arrive at their seismic first album,
and what was jettisoned on the way?

“THEY
THOUGHT
WE WERE
TAKING PISS
– AND THEY
WERE
RIGHT!”
Graham
Lewis
 PART 1 “CREATIVITY JUST EXPLODED”
Bassist, voice and lyricist Graham Lewis on
chance, shifts and exploding creativity.

“I
knew Bruce [Gilbert, guitar] socially from about 1974.
I’d moved up to New Barnet for my final year at art
college. I was social secretary there, so I was steeped
in what little was going on musically in London – stuff like
Dr. Feelgood, and [Ian Dury’s] Kilburn And The High
Roads, who I must’ve seen 20 times.
Bruce had a job at Watford Art College [as ‘audio-visual
technician’], and he put together an end-of-term group
with Colin [Newman, singer/tune-writer] and [guitarist]
George Gill, to do the college hop. By that point, I was
working as a freelance fashion designer, but I still used to
bump into Bruce. One time we went to see The Vibrators
at the Lord Nelson on Holloway Road, and he said, ‘Would
you like to come along and play bass?’ This was October
1976. I had to borrow a bass – a Paul McCartney violin-
style Hofner – and for an hour or so we made a racket.
Afterwards, they said, ‘We heard you could play!’ I said,
No, I told Bruce I had a bass – I was very specific. They were
quite objectionable, but then Bruce called – ‘Er, we’re
wondering if you’d like to come again this week?’
I was very much the outsider in all this, but I under-
stood it was George’s group. We’d play his material, which
was sort of New York Dolls, MC5-ish, rough-and-ready,
‘Hey man, let’s rock, we’re heavy dudes’ kind of thing. Not
terribly good. Then, George somehow broke his ankle.
By now we’d played three or four times, and we were
rehearsing – Robert [Grey, aka Gotobed], our drummer,
had found this underground ashtray in Stockwell – you
came out, and you were green with tobacco ash – but
George was off the map, so what were we gonna do?
We’d seen all the new bands. We very much cared for
the Buzzcocks, because they weren’t touched by that R&B/
rock‘n’roll tradition. And when the Ramones came over
[in July ’76], that was inspiring. We really understood we
had to play an awful lot faster, and tighter.
Colin and I were out seeing The Damned at the Roxy in
January ’77, and Colin was like, ‘I can write tunes, you know.’
I said, Well, I think I can write words, and took out of my
pocket what became the words for Lowdown. Next time we
turned up at the ashtray, Colin goes, ‘Here’s the song I’ve
written to those words you gave me’, and we then learnt
how to play Lowdown – our first composition! An extraordi-
nary thing. We started rehearsing three or four times a
week, for 10 or 12 hours, and in a period of three weeks, the
bulk of Pink Flag was written.
With George, it’d been a racket, and being in tune
didn’t matter, but this method and format, and our limited
skills, suggested that things had to be very precise, edited
and witty. A song did what it did, then it stopped. There
Saw you in a mag: (main) Wire in ’77 (from was no fucking about, no twiddling guitar solos, no
left) Robert Gotobed, Bruce Gilbert, Colin
Newman and Graham Lewis; (bottom row, posturing. That proved to be a fantastic model, and the
from left) a page from Gotobed’s diary, creativity just exploded from there.
showing early gigs and fees (£5 for playing Once George was off crutches, it was extremely
the Nashville?!); the Roxy live LP; with soon-
to-be-ex-member George Gill (second right);
obvious that it wasn’t the same thing any more, and there
signing to EMI, September ’77 (Nick Mobbs was no room for what he did. It actually was a group now,
sat on floor, Mike Thorne third from right). with a sound, and there was an acceleration of purpose.
We got a show at the Roxy [on February 24, 1977],
supporting The Jam, and you had young Paul [Weller]
going, ‘B-b-but where does it come from?’ It was getting
so dreary, people saying what was punk, and what wasn’t.
We came from a creative education, where you were
taught to think and be flexible. There was a lot of spitting
at gigs, but also glass- and bottle-throwing. It was quite
violent, and us fucking about with tempo didn’t help on
that front, because they thought we were taking the piss
– and they were right!
Annette Green, Colin Newman

We went back to the Roxy for the two shows in April

that got recorded for Harvest/EMI’s live album, and that’s
when Mike Thorne, who produced the Roxy album,
became interested. He came up, wearing a jumper with a
big eagle, or a sheep, on it – long hair, sparkly trousers and
pixie boots – ‘Er, hullo! Would you like to use my tuner?’
But he basically got us through the door at EMI.”

TURN OVER! STUDIOS

WIRE VOICE COLIN NEWMAN ON MOANING,
AND WHY PINK WAS INTERESTING.

MOJO 29
 PART 2 “IT WAS HARSH”

WIRE ACTIVATE AND One chord and

shouting: Wire
(from left)
Gilbert, Gotobed,
the location – ‘There’s a flagpole on
Plymouth Hoe, with empty ground in
front, blue sky.’ But Graham had

RECORD PINK FLAG Lewis and

Newman, with
initial releases
come up with our colour concept
on-stage, which was black, white and
pink – black and white was the
Wire front-person Colin that singular minimalist aesthetic. and a badge;
Mr Suit and 12XU were already (below) the aesthetic of the day, but adding pink
Newman on jamming, comedy to us – we’d moved on, and singer in was interesting.
performance.
humourless record labels written stuff like I Feel Mysterious We had a playback of the final
album at the record company, and
and America calling. Today, which went on Chairs Missing
they all thought it was harsh. We’d
[’78]. Mr Suit seems straightforward,
been signed by Nick Mobbs, who’d

“P
retty much everyone on the but it’s not at all about rejecting
Roxy live album went into corporate sponsorship. It’s actually a signed Pink Floyd and the Sex Pistols,
EMI to ‘have the conversation’. slightly whingey love song, directed at so they thought we might be the Pink
They’d recorded our set, but we were someone who seemed to think this Floyd of punk. They didn’t see the
writing new songs all the time, so we other person was more interesting humour in it.
started demo-ing for them – two lots than I was. A lot of the writing is quite The album came out in December
in May, underneath their offices in personal: Straight Lines, which “WE’VE ’77, and there’s a bootleg from the
Manchester Square, and another Bruce wrote, is just his life. The chorus ALWAYS FELT week after, where we only play two
lot in August. That’s when we got – ‘Oh it’s unlust, and the one-dimen- LIKE PINK songs off it. For those songs we’d
signed, and we were recording at learnt we could all play the same thing
sional boy’ – is so him. Bruce does FLAG WAS at the same time, but for the Chairs
Advision in Fitzrovia two weeks later, pissy aphorisms.
in early September.
DONE Missing songs, we’d learnt we could
Other songs were more about TO US .”
On the first day, we didn’t under- process: for 106 Beats That, the chords play different things at the same time,
stand anything about the recording came from some formula I’d worked Colin and obviously that was more exciting
process. Mike Thorne, who got the job out based on the names of train Newman to us.
of producing, had Rob playing his kit stations between London and Mainly, the British press got it, and
so they could get the drum sound up, Watford, so it does this absurd the Americans didn’t. There was a
and we ended up jamming for two chord sequence. Then, Field D backlash against punk over there, but
hours. We were really excited, thinking For The Sundays is completely somehow Pink Flag skirted around that
we’d recorded a whole alternative tongue-in-cheek: the music w and influenced hardcore bands like
album – we were disappointed when listened to wasn’t in the norm Minor Threat. In America, they thought
we realised they’d only been listening papers, which were full of you had to pay your dues, and be on
to the drums. people like Rod Stewart and the road for four years before you
With hindsight, we’ve always felt Britt Ekland, so there was made your first album, but suddenly
Annette Green, Paul Slattery

like Pink Flag was done to us, but it absolutely no expectation Pink Flag was offering that you could
worked out well. Mike Thorne was that we’d become those kind do one chord and shouting, and still
responsible for deciding what went of people. make interesting music.”
on there. Certain more recent tracks I’m pretty sure the cover As told to Andrew Perry
were excluded simply because photo was inspired by the Wire release specials editions of their
they were too advanced, but that minimalism of Bruce’s paintin albums Pink Flag, Chairs Missing and 154
became the strength of Pink Flag – and he definitely came up wit on vinyl and CD on June 22.

30 MOJO
 "'
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All BGO Records new releases are available from Amazon and all good record shops or online at www.bgo-records.com
For a free BGO Records text catalogue listing and order form, please email [email protected] or call 01284 724406

BGO Records, 7 St Andrews Street North, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk IP33 1TZ A
19:81*;:-,
15
:0-
%
*?
!867-8
;91+

THE TEMPTATIONS
Norman Whitfield Psychedelic Soul
Elemental Music, together with Universal Music
Group, proudly presents a new CD collection of Ranked as #1
The complete
on the list of The
long out of print titles from the vaults of Motown Temptations’ TOP Un-Edited album
10 albums in the for the First
Records. True masterpieces of the 70’s R&B, Soul 88530 December 2017
88532 Time on CD
issue of MOJO
& Funk scene.    Magazine  ALSO AVAILABLE
ON 180 gr. LP
JXR SGD HLHS is the fourteenth The acclaimed 1973 album by
All of them produced by Norman Whitfield, studio album by The Temptations
ENQ SGD
NQCX NSNVM K@ADK
The Temptations for the first time
on CD format including the full
considered one of the best soul-funk producers ever. released in 1971. It includes the KDMFSG TM§DCHSDC RSTCHN UDQRHNMR
ª¬ GHS  TRS X L@FHM@SHNM of all of the album cuts (these
TMMHMF V@X VHSG D KNMF UDQRHNMR VDQD OQDUHNTRKX
NMKX @U@HK@AKD NM UHMXK

88531 88525 88529

SOLID ROCK PUZZLE PEOPLE PSYCHEDELIC SHACK

Righteous trippy soul, recorded The next step along the path that The album which represents the
CTQHMFSGDGDHFGSNEGDDLOS@SHNMR Cloud Nine started and takes the A@MCRETKK§AKNVMRTALDQFDMBD Distributed by
strong association with Norman Detroit band further away from into psychedelia.
Whitfield. a classic soul sound, and more
towards the realm of psychedelic
soul.
HAGIASOFIA

PAINT A BULGAR
PICTURE
Beatific choir Le Mystère Des Never mind the
Balkans?: (main)
Zableyalo Agne involves a lamb that
discovers the shepherd has sold her
mother. Other lyrics on subjects such as
good/bad omens, fetching water and
courtship are mixed with new styles: Sofia’s
Voix Bulgares bewitched the Le Mystère Des world beatbox champion SkilleR appears
Voix Bulgares on four tracks. According to Boyana
’80s. Elizabeth Fraser and Lisa in the Pandhof Bounkova, the music publisher behind the
Gerrard discuss their return. Garden of the
Dom Church,
revitalised Voix Bulgares, contemporary
Utrecht, The writers and modernised arrangements will

“T
he human voice is the most
Netherlands, “sustain the tradition but make music for a
perfect instrument of all,” opines November 9, younger generation too.”
legendary Estonian composer 2017 (choir con-
As Bounkova explains, before com-
Arvo Pärt. For evidence, he could cite ductor Professor
Dora Hristova, munism “there were no choirs in folklore
cultural ambassadors from another
centre, in black); music”. Incredibly, the sound of angels was
country formerly in the communist bloc, (bottom row) a blunt political tool, part of the new Soviet
namely Bulgaria’s State Radio & TV Female the choir before
performing at puppet regime’s drive to stamp out
Vocal Choir. Better known as Le Mystère
the Domkerk; reactionary forces in Bulgaria’s traditional
Des Voix Bulgares, their new album (below) Cocteau culture. Composer/military bandleader/
BooCheeMish is their first in 24 years. Twin Liz Fraser. choir leader Filip Kutev would draw on
That a Bulgarian choir has a French
modern classical theorists such as
name is the doing of Swiss mining
Schoenberg to create a new, “progressive”
engineer-turned-ethnomusicologist
sound. Ironically, the group peaked when a
Marcel Cellier, whose field recordings –
second volume from Cellier’s vaults won
which began in 1952 – led to the 1975
the 1990 Grammy for Best Traditional Folk
compilation Le Mystère Des Voix Bulgares on
Recording (in gift-giving mood, George
his own Disques Cellier label. The
Harrison ordered 26 copies from 4AD), not
“mystery” was a reaction to the music’s
long after communism collapsed, leaving
uncanny, angelic sound, a piercing blend
them to contend with the free market.
of heartache and euphoria, born from
Yet their voices would not be silenced.
hardship and community, but also an
Kate Bush had nabbed three of the
open-throated method of singing.
ensemble’s principal soloists, known as
The album found a bigger audience in
The Trio Bulgarka, for her LPs The Sensual
1986, when UK independent 4AD licensed
World and The Red Shoes. In 1989, Bush
Cellier’s compilation. In 1985, Bauhaus
spoke of tapping into “their female music
frontman Peter Murphy had completed his
from a strong female point of view, which I
first session for a solo album, overseen by
think gives it a tremendous intensity, which
4AD skipper Ivo Watts-Russell. “To
you don’t really find it pop music.” There
discharge the day’s creative energy,”
followed collaborations with Terry Riley
Murphy recalls, he played a tape of Cellier’s
and the Kronos Quartet, while associate
album, discovered via a friend who’d used
group the London Bulgarian Choir have
it as a soundtrack for a modern dance
been stage guests of historio-rockers
piece. “It simply buckled my knees!” says
British Sea Power. Says BSP guitarist Noble,
Watts-Russell. “Never before had I been so
“Sometimes Bulgarian vocal music isn’t far
intensely subjugated by the human voice.”
from art-rockers using drones, like
For post-punk-leaning 4AD to release
Spacemen 3 or John Cale. There’s a lot of
archaic Balkan folk wasn’t such a strange
dissonance in there, playing around with
concept. The label’s roster included
altering the pitch around notes.”
Cocteau Twins and Dead Can Dance, “THEIR While recordings have been sporadic
respectively fronted by post-punk
theurgist Elizabeth Fraser and banshee
VOICES WERE – “No producer or investor got involved,
siren Lisa Gerrard, both of whom were MY IDEA and it’s hard to write for the open-throated
OF AN technique,” says Bounkova – BooCheeMish
floored by the album. “I broke my voice in
(the phonetic name of a folk dance) finds
pieces trying to sing the way they did,” EDUCATION, their spirit undimmed. For original Voix
admits Gerrard, who guests on three songs AND A Bulgares members Radka Alexova and
on BooCheeMish. “But their celestial HOME.” Elena Bozkova it’s also a chance to reprise
presence, their angelic sense of humility
Elizabeth the glory days, when they were feted as
with joy buried deeply within it, became
Fraser celebrities, travelling in a manner most
my greatest inspiration, especially in
Bulgarians could barely dream of, and with
cinema [see her soundtrack contributions
the opportunity to witness the impact of
to Gladiator, Heat and Black Hawk Down,
their heavenly voix. “When we performed
among others]. They gave me licence to
for the first time in London,” Alexova
yell out from the heart and soul.”
recalls, “the audience was very reserved
“Their voices were my idea of an
and we were a little bit puzzled. Later, we
education, and a home,” says Fraser. “No
learnt they were listening carefully with
way I’m going to sound like these women,
their eyes closed and when we finished
but there was such freedom to what they
they stood up and applauded for so long
Getty, Chris Ruiz (3)

did, how they constantly shifted dynami-

that we performed four encores. You can
cally and rhythmically, not to mention the
never forget such an experience.”
polyphony and technique. And to think
Martin Aston
they’re possibly singing about sheep!”
Indeed, BooCheeMish knee-buckler BooCheeMish is released by Prophecy.
MOJO 33
 TIMEMACHINE

MAY 1964 CHUCK BERRY

PLAYS HIS FIRST UK TOUR!
Chuck Berry had already which ascended to the third spot on Sweet little
MAY 9 been a recording artist for the charts. Promoter Don Arden – rock’n’parole’er:
(clockwise from
nine years. He’d started at the top: aware that Berry was now on parole main) Chuck
Maybellene, a track he’d originally for 14 months after serving two-and- wows ’em in
recorded as Ida Red, gained him the a-half years behind bars for transport- Blighty; with
undisputed R&B hit of 1955, staying at ing a 14-year-old girl across state lines excited fans; Arden’s invitation. Noting that “the
Don Arden; tour- tour had mostly bus and trains for
Number 1 on the US Jukebox charts for – duly offered him a British tour. mate Carl
11 straight weeks. Then living in Chicago, where his Perkins; gig
transportation,” Berry was persuaded
Yet despite appearing in films parole officer proved to be remarkably poster. that coach travel was acceptable by
including 1956’s Rock, Rock, Rock! and liberal, Chuck recalled, “I could go two singer-dancers who were part of
Go, Johnny Go! in 1959, he’d made anywhere without the parole officer the show, namely Jemima Smith and
little impact on the British record-buy- demanding that I first register an Caroline Attard – AKA Decca record-
“THE ing artistes The Other Two – who were
ing public. Many may have regarded account of my intended travels. He
him as the font for all told me to state only
AUDIENCE placed in a seat directly across from
thing rock’n’roll, but fterward on my monthly BECAME SO Berry’s set at the front of the bus.
1958’s Sweet Little eport, when and where I’d ROUSED… ”English buses are extremely plush
Sixteen was his lone one.” So he upped and THE MAN- with reclining seats like those of larger
Top 20 success to date. airliners,” Berry recalled, adding,
ew the Atlantic to accept AGEMENT
In 1963 there came a ”Attard always wore slacks but Jemima
LOWERED was often seen in an exciting blouse
change. Pye Interna-
Getty (3), Rex (2), Avalon, Alamy (2), Advertising Archives

tional records did a deal and skirt.”

with Chess that gave The show was of the package
them access to Berry’s variety, with Carl Perkins as main
back catalogue, and by support while The Animals, The
Christmas that year a Nashville Teens, Kingsize Taylor &
double-header of Let It The Dominos plus The Swinging
Rock/Memphis Blue Jeans provided the rest of
Tennessee was a UK the names on the posters. Perkins,
Number 6 hit. Other whose career had been placed on
Berry releases also sold hold following a horrendous car
well, and in early May crash some years earlier, proved
1964 he had the biggest British a popular figure with audiences on
single of his career to that point the tour, which got underway at
with No Particular Place To Go, Finsbury Park Astoria on May 9

34 MOJO
 ALSO THIS
before trekking through a couple MONTH
of dozen venues, from Plymouth
to Glasgow.
However, Perkins discovered that
Chuck Berry, whom he had worked
with years before, was not the man he
had previously known and admired.
”I never saw a man so changed,”
said Perkins. “He had been an
easy-going guy before, the kinda guy
who’d jam in dressing rooms, sit and
swap licks and jokes. In England he ERIC’S
STUDIO
was cold, real distant and bitter. It DEBUT
wasn’t just jail, it was those years Eric Clapton (above)
of one-nighters, grinding it out like 4session,
plays his first studio
on two tracks
that can kill a man, but I figure it was
for Otis Spann – Pretty
mostly jail.” Girls Everywhere and
The Swinging Blue Jeans proved Stirs Me Up. Muddy
unpopular with audiences, who felt Waters also appears on
they were not true rockers, and Gene the date, as does Jimmy
Page, who plays
Vincent was drafted in for a couple of harmonica.
concerts, causing the Melody Maker to The mingers, not the
enthuse of one capital show: “Forget MOODIES song: The Rolling Stones
The Beatles and the Stones, London IGNITE (not that bad, surely?).
audiences haven’t witnessed anything
quite as spectacular as three living
4ClintDenny Laine, Mike
Pinder, Ray Thomas,
Warwick and
legends – Chuck Berry, Gene Vincent
and Carl Perkins – heading a
Graeme Edge form The
Moody Blues.
BARD VIBES
DAILY MIRROR
one-nighter at London’s Hammer-
smith Odeon.“
But there was never any doubt
Around The Beatles
6Produced
is aired on ITV.
CALLS STONES
about who was the star of the
package. The smart-suited Berry,
by Jack Good,
it features Cilla Black,
P.J. Proby and, of course,
“UGLY”
The Daily Mirror says of The Rolling
backed by Kingsize Taylor & The The Beatles, who help
spoof A Midsummer MAY 29 Stones: “Everything seems to be
Dominos, with Roy Young helping
Night’s Dream. against them on the surface. They are called the ugliest group in Britain. They’re
out on piano, roused the out-front
crowds on every occasion via classics YURO not looked on kindly by most parents or by adults in general. They are even used
Johnny B. Goode, Sweet Little Sixteen, EXCHANGE to the type of articles that asks big brother if he would let his sister go out with
Timi Yuro asks the them.” The Stones, whose debut album is at Number 1 and are heading off on
Nadine, Maybellene and more. He
literally stopped the show at his first
6Supreme
Los Angeles
Court to nullify
their first US tour, survive the harsh critique.
Hammersmith Odeon performance on her contract with
Liberty Records.
May 10, where the audience became Hong Kong TOPTEN
so roused by his trademark duckwalks GUY LEVEL ka-blooey:
that the management panicked and
16 Mary Wells
reaches Number
Garland feels
the pressure.
UK ALBUMS
lowered the safety curtain.
Even so, the tour proved an
1 in the States with My
Guy. It’s the first
CHART MAY 17
enormous success, and the only Motown chart topper.
drawback was that a planned Granada
TV special, due to feature Berry and
DYLAN AT 1 THE ROLLING STONES
THE ROLLING STONES DECCA
THE RFH
Perkins, failed to materialise before
Berry flew home again to report to his
parole officer.
17 Bob Dylan plays
the Royal Festival
Hall, his first big London
2 WITH THE BEATLES
THE BEATLES PARLOPHONE

gig. Says The Times, “His

Fred Dellar voice was untamed and
pinched, his enunciation
3DAVE
A SESSION WITH THE
DAVE CLARK FIVE
CLARK FIVE COLUMBIA
AD ARCHIVE 1964 poor but his sincerity
never in doubt.”
FAREWELL
RUDY
4THEDANCE
SHADOWS
WITH THE

SHADOWS COLUMBIA
Rudy Lewis of
20 The Drifters, a
27-year-old heroin
addict, is found dead in
5RECORDING
WEST SIDE STORY
ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK
PHILIPS
his Harlem hotel room
just hours before a JUDY FALLS
recording session.
SUTCH TREAT ILL IN OZ 6 ADUSTY
GIRL CALLED DUSTY
SPRINGFIELD PHILIPS

27 Screaming Lord
Sutch launches
his pirate radio station
MAY 29
Judy Garland is
hospitalised in Hong 7 PLEASE PLEASE ME
THE BEATLE
Radio Sutch on a fort in Kong, a week after a disastrous show
the Thames Estuary.
SKA TIME
in Melbourne which was reported in
the New York World-Telegram with the
8THESTAY WITH
THE HOLLIE
HOLLIES PA
Jamaica says it headline ‘Riled Aussies Hoot Judy Off
30 will send six
dancers to demonstrate
ska at New Jersey
Stage.’ Rendered unconscious by a
heart attack or, say others, a pill 9ELVIS
ELVIS’ GOLD
RECORDS V
PRESLEY
Palisades Amusement overdose, it is initially reported that
Park. Jimmy Cliff and she had died. Despite being advised
‘So many ways to think about’ these fine
baked beans – served with bacon and…
Byron Lee are also due
at the New York World’s
to give up singing for a year to allow
damage to her vocal cords to heal,
10 BLUE GEN
GENE PITN
UNITED ARTISTS
tripe? Lungs? Answers on a postcard! Fair during the summer.
she continues to perform. The Shadow
knows: Hank
Marvin, at 4.
SAVE
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 THE LEGACY
1951-2018 Album: The Clash
(CBS, 1977)
The Sound: Having

COMPLETE CONTROL
Mickey Foote, who oversaw Newport (Joe was just hanging out Garageland:
becoming the sonic
template for scores
of punk groups to
come. Within a year,
initially suggested that
the band record their
debut live, to sound like
The Velvet Underground’s
Live At Max’s Kansas City,
there at the time). When Strummer Mickey Foote however, Foote Foote contented himself
The Clash’s peerless earliest moved to London and formed The
(far right) keeps
would be fired for with reining in CBS’s
a watchful eye
studio recordings, died 101’ers, Foote – bluff, friendly, on CBS’s Simon surreptitiously attempts to polish the
recordings. “In the control
on March 2. practical, resourceful – joined him as Humphrey at The
Clash sessions,
varispeeding The room, you could press a
the band’s handyman and sound as Simonon, Clash’s fourth button and, if this thing on
he imprint left by some souls on

T rock’n’roll can be slight, yet their

influence still immeasurable. So
it is with Mickey Foote, The Clash’s live
mixer, before jumping ship with Joe to
The Clash in June 1976. His appoint-
ment with fate came after Mott The
Hoople and future London Calling
Jones, Rhodes
and roadie
Roadent look on.
single, Clash City
Rockers, in an
attempt to give it
extra zip. “I was
the screen went round in
a perfect circle, the sound
was supposedly all right.
It was like, Fuck that shit,
turn that stuff off !”
soundman who, in 1977, was tasked
producer Guy Stevens had failed to asked to do it by
with producing the band’s early
capture the group’s exhilarating Bernie on CBS’s advice,” he explained.
singles and self-titled debut LP;
rehearsal-room sound on an early “Being between Bernie and The Clash
records which, together with those by
demo session for Polydor. Once signed was a difficult position; the band
the Pistols, created the foundational
doctrines of UK punk. Foote’s close to CBS, the band looked to their live thought I’d sided with management
association with The Clash’s radically soundman to bottle their raw punk against them… It was a fair cop. It
minded manager, Bernard Rhodes, lightning, first on the inaugural White was the same thing later with Kevin
also saw his manning the desk for Riot single and then on The Clash. Rowland [who disapproved of Foote
Working at CBS’s Whitfield Street and Rhodes’ – as ‘Foot & Mouth’ –
three other crucial late-’70s acts: The
studios alongside in-house engineer
“BEING
Specials, Vic Godard & The Subway final mix of Dexys’ debut single,
Simon Humphrey, a fitting clash of BETWEEN Dance Stance].”
Sect and Dexys Midnight Runners.
But the Basildon-raised former art cultures erupted. “I made sure it wasn’t BERNIE AND After his working relationship with
student never harboured any illusions over-this’d or noise-gated that,” Foote THE CLASH Rhodes ended in the early ’80s, Foote
about his technical abilities. “I’m not recalled. “It was plug your amp in, turn WAS A faded from public view, and he
an engineer, I never pretended to be it up to three and don’t mess about DIFFICULT eventually re-trained as a heating
one,” Foote told this writer in 2003, with anything. Most of the guide POSITION.” engineer. By 2008, he’d moved back to
during an ultra-rare post-Clash vocals were used because Joe’s voice his birthplace, Aberdeenshire, where
interview. “That wasn’t my job… What wasn’t in the greatest condition. To Mickey he achieved minor celebrity for
was my job? To make it sound like we sing above Mick Jones’s guitar, you’re Foote opposing a new golf course develop-
wanted it to, not [the record label].” not fucking joking!” ment by a US businessman named
Camera Press

Foote’s entry into The Clash’s orbit Much to CBS’s surprise, the clipped, Donald Trump. Foote died in hospital,
came via Joe Strummer, whom he’d fiery broadside of The Clash reached aged 66, after a short illness.
befriended while at college in Number 12 in the UK album charts, Pat Gilbert

38 MOJO
 MIKE HARRISON CLAUDIA
SPOOKY TOOTH VOICE FONTAINE
AND KEYSMAN AFRODIZIAK
BORN 1945 VOCALIST
Born in Carlisle, BORN 1960
blues-powered Born in London,
voice and singer Claudia
keyboardist Mike Fontaine began
Harrison played in her career singing
local R&B men The lovers rock, cutting
V.I.P.s, who, after her highly Kneel, don’t run: The
keyboardist Keith regarded debut Ventures with Nokie
Emerson’s departure to form The Edwards (second right).
single Natural
Nice, found psychedelia with Art in High in 1981. She would find fame
1967 and took part in the graphics/ with the vocal group Afrodiziak, Bell tour, reaching memorable twanging triumph that was Walk,
music happening Hapshash And initially a duo of Fontaine and heights of expression and artistry Don’t Run in 1960. Switching to
The Coloured Coat. Art would in future Soul II Soul vocalist Caron when singing The Great Gig In lead guitar, Edwards would provide
turn evolve into dual voice/keys Wheeler. The group would become The Sky. focus and dynamic momentum for
hard-psych rockers Spooky Tooth, one of the most recognisable Clive Prior The Ventures’ direct yet nuanced
who released four albums backing vocalists in ’80s UK pop, output, leaving his mark on a
(including 1969’s rock-electronic
fusion Ceremony with Pierre Henry,
appearing on The Jam’s Beat
Surrender, Elvis Costello’s Every
NOKIE EDWARDS re-recorded version of Walk,
Don’t Run which reached US
which Harrison disowned) before Day I Write The Book and, having VENTURES GUITAR Number 8 in 1964. He left the
breaking up in 1970. The singer become a three-piece with Naomi BORN 1935 group in 1968 for a solo career
recorded solo and with a reformed Thompson, The Special AKA’s Free that spawned two albums, but
Spooky Tooth until 1975 when he Nelson Mandela. Afrodiziak would A Lahoma, Oklahoma-born returned from 1973 to 1984, and
left music for more regular work, also appear on recordings by the multi-instrumentalist who was then again for regular tours of
including a stint as a milkman. He likes of Madness, Howard Jones playing professionally at the age Japan. In the ’90s, Edwards was
returned in 1997, joining the and Heaven 17, while Fontaine’s of 11, Nole Floyd ‘Nokie’ Edwards twice Grammy-nominated for his
Hamburg Blues Band and reuniting solo credits included Paul Weller, moved to Tacoma, Washington in country and gospel recordings,
with Spooky Tooth for live work Peter Gabriel, Holly Johnson, the late ’50s to play with country and was present when The
and the 1999 album Cross Purpose. Robbie Williams, Joe Cocker, star Buck Owens. Soon after, he Ventures were inducted into the
In 2006, he released Late Starter, his Incognito and many others. In started playing bass with rocking Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2008.
first solo album for 31 years. 1994 she was part of Pink Floyd’s instrumentalists The Ventures, who He played his last show in 2017.
Ian Harrison live group for their The Division scored a Number 2 smash with the Ian Harrison

THEY ALSOSERVED
SINGER KAK CHANNTHY chart-topper Tears. He also recorded in the mid-’70s. He also recorded solo thereafter disappeared from
(b.1980) fronted The Cambodian comedy records with his diminutive in 2000 he released his Tribute To public view.
Space Project, a group which found comic creations The Diddy Men: at Stéphane Grappelli and appeared on TRADITIONAL musician LIAM
inspiration in her homeland’s popular his funeral at Liverpool’s Anglican recordings with Pierre Moerlen’s O’FLYNN (b.1945) played the
music of the ’60s and early ’70s a cathedral in March, Diddy Men and Gong, ZAO, George Duke, Toots uilleann pipes, masterfully, with
tradition almost extinguished by his trademark ‘tickling sticks’ were Thielemans, Jack DeJohnette ground-breaking Irish folk group
the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime. in evidence, and flags were lowered and sundry Magma members, Planxty, who he co-founded in 1972.
The Cambodian Space Project in respect. among many others. He also made five solo albums and
released five albums and toured ALBUM COVER art pioneer GARY PRODUCER and DJ MATT DIKE recorded regularly with composer
internationally, with Channthy BURDEN (b.1933) created (b.1961) co-founded the Delicious Shaun Davey and former Planxty
collaborating with admirers memorable sleeve designs for Vinyl label in 1987. As part of the bandmate Andy Irvine; O’Flynn’s
including Mick Harvey, Paul Kelly Crosby, Stills & Nash, Joni Dust Brothers production team he other credits include work with the
and Dennis Coffey. She also Mitchell, The Doors, Laura Nyro, found late-’80s pop-rap success with Everly Brothers, Kate Bush, Mark
performed with her group Channthy My Morning Jacket, Conor Oberst hits by Tone Lõc and Young MC; Knopfler, Emmylou Harris, Mike
Cha Cha. In 2015 the documentary and many others. Burden was also Dike and the Dust Brothers would Oldfield, Enya, Seamus Heaney,
Not Easy Rock’n’Roll told her strange noted for his long association with go on to produce important chunks John Cage and many others. The Irish
and inspiring story. Neil Young and Crazy Horse, which of the Beastie Boys’ 1989 sample Taoiseach Leo Varadkar hailed him
TOWER RECORDS founder RUSS began in 1970. “My friend for life, Gary -heavy masterwork Paul’s Boutique. as “a genius and great Irish man”.
SOLOMON (b.1925) founded the was my art director, creating album
retail giant in 1960 in Sacramento: at covers with me for almost 50 years,”
its height, the hangar-sized, open-late, said Young in tribute, “beginning wit
record shop/hangout had 200 outlets After The Gold Rush and ending with
worldwide, offering the widest array Paradox and Roxy…, my next two
of music. The scorched-earth albums.” Burden also shared a
consequences of downloading, Grammy for his packaging for Young
and what Solomon admitted were The Archives Vol.1: 1963-1972.
poor business decisions, led to the RAPPER CRAIG MACK (b.1970)
chain’s closure in 2006. In 2015 the was best known for his wiggy 1994 h
documentary All Things Must Pass: Flava In Your Ear, whose remixed
The Rise And Fall Of Tower Records version provided early exposure for
starred celebrity patrons including The Notorious B.I.G. and Busta
Bruce Springsteen and Elton John. Rhymes. Though his debut LP
ENTERTAINER SIR KEN DODD Project: Funk Da World shipped gold,
(b.1927) enjoyed a long and Mack was unable to capitalise on his
distinguished career as a comedian; early success, and from 2012 he joine
he was also a successful singer, a controversial Christian group in
making the UK Top 40 singles charts South Carolina.
Mirrorpix, Getty

on 18 occasions from 1960 to 1975. His VIOLIN virtuoso DIDIER LOCK-

hits included 1964’s signature song WOOD (b.1956) played with Paris’s
Happiness, and 1965’s million-selling rock-prog-jazz terrorsquad Magma
Love Me Dodd:
Ken with Madame
Tussauds’ Fabs, 1964.
 THE MOJO INTERVIEW

Stephen Malkmus traded

Pavement’s high-status
jumble rock for solo jeopardy
and epic jams. Now he’s
waving his freak flag high
as the house goes up in
flames. “Take the money
and run!” he advises.
Interview by JOHN MULVEY t Portrait by ANDREW COTTERILL

LIFETIME HAS PASSED SINCE Today, the 51-year-old Malkmus has flown in from Portland

A
Courtney Love called him the “Grace Kelly ostensibly to promote Sparkle Hard, his seventh album with his
of slacker rock” but, 25 years on, Stephen 21st-century backing band, The Jicks. It’s another fine negotiation
Malkmus arrives in a London hotel salon between Malkmus’s baroque record collector tastes and his odd
with his looks more or less intact. His floppy, melodic sensibility, where bovver-booted glam-rock mutations
collegial hair has only a few strands of grey, share album space with elaborate prog-folk workouts. There are
and he still affects a certain distracted innovations, too: a frisson of AutoTune; a countryish duet with Kim
amusement at the world, at himself, and at the stuffed kangaroo Gordon; and Bike Lane, the most explicitly political song Malkmus
in boxing gloves that stands next to our table. has ever released, which contrasts white liberal anxieties with the
“I got a lot of credit from that quote,” he says, fidgeting with a 2015 murder of Freddie Gray in Baltimore police custody.
tattered red sweatband on his left wrist, a He is also, though, happy to discuss the
plastic tag still protruding from the back of his WE’RE NOTWORTHY whole trajectory of his career. “There are
shirt. “It’s the greatest thing Courtney Love highs and lows,” he laughs. “I don’t know who
ever did in her life, as far as I’m concerned, Kim Gordon on the SM looks back and thinks everything was
but I guess I’m narcissistic.” enigma. “He’s like a horse.” awesome, especially something as far back as
As frontman of Pavement, Malkmus’s “Being asked to sing a Pavement. I was just a kid, and there’s a
duet with Stephen
haphazard elegance and droll intelligence Malkmus is in my top five
certain charge of first love in how you
made him a role model for a generation of afterglow moments of remember those times.”
indie rock fans who disdained that sort of a long ‘career, career, Whenever Malkmus touches on more
reverence. Through the 1990s, Pavement career’. The song we sing, emotional areas, his answers are punctuated by
Refute, is classic Malkmus.
became one of the biggest cult bands in the Faux country, funny but also observa- self-deprecating giggles, as if to put scare
world, an often chaotic presence on the tional about contemporary life. He makes quotes around anything that might be miscon-
periphery of scenes, occasionally coming into songwriting look as effortless as he does strued as pompous. “Talk is cheap,” he claims,
working on multiple online Scrabble
contact with the mainstream before an absurd games, or The NY Times crossword. The
when asked about his old bandmate Scott
event – being pelted with mud at the Lollapa- lyrics and music always feel so entwined, Kannberg wanting a 30th anniversary Pavement
looza Festival in 1995, say – would send them whether one is across and one is down. reunion in 2019. “I can’t see that happening
slouching back to the underground. They’re exacting like a novel but myself. But I’m just the singer…”
ambiguous like poetry. His songwriting ➢
process is a mystery, like a horse.”
MOJO 41
 ➣
What are your memories of Los Angeles, Fall, Wire. That was where the actual music of covered it and that gave us a tiny foot in the
where you were born? Pavement, which is like a distorted version of door. It was kind of sincere-sounding.
I don’t really remember too much: does all of those things, really starts.
Didn’t that foot-in-the-door happen while
anybody? I just have fleeting memories of I never thought I’d be in a band with Scott
you were away travelling?
being on the beach looking for ocean glass. My when I was in college. I tried to start another
band, this recording project called the Lake Yeah, Scott to his credit printed a thousand
grandparents’ house. My grandfather’s funeral.
Speed. College ended, and I had this friend copies. He believed in it. If it never came out, I
School, barely. My dog. A lot of babysitters. Our
who was a bass player in Charlottesville. He wouldn’t have been surprised. I flew to Paris,
generation of parents, they were hands-off
was in this Grateful Dead covers band called went to Spain and Italy, then Egypt and Turkey
with children. We were pretty much dealt with
The Skulltones, who made a lot of money for six months of trying to live on falafels
by babysitters, whereas with my children now,
playing sororities and fraternities. Sometimes and water. I ended up in Berlin, went to this
we sort of curate their lives, we’re really
they’d throw in a Sex Pistols song, something record store and saw the single there, and I
intertwined with them.
kinda edgy. With their drummer, we practised couldn’t believe it. So yeah, I came back to
When you were eight, your family moved for a week and made a full album. It was wide acclaim (laughs).
upstate to Stockton, and a couple of years basically like Pavement, except I didn’t hide the But when you got back to the States, instead
later you met Scott Kannberg, co-founder of influences that well, and didn’t think about
Pavement, on a football team. Scott once of going to Stockton and making something
making it sound real dirty. I thought I was
described you as the “neighbourhood brat”. more concrete out of Pavement, you
going to get signed to some crappy indie label
decided to go to New York and worked with
I don’t know if I was, but as far as archetypes and that was going to be my life.
Nastanovich and Berman as security guards
go, he was probably a little geekier. He had I was always writing songs. It was some-
at the Whitney Museum Of American Art.
tortoiseshell glasses and was goofy at that thing to do, some world creation you do in
point, like half the world. And I didn’t have your spare time. In England, I think there are There was no way I was going back to
tortoiseshell glasses, and I was slicker. I was dudes who look in the mirror and say, “We’re Stockton. I mean, if your parents are dying to
definitely not the nicest kid in the neighbour- going to have a band, we’ve got this plan and get out of there, you’d better be. David and
hood, but I wasn’t a teaser. we’re going to be big.” You know, “I love Bob were more a part of my intellectual cohort,
Morrissey and I want to be a star too,” like the but they didn’t play music, that was the
What did you listen to growing up? dude from Suede. But usually, I think things problem. David wrote poetry and fanzines, but
The first time I bonded with a band was with just grow. I don’t think he seriously thought he’d ever be
Kiss. Ninety per cent of boys started with Kiss, in a band. I knew Bob could be in a band.
In 1989, back visiting Stockton, you hooked
then you could either go in the direction of In the sleevenotes to Pavement’s Secret
up with Scott Kannberg again and recorded
Rush, or you could go in the direction of Devo.
the first Pavement single, Slay Tracks, at History compilation, you wrote that
But luckily, you could all meet back at Van
Louder Than You Think, a studio run by a yourself, Berman and Nastanovich “used to
Halen. Then of course came second-wave punk
hippy called Gary Young, who became have sinister post-adolescent psychological
rock – Black Flag – and then the new new
your drummer. battles – we definitely needed girlfriends.”
wave, like R.E.M. and The Smiths.
I came back, and Scott and I made a lo-fi single That’s true. Every cis guy does, probably. We
You went to the University Of Virginia, and in Stockton. Those Lake Speed dudes wouldn’t were still young, there wasn’t Tinder and stuff,
met Bob Nastanovich, who would eventu- have understood. They wouldn’t have we couldn’t work on our game. We had no
ally join Pavement, and David Berman, with understood this really glitchy, intentionally game. Zero game. A lot of frustration. Those
whom you’d form the Silver Jews. Did your shitty-sounding thing. Faust, Chrome, the two fought a lot. And David got arrested for
tastes change when you were all working at Swell Maps. Maybe Wire and Pere Ubu – those having mace in his backpack – his grandma
the college radio station? were the influences on Slay Tracks, except for gave it him and he just forgot about it. You had
At college it was bands like Sonic Youth and one song, Box Elder, this jangly song that to have a permit for mace and he didn’t know,
Dinosaur, and then retro comes, and finally I’ve didn’t really fit but was the one that got so he had to spend four hours in jail, and I
got taste. The Velvet Underground, Can, The popular with John Peel. The Wedding Present remember Bob thinking that was the greatest

A LIFE IN PICTURES 2 3
Malkmusian theory: the feast of Stephen.

1 The young Stephen

Malkmus at play in
Stockton, California: “We had
Leno’s show”: Pavement
awkwardly make the big time,
1994, alongside Drew
our own Atari, and a kick-ass Barrymore.
bumper pool.”

2 The Silver Jews: (from left)

Malkmus, David Berman,
8 “They get what I do”: the
first Jicks line-up, 2003,
(from left) Joanna Bolme, Mike
Bob Nastanovich. “I didn’t have Clark, John Moen, Malkmus.
to conceptualise anything, I
could just show up.” 9 Wowee zowee: the “Grace
Kelly of slacker rock”

3 Pavement live at Maxwell’s

in Hoboken, NJ, 1992: note
the skills of inverted
contemplates his visage, 1996.
“I guess I’m narcissistic…”
Courtesy Stephen Malkmus (2), Kevin Scanlon, Getty (4), Camera Press, Rex

drummer, Gary Young.

4 On tour in south
London, June 1992:
(from left) Mark Ibold,
Scott Kannberg, Gary
Young, Malkmus, Bob
Nastanovich.

5 Kicker conspiracies:
Pavement FC with
new signing, drummer
Steve West (second
right), 1994.

6 Malkmus with Beck

Hansen, producer of
the fifth Jicks album,
Mirror Traffic, 2011.

7 “For better or worse,

we were on Jay
1

42 MOJO 4
thing. It was laughing at others’ misfortunes You once said you were worried when you side of him, and I hadn’t seen it before in the
to mask your own. Men are into having finished Slanted And Enchanted that it would studio. Often, in the early times, Gary acting
hierarchies, much more so than women. be seen as a big sell-out. crazy was like a Get Out Of Jail Free card for the
Maybe we were just trying to figure that out. More so the Watery Domestic EP, which came moments in a gig when we didn’t know what
after it. I thought that was really poppy. We we were doing. We were like a trainwreck
All through this period you were returning band, and that was kind of cool, because we
to California and making the first Pavement were on tour with Sonic Youth and it seemed
like the only bands they were into were really didn’t know how to play.
records with Scott and Gary.
noise music. But while he was a disruptive figure, wasn’t
Well we did the singles, and it was all fun and
kids’ stuff until we made the 10-inch, Perfect When you came to the UK in December Gary also the one who was most aggressive
Sound Forever [recorded late 1989/released 1992, supporting Sonic Youth, there seemed about getting a major deal?
’91]. That was more serious, the gateway to to be a lot of tensions within the band. He was interested in that. He had a brother who
[debut album] Slanted And Enchanted. People Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon were worked in a studio in New York state where the
actually liked that, so I thought, “Well, if you allegedly trying to sign you to Geffen, and Spin Doctors recorded. So he had connections
like that, I can do it again.” But to Columbia Records through the
somehow, over the course of three Spin Doctors. And Gary, to his
weeks, I was listening to Dragnet
or something and it became really
Fall-influenced.
“Pavement were like a credit, was probably right. The
shelf life of a rock’n’roll band is
today and tomorrow, and you’ve
We made the album over
Christmas [1990], for a thousand trainwreck band, and got to strike when it’s hot. If I was
going to give any advice to any
bucks, over five or six days. I
brought the tape back to the
dudes in New York, and Bob was
that was kind of cool, band now that was getting offered
some money, my advice would be:
do it! Take the money and run!
like, “This is really good, man. I
don’t know exactly what it is but
something good is happening
because we really didn’t At what point did you all
decide that Gary had to
here.” I started listening to the
cassette and thinking I actually
know how to play.” leave Pavement?
I remember going to Stockton and
might have something. I might not trying to teach Scott and Gary
have to get a job for a while. It was probably Gary Young appeared to be out of control, some new songs. It was OK, but it wasn’t
the best feeling in the band, ever. Your friends pulling headstands in the middle of shows sounding like I wanted it to sound. So I went
liking it: that was awesome. and putting a dead rabbit in your bag. back to New York and got another drummer
That was a weird time. I think Sonic Youth [Steve West] and started practising with him,
When you were writing songs, was it a and then we went on tour with Gary and had a
self-conscious process? Were you trying to asked Pavement to do it, but I wasn’t into it.
Even though I loved Sonic Youth, I didn’t want talk with him in Copenhagen [June 1993] and
be literary, or playful, or was it just your he quit. That was a big weight off my shoulders
to associate with them through David Geffen’s
natural voice? personally. Steve worked at the Whitney with
label. We were a buzzy band and we were
Some songs had a sci-fi Mark E Smith voice. popular, but I think I was really waiting to do Bob, and he went to high school with Bob, and
Some were informed by the writing of the next thing. We were just getting drunk and he was in a popular high school band that
Raymond Carver. But I wasn’t thinking about it trying to meet girls and stuff that cis guys do people actually went to see, and he had an
too much, I was just being phonetic. Some of on tour. actual girlfriend in high school – which was a
that twentysomething ache and boyish edge is And Gary was annoying. I guess he was very rare thing, at least back in our time. He also
in there, but you don’t want to examine it too drinking. I remember he was horrible the very had a space to rehearse in Brooklyn, a classic
much because it’s sort of embarrassing. first tour we went on. I saw the really wasted loft that looked like an artist should have. ➢

5 9

6 8
 Sidewalk talk: Stephen
Malkmus sparkles in
Clerkenwell, London,
March 12, 2018.

“I’m not sayin I know what I want from this, but one
thing I don’t want is to have no one care any r .”
➣
And so that’s when you started and make Wowee Zowee, which sounds like Wasn’t that virtually a solo album?
formulating the second Pavement album, a conscious attempt to derail that success. Nah, I mean it could have been. It was me and
Crooked Rain Crooked Rain? Scott might say that. May was into myself Nigel [Godrich, producer] more, but I wouldn’t
I was already ready. I knew I wasn’t going to do too much, but I would list it and think it call it a solo record. The others are on there
the scratchy Fall thing any more, I was going to was so cool, a lot differen Crooked Rain in more than they’re on Crooked Rain, more than
go in the opposite direction and sound like a way that no one was ex ng. I think it was on Slanted And Enchanted… I sound like Billy
Free or The Eagles (laughs). I wanted to do a great move (laughs). Th re some weird Corgan. We did everything together as a band
something fat and warm-sounding. songs on there, but to m ally did make pretty much, but there was no song by Scott
sense. I just thought it was a little long. It’s a on there. You work so hard to get to a point,
It didn’t turn out quite that way… stoner album, in retrospect. and then that point is where you can see the
No. But the idea was to trash out classic rock precipice, and you have to go do it all over
It also sounds like the point where a culture again. It’s hard.
and take a bit of a piss at it, but also write good
of jamming comes into your music. As you
catchy songs. We’re still sloppy Pavement, but
started doing that, did the musical Terror Twilight was going to be called
why don’t we try to make it sound a little
limitations of the other members of Farewell Horizontal at one point?
bigger? And it was different-sounding. It had
Pavement begin to frustrate you? Mark thought of that.
bass on it, for one thing [bassist Mark Ibold had
been recruited into the band, along with Musically that could be a problem, but it’s all of
a piece. It’s not one of those things where Do you think the band knew it was the end?
Nastanovich as auxiliary drummer, after
Slanted And Enchanted]. It got mixed on a real Eddie Van Halen can’t deal with the simple Maybe. I don’t know for sure what I thought
board, a Neve board. But again, it was made in bass playing of Michael A ny. It’s just the was going to happen. It’s kind of sad when you
a totally lackadaisical way, luckily. personalities get stale. D wanna bounce talk about it like this. I feel bad about it.
off this person? That’s all t’s not really
Do you ever look back and regret not ability. It’s 10 years of con touring, and Why did you describe yourself as a “cold
seizing some of the opportunities that were being exhausted. It’s a co t pressure cold boy with an American heart” on Terror
presented to you around Crooked Rain? cooker: more touring, more drinking, more Twilight? You must have been aware that a
potential for bad behaviour and rude things. lot of people stereotyped you as being
Maybe, yeah. Maybe we should’ve got a quite arch and aloof?
manager. It’s not like I imagine myself as Dave More hangovers and more flights.
Grohl now, or something – but it certainly That sounds like some kind of Bruce Springs-
Can you recall a point where you decided teen wannabe thing. I wasn’t self-aware. I
wouldn’t be bad to be Dave Grohl (laughs). you didn’t want to continue that fight? wasn’t acting out. I liked to read reviews of the
So you’re on the Tonight Show With Jay Maybe during the making of the Terror Twilight band, but I don’t know if I paid attention to
Leno, doors are opening… and then you go album [1999]. that stuff. I always see myself as an all-rounder

44 MOJO
 like The Grateful Dead can get into them don’t exactly know why, because it can turn
and go deeper, but I didn’t have faith that at any time.
it was a viable business model for me. I like
trancey things, but I do find this urge to A cynical way of looking at it is that you
edit things down and get purer and purer have a safety net, because you’ve
instead of blissing out. I’ve been thinking got Pavement. What made you do the
about how to make things sort of… vaguer reformation tour in 2010? Was it Bob’s
for the next record. financial situation?
No, I thought it’d be fun. Everyone was
Has the Jicks period been liberating for you asking, the band was up for it. I always
as a guitarist? To be able to play in more imagined I’d do something like that, I just
intricate ways with more simpatico players? didn’t know when, and it was pretty nice, out
That’s true. They got to understand me, they on the campaign trail.
get what I do. And it takes a little while to get
my thing, as a musician – to anticipate it. I But did you feel like the bad guy again when
thought I was doing songs like The Beatles, you didn’t want to carry it on?
I didn’t know it was my thing. No. I knew that that was when to stop, and
they’re wrong if they think it wasn’t. I wanted it
That gets to the heart of one of the reasons to be special, I didn’t want to cheapen that,
why your music has endured. There’s always and it was already getting stale near the end.
been something structurally off about the We had a concert at the Hollywood Bowl, a
way you write songs, which means it’s very really good, short concert. There were beta
hard to normalise them. movie stars there afterwards, for a beta
I agree. It’s fortunate for me. I’m not saying I band. And then we went to Vegas and it was
know what I want from this, but one thing I bad vibes.
don’t want is to have no one care any more. It’s
a weird time in the music world, where a lot of Your music often seems entrenched in the
pre-internet artists are flailing about. And I culture of being a record collector, but your
could be too, some might say, but people are processing means that it doesn’t sound
somewhat into it, still. I’m grateful for that but I exactly like Fairport Convention, or The
Groundhogs, or The Grateful Dead.
Yeah I think that’s true. I don’t manage to
PERFECT SOUNDSFOREVER imitate the things that I like. I mean, I assume
everyone’s doing this, but we pick things that
Stephen Malkmus’s finest solo weren’t popular. For instance Face The Truth,
wig-outs. By John Mulvey. the influences on that are mostly forgotten,
kind of mediocre Christian bands, folky things,
THE SWASHBUCKLING DEBUT and cold wave 7-inches. It’s trying to do all
Stephen Malkmus these things that failed and that no one liked,
and then expecting people to like it. Maybe
★★★★ David Bowie thought he was doing that by
DOMINO, 2001
liking Iggy Pop and The Velvet Underground.
“I’m not what you think I am,”
sings Malkmus on Jo-Jo’s Does a reputation for being funny lyrically
Jacket, but his first solo album become a burden?
(working title: Swedish
Reggae) turns out to be a I don’t think there’s a burden. You have to
mostly joyous reiteration of evaluate what you’re doing with lyrics
in the music: making the cover art, playing his core strengths. Self-produced under the periodically and see if you’re just talking
the solos, writing the songs. Lyrics are just a nom de guerre of Clarence Skiboots, much of it BS – or if your BS is inspired. I’ve certainly
part of it. could also be read as an allusive post-mortem talked BS, and I know I have my fair share of
on Pavement – not least The Hook, a placeholder lyrics. When you’re younger,
At the last Pavement show, at Brixton cowbell-heavy yarn about the touring things flow out and it’s cool, but you can’t get
Academy on November 20, 1999, you hung a misdemeanours of Turkish pirates. away with that your whole life. When you’re
pair of handcuffs from your mikestand to
older you have to go through things a bit
symbolise, you said, “what it’s like being in THE PROG-FOLK JAMMER more, and read them out and ask, “Is that
a band all these years.”
Real Emotional Trash really good?” Now, when I’m trying to be a
There were some handcuffs that had been left little vague or universal, I have to ask
in Bob’s hotel room by his girlfriend. When we
★★★★ people if it translates. I’m sharing more as
DOMINO, 2008
came downstairs, the staff said, ‘You’ve left Four albums in, with the Jicks our world is crumbling.
these,’ and gave us these furry, sweet well attuned to his explora-
handcuffs for real lightweight kink action. Bob It’s interesting you came to prominence in a
tory whims, Malkmus leans
claimed they weren’t his, but we’d seen cop time of grunge and lo-fi, when songwriting
into a series of epic jams that
shows and so we put two and two together. I was predicated so much on confession and
often (eg Elmo Delmo)
was teasing around with them in the bus to the triangulate the space neuroses. But you seemed to be blissfully
venue, and backstage. It started very between Fairport Convention, The Grateful untouched by that.
light-hearted. There was some talk it could be Dead and Television. The career-topping title I think so. It is ironic, all these bands like
over, but I didn’t know it was going to be the track, meanwhile, spends 10 minutes Nirvana or Pearl Jam, people would always say,
last show of the band. imagining how Heroes & Villains would sound “Don’t talk to them about their lyrics.” I don’t
if covered by peak Status Quo. think the world should be like that any more.
But you did shut down the band six It’s not like I’m trying to target my lyrics so that
months later and asked Scott to put the THE BELGIAN POP DETOUR more people like them. I really want to know:
message out.
Wig Out At Jagbags am I missing the mark here?
That’s true. You’re making me feel bad for Scott ★★★★
(laughs). That must have been a bummer. So is this, after 30 years, the first inklings of
DOMINO, 2014
self-doubt as an artist?
The first five records with The Jicks, before While living in Berlin for a
couple of years, Malkmus I wouldn’t say it’s self-doubt. I think it’s a new
2014’s Wig Out At Jagbags, seem to toggle mode of work; it’s not being self-conscious or
takes the Jicks to Belgium,
between more concise pop (Stephen and into the studio with afraid. The world is really crowded with things,
Malkmus; Face The Truth; Mirror Traffic) and Pavement soundman Remko and I just want your best thing. I have lots of
more expansive, jamming-heavy albums Schouten. The result is one of other stuff to deal with and listen to, I don’t
(Pig Lib; Real Emotional Trash). his most exuberant and accessible records, need to hear your five-out-of-10 record. As you
Andrew Cotterill

Yeah, you can get worn out on the jamming also encompassing rueful college nostalgia get older, you want to fly your freak flag, but
stuff if you tour a lot and you agree to play (Lariat references the Dead, the Minutemen, you also want to sell the records you don’t
those songs 40 times in 55 days. How much Sun City Girls, and Alfred, Lord Tennyson), listen to any more. You want to focus on the
can you get from that? Of course, a band horn sections (Chartjunk) and a daft charge at good stuff. That’s what I’m doing more. M
punk (Rumble At The Rainbo). Great guitar
solos, too.
MOJO 45
 RACE SLICK IS 78, SOBER AND HAPPY WITH
life. “I’ve got a house, a car, I can pay for my food,
buy paint and canvases,” she says. “I mean, what
more junk do you need?”
It’s five decades since Slick emerged from a
bohemian enclave of San Francisco to become,
with Jefferson Airplane, the Elizabeth Taylor of
the psychedelic set. Beautiful, sharp-tongued,
liberated and mischievous, she had a voice made for those times, an
unusually loud Eastern-scaled wail that could lift a melody to the
intoxicated heights of acid rock bliss. It could also drip pure poison.
“Grace Slick,” sighs Marty Balin, her singing partner for much of
the ’60s and ’70s. “She drove people crazy! But put a microphone
in front of her and you couldn’t stop her.”
Jefferson Airplane had originally been Balin’s band. An early San
Francisco scene hipster, he’d opened the formative Matrix club in
August 1965 to showcase the band; he designed the posters and
generally called the shots. He also sang the ‘cry guy’ songs.
Everything changed when Slick joined in October 1966, replac-
ing Balin’s co-singer, the similarly dark-haired, low-voiced Signe
Anderson, who’d found motherhood incompatible with recording
for RCA and touring. Somebody To Love and White Rabbit, which
Slick had written and performed with her previous group The Great
Society, shook Jefferson Airplane from their folk rock orthodoxy.
Both songs were Top 10 US hits during the first half of 1967. ➢

46 MOJO
She’s no Girl Scout:
Grace Slick in San
Francisco, January 1968.
➣
By the summer, San Francisco had become the psychedelic capital already too old for The Beatles: “My girlfriends asked me over to see
of the world. Unknown to most, moves were afoot to bring the them on Ed Sullivan, with their cutesy hairdos and matching outfits,
Airplane crashing back down. singing ‘I wanna hold your hand’. I thought, That’s stupid.” The
“I was romanced by Elektra,” says Slick. “They figured, ‘She’s got Stones, especially “defiant” Jagger, were more her thing.
the hits,’ thought I was this hotshot.” Elektra already had ‘Queen Of Lenny Bruce inspired one of Slick’s first songs, Father Bruce, a
The Beatniks’ Judy Henske, whose High Flying Bird was an Airplane regular in The Great Society’s set. Sarcasm, probably the defining
set regular. They had bigger ideas for Slick. Grace Slick trait, was afoot in the band’s name too, which riffed on
“I didn’t wanna be like Linda Ronstadt [would become] and carry President Johnson’s recent initiative to combat poverty and racial
a whole band,” she says. “I didn’t even wanna be Grace Slick! I like a injustice. Many, Slick included, felt it didn’t go far enough. “There
band where everybody’s equal. Besides, I’m partly lazy.” were all kinds of reasons not to like what was going on,” she says.
“Birmingham, Alabama, the war in Vietnam, Nixon…”
ODAY, SLICK CAN BE AS LAZY AS SHE LIKES. SHE LIVES Born in 1939, the eldest daughter of a banker father and a
in Malibu, Los Angeles, close to the ocean she mother who once doubled for Hollywood
loves. Daughter China and her husband live next actress Marion Davies, Grace Barnett Wing
door. She rarely gives interviews (“What, to talk about was steeped in The American Dream. In the
the ’60s for the ninetieth time?”), and seems to have kind of twist that Slick revels in, the seed
granted this one on a whim. A new edition of Sunfighter, of rebellion was planted by one of the
her 1971 album with Paul Kantner and heavy West Coast Dream’s great achievements, a good post-
friends, is imminent. But she barely remembers it. war public education.
“All I know is that my daughter’s the fat guy [ie the “The Eisenhower ’50s were so sterile,”
baby] on the front cover,” she says. “I have a real good she says. “When I read about turn of the
24-hour memory. But the other stuff? It’s arbitrary. I can century Paris – Gertrude Stein, Diaghilev
sing you a dog food commercial from 1945 but don’t ask and Picasso, smoking dope, having interest-
me to sing one of my songs.” ng conversations and turning art on its
That said, Slick is full of gusto. It’s 4.30am her time head – that sounded a lot more fun.”
and she’s already threatening to wallop “stupid, racist” If the Belle Epoque lit up an alternative
Trump on the nose. “I never sleep for more than an hour lifestyle, Miles Davis’s Sketches
and a half at a time,” she explains. “They say you can’t Of Spain (1960) provided
think straight if you don’t sleep right. I’ve never thought the soundtrack. “I could lis-
straight anyway.” ten to that thing 24 hours
As you might expect from someone who once sang “Up against the straight,” she says. “When I
wall, motherfuckers”, Slick is bang up to date with world politics. first heard it, I thought, God,
“CNN is iffy,” she says. “It does what the sponsors want. I watch late- I’m in heaven.”
night guys like Bill Maher if I want the real thing.” It’s a habit that goes Sketches Of Spain was
back to when she first heard Lenny Bruce in the early ’60s: devastat-
ing, anti-establishment satire that turned her upbringing on its head.
“I was really straight until I was about 23,” Slick says – and

Embryonic Journey: (from

above) Slick in junior high, 1954;
vinyl inspiration and apotheosis;
the Airplane fly, November 1968
(from left: Paul Kantner, Jack
Casady, Spencer Dryden, Slick,
Jorma Kaukonen, Marty Balin.
worlds away from Slick’s affluent family home in Palo Alto, Califor- Baxter’s opened with a howl of feedback and wound up with an
nia, and from bebop too. Folding Iberian folk song and classical ensemble salute to an afternoon of “acid, incense and balloons” in
influences into jazz, it created a new musical language. Golden Gate Park. But Slick’s contributions were seriously strange.
Slick swallowed it whole. Her songs, especially during Airplane Two Heads was a clockwork-paced oddity dipped in a Dali land-
days, sounded offbeat and beyond genre, unlike Kantner’s hymns to scape and subjected to serious stereo panning. Rejoyce merged
hippydom, Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady’s acid rock blow-outs James Joyce’s Ulysses with flyaway Sketches Of Spain horns, leaving
and Balin’s heartbreakers. And the moody semitones of Moorish/ psychedelia far behind.
flamenco music stayed with her (though Slick discovered her “I loved writing songs and taking them to the band,” Slick says of
affinity with flamenco scales during an acid trip). The bolero beat Jefferson Airplane’s heyday. “I’m not a great piano player but I’d
that underpins White Rabbit came direct from Sketches Of Spain. play the chords and sing so they’d know what’s happening. When
“Genetically I’m Norwegian, so I’m not sure what that Spanish the band got hold of it, I’d be like, Wonderful, I love that!”
thing is,” says Slick. “I also love Spanish art and archi-
tecture, so it’s probably because the Spanish built Y THE END OF 1967, GRACE SLICK
California.” Her hometown Palo Alto translates as was a leading voice – and face – of the
‘Tall Tree’. rock counterculture. At the Monterey
White Rabbit will always be her defining work. Festival that June, D.A. Pennebaker’s
Whereas The Great Society played it long, Indo-Jazz camera remained focused on her throughout
style, Jefferson Airplane tightened it up and stripped Today, blissfully unaware that the song was a
it back, creating a stealthy-sounding backdrop for Balin showpiece. Grace, a strangely beautiful
Slick’s Alice In Wonderland acid fantasia. Her cli- tribute that concluded Country Joe & The
mactic “Feed your head!” was a clarion call. The Fish’s debut, Electric Music For The Mind And
Summer of Love saw San Francisco awash with Body, did her reputation no harm either.
dosed-up pleasure-seekers. Surrealistic Pil- “I’d seen her at the Fillmore with The Great
low, the tie-in album, went Top 3 in the US. Society,” says ‘Country’ Joe McDonald today.
Only The Beatles and The Monkees were “I thought, Incredible voice but the material was bland.
selling more. I went home and wrote something I thought was worthy
“It was a big cultural moment,” Slick of her, something that would show off her voice. I was
says. “For a couple of years there, it seemed thinking Yma Sumac art music. But I was too shy to tell
we were headed in the right direction. There her, so we ended up recording it.”
was this forward motion of people wanting On 1968’s Crown Of Creation and 1969’s live Bless Its

Seth Poppel/Yearbook Library, Getty, Henry Diltz/Getty, Alamy

peaceful solutions to a lot of issues.” Pointed Little Head, recorded at the Fillmore East in
The Beat Generation had merged with November ’68, Jefferson Airplane sounded like the best
the Beatles generation, with LSD blurring band in the world. “We had it all,” says Slick. “Jack and
the boundaries. “Drugs in the ’60s? There Jorma’s American blues. Paul’s ‘let’s all go to
wasn’t anything abnormal about that,” uter space’. I’m kinda dark and sarcastic.
Slick insists. “Marty and I drank, Jack and Jorma And Marty’s love songs. That’s fabulous –
did speed, our drummer [Spencer Dryden] did until the musicians start saying, ‘My shit’s
alcohol, and Paul was marijuana. It was nothing.” etter than your shit.’”
Slick maintains she never saw anyone freak In November 1968, New Wave cinema’s
out on LSD. Musically, though, acid was all over nfant terrible Jean-Luc Godard filmed the
late ’67’s After Bathing At Baxter’s, the third and Airplane performing on the roof of the
most freaked-out Airplane album. Its title was a Schuyler Hotel in New York. He thought
euphemism for tripping. hey were the most revolutionary band ➢

“Gotta revolution!”: (from top)

the Airplane’s Surrealistic Pillow
and After Bathing At Baxter’s
LPs; talk to the hand, late ’66;
soaring over Woodstock, early
morning, August 17, 1969.
 ➣
in North America.
They duly obliged with
a version of The House Mars, but the nervous system still reacts as if there
At Pooneil Corners was a lion at the cave opening.”
that was relentless, al- No song seemed more apt at the close of the dec-
most terrifying. Slick ade than Wooden Ships, a highlight of Volunteers and a
and Balin traded lines Kantner co-write with David Crosby and Stephen
like doomsayers wel- Stills. It was, says Slick, “a sad goodbye to a lousy form
coming the apocalypse. of life, a ‘We’re out of here’ kind of thing. But it was
“Sometimes, we’d be done with a certain amount of joy. I’d been on Cros-
like two saxophone by’s boat, literally a wooden ship, and it was beautiful.
players,” says Balin. “We d take off and the l the freedom, this soft, gentle way of living.”
Here they sounded like three – Kirk, Coltrane and Coleman. Slick, now dating Paul Kantner, wanted some of that. Making
It was a performance for new times, a song that railed against “all their escape to Bolinas, Marin County, in summer ’70, the new
the bullshit around us” in a year marked by burning cities, political power couple began stockpiling their best material for their own
assassinations and Vietnam blackening everything. albums. Blows Against The Empire, Kantner’s masterpiece, ran with
After a long winter lay-off, the band regrouped in spring 1969, the Wooden Ships idea, positing a hippy paradise somewhere in the
only to find various factions pushing for prominence. Frustrated by cosmos. Follow-up Sunfighter celebrated the couple’s new daughter
the lack of playing-time, Kaukonen and Casady – soon calling China, both in song and on the sleeve.
themselves Hot Tuna – started to open for the Airplane. “I liked all Typically, Grace Slick was partly repelled by the Marin County
the differences in the band,” says Slick, “but the guys were not way of life. Sunfighter had opened with Silver Spoon, a vicious attack
appreciative of each other’s stuff.” on vegetarians that appeared to celebrate cannibalism. In spring
1971, she was arrested for drink-driving after crashing her Aston
T WOODSTOCK THAT AUGUST, SLICK IGNITED Martin at over 100mph. Her charge sheet, which already included
the Airplane’s early morning set by declaring, “It’s a new raps for LSD, saying “fuck” on-stage and attacking cops, ought to
dawn.” During Volunteers, the title track from their forth- have served as a warning
coming, highly politicised album, the band barked “Gotta revolu- “I guess she was a hard woman to be around,” says Marty Balin,
tion!” at the sleepy crowd. But those ‘Make love, not war’ banners who’d walked out on the band in late 1970. The sole Airplane
were already in tatters. Four months later, on December 6, 1969, member to refuse Slick’s affections, he has only good memories of
they were nowhere to be seen. their working relationship. “We both sang our hearts out and peo-
“The Hell’s Angels had served as a deterrent to stop people ple used to think we were married. I’d make love to her on-stage
climbing on stage in Golden Gate Park many times and they were and burn her down and she loved it. But offstage I hardly gave her
fine,” says Slick. “So when Paul and I went to England and talked to the time of day and it drove her crazy.”
Mick Jagger about a free concert, we recommended them.” “I didn’t do Marty because he didn’t show any interest,” Slick
The fateful free festival at Altamont Speedway, which ended in admits. “I thought, That’s fine, there’s four other guys left!”
mayhem and murder, turned ugly earlier in the day as Jefferson If being a woman in a male-dominated profession ever worked
Airplane were ripping into Fred Neil’s The Other Side Of This Life. against her, Grace Slick didn’t notice. “It never occurred to me,”
Marty Balin leapt into the crowd to stop the violence and was she says. “Women have always been singers. Being a justice of the
promptly knocked out with a pool cue. Supreme Court, now that would’ve been hard.”
“Put speed and alcohol together and something ugly’s gonna In her autobiography she dismissed ‘the Cause’ as “a new slant
happen,” Slick says. But it was more than bad drugs. “We thought, on an old Tupperware party”. Today, she’s delighted men like Har-
Getty (2), Alamy

If you give people an education, they won’t fight. But that’s not vey Weinstein are finally being called out. “Having to put out to get
true. Unfortunately, the nervous system is more powerful than any the job? That’s got to stop,” she says. “When I was in my twenties,
education. You can see it today. The big brain is working on going to I didn’t have that problem. None of the record company heads or

50 MOJO
 ther people’s songs with the sole intention of having
its, she’d embraced the unthinkable. We Built This City,
ara and Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now were all US
umber 1s.
“I’d damaged the band by being a roaring drunk,” she
ys. “So I came back, did what I was told, and played the
od girl. But it was boring and the songs were stupid.”
Slick bowed out, joined Jefferson Airplane for a
union album and tour in 1989, then called it a day.
The Rolling Stones are the only group that look OK on
ge when they’re old,” she says. “Rock’n’roll’s a young
rson’s medium.”

LICK REKINDLED HER LOVE OF PAINTING.

She’s been exhibiting for years, her interests being
vivid portraits of animals, characters from songs
d musicians from her past. While out driving, she’ll
A bumpy flight: (from left) with
daughter China and mother Virginia; listen to anything from Grieg to Eminem
the Sunfighter sleeve; with Paul and Journey. “Old people play CDs in
Kantner, 1976; Slick with Starship,
1988; with portrait of Jerry Garcia, cars!” she says. “Nobody can bother me
2000; Grace’s biggest post-Jefferson and I like what the sound does in a car.”
Airplane hits, Miracles (1975) and –
eek! – We Built This City (1985). g She can cry easily listening to music.
Maybe the band members “It’s because I’m happy. I never cry
would, but I liked it because I liked all of them!” when I’m mad or disappointed.”
After what was virtually a Jefferson Airplane reunion tour Before she goes, Slick remembers
in ’72, Kaukonen and Casady went to Europe to pursue their something. “I do like the new Fab Four!”
passion for speed-skating. The band faded from view. Hot For the first time in almost two hours, I
Tuna and Slick/Kantner solo projects prevailed. haven’t a clue what she’s talking about.
In 1974, Slick released a solo album. She called it “William, Kate, Harr y and Meghan
Manhole to annoy feminists. It was dominated by an Markle!” she says. “We don’t do that
epic love letter to Spain, rich in Iberian flourishes, over here, so it’s fun and a bit Alice In Wonder-
made-up words and the London Symphony Orches- land. The nearest we had to a queen over here
tra. Sales weren’t great. That same year, Slick and was Elizabeth Taylor.”
Kantner put together Jefferson Starship, a name first Indeed, you did. The Acid Queen. Ten feet
employed on Blows Against The Empire. Against all tall, wasn’t she? M
expectations, the project outpaced Fleetwood Mac
in the race to corner the AOR market in the States. Paul Kantner & Grace Slick’s album Sunfighter is reissued
on Retroworld.
Key to its success was Marty Balin, back on board
on the proviso that he could sing what he wanted.
He came up with Miracles, a song filled with all the
sex he and Slick never had. It went Top 3. “I got her to sing all these
‘baby, baby, babys’ and she hated it,” he says. “It was like Paul Mc-
Cartney’s Silly Love Songs,” she says. “Love songs are smarmy. I’m
no good at writing them so I don’t.”
Offstage, it was a different story. Slick, 35, had taken off with the says. “She was Fire and I’m Ice. In fact,
band’s lights man Skip Johnson, 23. “You’re too old, too fat, and I’m literally ice – I’m almost Icelandic!
Janis would stamp her feet on-stage
too drunk, but I love you,” he told her. On November 29, 1976, the and get that growly voice going. My
pair were married in Hawaii. voice is more like a horn. I was built for
rock’n’roll because my voice is really
UT SLICK’S OTHER LOVE AFFAIR – WITH THE GRACE SLICK and Janis Joplin loud. Janis was a rock’n’roll machine
(pictured below) both emerged on in her own way.”
bottle – had by no means ended. On-stage in Hamburg in Both bands performed at the
the San Francisco scene during 1966.
June 1978, during a rare European tour, more drunk than Joplin fronted Big Brother & The Monterey Pop Festival in June 1967.
ever, her Third Reich satire – involving Nazi gestures and sticking Holding Company, who played raw, Jefferson Airplane were already
daring psychedelicised blues. having hits. CBS handed Big Brother a
her fingers up the nose of an audience member – got her sent home. huge deal with a view to promoting
“They called us Fire and Ice,” Slick
“Then,” she says, “I get into my car, drive real fast, get arrested, yell oplin as a solo artist. “We didn’t see
at cops and go to jail. I turn into an asshole much of each other after that,” Slick
when I’m drunk. It got darker and darker.” ays. “You were either in the studio or
n the road.”
In court and out of the band, she was or- When Joplin died of an overdose
dered to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. “I n October 4, 1970, her peers and pals
didn’t want to stop drinking,” she says. “My ere shaken but not necessarily
hastened. “Marty was totally torn up
idea of hell was living in California without a y that and stopped doing drugs
driver’s licence. But I went along and I liked it. together,” says Slick. “I didn’t
Everybody’s equal and there are no hotshots.” ecause I’m stupid. I thought, Yeah,
aybe her but not me. I’m not gonna
Slick got her licence back and, after a few o that way. Which was not
initial slips, has been sober for 25 years.
Jay Blakesberg, Alamy

cessarily true…”
The mid-’80s saw a new Grace Slick: “So- The problem, she says, was
roin. “It’s so small. You’d think, I’ll
ber, smiling and selling out”. Fronting Star- st have a little bit more. But that’s
ship, forming a new singing partnership with e bit that’ll kill you. Alcohol will too
AOR-voiced Mickey Thomas, and singing t it’s usually a long stupid thing.
roin is real tricky: Jimi Hendrix, Jim
orrison, Janis. You gotta look out
cause you’re gonna die – now.”
 SUB-ZERO WIND BLOWS IN OFF L AKE
Michigan. Traffic roars by on Interstate 41. Only dog-
walkers and joggers are dumb enough to brave North
Avenue beach on a day like today, and no one is going in
the water. No one, that is, except Ryley Walker, who is
currently wading out into the great lake’s freezing
swells, arms open wide, shouting “Chicago is trying to
kill me!”
The day started late, the 28-year-old singer-song-
writer’s morning written off due to a bad combination
of downers and depression, but he rallied and is now
keen to show MOJO round the city that has, for better
and for worse, inspired his new album, Deafman Glance.
“Chicago influenced this whole record,” he explains, post-wade,
grey Nikes squelching. “This city is always stinging you, reminding
you your body is breaking down. But it’s also a really creative musi-
cal community. It’s a fairly depressing record. I’m pretty depressed.
But I finally found music that sounds like me. These songs are an
audio version of a foot going into the balls of the guy that made
Primrose Green. That kid needs an ass-kicking”
HEN PRIMROSE GREEN WAS RELEASED IN MARCH 2015,
it was hailed by critics as the work of a young American
musician in tune with the jazz-folk influences of Bert Jansch,
Tim Buckley, John Martyn and Nick Drake. The album sold around
40,000 copies. Walker’s live shows brought in audiences who
ranged from teenagers to old heads, but those who saw Walker play
around this time, or witnessed the walkouts during some of his
wilder instrumental experimentations, knew that here was an
Guy Eppel

Waving, not drowning: artist already uncomfortable with the limits Primrose Green placed
Ryley Walker braves
the elements at North on his sound. ➢
Avenue Beach, Chicago,
March 7, 2018.
MOJO 53
Dumb flowers: Walker on location
for the Primrose Green sleeve
photo shoot,2015; (insets,
below) guitar tutorial Led Through his love of mid-noughties Sonic Youth he’d also grad-
Zeppelin IV; the four Ryley
albums from then to now. ed to the albums of Chicago musical polymath Jim O’Rourke.
ding that O’Rourke’s 1997 LP Bad Timing was influenced by
meone called John Fahey”, he got into Fahey, then Jack Rose,
“a whole ton of Chicago music”.
Walker spent his days riding his bike, travelling on the Blue
train, and listening to Tortoise’s TNT on his iPod.
I became obsessed with this city and its musical history,” he
ains. “There’s something about it, something dissonant and
et really pretty. I learned to find these weird patterns in the
city as I listened to the music.”

TILL UNDER LEGAL DRINKING AGE,

Walker learned about Chicago house-shows,
DIY music spaces in basements and front rooms
around town for kids who couldn’t get into bars.
“It was way more fun than college,” enthuses
Walker. “Suddenly all I cared about was getting
➣ fucked up and having fun. I remember I was on
acid, watching [Chicago power-jazz
Village song man, says Walker, as we sit talking trio] Tiger Hatchery at this house-
next to a gurgling Gaggia in Chicago’s Cafe Mus- show spot called The Ottoman Em-
tache. Today, with black woolly hat pulled tight on pire, and just being like, Dude we
his head, a spivvy moustache, filthy ripped jeans and a greasy, have got to fucking jam! These are my
outsize clay-coloured Barbour jacket, he looks a world away folks! They were like, ‘We live at this
from the clean-cut, flower-picking Ryley on that LP. punk warehouse place called the
“I really wanted to be Tim Buckley,” he continues, with the Mopery. We have a jam every Tuesday,
wry, self-mocking tone that is both his default setting and his Wednesday. Come by.’”
armour. “People latched onto that, and that was great, but no “He was this young, buzzed,
one needs to hear me sing that vapid, emotionless imagery relatively annoying kid,” remembers
anymore: dumb flowers, dumb mountains, Tiger Hatcher y’s Ben Billington.
dumb skies. After a while I was like, I can’t “Before we knew he played guitar we
contain this. I’m a city person. This is where I ust knew him as ‘Wasted Tiger Hatchery Fan’. But he
exist, and thrive.” was an incredible listener. He can adapt to so many
Ryley Walker moved to Chicago in autumn different styles.”
2007, when he was 18 years old. He’d grown Developing his fingerpicking technique, Walker
up 80 miles away in Rockford, Illinois, a discovered Robert Fripp’s ‘new standard tuning’ and
Midwestern town hit hard by Reaganomics, the deconstructed jazz guitar of Derek Bailey, and
with a mum who worked at a grocery store and threw himself into the Chicago scene. With Jay Castor
a dad who worked at a factory: “typical Mid- he formed kosmische noise duo Heat Death and then
western middle-class people, hard-workers.” acoustic noise-jazz outfit Wyoming with Tiger
He learned guitar by playing along to Led Hatchery double-bassist Andrew Scott Young.
Zeppelin IV and, like a lot of teenagers who dis- He also met and befriended Fredericksburg
cover they’re bad at sports, got into punk rock: Bad guitarist Daniel Bachman, and started playing
Religion, NOFX, Ramones. He also got into religion. out live with Brian Sulpizio of Chicago main-
He formed a punk duo, The Cryin’ Onions, with stays, Health & Beauty.
childhood friend Jordan Acosta, and started playing “Mike Forbes, from Tiger Hatchery, brought
guitar for evangelical mega-church, Cross Current. him to my home studio,” remembers Sulpizio.
“I was the annoying loud kid,” says Walker, “kind “There was a cat at his house who’d pee on his
of like I am now. Never shut the fuck up. My teachers clothes, so he’d show up not realising he
hated me. Rode my bike, smoked weed, smelled like cat piss. I’d loan him a shirt and
[but] I went to church sometimes. Cross pants while we explored new heights of musical
Current let me play guitar. Fifty bucks greatness together.”
a week. Free pizza. My first paying In 2013 Walker was riding his bike through
gig. Sweet. I stopped going when they Chicago when he got hit by a car. He ended up in hospital
caught me smoking weed. I was like… and, confined to his apartment, spent a lot of time wood-
(stoner dude voice) Fuck you, I don’t need shedding, and trying his hand at vocals. Around the same
this shit anyway!” time, he met up with Cooper Crain, of local psychedelic
A pause here to say that pretty much am collective Cave, who asked if he could record Walker
everything Ryley Walker says is weighted sometime. Those sessions, with Ben Billington and Dan
with self-deprecation. He adopts the ston- Thatcher of Tiger Hatchery, plus Brian Sulpizio guesting
er dude voice whenever he says something on guitar, became Walker’s first vocal LP, All Kinds Of You,
he thinks might sound dumb, clichéd, or released on Tompkins Square in 2014.
privileged. He’s incredibly tough on himself: “I’m still the fat kid “Those sessions were relatively loose,” says Ben Billington.
who’ll never be good at baseball,” he says, with serious irony. “Ryley throwing some darts at the board and seeing what stuck, but
The Ryley Walker who enrolled at Chicago’s Columbia College super-fun.”
in 2007 arrived with a ton of records, and few friends. Back in Walker is uncomfortable talking about All Kinds Of You and his
Dustin Condren

Rockford, he’d befriended owners of second-hand vinyl shops, get- breakthrough follow-up, Primrose Green. He jokes about that period
Guy Eppel

ting hipped to Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, PiL, free jazz and Joy Division, repeatedly – “Hey guys! Remember Fairport Convention? I do.
“all these weird people who dropped this mad knowledge on me.” Check out my pants!” – but it’s clear that his inability to be ➢

54 MOJO
“The isolation in my
head”: Ryley Walker on
the outside, looking
in, North Chicago.
 fluids are spilled, guts are puked. Even
though I’m probably turning most of
the readership off at this point, Helltrap
Nightmare is very much a sweet show
at the centre. It’s human, painful and
run by an incredibly talented crew.
Check out: One of their gigs when they
come around.

Most of the artists I’ve described have

been in the left-of-centre territory.
Luggage is very much where ROCK
music is in Chicago right now. An
incredible bunch of guys who work
their asses off to achieve sonic
Ryley’s kindred spirits: perfection. It has the classic
(from left) Forest Chicago sound of Tar/Jesus
Management, Circuit Lizard but pushing a sort of
Des Yeux, Natural twisted psychedelic Cocteau
will get on Information Society Twins mist in the area. Soon to
that stage and be the new legends.
When I first met John Daniel, he was command a room like nobody I’ve ever Check out: Three (DON GIOVANNI)
playing drums in punk bands around seen. After decades on the scene, they
Cleveland. He made the move to continue to make beautiful records
Chicago and has found amazing that confuse and bewilder the rest of
HICAGO MUSIC is very much based acclaim and success amongst his peers Ben Billington has dedicated his entire
this planet. ONO forever.
in community. What I enjoy most is around town. Most of his releases as adult life to booking bands, playing in
Check out: Machines That Kill People bands, producing records, and being a
that improvising is very much the Forest Management are a beautiful (THERMIDOR/REISSUED BY GALACTIC ARCHIVE) general to the Chicago underground.
centre of it all. Take any Chicago masterclass in slow rolling drones. A
folk musician, techno musician, patient listener is rewarded with peaks He’s incredibly kind and has certainly
solo singer, etc, and they will all be and valleys so real, you can run your helped me out for a long time. When I
open to the idea of getting on stage hands across the wavering grass. was much younger he went out of his
This collective, run by Josh Abrams, has
together to see what happens, even if way to help me get shows, play with
Check out: Limited Confession got to be one of my favourite bands of
they have no former experience doing me, and be a good pal overall. His solo
(FORESTMANAGEMENT.BANDCAMP.COM) all time. The cyclical grooves are
improvised music. Everyone has a very moniker Quicksails embodies the
seamless and perfect. I’ve seen them
creative and daring spirit that I’ve yet sound of a million coloured pencils
outdoors more than indoors which I
to see in any other city. Here are some dropping onto a million lily pads.
think is a good thing. Always nice to lay
artists I think embody the spirit of song One of the most uncompromising, Check out: A Fantasy In Seasons
in the grass with a pair of shades on
and improv, and play a major role in the daring artists I know. Haley Fohr has (NNA TAPES)
and forget the rest of the world while
current underground Chicago scene. been a major influence on me for a
they perform. I think the percussion of
long time. We used to live right next
Frank Rosaly/Mikel Avery is incredibly
door to each other and I would be able
innovative and powerful. Nick is involved in just about every area
A trio of Doug Kaplan, Max Allison to hear her practise singing through
the walls. Her dedication and discipline Check out: Simultonality (EREMITE) of jazz music all over the city, but this is
and Natalie Chami. A super trippy and my favourite project of his. The band
psychedelic synth/drone band that’s has led her to create music that nobody
else is making, or possibly could make. play frequently at the California Clipper
the aural equivalent of watching in Humboldt Park. Their natural musical
Hershey’s strawberry syrup slowly Check out: Reaching For Indigo This is a variety/comedy show hosted kinship and communication has had a
ooze its way around a perfect scoop (DRAG CITY)
by the ever-bonkers Sarah Squirm. profound effect on the way I collaborate
of rainbow ice cream. They’re an Chicago has a big history of improvised with others, and the way my playing has
incredibly talented bunch and comedy which, to be frank, is fucking developed over the last year. These are
proudly DIY with th i ONO Chi ’ bi t enigma. LAME. This show (often hosted at the some of the absolute best players in the
expanding reco , non-music, Hideout/The Empty Bottle/other country all getting together to change
universe Hausu frofuturism, alternative venues) turns comedy the game with ease.
Check out: The Ho UNK ROCK. . inside out. Often literally. Check out: Ultraviolet
Workbook (UMOR singer Travis Body parts are exposed, (INTERNATIONAL ANTHEM)

Roll another number:

Walker lights a fire
under his adopted
hometown.
➣
emotionally true to himself with Primrose Green still causes him It’s why, he says, his drug of choice has always been downers,
upset. By the time he came to record the follow-up, 2016’s Golden or speed.
Sings That Have Been Sung, he was, in his own words, “pretty “The last thing I want to do is think when I’m getting fucked up,”
bummed out”, seeing himself as “this lying, megalomaniac narcis- he says. “I just want to think, Holy shit, I’m flying! As horrible as it
sist conceited asshole” yet trying to work through it. sounds, drugs provide me with freedom from my mind. They give
“That was the whole mission of Golden Sings,” he says. “To prove me an ‘off ’ switch. I do not want to let inner Ryley out.”
I can actually sing, write, have my own voice, be me, and still be in Ironically, Deafman Glance is the closest Walker has come to
this game!” expressing “inner Ryley”, moving from the placid, interior sadness
Written on the Primrose Green tour, songs like The Halfwit In Me of Castle Dome, a metaphor for “the sense of isolation in my head”
(“still the coolest song I’ve written”) and The Roundabout through songs that rise, soar, and fall away, high moods and low,
incorporated the same kind of witty observations and wordplay that down to the itchy, nervous jazz explorations of Accommodations, a
dominate Walker’s own conversation, and the comic version of track Walker is uncharacteristically proud of. “No one is making
himself he presents in his Twitter account, whilst tracks like Funny music like this,” he says. “Even though we worked on it for too
Thing She Said and Sullen Mind found him explicitly addressing his long, spent too much money on it, and I lost my fucking mind in the
own depression. process, it’s the one record of mine I can listen to all the way
“Massively so,” he admits. “Depression has been such a part of through. For now.”
my own reality. I’ve been addicted to drugs since I was very young, MOJO asks whether, after the pain of Primrose Green, Walker has
using coke, speed and downers for a very long time. That causes a finally found his own voice. He takes the question and pulls it down
lot of depression. I’ve had great periods of sobriety but I always go a black hole.
back to it.” “I’m finding my voice,” he stresses. “But the more I find my
voice, the more I hate myself. You know, it was actually fun to be the
ITH A TITLE LIFTED FROM A FILM BY THE PLAY- folksy guy with the long wavy hair. Now it’s just fucking depressing.
wright and choreographer Robert Wilson, which “scared the I’m self-sabotaging with drug abuse, straining the relationship with
shit out of ” the 10-year-old Ryley, Walker’s new LP, Deafman the labels. I’m making better music but it gets harder and harder.”
Glance was written sober: a first. Walker also admits that, for once, he’s scared to go out on tour.
“After Golden Sings,” says Walker, “I had those feelings again: ‘Oh “I’ve spent the majority of my life touring,” he says, “but I have
shit, I hate that record!’ I’d toured my ass off, made no money and a solo tour coming up and I’m terrified. These songs don’t work as
I’m driving myself into the ground. For the first time in my life, I solo songs.
hated music. I took time off from drugs and booze. I don’t know if “Plus,” he adds, “ I can’t trust myself any more on tour. I’m
it made the music better, but I’d wake every morning and not be always trying to score dope and get fucked up. It’s wrecking me. I’d
hungover. I just needed to prove I could still do this.” rather stay here and collaborate with other musicians, where my
Produced, like Golden Sings, by Walker with ex-Wilco multi-in- friends care for me.”
strumentalist LeRoy Bach, and recorded and mixed by Cooper
Crain, with a trusted team of Brian Sulpizio and Bill MacKay on HERE’S DARKNESS IN RYLEY’S MUSIC,” SAYS BILL
electric guitar, Andrew Scott Young and Matt Lux on bass, Mikel MacKay. “He’s put more of himself into his songs, they’re
Avery and Quin Kirchner on drums and Nate Lepine on flute, the becoming more complex, but he goes through a lot of turmoil
idea was to make “a very contemporary Chicagoey record”, one in the process.”
that referenced Jim O’Rourke, yet echoed the decay and beauty of MOJO is sitting with the 51-year-old Chicago guitarist and regu-
the city it was written in, as well as the mind that made it. lar Walker collaborator. It’s two hours later at Cafe Mustache. On-
“The music sounds like it’s falling apart,” says Walker, stage, Walker is prepping for the first of his improv residencies,
“and the words come from a really fragile state of mind. I playing amplified acoustic guitar alongside LeRoy Bach on electric
find it ridiculous that, despite the luck I’ve been given, I’m still guitar, Tortoise’s Dan Bitney on drums, and Chicago improv
horribly depressed.” composer Ben LaMar Gay on cornet. The room is friendly, relaxed
and supportive as Walker takes the stage. Woolly hat pulled down
over his eyes, he moves with the group, leading and following, as

Guy Eppel (6), Michael Vallera, Mikel Avery

they lock into a glorious fusion of free jazz, tantric drone and
hypnotic electric noise. Dissonant and off, yet really pretty.
MOJO focuses on Walker, head back, playing furiously, beatific
smile beneath his moustache. He looks happy. Earlier, before we fell
down the hole, I’d asked what it felt like to finally play music that
felt in tune with this city he loves so much.
“I feel like it’s me coming to,” he said. “Like I can finally breathe
on my own. This city wants me dead but I’ll never leave. It’s going
to take an act of God to shut this shit down, you know?” M

Full of beanies: Walker joins an

improv session at Cafe Mustache,
Logan Square, Chicago; (above) the
players (from left) LeRoy Bach (guitar),
Dan Bitney (drums), Ben LaMar Gay
(cornet), Ryley Walker (guitar).
 EFORE HEAVY METAL THERE WAS HEAVY
rock, and before heavy rock there was a hipster
word: one that meant serious, deep, worthy of note
and respect - ‘it’s heavy, man’. As 1967 turned into
1968, it began to mean something else: heavy in the
sense of the periodic table of metallic elements,
heavy in the sense of the weight of the world on the
shoulders. That was the mood in the comedown after the Summer of
Love: things coming down, a sense of oppression either physical or mental
in a world turning darker.
As a style, Heavy begins in blues rock filtered through psychedelia. It
was boosted by the arrival of two separate trios in 1966: Cream and the
Jimi Hendrix Experience. As the late rock critic Ian MacDonald suggest-
ed, bands lacking an extra rhythm guitarist – who was often the song-
writer – created a change in the sound of pop as it was becoming rock.
Simpler musical structures, often based on riffs, came to the fore, added
to an improvisatory approach taken from jazz. The bassist would hold
A heavy year: (clockwise from far left) Randy Holden
of Blue Cheer, November; Nguyen Loan executes a
everything down while the drummer and the guitarist moved around
Alamy (6), Getty (5), Rex

Viet Cong prisoner, February; police and protestors their respective instruments.
in London, March; a Phantom II drops bombs on The first widely exposed Heavy record was Purple Haze, a massive
Vietnam, February; Tommie Smith and John Carlos’s
Black Power salute, Mexico City, October; sailors on UK hit for Hendrix in spring 1967: the lyrics were psychedelic, but
the USS Edson dispatch the ‘Million Pound Round’ from the opening two chord fanfare in, the sound was brutal – cut very
Vietnam-wards; Soviet troops march into Prague,
August; Jimi Hendrix, harbinger of Heavy; Paris loud in the original 45. In November, Cream unleashed the Rock ➢
students, May; Heavy biker in Hells Angels On Wheels
movie; Steppenwolf’s John Kay; protest poster.
MOJO 59
 ➣
Riff par excellence on Disraeli Gears: Sun-
shine of Your Love, later covered by Hendrix
on Lulu’s TV show. In the meantime, Vanilla
Fudge had released their battering cover of
You Keep Me Hanging On, an eventual US
Top 10 hit and a UK pirate radio favourite.
But it wasn’t just to do with the constitu-
tion of groups. Technological developments
– in amplification particularly – initiated a
kind of arms race, with Jimi Hendrix,
The Who and Cream vying with each other
to go further and louder. Over weening,
drug-inspired ambition set in, with a corre-
sponding lack of care given to melody and
structure – traditional pop virtues. Indeed,
the cutting edge of white music – coalescing
as Rock – defined itself as against Pop: Cream
complained about having to release singles; Heavy metal thunder!:
(clockwise from above) Iron
Led Zeppelin would later do without Butterfly brew up some
them altogether. Brobdingnagian nonsense;
Steppenwolf see the upside
The new appetite for rock music in gen- of burnout; Blue Cheer
eral – evidenced by the success of Monterey rock Copenhagen; Spooky
Tooth’s Mike Harrison
– began to favour larger stages than the tradi- feels the paranoia.
tional club, ballroom or cinema, with the
corresponding need to fill those venues with
greater showmanship – eating guitars, burn-
ing guitars, smashing guitars – and fierce
Marshall stacks. You can see a lot of this in
Tony Palmer’s 1968 TV film, All My Loving,
which features The Who, Cream and Hen-
drix, with Paul McCartney offering the im-
mortal phrase: “pop music is the classical
music of now.”
The actual word ‘Heavy’ comes into view
during 1967, with the psychedelic, improvi-
sational Hapshash And The Coloured Coat
album, which featured ‘The Human Host
With The Heavy Metal Kids’. But it’s not un-
til 1968 that a Heavy style begins to come
into focus as a response to money, ambition
and events in the world outside. 1968 was a subordinated to the bludgeoning riff. Somewhat (“People always going round putting me down”)
dread year: with massive student protests to everyone’s surprise, it went to Number 14 and desperation. Spooky Tooth would mine
throughout the US, Paris, London and Mex- in the US charts, occasioning an American this blues rock/downer mode to great effect
ico City (where 300-400 young people were Bandstand performance with a bemused Dick on their second album (Spooky Two), which
Clark. Its parent album, Vincebus Eruptum, has contains the all-time riff-rocker Better By You,
massacred in the Tlatelolco district), the as- much more of the same and is heavily regarded Better Than Me – covered a decade later by
sassinations of Martin Luther King and Rob- by Julian Cope, who deems it full of “barbarian Judas Priest.
ert Kennedy, and escalation in Vietnam. thrill rides”.
Heavy times demanded an appropriate musi-
cal response: here are 12 of the Heaviest.

Steppenwolf was a
As Art, Spooky Tooth fabulous name to come
had already established across in the American
their proto-heavy chart run-downs of the
This is the true credentials with a time: what did they
LOUD sound of Heavy stripped-down, sound like? This
to announce the new riff-heavy version of drive-time warhorse
year: guitar and bass Buffalo Springfield’s was the first of two
playing the same For What It’s Worth huge Top 10s for the
root notes, strangled (aka What’s That Sound) group in 1968: Magic Carpet Ride might be more
vocals, a simple musical the previous year. After changing their name psychedelic, but this pedal-to-the-metal rocker
format (a 10-year-old and adding American keyboardist/writer/singer (Number 2 US in high summer; Top 30 UK)
rock’n’roll song), Gary Wright – a move suggested by Island head defined the new rock style just as it helped to
strident psychedelic guitar, sledgehammer Chris Blackwell – they released this, their first name it: “I like smoke and lightning/Heavy metal
drums, and even a half time segment towards single, in February 1968. Mid-paced with a strong thunder.” It has everything: gruff vocals, swirling
the end. Named after a particularly potent riff and carefully melodic touches, it’s neverthe- Hammond organ, a killer central riff, galloping
brand of Owsley Stanley-synthesised LSD, less a doomy thing. “Sunshine help me/Help drums and a definitive outsider/biker attitude. Its
Blue Cheer were San Francisco street hippies, me take the strain away,” Wright sings in an appearance, the following year, in Easy Rider
formed by the drummer of the Oxford Circle and overwrought voice, while the other vocalists sealed its countercultural credentials, and the
managed by a Hell’s Angel called Gut Terk. Eddie rave and shriek behind him – a pop/rock song song has since been covered by dozens of artists
Getty (5)

Cochran’s original had subtlety and humour, but turned into an exorcism. 1967’s ecstatic elevation including Slade, Link Wray, and yes, Ozzy
everything here – including the lyrical pay-off – is has gone, and in its place comes paranoia Osbourne with Miss Piggy.

60 MOJO
 “BY 1968, I thought the British blues boom was pretty
much over, now that everyone had jumped on the
bandwagon. I said to Chris [Youlden, singer] that we
had about two years left – Chris and I were both
pessimists by nature. But Savoy Brown hadn’t had
any hits like our peers Fleetwood Mac and Chicken
Shack; we never had the mindset to get on Top Of The
Pops, we were this pristine blues band and nothing to
do with Swinging London, or the pop scene. We were
living in a dismal flat in Bayswater, doing really well
but not making money.
So, a lot of the heaviness was internal, but it also
reflected what was going on around us. We’d had the
high of 1967, which felt new and fresh and young. It
felt like we were in charge, and then suddenly it
wasn’t the case, and you were left facing reality and a
lot of uncertainty. I was aware of the demons in life
and the social aspect of things like the Vietnam War.
Soldiers came to our shows in the US, saying Savoy
Brown had helped get them through. All of a sudden,
that creeps into a song like Train To Nowhere.
Savoy Brown always wanted to play heavy music,
to keep things real and direct, not to beat around the
bush, or sing about ‘fairy clouds in the sky’. Train To
Nowhere was a statement, an anti-pop statement. I
wanted a modern version of Elvis’s Mystery Train, and
I gave Chris the title, and the structure, and he wrote
the lyrics and sung them brilliantly. Yes, it was dark!
I’d always enjoyed that side of the blues, and that’s
where Savoy Brown were so influential, or so bands
like Iron Maiden and Judas Priest tell me. I’ve always
heard the guitar that way, not with high treble but a
heavy, deep mid-range. I was influenced by Otis
Rush, and Willie Dixon, who introduced the minor key
to blues, which gives you that heavy, dark sound
everyone began to play, like Black Sabbath. Train To
Nowhere was in a major key but I kept it to two
chords, modal-style, so it was almost a drone. But I
There is absolutely played the guitar solo in a minor key, and therein lies
excuse for this the heavy dark sound that would later come along,
Brobdingnagian pi playing minor notes against the major key.
of nonsense, but it’s The human factor, personality, is the key, but
totally great. Los equipment was important too. We had our Marshalls,
Leonard Bernstein
Angeles’ Iron Butter maybe even a full stack, which we set up in the far
hated what he saw as corner of the studio, and turned them up full, which
this instrumental had already set out t
stall on their first alb sounded like a rhinoceros! A year later, you had
trashing of his classic Sabbath and Led Zeppelin, they took the bull by the
from West Side Story: “I released in January;
horns. But Savoy Brown couldn’t join them. We were
utterly loathe what Heavy was but a prelude to the main event. L
too firmly seated in the blues tradition.
they’ve done,” he said jams were becoming the norm on stage and
album by 1968, and the group’s decision to The latest Savoy Brown news i l di 201 l
at the time. “They’ve
corrupted my work.” On enshrine their live favo
one level he was right, because The Nice’s epic As a song, In-A-Gadda-
version deconstructs the song and, by hammer- Vida is nothing – a drun
ing the central melody as a riff, turns an ramble – but the group Savoy Brown in
immigrant’s dream of integration into an angry plough through the September 1968,
protest. The dominant sound is Keith Emerson’s variations with, it has to with Kim Simmonds
Hammond organ, played at lightning speed, but said, some delicacy and on far right.
David O’List’s guitar squalls and teases in just the virtuosity among the he
right places. At the song’s close, up pipes a young passages and the throa
girl’s voice, intoning the only lyric: “America is clearing guitar noises. A
pregnant with promise and anticipation, but is base, of course, is a mon
murdered by the hand of the inevitable.” fuzz guitar/Hammond
Catching an anti-American wave (the bracket in organ riff, the vocals are
the title refers to the constitutional right to bear gruff and ‘manly’, there
arms), The Nice’s brutal, six-minute recasting hint of Far Eastern prom
went to Number 21 in the UK. If it wasn’t so and there is a drum solo
dextrous, it would be punk. around nine minutes in ➢
 ➣
that actually contains a pretty good break. It
definitely hit a chord, as the album which it
dominated reached Number 4 in the US charts.
One of the Atlantic label’s earliest rock successes,
it eventually sold 30 million copies.

Much of Cream’s studio

output runs contrary to
their blistering live
reputation: the eight
cuts on the first disc of
the era-defining double
Wheels Of Fire oscillate
MY MOD band The Attack had already started between psychedelic
turning heavy. I couldn’t afford a 100-watt Marshall pop (White Room),
amp, so mine was 50-watt, but if you turned it right enhanced blues (Politician; Sitting On Top Of The
up, as I’d seen Clapton do, it would distort and give World) and avant-pop experiments like Passing
you this incredible, attacking, heavy tone. The Time and Pressed Rat And Warthog (written
My original concept for The Nice was a quartet by Ginger Baker in collaboration with the jazz
styled like an orchestra. For example, the guitar pianist and composer Mike Taylor). For the truly
would take the violin’s role, and we’d all play very heavy stuff, you have to go to the live disc – and
powerfully. Keith [Emerson, keys] and I were both this version of the Robert Johnson classic is the
classically trained and thought we could do these most concise and exciting of all the officially
incredible fusions – classical, jazz, rock – to get released Cream concert recordings. At the
people’s attention. So did smashing up your opening, Eric Clapton’s guitar is perfectly
instruments, like The Who, my favourite live band. I pitched, the solos aren’t too long, and the
told Keith, “Smash up the organ, stand up when whole thing is wrapped up in four and a
you’re playing, and throw your arms around!”
quarter minutes. Like it or not, this was the
America was the result of my parents’ stack of
scores. One of them was West Side Story. This was
sound of the late ’60s: over-amplified guitars
material that hadn’t been commercialised into going on and on, blaring away.
rock. But it became a protest song for us. We loved
– we needed – American music like Tamla and soul,
but the Vietnam War was a huge downer that
turned everyone against the US. Our parents and
grandparents had said they’d never go back to war,
they’d been through two, and for what? For
politics. Would the UK side with the US and things Pop tries to go heavy,
escalate into a Third World War? Robert Kennedy’s and falls flat on its face.
assassination was another huge shock, and the
The Top 3 Fire Brigade
idea developed of releasing America as a protest
single, which only Dylan seemed to have gotten
had been a quirky
away with. rocker – but a rocker
Americans in the audience asked if we’d burn nevertheless. Driven by
their draft cards on-stage, which we did, but I bad-ass guitarist Trevor
didn’t know Keith planned to burn the US flag on Burton – stepping up to
stage until I saw him drawing it on this big piece of the plate after his
paper – and at the Royal Albert Hall! When he set confrère Ace Kefford quit – Wild Tiger Woman is a
light to the flag at the end, there was this big stomping blues, with squalling, Hendrix-inspired
silence. It was very brave, but it got us banned from guitar, and some risqué lyrics that may well have interactions and vocal overkill, particularly in the
the venue. Overnight, we became quite famous, hindered its success. This being The Move, the extended middle eight, making the whole thing
but we didn’t burn the flag again – after the ban, four musicians could never quite let go of their turgid and, 50 years later, hard to enjoy to its
we thought we’d call that quits! pop sensibility – shown particularly in the bitter end. Cocker made some terrific records – in
multi-voice middle eight – and there’s a hint of particular Marjorine from earlier in that year – but
O’List’s album The Future Is Wild – featuring Attack
O b acid indigestion in lines like “Young and this isn’t one of them. Yet it shows that Heavy was
isive/Minds are in a maze.” Too complex becoming mainstream by the end of ’68 – both in
ontradictory to be truly heavy, Wild Tiger terms of chart success and stylistic spread.
an flopped where it mattered, but The
The Nice (from left): Keith e would remain split between pop and
Emerson, Davy O’List, Brian y for the rest of their career.
‘Blinky’ Davison, Lee Jackson.

Before it was a
posthumous Number 1
single, it was the final
Heavy goes to Number track on Hendrix’s
1 UK for one week in Electric Ladyland – along
early November 1968, with The Beatles’
following Those Were so-called ‘White
The Days and Hey Jude Album’, the double
at the top and providing album in a year full of
the full stop to a them – and a better finale could not be imagined.
Beatle-dominated An edited studio version of the long jam that
autumn. This ticks all took up most of Side 1 (hence the Slight Return),
e boxes: rich, swirling Hammond organ, noisy this cosmic blues begins with the most
st-psychedelic guitar, slow tempo, battering identifiable guitar fanfare: faded-in chicken
ums and a harsh, soulful voice. Cocker and the plucks segueing into an archetypal blues riff,
ease Band stretch out The Beatles’ original to played through wah wah, before the full band
arly double its length with gospel-style comes in (at 31”) with annihilating power. There’s
 Heavy goods vehicles: (clockwise
from right): The “vengeful,
chilling” Jimi Hendrix Experience;
Love Sculpture – even their name
was heavy; Joe Cocker – battering
overkill?; Cream film It Was
A Saturday Night.
arrangement. The third single by this Welsh
group, it was rush-released after being aired on
John Peel’s Top Gear and reached Number 5 in
the UK charts slightly after Gun’s Race With The
Devil – another headlong hurtling of heaviosity.
Guitarist and writer Dave Edmunds went on to
many great things, of course, but in the
meantime, wasn’t there something Heavy,
slab-like about his group’s name?

a lot of soloing, but at this point Hendrix is still trope, but this is a song of the damned.
disciplined, and the minatory mood perfectly fits Beginning slow with droning guitar, the group
the heavy lyrics, which veer from god-like stay on the drone for four minutes, while Chris In which Heavy is rising
omnipotence to a vengeful politeness and a Youlden spells it out: “On this train ’til I die /Train I to such prominence
chilling finale: “And if I don’t meet you no more in ride goes to God knows where/I don’t know and I that the country’s
this world/Then I’ll, I’ll meet you in the next one/ don’t care.” It ends with a heartfelt warning all greatest pop group
And don’t be late, don’t be late…” the more chilling because of its civility: “Please decides to spend some
now brother don’t you ride this train/Ride the time there. Opinion is
wrong rails, live your life in vain.” mixed about the results
– in Revolution In The
Head, Ian MacDonald
decreed it risible – but there is something
The idea of melding hypnotically off-kilter about the mismatch of
Savoy Brown are classical music to pop form and execution. The riff, when it appears
sometimes unfairly was well underway by during the chorus, is slab-like, but the guitars are
dismissed as Brit Blues late 1968: The Nice were nowhere near heavy enough, and McCartney’s
journeymen, more already playing the yells are privileged in the mix – unlike many
successful in the US Brandenburg Concerto Heavy records, where the instrumentation is the
than in the UK. This (Brandenburger) while focus. There’s something stilted and halting
extraordinary single Mason Williams had about the rhythm, and the false ending seems
blows that right out of had a huge hit with the redundant. The decision to retain Ringo’s shriek
Alamy (3), Getty (2)

the water: it’s not Heavy instrumental Classical Gas that summer. This at the end (in the stereo version, at least) plants
in instrumentation, but it’s a perfect example of version of the Khachaturian piece (from the the song in the territory of experiment, if not
how British musicians took the dread of the ballet Gayane) is taken at a breakneck pace – all piss-take – but the whole effect is obsessive and
original blues and made it into something of galloping drums and guitar slashes – while still niggling, ripe for adoption by shagnasties of all
their own. Trains were a long-standing blues holding firm to pop standards of melody and kinds. So yes, Heavy in the end. M

MOJO 63
King’s gambit: Robert
Plant considers his next
move at Chess Forum,
Greenwich Village, New
York, February 15, 2018.
 MOJO ON THE ROAD

VALHALLA
CAN WAIT
Being the guy from Led Zeppelin isn’t enough for Robert Plant.
Instead, he continues to search for music to call his own. MOJO
rides with the Sensational Space Shifters, in New York and
Boston, to find a Golden God with something still to prove.
“It’s good for the brain, innit?” he tells Andrew Perry.
Portrait by Pieter M van Hattem.

N THE GREEN ROOM AT THE FABLED It’s over a decade now since Led Zeppelin gave their

I
Beacon Theatre on New York City’s Upper one full performance since drummer John Bonham’s
West Side, dinner is served. Robert Plant’s passing, at London’s O2 Arena in December 2007. It’s an
six-strong Sensational Space Shifters are dining open secret that the only obstacle to another reunion of
with crew and local friends, after conducting a Plant, guitarist Jimmy Page, and bassist John Paul Jones
soundcheck without their leader. – plus substitute sticksman, Jason ‘son-of ’ Bonham – is
Yesterday Plant, who turns 70 this coming the singer’s reluctance to sideline a solo career that has
August, enjoyed a late night’s revelry at a gig in Brooklyn evolved into an exotic and successful pan-generic
by Balkan gypsy brass crew Slavic Soul Party, and is adventure, exemplified by his fifteenth post-Zep studio
apparently resting up in advance of this fourth show on a album, 2017’s Carry Fire.
12-night North American theatre tour. Suddenly, without Zeppelin’s increasingly historic one-off at The O2
fanfare or your even really noticing it, he drifts in with a was actually prompted by an unhappy accident at the
cup of tea and sits at a table, quickly warming up to Beacon. It was here that Ahmet Ertegun, the legendary
enthuse about Wolverhampton Wanderers’ runaway lead Atlantic Records boss who’d mentored countless jazz,
at the top of English football’s second tier. soul and rock artists over the years, including Zeppelin,
“Everyone said we’d struggle, because we’d signed all took a fall on a backstage staircase, and never recovered
these little fellas from Portugal and Brazil,” he notes with from his ensuing head injuries. Led Zeppelin’s O2
glee, his famous corkscrew mane loosely tied at the back. concert was conceived in tribute to Ertegun’s memory,
“As if they wouldn’t survive the weather in the Midlands. and Plant today comes over a little misty-eyed as he
But they just had a go, like we did with Zeppelin, you notes that the offending staircase has since been
know, giving it to Springsteen – ‘What are you gonna do removed. His affection for the venue itself,
with that, mate?’ So, now we’re 13 points clear at the top, however, is undiminished.
we chant, ‘We’re fucking shit in the winter!’” “It’s just one of those places,” he says, eyes ➢

MOJO 65
 ➣
a-twinkle as he drinks in the audito- stirringly reimagined with upright bass, “That’s all going on, every day, so why not
rium’s OTT array of neo-Grecian statues, mandolin and exploratory picking from Tyson; sing your heart out, eh?”
arches and frescos, “where you put your Gallows Pole is revamped as a kind of delirious
hands on the walls, and you can feel the ‘speed ceilidh’, its Celtic stock tinged by HE FOLLOWING MORNING, WE
million musics, all through time. They’ve
absorbed so much endeavour, and so much
joy beyond the footlights, and so much
flavours of Appalachian banjo and scratchy
rockabilly guitar. And though Plant currently
favours a measured, high-register croon, he
T join Plant at Chess Forum, an
Arab-run shop-front in Greenwich
Village dedicated to the greatest of all
tentative, speculative stuff from artists, will unleash the vocal beast of Zeppelin during strategy board games. Sipping a latte, he
trying things out here for the first time. a barn-storming, violin-propelled Misty explains how he chanced upon this place
Magnificent, isn’t it?” Mountain Hop, moaning and screeching with after arriving Stateside a few days early to
vigour. The flat-out rock finally arrives on a acclimatise for the current tour, and duly
HAT QUESTING SPIRIT IS monster-riffing encore of Whole Lotta Love, signed up for a refresher course here, with a

T energetically pursued on-stage later

as, within a packed Beacon, Plant’s
Sensational Space Shifters channel a fair few
interspersed with extraneous snippets of Sam
Cooke’s Bring It On Home and Santianna, a
sea shanty dating back to the Mexican-Ameri-
Maghrebi tutor from Casablanca.
“Because it’s good for the brain, innit?”
he reasons simply. “The teacher guy kept
of those musics in one fabulously vibey, can war of the 1840s. saying to me, (irate Arabic tone) ‘Why did you
stylistically free-floating extravaganza. Out Afterwards, in a green room filled with do that move – are you a fool?’ I said,
front, the singer appears absorbed and often New York City biz bigwigs, Plant again moves (shrugging) Yes, I probably am.”
transported by his band, particularly his two without superstar kerfuffle, but he is in Plant first visited Morocco with Jimmy
guitarists: the bearded, David Crosby-esque buoyant mood. Page in 1975, just after Zeppelin’s epic
Liam ‘Skin’ Tyson, whom Plant colourfully “Being with our gang is like a fun three-night stand at Earl’s Court, and
describes as “the master of this beautiful, factory,” he tells MOJO, slurping from a explored the north-western edge of the
heart-warming aetherea of psychedelia”; and glass of white wine. “It’s very intense Sahara for a few weeks. After spending a
band leader Justin Adams, whose crunching musically, but it’s all done with the greatest somewhat chequered 1980s apart, Page and
voodoo-blues shuttle between West Africa open heart – like open-heart surgery! That’s Plant returned to Marrakesh to record
and the Mississippi Delta – as Plant again what drives me to it, because, you know, you tracks for 1994’s MTV-sponsored No
puts it, “like a Tuareg twanger”. can’t duck out from mortality.” Quarter, and also enlisted an Egyptian
When Led Zeppelin tunes surface, they’re He pauses and sighs, perhaps thinking of orchestra for that album’s sumptuous
often the more reflective or acoustic ones: the succession of peers who’ve fallen in re-reading of Zeppelin’s Kashmir.
That’s The Way, from Led Zeppelin III, is recent months. “They used to say to me, ‘Mr Robert,

66 MOJO
 Carrying the flame: (right)
the band shift space at the
Beacon Theatre, New York,
February 14, 2018 (from left)
John Baggott, Liam ‘Skin’
Tyson, Dave Smith, Plant,
Seth Lakeman, Billy Fuller,
Justin Adams; (opposite)
Plant, Adams (hidden) and
Lakeman burst it out.

set-up”, which included Clive Deamer and

IF IT GOT A N Y BIGGER TH A N John Baggott, drummer and keyboard player
respectively from Portishead’s touring band.
T H E AT R E S L I K E T H I S – I T ’ S A N That line-up cut 2002’s Dreamland, mostly
I N T I M AT E T H I NG covers, “to get the personality of the music,”
says Plant, “and from then on, everybody
W E D O – Y O U ’ D L O S E A L O T. could be themselves entirely.”
That fully came to pass on 2005’s Mighty
you speak the language of dogs!’” he recalls sought was a platform for hybridising his Rearranger, with the arrival of Skin Tyson,
today with a smile. “Because the Egyptians various tastes, ancient and modern. whom they poached from momentarily
always claim that Maghrebi, which I’d “In those days,” he says, “people had defunct Scouse Britpoppers Cast, as a more
picked up over the years in Morocco, isn’t much less understanding of how broad I searching foil for Adams, and young bassist
proper Arabic.” wanted my music. My singing – that thing I Billy Fuller, another Bristolian who was
It was this strand of Plant’s musical DNA can do – shouldn’t live in any one bag, in any sourced by Portishead’s Geoff Barrow from
which laid the foundation for the original one place. I was desperate to find someone a seven-piece space-jazz improv unit called
Strange Sensation line-up, formed in the who could steer a six-string guitar away from Fuzz Against Junk.
aftermath of his last substantial collaboration the normal guitar that you’d associate with a Mighty Rearranger was rightly hailed as
with Page, 1998’s Walking Into Clarksdale singer with my history.” Plant’s tastiest post-Zeppelin effort thus far,
album, as a liberation from the shackles of To that end, recent collaborators from but he soon left-turned, putting Strange
stadium rock. world-y troupes Afro Celt Soundsystem and Sensation on ice while he collaborated with
“I’d been playing with Jimmy,” says Plant, Transglobal Underground directed him to Nashville star Alison Krauss on 2007’s
over robust coffees in a nearby Greek cafe, Justin Adams, a nomadic diplomat’s son best sublime Raising Sand – a quietly envelope-
“and by 1999 it’d turned into this great known for bringing North and West African pushing alt-country record whose cult
concrete-monolith gig. There was a lot of techniques into Jah Wobble’s Invaders Of appreciation unforeseeably outgrew itself,
muscle in it, and I just ran out of muscle. So The Heart. At the time of Plant’s call, Adams to the point where the duo wound up
Pieter M van Hattem (7)

I ran away.” was busy mixing the first Western album by touring arenas.
Initially, he formed a knockabout folky Mali’s Tinariwen, The Radio Tisdas Sessions, “It was a different kind of audience for
skiffle group called The Priory Of Brion, in his loft studio in Bath. me, particularly in America,” he says. “Over
based just over the Welsh border from his The Strange Sensation duly became what here, Alison’s known for a particular thing,
Worcestershire home, but what he really its chief calls “a Bristolian West Country and she’s got more Grammys for it than ➢

MOJO 67
 “H E K NOWS
MOROCCO
BETTER
TH A N I DO!”
Sensational Space Shifters’
Justin Adams on Robert Plant’s
“pure spirit of adventure”.
I almost felt like my predilection for the Arabic,
North African thing had been a handicap in
the music business, because most people are
like, ‘What do you want to play that kebab
shop music for?’ I never thought I’d end up
playing with someone who’s ‘classic rock’, but
then the more I’ve got to know Robert, the
more I’ve realised he actually knows Morocco
better than I do.
When he first called me up, he asked what
I’d been up to recently, and I said, I’ve just been
out in the Sahara desert recording this band
Tinariwen, and we were instantly on the same
page. On that call, he said to me, ‘If you ever go
back to Mali, take me as well.’ I said, OK,
thinking, Well, that’s never gonna happen!
Two years later, we went to the third Festival
In The Desert, and that was an amazing,
bonding experience, listening to all this
incredible music under the stars, jamming
with Ali Farka Touré…
Working with him, I soon realised that a lot
of his exceptional skills are about the
techniques of music, as a vocalist and lyricist,
but then he has more subtle ones, about
chemistry between people, when the right
moment to do something is – or, if you wanted
to use posh words, ‘following the muse’. He’s
hyper-sensitive to people’s vibes, and what’s
going on in the room
“ROBERT’S HYPER- – which you lose in the
bigger places.
SENSITIVE TO Robert’s the master
PEOPLE’S VIBES, of putting comple-
AND WHAT’S GOING mentary personalities
ON IN THE ROOM.” together. Skin [Tyson,
other SSS guitarist] and
➣
anybody else in the history of metalwork playfulness immediately drains from
I couldn’t be more different: he’s got that
mind-expanding, psychedelic thing, with and fretwork! So we would play a bluegrass Plant’s eyes. We take it the prospect
open tuning, and delicately finger-picked festival, and she’d come over to me and say, wouldn’t excite him?
acoustic guitars. For me, it’s Hubert Sumlin, ‘What percentage of the crowd do you think “No,” he says, then, after a pregnant
Tom Verlaine, Steve Cropper the James ill l b h hird song?’ And they did! pause: “it just makes me realise how time
Brown guitarists, the Africa
economical, rhythmic appr up and fuck off! They call flies, and how long John Bonham has not
Robert lives in both of th at-snappers: they’d see the been with us, and what a price to pay for the
he wants to go Jefferson Ai kit, get their collapsible whole fucking thing. To have gone through
Crosby-Stills, or more the in , bang them together and car wrecks and losing my child” – in 1975,
groove thing, or the Arabic
North African references –
way.” Plant was badly injured in a road accident on
it all. the middle of that the island of Rhodes, and in 1977 lost his
He’s chosen people who paign came Zeppelin’s five-year-old son, Karac, to a stomach virus
got their own musical voice concert, which prompt- – “and then losing the guy who tried to help
and he creates an
environment where it’s
talk of a full-scale me get back into a creative place after losing
good to experiment – union tour, the prospect my boy…”
don’t repeat yourself, we’re which Plant has regularly He gazes off for a moment. “So really,
not doing things desperate stanced himself from. everything’s fine,” he concludes, abruptly.
trying to impress, or get on
radio, let’s do something w
ow, with the approaching “It’s 50 years, but it’s not 50 years – it’s 38
that pure spirit of adventur th anniversary of the years of darkness for a family [ie. Bonham’s].
We’re in an amazing ginal Zeppelin quartet’s So all that hullabaloo is great, and I’m sure
situation, because right no gig together – as The there’ll be some great things to come out of
it’s tough making interestin
music and making it work
Yardbirds, in Gladsaxe, it.” He smiles, as genuinely as he can, as he
Pieter M van Hattem (7)

financially. So the fact that mark on September 7, ponders the projects that Page may or may
Robert’s name sells tickets – there has been not have planned after the recent How The
straight away, and then for wed conjecture about West Was Won reissue.
to be, ‘OK, let’s really go for
it and make some out-there
le Zeppelin activity. At “I really can’t wait to hear them –
music’ – it’s a dream. ere mention today, the I might even get a free copy.”
 Pocketful of golden:
(clockwise from left)
Robert Plant walking
down Thompson Street,
New York City; the
Beacon Theatre audi-
ence earn plaudits from
the band; SSS merch;
(opposite) the Space
Shifters deploy “power,
energy and pulse.”

HE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON seat-of-pants remapping of the sacred

T at Boston’s Orpheum Theatre, the

Sensational Space Shifters’ illustrious
frontman is tackling his Zeppelin legacy, very
PA G E A N D
PLANT TURNED
canon. Post-O2, Plant obviously saw that the
road ahead, either with Zeppelin or Krauss,
was leading into that enormo-dome world
much on his own terms. He and his I N T O T H I S G R E AT which summoned only memories of
half-dozen compadres are gathered on-stage claustrophobia and pain, bereavement
in a circle, using their soundcheck to
woodshed When The Levee Breaks – Led
CONCR ETE - and burn-out.
“You know those signs people put on
Zeppelin IV’s powerhouse closer.
After our interview in New York
MONOLITH lamp-posts over here,” he says, “with, ‘I’m
lonely, anyone wanna date?’ – and you can
yesterday, the band drove up to Massachu- G I G . T H E R E WA S tear the phone number off the bottom, and
setts, and even though Plant again burnt the A L O T O F M USC L E you can call this guy? I started to feel a bit
candle at a City Winery gig by his buddy like that as a singer. You know, ‘I wanna do
Steve Earle, they’ve convened here early to I N I T, A N D I J U S T something different now. Call me!’”
reinvent Levee, based upon an ominous loop
that John Baggott has devised explicitly for
R A N OUT Attempting to reclaim a little more
agency over his musical life, in 2010 he
the purpose. OF MUSCLE . reactivated the name Band Of Joy – after the
For a highly charged 90 minutes, this pre-Zeppelin blues-psych group he’d
iconic track is reimagined, morphed, inhabited in mid-’60s Stourbridge, with
demolished, and reconstructed again, Brit-folker Seth Lakeman carries Page’s Bonham – for a folk/country venture based
entirely on the fly. Often, it’s only when linking guitar melody with a downhome around Nashville sessioneers and his then
Plant moans a verse – “’f it keeps on country lilt. Occasionally, Plant offers a partner, Texas-based chanteuse Patty Griffin,
rainin’…” – that you remember what song broader direction – “You could burst it open with whom he was living in Austin.
they’re doing. At one point, rimshots and a right there!” – which Adams then tries to Touring Europe, Band Of Joy were
tweaked bass line seem to be nudging it translate into actual music with the others. supported by JuJu, Justin Adams’ interim
towards dub territory, until they reach the Whatever life in a revived Zeppelin may quartet where he played alongside Gambian
bridge, where sawing violin from Dartmoor entail, it’s unlikely there’d be scope for such one-string violinist Juldeh Camara, with ➢

MOJO 69
 Feeling the muse: (clockwise from
left) scenes outside the Orpheum
Theatre, Boston, February 16,
2018; two nights earlier at the
Beacon, New York; Skin Tyson
and Plant; the Sensational Space
Shifters take a bow; Plant has a
board meeting with Imad Kha
Chan, owner of NYC’s Chess
Forum; RP sings his heart – “It’s a
hell of a challenge to float this.”

➣
Fuller on bass, and nu-school jazzer Dave HAT STUFF IS IN POWERFUL
Smith on drums. For a one-off gig in
Guildford in May ’12, Plant was unable to
50 YEARS evidence in Boston later, as another
pulsating show unfolds within the
assemble the Band Of Joy, and asked Adams OF LED ZEPPELIN Orpheum’s vaulted, gold-and-magnolia-
if JuJu would back him. J UST M A K E S M E painted surrounds. The crowd here, on
“We’d got that far,” Adams remembers, Friday night in hard-partying Boston, are
“so then it was, ‘Why don’t we give Skin a R E A L I S E H OW even more up for it than New York. And
ring?’He was free, and John Baggott had just
come off tour with Massive Attack, so that TIME FLIES, though Plant himself was apparently
snoozing a mere 10 minutes before stage
became the Sensational Space Shifters.” A N D HOW LONG time, he too is in top form, bringing
Plant himself was at a crossroads in life: heartache to Walking Into Clarksdale’s Please
missing his four kids, he was also finding JOH N BONH A M Read The Letter, while in the next breath
Austin “exhausting climatically”, and H AS NOT BE E N joking about the pleasures of staying up late.
disliked that he was treated as a celebrity There’s no outing for Levee, mind.
there. “Certain things I couldn’t do
WITH US. “Well, fuck me,” Plant exclaims to MOJO
naturally,” he says, “which I can in Ludlow backstage afterwards, again in post-show
or Shrewsbury. So I came home, and I felt band’s sonic identity shifted perceptibly euphoria, “we finally have people coming
that I’d failed in a plan – a cunning plan – for away from West African trance-outs to who’re ready to lose their shit!”
the first time.” incorporate arcane, but no less transcend- We’ve become used to rock royalty from
The ensuing Sensational Space Shifters ent, Brit-folk traditions. Plant is delighted the ’60s and ’70s raging against the dying of
album, Lullaby And… The Ceaseless Roar, was with the evolution. the light, yet right now – with performers
about finally facing up to his twin-centred “It’s a hell of a challenge to float this,” he retiring from the live arena, and after Prince
Pieter M van Hattem (7)

needs, for both domestic privacy and the says. “It’s a teeny-weeny rolling thing, in the and Tom Petty died medicating the aches and
musician’s peripatetic buzz. After touring big scheme, but if it got any bigger than pains that come with later life on the road –
that record, Camara returned to Gambia, theatres like this – it’s an intimate thing we one has to wonder how Plant, notorious for
and Seth Lakeman came aboard for Carry do, with power and energy and pulse – you’d his excesses in the ’70s, copes so well.
Fire’s touring phase. In the process, the lose a lot of that sensory stuff.” “Been there, done that,” he replies with a

70 MOJO
 21s t C E N T U R Y
MAN
Robert Plant’s Indian Summer,
in albums. By Andrew Perry.
Robert Plant
Dreamland (Mercury, 2002)
++++
This off-the-cuff loosener for
Plant’s embryonic Strange Sensa-
tion combo featured four hazily
psychedelic self-composed jams,
plus fragrant covers of, amongst
others, the Tims (Rose and Buckley), Skip
Spence, and Bukka White’s Fixin’ To Die –
a Zep favourite, still in his live set.
Robert Plant & The
Strange Sensation
Mighty Rearranger (Sanctuary, 2005)
+++++
As the Strange Sensation hit their
stride, Plant delivered his best
record in 30 years, the musical
fusions of ancient/modern,
Anglo-American/African, etc,
matched in full-bloodedness by a world-trav-
elling singer voicing knowledgably on tribal
displacement, famine and political mendacity.
Mighty tunes, too.
Robert Plant & Alison Krauss
Raising Sand (Decca, 2007)
+++++
Stateside roots avatar T Bone
Burnett played match-maker/
producer for this union of reborn
rock god and much-garlanded
new doyenne of bluegrass, which
genre-bustingly pandered to neither’s
audience. Recherché songs (Gene Clark, Tom
Waits, etc) are lit up by consummate ensemble
economy, and superlative duetting.
Robert Plant
Band Of Joy (Decca, 2010)
++++
According to Plant, his
smirk, going on to reveal that he has a small Nashville-centred Band Of Joy “I shan’t be at my own birthday,” he says,
brown bottle at home containing three began working on sultry fondly recalling his 60th, where entertain-
Quaaludes which were prescribed to him in numbers by slowcore-rockers ment was provided by veteran comedians
Low, and, inexorably, he and
Los Angeles in the ’70s, but which he has Texan vocal foil Patty Griffin ended up in bed.
Frank Carson and Tommy Mundon. “Lenny
kept as a warning to himself: “The label on Much smouldering folk/country majesty also Kravitz’s tour bus came from Ireland,” he
the bottle says, ‘Robert Plant – for sleepless- ensued, plus a Zeppelin-taunting scamper recalls, “and it got stuck on the hump-back
ness’ – it looks like an album cover! Three through Barbara Lynn’s You Can’t Buy My Love. bridge in my village, with its front wheels on
Rorer 714s, from Schwartz pharmacy in LA, Robert Plant one side, and the rear wheels on the other.
and I often think to myself, Wow, there they Lullaby And… The Ceaseless Roar “But neither of those comedians are with
are – poison!” (Nonesuch, 2014) us any more,” he sighs, “so if ever there’s a
Instead, Plant has chosen a modestly ++++ day for opiates... (pause) I might drop an
After circumstance reactivated
proportioned touring model which is his Justin Adams-led, early-2000s Ambien and see what happens. If there’s a
sustainable for a singer of his vintage, with an backing combo (now rebranded bustle in the hedgerow, it’ll be me, snoring!”
itinerary loosely structured as one night on, the Sensational Space Shifters) Though anniversaries will be avoided,
the initial line-up featuring
one night off. “It’s not an endurance test,” Gambian fiddle maestro Juldeh Camara cut
Plant is in good spiritual and professional
he concludes. but one record, strong on future-arcane fettle, and keen to get writing again.
Within those parameters, there are few anthems of displacement that audaciously “After all that disorientation a few years
artists who’ve managed to remain as surpass the “wholemeal world music” ago, leaving Austin,” he says, “I’ve come to
approach Plant and co loathe.
full-blooded and productive in their twilight terms with my condition better. Now I know
years. At the end of this US tour, he’s off to Robert Plant that it’s all home. Everything’s home.
Austin to sing on Patty Griffin’s new record. Carry Fire (Nonesuch, 2017) Soundchecks, staggering through the Black
++++ Country on a Friday night with a bunch of
Though the pair reputedly separated in ’14, Back on a roll with Adams’
Griffin, if we’re reading the runes correctly, pan-globalist crew, Plant here fatties – it’s all the same thing. When you
is still an important person in his life. voiced in a seductive croon to smile, it’s home.”
avoid contributing to the shrill
Otherwise, in 2018, he’s on the run from discourse of contemporary news
At which, Plant bids adieu, heading off
those birthdays – not only Zeppelin’s 50th, with any full-blast screeching. Bittersweet for tomorrow night’s show in Toronto,
but his own 70th. meditations on mature romance, but also grinning from ear to ear. M
refugee misery and political isolationism,
make this another corker.
MOJO 71
 G E
N A
OO
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P E NT
AVE S ON A E
EYS H E AM -FAM
O NK SINC YPER ND
C M AR S O H T A IT IS
TI E N T B F
ARC FIVE Y IP — I , DOU END OSINO,
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THE LAR TRRHOO AT THE L & CA VEL
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STE FATH VERY. E HOT OSE N
D O S
AN -DISC TY BA U WH NS
F I P
S E L QU I L OP O I
N P F
TRA SM
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TH HING
A NYT E R I LL .
Y
AN N. “B OTT

A
C
LE STO D REW
E C EC C A N
Y BY
NN HY
DA A P
TO GR
PHO
 EA M
Y DR
A MOJO 73
 T WAS JANUARY 2016, AND ALEX TURNER WAS BEGINNING TO WONDER
whether he’d ever write another Arctic Monkeys song.
“I think it’s always been like this to some extent,” says the singer, with some
weariness. “I have to find ways to trick myself into writing songs. But this time, I’d run
out of tricks…”
After a 30th birthday trip with friends, Turner had returned to his Los Angeles abode,
turned the key in the door and swung it open. Ostensibly, the house was as he’d left it.
It was only when he turned left and poked his head around the door of what he still, in
a comfortingly un-Los Angeles way, refers to as “the spare room” that he observed the
new addition to the household: an upright piano, not exactly in the first flush of youth.
“It was a Steinway Vertegrand,” he whispers reverentially, “a very kind 30th birthday
gift from my manager. Looking back now it seems really… significant. It changed
everything really.”
Two years on and five and a half thousand miles says, meaning Monkeys guitarist and policy touchstone Jamie Cook,
away, we’re talking change in Turner’s east “and I guess people at Domino. But it didn’t come from me. I
London pied-à-terre – a two-up-two-down understand it, I think.”
plucked straight out of Northern cliché and It is said that Turner is an unenthusiastic interview. Sometimes
dropped in the country’s trendiest postcode. The this is put down to shyness, or petulance, but in the flesh it really
front door is scuffed, the house number wonky, does look like it physically pains him to reveal aspects of his inner
there are bin bags outside. In the kitchen there’s a life. That’s combined with an aggressive pre-filtering of his answers
box of Yorkshire Tea bags and a packet of Crunchy to expunge bragging, BS, convenient near-truth and pat answer –
Nut Cornflakes. Upstairs, Turner’s American the basic building blocks of your rock’n’roll interview – that
model girlfriend Taylor Bagley – towering but sometimes seems to strike him dumb. “I wouldn’t consider him
friendly, sporting a copper-coloured gamine crop – enjoys the reticent at all,” protests his friend and longtime producer James
recently remodelled bathroom facilities. She Ford. “But he’s definitely not happy-go-lucky. He’s
was too tall to fit in the old tub, apparently. wary of strangers. You would be, if you were him.”
Turner half-sprawls, half-perches on the On November 15, 2014, 10 eventful years since the
sofa in the living room, squinting in the light Sheffield group’s spiky demos first caused a stir on
streaming through the front window, Myspace (remember that?) and eight since Gordon
apologising for sunglasses indoors. He’s Brown declared himself a fan (remember him?), and
dressed in a brown silk shirt, navy pinstripe still flush with the next-level success of their fifth
blazer, and black jeans with massive, flapping album, AM, the Arctic Monkeys closed their biggest
rips in the knees, but it’s his facial furniture ever tour with a show in Rio De Janeiro. “We ended up
that prompts a third glance: unwashed shoul- on the beach at dawn,” recalls their manager Ian
der-length hair, tied back, and a goatee beard McAndrew of the demob euphoria. “And we all
framing the big eyes and aquiline nose – a ran into the sea.” Turner returned to LA and
touch of the 1980s TV magician. On a small started work on an album with Columbia-signed
table next to him sits a George Saunders novel. In singer-songwriter Alexandra Savior. Then, in
the back a Revox reel-to-reel spins tunes. “If you summer 2015, he reunited with Miles Kane to
can’t play your reel-to-reel when MOJO’s coming write and record a second Last Shadow Puppets
over,” Turner smiles wryly, “when can you play it?” album, Everything You’ve Come To Expect. In
Turner’s new look heralds a new direction for his interviews, Turner and Kane traded in-jokes,
band. Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino, ile Turner concocted elaborate and
sixth album credited to Arctic Monkey percilious statements – a different kind
is spacey and strange – lounge music not-quite engaging – and Kane got into
the retro-future, an ejection if not reject water when he propositioned a female
of indie guitars. Its impending release rnalist. On their subsequent tour Turner
MOJO meets Turner, is strictly hush-h ed baroque new tics to an increasingly
– partly to wrongfoot, as far as possibl andiloquent stage persona. Meanwhile,
the all-encompassing digital transparen s Arctic Monkeys bandmates had
cy of everything; partly so that the album sumed largely civilian existences. Jamie
can be ‘dropped’, as an entity, without ook, drummer Matt Helders and bassist
scene-stealing lead-off track, a gambit th ck O’Malley were all married and fathers
plays to its strengths (ie, it is not rep oung children.
with indie disco bangers) but not Time ticked on. Three years since AM’s
decreed by Turner. 3 release, there was still no sign of any
“Jamie was really keen on that idea,” w Arctic Monkeys songs. ➢

“I HAVE TO FIND WAYS TO TRICK MYSELF

Andrew Cotterill

INTO WRITING SONGS. BUT THIS TIME,

I’D RUN OUT OF TRICKS.” ALEX TURNER
74 MOJO
Star treatment: Arctic Monkeys,
shot exclusively for MOJO,
March 14, 2018 (from left)
Jamie Cook, Alex Turner,
Nick O’Malley, Matt Helders.
Save it for the morning after: Matt
Helders and Alex Turner give it one
last push on the final date of the
AM Tour, HSBC Arena, Rio De Janeiro,
November 15, 2014; (inset right) Turner
at Brixton Academy, February 17, 2006.

SOUND
self-pity gets short shrift:
“She said ‘Do me a favour and
stop flattering yourself.’”

THE EVOLUTION OF THE ARCTIC MONKEYS, Turner’s farewell to lost weekend

reportage – though he would
IN 10 SONGS. KEITH CAMERON. subsequently address similar
1 I BET YOU L nightscape –Rumble Fish relocated dynamics in different locations.
GOOD ON THE to Sheffield. Alex Turner’s view on
the pissed up scrappers is
4 TEDDY PICK
DANCEFLOOR (Domino 45, 2007)
characteristically ambivalent,
(Domino 45, 2005) shifting from disdain to acceptance: Taut from
That kinetic “What can I say? I’ve known them industrial-level
ignition, the lyric’s for a long long time…” roadwork and
multiple feats of streamlined by
metrical geometry: 3 LEAVE BEFORE THE co-producer James
the breakout Arctic LIGHTS COME ON Ford, Teddy Picker 6 CRYING LIGHTNING
Monkeys record (Domino 45, 2006) effected a steroidal upgrade on
presented its creators as a finished (Domino 45, 2009)
Written and recorded after Whatever Fake Tales Of San Francisco’s gawky
article. Its narrative voice, poke at local scene wannabes. As producer of Humbug, Josh
People Say I Am…, this meticulously Homme’s greatest gift to Arctic
meanwhile, skilfully toggles voiced account of one-night-stand Turner’s takedown of the band-
between participant and observer, width generation’s malaise was Monkeys was to set the individuals
disconsolation (“She’s thinking ‘He free while sonically rendering
while refreshing the Northern looks different today’”) showed the brusque: “Not quick enough/Can I
kitchen sink drama template with a have it quicker?/Already thick and them as a true ensemble. Crying
Monkeys could increase t Lightning is a feat of construction,
teenage spark: “There ain’t no love, emotional payload while ing you’re getting thicker.”
no Montagues or Capulets/Just whereby the players are apparently
out the ramalama. It was sibly 5 DO ME A FAVOUR soloing to different songs, yet the
banging tunes and DJ sets”.
(from Favourite Worst Ni are, whole marches in lockstep. When
2 A CERTAIN Domino, 2007) it arrives, Cook’s actual solo stings
ROMANCE The second album’s like illicit frontier spirit.
(from Whatever People S m, quantum leap
That’s What I’m Not, Do 2006) came two-thirds 7 CATAPULT
The debut album’s through, where its (B-side of Cornerstone, D , 2009)
pugilist/poet voice shifted unam- The Arctic desert
duality is best biguously from voodoo peaked
captured by this third to first person. This shattering with this flamenco-
epic closer, where break-up vignette – marshalled by psych whirlwind.
crushing instru- Matt Helders’ beats, decorated by Egged on by
Getty (2)

mental passages rub against the Jamie Cook as Johnny Marr – is Nick O’Malley’s
lyric’s detailed account of a lairy voiced by the dumper, whose unbridled bass, Turner hyperventi-

76 MOJO
 “ALEX IS DEFINITELY
NOT HAPPY-GO-
LUCKY. HE’S WARY
OF STRANGERS.
YOU WOULD BE,
IF YOU WERE HIM.”
JAMES FORD

B
EFORE SITTING DOWN AT HIS 30TH BIRTHDAY
present, Alex Turner hadn’t played piano with any serious-
ness since he was eight.
“I was taught to play a bit,” he says, “but I never took to it the
way I did to guitar when I was 15 or something. But there was
always these three chords and a scale that I could play on piano,
and I could always make it look like I knew what I was doing. And
I guess I wanted to see what was behind that door…”
Piano chord progressions dubbed onto a vintage 8-track in
Turner’s spare room – renamed “The Lunar Surface” after the
theory that the Apollo landing was faked on a soundstage by
Stanley Kubrick – became the soundtrack to Turner’s own alter-
nate reality. Slowly, a new sort of song emerged.
“So I’ve tricked myself into writing – by sitting at the piano,
doing this thing that I haven’t done before, then almost I’m
allowed to…” he pauses, filtering again. “That gave
me permission to go somewhere I’d had trouble get-
ting to before. It allowed me to put across how I…
feel, more… broadly than I’ve done before.”
Songs came that coughed up piercing observa-
ions on the human malaise, sometimes in disjointed
punchlines. “That’s always the stuff that stays,”
lates as he watches his girl fall for ays Turner. “Whenever you think you’re doing
some cad, whose “heart was cut out omething for a joke, you’re doing something for a
of the same stone that they used to eason, deep down.”
carve his jaw”. Homme wasn’t alone Others appeared to address Turner’s own situa-
in wondering how Catapult didn’t
make the final cut.
on, like Star Treatment, with its striking opening line
“I just wanted to be one of The Strokes” – and mid-
8 PILEDRIVER WALTZ ong admission that “Golden Boy’s in bad shape”…
(from Suck It And See, Domino, 2011) “That was me writing about writing,” he
Perhaps inevitably, ys. “It was my 8 ½, the Fellini film – where the
the Monkeys’ rector character can’t seem to make this movie,
fourth album felt
like a retreat to safer owever hard he tries. I was thinking about that.
territory; its best nual, Jamie Cook That s interesting to me.”
song was the group finally unleashed his War Pigs Turner admits to subsequently trying and failing to replace the
reworking of a solo Alex Turner moment into the spectral grooves Strokes line, knowing it would make the song into one about Alex
recording from the Submarine film of this billet fou to a Hollywood
soundtrack. However handsome,
Turner, Rock Star.
dream girl. She has a “kiss the colour
Piledriver Waltz’s bittersweet of a constellation falling into place”.
“Did the Strokes line feel too close to home? Yeah, absolutely,”
will-o-the-wisp efflorescence felt Al, I’ve a feeling we’re not in he sighs. “But you can’t let that stop you. That whole thing of, Oh
like mere routine for a band whose Barnsley any more… my God, what are they gonna think this means? You can’t really
standards now demanded more. work like that.”
10 WHY’D YOU Was Golden Boy really in bad shape?
ONLY CALL ME WHEN “In the sense that I was lost and didn’t really have any ideas
YOU’RE HIGH?
(Domino 45, 2013)
about what I was going to do. ‘Golden Boy’’s a bit of a rob off that
Even at its
Leonard Cohen song, Dress Rehearsal Rag [“Where are you
platinum-precision golden boy/Where is your famous golden touch?”]. I must have
peaks, AM been playing the album [Songs Of Love And Hate] and it kind of got
suggested Arctic in there.”
Monkeys’ vision of Is it the most autobiographical song he’s ever recorded?
high rolling wasn’t
so far from messy nights at the “Well the album sort of all is. I’m having a word with myself,
Leadmill. The song’s phat-bot- intermittently, throughout all 11 tunes.”
tomed momentum wobbles on the The richness and depth of Tranquility Base’s lyrical world –
verge of queasy, as Turner, even some of the songs feel like super-dense prose-poems set to music
9 ARABELLA amid the glimmering Beverly Hills
(from AM, Domino, 2013) gold, finds himself “Somewhere
– will delight and relieve Turner admirers of long standing. After
Having emerged from the Homme darker, talking the same shite”. Too the extraordinary observational detail and characterful stance of
Humbug with long hair and a Tony much of a good thing, and all that. Arctic Monkeys’ 2006 debut album, Whatever People Say I Am, ➢

MOJO 77
 Shadowy men on another
planet: (from left) Helders,
Turner, Cook, O’Malley.
“Maybe there’ll be fans
we gained from AM that
will be a bit confused now.”

➣
That’s What I’m Not, it’s arguab at the Apocalypse – and his 8-track bedroom vocals
for all his subsequent diversions – the have mostly survived subsequent sessions (“In the
gaudy fun-poking of Favourite Worst Nightmare, posh booth with the posh mike, we couldn’t get the
erotic surrealism of Humbug and AM’s pithy same intimacy,” says James Ford). Listening back in
reflections on the ways of desire – Turner has early 2017, Turner kind of liked what he’d done.
worked within himself as a lyricist. James Ford “But I was still unsure about what it was,” he
says that on a night out with the singer you can see insists. “Was it just… meanderin’?”
his ear at work – switching onto the conversation- Turner invited Jamie Cook out to Los Angeles to
al quirks of everyone around him. But Tranquility help him decide how out-there he’d gone. Is Cook
Base – a song-cycle with overarching sci-fi the band’s gatekeeper? Turner laughs.
architecture that accommodates sophisticated “I think he has good judgment, yeah. And
swipes at our entertainment and info- maybe it comes from the fact that this was all his
swamped culture – is a trip somewhere new. idea – the band.”
“I tried to write this kind of thing before,” He needed Jamie to say if it was or it wasn’t Arctic
says Turner, clinking his rings on an Arctic Monkeys?
Monkeys tea mug. “I just didn’t know how to, “I suppose I did, yeah.”
really. I think I tried and recognised,
HAT’S NICE, BLAME ME ,” MOCK-
thankfully, that I wasn’t ready. It’s like the
natural place to have gone, after that first “ complains Jamie Cook, between sips of a
record, was somewhere around ’ere.” Guinness in an east London pub. If the
In the song Science Fiction, he sings, “I group’s label is keen to keep an imminent Arctic Mon-
want to make a simple point about peace and keys release on the QT, this may not be the best place
love, but in a sexy way that’s not obvious”. The dilemma of every for this very recognisable gentleman to be seen. A young woman on
pop writer who yearns to say something ‘meaningful’? the next table taps away at her laptop and glances our way.
“Yeah, it’s not a disclaimer,” says Turner. “But I think you have to While five years was already a long time for a group in their
recognise the vanity of that. It was the only way I could go there. commercial prime to lie doggo, and God knows how it would have
Others are capable of going there in different ways...” played in terms of perceptions of their future as a band, Cook
Is this the yin to Last Shadow Puppets’ yang, where everything concedes that Tranquility Base was nearly an Alex Turner solo album.
seemed more showy, more pretend-y? “I thi at first, because it was quite basic – piano, vocal and no
“That could be true,” says Turner, sounding unsure, “but I think guitar – wo minds about, ‘Is this Arctic Monkeys or am I
also part of that Puppets record was… they were probably the most going som lse with this?’” says Cook. “And maybe at first I
straight-up love letters I’d ever written. I put it all in there. And was a bit like that as well. It’s definitely not a guitar-heavy record,
maybe that was part of it. I’d gone there completely with Sweet not typically what we’d do. It took a lot more thinking about.”
Dreams, TN, and Dream Synopsis and The Bourne Identity. You’re While Cook was visiting Turner, he added subtle guitar parts to
Andrew Cotterill (4)

not going to get any of that on this album.” the latter’s piano demos. Matt Helders, a near neighbour in Los
At the piano, imagining himself in a taqueria on the roof of a Angeles, insinuated drums around Turner’s own. Nick O’Malley
casino on the moon in a future version of now, Turner found he and James Ford were flown in to contribute. Later, in May 2017,
even sang differently – subtly strange and intimate, a lounge singer full group sessions were convened at Vox Studios on Melrose

78 MOJO
 “AL WAS IN TWO MINDS ABOUT, ‘IS THIS
ARCTIC MONKEYS OR NOT?’ AND MAYBE I
WAS A BIT LIKE THAT AS WELL.” JAMIE COOK
Avenue, where Charlie Parker recorded his legendary Dial Sessions “This whole furore was going on and we got a call from Top Of
and Tranquility Base acquired its ghostly veins of vintage keyboards: The Pops wanting to book them. I thought this was great, so
Orchestron, Dolceola, harpsichords real and synthesized. Then in exciting – an unsigned band on TOTP. And Jamie said, Nah. There
September, chasing the live ensemble sound of Pet Sounds and wasn’t even a discussion.”
Dion’s Born To Be With You (“It’s one of my favourite records of all “We were kind of fearless,” says Cook. “We definitely upset
time,” says Turner. “It’s like you want to go and live there for a bit”), people. We created a lot of rules: we’re not doing that, we’re not
Turner moved proceedings to La Frette Studios on the outskirts of doing that, we’re not doing that. Maybe that was a way of protecting
Paris, invited extra players including Last Shadow Puppets’ touring ourselves. Putting walls up.”
drummer Loren Humphrey and regular Arctic Monkeys After their debut album became the fastest-selling in the UK
contributor Tom Rowley, and with Ford he orchestrated as many as ever, the group, soon to lose original bassist Andy Nicholson, were
nine musicians recording simultaneously live to analogue tape. Still, not impervious to the feelings of British music fans who saw in
much of what’s heard on the final album has survived from them a rebirth of rock values thought lost, including the “old Jam
Turner’s 8-track. fans” they still see at the front of their gigs, mixing it with the kids.
“Al’s been very hands-on,” says Cook. “Producing-wise, he’s “We knew the record meant that much to people,” says Cook.
been the most involved he’s ever been. We did go to La Frette, but “We felt a responsibility on us to not fuck it up, to not let anyone
it was always going to be difficult to do it better.” down, including us-selves. What that would mean I’m not actually
If the final result is Arctic Monkeys, it’s a long way from their sure. Maybe we haven’t figured that out yet.”
roots, sneaking into shows at Sheffield’s Leadmill to see The Later, drummer Matt Helders will tell MOJO that the group
Strokes, Libertines, The Coral, the vanguard of the guitar revival of resisted early offers to play arenas when they felt they lacked the
the early ’00s. material to provide value for the ticket price. What else did they
“One of the first gigs I ever went to was The D4,” says Cook, turn down?
dewy-eyed at the thought of the NZ garage rockers. “They had a “Advertising,” says Cook. “Anything that looked like cashing in.
song called Rock’n’Roll Motherfucker, which when you’re 17 is the We wanted to keep… real. I think a lot of stuff around us felt fake.
best song title ever. We were all at Barnsley College at the time, all Maybe that’s what people liked, that we felt… real.”
probably underage or looked it. It seemed mad that the D4’d come
‘
R
all the way from New Zealand. They were full-on. That’s definitely EAL’ WAS PERHAPS NOT QUITE THE VIBE AS THE
the moment I said to myself, I want to do this.” AM tour, 150 shows old, ended in Rio in 2014.
The Arctic Monkeys, with the terrible name they nearly ditched “I think we’d gone as far as we could go,” says Nick
for the even worse Bang Bang, gained an early reputation for O’Malley. “I had these crazy ’80s hair metal leggings on-stage. I’d
cussedness that they’ve never quite shaken off. Ian McAndrew worn ’em on Halloween, which I’d done dressed as Macho Man
remembers an incident when their pre-Domino debut single, Five Randy Savage, the WWF wrestler. That was a big sign that it was
Minutes With The Arctic Monkeys, sparked a feeding frenzy. time to have a break.” ➢

MOJO 79
The Bang Bang Club: all
smiles for the foundation
line-up of Arctic Monkeys
in 2006 (from left) Cook,
Turner, Helders and original
bassist Andy Nicholson.
 “I REMEMBER
THINKING, THIS
IS DISGUSTING,
THIS IS TERRIBLE…
I CAN’T WAIT TO
TELL EVERYBODY!”
MATT HELDERS
➣
“It was weird,” agrees Matt Helders. “Like the end of
a film. Even being in the airport to fly home was a bit of a
comedown. The blank diary.”
The backdrop has shifted, and all of the Arctic Monkeys
are back at La Frette for a photo session, a chance to acquaint
MOJO with this falling-apart piece of the Belle Epoque,
overgrown with superannuated synths, tape decks and patch
cables, a ghost house infected by the virus of recording. In the
basement lurks the early-’70s 24-track Neve desk
commissioned by legendary French playboy label boss Eddie
Barclay and accidentally won at auction by La Frette owner
Olivier Bloch Lainé (he bid first as a joke; no one followed).
On the ground floor, the airy double living-room, originally
used to record string ensembles, is where two drum kits, two
pianos and a hodgepodge of vintage keyboards were arrayed
last autumn in pursuit of Alex Turner’s Dion fantasies.
“Everyone had a go on everything,” says Helders, a brisk
and cheerful kind of fellow. “I think just because it was all set
up and we could all move around. It wasn’t something we did
so that we could talk about it later: ‘Yeah, I played synth and
Alex played drums…’”
La Frette offered the opportunity to immerse in the
soundworld of Tranquility Base and absorb the local myths. To
Turner’s delight, Bloch Lainé revealed he had been a
housemate of one of his favourite French film composers, the
late François de Roubaix. At their disposal was driver Joe, who
had once leapt out of his cab in central Paris to save a man
being beaten bloody by several assailants. The man turned out
to be a very grateful Serge Gainsbourg. It was music, music,
music. And wine. And crème anglaise.
“There’s not much else to do around here,” says O’Malley.
“There’s a Tabac up in the village – kind of a combined
bookies, bar and cigarette shop – a lot of locals shouting at the
ONLY ONES WHO KNOW TV and us lot drinking beers. They loved us by the end – I
think we spent more than anyone had ever spent in there.”
INSIDE THE CLOSED demonstrate ambition. It took me
While Helders will baulk at the suggestion that, with his
a long time to gain their trust.”
WORLD OF THE That changed, but McAndrew trademark triplet fills and extra-curricular coup as part of Iggy
ARCTIC MONKEYS, maintains the group’s innate Pop’s Josh Homme-helmed Post Pop Depression project, he
suspicion of the world had, and has,
EARLY DOORS. a constructive side…
could now be genuinely termed A Musician, he admits that
“I REMEMBER very distinctly being “They intuitively know what is musical questing is now part of what Arctic Monkeys do.
on a train going to meet them [in and isn’t right for them. I’ve just had “That feeling started with Humbug,” says the drummer/
2005],” recalls James Ford. “I had the to learn to listen. Like that first really now-keyboardist, referencing the 2009 album they mostly
ear buds in and the first thing I heard big show we did – Old Trafford
was Mardy Bum. Straight away it was, Cricket Ground in 2007, with Amy made with Homme at the California desert studio, Rancho
Oh shit, this is a voice I haven’t heard Winehouse, The Coral and Super- De La Luna. “We got away with that – now we can do
for a long time…” grass on the bill. It was a 25 pound anything, be anything. We’d allowed ourselves to explore, and
Ford was ruled out as producer of ticket – far too cheap! But their mates
the band’s debut album but returned had to be OK with it. They were the
we just got more into the craft of making a record. Because
to helm Favourite Worst Nightmare. sounding board for what was that’s the bit that lasts forever.”
He’s been involved in every album ‘proper’. It’s still like that in a way.” But was it really possible for the band to wipe the stunning
since, but hasn’t forgotten his So what’s at the root of the success of AM from their minds before taking their next step?
probationary period. Monkeys’ air of autonomy?
“They were a close little gang,” “‘Authenticity’,” quips Matt “We’ve had that challenge before,” says Helders, “after the
he says. “Even though they were a lot Helders, facetiously. “I think there’s first album success where we had to just get on and make the
younger than me they were really something, though. It has to do with second, or else forever be dwelling on it. But this one didn’t
intimidating, hard to get along with. where we’re from and the honesty
They were closed to all outsiders at that comes with that. I imagine that feel like that. I mean, maybe there’ll be fans we gained from
AM that will be a bit confused now. Like, that was their first
Andrew Cotterill

that point.” comes out through the music, too.

Manager Ian McAndrew had a Sometimes it’s being stubborn about experience of the band… ‘and now they’re doing this?’”
similar experience, when introduced the way we do things. How we wanna
to the four by his then-partner Geoff record stuff or decisions we make
“If we were worried about that we would never have made
Barradale: “They were quite outside of that. I think there’s just – Humbug,” says Jamie Cook. “And to disappear for a ➢
uncommunicative, didn’t really something genuine about it.”

MOJO 81
MEMO FROM TURNER
THE MUSIC FLOWING THROUGH MONKEY MINDS DURING
THE MAKING OF TRANQUILITY BASE HOTEL & CASINO.
T THE FOOT of the twisty stairwell at Other strands of music woven into the

A La Frette studios, an early-’70s

Seeburg Olympian jukebox squats.
It’s full of wonderful vinyl 45s but the
would-be button-pusher has to take
a flyer, as the selections have no names on them.
“I had to note the best ones down,” says Matt
Helders, pulling out his mobile phone. “(Reads) The
Tranquility tapestry include quirkily arranged soul
(The Three Degrees’ version of James Gang’s
Collage, from their pre-Philly debut album, is a
revelation) and full-on disco (Evelyn ‘Champagne’
King’s irresistible Love Come Down) – cheesy
keyboard sounds are a Turner delicacy. Then
there’s a penchant for comparatively overlooked
Stones – Moonlight Mile, some French songs, some ’70s singer-songwriters, like Lindisfarne founder
doo wop. The Great Pretender by The Platters was a Alan Hull, whose 1973 album Pipe Dream weaves a
big one. Hit The Road Jack – Ray Charles, Mrs mellowed but sardonic spell.
Robinson, Joe Le Taxi…” “That Pipe Dream album took me years to find,”
“The jukebox felt like the centre of the La Frette says Turner. “When I used to live in New York, there
universe,” says Alex Turner, who’s provided MOJO was a guy who worked in a restaurant I used to
with a list of the songs that fed into the writing of always chat about music with. I’d tell him I was
Tranquility Base and its recording. “We was always into Dion and he’d recommend t ff th b i
hanging out at the bottom of them stairs, because of that.”
the main living room was full of tackle. There wasn’t More recent Turner raves
anywhere else to hang out.” betray a yen for the whiff of
Turner has been coming to France to record coke-y rot in super-smooth
since the first Last Shadow Puppets sessions at late-’70s productions, like Ne
Studio Black Box in the Pays de la Loire in summer Young’s Midnight On The Bay
’07, and French pop and soundtrack music remain a from The Stills-Young Band’s
key influence on Tranquility Base. Jean-Claude Long May You Run album (“I
Vannier, the arranger on Serge Gainsbourg’s kept listening to that tune
Histoire De Melody Nelson, is a longterm Turner loads at La Frette”), but
obsession. Jean-Claude Vannier is alway
“I’ve been chasing down the Melody Nelson bass the default. In fact, there was
tone for, like, 10 years now,” he says, and thinks he’s chance that Turner might get
finally nailed it on Tranquility’s title track, where he to meet the great man
plays a tricksy line on a painstakingly sourced Burns through La Frette owner
Vista Sonic bass, close to the type played by Dave Olivier Bloch Lainé.
Richmond on the original Gainsbourg sessions. “Olivier kept saying he’d
But his soundtrack composer du jour is François call him, get him over, but he
de Roubaix, a prodigious synthesist of early never did,” says Turner. “I
electronica, folk elements and twangy spy guitars heard a story about him,
who died in a diving accident in 1975, not yet 40. though. A guitarist friend of
The love affair started with cinéphile Turner’s mine, Benji Lysaght, played
devouring of Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1967 Gallic noir the Hollywood Bowl with
classic Le Samouraï, starring Alain Delon. him, when they played all of
“There’s this organ arpeggio in Le Samouraï that Melody Nelson [in 2011].
I definitely was thinking of when I wrote those parts Anyway, they were
on American Sports,” says Turner. “I went a bit mad rehearsing and Vannier came
on those arpeggios for a bit. introducing himself, and he came
“There’s some other organ movie stuff on that over to Benji, and Benji thought he
list too. The Nino Rota piece, Toby Dammit, is the was coming over to say, ‘Just have
soundtrack to Fellini’s third of [Edgar Allan fun, enjoy yourself, it’s going to be
Poe-inspired 1968 portmanteau movie] Spirits Of OK.’ But actually he said something
The Dead. That film was something Richard Ayoade more along the lines of, ‘If you fuck
put us onto a while ago.” up, it’s all ruined’ (laughs).”

Feel no fret: the Monkeys, plus pianist

James Righton, in full sonic overhaul
mode at La Frette Studios, near
Paris; (inset above) pages from Alex
Turner’s notebook (“In the words
of Joe Cocker, rock on in one way or
another”); the studio’s lucky juke.
 ➣
couple of years and then come back with AM2? I think people brightly. “Infinite Jest blew me mind – that and George Saunders. I
would have been, ‘Fuck off.’” think it did awaken something. There’s so much in it.”
One thing that was unavoidable after AM’s global penetration Besides what can only be described as its overarching conceit,
was a higher profile for individual Arctic Monkeys. Certainly the Tranquility Base contains breadcrumb trails to bigger ideas. Like
number of idiots getting in Alex Turner’s face at airports, then the Ballardian name of Turner’s taqueria on the moon: the
YouTubing the results, has been on the rise. Information-Action Ratio.
“I haven’t noticed it in a beneficial or a negative way,” demurs “Did you find that then?” he smiles. “Yeah, that’s from Neil
Helders. “I still have to queue up for things like anyone else, I still Postman, Amusing Ourselves To Death – that was the other thing I
have to buy tickets to Disneyland. I suppose it’s different for Alex. read before I wrote these songs. I might have got to that from David
People are always trying to get a reaction out of him.” Axelrod’s podcast, The Axe Files. That’s the other David Axelrod,
Do you get told, “You’ve changed”? the one that worked wi’ Obama – (grins slyly) I like ’em both.”
“A lot of us friends joke about that,” says Helders. “But I don’t Neil Postman’s 1985 study, addressing the TV age but still
think we’ve had too much backlash, or maybe we don’t see it, or jarringly relevant, argues that information changed from being
hear it. I imagine it’s happening: ‘I went to school wi’ him. He’s a essentially a tool to essentially a confectionary with the invention of
dick.’ People can’t stand it, can they? the telegraph.
“But a lot changes between the ages of 18 to 30, don’t it?” he “And the Information-Action Ratio is a way of explaining that
muses. “Whether you work in a call centre or do this. In some ways we don’t need the vast amount of information we receive, and what
you change even less. It’s like Peter Pan syndrome. You don’t we do about the information we receive isn’t ver y much,”
necessarily have to grow up at all – until you have a kid.” expounds Turner. “A fantastic name for a taqueria, on the roof, of a
Asked if there was ever a moment when rock’n’roll fun tipped hotel and casino complex, on the lunar surface – I think we can
over into madness, Helders recalls a night around his 21st birthday, definitely agree on that.”
shortly after the release of Favourite Worst Nightmare. A related recurring theme is the fetishisation of technology. It’s
“One thing had led to another and I was in a scenario where I bothered Turner for a while. “But I found it very difficult to write
threw up next to Rod Stewart’s Ferrari outside his house in Beverly about,” he says, “because it sounds ugly. All the words connected to
Hills,” he says. “I remember thinking, This is disgusting, this is it are horrible… And I don’t want to fucking hear it either.
“But I think I’ve got better with technology since I wrote these
terrible… I can’t wait to tell everybody! We’ve always said that as
songs,” he adds. “I realise that I’m not always checking the news –
soon as any of it starts feeling normal then you’re done. That’s
that I’ve kind of stepped away from it a bit. Maybe sometimes I put
when someone needs to step in.” stuff into a song to stop myself from doing it – I think I’m just
“It’s them moments when Shirley Bassey’s got her arm around realising that’s true. Like there’s a line in the middle of She Looks
you, and Paul McCartney’s over there,” adds O’Malley, recalling the Like Fun about waffling on to strangers about martial arts in bars,
Q magazine awards in 2007. “You feel like you’re in a film, in a and that was definitely something I was doing a lot of and was aware
story. But I never felt like I was losing it, because I never felt a part I needed to stop doing.”
of it. I felt more like… an observer.” Why martial arts?
What’s the difference between having control and losing it? “I like to go to the kickboxing gym and have done for ages – I got
“Not going and doing the same thing the next night,” says into it while I was living in New York in 2010. I was just so
Helders. “Or, it’s knowing that I’m still capable of massive regret. impressed by the people I’d met in that world. Then you get to the
That’s reassuring. That means you’re not a sociopath.” bar and that stuff comes out… like, times a thousand.
What impressed you about…
N THE BIG ROOM AT LA FRETTE, THE SITE OF

I sessions for Nick Cave’s Skeleton Tree and recently revi

Bad Seed Warren Ellis with Marianne Faithfull, Al
plays piano, hair falling over his eyes, alone in a
by
“God! I’d so not intended to get into this! (laughs) The point is
I’d waffled on in bars about that too much and I needed a new
topic, ’cos there’s always gonna be something I suppose… unless
stop going to bars.”
crowd. Soon he’ll be required to don some
costumes – a roll neck, a silk shirt, a white tuxe HERE’S A CLUB IN ST LOUIS, MISSOURI, CALLED
jacket – and take a stroll through the village The Pageant that Arctic Monkeys played several times be-
in-house photographer Zack Michaels s their elevation to Stateside arenas. Next to it, a hotel
away. When the band are shot lean e Moonrise is wholly moon-themed. In the bar, they
incongruously mouldy and clapped-out Ren play songs with ‘Moon’ in the title and a mas-
Turner will grab a nearby garden spade and lean o ive model of the Earth’s satellite looms over
one eyebrow raised. “When you shoot th he roof terrace. Alex Turner concedes that
Arctic Monkeys,” notes Zack, “humour is always he seed of Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino may
an important element.” have germinated here, and admits to the mel-
But with Turner particularly, it’s not always ancholy conviction that, as soon as humans do
obvious when he’s joking. When he’s playing the properly populate the moon, the first thing
rock star or being the rock star. Or sometimes, how hey’ll build is a similarly vulgar temple to
seriously he’s taking himself, his music or writing. consumption. It’s part of a more general sad-
But maybe that too is changing. In his kitchen back ess and ruin that creeps across the album; a
in east London, as he brews MOJO a Yorkshire ense of loss that’s in Turner’s best songs,
he seems both more relaxed and more earn om A Certain Romance (“There’s only music
keener than usual to share the traffic in his nog that there’s new ringtones”) to Humbug’s
“All throughout that last Puppets tour I ornerstone and beyond; that’s in a line like “I
was reading [David Foster Wallace’s unch my fragrance called ‘Integrity’”.
mammoth satire] Infinite Jest, and I think “It just feels like we’re not far away from
Christian Rose, Dalle, Iconicpix

that’s got a lot to do with it,” he says, a fragrance called ‘Integrity’ being an
actual thing,” Turner sighs. “It’s the sort of
Alternative perspectives: some of the literary
and audio-visual inputs to the Tranquility Base thing I write down and then have to check
ecosphere (from top) David Foster Wallace’s that it doesn’t already exist.”
Infinite Jest; dystopic mail from Neil Postman;
1967 Gallic noir Le Samouraï; Jean-Claude Integrity is a much-referenced part of
Vannier; Fellini’s Spirits Of The Dead. the appeal of Arctic Monkeys, but ➢

MOJO 83
 Où est le concierge?:
Arctic Monkeys waiting
patiently in their hotel
mezzanine of the mind.

“YOU CAN DO SO MUCH WITH MUSIC. LIKE

BORN TO BE WITH YOU OR HISTOIRE DE MELODY
NELSON. INCREDIBLE THINGS.” ALEX TURNER
➣
what’s the checklist? Are ideas like indie or punk or rock’n’roll Sometimes a short memory can be a boon to an artist – other-
connected with it? wise the sheer numbers shifted of AM’s deft meld of rock and R&B
“I think they all have a connection with instinct, those kinds of swagger (over a million on both sides of the Atlantic, after the di-
terms, to me,” says Turner. “More often than not, if you don’t trust minishing returns of Humbug and Suck It And See) would be hard to
those feelings you end up worse off. Gut feeling is what rock’n’roll, ignore. Did Turner really not hear voices telling him to emulate it?
punk even, is all about.” “I think I probably did but my instincts were stronger,” he says.
At the Brit Awards in 2014, Turner delivered a short, well- “I just have no idea how I would get back there to do that again. It
turned speech on the subject of rock’n’roll (in précis: It Will Stand) seems so far away. It doesn’t seem possible. This is the only thing I
– something the event clearly needed more of – before appearing to could have done.”
lose faith in it, dropping his mike and leaving the stage. Asking him More than ever, there’s pressure on name artists to homogenise,
how he feels about it in 2018 is like poking him with knives. file off their eccentricities to conform to a similar radio/streaming
“I maintain that I didn’t really have another way around it,” he pop-dance-rock sound. You see bands old enough to know better
says, more slowly than he’s said anything in nearly three hours of falling into it – the thing of having to ‘compete’.
interview. “Another way of justifying getting up in that room. What “I don’t subscribe to that,” says Turner. “The more you can
else was I supposed to do? To go up there and pretend that I’d been ignore the idea of competition, the idea of wanting to ‘win’ this
dreaming about that moment since I was a kid would have been thing, the better for your creativity. What I’m excited about is that
dishonest.” you can do so much with music. Like Born To Be With You or Histoire
In the past he’s talked of the characters he plays on-stage, or in De Melody Nelson. I mean, incredible things.”
songs. Today the word ‘character’ makes him visibly squirm. What’s the hardest part of making a record?
“I don’t know why I recoil,” he says. “Maybe because by saying, “Accepting that you’ll never get close enough to Dion.”
It’s a character, it’s like I’m saying it’s not real, or it’s not true. But In 2007 Turner expressed dismay at the idea that Arctic
that’s not the case.” Monkeys might make 12 or 13 albums. Maybe 12 or 13 albums like
Bowie isn’t lying when he’s playing an alien rock star. Actors the first two, of what Turner now routinely describes as “chip shop
aren’t lying when they say words they didn’t write… rock’n’roll”, looked a stretch. Does an album like Tranquility Base
“Yeah… and I suppose at the beginning of this band my attitude Hotel & Casino, with its Year Zero sonic overhaul and laissez-faire
was uncomfortable with that idea, which is quite possibly an act in take on band roles and audience expectations, make that tally more
itself. I think that AM, with the haircut and that whole thing, I talked likely? Does it mean Arctic Monkeys can now make any kind of
a lot about characters around there. Maybe that’s why I recoiled. record? Alex Turner hopes so.
I’ve had the persona conversation.” “It still seems like a large number, though,” he ponders. “I was
How accessible is the Alex Turner of the first album to him now? watching a Joe Cocker documentary the other day, and he released,
“Not at all really. (Pauses, squints, as if weighing the truth of this) like 32 albums. That’s a lot. Maybe we’ve got a few more in us
They’re reissuing the first album in the US. Now, we never put the but maybe I need to take a detour or something. I need to have a
lyrics on the sleeve of the first album. I don’t fucking know why not, Broadway period.”
but it might have had something to do with being contrary at every Turner strokes his bearded chin, imagining the critical response
available opportunity. But they’re gonna put the lyrics in the reissue, to this latest outrageous manifestation of Alex Turner hubris.
Andrew Cotterill

which meant I had to read through them, and that’s why I can tell “‘He’s done a play!’ I can just see me on BBC Breakfast talking
you with confidence that I don’t have access to that person. But it about me play… in a fleece.”
did… amuse me. A trip down memory lane.” It would be his most extraordinary character yet. M

84 MOJO
YOUR GUIDE TO THE MONTH’S BEST
MUSIC. EDITED BY JENNY BULLEY

CONTENTS
86 ALBUMS
s Eleanor Friedberger turns Terpsichore
sJon Hopkins’ utopian visions
sRy Cooder’s blithe spirit
sFatoumata Diawara is a knockout
sPlus, Arctic Monkeys in space, another
Iceage, the return of Françoise Hardy,
Magic Numbers, Leon Bridges, Beach House,
Bombino, Courtney Barnett, Roger Daltrey
and more.
100 REISSUES
sFree your mind with Ornette Coleman
sFill your boots with Neil Young’s Archive
sMetallica’s Garage Days revisited
sPlus, Chet Baker, The Who, Bunny Lee,
Bark Psychosis, Steve Miller, Wire and more.
112 BOOKS
sPaul Simon’s almost autobiography. Plus,
Moby Grape, Shirley Collins, Jimi Hendrix,
UK record shops and more.
114 SCREEN
sThe Slits tell their story. Plus, The Doors at
the Isle Of Wight Festival, The Parkinsons’
not-quite rock‘n’roll legend and more.
116 LIVES
sBack from The Dead: Phil and Bob in New
York’s Radio City
sIn Hamburg’s Reeperbahn, Charlotte
Gainsbourg isn’t afraid.

“Still remarkable is the striking indi-

viduality of the voices in the abandon.”
DAVID FRICKE GOES FREEFORM, REISSUES P100

RATINGS & FORMATS

Your guide to the month’s best music is now even more definitive with our handy
format guide. CD COMPACT DISC DL DOWNLOAD ST STREAMING LP VINYL
MC CASSETTE DVD DIGITAL VIDEO DISC C IN CINEMAS BR BLU-RAY

★★★★★ ★★★★ ★★★ ★★ ★ ✩

MOJO CLASSIC EXCELLENT GOOD DISAPPOINTING BEST AVOIDED DEPLORABLE
 Roots manoeuvre
Fourth solo album from resting Fiery Furnace sees formidable change
of direction, says Victoria Segal. Illustration by Jane Sanders.
producer Clemens Knieper joined her. Rebound’s
Eleanor Friedberger fractured narratives feel insulated from the world,
★★★★★ but never isolated, never indulgent: instead,
Friedberger explores everyday loneliness and
Rebound disquiet. A phone number in a pocket is erased in
the washing machine. A long-distance letter fraught
FRENCHKISS. CD/DL/LP
with history offers no comfort, just “yak yak yak”.
t the end of 2016, in retreat from the US Even a dog barks in the wrong language.

A election’s grim realities and keen to keep

moving after touring her third solo album,
New View, Eleanor Friedberger travelled to Athens,
Sometimes, this dislocation can feel pleasantly
dreamy – the blanketing drone of Nice To Be
Nowhere, for example, is a romance in hopeless
Greece. The city was largely new to her, although, limbo, Move Closer covered by Suicide. Other
with a Greek-American mother, the country was times, it stings. In the opening My Jesus Phase – a
not. Shopkeepers, convinced by her perfect accent and KEY TRACKS wander in the wilderness? – Friedberg sits in the Galaxy
“relatively Greek” looks, talked to her as if she were a ● Everything Bar in Athens, one of the concrete locations map-pinned
resident, but she still didn’t feel entirely at ease. “Going ● It’s Hard across this record. Her thoughts, though, are harder to
somewhere where the alphabet is different really affects ● Are We Good? chart. Amid spidery keyboards, her sentences tangle
you” she tells MOJO. “Somewhere you can’t immediately themselves up, drift and fade: “How will I… How will he
read a sign, you feel like you’re on another planet.” find me?” she asks. The churchy thrum of Are We Good?
That sense of disconnection, of distance, of signs that backs a richly allusive tour-travelogue, where Friedberger
are hard to read, runs deep through Rebound, her fourth struggles with more unsatisfactory human contact. “I
album since she and her brother Matthew froze The Fiery proposed to a woman for a man last night,” the song
Furnaces’ floridly rococo indie experiments in 2011. Most opens, “She said, ‘Yes’, they cried and we kissed.” Here’s
of Rebound’s songs read as if they are in a different connection – but it’s at one strange, dispiriting remove.
alphabet, little emotional and musical accents subtly Elsewhere, words are robotic, unyielding, shutting
shifting the tone and meaning, familiar things – is that Friedberger out: “How’s your French? It’s bad, none/
a love song? A heartbroken lament? – pitched up or down How’s your Swedish? It’s bad, none.” In the end, she’s
by musical circumflexes and lyrical cedillas. There is reduced to asking the title question repeatedly, a quest
not much here (songwriting aside) that feels solid: for reassurance that never comes.
relationships are slippery, communication is treacherous, There’s more thwarted intimacy on The Letter, a sweet
language crumples like a bad ankle the second you put skipping shuffle through pages from a long-distance lover,
any weight on it. although the gap isn’t just literal: “The opposite of what he
It’s an alienated mood emphasised by Friedberger’s thought he thought/The opposite of what she wanted.”
brilliantly effective shift away from The well-oiled mechanised pop of It’s Hard, meanwhile,
the homegrown classic rock that is another ill-fated attempt to put down roots. It unfolds
has marked much of her solo work, in the club Rebound –“where time stands still/It’s like ’82
and into exotic ’80s synthesizers or ’83/Or ’85, it’s hard to tell”, and the music “sounds
and programmed drums. New View familiar but it’s sure not The Cure”. It’s another ersatz
was introduced by He Didn’t experience on a record of almosts, not-quites.
Mention His Mother, a warm, Rebound, though, hits every target. Friedberger’s skill is
woody knock on Heaven’s door to make this vague emotional terrain emotionally vivid,
accompanied by a video of with paint-like splashes of synths and guitars brightening
Friedberger and her band working In Between Stars and The Letter; with her impeccable
and playing at a farm in upstate “ REBOUND ’S phrasing on Everything or My Jesus Phase. Rule Of Action
New York, an ungroomed domestic initially feels like a kind of flattened, escaloped Stereolab,
scene of dogs and kitchens and FRACTURED
NARRATIVES but it soon pops back into fabulous 3D, thanks to the
button-down shirts. Rebound’s interlacing vocals, the moth-light jazzy shuffle, the spiky
first release, in contrast, was the FEEL keyboard wiring. There’s also sharp glints of hope: the
obsessive pulse of In Between INSULATED gorgeous Make Me A Song sounds like a threat – “I could
Stars, a song that seemed to be FROM THE love you more” – but it’s a demand to create something
about infatuation and its ability to WORLD meaningful and lasting: “Vibrate, resonate”. Most
dissolve rational thought. The video BUT NEVER unabashed of all is Everything, a wise, funny statement of
showed Friedberger dancing alone, ISOLATED, defiance, desire and self-worth that brings A Room Of
distorted by bright blurry waves of NEVER One’s Own and Patti Smith’s M Train together at last as
TV static, flesh-and-blood woman INDULGENT.” Friedberger intones with killer timing, “A house, a chair
j turning into sci-fi blur. and a rug/That’s everything… I mean two houses please.”
That retro-futurist chill is, As Friedberger’s finest solo album to date, Rebound
however, deceptive: Rebound is still deserves such rewards. For all its passing ships, its
gloriously human to the touch. The glancing blows, it feels full to the brim – with experience,
album was named after the after- with emotion, with ideas. Supple, elastic, and in forward
hours goth disco in Athens that motion, it loses nothing in translation. Vibrate, resonate.
sparked her vision for these songs
– fittingly, she recorded it largely
alone on a Casio keyboard before ELEANOR TALKS! THE FIERY ONE ON GREECE,
ALIENATION AND LONELINESS.

86 MOJO
 screaming ‘single!’, the sense roll of 2014’s Plowing Into The
that Chvrches are about to Field Of Love showed the Dan-
go St Peter’s Basilica-sized ish quartet starting to split
is inescapable. their punk-scene skins, but
James McNair Beyondless confirms a startling
evolution, fins to flight at cha-
otic time-lapse speed. Their
nails-into-concrete intensity
Françoise Hardy remains locked into the DNA
★★★ of Hurrah and Take It All – not
least because of Elias Bender
Personne d’Autre Rønnenfelt’s ragged nihilist
PARLOPHONE. CD/DL/LP drawl – but the presence of
Belly What you’d expect fro horns and Sky Ferreira on Pain
doyenne of French po Killer, the staggering after-
Eleanor ★★★ hours cabaret of Showtime, or
Atmospheri-
Friedberger: DOVE cally and
The Day The Music Dies’ unex-
having fun, BELLY TOURING. CD/DL/LP pected Britpop influence
seriously. musically, shows them bursting into new
’90s alt-rock faves’ first Françoise forms. As with any redevelop-
album since 1995. Hardy’s follow- ment, it’s often a mess, but to
up to 2013’s
“It was the hardest Neither feud nor tragedy
finished off Belly, just tour-
shredded friendships in the
L’Amour Fou doesn’t surprise.
Reassuringly autumnal, it drifts
witness the process is genu-
inely exhilarating.
Victoria Segal
time I ever had.” post-Nirvana era of alt-rock
crossover and high
by with the grace of a soaring
kite. The surprise is that
Personne d’Autre exists.
expectations. Those factors no
Eleanor Friedberger speaks longer apply, but neither does Hospitalisations over the past Neil Young
few years and the 2015 publi- + Promise
to Victoria Segal. a typical band dynamic – all
four original members are cation of her book Avis Non
You said you wanted to keep moving after touring here but their far-flung Autorisés… suggested music Of The Real
addresses mean DOVE (capital had taken a back seat. The ★★★
New View in 2016 – what made you feel like that? album’s standouts are the
letters suggesting more than Paradox
“It’s a sad thing about getting older – I like what I do just the bird of peace) was subtly orchestrated Quel
more than I ever have but I feel that touring the way I do Dommage (with words by REPRISE. CD/DL/LP
assembled by e-mail. Perhaps
which is very… lo-fi (laughs), is really taxing. I have this that explains a seamless, Hardy) and the ebbing-flowing The soundtrack to Dar
adrenalin which keeps me going and I don’t want it to burnished sound shorn of ‘alt’ Le Large, written by modern Hannah’s eco-warrior/
stop. It’s probably a little bit unhealthy. I was feeling spark or tension. Maybe they chanson auteur La Grande concert movie.
that way towards the end of 2016 and it was so marked wanted to sound ‘grown up’. Sophie. Trois Petits Tours nods
to the country music she liked The subject
because of the election in the US. The holidays come Either way, Belly linchpin of alternately
Tanya Donelly’s nuanced, as a teenager. Hardy was
and everything shuts down, too, and I was like, I cannot patronising
bittersweet inclinations rule, stimulated to record again
let that happen, I have to make a plan to do something after hearing Sleep, by Finnish or dismissive
really drastic and big, which for me was – I’m going to and the choruses lift off. reviews, Daryl
Upbeat episodes (Shiny One; band Poets Of The Fall, but
go to Greece! I’m going take Greek lessons! And I’m unfortunately, its makeover Hannah’s Para-
going to try to write and not sit around and relax… Stars Align) are outweighed dox movie harks back to Bob
by melancholic drama, from as Dors Mon Ange here
which is what I might have been inclined to do a few lacks impact. In Avis Non Dylan’s Renaldo & Clara, a
stripped ballads (Heartstrings; mash-up of concert footage,
years ago. I had a sense of urgency I didn’t have before. Suffer The Fools) to FM-radio Autorisés…, she raged at the
I think it comes with getting older and wanting to do ageing process and expressed ad-libbed dramatic interludes
flamer Quicksand. Dominated and documentary. Young’s
as much as possible.” by lyrical references to support for right-wing
politicians. It sounds as if soundtrack to his partner’s
It’s often said that economically fragile places are dependence, trust and the film is similarly random, but
threat to both, DOVE spans the her anger has subsided.
creatively fertile – was that true of Athens? Kieron Tyler when it hits the right mark,
benefits and risks of looking it too dazzles. There are few
“For me it was exciting to be in a place where ‘DIY’ is an back and moving on. complete songs – a solo organ
understatement. While I was there I assembled a Greek Martin Aston performance of Pocahontas,
band with the help of some friends and we played in Iceage Willie Nelson making a camp-
this abandoned hotel right in the centre of Athens. fire cameo for Angel Flying
There’s no heat, there’s only one toilet, they have this
Chvrches
★★★ Too Close To The Ground – but
makeshift bar, pay what you want – suggested donation Beyondless even without bigger context
two euros. I played to a thousand people, which is more ★★★★ MATADOR. CD/DL/LP there are flashes of brilliance,
people than I’ve ever played to at one of my solo gigs. It Love Is Dead Copenhagen punks p e
such as the 10-minute live
was amazing, it felt dangerous! That kind of thing would Cowgirl Jam with Promise Of
VIRGIN. CD/DL/LP limits on fourth album
never happen in New York.” The Real. Other snippets show
Glaswegian trio built o Given they songs such as Peace Trail are
Back home, was it difficult to readjust to working? apparent typo reach f were in their maturing nicely in the live
“It was the hardest time I ever had. I was also superstardom. late teens crucible, while the stoned
challenging myself – I bought this Casio keyboard and It’s a pretty when they mumbling of The Turtles’
I started writing songs without lyrics in mind, which is novel break-up released 2011 Happy Together offers a rare
ditty that debut New glimpse of Young actually
something I never normally do. I had a handful of songs
laments the Brigade, it would be worrying having a laugh. Fascinating,
I really liked and it was a real struggle to insert lyrics. if Iceage hadn’t managed to like a whole Dylan Bootleg
I was listening to Stereolab and I was really enjoying fact that you
and your rethink themselves a bit since Series in one disc.
that – so many of the lyrics I just can’t understand, half then. The blowsy Bad Seeds Andy Fyfe
amour’s names will now never
are in French, half in English. I was like, What if I just
be scrawled on bathroom
sound like I’m singing in another language? I thought walls, but that’s the approach
about doing that for a few days. There were also songs of Graffiti, one of many sure-
where I knew I wanted to write about something in footed, instantly memorable
particular – I haven’t done that much in the past. It’s songs on Chvrches’ third
Hard is about going to this nightclub [in Athens] called album Love Is Dead. On Get
Rebound. On Everything, I wanted to poke fun at myself Out, Deliverance and Never
but also take myself very seriously, which is a hard thing Say Die, frontwoman Lauren
to pull off. It’s about not wanting to compromise. I hope Mayberry’s voice is as perfectly
women can relate to that song.” pop as Madonna’s, but rather
more malleable, while band-
There are a lot of communication breakdowns on mates Iain Cook and Martin
Rebound – was that deliberate? Doherty continue to fashion
“I wanted to make an album that sounds like being all kinds of euphoric or gently
alone, that sounds like feeling alienated, that sounds bittersweet synth hooks. With
like I don’t know where I belong. To me it’s a sad record, Greg Kurstin (Adele, Sia) co-
you know. With my previous records, people were like, producing nine of the album’s
‘It’s a break up album!’ And I’m like, It’s not a fucking 13 tracks, The National’s Matt
Steve Gullick

break-up album! It’s just so much more complicated Berninger duetting on My

Enemy, and pretty much every Iceage: no
than that.” tune here (save for stark piano
chill out.
and treated-dialogue segue ii)

88 MOJO
 Breathe deep: Jon
Hopkins prepares for
a psychedelic journey.

Another
Green
World
Organic techno
eminence in search
of a better place.
By Andrew Male.
Jon Hopkins ikes of Brian Eno, Coldplay and
King Creosote, it wasn’t until
Emerald Rush, with its corroded Strings Of Life
keyboards and ghostly female vocals,
★★★★ mmunity that he arrived at a recognises the transcendent joy in these
sound that felt fully immersive and patterns of collapse and recovery, while the
Singularity definable, its synthesis of digital twisted interior rhythms on Neon Pattern Drum
DOMINO. CD/DL/LP and analogue techniques emulating the space suggest Hopkins might well be cranking this
between the physical and the ethereal, the out on some fritzing Heath Robinson
WE ARE living through strange days, caught exterior and the interior. contraption of valves, flywheels and wires. His
between fears of chaos and apocalypse whilst Conceived during a year off in California sense of sonic space lends these tracks an extra
simultaneously buoyed by glimpses of brighter “exploring psychedelic states”, Singularity is dimension, so that by the time we arrive at
futures. In such dissident times, it makes sense also informed by the political chaos of 2016, triumphal techno behemoth Everything
that artists are playing with ideas of utopia. and Hopkins’ attempts to combat the gloom, Connected, the album’s rolling sense of tactile
Recent albums by Björk and David Byrne, plus including Tibetan Tummo meditation and the 3D space is enough to summon up images of
forthcoming releases by Kamasi Washington Wim Hof breathing technique. shaking club walls, and crumbling plaster.
and Janelle Monáe, all ponder imaginary places Meticulously constructed, yet with melodies Ironically, the second half feels brighter,
of perfection, of escape from present day and rhythms born out of improvisation, it’s an more organic, yet somehow less satisfying.
horrors. We can now add Singularity to that album of two halves, moving from euphoric In the choral ambience of Feel First Life, the
commendable list, a sonic realisation of a collapse to an uncertain contentment. playful, Plone-like melodies of Luminous
better world, conceived in the depths of For the first half of the record, ecstatic Beings and the nature sounds and piano
psychedelic experimentation. passages of bright release are bracketed by melody of album closer Recovery, Hopkins is
The roots of Singularity’s world-view began spaces of dissonance and desolation. The moving to a purer space, the imagined karmic
in Hopkins’ 2013 breakthrough LP, Immunity. opening title track pushes a naive house utopia of his psychedelic travelling. Yet, and
Although the Surrey-born producer has been melody into distortion and breakdown, led by a perhaps this is the point, there is something in
making music since 1997, both as solo artist, sub-bass rumble sampled from a thunderstorm Singularity that makes us want to travel back
film music composer and producer with the outside Hopkins’ studio window. Recent single into the ruins and begin the journey again.

plenty of characters to worry stuck to his guns, meaning resulting album is a mainly synth-led Germanic thing,
about here, but all’s not Panic Blooms generates fond R&B/soul covers record, on Yamada’s vaporous vocals low
necessarily lost. Dive takes memories of a recent past. which Rog strives not only to enough in the mix that they’re
what could even be a hopeful While fragmentary doodles restate his hegemony as blues- almost wordless, often just
turn, with the phrase “Lost all Aerosol Weather and One rooted rock vocal nabob but to another texture in the motorik
illusion.” There’s an acceptance More Ear make little show – as on the cracked matrix. While a little slavish
here, but it’s hard won. impression, the elegant Southern soul of Boz Scaggs’ in worship of her influences,
Chris Nelson Permanent Hole and almost- I’ve Got Your Love and the these seven icy near-
baroque album closer Mr No impressive, self-penned instrumentals conjure a
One make the case for still Certified Rose – how age and gripping imaginary thriller
casting ears in this direction. experience have added even in the mind, their glacial
Black Moth Super Hopefully, the wilful Fec will greater grain and texture to his electronic melodies
continue carrying this
Beach House Rainbow particular torch.
pipes. Muscular adaptations of underpinned by taut rhythms,
Stephen Stills’ How Far and like early Human League
★★★ Kieron Tyler Parliament’s Get On Out Of
★★★ jamming with Can. Among
7 Panic Blooms The Rain stray into ’70s the cold-blooded tracks, it’s
RAD CULT. CD/DL/LP Who territory, with stirring the more infernal likes of
BELLA UNION. CD/DL/LP/MC arrangements and hot
Dogged Pennsylvania Death Money, with its woozy
Dreamy duo head back Townshend licks, while his
sticks with what he kn synths, raspy slither and
into the darkness. courageous tilt at Nick Cave
What Black urgent pulse, or the paranoid
The blankets of noise Victoria piano ballad Into My Arms
Moth Super chill of Devil (Yamada chanting
Legrand and Alex Scally wrap roils with heartache that
Rainbow deal “I saw the devil in a violent
listeners in are so big and can’t be faked. Now a new
in has been Who record, please. dream” over tom-tom rumble)
woolly they’ve been known to that really quicken the pulse.
bracketed as Pat Gilbert
obscure their songs’ meaning. The kosmische filigrees within
chillwave or
Words become more contours the polar ambience of closer
in the folds, more enveloping hypnagogic pop. It’s 15 years
since Tom Fec, aka Tobacco, Atlantis are also a high-point.
elements next to massive
began using BMSR as his prime Roger Daltrey Vive La Void Stevie Chick
guitar distortion and
molasses-y snare. Pay No Mind musical vehicle, and Panic ★★★
plays appealingly like The Jesus Blooms is the guise’s sixth ★★★★ Vive La Void
And Mary Chain slowed to 16 album. The vision has As Long As SACRED BONES. CD/DL/LP
rpm. Then, just as you’re remained consistent: I Have You
settling into drowsy twilight, vocodered vocals, wobbly Moon Duo side-project
POLYDOR. CD/DL/LP
out of nowhere, a lyric smacks synths, mushy percussion, delivers cold-blooded
like citrus on the tongue. Drunk random sonic interjections, The voice of The Who, with Kraut-synth vignettes.
In LA is another sheet of sound and songs sounding as if they Townshend on guitar and One half of West Coast neo-
Dave Eringa producing.
Steve Gullick

until Legrand admits, “I am could fall apart at any moment psychedelicists Moon Duo,
loving losing life,” and you – with fuzziness and distance Last month’s MOJO cover story keyboardist Sanae Yamada’s
realise the singer’s on so much cloaking the whole. Where charted As Long As I Have You’s first album as Vive La Void is,
more than a bender. There are others have moved on, Fec has lengthy gestation. The perhaps unsurprisingly, a

MOJO 89
 Ry Cooder:
dreaming on.

with looped and sampled elements help

contemporise his dad’s inherently rootsy
sound. “Joachim’s Orwellian march of the
doomed showed the way”, Cooder has said
of the ghostly, treated-horns dialogue that
underpins his ominous reading of Blind Willie
Johnson’s Nobody’s Fault But Mine, and his
son has one co-write credit and several
co-arrangement credits here.
Shrinking Man’s lightly worn tale of
senior-citizen weight-loss decries the fashion
industry’s use of child labour and has a gnarly,
utterly joyous backbeat; in Gentrification,
a wry, Paul Simon-like story of an inner-city
neighbourhood spooked by the coming of
“the Google men”, one individual’s response
to the news that his building has just been
bought by Johnny Depp is
simply: “Who?”
Cooder’s vocal performances –
all one-take affairs we are told – are
wonderful throughout, and never
more so than on his cover of Alfred

Spirit in the dark

A part-satirical critique of moral “I’m not religious”, Cooder
Reed’s spirited take-down of certain
wealthy Christians’ consumerism,
You Must Unload. But the most
poignant song here is another
tells Piazza as they perch on Cooder original, Jesus And Woody.
decline in the US and beyond. rough-hewn wooden pews, “but there s some Built on tender acoustic guitar figures, and part-
By James McNair. kind of reverence mood that takes hold when improvised in the studio on the day the father
you play these songs.” of Cooder’s daughter-in-law died, it finds Christ
Secular though its vantage point ultimately seeking musical and spiritual consolation from
Ry Cooder is, this album is not without a certain questing, an American folk hero: “So sing me a song about
spiritual dimension. It sees Cooder pay the this land is your land/And fascists bound to
★★★★ utmost respect to towering gospel and blues lose/You were a dreamer Mr Guthrie/And I
The Prodigal Son milestones by the Pilgrim Fathers and The
Stanley Brothers, among others. There are
was a dreamer too.”
Ultimately, The Prodigal Son exhorts us
FANTASY/CAROLINE INTERNATIONAL. CD/DL/LP also some fine new Cooder story-songs to shape up in the humanitarian department,
in which his righteous anger is leavened with Cooder questioning the moral compass
IN THE accompanying text for The Prodigal Son, of certain wealthy believers and would-be
with dry humour and wonderfully
Ry Cooder’s first solo album in six years, New effervescent grooves. ethnic cleansers. His cover of Blind Willie
Orleans writer Tom Piazza imagines stumbling Cooder’s magnificent way with bottleneck Johnson’s rousing gospel entreaty Everybody
across Ry in a clapboard church somewhere on steel is often in evidence, while his son Ought To Treat A Stranger Right acts as a
between Nashville and Knoxville. Joachim’s percussion-rich soundscapes pretty good synopsis.

aka Kidd Funkadelic, who rural Perthshire. While there’s (“I was trying to make an undulations and falsetto vocal
The Dean still shreds like a mutha. a real warmth in their music – anti-folk record”), and features scorched by darkened synth
Ween Group Throw in growling metallic
monster Yellow Pontiac
the richness of cello or
mellotron reflected back by
passages of tinkling, diffuse
improvisation, most notably
tones and agitated rhythm.
He’s likely conscious of Burial
★★★ (“You are what you eat, the deep-grained, burnished on the itchy reverie that and Mulatu Astatke, too.
Rock 2 and the car that you drive… voices of Emily Scott and Rob begins Can’t Ask Why. At H.P.A.C. stands for ‘hyper
SCHNITZEL. CD/LP that ugly-ass yellow fuckin’ St John – there’s also a little heart, though, Deafman Glance pink anxiety complex’ and,
Pontiac”), and it’s a must chill around the edges, lurking is a superbly crafted reiteration as on 2015 debut In Greyscale,
Self-explanatory seco for Ween faith-keepers. in the tape loops under Mud of Walker’s aesthetic, with Njoku’s childhood in a
outing for Ween axem Andrew Perry And Flame or the awl-like the Chicago scene influences violence-ridden Lagos
Ultra-prolific guitar motif whittling away at of 2016’s Golden Sings That boarding school and
grunge-era Get Back Down. Old and new, Have Been Sung given greater subsequent search for peace
stoner satirists sweet and sharp, Welcome prominence. Nate Lepine’s is the backdrop for these
Ween Modern Studies Strangers holds you in an flute is a strong presence taut meditations. Feeling
disbanded in ★★★★ ambiguous, but utterly throughout, in songs whose Weightless is true to its
2012, after enchanting, embrace. nimbleness and intricacy
wayward singer Gene Ween
Welcome Strangers Victoria Segal often recall the post-rock
title, but Remain Calm
FIRE. CD/DL/LP (describing a panic-attack
(aka Aaron Freeman) quit chamber music of Jim
response) builds ominous
to sort out a drugs/alcohol Scottish quartet throw O’Rourke, another Chicagoan
synth-drone waves to a
problem. In between one-off open the doors on exp e who maintains a fine balance
reunions, his spiritual ‘bro’, second album.
Ryley Walker between classicism and piercing climax. Drifting Off
innovation: check, especially, In A Care Powered Balloon
guitarist Dean (né Mickey With their first ★★★★ sits in between those two
Melchiondo) built a studio Deafman Glance the ornate jazz-prog of
album, 2016’s extremes, simultaneously
in Belmar, New Jersey, and Telluride Speed.
Swell To Great, DEAD OCEANS. CD/DL/LP becalmed and uneasy, full
now the torrent of puerile John Mulvey
Modern Questing guitar maest of space and dread, as if the
pastiche flows afresh, backed Studies made goes further out – wit only way to escape the perils
by the old Ween touring a venerable jazz flute! on earth is to gaze at the stars.
combo. On paper, the Victorian harmonium their Tony Njoku Martin Aston
repertoire leans a tad heavily musical familiar, a very A contrarian
on covers and instrumentals tangible way of linking spirit, Ryley ★★★
this time. However, Gerry & the folkloric past to their Walker’s desire H.P.A.C.
The Pacemakers’ Merseybeat experimental pop present. to subvert his MYSTIC SONS. DL/LP
weepie Don’t Let The Sun This second album, Welcome reputation – as
Catch You Crying is a prodigious, Soul-tronic salvation
Strangers, widens the scope,
ingeniously revamped as a folkish singer-songwriter from Brit-Nigerian winner
not only welcoming in friends
goofy Stones, lunar-flipped they haven’t met yet but pitched somewhere between of 2016 Green Man
country-rocker, and vocal- deepening their sound with Bert Jansch and John Martyn ‘Rising’ competition.
free Sunset Over Belmar brass, strings and analogue – is never quite as effective as Tony Njoku cites Anohni, Björk
Bryce Duffy

showcases Melchiondo’s synths, resulting in songs that he perhaps hopes. Solo album and Arca as inspirations but
secret weapon – P-Funk suggest a muddy-hemmed number four comes couched he evokes an Afro-futurist
axeman Michael Hampton, Jim O’Rourke lost in a field in in a lot of conceptual rhetoric James Blake, his blissful

90 MOJO
 Just Like A Summer Cloud sit Mark Peters with the singer wryly ruminat-
nicely against the hopeful ing about his own demise:
balladry of A Lifeboat. Still in ★★★ “I don’t wanna be the last man
their early twenties, the duo is Innerland standing/On second thought
primed for great, great things. SONIC CATHEDRAL. CD/LP/DL
maybe I do.” In Bad Breath,
Andy Fyfe one of the funnier examples
Engineers’ prime-mov of country cornballery, Willie
deftly creates site-spe sings “Bad breath is better
pictures-in-sound. than no breath at all.” But the
Lake Street Dive The first solo album’s masterpiece is Some-
★★★ album from thing You Get Through, one of
Engineers the greatest songs about loss
Free Yourself Up ever written: “It’s not some-
main man
NONESUCH. CD/DL/LP Van Morrison with Hammond
Johnny Irion Skilful performances
Mark Peters
organist and trumpeter Joey
thing you get over/But it’s
something you get through.”
attracted
★★★★ ignite a strong set of attention as a limited-edition DeFrancesco (and the latter’s Be assured, the tears the song
Driving Friend ’70s-influenced soul-pop. cassette last December, so this band) in a thrilling club jazz yields are cathartic.
RTE 8. CD/DL/LP Few singers sound happier leap to widespread availability setting. Morrison, clearly Michael Simmons
voicing frustration than with extra tracks is welcome. enthused by DeFrancesco’s
Californian musical vibrant feel for playing the B3,
Rachael Price. The frontwoman Elements of what he is known
journeyman goes from folk elevates his game on a set
for bleed through: the foggi-
to rock to Americana. of Massachusetts quartet Lake
Street Dive exudes breeziness ness inherent to Engineers’ weighted equally between Wooden Shjips
Two years ago, Johnny Irion and grit at every turn. She has post-shoegazing stance, the blues standards and visits to ★★★★
put together a band, US glistening drift brought by his own back catalogue. All
Elevator, to play the rock songs
an especially agile voice, able
Saints Day from Morrison’s
V.
to navigate tricky phrases the their sometime keyboard
THRILL JOCKEY. CD/DL/LP
that he’d been neglecting way a race-car driver hugs a player Ulrich Schnauss, also 1991 Hymns To The Silence is a
since he partnered with curve. As always, the music a past collaborator with lively reworking, with blasts First album in five yea
Sarah Lee Guthrie and made on LSD’s sixth studio album Peters. Yet Innerland speaks its of horns and choppy keys from San Francisco-rai
five folk albums. During a follows suit, bouncing with own language. Not in words, wedded to Morrison’s gruff, Portland-resident psy .
break in recording that band’s honed ’70s pop-soul melodies as it’s all-instrumental, but soulful vocal. Titus Turner via Set to a
self-titled debut, he started buoyed by fleet instrument- through eight focused tracks Ray Charles’s Sticks And motorik
writing the songs that led to ation. At the same time, the bringing to mind the non- Stones is an ebullient swing rhythm, open-
this album, recording them on irked lyrics make sharp vocal aspects of Eno’s Another instructed by Jimmy Smith er Eclipse sets
a 24-track vintage Studer tape observations about sexual Green World, Vini Reilly at his and the Blue Note school; things off in
machine. Not so much politics (Dude), the toil of most hard-edged, and mid- Memphis Slim’s Every Day I fine style, fast
American rock, more self-improvement (Shame period Popul Vuh. Whatever Have The Blues and Guitar and high with a relaxed feel
Americana – 10 engaging Shame Shame) and the the touchstones, this aural Slim’s The Things I Used To Do and a long, liquid guitar solo.
songs played with a band loneliness of the inner life map of north and north-west could be live at the Flamingo. But the fifth Wooden Shjips
that includes Neal Casal and (Baby, Don’t Leave Me Alone England is defined by an Lois Wilson album soon throttles to
members of the Dawes, Wilco With My Thoughts). The angularity which can only have present a group confident and
and Mother Hips. Some of group’s double-messages evolved from a background relaxed in what they’re doing.
them played a part in US coalesce most finely on the in a band: May Mill drives Most songs are between six
Elevator, so it’s no surprise to few occasions they pause for forward, album opener Twenty Willie Nelson and seven minutes long,
hear some of that album’s ballads, like the aching I Can Bridges rocks. Impressionistic; ★★★★ relying on a basic groove that
Burritos, Beatles and Laurel Change. But the nostalgic forceful too. allows the musicians to relax
Canyon moments on this melodicism, and relentless Kieron Tyler Last Man Standing
and stretch out. All is texture
album too (Palm Springs; pep, of the rest will thrill
LEGACY RECORDINGS. CD/DL/LP
and mood, with synthesizers
Salvage The Day; Angels Fly). even those who miss what At age 85, Willie’s writi and acoustic guitar augment-
Fine mid-tempo country-rock lies below. and singing on peak f
with a tinge of nostalgia and a Jim Farber
Van Morrison ing the customary acidic, SF-
Following last style psych guitar patch. The
sense of summer. And Joey year’s God’s vocals are high, and buried in
Sylvie Simmons
DeFrancesco Problem Child, the overall mix. Backwards
Willie has guitars vie with the synths to
★★★★ released his create a hazy, upbeat feel on
Kacy & Clayton You’re Driving second great songs like the melodic Already
★★★★ Me Crazy album in a row, each track Gone and raw first single
SONY LEGACY. CD/DL/LP co-written with producer Staring At The Sun. V. creates
The Siren’s Song Buddy Cannon. It’s never mor- a sense of space, both mental
NEW WEST. CD/DL/LP
Blues/jazz covers follow bid, but mortality is a running and physical, as well as the
up to 2017’s Roll With The theme. Girded with a New idea of an alternate perception
Canadian cousins com Punches and Versatile.
down from the hills fo Orleans second line rhythm, that is the calling card of West
Tweedy-helmed secon His thirty-ninth album, and his the title track pays tribute to Coast psychedelia.
third in seven months, places late pals Waylon and Merle, Jon Savage
Second
cousins Kacy
Anderson and
Clayton Linthi-
cum have
known each
other all their lives, growing
up in isolated rural Saskatch-
ewan. Their easy familiarity is
evident throughout The Siren’s
Song, with its beautiful mix of
Kacy’s crystalline vocals and
Clayton’s inventive, deep-
groove country guitar. Moving
away from the acoustic duo
sound of their debut, Strange
Country, the addition of a
rhythm section adds warmth
and depth, something pro-
ducer Jeff Tweedy knows
plenty about. ’60s folk revival
and gothic cosmic country
join together seamlessly,
as if The Seekers were singing
Nick Cave’s songs instead of
the other way around. The
quiet domestic desperation
Shervin Lainez

of deceptively jaunty The

Light Of Day and
the sunny, coun- Lake Street Dive, with
trypolitan vibes of agile singer Rachael
Price (second left): grit
and relentless pep.
 produces and provides guitar here). She has
spent seven years observing, absorbing and
making valued friends, determined the
transition from debut to second album was
going to be flawless.
Rokia Traoré, with whom Diawara is often
compared, released a similar guitar-and-voice
debut but then stumbled when she repeated
that act for the follow-up; it took a spectacular
live show before the second phase of her career
began. Diawara has got the live show in the
bag, now here comes the album. And it’s a
set that drags a whole continent behind it,
screaming: “You can’t ignore us any more. You
can’t hide us behind that world-music tab. You
can no longer imagine that we are some other
Fatoumata
Diawara: she’s
form of entertainment.”
got something Fenfo (which translates roughly as
to say. “something to say”) defies simple
abels: it could hardly be more
African, more pop, more urban or
more soulful. Its provenance is
woven through it – on guitar, in the

Fighting talk
hythms, with the use of kora and
kamel ngoni – but never made
explicit. The lyrics are in Bambara,
but who in their right mind could get
hung up on that? To a young African,
With her second album, had landed. Prior to that, she
was an actor, a street-theatre brought up on imported hip-hop,
Mali’s ‘most likely to’ performer and part of Oumou R&B, pop and soul, plus whatever
delivers a knockout blow. Sangaré’s band. Even before anybody had heard music could be made at home, nothing is off
of her, she had a CV that suggested quality and limits, the entire artistic palette is there to be
By David Hutcheon. charisma. Critics, this one included, fell over used. And Diawara exploits that uniqueness
themselves to declare that a new African star with aplomb.
Fatoumata Diawara would be among us very shortly. She understands duende, feels saudade and
But then came… Well, not quite nothing, but has experienced the blues, but she wraps them
★★★★ a semi-silence as Diawara put ascendancy on
hold. She pulled together an all-star session
in a welcoming smile that comes from the heart,
and then – because she knows how the political
Fenfo protesting Islamist activity in Mali; she recorded wind blows wherever this album may take her
WAGRAM/MONTUNO. CD/DL/LP a low-key duet album with the Cuban pianist – presents the title of Negue Negue as a chant
Roberto Fonseca; she appeared with Songhoy and dares you to sing it loudly.
IN 2011, when Mali’s Fatoumata Diawara Blues, David Crosby and Africa Express; she Seven years, it turns out, ain’t but a blink
released her debut, Fatou on World Circuit, guested on albums by Bobby Womack and the of the eye when you’re waiting for a superstar
there was no question that a significant talent French superstar Matthieu Chedid (who to arrive.

a roughness and free- resembles a fragment of Syd perceptive Robert Forster first album in four years should
wheeling lack of structure to Barrett’s cracked eggshell likened him to Antony And The put paid to that. Peopled by
Imajghane that other bands brain, spare and tranquil as Johnsons mixing “landscape runaways, lost children, and
might edit out, and Moctar’s Young Marble Giants; Ducks’ and animal life and family into “damaged goods bitten by the
instinctive feel for reggae atonal vocal, needling guitar spiritual reverie”). But this uses hounds of love”, Outsiders is
comes through on several and giddy rhythm is infuriating string and brass arrangements, a notably mature-sounding
tracks – as does his love of and yet uncannily gorgeous. worked out by Gurrumul and record full of gnarly guitars,
apparently stumbling over a Twilight Zone-esque eeriness his collaborator, Michael scrunchy Hammond organ
groove and then letting it take and sampled frogs expand the Hohnen, to make a stronger and tuneful innocence lost.
him wherever it wants. necromancy, while Le Bon’s art-rock case for the singer “Maybe there’s no grand
David Hutcheon more accessible Gallic/Gaelic (think Street Hassle, design”, concedes the chorus
poptones surface in Real of Sweet Divide, wherein
Radiohead’s Burn The Witch, or
Outside. How she continues Romeo and Michele Stodart’s
Bombino to turn apparent whimsy Maria McKee’s I’m Not
harmonies delight yet again,
★★★ Drinks into profundity borders on Listening). The title track,
while Lost Children, comprised
the miraculous. previously heard on his debut,
★★★★ only of ‘50s-tone guitar grit
Deran Martin Aston is transformed; the work put
and lonesome vocal, is a
PARTISAN. CD/DL/LP Hippo Lite into newer songs suggests the
remarkable performance.
DRAG CITY. CD/DL/LP/MC next step could have been a
The Saharan axe hero who full-blown Aborigine For all the exuding of hard-
retains his rough edges. Second uninhibited ps Gurrumul won emotional intelligence,
symphony. Immerse yourself
trip from Welsh-Ameri there are hopeful moments,
Of all the second-generation ★★★★ in this, the countless layers
alliance. too. One could imagine the
Tamasheq bluesmen, Omara have untold secrets to give up
Moctar seems the least Drinks aren’t as Djarimirri (Child Of over time.
late Glen Campbell eating up
beholden to the strictures his far out as Cate The Rainbow) the vocal melody of Webb-
David Hutcheon
peers have applied to their Le Bon’s semi- meets-Bacharach infusion
SKINNYFISH. CD/DL/LP
music to keep it authentic. improvised Power Lines, while the muted
Perhaps that’s due to his Niger sideline Final act of the all-time train-beat country of Wayward
upbringing (rather than BANANA but bestselling indigenou The Magic is just divine.
Australian. James McNair
further north in the Sahara, her partnership with Tim Numbers
where most of the ‘White Fence’ Presley is still Finished
internationally known bands more freeform than either’s shortly before ★★★★
originated) but it does put solo work. Recorded in remote his death last Outsiders
clear blue water between this St. Hippolyte Du Fort (hence July, the fifth ROLE PLAY. CD/DL/LP
fifth official Bombino album Hippo Lite) in France, a town album by Dr G
and Tinariwen et al. The apple whose menfolk were Yunupingu is The Stodart and Gannon
doesn’t fall too far, of course, decimated in WWII, the follow- a quite stunning farewell. siblings explore reality’s bite
and well-versed doubters are up to 2015 debut Hermits On His first two releases put on fifth album.
Aida Muluneh

entitled to wonder if they Holiday is suffused with as the listener in familiar Gross simplification though
haven’t already amassed a few much sadness as madness. territory – multi-layered it is, many have long thought
tracks called Midiwan from the Whirring, elliptical and vocals over guitar and bass The Magic Numbers perma-
Tuareg stable. However, there’s feverish, Blue From The Dark accompaniment (the ever- smiling innocents – but their

92 MOJO
 Christina Vantzou Though nocturnal and reptil- Richard Youngs
ian, Hit On All Sixess scores top
★★★ marks for urgency, and an ★★★★
No. 4 atmospheric toxicity you’ll wal- Belief
KRANKY. CD/DL/LP
low in for 46 minutes. Above O GENESIS. CD/DL/LP
all, it’s got tunes: Sleepless
Belgium-based composer’s Allies sweeps by with all the LP No.140 from the Bri
fourth LP of exquisite subterranean majesty of a folk-art factotum; his f
ambient explorations. top-of-the-night Batcave clas- for Tim Burgess’s label
Like the sic, while Don’t Die Yet closes Not even Rich-
soundtrack to out with swingeing intensity, à ard Youngs
a threshold la The Cure’s Pornography. owns all of
dream-state, Audibly inspired by the dark- Richard
Vantzou’s ness its author has glimpsed, Youngs’
fourth LP this album’s triumph is thus all recordings. For
begins with a distant ecstatic the more potent. nearly 30 years, this 51-year-
cry, a blissful fall through dark Andrew Perry old Glasgow-based musician
galaxies underscored by heavy and librarian has released an
machine hum and spectral astonishing run of rich, strange
Ligeti strings. Born of collabo- and fearless LPs that range
ration with fellow Kranky com- from epic voice-and-guitar
posers Steve Hauschildt and laments to discordant elec-
John Also Bennett, plus Ex- tronic experiments, always
Dirty Projector Angel Dera- rooted in ancient traditions of
doorian, No. 4 is a warmer, the ballad and the dirge. For
more cohesive work than his debut release on Burgess’s
2015’s No. 3. For this concep- boutique label, Young weaves
tual journey through inner
11 modern blues of frail long-
space, Vantzou utilises piano,
harp, vibraphone, voice, syn-
ing around backwards guitar, Eric Chenaux
thesizers, and percussion (plus mumbling bass and home-
the strings of Belgium’s Echo Thievery made percussion, his chanted ★★★★
Collective) to travel landscapes Corporation lyrics like pale fragile spells for Slowly Paradise
of sleep and memory. The escaping the 21st century. CONSTELLATION. CD/DL/LP
whole is deep, immersive and ★★★★ Youngs fans should also check
Toronto improv guitarist returns
tranquilising, yet it’s tracks like Treasures From out Endless Futures, a RSD
with another LP of peculiar love
Lava and Garden Of Forking release on Glass Records
The Temple Redux, comprising 11 tracks of
balladry.
Paths, where choral female
voices call out and a pulsing
ESL. CD/DL/LP “reimagined punk rock”, A RASPBERRY. A wet-lipped Stylophone raspberry. That s the
bass line cuts through the Superior selection from including a transportive, side- distinct sound Eric Chenaux chooses to lead off his gorgeous new
ambient fog, that really veteran Washington DC long vocal improvisation over LP with. The song shackled with this electronic flatulence is
shine out. groove bandits. bass, drums and tremolo gui- called Bird & Moon and finds Chenaux singing, in a sweet
Andrew Male tar, a portrait of Youngs caught Garfunkel soar, over warped wah wah guitar, about how
Treasures From The Temple – “Moonlight needs a little sky/To make the warmest light”.
the eleventh album from between “faux halcyon days”
and the “space-filling, content- Chenaux is undoubtedly strange, but he also knows his music
Washington DC’s Thievery works because of that nervous tension between his free,
Corporation – grew out of providing” present.
Deadcuts offcuts and mixes from 2017’s Andrew Male deconstructed guitar playing, his melodic song structures and
that frail, Chet Baker falsetto. At times reminiscent of Derek
★★★★ accomplished Temple Of I & I, Bailey’s Ballads LP, with vocals by Arthur Russell, the songs on
Hit On All Sixess recorded at Gee Jam Studios in Slowly Paradise are slow love songs, but slow love songs that,
SPEEDOWAX. CD/DL/LP Jamaica. Now 23 years into Slug thanks to Chenaux’s playing, suggest an impermanence at the
their career, producers Rob heart of all romance, a chaos at life’s core.
Former Senseless Thin Garza and Eric Hilton plus a ★★★★
frontman Mark Keds g
post-punk goth!
supporting cast of toasters HiggledyPiggledy
and chanteuses again create MEMPHIS INDUSTRIES. CD/DL/LP ALSO RELEASED
In amongst their distinctive sound,
widely (self-) updating those late-20th Dizzying and danceab
documented century genres, downtempo prog-funk precision fr Alvin Lucier Gemini Sisters
drug problems, and lounge. Music To Make You Sunderland. ★★★★ ★★★★
grunge-era Stagger is what the Thieveries Like Field Criss-Cross/Hanover Gemini Sisters
pop-punk do best, waves of electric piano Music’s Brewis BLACK TRUFFLE. DL/LP PSYCHIC TROUBLES TAPES. DL/MC
pin-up Keds hasn’t been idle over dubby horns, nagging brothers – with
since his band’s demise in ’95. congas and an insistent Two recent works This new
whom he
After briefly serving as The breakbeat. Voyage Libre by the experimental collaboration
collaborated American between High
Wildhearts’ second guitarist, (performed by LouLou on his 2015 composer. In Criss- Aura’d’s John
he’s fronted numerous groups Ghelichkhani) is yé-yé meeting debut – Slug, ostensibly the Cross, Oren Kolodij and
(Jolt, The Lams, etc), but with OMD; Water Under The Bridge nom de plume of Ian Black, Ambarchi and Stephen O’Malley Zelienople’s Matt Christensen is
Deadcuts he breaks fresh sounds like a lost glacial new appears intent on dismantling create hallucinatory sound wave full-force, tripped out, sonic
ground. Forgoing excitable romance, a blend of icy pop music and reconfiguring it dialogues between amplifiers, bliss; multi-tracked voices over
Buzzcocks-isms, this second electronics and Natalia into new shapes. There’s a while on Hanover, Lucier New Age harmonics, slack-key
album’s opener, Single, crashes Clavier’s emotional vocal. hard funk edge at the heart of references instruments in a 1918 guitar thrashing, bush-fire
in with the gothily flanged “Where have all the good tunes these explorations that man- photo of his father’s jazz band distortion and tumbling jazz
guitars of peak-period Sisters gone?” toaster Notch muses on ages to summon the image of for a swirling, ectenic drone drums, all tethered to boom-
Of Mercy, Keds voicing in the Waiting Too Long; Treasures King Crimson jamming in a of violin, sax and bowed sounding bass. No drugs
gravelly rasp of The Psyche- From The Temple has plenty. vibraphone around lone necessary.
drafty Sunderland warehouse,
delic Furs’ Richard Butler. Daryl Easlea piano notes.
and a complexity that sug-
gests a one-man Mackem Delphine Dora
Mahavishnu Orchestra. The C. Diab ★★★★
staccato riffing and swirling of ★★★ Eudaimon
opener No Heavy Petting is Exit Rumination THREE:FOUR. DL/LP
brilliantly disorientating; Gib- INJAZERO. CD/DL/LP Having previously
berish is slick psych-disco Deeply in tune with interpreted the
almost akin to MGMT, with the wild surrounds poetry of Walt
deft percussion and subtle of his Port Hardy Whitman and Sylvia
string arrangements through- island home, this Plath, Paris-born
out. George Clinton in full fourth release from pianist and vocal improviser Dora
cosmic Funkadelic mode is the Canadian experimental now turns her hand to the
perhaps Black’s closest refer- musician uses manipulated mystical neo-Romanticism of
ence point; remarkable for a bowed guitar and trumpet to Kathleen Raine. Dora’s ethereal,
JB Deucher, Jen Maler

man rumoured to work in a call create wild storms, chill drones overlapping, sweetly melancholic
centre in a recession-hit north- and dissonant wails. Music for vocals and cascading piano free
Light fingers: Thievery dark landscapes; like a modern, Raine’s words from the page,
ern town. Admirably obtuse,
Corporation’s Eric Hilton electronic scion of The Bothy investing them with a wild
Slug put the odd into prog Band and Boys Of The Lough. ecstatic fire. AM
(left) and Rob Garza. odyssey with style.
Ben Myers

MOJO 93
 Ash own name for crepuscular, On Once Upon a Time, Canty Stephen
symphonic ambience. In The reminds us he can pour as
★★★ Fields Of Nothing is his third much soul into gentle snare Malkmus
Islands own-name outing, a sound- taps as he can into avalanche & The Jicks
INFECTIOUS MUSIC. CD/DL/LP
track for the simultaneous drum rolls. Welcome back,
loneliness and serenity felt boys, we missed you. ★★★★
Album number seven f in isolation while the outside Chris Nelson Sparkle Hard
the Downpatrick, Cou world rages and implodes. DOMINO. CD/DL/LP
Down-formed trio. Lengthy elegiac drifts include
Unblinded, 11 minutes of Seventh Jicks-backed
With Tim
undulating threnodies of from Pavement front
Wheeler now
piano and strings that max-out Kim Gordon guests.
living in NYC,
Rick McMurray third album; a feast of succinct, the lonely/serene paradox. As well as
based in Edin- provocative powerpop that There is also one passage of blending lin-
burgh, and mangles the absurdities of vocals, during Far From Home, guistic ele-
Mark Hamilton in Hoboken, modern life through a blackly which echoes Bell Gardens’ gance and
the days when Ash were proxi- comic lyrical mill. Whether mournful deployment of pedal musical levity,
mate enough to record and satirically skewering the safety steel, where the grievous likes Sparkle Hard
release a single every two of conformity (More Of The of “If you felt alive, I couldn’t affirms Stephen Malkmus’s
weeks for a year are long gone. Same), music industry sexism tell, it’s coming to an end” increasingly contemplative
That said, Islands does a decent (Smile!) and single parenthood seem aimed at himself, power- approach. The songwriter dials
job of re-animating the kind of (Jeannie Becomes A Mom) or less to affect change. Orquesta Akokán down his flippant rock lexicog-
urgent, powerpop nous that throwing nods to Kate Bush Martin Aston ★★★★ rapher persona from the get-
fired ubiquitous 2001 single (Talk), Kim Wilde (Cry!) and go, as Cast Off’s opening piano
Burn Baby Burn (witness True
Orquesta Akokán chords establish a troubled
Rilo Kiley (Soul No. 5), Rose has
DAPTONE. CD/DL/LP
Story and Annabel here). developed a knack for penning mood that pervades even the
Other highlights include Buzz- sparky, sarky, swaggering
The Messthetics José ‘Pepito’ Gómez leads groovy choogle of Bike Lane,
kill, a Ramones-ish grump choruses that resonate long ★★★ the mambo revival with his a venomous satire of the 2015
about a thwarted hook-up that after her smoky tones have intergenerational big band. killing of Freddie Gray by Balti-
has The Undertones’ Damian faded. Loner is the sound of
The Messthetics more police – “Kick off your
DISCHORD. CD/DL/LP The first track, Mambo Rapido,
O’Neill and Mickey Bradley on her undoubted talent turned begins softly with a piano jackboots, it’s time to unwind”
backing vocals, and Confes- feral. It’s a wonderful, Fugazi’s rhythm section arpeggio, then a scream of – and then bleeds into the
sions In The Pool, which gets rollicking beast. rides again. brass; sax, trumpet and pointedly titled Middle Ameri-
pleasing mileage from cascad- Andy Cowan When the trombone dance atop ca (“Men are scum, I won’t
ing synth arpeggios. There is, polyrhythms driven by the tres deny”), a regretful, ultra-melo-
world needs
alas, something much more cubano, cowbell and congos. dious late-VU swoon. There’s a
’em most,
formulaic-sounding about Over this percussive wall of cosmic twinkle throughout,
All That I Have Left, but for at Kenneth James Fugazi return.
Well, Fugazi’s sound, vocalist José ‘Pepito’ brightest amid Kite’s almighty
least 42 of its 46 minutes,
Islands is an invigorating place
Gibson drummer Gómez calls out to the guitar ascension, or the
Brendan Canty and bassist dancefloor. It’s a thrilling Can-go-jive-talking exit Let
to be marooned. ★★★ Joe Lally have returned, and statement of intent by the Them Eat Vowels, while Refute,
James McNair In The Fields they’ve brought with them massed ranks of the 20-strong a bluegrass duet with Kim
Of Nothing freak-out guitar whiz Anthony Akokan ensemble – Akokan Gordon, leans more to pathos
KOMPAKT. CD/DL/LP Pirog. Oh, and they’re an meaning ‘from the heart’ in than mischief. The PG Wode-
house of the indie generation
Caroline Rose Haunting soundtrack t
instrumental band. We’ll take Yoruba. Recorded live over
has scarcely dealt a finer hand.
it. The Messthetics is a short set, three days in Havana’s state-
★★★★ fracturing America. run Areito studio, their self- Keith Cameron
long on detail. Mythomania
Loner Gibson lives, opens with the rhythm section titled debut recreates the
NEW WEST. CD/DL/LP/MC recluse-style, in familiar crack form, but carnival, colour and spectacle
deep in the of the ’40s and ’50s Cuban
Offbeat New York roots California
charts its own path in short
order. Its sounds conjure a dance band era, when Arsenio
The Third Eye
rocker forsakes folky navel- forest, where sense of soldiering forward Rodríguez, Pérez Prado and Foundation
gazing for peppy pop. isolation is through the woods at night, Beny Moré were kings. As with
Disillusioned by the presumably a creative tool; his only to be surprised by UFO Daptone’s soul projects, the
★★★
troubadour life after touring known recording aliases cur- screeches from Pirog’s guitar. emphasis is on authenticity Wake The Dead
2014’s twangy I Will Not Be rently stand at 13, most recog- Serpent Tongue speeds by like and integrity and the result is ICI D’AILLEURS. CD/DL/LP
Afraid, Caroline Rose dropped nisably Bell Gardens, his cham- a time-lapse nature documen- spot-on; an exhilarating Matt Elliott’s beat-driv
anchor, took stock and started ber-Americana alliance with tary, while The Inner Ocean’s evocation that would have had take on the post-classi
messing with synths. The Stars Of The Lid’s Brian expansive soundscapes under- New York’s Palladium rocking. sound.
results are writ large on this McBride, while reserving his score that we are utterly alone. Lois Wilson
In the later
’90s, Bristol’s
Third Eye
Foundation
filled a fugged-
out space that
had been vacated by My
Bloody Valentine, welding
as they did untethered noise
to drum’n’bass rhythms and,
deep in the mix, the most
ghostly of melodies. After
a run of more songwriterly
albums under his own name,
Wake The Dead is Matt Elliott’s
first Third Eye album in eight
years. Those mournful, crypto-
classical refrains are more
prominent nowadays, so much
so that the title track, espe-
cially, resembles a cross
between Gavin Bryars and
William Basinski. But there are
also plenty of Elliott’s trade-
mark banshee chorales, and
a re-engagement with beat
science: clattery, martial hip-
hop derivatives beneath the
stately processionals; and a
chopped, sampled shout of
“Hate the fucking pigs” con-
Credit in here

necting That’s Why to the

aggro-minimalism of Chicago’s
footwork scene.
John Mulvey

Orquesta Akokán:
Havana blast.
 Hello spaceboys:
Arctic Monkeys dare
to leave the capsule.

fade-out/Call me when no
one’s around”), and Slide,
which is just piano, voice and
ballad, Bay without the effects.
Lucy O’Brien

Leon Bridges
★★★
Good Thing
COLUMBIA. CD/DL/LP
Courtney Barnett Texan soul revivalist e
off on the old-timey
★★★★ detailing, for the bett
Tell Me How Bridges’ 2015
You Really Feel debut Coming
MILK/MARATHON. CD/DL/LP Home was the
Celebrate! Success has not work of a man
spoiled the Melbourne- with the gift
based singer-songwriter. for the ersatz;
its era-perfect soul confec-
Courtney Barnett’s first post- tions had dust from the old
breakthrough set betrays a Soulsville studio running
little of the shock of her newly
through their veins. But pains-
famous status – Nameless,
takingly recreating the past
Faceless plays less radio-
swiftly becomes a creative
friendly than usual, City Looks
dead end, and his second
Pretty evokes the jet-laggy
full-length, while still con-
displacement of returning
nected to soul’s sacred well-
home a considerably bigger
deal than when you left – but spring, frames his artisanal

One giant leap

this second full-length is no songcraft in more modernist
In Utero-esque backlash. For settings. As such, the Mem-
one thing, while I’m Not Your phian smoulder of Shy con-
Mother, I’m Not Your Bitch nects Al Green ache to ‘90s
feels more ferocious than swing, while the minimalist
Barnett’s entire back downtempo of Lions suggests
D’Angelo crooning from a nest
Steel City superstars land to Orchestron to Dolceola.
catalogue, the rest of the LP is As ever, though, it’s on the mike that
characterised by an effortless of broken beats, and is quite on the moon. It’s quite he truly shines. Breaking free (mostly)
pop knack suggesting even lovely. Just as Leon’s litany of
swoonsome romancing begins
some trip, says Tom Doyle. from his trademark songs of lust and arch
her snores are laced with observation, he uses a confessional
classic indie-rock hooks. For to feel sweet but insubstantial,
another, Barnett’s no prisoner along comes the closing Geor-
gia To Texas, a jazzy, gospel-
Arctic Monkeys opening line in Star Treatment (“I just
wanted to be one of The Strokes”) to then
of her own darkness: her
anxieties are balanced by soaked autobiography that’ll ★★★★ spin a time-warping, fantastical tale
resilient wit, her songs steal your breath away, and wherein he paints himself as a cabaret
emotionally anchored but confirm that brilliance really is
within his grasp.
Tranquility Base singer who was “a little too wild in the
held aloft by something akin ‘70s”, as the exotica echoes and twinkles
to hopefulness. Sunday Roast’s Stevie Chick Hotel & Casino around him.
winning invocation, “Don’t DOMINO. CD/DL/LP
come with your arms It’s brilliant and surprising stuff, which
swinging, throw them around EACH ARCTIC Monkeys album since their goes on to succeed in making oblique
me”, sums up an album that’s
Parquet Courts socio-political commentary both vivid
blockbuster 2006 debut has felt like an act
warm, honest, awash with ★★★ of escapology – wriggle out of the and fun: Golden Trunks riffs on Feel Flows
tuneage, never corny, and Wide Awake! from Surf’s Up and imagines the leader of
really rather marvellous. straightjacket first, then break your way
ROUGH TRADE. CD/DL/LP out of the water tank. 2013’s AM saw them the free world as a wrestler in gilded
Stevie Chick
NYC punks enlist Dan emerging to the sound of a standing budgie smugglers; American Sports looks
Mouse for sixth long- r. ovation: a UK Number 1, US Top 10, and back down to Earth to see an “aura over
The election such a strong set of songs that it yielded the battleground states”. The album’s title
James Bay victory of six singles. is an imagined lunar leisure facility whose
★★★ Donald Trump For their next trick, the Monkeys have parent song features a very friendly
Electric Light prompted the ventured into space, with a thematic, if receptionist named Mark, keen to help
REPUBLIC. CD/DL/LP solace that at not exactly conceptual, near-future sci-fi direct your call.
least we’d get But it’s in album standout Four Out Of
Shouty choruses alter some good punk records out lounge/soul album whose influences
with clever R&B pop o - mirror Alex Turner’s listening tastes circa Five that the gentrification of the surface
of the travesty, as we had in
winner’s second albu the Reagan-Thatcher era. Wide the second Last Shadow Puppets record, of the moon is fully realised: a yacht rock
After the Awake! is exactly what some 2016’s Everything You’ve Come To Expect. Moonage Daydream tongue-twister with
open-mike had in mind. Unsurprisingly, it Throughout, there are shades of Serge 10cc harmonies where “cute new places
acoustic feel of flies the Wire and Minutemen Gainsbourg (clipped ‘60s bass), David keep on popping up” and the narrator’s
his 2015 debut flags high. More surprising are Axelrod (rolling grooves), The Beach Boys taqueria is getting “rave reviews”. The
Chaos And The occasional nods to funk and (watery, staccato Leslie speaker organ notion that it may well become an arena/
Calm, Bay ‘60s bubblegum. Almost Had festival singalong is highly amusing.
cranks it really high for the To Start A Fight/In And Out Of stabs) and various hues of David Bowie
Patience bolts a song with circa 1973-75. All in all, the Monkeys’ sixth long-player
follow-up. The psychological
wrestling of his first album is vocals reminiscent of ’80s These tracks have their origins in a is a bold move. While there’s every chance
replaced by foot-stomping hardcore onto another whose series of home-recorded Turner tapes that it will shed some fans, being a transitional
desire, from the hard, glinting chorus lead-in would have have been embellished by the other album like Humbug (though not as hard-
rush of Pink Lemonade to the worked for The Monkees. Monkeys – or not (two songs don’t even going as that record’s heavy rifferama was)
slow-core distortion of the Using the passive voice feature the band’s rhythm section) – and and basically not AM 2, it buys the group a
self-explanatory Wasted On throughout undercuts the lot of freedom. As Arctic Monkeys’ head
long-time producer James Ford, plus
Each Other. Co-produced with Courts’ punch. Witness:
Paul Epworth (Adele) and “Those who find discomfort in guests including Zach Dawes (Mini album, it’s a thing that no one envisaged
long-term collaborator Jon your goals of liberation will be Mansions) and James coming from those callow,
Green, this ambitious record issued no apology.” OK, fine, Righton (formerly of Fred Perry-wearing youths
loses subtlety in the grand but good on ’em for amending Klaxons). Nonetheless, the of more than a decade ago.
Springsteen-ish gestures of that wordiness with, “And fuck spotlight stays trained on n shifting their base to
Andrew Cotterill

songs like Just For Tonight. Tom Brady,” a much clearer Turner, as he whirls around in the moon, from here they
Bay fares better with the kiss-off to America’s most his private studio, moving could go anywhere.
looped, crunchy soul and hated sports star and noted To infinity and beyond.
from baritone guitar to piano
more nuanced lyrics of Fade Trump-endorser.
Out (“You only love me in the Chris Nelson

MOJO 95
 lie in the fun and games of
market days and local fairs
(Unison, Shandai Ya).
David Hutcheon

Lindi Ortega
★★★
Liberty
SHADOWBOX MUSIC. CD/DL/LP
Alt-country singer tur
psychobilly pulp quee
Less than two
years ago,
Lindi Ortega
had decided to
quit music.
Dubbed the
‘dark star’ of country, the
Canadian’s traditional twang
mixed with punky attitude
Idris Ackamoor had ensured a loving fan-base
& The Pyramids: and award nominations; but
hieroglyphically that didn’t pay the rent.
inclined. Burned out, she started writ-
ing her farewell song – and
glimpsed a new direction. She
left her label, scaled back the
nary People, Ordinary Lives is Land Of Ra’s chanted title honky-tonk, channelled her
Dr. Octagon literally a surveillance story. might pay homage to an Mexican heritage and love of
★★★★ On Businessman, the singer obvious Pyramids influence, Tarantino and Morricone. The
complains, “Deadlines wear Catto shepherds the song result is a kitschy cinematic
Moosebumps: An towards reggae; and, in a journey, told by a cast of unsa-
me down” against a musical
Exploration Into backdrop as sterile as the further negotiation of new voury characters, that moves
Modern Day hotel rooms he endlessly hops horizons, the opening Tinoge from tragedy to redemption.
flirts with Afrobeat. The Afraid Of The Dark echoes
Horripilation to. Rouse fashions his tracks
with Gretsch and ghostly P.J.
from a Steely Dan mould: suspicion remains, though,
BULK RECORDINGS. CD/DL/LP Harvey intonations, while The
catchy, precise, cold. The that a spiritual take on jazz
Time-travelling women in Women And The remains their strongest suit, Comeback Kid is the rip-snort-
extraterrestrial’s bela Wind aren’t partners but fleet- when Ackamoor’s tenor ing, Tim Burton-esque tale of a
sequel to convention- ing pleasures. Even a pledge intertwines with Sandra girl who took a bullet but rose
defying alt-rap landm of devotion, I’m Your Man, Poindexter’s violin on the title again. Alongside lonesome
Marie Andrews’ follow-up is a
insists that a lover “Come and track, or when he unleashes harmonica, Ortega’s velvety
It’s hard to set steeped in the bitter
get it while you can,” presum- Patsy Cline croon is
underestimate wisdom that follows. A more Pharoah-ish blasts that add a
ably because the singer’s unleashed. It doesn’t all work;
how much old-fashioned brand of note of protest to the
halfway out the door. Finally, but when it does, it’s wonder-
1996’s spaced- country than its predecessor, outstanding lament, Soliloquy
on There Was A Time, a singer fully widescreen.
out debut Dr. Kindness sees Andrews play For Michael Brown. Glyn Brown
Octagonecolo- the traditional diva, brilliantly hits rock-bottom, asks for help John Mulvey
gyst redefined hip-hop’s imagi- so on the swelling, epic title and invests himself. When
native limits. Set in 3000, it let track. Elsewhere, shadowed by guitarist Xema Fuertes crowns
Kool Keith’s titular rapping atmospheric tremolo guitar the confession with an off-
The Mystery Of The Sea
and elements of Memphian kilter solo, it quenches like an
medic wreak havoc over futur-
soul, Andrews injects overdue dose of honesty. The Bulgarian And Cake
istic beats supplied by rookie
Americana archetypes with Chris Nelson ★★★
producer Dan The Automator
tenderness and empathy: Lift
Voices Featuring
(later a key architect of Gorillaz’
Lisa Gerrard Any Day
debut) and Invisibl Skratch The Lonely From My Heart’s THRILL JOCKEY. CD/DL/LP
Piklz DJ Qbert (a turntable sharp update of classic ★★★★
Hendrix). Re-emerging into a country misery, Rough Around Sam Prekop and frien
mainstream rap landscape The Edges’ tale of “the flaws in BooCheeMish first album in six years
that’s openly embraced the all the in-betweens” humane PROPHECY PRODUCTIONS. CD/DL/LP This is the first
strange ever since (Future; Earl and moving. The absence of Medieval chills from album from
Sweatshirt; Kevin Gates), the song about women’s the near east. Sea And Cake
Moosebumps… doesn’t sweat reproductive rights she played as a trio – Pre-
on tour last year is a An essential
past glories. Automator’s supe- listen for eve- kop on vocals,
rior beat chassis and Qbert’s disappointment, but Two Cold guitar and
Nights In Buffalo’s vision of an rybody who
fluid manipulations mash misses 4AD’s keyboards; Archer Prewitt on
with spindly guitars, skronking “American dream dying” guitar; John McEntire of Tor-
suggests social comment ethereal salad
saxes, steely synths and
remains an interest. Given
Idris Ackamoor days in the
toise on drums, bass and pro-
duction duties. The group
spooked strings. Keith’s surreal
wordplay – full of insane pec-
the compassion of her & The Pyramids mid-1980s – Gerrard sang (and
have been honing their craft
songwriting, she should still does) with Dead Can for over 20 years and all their
cadillos and a Noah’s Ark-full of
pursue it.
★★★ Dance; the women of the trademarks can be found here.
wild animals – has one leg
Stevie Chick An Angel Fell Bulgarian state radio choir hit Prekop’s light, breathy vocal
planted firmly in the future, STRUT. CD/DL/LP the indie charts (no, honestly)
ensuring Dr. Octagon is still lines feel like they are glanc-
after Bauhaus’s Pete Murphy ing across the surface of the
one of a kind. Cosmic jazz vets explore new discovered their 1975 LP – or
worlds – and East London! music, although if anything,
Andy Cowan Josh Rouse anybody whose spine tingles his timing and characteristic
Latterly, Idris Ackamoor and at the thought of “sonic cathe- vocal cadences sound a little
★★★ his reconstituted Pyramids drals”. The choir’s speciality too familiar. And typically,
Love In The have managed to parlay a – polyphonic harmonies from
Courtney Marie Modern Age cultish reputation into a viable centuries-old folk forms from
most of the songs glide along
smoothly rather than being
Andrews YEP ROC. CD/DL/LP career, some four decades Bulgaria, Byzantium, Thrace demonstrative and dynamic,
after their three fine Afro- and the Ottoman empire – is but there are rhythmic synco-
★★★★ Singer/songwriter get futurist jazz albums were inimitable and here arranged pations and all manner of
May Your clinical on album No released on a tiny San as if to show up and bewilder instrumental subtleties going
Kindness Remain The album title Francisco label. After two today’s psychedelic warriors in on just under the surface.
LOOSE. CD/DL/LP sounds like an comeback albums recorded a headphone challenge; Ger- Prewitt is on top form, playing
anthropology in Berlin, An Angel Fell finds rard adds lead on a handful of some complex chord progres-
Following her breakthrough, text, which is the band in Dalston, recording tracks. While a medieval sions with a silvery tone on
Alexis Maryon

Nashville up-and-comer lets fitting since with Malcolm Catto of the church might be the best place Circle, while getting all fizzy
her love flow. most of the eclectically inclined funk to hear songs such as Ganka or and distorted over deep bass
If 2016’s Honest Life was a songs are observations from band, The Heliocentrics. It’s Sluntse, there is much to lines on Cover The Mountain.
break-up album, Courtney an emotional distance. Ordi- a judicious match-up: while remind you that their origins Mike Barnes

96 MOJO
A Perfect Circle Aisha Burns Jennifer Castle Alabaster Blair Dunlop
★★★ ★★★ ★★★★ dePlume ★★★
Eat The Elephant Argonauta Angels Of Death ★★★ Notes From An Island
BMG. CD/DL/LP WESTERN VINYL. CD/DL/LP PARADISE OF BACHELORS. CD/DL/LP The Corner GILDED WINGS. CD/DL
The cerebral alt-rock Texan Burns addresses the Recorded in a church by Lake Of A Sphere Son of folk rock luminary
collective’s first album in loss of her mother in eight Erie, the Canadian’s third finds Ashley Hutchings, Dunlop is
LOST MAP. CD/DL/LP
14 years is at once brooding songs that drift and haunt her feeling mortal; drawing on an adept guitarist whose epic
and beautiful. There’s biting with layered voice and moody poetry, reminiscence, visions, Imploring opener Is It Enough songwriting instincts prevail
humour in Maynard James strings. Highlights: If I, and ghosts and the corporeal sets out the shifting moods of on a personal-political fourth
Keenan’s apocalyptic warmer Where Do I Begin return to the earth, for sax-poet Angus Fairbairn’s album. Thoughtful break-up
mithering, offset by twinkly, that ends the album with country-soul songs full of new LP: skronk, ecstasy and songs mirror British cultural
minor-key soundscapes. PB acceptance, if not hope. SS warmth and comfort. JB keen-eyed observation. JB isolationism outside. JB

Micah P Hinson Park Jiha Mt Desolation Speedy Ortiz Pinkshinyultra-

★★★ ★★★★ ★★★ ★★★ blast
At The British Communion When The Twerp Verse ★★★
Broadcasting TAK:TIL. CD/DL/LP Night Calls CARPARK. CD/DL/LP/MC Miserable Miracles
Corporation Who knew that a meld of ISLAND. CD/DL/LP Sadie Dupuis and her CLUB AC30. DL/LP
FULL TIME HOBBY. CD/DL/LP ambient, free jazz and Korean Less sepia-tinged than their co-conspirators take on Russian electro-shoegazers all
Texas songwriter’s 11 cuts for folk could be so serendipitous? alt-country debut but still the #MeToo moment with but ditch guitars for strong
the Beeb since 2004. Deep Park Jiha’s spectral minimalism warm, rootsy and melodic, this deliciously off-kilter ‘90s noise third album. Dance AM and
fable-making (Lovers Lane), – and her hammered dulcimer Keane spin-off allows Tim on their third album. The Triangles carve a deep motorik
spiritual (God Is Good) and – feels like a belated sequel to Rice-Oxley and Jesse Quin vignettes pack enough detail opener; then rave euphoria
unfathomable (How Are You Laraaji/Eno’s 1980 Day Of more impact than the soap- and emotion to work as well and swoony breakdowns trail
Just A Dream). JB Radiance. JM opera pop of their day job. JB in short fiction form. CN Lyubov Soloveva’s vocals. JB

NOWSTREAMING
This Is
Tom Waits
Playlist
Salad Undressed Derek Smalls
S
potify already has Tom
Waits playlists, but none
★★★ ★★ like This Is Tom Waits.
Good Love Bad Love Smalls Change Despite the prosaic title, these
PLEDGEMUSIC. CD/DL/LP (Meditations 76 tracks are special: Tom has
Paul and Marijne of Salad On Ageing) curated this career-span
reconvene with guitarist/ TWANKY/BMG. CD/DL/LP personally. While some notable
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Smalls has the driest lines in
If the name suggests a pared Spinal Tap (“Are we gonna do Down In The Hole), Waits proves
approach, it’s certainly light on Stonehenge tomorrow?”). But no wilful obscurist as his choices
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Swordfishtrombones’ 16 Shells
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1999’s Mule Variations supplies
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Uniting Various
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Jolie Holland-conceived Matthew E White’s Prunes’ debut album
Modern, ancient, and timeless,
benefit album for hurricane hit golden soul grooves on track with lolloping
producer Tim Liken, sitarist
Clem Alford and bassist Ben South Texas and love song to stirring, Spacebomb- drums and dreamy
Hazleton lead a gently the Gulf Coast. Twelve covers produced charity single. spaced guitars.
rambling spiritual jazz trip via of songs about floods, Texas Find it: YouTube Find it: SoundCloud
Eddie Hicks’ rhythms, Idris and broken lives sung by Jolie,
Rahman’s clarinet and more. JB Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, et al. SS

MOJO 97
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98 MOJO
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 Disruptive influence
A real-time document of how the alto saxophonist’s brief tenure
at Atlantic transformed jazz history. By David Fricke.
Worth, Texas, apprenticed on the Southern blues
Ornette Coleman circuit, at one point touring with singer-guitarist
★★★★★ Pee Wee Crayton. “All I wanted to do was write
music that people would like,” Coleman told me in
The Atlantic Years 1989. “I always told people I was commercial,
because I was the only one doing what I was doing.”
RHINO. LP
Modern Jazz Quintet pianist John Lewis said the
he subject of this box set would have enjoyed same of Coleman 30 years earlier, in the jazz press,

T the irony in the title. The Atlantic Years is a

10-disc remastered vinyl monument to
Ornette Coleman’s historic entrance as a composer,
after seeing a club set in Los Angeles. He declared
Coleman “the only really new thing in jazz” since
the bebop mutiny of Charlie Parker and Thelonious
improviser and bandleader at the front of jazz’s Monk, and encouraged MJQ’s producer at Atlantic,
most convulsive decade: six classic studio LPs and Nesuhi Ertegun, to sign the firebrand, then just
four original anthologies of outtakes. In fact, the alto KEY TRACKS turning 29. Coleman’s first two albums – in 1958 and ’59,
saxophonist, who died in 2015 at the age of 85, was a ● Lonely Woman for the West Coast imprint Contemporary – straddled
working artist at Atlantic Records for not even two years, ● Una Muy Bonita eras, with Coleman and Cherry’s keening horns tugging
● Beauty Is A Rare
cutting everything here in 10 sessions between May 1959 Thing (First Take)
forward against a formal drive (MJQ bassist Percy Heath,
and March 1961. It became a habitual restlessness. drummer Shelly Manne).
Coleman ultimately issued his official canon – almost 40 At Atlantic, Ertegun wisely let Coleman loose with his
albums across half a century – on 18 different labels, working groups. Cherry was a constant, the compressed
preferring self-determination and nomadic struggle to tone of that pocket horn belying the explosive, often
A&R politics and punitive contracts. sensual force in his soloing and harmonies, while the
But it was in Atlantic’s brief window of support and rhythm sections shifted across the sessions in subtle,
licence, in the same transforming season of Miles Davis’s exploring combinations: the buoyant fraternity of Haden
Kind Of Blue and John Coltrane’s Giant Steps, that Coleman and Higgins on Shape… and Change…; the earthy blend
established his vision of an unprecedented, truly free jazz. of Haden’s flow and the second line chops of Blackwell, a
Declaring his independence from chord-bound hierarchy, New Orleans native, on 1961’s This Is Our Music. Later
he unleashed a turbulence of equals that was at once dates featured bassists Scott La Faro from the Bill Evans
vigorously avant-garde – shattering conventional Trio and Jimmy Garrison from Coltrane’s classic quartet.
relationships between melody, key and rhythm – and This Is Our Music was Coleman’s first date at Atlantic’s
vividly descended from the unchained-ensemble surge of New York studio, made in the summer of 1960 right after
the early New Orleans groups and the ecstatic polyphony his quartet’s controversial residency downtown at the Five
in black-church singing. Coleman later coined a name for Spot. The album was also Coleman’s first with Atlantic’s
his music: harmolodics. But the Atlantic LPs announced house engineer Tom Dowd. In the rightly titled Blues
his certainty right away in the titles and cover art: the Connotation and the startling Gershwin standard
shotgun argument of The Shape Of Jazz To Come and Embraceable You, you hear that nightclub bond and the
Change Of The Century, recorded within six months of each Texas roots inside the leader’s intellectual rigour. Dowd
other in 1959; the pure energy of worked on the rest of Coleman’s Atlantic sessions,
Jackson Pollock’s action painting including Free Jazz and the 1962 release Ornette On Tenor,
on 1961’s Free Jazz; the punctuative the saxophonist’s exuberant return to his first horn.
authority of Ornette!, released in Coleman rarely had an ear as acute and sensitive to his
December 1962. sinew and poignancy at the console again.
Coleman backed his audacity Free Jazz, of course, is the extreme here, the record
with immediately compelling " FREE JAZZ that Downbeat magazine famously reviewed twice in the
tunes: the searing melancholy of IS THE same issue, awarding it both five and no stars. The album’s
BACK STORY: Coleman’s alto and Don Cherry’s EXTREME extended resonance – in Coltrane’s Ascension, Lou Reed’s
FREE HOUSE cornet in the ballad Lonely Metal Machine Music and Sonic Youth’s feedback monsoon
● Coleman made his first Woman, the immortal opening of HERE, THE at the end of Expressway To Yr Skull – is undeniable. Still
two Atlantic albums at Shape…; the tart exuberance of RECORD remarkable, even at this late date, is the striking
Radio Recorders in Los
Ramblin’, the first track on Change THAT individuality of the voices in the abandon: trumpeter
Angeles. The house
engineer was a young man Of The Century. Atlantic even DOWNBEAT Freddie Hubbard’s hard-bop fire; Eric Dolphy’s bass
named Bones Howe, who released Change…’s Una Muy MAGAZINE clarinet, a subterranean mirror of Coleman’s alto sax. A
later engineered hits for
The Mamas & The Papas
Bonita, a whirligig melody cantered REVIEWED 1998 CD reissue featured the complete, uninterrupted
and produced six albums by Charlie Haden’s firm bass pulse, TWICE IN performance, but there is something to be said for the
for Tom Waits. Howe told as a two-part 45 in 1960. In his THE SAME breather, between sides one and two, back in effect here.
the website Sound On
Sound that he set up
linernotes to this set, former New ISSUE, Actually, I prefer First Take, the 17-minute outtake
Coleman’s quartet “the York Times critic Ben Ratliff points unearthed for Twins, a 1971 release included in this set.
AWARDING
Courtesy of Atlantic Records

same way they rehearsed out that Free Jazz – the 40-minute It’s faster, more urgent, practically punk rock, with a
in Ornette’s apartment”. double-quartet improvisation that IT BOTH drone-and-sprint break by the basses.
There were no music
stands or charts. “Ornette coined a movement – is “booty FIVE AND NO Coleman’s Atlantic revolution was fully issued on CD
didn’t even count off. He’d music”, anchored by explicit STARS.” in the 1993 box Beauty Is A Rare Thing. But the music was
jjust lower his horn and themes and the elastic-R&B bind of re-sequenced according to session. The Atlantic Years
they’d all hit it – at exactly
the same tempo.” drummers Billy Higgins and Ed restores the impact of Coleman’s daring as it first arrived,
Blackwell. Coleman, born in Fort over 50 years ago. The shock and awe are still intact.

100 MOJO
The new style:
Ornette Coleman
as depicted on the
sleeve of 1959’s
The Shape Of
Jazz To Come.
 Bobby Digital recordings every bit as illustrates the state of flux The
tremendous as those issued. Who were in. Most of the time
★★★★ Kieron Tyler here, they sound happier
X-Tra Wicked Reggae playing other people’s songs,
as if they’re not quite sure
Anthology/ Serious about their own.
Times Reggae Ragnar Johnson Mark Blake
Anthology ★★★★
VP. CD/DL Crying Bamboos
Two anthologies of Jamaican IDEOLOGICAL ORGAN. CD/DL/LP Liz Phair
producer’s work from digital First vinyl edition in 4 rs
dancehall to roots revival.
★★★★★
for historical 1979 Pap
Exile In Guyville
Various Robert Dixon started out in International New Guinea flute reco s.
MATADOR. CD/DL/LP
1985 working with King Jammy.
★★★★ His quickness at mastering Harvester Originally
A 25th anniversary rei
released on
Baby I’ve Got It! computerised technology led ★★★★★ David Toop’s for an alt-rock classic
More Motown Girls Bunny Lee to dub him ‘Digital’ Remains Quartz Publi- collegiate sexual polit
and the name stuck. As Bobby cations, these Somewhat
ACE. CD/DL SILENCE. LP
Digital he launched his own
Twenty four rare ’61-69 gems Five-LP tribute to the ceremonial playfully, this
label in 1988 and was soon
from Motown’s female ranks, bamboo flute recordings by 1993 smash
running it out of his own studio. pioneering minimalist
14 previously unissued. social anthropologist Ragnar was a female
He was crucial in breaking Swedish rock band.
Johnson now get a legitimate rejoinder to
In the mid-’60s, Motown’s Shabba Ranks with Just Reality, First, in 1967, there was reissue on Stephen O’Malley’s the Stones’
assembly line went into Wicked In Bed, Respect et al, Pärson Sound. Then there label and the reasons are clear.
and enabled dancehall to find lads-own shagger vibe (Exile
overdrive; the result, great was International Harvester, Played at male initiation On Main St. became a kind of
songs ended up on the shelf its conscience with Admiral ceremonies in coastal villages
quickly renamed Harvester. inverse-template; both albums
due to the sheer volume of Tibet, Shabba Ranks & near the Ramu River, and
Ninjaman’s Serious Time and Next, in 1969, was Träd, Gräs have 18 tracks). It’s a captivat-
material produced. The & Stenar. Essentially the same intended to emulate the cries ing portrait of Generation X
Supremes rarely suffered Sizzla’s Black Woman And Child. of spirits, this collection of
He also took the roots reggae of band, all strove to marry Terry sexual interplay – akin to a
but everyone else did – Riley’s minimalism and rock twin instrument dialogues more plot-heavy Madonna
Brenda Holloway in particular, Horace Andy and Gregory Isaacs – with occasional wooden
to a new audience with Bless while nodding to traditional fronting compositions that
who recorded nearly 150 Swedish music. No other band gong and drum percussion – sit as intriguing parallels to
shelved songs. Her title track You and Set Me Free might fool the unsuspecting
respectively. Sold separately, on the planet was doing this Nirvana. Built on Phair’s self-
here and the same year’s to such an elevated level of listener into thinking they taught chording and a melodic
these collections emphasise were listening to some free
Without Love You Lose A far-outness. This was drone- sense of rich DIY potency,
Digital’s impact on the workout by Don Cherry and
Good Feelin’ are moulded these compelling narratives
dancehall and beyond. X-Tra rock and the Swedish progg Evan Parker: two breathy,
in the classic Motown sound. blossom into a transfixing
Wicked includes an insightful (sic) movement’s opening wailing voices caught up in
Likewise Gladys Knight’s In (and profane) particularity –
documentary; Serious Times a chapter. Remains collects annular murmurations that
My Heart I Know It’s Right, her Mighty Mike Heathen Mix CD. as on the signature track Fuck
ace first label recording, and stunningly remastered dance around each other with
Lois Wilson editions of International And Run. It’s a record so dis-
The Marvelettes’ toothsome a rough, devotional life. The
Harvester/Harvester’s two tinctive that it’s understand-
take on Sweet Talkin’ Guy. interweaving flute drones
albums: 1968’s Sov Gott Rose- able Phair hasn’t equalled it in
Breaking the mould but have the ability to trick the ear
Marie (issued by Finnish label into thinking you’re hearing five subsequent albums. Now
equally divine are Kim augmented by Phair’s three
Weston’s So Long which Love as there was no suitable melodies, instruments and
Swedish outlet) and1969’s voices that aren’t there, earlier Girly-Sound cassette
places the big-voiced singer albums, the reissue comes as
in an intimate setting with Hemåt. Politics was inherent: whether it be Slim Harpo’s
harmonica, Pauline Oliveros’s 3-CD and 7-LP versions.
strings and Rita Wright’s the first album has a track
accordion or the mating calls Roy Wilkinson
It’s Been A Long Time called The Runcorn Report
Happenin’, which hints at On Western Progress and the of rare jungle birds.
the transcendental soul she chant Ho Chi Minh. Albums Andew Male
later made as Syreeta. three to five of the box set King Tubby &
Lois Wilson feature previously unheard
Riley All Stars
The Who ★★★★
★★★ Concrete Jungle Dub
Live At The Fillmore DUB STORE. CD/DL/LP
East 1968 Ultra-rare dub album
UNIVERSAL. CD/DL/LP overdue reissue.
Townshend and co cap d Dennis Harris’s
in transition, live in Ne south-east
York City. London-based
In 1968, The DIP stable
Who were in issued an
a quandary. array of reggae
They were no during the 1970s, with the
longer the Concrete Jungle imprint
twitchy teen- reserved for hardcore roots.
age Mods of I Can’t Explain, Concrete Jungle Dub was
but they’d yet to become an released in 1976 as a limited
arena-rock group with the edition of 300, featuring
following year’s Tommy. Live the work of perceptive
At The Fillmore East 1968 is The hit-maker Winston Riley,
Who: The Tricky In Between dubbed down by King Tubby
Years. Recorded in New York in at his legendary Waterhouse
the aftermath of Martin Luther studio, with Riley’s brother
King’s assassination, they Buster credited as producer
bulldoze through I’m A Boy and Harry J another noted
and deconstruct My Genera- mixing site. Despite some
tion for more than 30 gruelling surface noise between songs
minutes. “Hard rock next… due to the ancient source
hard rock!” growls Pete Town- material, the 10 tracks are
shend before a bullish take on killer, with Stepping Stone
Eddie Cochran’s My Way. But Dub a ghostly, voiceless cut
his introduction suits most of of Johnny Osborne’s rendition
the material, especially of The Delfonics’ Ready Or Not,
Cochran’s C’mon Everybody Swal Field Dub a stripped-
and a trance-like take on down take of Donovan D’s
Johnny Kidd’s Shakin’ All Over. superb Who Is The One, and
Little Billy, a strange Dread Dub a bass-heavy
Garden heads: Townshend curio recasting of Mervin Brooks’
International about the perils of Cheer Up Black Man.
Harvester vibing smoking cigarettes, David Katz
al fresco.
Various Pete Townshend
★★★ ★★★
Tokyo Nights: Female Who Came First
J-Pop Boogie Funk UNIVERSAL. CD/DL

1981 To 1988 Who mainman’s de nal

CULTURES OF SOUL. CD/DL/LP first solo album re d.
The Tropical Disco Hus Who Came First
compilers go crate dig crept out during
in the Far East. 1972 in the gap
between Who’s
Journalist Next and
Yutaka Kimura Quadrophenia. It
economically found a home for ideas from
defined City The Who’s abandoned
Pop as “urban Lifehouse project and became
pop music for a celebration of Townshend’s
those with urban lifestyles” – Indian master, Meher Baba.
a variant on US R&B, disco and However, Townshend’s first
AOR that reflected the lavish solo album was made with a
exuberance of Japan’s post- little help from his fellow
war recovery. If western disciples. Pete’s gentle
homage is explicit on Hitomi readings of the later Who
Tohyama’s strutting, confident songs Pure And Easy and Let’s
Wanna Kiss (which liberally See Action still shine, while
borrows its synthetic groove Ronnie Lane’s Evolution and
from Another One Bites The Billy Nicholls’ Forever’s No
Dust) or Aru Takamura’s I’m In Roxy music: Young,
Time At All, as pleasing as they Talbot and glitter
Love (an arch re-imagining of are, still break the flow a little,
Cheryl Lynn’s Got To Be Real), boot brilliantly
just as they did on the original confound the Strip.
it’s hard not to shake a tail- LP. Historians will savour the
feather to Hitomi Tohyama’s bonus disc’s alternative takes
Exotic Yokogao (The and musical sketches, while
Carpenters to a boogie beat) the less committed can still
or the Madonna-esque dance-
pop seduction of Kaoru
Akimoto’s Dress Down. Tokyo
Nights… is all the more en
vogue given City Pop’s recent
resurgence via the YouTube-
enjoy the previously
unreleased The Love Man,
where Townshend grapples
with his new pedal steel, and
hear just how much Roger
The hard sell
A legendarily damaged announce, “everything is cheaper than
Daltrey later brought to it looks.” How better to memorialise the
sampling antics of various
vaporwave artists.
The Seeker. show emerges from the deaths of his bandmate Danny Whitten,
Mark Blake
Andy Cowan Archives. Less shaky than and his roadie Bruce Berry, than with a
show that understood rock’n’roll could
expected… By John Mulvey. be celebrated, even as it was exposed
Bark Psychosis The Eleventh as a kind of sick joke?
House Featuring Neil Young The legend of Tonight’s The Night
★★★★ Larry Coryell often fixates on bleakness, raggedness,
///Codename: ★★★★ vivid debauchery. What’s remarkable
Dustsucker ★★★ about the Roxy recordings, though, is the
FIRE. CD/DL/LP Level One Roxy: Tonight’s focus and power of the Santa Monica
Unrushed second RETROWORLD. CD The Night Live Flyers. Where some of the original album
album from the revere Forgotten jazz-rock REPRISE. CD/DL/LP
performances are fraught and tentative,
post-rock pioneers. gem dusted down fro as if committed to tape even
For 10 years, the archives. IT’S POSSIBLE, just about, to over- as they were being written, the live
it seemed that Though not mythologise Neil Young’s Ditch period, performances a few days later are more
1994’s Hex, as well-known riddled as it is with death, tequila, robust, without diminishing the wired
debut album as fusion sunglasses at night and sundry other ambience. As on the studio version, the
of London’s trailblazers the signifiers of rock’s darker potentialities. title track is played twice, but the first take
influential Mahavishnu here is crunchier and less spooked,
What is harder, though, is to overestimate
boundary-blurrers Bark Orchestra,
Psychosis, would remain alone Weather Report and Return the brilliance of the music that Young Young’s voice more commanding as it
in the world, its reputation To Forever, the short-lived but made between 1973 and 1975; the songs plays off Lofgren’s sputtering guitar line.
undimmed by anything so highly influential The Eleventh of Time Fades Away, On The Beach and The a cappella harmonies of New Mama
mundane as a ‘follow-up’. In House were a jazz-rock band Tonight’s The Night. are uncannily tight, and even the set’s
2004, however, the band’s to be reckoned with in the When that last album’s main session most harrowing song, Tired Eyes, moves
prime mover Graham Sutton early-to-mid’-70s. Led by the was finished, in August 1973, Young and with a purpose that belies the trauma.
announced he had been late Larry Coryell’s fleet-of- No concessions are made to the crowd;
finger fretboard pyrotechnics,
the Santa Monica Flyers – Crazy Horse’s
working on a second record
since 1999 and ///Codename: they were also powered by Ralph Molina, Billy Talbot and Nils Lofgren, they just get the session’s nine songs, a
Dustsucker edged into the the propulsive polyrhythms of plus Stray Gator Ben Keith on steel – took snatch of Roll Out The Barrel, and a
light. While Hex bloomed in ex-Weather Report drummer up residence at the Roxy, an elite new club sprightly early version of Walk On,
the genre-fluid early ‘90s, Alphonse Mouzon. This was on Sunset Strip. They stole a wooden destined for On The Beach. By the time
layering ambient, jazz and the quintet’s second album statue of a Native American and coupled it he and the Flyers left LA on tour, Young’s
Talk Talk atmospherics, /// and their debut for Arista, with a potted palm tree for a stage set. vision would become even more
Codename: Dustsucker no issued in 1975, though a year
later they had split up (they
Nine hundred dollars’ worth of glittery uncompromising: Tonight’s The Night
longer had that element of
surprise (though it did feature reformed briefly in 2017). Level platform boots were taped to Young’s itself would last half an hour, and
ex-Talk Talk drummer Lee One is arguably the most grand piano, Black Beauty, as if to throw audiences would become vocally riled
Harris). This reissue underlines satisfying of their recordings, the grungy anti-glamour of the musicians by the lack of familiar songs. “We’re
its textural richness, however, melding high-decibel rock- into even sharper relief. Here was Young going to do an old tune for you now,”
a place where the woozy style riffs with chromatic jazz trialling the mix of rawness and artifice the unreliable showman vamps at the
tropical shimmer of 400 solos and complex time that would become a critical, if Roxy, before lurching into
Winters sits alongside Burning signatures. All the band
The City’s polished acoustic contribute material, such
often confusing, part of his he hitherto unheard Walk
glow or the sentient machine as the febrile prog-fusion aesthetic. He would play in the On. “Sooner or later it all
music of INQB8TR. Bark of Mouzon’s Nyctaphobia, most heartfelt and gets real,” he sings,
Psychosis have remained though Larry Coryell’s own unvarnished way, but talk with honestly enough – but
ambient since, Sutton tunes are arguably the a glibness that bordered on from now on, reality would
focusing on production strongest, as evidenced by surrealism. “Welcome to be predicated on his own,
work, but this reissue fills any the expansive three-part Miami Beach,” he would very peculiar, terms.
Getty

space beautifully. mood piece Suite.

Victoria Segal Charles Waring

MOJO 103
 Ronnie Laws (who also plays the high Atlantic waves or the
flute) and etched with pain bleak Hebridean wind itself
and sorrow. had been blessed with a proud
Lois Wilson singing voice.
Andrew Male

Prince Buster
★★★★ Wire
Let’s Go To ★★★★★
The Dance 154
ROCKA SHACKA. CD/DL/LP PINK FLAG. CD/LP

Rare rocksteady, expe Progressive punk geni

produced by the Princ ushers in a new era.
Prince Buster Three years
will always be and 154 gigs
remembered into their
as the King of career, Wire
Ska, yet this produced this,
excellent com- their highest-
pilation reveals that his lesser- ever charting album release,
known rocksteady produc- which scraped to Number 39
tions are equally captivating. in late 1979. Sullen opener I
Harnessing the top session Should Have Known Better
musicians of the day, including offers a touchstone song for
influential guitarist Lynn Taitt, the burgeoning post-punk era,
Buster fashioned exceptional a precursor to the sullen tones
rocksteady with Hortense Ellis, of Bauhaus/Bunnymen and co
the Righteous Flames and who followed in their slip-
Freddy McKay, and voiced stream. Gone is the austere
great romantic ballads such economy of debut Pink Flag,
as Love Each Other and To Be and in its place a greater use of
Loved himself. He also mor- synths and less obtuse
phed The Beatles’ All My approach to melody. High-IQ
Loving into an agreeable rock- pop brilliance comes via
steady groove. Larry Marshall’s stand-out track Map Ref. 41°N
mournful Wooden Heart has 93°W (a reference to the geo-
an intense instrumental coun- graphical centre of the US):
terpart in the ultra-rare Rock- “Chorus!” announces Colin
ing In The Field; Dawn Penn’s Newman, archly. This hardback
Barbara Dane: languorous reworking of book/CD reissue comes with
she’s beyond great. Dionne Warwick’s Long Day, extra tracks and on vinyl too,
Short Night is exquisite, and and is a reminder of Wire’s
Errol Dunkley’s My Future Lies initial and unsurpassed crea-
Ahead Of Me a previously tive purple patch, the sound of
with country guitar god Doc The Lightmen four remarkable talents realis-
Watson – the thread is that unreleased killer. With high-
lights aplenty, the whole ing a shared new aesthetic
voice loaded with humanity. ★★★★ shebang is a real winner and vision for next-gen punk.
Michael Simmons Free As You feels all the better on double- Ben Myers
Wanna Be vinyl format.
NOW-AGAIN. DL/LP David Katz
Eric Andersen First time reissue of Houston Young Wu
★★★★★ New Thing! pioneer’s 1970 ★★★★
The Essential debut in stereo and mono. Various Shore Leave
Eric Andersen Bubbha Thomas would later ★★★★ BAR NONE. CD/DL/LP
lead his band into funk, but
REAL GONE MUSIC. CD/DL
for the drummer, bandleader Salm Volume 1 Sole album from choic
Barbara Dane The first career-spann and political activist’s first ARC LIGHT EDITIONS. LP Feelies offshoot.
anthology of the grea recordings for local label 2003 document of Gae It took New
★★★★ singer-songwriter. Judnell he was sat firmly at Psalm singing, release Jersey guitar-
Hot Jazz, Cool Blues Eric Andersen the feet of John Coltrane and vinyl for the first time. niks The Feel-
& Hard-Hitting Songs was consid- Ornette Coleman, exploring
Arc Light Edi- ies six years to
SMITHSONIAN FOLKWAYS. CD/DL ered one of both the interior and exterior follow 1980’s
tions release
Woody’s chil- struggle via deep jazz and college-rock-
Our Mother Of Americana beautifully
dren when the avant-garde. Recorded at defining debut Crazy Rhythms
finally gets collected: 2-CD packaged vinyl
he emerged Nashville Sound studio and with The Good Earth, but only
set spanning 60 years. reissues of
during the folk revival of the produced by Thomas with one more year to make Shore
hard-to-find
For someone dubbed “a 1960s. But like Dylan, he’s more label owner George Nelson, Leave as Yung Wu. The change
experimental, improv and
gasser” by Louis Armstrong than a folk singer – truly one of opener Creative Music of name reflected drummer
electronic LPs at reassuringly
and whom Bob Dylan called the original singer-songwriters, celebrates art as a means of Dave Weckerman’s shift to
affordable prices. Yet while
“a hero”, Barbara Dane has transcending dusty boxcar spiritual ascension through the vocalist/songwriter, though
previous releases have been
certainly been overlooked. sagas for the examination of chaotic clang and dissonance there’s no other difference
artist-led (Arthur Russell,
However, at the age of 90, existential dilemmas, with the of horns and drums. The eight- beyond the nomenclature, just
Ingram Marshall, Joan La Bar-
Dane is finally undergoing a natural sob in his distinctive minute title track charts the a more relaxed version of The
bara), Salm focuses on a tradi-
critical renaissance. While she tenor a powerfully effective civil rights confrontation. tion and a sound, the unique Feelies’ itchy-scratchy nerdy
got labelled a folkie because emotional conduit. This 2-CD “At what price does equality form of religious worship that origins. That said, Shore Leave
she often plays acoustically collection extends from a rare come?” cries Thomas, through is Gaelic psalm singing. Previ- bears an overarching debt to
and is a devoted political duet with Phil Ochs in 1964 and frenzied percussion and sax ously available on specialist The Beatles’ Rain, a drone-pop
activist, Dane started out as excerpts from his first album solos, directed by a young Celtic music label Ridge, Salm variant of guitarists Glenn
a jazz and blues singer, with (1965’s Today Is The Highway), Vol. 1 documents two evenings Mercer and Bill Million’s mini-
a honeyed blues belt through his most well-known of congregational praise sing- malist vigour, stated clearest in
reminiscent of Bessie Smith. compositions Thirsty Boots, ing in the Isle of Lewis’s Back Eternal Ice and a cover of the
We hear early sides with Violets Of Dawn, Blue River and Free Church in October 2003. Stones’ (Rain-soundalike) Child
nightclubbing jazzmen, live Is It Really Love At All. His col- This is strange stuff, where the Of The Moon. Neil Young’s
tracks with blues giants laborators have included Lou male ‘precentor’ sings psalm Powderfinger is made over
Lightnin’ Hopkins, Memphis Reed, Joni Mitchell, Richard lines to a Lowland melody more like (Feelies acolytes)
Slim and Willie Dixon, as well Thompson, Rick Danko, David before the congregation R.E.M., and Eno/Phil Manzan-
as pro-union sing-alongs with Bromberg, Joan Baez and Leon era’s Big Day is rendered even
Zoe Lowenthal

answers en masse, at their own

Pete Seeger and studio work Russell – more proof of his pitch and speed, each adding janglier. But for Feelies purists,
with a pre-rock Chambers limitless range. The download unique melodic flourishes. The Spinning reprises some of
Brothers. There are art songs, contains an extra nine songs. result is eerie, soaring, rough- Crazy Rhythms’ speedy mania.
anti-Reagan satire and duets Michael Simmons hewn and transcendent, as if Martin Aston

104 MOJO
 VINYL PACKAGE OF THE MONTH

Bunny Lee & Chet Baker

The Aggrovators ★★★★
★★★★ Portrait In Jazz By
Presents Super Dub William Claxton
Disco Style JAZZ IMAGES. CD/DL

PRESSURE SOUNDS. CD/DL/LP Eighteen-disc box set

Anagogical dubs from y marks 30th anniversa
‘Striker’ Lee’s stable. of Baker’s death.
1979’s Presents With his chis-
Super Dub elled, movie
star good
Disco Style is
looks, the
Disco Inferno
issued on CD
with a bonus photogenic ★★★★
disc featuring
Tommy McCook & The Aggro-
trumpeter and
singer Chet Baker became the
Technicolour
ONE LITTLE INDIAN. CD/DL/LP
$ g
vators’ 1977 Super Star Disco
Rockers – the pair are issued
poster boy for West Coast
cool jazz in the 1950s. Musi- Heterodox Essex pop trio’s Days Re-Revisited
amazing 1996 swansong.
separately on vinyl. The link is
Bunny ‘Striker’ Lee, who pro-
cally, it was a rich and fertile
period for the young horn First time on vinyl. Metallica
duced both. The first takes god, despite his drugs-blight- A working-class Essex trio, BLACKENED RECORDINGS. EP
dub into the realms of psyche- ed private life. This particular inspired by the grey pyretic

S
era is brought to life in vivid uperficially it was a blast – Metallica getting back to
delia. With Pat Kelly and Stan- sounds of Joy Division and
detail via this 18-CD retro- their roots, covering favourite heavy metal and punk
ley ‘Barnabas’ Bryan at the Wire, yet fired by Public
spective, which presents Enemy, The Young Gods, and songs. On a deeper level, this 1987 EP was a shrewdly
controls, perception’s doors
are opened with Shalin Tem- Baker’s music in tandem with the creative power of the low-key debut for bassist Jason Newsted, replacing Cliff
ple Dub’s innovative layering noted US photographer Wil- Roland S-750 sampler, Disco Burton who was killed in a tour bus crash a year earlier.
of instruments – snaking liam Claxton’s indelible imag- Inferno spent the early ‘90s While the sound is raw and the vibe loose – following a
horns, haunted organ, drum, es of the trumpeter. Baker’s crafting chilly, dissembled medley of two nasty Misfits numbers is a jokingly out-of-
bass – with echo, reverb and penchant for romantic bal- pop, where the dystopian tune snippet of Iron Maiden’s Run To The Hills – there is
strange electronic pulses. ladry is the set’s central visions and paranoid reverence and absolute conviction in Metallica’s tributes
Elsewhere Super Rockers Dub theme and highlighted on sprechstimme of reluctant to the bands that inspired them. Most significant of all is
is peaceful protest; Money In three discs dubbed ‘For Lov- frontman Ian Crause were Diamond Head’s Helpless, its speedy, multi-riffed dynamic
My Pocket Dub utilises the ers’. Elsewhere, Baker’s signifi- backlit by a green-screen of a template for Metallica’s revolutionary thrash metal. Also
‘squawky’. The second album cant sides for the Pacific Jazz library samples (fireworks, featured, for the first time in the UK, is a more left-field
is mixed by King Tubby and and Riverside labels are pre- breaking glass), pellucid
sent, including his innovative selection: Killing Joke’s The Wait. On black, orange vinyl
Prince Jammy. It’s transcen- guitar and doomy post-punk
work with Gerry Mulligan that and picture disc. Paul Elliott
dental dub, in particular bass. They sold nothing, and in
Lamb’s Bread Herb, an orphic came to define cool jazz. For a euphoria born of financial
reworking of Yabby You’s those partial to Baker’s bur- desperation, the trio created
Death Trap, the apotheosis of nished horn and dreamy, this last-gasp masterpiece. singer-songwriters. There are polyrhythmic extravaganza.
what Lee calls McCook’s ‘far languid vocals, this is nothing Crause’s intense prophetic other worthy bits, like a dusty Both LPs are enhanced by
east’ sound. less than a feast. eye continues to map the cover of Neil Young’s Unknown expansive linernotes.
Lois Wilson Charles Waring hopelessness of the times, but Legend and a raw take on Get Charles Waring
his fragile singing is invested Miles. But for anyone but the
with a nervous luminosity. most obsessed fan, less would
The drive is forward, the guitar have been more.
Grant Green: from
bebop to funk and sharp and electric, the Jim Farber Radka Toneff &
R&B, he always ‘obvious’ samples (Lust For Steve Dobrogosz
struck gold. Life drums, the Doctor Who
theme) sounding gloriously ★★★★
desperate. Failure never felt Grant Green Fairytales
so beautiful.
Andrew Male ★★★★ ODIN. CD/DL/LP

Funk In France – Sublime jazz from a

Paris To Antibes/ Scandinavian legend.
Gomez Slick! Live At Oil Can In late 1979,
ill-fated Nor-
★★★ Harry’s wegian singer
RESONANCE. CD/DL/LP Toneff and
Bring It On (20th
Two, separately availa American
Anniversary Edition) lost live recordings by d pianist Dobro-
VIRGIN/UMC. CD gosz recorded an improvised
jazz guitarist rediscov
Reboot of 1998’s Merc version of My Funny Valentine,
There were
winner proves you can which was so remarkable, so
two distinctive
too much of a good thi sensitive in its approach, that
phases in
This 48-track, a few years later the duo
Green's record-
4-CD box set decided to record nine addi-
ing career. He
will test the tional songs in similar vein.
played bebop-
outer limits of influenced jazz up until 1969, Fairytales, the resulting album,
a Gomez fan’s after which he branched out proved to be Norway’s best-
love. It groans into funk and R&B. These two, selling jazz album and in a
with 35 previously unreleased live recordings – separated by 2011 poll was declared by
tracks, including 25 demos, six years – reveal that in a live Norwegian musicians as the
BBC sessions, and the setting, Green never totally country’s finest album of all
Southport band’s 1998 Glas- abandoned his straight-ahead time. Now this remastered
tonbury show in its entirety. roots, blending swinging hard version is available, enabling
Unfortunately, the most dedi- bop workouts with James a fresh generation of admirers
cated followers probably Brown-inflected funk grooves. to add it to their collections,
already own this debut’s 10th Both sets are scorchers, with filed alongside the equivalent
anniversary edition which the former capturing Green in likes of Ella Fitzgerald’s much
features many of the same rare both trio and quartet formats hailed liaison with Ellis Larkins.
recordings. Since part of the during a rare European tour. It’s all about lyric interpreta-
charm of the original album There's a deeper and heavier tion. Songs involving texts
was its rustic, handmade feel, soul and funk quotient on from, variously, Fran Landes-
it’s no surprise that some of the Slick!, recorded in 1975 in Van- man, Emily Dickinson and
newly unearthed demos don’t couver, which finds Green Dave Frishberg ensure supe-
differ enough from the final putting his own guitar-led spin rior readability, while the
product to excite. The most on songs by the Ohio Players, inclusion of Kurt Weill’s Lost In
Chuck Stewart

special tracks are the live ones Bobby Womack, Stevie Won- The Stars and Jimmy Webb’s
that capture the excitement der, and the O'Jays, whose The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress
and freedom of a new band For The Love Of Money is provide further highlights.
bursting with three significant transformed into an epic Fred Dellar

MOJO 105
 Alberto Y Lost Cockney Rebel
Trios Paranoias ★★★★
★★★ The Psychomodo
Skite CHRYSALIS. CD/LP

WMM. CD Much under-loved maudlin

Mancunian satirists’ 1978 LP 1974 glam jewel, re-cut from
ably pastiches punk, new original production masters,
wave, reggae and, on near-hit with Steve Harley abetted by
Heads Down, No Nonsense Andrew Powell-arranged
Mindless Boogie, Status Quo. Abbey Road choirs, piano and
FILEUNDER Some of the jokes have aged strings. Final track Tumbling
better than others. IH Down is a lost treasure. PG

Pompitous!
World ★★★★ (1969), which
included a guest appearance
from Paul McCartney (as Paul
Ramon), working out his
Cowboy? Gangster? Having a laugh:
Steve Miller
frustrations over The Beatles’
Joker? Steve Miller, (centre) and legal clashes on a song called
band prepare to My Dark Hour. The same
king of tongue-in- take the money year’s Your Saving Grace ★★
cheek blues rock. and run. was a comparatively
By Jim Irvin. mundane blues album, then Brenda Lee Cheikh Lô
Miller rustled up more varied ★★★ ★★★★★
influences – country rock,

S
teve Miller’s critical Little Miss Dynamite Ne La Thiass
acceptance speech Tex-Mex and tango – for the
MILAN. CD/DL WORLD CIRCUIT. CD/DL/LP
upon his induction into self-produced Number 5
4’9” but all of it bandsaw voice, The 1996 debut from Youssou
the Rock and Roll Hall of ★★★★ (1970), a record that blasting through this 23-track N’Dour’s Senegalese protégé
Fame in 2016 showed how espoused his philosophy of comp, 1956-’62. Debut hit is a landmark African
much he cares for being part music’s primary function: the Jambalaya would have been recording. Remastered by Lô
of the consensus – and for means to a good time. precocious even if this Georgia from the original 1995 Africa-
self-appointed gatekeepers. In 1971, a broken neck native had been older than 12. only cassette, its spiritually
For fiftysomething years this slowed down Miller’s Dynamite’s raunchy sex-a-billy elevated sounds are richer,
progress. Makeweight semi- wouldn’t be allowed today. DE sun-warmed and jazzier. JB
talented journeyman has “THE
ridden his own path along live album, Rock Love ★★,
the blues, psych, rock and
RECORD didn’t advance his career, but
synth-pop trails as The Steve ESPOUSED parts of overlooked flop
Miller Band, an outfit with HIS Recall The Beginning… A
only one consistent member, PHILOSOPHY Journey To Eden ★★★★
whose first nine albums are (1972) pointed toward his
now available again from OF MUSIC’S subsequent sound, adding
Capitol/UMe on remastered PRIMARY strings and creamy harmonies
vinyl, initially collected in an FUNCTION: to the recipe, the title track
enticing, colourful boxed set. THE MEANS providing a pretty highlight. Pere Ubu Plush
Miller’s records may 1973’s breakthrough, The ★★★★ ★★★★★
occasionally play dumb – his TO A GOOD Joker ★★★, was a light-
“whatever works” approach TIME.” hearted but thin rock album Les Haricots Sont Fed
to lyrics (ie, “the pompitous lofted by its undeniably Pas Salés 1987-1991 BE WITH. LP

brilliant, chart-topping title FIRE. LP Publicity-shy perfectionist

of love”) won’t have given Liam Hayes’ exquisite 2002
Dylan any sleepless nights track, which took him 19 days After the internal-logic art
rock of reunion album The landmark of obsessional,
– but he has smartly to perfect. Noting how medium-fi chamber pop.
Tenement Year, Ubu surprised
understood that it takes hard attention to detail had paid us with the accessible-but- The singer’s less magical,
work to make music sound off, Miller devised a new still-warped pop of Cloudland Rundgren-rocking fourth
effortless. Though his muse is working method. Taking and Worlds In Collision. All in album, 2010’s Korp Sole Roller,
deeply rooted in the blues, drummer Gary Mallaber and this box, plus bonus demos. IH also returns in black plastic. DE
having Les Paul as a bass player Lonnie Turner into
godfather showed him how the studio for two weeks, he
pop and technology worked quickly cut 50 backing tracks,
in harmony. As such, his early then spent 18 months
albums took advantage of perfecting all the overdubs
synths, mellotrons and sound and vocals by himself, a blend
effects to impart psychedelic of spontaneity and
flavour. The debut Children fastidiousness that turned
Of The Futur ynamite.
produced b results Saxon Simply Saucer
Olympic in L ti-platinum
oversaw the n Eagle ★★★★ ★★★
albums), pro and Book Of Wheels Of Steel Cyborgs Revisited
features ban a year later, BMG. CD/DL/LP IN THE RED. DL/LP
Scaggs (bas part of this In 1980, Saxon’s second Another re-up for a small
(drums) sha . album delivered classic classic of outsider proto-punk:
Sailor ★★★ ng your British heavy metal, inspiring psychedelic Stooges riffing
a young Lars Ulrich, and a and droogish electronic
sound. Scag the Hall of big hit, 747 (Strangers In modulations, recorded in
keyboard pl dvice that The Night). Now added: live Daniel Lanois’ Ontario
Jim Peterma following
Getty

tracks from the first Monsters basement circa 1974. Now

before Brav s. Of Rock festival. PE with bonus live set. JM

106 MOJO
The Coventry Hawkwind Rupert Holmes Martin Freeman Millie Jackson
Automatics ★★★ ★★★ & Eddie Piller ★★★★
★★★ The Emergency Songs That Sound Present Caught Up
Dawning Of Broadcast Years Like Movies ★★★★ ACE/SOUTHBOUND. LP

A New Era 1994-1997 CHERRY RED. CD/DL

Jazz On The Corner Jackson’s salty blend of soul
ATOMHENGE. CD The man behind 1979’s Escape and soap opera is at max
WMM. CD ACID JAZZ. CD/DL/LP
5-CD box revisits old material, (The Piña Colada Song)’s first strength on her first Caught
These pre-2 Tone 1978 demos Mod pals’ club jazz playlist:
lack the bite of later Specials live trance-outs, abduction three LPs. Knowing, narrative Up album, recorded at Muscle
Freeman picks the classics
versions, but the punk and concept album Alien 4 (fronted orch-pop songs recall Nilsson, (Art Blakey, Lee Morgan, Shoals. Robustly narrated from
reggae mix still stimulates on by Ron Tree) and, on Distant Randy Newman and, at his Blossom Dearie, Eddie two sides of a love triangle,
formative versions of familiar Horizons, dalliances with most snarky, a more homely Harris); Piller’s choices it’s powerful, dramatic, and
songs and oddities. IH crusty techno. Still freaky. IH Warren Zevon. Honest! IH are more esoteric. LW notably self-produced. JB

The Lurkers Ustad Zia MFSB Nightcrawlers NRBQ

★★★ Mohiuddin Dagar ★★★ ★★★★ ★★★
Fulham Fallout ★★★★ The Definitive The Biophonic NRBQ
BEGGARS ARKIVE. LP Ragas Abhogi Collection Boombox Recordings OMNIVORE. CD/DL/LP
True to the spirit if not the & Vardhani ROBINSONGS. CD ANTHOLOGY RECORDINGS. CD/DL/LP Rambunctious, eccentric 1969
letter of punk, The Lurkers’ The pick of Gamble & Huff’s Philadelphia synth trio’s self- debut from a minor American
IDEOLOGIC ORGAN. CD/DL/LP
1978 debut slobbers with Philly soul orchestra ’73-78. released ’80s home recordings institution, now on CD for the
street-urchin energy, its songs From a Seattle house show in first time. Swings wildly from
1986, a lo-fi recording of Bulging with showtime R&B, draw from the kosmische
as close as any UK band of the Hindustani classical master funk, jazz, disco, muzak and, pulses of Tangerine Dream bar-band choogling (a meaty
era got to the Ramones for Mohiuddin playing his rudra later, synthy grooves: let and Klaus Schulze and US take on C’mon Everybody), to
dumb fun. Great tunes too. veena, a bassier sitar. Utterly visions of giant velvet bow pattern music to create an Fugsy takes on Sun Ra and
Now on orange vinyl. KC engrossing take on raga. JM ties fill your mind. IH eerily timeless electronica. AM Carla Bley. JM

FILTERINDEX
Ackamoor, Idris Lake Street Dive 91 Wooden Shjips 91
& The Pyramids 96 Lee, Bunny & The Young Wu 104
Andersen, Eric 104 Aggrovators 105 Young, Neil 103
Andrews, Courtney Marie 96 Lightmen, The 104 Young, Neil 88
Arctic Monkeys 95 Magic Numbers 92 Youngs, Richard 93
Ash 94 Malkmus, Stephen
Baker, Chet 105 & The Jicks 94 COMING NEXT MONTH
Elvis Presley The Residents Bark Psychosis 103 Messthetics 94 Ray LaMontagne, Natalie
★★★★ ★★★★ Barnett, Courtney 95 Metallica 105 Prass, Father John Misty
Bay, James 95 Miller, Steve 106 (pictured), Johnny Marr,
The Searcher OST Duck Stab/Buster Beach House 89 Modern Studies 90 The Beat, Weyes Blood, Neko
SONY MUSIC. CD/DL/LP & Glen Belly 88 Morrison, Van 91 Case, Norma Waterson &
Thom Zimny’s three-hour doc CHERRY RED/NEW RALPH. CD/LP Black Moth Super Rainbow 89 Mystery Of The Bulgarian Eliza Carthy, Theresa
soundtracked over two discs
spanning El’s country-blues A “pREServed Edition” of the Bombino 92 Voices 96 Wayman, Jeffrey Lewis,
roots to pop cultural queasy listening classic from Bridges, Leon 95 Nelson, Willie 91 Melody’s Echo Chamber,
domination. A 3-CD deluxe ed 1978 adds rehearsal and live Buster, Prince 104 Njoku, Tony 90 Stuart Staples and more
features the original score by takes (highlight: horrorcore- Cheneaux, Eric 93 Orquesta Akokán 94
Pearl Jam’s Mike McCready, ish Semolina, from 2011). Bach Chvrches 88 Ortega, Lindi 9
plus a ‘roots of Elvis’-style Is Dead, they sang. Maybe it Coleman, Ornette 100 Parquet Courts 9
comp of his influences. JB was for the best. DE
Cooder, Ry 90 Peters, Mark 9
Daltrey, Roger 89 Phair, Liz 10
Dane, Barbara 104 Rose, Caroline 9
Deadcuts 93 Rouse, Josh 9
Diawara, Fatoumata 92 Sea And Cake 9
Digital, Bobby 102 Slug 9
Disco Inferno 105 Thievery Corporation 9
Dr. Octagon 96 Third Eye Foundation 9
Drinks 92 Toneff, Radka
Eleventh House 103 & Dobrogosz, Steve 10
Friedberger, Eleanor 86 Townshend, Pete 10
Sky Various Gibson, Kenneth James 94 Tubby, King & Riley
★★★ ★★★★ Gomez 105 All Stars 10
Green, Grant 105 VA: More Motown Girls 10
The Studio Albums Spiritual Jazz Gurrumul 92 VA: Salm Vol. 1 10
1979-1987 Vol 8: Japan Hardy, Françoise 88 VA: Tokyo Nights 10
ESOTERIC. CD JAZZMAN. CD/DL/LP Hopkins, Jon 89 Vantzou, Christina
Classical rock superband’s first Not always “Spiritual”, but this Iceage 88 Vive La Void
seven LPs, plus a live DVD. survey of the Japanese scene International Harvester 102 Walker, Ryley
Originals, plus Satie, Vivaldi 1961-1983 contains plenty of Irion, Johnny 91 Ween, Dean
and Mozart numbers, from gold, from straight modal Johnson, Ragnar 102 Who, The 1
sensible prog to full Hooked groove to enterprising fusions Kacy & Clayton 91 Wire 1
On Classics. Bach’s Toccata is of east and west (cf Minoru
Old Spice-level exciting. IH Muraoka’s zen funk). JM
 rhythm and blues like the Stones and
Pretty Things.”
Out Of Borstal’s USP is its head-on
collision of 1970 sound and vision – R&B,
Jesus Christ Superstar, country, bluesy
soul, proto-glam and hard rock, with
plenty of funky breaks: miraculously,
it all hangs together. Offbeat flourishes
added to the sense of yobby intrigue;
a young actor was hired to narrate the
track Borstal, his Cockney banter about
casual violence and skinhead fashion
interspersed with Beats-evoking bongos
and drum rolls, prefacing a brass-heavy,
guitar-squealing jam. The best tune was
reserved for The Boys Lazed On The
Verandah, Peter Sarstedt’s jaunty swing
ballad sung (says Gorman) by bassist
Francis, inspired by “the lustful prison
governors whose houses were open at
weekends to the better-behaved – and
better-looking – boys in their care,”
explains Napier-Bell.
Francis also sang the confronta-
tional Fighting, Spitting, Kicking
Woman (written by Mike and Tony
Newman of Plus, the latter going
on to drum for Bowie and Bolan)
while Gorman claims the Stonesy
guitar on See You Later is his. “But
CREDITS the album sounded nothing like
Tracks: Intro – Borstal us,” he says. Fresh still gamely
Theme/ Shifting The played along – “It was a chance to

Reform School’s Out Big house music: bluesy Hendrix fans

Blame/ Take What You
Want/ Back To My Home/
Fighting, Spitting, Kicking
Woman/ Hit & Run/ Long,
get a record out, and I’d have done
anything to promote our success,”
he admits. This included having
their precious locks shorn for the
This month’s found cell-wall glowering in Brut. But the third group
Long While/ See You
Later/ The Boys Lazed On LP cover, posed moodily in front of
carvings: bootcamp R&B their prison
was bona fide: teen trio The Verandah/ You Made railings at Alexandra Palace.
blues, Fresh (left
exploitation with knobs on. to right) Kevin Fresh, who really had Me What I Am/ Borstal
Theme/ Life Is What You
After RCA released the album,
Francis, Bob won the Weymouth Fresh’s promo duties involved
Make It
Fresh Gorman and
Roger Chantler;
talent show. “We played
noisy pop-R&B, a bit like
Personnel: Bob Gorman
(guitar), Kevin Francis
pretending to be borstal boys:
“That’s when it got strange,” says
Out Of Borstal (below) Simon The Yardbirds,” says (bass), Roger Chantler Gorman. Leaving the concept at
RCA VICTOR, 1970
Napier-Bell and Fresh guitarist Bob (drums), various session home, the band toured Europe,
Ray Singer musicians.
(right) in Gorman, calling from and on returning, discovered

A
lmost 50 years ago, a writer/ Gran Canaria. “And part Producers: Ray Singer Rocking Horse had finished a
manager/schemer, who later deal-making
of the prize for winning and Simon Napier-Bell second Fresh LP, Fresh Today, also
mode.
worked with Bolan, Wham!, Japan was a record deal.” Released: 1970 released in 1970. “Out Of Borstal
and others, found a young R&B group On the plane to New
Recorded: Olympic
had been really well received,”
from Southampton. Together they were Studios, London
York, Singer read says Napier-Bell. [Actor] Sal Mineo
responsible for a music business parable “SAL MINEO Brendan Behan’s Borstal
Chart peak: n/a
ordered a thousand copies, and
defined by opportunity, promise and Current availability:
ORDERED A Boy. “RCA wanted a out of print (see Discogs) gave them as Christmas presents.
exploitation, producing a very British
curio of grimy rock/pop vérité circa 1970. THOUSAND concept album so I Jagger liked it too, and bought a
COPIES, mentioned it to Simon,” lot. It hit a nerve with people.”
That it was a concept album about life in he says. Napier-Bell also recalls Singer, But not with posterity. “Ultimately it
borstal only makes it more bizarre. AND GAVE in a moment of creativity, declaring, destroyed us, because we’d veered so far
Skyping from Thailand, Simon THEM AS “Fresh… Out Of Borstal!” The band away from what we were,” says Gorman.
Napier-Bell recalls its creation. He’d
formed Rocking Horse Productions with CHRISTMAS could surely mimic delinquent youth; “We were confused and argued too
there was just one snag. “Until they much. When I see the guys back in
singer-turned-producer Ray Singer, who PRESENTS.” came to London, we didn’t realise how Southampton, we’re still sad about it.”
helmed Peter Sarstedt’s 1969 UK Number
1 Where Do You Go To (My Lovely). The
Simon bad [Fresh] were,” says Napier-Bell. Afterwards, Francis ended up a school
er-Bell “So we made the record mostly with caretaker, drummer Roger Chantler
duo’s plan was devious and daring musicians.” self-recorded solo albums, while Gorman
“Everything was happening for Br asn’t like making an album with a backed Joe Tex and Geno Washington,
bands in America,” recalls Napier- ecalls Singer. “Kevin Francis did a and now plays the circuit in Gran Canaria.
“so we visited the major US labels, als, but other people sang more, “Thanks for the experience, Simon,” he
told each we had this amazing gro lf included, Simon arranged, and says. “For good or bad, I learned a lot
that we didn’t have time to record used great musicians like Herbie about the industry. And everything that’s
them before flying out, but that owers and Clem Cattini. happened has led me to here, and I’m
we’d signed them on the spot. We Unromantic, I know, but that’s very happy.”
didn’t have a single group, we wer how it was.” Singer doesn’t feel particularly guilty
just having fun.” The songs were also out of about how Fresh were handled, saying,
Napier-Bell claims Rocking esh’s control. Except for Rolling “If they’d really been worth their salt,
Horse scored 11 deals for 11 bands es ballad Long Long While, they’d have pushed everything aside,
all discovered when judging a er and Napier-Bell shared the and moved on.” Yet Napier-Bell admits,
talent contest on Weymouth Pier ing credits with brothers Peter “We were incredibly high-handed with
(“Simon does tell wonderful Clive Sarstedt. Singer also took the band, just horrible. But we thought –
stories,” observes Singer). In fact, eral lead vocals, on Hit & Run, as probably rightly – that’s what the music
they initially scored three deals. melessly fun a Little Richard rip-off business was all about. Since then, we’ve
Two were for bands fabricated by You Later was of the Stones’ learnt you’re not meant to do that, so we
Napier-Bell – Plus, whose The Tonk Women. “To make a do it with more discretion now. Like
Seven Deadly Sins fused hard l-themed record,” Napier-Bell everyone else does!”
rock to a Catholic mass, and “you’d choose tough, upbeat Martin Aston

108 MOJO
“ t he b oy s
ar e bac k ...
”
PIN K FLO YD
A JOURN EY TO THE DARK SIDE DE F LEP PA RD RA INB OW
SHEFF IELD STEEL GOES PLATIN UM
MR BLACK MORE IS BACK

ON
E
SAL
N OW

“We would leave the stage smeared wit ISSUE 7

h blood...”
UK£5.00 US$9.99 CAN$11.99

THIN LIZZY
STILL DANGEROUS
CH ECK OUT: W W W . P L A N E T R O C K . C O M
 10 The Jackson 5
Goin’ Back
To Indiana
MOTOWN 1971, REMASTERED CD 2010
£10.41
You Say: “He’d just turned
13, but MJ’s talent was
already awesome.” Kenny
Hunt, via e-mail
The soundtrack to a goofy TV
special guest-starring Diana
Ross, Bill Cosby and a raft of
basketball players, the meat
of Goin’ Back To Indiana is
gleaned from a raucous
homecoming gig at the height
of their fame. Highlights
include an ominous lurch
through Isaac Hayes’ reading
of Walk On By (later sampled
by Public Enemy for By The
Time I Get To Arizona), a cou-
ple of agreeably frenetic Sly
Stone covers and, best and
most unlikely of all, a blissfully
funky rewrite of Traffic’s
Feelin’ Alright, a song Hayes
would also cover in 1973. Of
several J5 live albums, Goin’
Back To Indiana best captures
the choreographed riot of
their concerts.

INDIANAJONESIN’

Michael Jackson and

The Jacksons
supremos Gamble & Huff before taking the
creative reins themselves for 1978’s
disco-themed platinum-seller Destiny.
The following year, Michael revived his
Pop-R&B genius. Fiat tux: The
Jackson 5 in
solo career with Off The Wall, a monster hit The Jacksons
By Stevie Chick. March 1975
marking his first collaboration with producer Destiny
(from left) Tito, Quincy Jones. 1982 follow-up Thriller – which EPIC 1978, CD £12.74
remains the best-selling album of all time –

T
he King Of Pop had hardscrabble Jackie, Michael, You Say: “Shake Your Body
beginnings. Born to shop assistant Jermaine and helped usher him to his place atop pop’s (Down To The Ground) may
Katherine and steel-worker/bar-band Marlon; (far throne, where he remained for the rest of be their best ever song.”
guitarist Joe in Gary, Indiana, Michael right) MJ turns the 20th century. But this imperial phase was Steve Read, via e-mail
down the marred by tabloid infamy and accusations
Jackson first performed alongside older Technicolor for There was an impressive
brothers Jackie, Tito, Jermaine and Marlon as his solo career, of child abuse, and the disarray of his private
swagger to that title, but it
The Jackson 5 on his seventh birthday. A January 1979. eventually disengaged his previously wasn’t mere destiny that
combination of talent, toil and the ever-pres- llible pop touch: 2001’s Invincible was saw it shift four million copies.
ent threat of Joe’s cruel retributions swiftly a relative disappointment and the last album The 5 had flirted with disco
vaulted the brothers from high school talent before his 2009 death, weeks ahead of a before, but their first album
contests to the attention of Motown Records ‘comeback’ tour. to assert complete creative
honcho Berry Gordy, who moved the His final years were dark and tragic, but control placed songcraft
Jacksons to Hollywood and teamed them the art he created continues to inspire, and rhythm on equal terms.
memorialising a peerless performer, singer It led with the album’s sole
with his new songwriting/production team cover, Blame It On The Boogie
The Corporation. and songwriter whose brilliant vision defined
Their first four singles – I Want You Back, “ THRILLER pop itself for several decades. Remember (by improbably named Brit
hopeful Mick Jackson), an
ABC, The Love You Save, I’ll Be There – were REMAINS him that way. irrepressibly joyful pop
chart-toppers, thanks to The Corporation’s THE BEST- confection, while the other
brilliant material and the dazzling, prodi- big smash, Shake Your
SELLING Body (Down To The Ground),
gious gifts of Michael, an all-singing,
all-dancing pre-teen phenomenon who was ALBUM OF was a deathlessly danceable
soon spun off into a parallel solo career. But ALL TIME.” beast. But Destiny had
depth: check the gossamer
Motown wasn’t sophisticated enough to strings and soft-focus
evolve with its young charges, so as balladry of Push Me Away,
Jacksonmania inevitably waned, the or the wry storytelling of
Jacksons decamped to Epic, cutting two the best comments. That’s What You Get (For
modestly successful albums with Philly Soul Being Polite).

110 MOJO
9Unreleased
The Jackson 5
I Want You Back! 8 Jackson with
Michael

The Jackson 5
7 Lookin’ Through 6 Jackson
The Jackson 5

The Windows
Michael

Bad
5The Jacksons
Triumph
EPIC 1980, REMASTERED CD 2009 £6.97

Masters Soulsation! MOTOWN 1972, REMASTERED CD 2016

£10.26
EPIC 1987, REMASTERED CD 2012 £5.99 You Say: “A perfect accom-
paniment to Off The Wall…
MOTOWN 2009, CD £4.16 MOTOWN 1995, CD £22 You Say: “His last great
You Say: “Consistently record.” Suzanne Murray, sad they couldn’t stay
You Say: “Superb quality You Say: “Bypasses the good.” George Cheng, together.” Will Davies,
outtakes and rarities via e-mail
extraneous stuff on the via e-mail via e-mail
collection.” Phil Castiglione, original albums.” Tom Thriller was an impossible feat
via e-mail Partington, via e-mail Their previous album, 1971’s Off The Wall had made
to follow, but Bad tried valiant-
Maybe Tomorrow, marked the Michael a bona fide solo
An impressively solid raid of Even as veteran Motown stars ly, and at times perhaps too
end of the Jacksons’ tenure sensation, but he wasn’t too
the Motown archives, this like Stevie Wonder and Marvin hard. Even a Scorsese-directed
with the Corporation – the big yet to rejoin his brothers
selection of mothballed Gaye were ditching the label’s promo couldn’t land the title for another multi-platinum
team were responsible for track’s macho bombast –
Jackson 5 nuggets offers lively ‘factory’ organisation in favour group effort. Nonetheless,
only three tracks here. But Michael was a lover, not a
excerpts from a ’70s TV variety of creative control over their the Jacksons were not a frater-
while this sixth studio set fighter, and Bad’s best
show hosted by comedian Flip own auteurist visions, The nity of equals, and Triumph is
Wilson, a souped-up outtake began a period of transitional moments were love songs: the
Jackson 5’s success was late- very much cast in Michael’s
of their proto-disco banger era proof that the old school uncertainty for the 5, it’s one giddy, light-headed The Way image, sounding like both a
Dancing Machine, and a cover system could still deliver bril- of their stronger albums, rely- You Make Me Feel, the billow- retread of Off The Wall and a
of Curtis Mayfield’s Man’s liance. But just like Motown’s ing less on the Motown formu- ing, brilliantly overblown dry run for Thriller. Which,
Temptation that suggests early long-players, the la, more on booming Latino- devotional of I Just Can’t Stop as it turns out, is no bad thing:
gravitas was not beyond the Jacksons’ albums shamelessly funk excursions (Don’t Want Loving You, a duet with Siedah Can You Feel It remains the
juvenile Michael’s reach. Best balanced the singles with To See Tomorrow), a piano-led Garrett. Elsewhere, Man In The greatest foot-stomping
of all is Buttercup, a jazzy, bubblegum filler and pedestri- barrel through Jackson Mirror worked alchemical anthem in the Jackson
swoonsome 1974 ballad an retreads of the label’s clas- Browne’s Doctor My Eyes, and magic, finding poignancy and songbook, Everybody is zeph-
penned and produced by sics. So this ’69-75 4-CD box an epic title track penned by uplift in well-worn self-help yr-light and anticipates the
Stevie Wonder, from a pro- set might be the best way to Clifton Davis, blending sophis- tropes, while CD bonus track dreaminess of Human Nature,
posed collaborative album explore beyond the clan’s ticated harmony arrange- Leave Me Alone toyed point- while the sleek This Place
that never made it past the greatest hits, cherry-picking ments and thrilling Shaft- edly with Jacko’s ‘Wacko’ Hotel’s stark declaration
planning stages. On the evi- the best album tracks, along influenced machine-gun image, lashing out at the tab- that “Hope is dead!”
dence of this dulcet track, it with a CD’s worth of rare and string blitzes for the Jacksons’ loid’s laying siege upon his commits gleeful murder
was a missed opportunity. unreleased recordings. most ambitious song yet. ever-shrinking private life. on the dancefloor.

WHERENEXT

The Jackson 5 Michael

Michael was a pioneer of the
ABC Jackson music video, so any Jacko
MOTOWN 1970, CD £11.77 Thriller library is incomplete with
You Say: “There’s something EPIC 1982, CD £5.99 out a collection of his visual
perfect and ageless about all You Say: “One of the all-time output: Michael Jackson’s
of it, not just the title song .” greatest albums.” Hussain Vision (Epic, 2010) is a pleas
Gary Johnson, via e-mail Miah, via e-mail ingly exhaustive compendi
um, including Jacksons clips
The strongest album of their The ambition displayed on along the way. Biography
bubblegum era, ABC boasted Thriller is still breathtaking: wise, J Randy Taraborrelli’s
two of the 5’s finest singles not content with being one Michael Jackson: The Magic,
with The Corporation – the of soul’s hottest stars, Michael The Madness, The Whole
title track, a bristling down- Jackson’s sixth solo album at it prom
pour of hooks and pop inven- eyed up total world domina- Michael Jackson ost Bad
tion, and The Love You Save,
which was the same, only
tion. Thriller confirmed him as Off The Wall tchy,
pop polymath without equal, EPIC 1979, CD £5.59 first post
more so – along with an rubbing creative shoulders ompila
unexpectedly convincing You Say: “Wacky, batty esoteric pop that har
with the likes of Paul ael (Epic,
cover of Funkadelic’s I’ll Bet the best of funk, disco and The Beatles.”
McCartney and Eddie Van sts a fine
You, and a raft of Motown Eoghan Lyng, MOJO Facebook
Halen, drawing funk, disco, uichi
standards, given a unique soul and even heavy rock into Jackson’s true triumph was Thriller’s predecesso s Behind
new spin when voiced by his vortex and owning them; By 1979, disco was already on the wane, but Off k from the
12-year-old Michael. His and, via John Landis’s unfor- The Wall transcended fad or genre, bending the ssions.
vigorous tears through gettable promo for the title- groove to Michael’s will. Here, he took it to the h brilliant
Smokey Robinson’s (Come track, breaching MTV’s nth level for Burn This Disco Out, or paired it nists,
Round Here) I’m The One You unspoken ‘colour barrier’. with delicate tornado strings and horns for the brothers
Need and Stevie Wonder’s Thriller confirmed that mindwarping pop perfection of Don’t Stop ‘Til ourish as
Don’t Know Why I Love You Jackson was a talent that You Get Enough, or fused it with quiet storm for s, and their
are highlights, Michael’s wouldn’t be contained by the blissful Rock With You. Away from the ve outputs
fierce, precocious delivery prosaic boundaries: the dancefloor, I Can’t Help It (co-written by Stevie or serious
explained on 2-4-6-8: “I may music he made was, Wonder) was a gorgeous ballad, coining a new, completists
Getty (3)

be a little fella, but I have all simply, pop, and he was more mature sound for Jackson, one emphasise only.
the heart of Texas”. the King of it. by the string-laden melancholy of She’s Out Of

MOJO 111
 WHAT WE’VE
LEARNT
● Simon’s first record
with Garfunkel, 1957’s
Hey, Schoolgirl –
credited to Tom & Jerry
– featured Simon’s
father Lou on bass.
● After seeing Simon &
Garfunkel’s live debut at
Folk City in 1964, David
Geffen, then working at
the William Morris

Simon says
He leaves that to Robert Hilburn, who time yet didn’t cut Agency, told Garfunkel
wrote 2013’s definitive Johnny Cash: The his son’s first that he “should stay
Life and was the chief pop music critic at records any slack. in school.”
the Los Angeles Times for 36 years: “I’m “Lou’s early ● Simon sang on BBC
radio for the first time
A fully authorised and Wherever we
may find him:
neurotically driven,” Simon told Hilburn criticisms were
in 1965, on the religious
back in 1973, confessing his constant fear right,” says a
forensically detailed Paul Simon of writer’s block. That early trust reaps Queens friend.
programme Five To Ten.
His song A Church Is
at Wembley
biography of Rhymin’ Simon. Studios, 1966. dividends now. Hilburn threads incisive “That honesty Burning outraged
recall from Simon’s inner circle – boy- stuck with Paul.” the Beeb’s head of
By David Fricke. hood pals; ex-wives Peggy Harper and By 1964, Simon religious broadcasting.
the late Carrie Fisher; studio associates – of elfin height,
Paul Simon: and inspirations including both Everly with already thinning hair – was finding
The Life Brothers – with thorough reporting and
extensive breakdowns of turning-point
his charisma, singing I Am A Rock at an
English folk club where “girls were
★★★★ albums (1968’s Bookends, Simon &
Garfunkel’s delicate peak of unity, and
screaming, and old ladies were
jumping up and down,” according to a
Robert Hilburn Graceland, the 1986 South African stunned eyewitness.
SIMON & SCHUSTER. £14.99 gamble that saved Simon’s career in Garfunkel is the pale rider haunting
middle age) as well as humbling missteps each page: dependent on Simon for

L
ate in this unusual hybrid of such as the 1980 film One Trick Pony and words to sing in a partnership that was
personal testimony and forensic 1998’s Broadway disaster The Capeman. brittle and uneasy from the start; eager
biography, Paul Simon – a Hilburn’s access and narrative licence for reunion after the 1970 split; easily
painstaking songwriter, protective of his sheds new light on Simon’s ascending wounded in estrangement. “I don’t even
creative control on records – explains years: his middle-class Jewish upbring- read them any more,” Simon says at
why he did over 100 hours of interviews ing in Queens, New York, where he first one point of his old school friend’s
for this book but did not write it himself showed his competitive edge on the public jabs. “Artie’s just working out
or demand the final cut. “ARTIE’S baseball field; Simon’s pop factory his demons.”
“I’m not drawn to big observations JUST apprenticeship making cheesy singles, It is a cool but characteristic dismissal.
about it,” the singer says of his half- WORKING initially with Garfunkel, under lame Even with the star riding shotgun instead
century in platinum-and-Grammy clover pseudonyms; and his awakening as a of in the driver’s seat, Paul Simon: The Life
and the costs fully tallied here, including OUT HIS singer and composer via the British folk moves like the singer’s best records –
a string of failed relationships and the DEMONS.” revival during formative trips to the UK in with enriched but even momentum. As
long drama of his vocal bond with Art Paul Simon 1964 and ’65. Simon points out, recalling the first time
Garfunkel. “You pay a price for fame,” Simon inherited much of his urgency he saw Elvis Presley on TV, “I knew I
Simon concedes, “but I’m not inclined to to excel from his father Lou, a dance- couldn’t beat him. But I still felt like I
Getty

calculate it.” band musician who never made the big could make it. I just had to go softer.”

112 MOJO
All Gates Open: and early death. His problems with first manager All In The Downs:
determination to turn his life Matthew Katz, but Moby
The Story Of Can around and pursue Grape fans will lap this up. Reflections On
★★★★ performance rhyme – inspired Jon Savage Life, Landscape
equally by Bob Marley, Patrik
Rob Young Fitzgerald and John Cooper & Song
& Irmin Schmidt Clarke – gained vital traction ★★★
as early ’80s Thatcherite One Last
FABER & FABER. £25
austerity bit hard. A self-styled Experience: The Shirley Collins
Double-pronged history/ STRANGE ATTRACTOR PRESS. £15
anarchist, Benjamin Zephaniah
impressionistic memoir of
doesn’t shirk naming names or
Jimi Hendrix A poignant story of tragedy,
Krautrock titans. Experience Live
apportioning blame as he triumph and murder ballads.
An active group
for seven years, by
draws disturbing parallels
between Brexit Britain and
At The Royal The recent The Ballad Of
Albert Hall Shirley Collins movie and
1975 Can’s fan the troubled times where he 2016’s Lodestar album mean
club numbered found his voice. Vivid, frank February 1969 the story of Shirley Collins’
between 300 and and to the point, yet bristling
★★★★ return to active service after a
400 greatcoated with compassion, this is a 38-year break is now quite
heads. But while rousing romp through a What’s Big And Ben Valkhoff familiar. No great revelations
bigger-selling contemporaries
have faded, Can’s in-the-
life less ordinary and a
timely reminder of art’s
Purple and Lives PICTURESOFJIMI.COM. £32 here, then, but it is still a
cracking tale and Shirley
moment telepathic redemptive force. In The Ocean: Lavish chronicle of Jimi’s last
entertains with wry anecdotes,
London concert; with
conjurations continue to
crackle with insane life. This
Andy Cowan The Moby previously-unseen photos. compelling honesty, sharp
Grape Story self-effacement and insights
superb and only occasionally On February 24 into the traditional songs that
‘official’ biography recounts ★★★ 1969, Jimi consume her. She doesn’t
how their unique entity Hendrix played mess around; right from the
sparked, grew, peaked and Cam Cobb his last indoor outset she goes to the heart
dissolved, with copious JAWBONE. £14.95 British concert of the problems that rendered
interviews with members and First telling of San Francisco at the Royal her silent all those years,
intimates, fascinating new group’s bedevilled history Albert Hall; a detailing how she met, fell in
insights (the real reason for the in book form. chaotic jam-cum-guitar- love with , married and was
1977 estrangement of bassist smashing rampage compared ultimately betrayed by Ashley
Moby Grape began 1967 with
Holger Czukay is scandalous) to the previous week’s more Hutchings. Her dispassionate
a terrific first album and a
and as sure a grasp of Can’s subdued display at the same telling is far more affecting
major label deal with
music, whether live, on film or venue. One of the European than any angry revenge
Columbia. Several events in
live, as this reviewer has read. super-fans who kept Jimi’s diatribe. There is some
that summer – having their
Can keyboardist Schmidt takes freak flag flying during leaner crossover with her previous
prime evening slot bumped at
over for part two’s Can Kiosk, a pre-Experience Hendrix times, book, America Over The Water,
Monterey; being arrested on Valkhoff experienced his life-
free-ranging, self-described about Collins’ collecting
drugs charges; suffering a shaping close encounter after
“collage” of diaries, dreams adventures with Alan Lomax;
hype overkill – derailed their sneaking into the afternoon
and discussion with Can- but, gently guiding us through
extraordinary momentum, soundcheck on the 24th,
admirers including Mark E her rise, fall and rise, while
Smith, Wim Wenders and Nick Going For and the rest was drug photographing the band in an expounding with relish on the
deranged psychosis and a vain
Kent, which reflects on the A Song: A attempt to recapture the
empty RAH, and then later, the
show itself. It’s a refreshing,
wonder of traditional song,
group’s origins, practice and this is an engaging read.
legacy in ways that are by Chronicle Of The initial magic. The result, sometimes startling change Colin Irwin
nevertheless, was three,
turns severe, droll, tender and UK Record Shop arguably four, fascinating
from the familiar images of
pithy. Can fans, get your Hendrix at the time, with
orders in.
★★★ albums that define the San Valkhoff’s black-and-white
Garth Cartwright Francisco Sound. Cam Cobb photos bolstered by his
Ian Harrison
tells this emblematic story forensic account of the day’s
FLOOD GALLERY PUBLISHING. £12.99
well. The group’s careening events and Jimi’s activities
Heavy-going history of this trajectory from formation until over this period: starting with
nation’s vinyl emporia, from the departure of Skip Spence the uproar of January’s Lulu TV
19th century to the present. is fleshed out, and his writing show mutiny, and finishing
In a valiant attempt to shatter about the music is insightful with Noel Redding’s departure
the gender stereotype of and passionate. There are in June. Valkhoff’s beautifully
record shops as the preserve flaws. He begins with 80 pages presented labour-of-love is
of blokes with personality about the 1971 reunion album, underscored by the feeling
disorders, the cover shows 20 Granite Creek, and I could that this tumultuous era is
Björk rifling through a ‘Fusion’ have done with more detail ending, although never that
section, and the early pages about the derailment of Skip Jimi’s days are now numbered.
depict two female shop Spence and the group’s Kris Needs
owners (an early-’60s
Shirley Bassey, and Ashli Todd
from Britain’s oldest record
shop, Spillers in Cardiff). Everyone’s welcome: Can
in 1988 (from left) Michael
In a colourful foreword,
Karoli, Damo Suzuki,
meanwhile, comedian Stewart
Jaki Liebezeit, Malcolm
Lee compares the author to
The Life And the 17th-century antiquarians
Mooney, Irmin Schmidt,
Holger Czukay.
Rhymes Of who vainly sought to protect
Benjamin our megalithic remains from
lunk-headed destruction.
Zephaniah Much love (and anger)
★★★★ doubtless fuels Cartwright’s
compulsive documentation of
Benjamin Zephaniah this latterly endangered retail
SIMON & SCHUSTER. £20 world. From the initially wax-
OBE-swerving Brum poet, cylinder-purveying HMV, via
playwright and national label-launching mavericks like
treasure takes stock. Virgin, Rough Trade, Small
While the first hints of Wonder and Beggars Banquet,
Zephaniah’s future as Britain’s through to the death of
premier dub poet came when Woolworths, Our Price and
he started rapping Bible countless indies nationwide,
passages for a church pastor there’s many a detailed tale
aged eight, domestic carnage told, with cameos from the
precluded a proper schooling, likes of sometime counter-
as the undiagnosed dyslexic worker at Bromley’s A.T.
and accomplished pickpocket Furlong & Sons, David Bowie.
embarked upon a series of Still: it has ‘dad’s birthday’
hustles that signalled a one- written all over it.
way trajectory towards prison Andrew Perry
 Atypical girls:
life-changing
rebels Albertine
(left) and Palmolive.

(Pop Group/PiL), plus Letts, Goldman, The

Raincoats’ Gina Birch, producer Dennis Bovell
and the Pistols’ Paul Cook.
“We were girls on a mission,” says Albertine,
who describes Ari as “a shaman” she could
channel all her insecurities through.
Rehearsal and live footage captures their
magnetic quality, the performances intense,
captivating, the group an explosion of colour,
vibrancy and fun. “You wanted to shock people
out of their complacency,” says Palmolive. For
Birch, seeing them was a revelation. “A life-
changing thing,” says The Raincoats’ singer. “This
complete raw energy, it unlocked something in
me and suddenly I was standing there thinking,
I want to do this too.”
Intimate footage taken at Ari’s mum Nora
Forster’s home shows just how close the
original four were, spending Christmases
ogether and dancing to reggae played on
Ari’s Dansette. “I felt I found my people,”
ays Pollitt.
Pollitt’s scrapbook from the time
From 1976 to ’82 The Slits provides another personal touch. It’s filled

Listen up confounded all musical and

gender expectation by
creating an extraordinary noise
that was labelled punk but
with cuttings, including a Zig Zag front
over and a News Of The World spread
with the heading, “These girls make the
ex Pistols look like choirboys.”
An overlooked punk band get encompassed so much more. While sensationalism and hostility
to tell their story. By Lois Wilson. “They were an avant-garde Afro-jazz
motherfucking gang that no one else
dogged them – at one show Ari is slashed –
they continued to push boundaries on their
could touch,” says Don Letts, DJ and their 1979 tour which saw the bill completed by Don
Here To Be Heard: first manager. “It was truly original,” adds Cherry, Creation Rebel and Prince Hammer –
The Story Of The Slits writer Vivien Goldman. “A new sort of tribe
striving for an equality that’s unknown in
the original punky reggae party. For Cherry’s
teenage daughter, Neneh, who got to join The
★★★★ the regular world.” Slits on-stage, it was “a dream come true”.
STARCLEANER/MOVIEHOUSE ENTERTAINMENT. C/DVD/DL
The Slits’ story unfolds from chaotic As was the reconfigured line-up’s 2005
beginnings to celebratory reunion ending reunion for Ari and Pollitt, as it took them to a
“THEY WERE scared of us,” says Viv Albertine of through candid insight from the band’s core young audience in the States before Ari’s death
The Slits’ audience, in director William Badgley’s – Albertine, Tessa Pollitt, Paloma McLardy aka in 2010. Albertine, meanwhile, continues to
fantastic documentary on the band. “These Palmolive, and the late Ari Up – with extra detail channel her sedition into her writing and
guys didn’t know whether to fuck us or kill us, from original guitarist Kate Korus, later concludes, reassuringly, “We were those people,
they were so confused.” drummers Budgie (Banshees) and Bruce Smith we were those rebels and we still are”.

27: Gone than this morbid corner of the ongoing passion for grease from the late director Murray well concur. A Camden-based
pop world. monkeying, and why Les Paul Lerner’s original footage, the group from central Portugal
Too Soon Ben Myers and Cliff Gallup rock. film showcases Morrison’s with a trusting but sincere
★★ Ultimately, Beck comes across dedicated vocalising, and as belief in the power of Pistols-
as the Ernest Shackleton of such is a reminder that he meet-Iggy-meets-Cramps
Director: Simon guitar exploration, Nigel remains one of rock’s finest punk rock, they were briefly
Napier-Bell Still On The Run: Tufnell’s much-loved lookalike, singers, blessed with a natural ablaze in the early noughties.
BULLDOG FILMS. DVD The Jeff Beck and a 73-year-old with instrument that was equal Their peak as naked-in-the-
surprisingly toned biceps. parts nightclub crooner and crowd contender-agitators
Revelation-free ex tion Story James McNair roadhouse blues shouter. who drank lager out of their
of rock mortality. The other Doors’ eclectic
★★★★ shoes is illustrated with
This attempt to influences stand out: organist searing gig footage from the
discover why an
Director: Matthew Manzarek’s classical chops, toilet circuit and beyond, plus
abundance of rock Longfellow The Doors: Live guitarist Krieger’s blues, other havoc, such as them
stars die at the age EAGLE ROCK ENTERTAINMENT. DVD
At The Isle Of flamenco and Indian music, scrapping with bouncers who
of 27 stumbles at The full Beck-Ola, f and drummer Densmore’s jazz then CS gas the unruly crowd.
the first hurdle Yardbird to able in eter
Wight Festival mastery. But however hard they tour,
when Tom Robinson remarks of Nessun Dorma. 1970 Michael Simmons the next step eludes them, and
that more have died at 26 or the band relate their drift to
28. Simon Napier-Bell is well “He’s having a ★★★★ disintegration with emotional
placed to explore the subject conversation with Director: John The Parkinsons: candour. With 90 minutes of
you – it’s just that
and calls upon plenty of music
he’s not singing,” Albarian A Long Way To
extras, there’s also a happier
biz contacts, but the tone of EAGLE ROCK. DVD/BR/DL ending we won’t spoil.
says Jimmy Page
these thin overviews of Jones,
here of Beck’s The final film of Ji
Nowhere Ian Harrison
Hendrix, Joplin, Morrison,
hyper-articulate musicianship. The Doors live. ★★★★
Cobain and Winehouse is akin
From Slash to David Gilmour
to Channel 5’s Autopsy. Pop
to Ronnie Wood, the sharpest On August 30, Director: Caroline
star insight from members of axes in town line up to echo 1970, The Doors Richards
Years & Years, The Feeling and the sentiment, praising Jeff’s performed one of BLUEBELL FILMS. DVD
Palma Violets feel entirely uncompromising love affair their last concerts
random, the psychology is with Jim Morrison Noughties punk’s
with the guitar. Matthew noble shit-or-bust tale.
cod and the “reefer madness”- Longfellow’s affectionate at the Isle Of Wight
style footage somewhat stock. 90-minute portrait also gleans Festival, before Jim left for “You’re a bunch of
Paul Gambaccini’s assertion plenty from Beck himself, who Paris and sunk “into the big knobheads,” drummer Nick
that Kurt Cobain was a one-hit explains his part in the birth of sleep” a year later. Facing a jail Sanderson tells his bandmates
wonder is also just plain Stevie Wonder’s Superstition, sentence for allegedly The Parkinsons, fondly, on a
wrong, though we do learn why there was no point exposing himself at a Miami high-spirited 2003 tour of
that Kurt’s mother’s famous searching for another male gig, and burnt out on the Japan, “that are great.” Those
“that stupid club” quote singer after Rod’s stint in The rock-star trained-seal routine, watching this rapturous, feral,
actually referred to the Jeff Beck Group, how the 1958 he was sober and subdued in poignant but ultimately
suicides of two uncles rather movie Hot Rod Gang fired his front of 600,000 fans. Recut uplifting documentary might

114 MOJO
 Abracadaver!
Grateful Dead founders and the band’s eternal chalk and cheese
embark on their first tour as a duo. By David Fricke.
Bob Weir No fallback
zone: Bob
Weir in his
one that didn’t even make the setlists at Fare
Thee Well: American Beauty’s Operator, the only
& Phil Lesh Birkenstocks
(main pic, left)
original song on a Dead studio LP by the band’s
first casualty, founding organist Ron “Pigpen”
Radio City Music Hall, and Phil Lesh
in his element
McKernan, who died in 1973. Lesh takes the
(main pic, right) mike in his friend’s absence with a touching
New York City – a Dead duo quaver framed by Weir’s bluesy filigrees. Other
backed by surprises come with juxtaposition. Weir kicks-

F
or the remaining veterans, life beyond the Wally Ingram
Grateful Dead has not changed much – in on drums. off the second set with a virile barking-R&B
practical, working terms – from the one vocal in Loose Lucy; Lesh follows with an
they knew inside the original, touring earthy croon through the traditional ballad
maelstrom. Only three days before this show, Peggy-O, an enduring feature on Dead tours for
singer-guitarist Bob Weir, 70, was in Florida Garcia’s tremulous tenor. The spectral expanse
with Dead & Company, his current gigging of Mountains Of The Moon from 1969’s
enterprise with drummers Bill Kreutzmann Aoxomoxoa – with Weir on a Stratocaster, adding
and Mickey Hart and, in guitarist John Mayer, tension and treble to his non-linear rhythm
an able ringer for the late Jerry Garcia. The guitar – segues through a brief reprise of Bird
previous week, bassist Phil Lesh was on-stage at Song to the urgent, angular climb of Let It
his Bay Area club Terrapin Crossroads with the Grow, the finale of the Weather Report Suite
latest version of his Dead-repertory collective, from 1973’s Wake Of The Flood.
Phil Lesh & Friends. The leader, a liver- The stage presence is all business, of course.
transplant and cancer survivor, is now 78. Weir makes a game attempt at banter with the
adoring crowd, prefacing Bird Song with a
Still, there is profound precedence at Radio bawdy story about Pigpen and his girlfriend at
City, the first of six theatre dates spread across the time – Janis Joplin – complete with mock-
a week in New York, Boston and Chicago. Weir orgasm noises. But when they aren’t singing,
and Lesh – the eternal chalk and cheese of the Weir and Lesh turn to each other in close
Dead in age difference, rock’n’roll character listening and anticipation: noting any shift in
and improvising vocabulary – are on the road the other’s improvising; ready to respond – or
in a strictly-duo format for the first time in lead – when a new path emerges. The purity of
their performing history. There is acute, focus shifts the next night at Radio City – Phish
supportive percussion at a stand-up kit by Wally guitarist Trey Anastasio joining Weir, Lesh and
Ingram, who has worked with David Lindley Ingram for the whole second set – and in
and Sheryl Crow. But for two long sets, the Boston, where former Bob Dylan guitarist and
unrelenting focus is on Weir and Lesh – who Phil & Friends alumnus Larry Campbell guests
clashed over the Dead’s business and legacy “WEIR IS
with his wife, singer Teresa Williams.
after Garcia’s passing in 1995; co-fronted the A JUBILANT This show, however, is a stunning
band Furthur over five, rocky years; and went STORM AS introduction in sustained close-up to a bond
their separate ways after the Fare Thee Well LESH SOLOS that, despite a few cracks over time, has never
reunion shows in 2015 – engaging with their THROUGH broken and still faces forward. The encore
canon and each other in a stark, revelatory THE FRAY choice is fitting: Lesh’s healing ballad Box Of
setting with no fallback zone. LIKE A Rain. And earlier, before the Lost Sailor/Saint
In the Dead, Weir and Lesh were the subtle Of Circumstance medley, Weir recalls a crisis
rhythmic spine and the fluid, melodic certainty LOW-END
GARCIA.” of confidence he had years ago during a walk in
between the double drumming and Garcia’s h ds. “It came to me,” he says. “I don’t
spiralling leads. Tonight, the two men at I’m looking for. But I just gotta keep
with the familiar comfort of Uncle Joh t it.” The truckin’ continues.
Band from Workingman’s Dead, quickly
up the contrasts in their unique drive.
instrumental breaks, Weir – who now
looks like the elder partner, in his
whaling-captain spray of stone-grey
beard – is a jubilant storm of
strumming and slicing flourishes on
acoustic guitar as Lesh solos through
the fray, exploring the tune’s byways
like a low-end Garcia. A jaunty Friend
Of The Devil, the ascending
exchanges in Bird Song and a sly zigza
– via a spurt of railroad boogie – into
Jay Blakesburg (5)

the stoned gait of He’s Gone highlight

complementary momentum of Weir’s
psychedelic impulses and the Bach-lik
rigour of Lesh’s walking bass.
There is an early left turn in repert

116 MOJO
SETLIST
Uncle John’s Band /
Operator / Ramble On
Rose / Friend Of The
Devil / Bird Song / He’s
Gone / Lost Sailor / Saint
Of Circumstance / Loose
Lucy /Peggy-O / Me And
My Uncle / Mountains Of
The Moon / Bird Song
(reprise) / Let It Grow /
A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna
t Fade Away /
ain
 SETLIST
Lying With You / Ring A
Ring O’Roses / I’m A Lie /
Sylvia Says / Songbird /
The Songs That We Sing /
Les Crocodiles / Deadly
Valentine / Kate / a perfect match for its sleek,
Charlotte For Ever / Rest/ minimalist architecture. The
Heaven Can Wait / Les stage set-up is cool, too, with
Oxalis / Runaway / glowing white neon rectangles
Lemon Incest
cutting through the darkness.
One can feel a collective intake
of breath as Gainsbourg takes the stage.
Seated at the piano, she’s framed by the
light strips, putting her at a glamorous
remove from the audience.
As soft as Gainsbourg’s voice is,
there’s a toughness at work here, too.
There’d have to be, given the subject
matter of these songs: opener Lying With
You recalls her experience of lying next
to the body of her father Serge Gains-
bourg after he died.
While some of the album’s more
reflective songs don’t quite find the lift
they need in this rather airless venue,
numbers like gossamer disco strut
Sylvia Says really soar. At the gloriously
noisy climax of Deadly Valentine,
strobes kick into action, Gainsbourg
leans artfully against a neon frame
and – for a moment – she smiles.
But it’s the show’s first encore that
feels like a glorious reveal; it’s a delicate
cover of Kanye West’s self-disparaging
hip-hop anthem Runaway. It’s funny,
hearing Gainsbourg singing “Let’s have a

Steppin’ Out
time. I’m very focused on those toast for the arseholes” in her clipped
songs while I perform them, and English accent. It also feels deeply
happy to be there.” honest, sung by a woman who must
It feels right that the tour begins here surely have seen her share of unchecked
Family histories, new starts Framed:
on-stage in
in Hamburg. This ebullient, forgiving egos and wild creativity in her life.
port city is a good place for first starts – Later, Gainsbourg reflects on the
and a touch of Kanye. the neon-lit
Brahms and The Beatles cut their teeth show. “It’s difficult to feel… what’s
basement of
By Sophie Harris. the Mojo Club. here – and for starting over. the word in English? To be bienveillant
In the heart of the red-light district, [benevolent] with the mistakes,” she
Charlotte the Mojo Club heaves with an immacu-
lately turned-out, motionless crowd –
says with a gentle laugh. “To feel that
tenderness about myself? No.”
Gainsbourg
Mojo Club, Hamburg “ I’M NOT
SCARED
“I
t took me such a long time to admit
that I could do live shows,” says ABOUT BEING
Charlotte Gainsbourg, backstage
at the Mojo Club. “It wasn’t part of my SAD ALL
culture at all. I lived with my parents’ THE TIME.”
records all my life, but my father was so
sick with stage fright.”
There’s another aspect to the
intensity of performing live this time
around. In 2014, Gainsbourg moved from
Paris to New York following the sudden
death of her sister, the photographer
Kate Barry. Her fourth album, Rest, took
four years to materialise, with its creator
writing her own lyrics for the first time.
Combining drama and disco with
melancholy and understatement,
Katja Ruge (3)

it is her most intimate work to date.

“Carrying my sister inside those songs
in live shows is very touching,” she says.
“I’m not scared about being sad all the

118 MOJO
 UNDER THE BRIDGE PRESENTS

JOHN HIATT
& THE GONERS
FEATURING SONNY LANDRETH

MONDAY 2 JUL SOLD OUT

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tuesday 3 JULY 2018

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 VOTED TOP FESTIVAL BY BBC 6 MUSIC LISTENERS

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 and the
can be viewed on YouTube. Starr was an
underrated singer, who is best remem-
bered today for her pop success with
Wheel Of Fortune. But she was a terrific jazz
voice, acclaimed by Billie Holiday as “the
only white woman I know who can really
sing the blues.”
SLIGHTRETURN
IS THE CANDY
SOUNDTRACK STILL
WHICH WAS THE TO BE HEARD?
Ringo Starr’s first appearance in a
non-Beatle film is reputed to be in a 1968

SHORTEST BAND film called Candy. I believe there was a

soundtrack album issued but I can’t trace
it. Is the album still available and does

REUNION?
Ringo appear on any tracks?
Mr Soul (limbo): J. Logan, via e-mail
(clockwise from
Fred Says: The Candy soundtrack album
main) Buffalo
I lost a bit of money on – trying to set up was first issued by ABC Records in the US
Bow down! As Grandmaster bicycle parks for the community, and
Springfield in
2011; Ringo during 1968 and appeared here on
Dellar zugzwangs you good trying to rescue the pub in Salford. But not lands one on EMI-Stateside. A stellar affair, the film
starred Charles Aznavour, Marlon Brando,
Sugar Ray
with esoteric rock, jazz great losses.” There’s also the matter of his
Robinson in the Richard Burton, James Coburn, John
popular comeback with ex-Beautiful South
and pub wisdom. voice Jacqui Abbott after several years of
Candy movie;
Bryan Ferry in
Huston and Walter Matthau alongside
Anita Pallenberg, Sugar Ray Robinson and
I was disappointed, commercial undera- 2010; Paul Ringo (cast as a Mexican gardener). None
but also relieved, chievement. “I thought Heaton with his of these feature on the album though,
that the partial the next stage was going pub in Salford; which includes The Byrds performing
Smiths reunion-plus- to be me going round on Kay Starr intro-
duces herself.
Child Of The Universe plus two songs
orchestra foundered my bicycle playing pubs by Steppenwolf (Magic Carpet Ride and
just as it was and releasing records that Rock Me). Additionally, there’s a score
announced. But it led maybe five or six by Dave Grusin featuring such tracks as
me to wonder what’s thousand people will Spec-Rac-Tac-Para-Comm, Ascension To
the shortest-lived buy,” he said. “Suddenly Virginity and It’s Always Because Of This: A
band reunion in rock? all that changed.” So now Deformity. The album has been out of print
Nick Johnson, you know. for a number of years but the film was still
via e-mail loitering online recently, a dire reminder of
Fred Says: You could
TOTP – THE an era when third-rate sex-satire passed for
say Led Zeppelin’s FINAL WORD up-to-the-minute comedy.
2007 gig at The 02 I’m a couple of months
Arena or Pink Floyd at Live8, but as these behind on my MOJOs here in New HELP FRED…
were only ever meant to be one-off Zealand, but I must point out that, DID FERRY GO TO
performances, we must dig a little deeper. regarding the TOTP live question (MOJO HELSINKI AND BACK?
Regarding actual long-term plans gone 287), David Bowie’s January 3, 1973 Could you please tell me why there is a
awry, The Velvet Underground’s month- performance of The Jean Genie predates male voice speaking a few words in
plus as a working unit before splitting again Stevie Wonder in 1974 and Tam White in Finnish at the start of Tender Is The Night
in 1993 deserves a mention, while Cream’s 1975. Bowie’s vocal, harmonica and on Bryan Ferry’s album Olympia? I think
2005 reconvention was sunk by deep-root- maracas are live and the backing is much the voice belongs to a Finn who seems
ed personal issues after just seven shows. rawer, even extending into a snipped to be talking about sauna. One possible
But there’s something about Buffalo Love Me Do. Ronson certainly a could be that either Ferry or
Springfield’s 2011 reformation that mixes play his solo live. The clincher, t ett Davies has tried to colour
tantalising possibility with baffling brevity: at 2:58, when Trevor Bolder fluf nightly atmosphere by adding
after just seven dates, and with a full tour for the chorus and comes in too a radio? It’s hard to believe
promised, Neil Young decided to record Andy Bassett, New Plymouth, Ne ce is there by accident.
with Crazy Horse instead, leaving the Pertti Ojala, Pieksämäki Finland
phrase ‘indefinite hiatus’ ringing in fans’ Fred says: And I thought this wa
ears. At least they played – pity those is now! asked Dave A Stewart, who
who bought tickets to see the Cocteau e track, but he failed to
Twins headline Coachella in 2005, only for WHERE IS THAT d. Anyone got any ideas, or
singer Elizabeth Fraser to pull out with a STARR SONG? d we file this one under
month to go. There was a song from the ’40s mingly steamy’?
that began “M I crooked letter,
WHAT HAPPENED TO crooked letter I, hump-back, CONTACTFRED
Rex/Shutterstock, Getty (4)

PAUL HEATON’S PUB? hump back.” Can you help?

I was sad to learn the pub Paul Heaton ran Richard Gray, via e-mail Write to: Ask Fred, MOJO, Fourth
in Salford, The King’s Arms, is now in new Fred says: This was an easy Floor, Academic House, 24-28 Oval
hands. What happened? one for me, as I had a picture Road, London NW1 7DT.
Daniel Ward, via e-mail of Kay Starr stuck inside my OR e-mail Fred Dellar direct at
Fred Says: We asked Paul a while ago, and RAF locker for two years. The [email protected]
he said: “There were a couple of businesses song is M-I-S-S-I-S-S-I-P-P-I,

126 MOJO
 BLACK MOUNTAIN ANSWERS
MOJO 293
ACROSS
1 One of The Trembling Blenders (3,5)

HIGH Across: 1 Fats

Domino, 6 Ska, 9 Two,
10/12 American
Dream, 13 Dick Dale,
5/12 down Loretta Lynn’s Jack White-
produced album (3,4,4)
7 It was Marvin Gaye’s first Number 1
album on the US soul chart (1.1.1.)
Win! Tickets for the 15 Stevie Wonder, 17
Ash, 19 The Idiot, 21
9 Was this Phil Collins release poorly clad?
(2,6,8)
Green Man festival. Too Funky, 22 Hues, 23 11 As tooted by Herbie Mann (5)
Kaya, 24 Twain, 25 13 The Verve’s debut album (1,5,2,6)

H
eld since 2003 at its base Meltdown, 27 Adrift, 17 Is This Whatcha Wont? he asked (5,5)
in the Brecon Beacons, 28 Once, 29 Cher, 31 18 He was born Marshall Mathers III (6)
the Green Man’s an Adam F, 32 Lemar, 34 19 Rapper whose albums include
Weird, 35 Muscle, 36 Konvicted and Freedom (4)
essential part of the outdoor Eno, 37 De Capo, 38 20 Their LPs include Join The Dots and
music calendar. This year, from Maire, 39 Limmie, 40 Clear Shot (3)
August 16-19, high standards Rockit, 42 Def, 43 21 In My --- Time (Family) (3)
will be maintained with Bottle, 44 Ages, 46
Acid, 47 Crass, 50
22 They delivered Dookie (5,3)
performers including John Opal, 51 Surrender, 54 23 David Guetta album on which he
Grant, The War On Drugs, Eden, 55 Ian, 57 Cal, 58 collaborated with John Legend, The
Fleet Foxes, Grizzly Bear, Adrenalize, 60 Script, etc (6)
King Gizzard And The Lizard Havens, 62 Queen, 63 25 He wore white sox for Adam And
Wizard, Cate Le Bon, Joan The Dance, 64 Eddy, The Ants (4)
65 Reedy 26 Could be Pitney, could be McDaniels (4)
As Police Woman, Rolling 27 This guitar-pickin’ Watson won eight
Blackouts Coastal Fever, Down: 1 Frank
Sinatra, 2 The Grammy awards (3)
Public Service Broadcasting, National, 3 Drive, 4 28 Morissette who delivered that Jagged
Dirty Projectors, Kevin M.C.A., 5 Old Before I Little Pill (6)
Morby, Baxter Dury and Jane Die, 7 At My Window, 8 29 Initially Bachman-Turner Overdrive (1,1,1)
Weaver, plus many others. This year s live MOJO God Only Knows, 11 31 Glastonbury band headed by Gary
Interview, meanwhile, will be with John Grant, who’ll Nash, 14/6 I Shot The Stringer (4)
Sheriff, 16 Edwyn 32 As paid by the Pet Shops in 1987? (4)
discuss his work and career at the Talking Shop literary Collins, 18 Sleaford 34 Morrissey’s relative advice? (4,5)
stage (other guests include Peggy Seeger, Viv Albertine Mods, 20 Thorne, 26 35 See photo clue A (3,6)
and Can biographer Rob Young). There’s also comedy, Tom Paxton, 29 36 Bo Diddley hit found amid Simon
film, the Einstein’s Garden science area and more! Clambake, 30 Empire,
And Garfunkel (4)
Want to go? Sure you do. We have three pairs of 33 Reed, 34 Wolf Alice,
35 More, 37 DeBarge,
38 Singular percussion instrument (4)
tickets – worth £180 each, for the full four-day feast of 41 C.C.R., 45 Songhoy, 40 Something found, like Daft Punk’s
fun – for three winners and a pal to attend. All you have 47 Creeque, 48 second album (9)
to do is fill in Pinetop Dellar’s crossword and send it to Alchemy, 49 Silence, 42 Macca’s band, formed in 1971 (5)
Black Mountain High!, MOJO, Academic House, 24-28 52 Elaine, 53 Driver, 56 44 Queens Of The Stone Age’s current
Nasty, 59 Reef, 61 Vee. record label (7)
Oval Road, London NW1 7DJ. Please include your home 45 UB40’s favourite tipple? (3,3,4)
address, email address and phone number. The closing Winner: David 47 Pink Floyd soundtrack with extras? (4)
date for entries is June 2. For the rules of the quiz, see Hunter of Dundee 48 Sweetie who provided New Edition’s
www.mojo4music.com. wins a Washburn first hit (5,4)
WCG20SCE guitar 49 Kraftwerk’s road song (8)
www.greenman.net 52 Fleetwood Mac offered little ones (4)
53 Not a major record company (5)
A 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 7 8 B 54 Eurythmics song inspired by Orwell (8)
56 ---- To The Music (5)
8 57 Musical genre (4)
58 Lucinda Williams’ 2001 album (7)
9 10 59 The only album that Robert Smith
recorded with Siouxsie (6)
DOWN
1 Anna Mae Bullock (4,6)
11 12 13 14 14
2 Your favourite magazine (4)
3 See photoclue B (2,7)
15 15 16 4 See photoclue C (3,8)
5 Bobby of Red Rubber Ball fame (3)
17 18 19 6 Michael who released Some Twist (3)
7 He was awarded an OBE in 2018 (4,6)
19 20 20 21 21
8 Rock duo, once part of 10CC (6,3,5)
10 Jazz pianist who was in with The In
Crowd (6,5)
22 23 24 25
12 See 5 Across
14 Trent Reznor’s are Nine Inches long (5)
28 27 26 30 27 15 A rare one – the only album ever
released by Mellow Candle (9,5)
28 29 28 29 30 33 31 16 This unfortunate woman provided an
Everly Brothers hit (4,5)
32 33 34
24 Miles Davis’ 1986 album (4)
26 The surname is Moroder (7)
29 Wrecking Crew drummer Hal (6)
35 36 37
30 Where The Hollies went round and
round (2,1,8)
38 39 40 41 32 Coloured like The Beatles 1962-1966
album (3)
40 46 41 42 43 33 A Split Enz or Basia album (4,3,4)
34 Ken’s fooling around to form a band
44 45 45
(5,2,4)
37 Chilean nueva canción group based in
Germany (6)
53 46 47 39 Label that signed Elvis Presley from
Sun (1.1.1)
48 50 49 50 51 41 It’s visual thing (5)
Getty (2), Alamy, Michael Berman

43 Could be Speedy – or Robert Earl (4)

52 55 44 Fleetwood --- (3)
45 An issued recording perhaps (7)
53 57 54 55
46 Muse album (6)
50 Musical term for a chunk of time (3)
51 It’s a Rag’n’Bone Man album (5)
56 59 57 60 53 --- On Fire (Elton John) (3)
54 Named like Johnny Cash’s boy (3)
58 61 59 55 Johnnie Ray’s weepy success (3)
C

MOJO 127
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 THISMONTH

TREVOR BURTON
were doing this psychedelic gig in
Denmark, somewhere like that, and I
lost it, and threw my bass at him,
kicked over my amps and stomped off.

AND THE MOVE

They began by blowing Sitting and hear- fucking had enough.” So I said, “Why
As I went off, his hi-hats sort of
whistled past my head and he
followed me into the dressing room
and said, “When are you fucking
leaving?!” I said, “I just did.”
ing the grass don’t you go home, fuck off,” and he
minds in Brum, but collapse grow: The Move
just lunged across the room and
I did a Top Of The Pops after that.
in 1969 (from The band were on one stage and
came at Streatham ice rink. left) Bev Bevan, slammed me against the wall. The
they’d put me on a plinth on the other
Roy Wood, guys broke it up, and off he went,
side of the room. The separation was
HELLO LATE 1965 Trevor Burton
and Carl Wayne;
saying, “I’m leaving.” The next day he
obvious. The very last gig was at
Me and Ace [Kefford, bass] were at the (bottom) the ’65 came back – it was all OK, he’d got it all
out in the open. He was a moody Streatham ice rink. It was just another
Cedar Club in Birmingham, and Davy Mod formation
with (right) Ace fucker, Ace, volatile, a tough guy. Move gig, it was OK. [Manager Tony]
Jones (alias David Bowie) was playing. Kefford; (below) Secunda had gone and then Don
We got talking to him and he said, The first gig was at the Belfry Hotel
Trevor today.
on January 23, 1966. It was pretty Arden turned up in the dressing room
“You guys should form a band.” I was saying, “I’m your new manager, boys.”
much perfect. We were doing
in Danny King & The Mayfair Set and That was it, definitely the end for me.
Motown, Chess, Atlantic stuff. All our
Ace was in Carl Wayne & The Vikings at They didn’t try and get me to stay and I
former bands were there to check us
the time. So we asked the guys – [mul- was glad to get out of it. I’d got a place
out, I think they were shocked, most of
ti-instrumentalist] Roy Wood from them. But we knew what we were in Buckinghamshire, so I went down
Mike Sheridan And The Nightriders, doing. There was burning ambition, to there, with a group of mates I’d put
and Carl Wayne [vocals] and Bev Bevan make it to the top. together, which was the start of Balls.
[drums] from The Vikings. They all said But it’s all water under the bridge. It
yes immediately. I think we all wanted was a fantastic time in my life, and I
to do something a bit more exciting, GOODBYE FEBRUARY 1969 wouldn’t have done any of the things
because music was changing. We’d be Ace had left – he did go very strange I’ve done if it hadn’t been for The
looking at The Who or The Kinks, and after he’d had acid, it tipped him over Move. I’ve met Roy recently, we always
stuff coming from America. the top. I think everybody was got on well. He’s never changed.
From the first time we plugged in exhausted, because we made our As told to Ian Harrison
we knew we had something special. It “I LOST IT money from gigging, we used to gig Trevor Burton’s Record Store Day album
was meant to be secret, ‘cos we were AND THREW five, six nights a week. I think we Long Play is out on Gray Sky Records.
still playing in the other bands, but MY BASS could’ve branched out more musically
there were rumours everywhere. We – it was ’69, you had the Cream and
were at Roy’s, he lived in a fourth-floor
AT HIM.”
Hendrix, Traffic, all that, and we were
council flat with his mum and dad. stuck in the pop world. I wanted to
Roy’s mum had made us sandwiches expand it, jam a bit more, loosen it up.
and tea, and there was a knock at the Roy was up for that but the other guys
door and it was Mike Sheridan saying, didn’t get it really. And we couldn’t
“Hello, hello, what’s going on here?” I really discuss it because we were too
think it was him who said to Roy, “You bloody busy gigging. We did tracks for
should call it The Move.” an album but they all got mixed up
We rehearsed the vocals first at Carl with the singles. I like the album now
Wayne’s house, then we tried it out [1968’s Move] but it was just a
with the full rig in a rehearsal room mish-mash, it didn’t have a focus.
Alamy (2)

and it came together pretty quick. At I was playing bass then, and me
the first rehearsal Ace said, “I’ve and Bev never clicked as a unit. We

130 MOJO
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