CARGO COLLECTIVE
THE BRIAN JONESTOWN MASSACRE
FU MANCHU
WIRE
THE WEDDING PRESENT
NO ONE RIDES FOR FREE
NOT ABOUT TO DIE
FIRE DOESN’T GROW ON TREES
AT THE DOJO LP / CD
PINK FLAG CD
LOCKED DOWN AND STRIPPED BACK VOLUME TWO
Recorded in Berlin between 2020 & 2021, Anton Newcombe’s BJM returns their 19th full-length studio album..
The fourth release in Fu Manchu’s 30th Anniversary vinyl reissue series is a new vinyl specific remaster of the band’s debut remastered by Carl Saff for optimum fidelity.
Released on vinyl for RSD 2022 and now available on CD, originally an early 80’s illegal bootleg of selections from demos recorded by the group for their 1970’s albums Chairs Missing and 154.
Volume Two features home recordings of Wedding Present classics along with a previously unreleased song: ‘That Would Only Happen In A Movie’.
µ-ZIQ
VLADISLAV DELAY
HOLLIE COOK
NIGHTLANDS
LUNATIC HARNESS (25TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION)
ISOVIHA
HAPPY HOUR
MOONSHINE
PLANET MU LP
MERGE RECORDS LP / CD
WESTERN VINYL LP / CD
This album is a counterpart to his two Rakka albums which were a personal reflection on the nature and sound-world of the northern Arctic wilderness.
“a coming of age for both [Hollie] Cook and modern lovers rock, with the nine songs a sumptuous wash of mellow melodic groove and soft, soulful voice.” —MOJO
War on Drugs’ bassist Dave Hartley aka Nightlands, uses lush vocal harmonies to create what Uncut calls “… multi-layered reveries and gently subversive laments.” R.I.Y.L. Beach Boys, Pink Floyd, Sam Evian.
THE CAT’S MIAOW
‘A’ RECORDINGS LP / CD
PLANET MU 4LP / 2CD µ-Ziq’s rare and sought-after fourth album, is generally considered to be Mike Paradinas’s best work of the nineties. Special 25th anniversary edition 4xLP box set.
SCOPITONES LP / CD
JOAN SHELLEY
PARTY DOZEN
BOBBY OROZA
THE SPUR
THE REAL WORK
GET ON THE OTHERSIDE
SONGS ‘94-’98
NO QUARTER LP / CD
TEMPORARY RESIDENCE LTD LP / CD
BIG CROWN RECORDS LP / CD
WORLD OF ECHO LP
Joan Shelley’s first new album in three years. A profound meditation on light and darkness.
The undefinable sax & drums duo from Australia deliver their fiercest and most diverse album yet. Features guest vocals by Nick Cave.
Bobby Oroza puts his desire for the profound on wax with his sophomore album Get On The Otherside mixing his renowned sound with lyrics about self-examination & coming to terms with the vastness of the human experience.
RIYL: Galaxie 500, Marine Girls & Beat Happening. Part of the burgeoning international pop underground of the nineties, The Cat’s Miaow’s legend has only built over subsequent decades, as more people discover this most quixotic & curious of groups.
BASS COMMUNION
THE NIGHTINGALES
EXPERIMENTAL AUDIO RESEARCH
SUNNY & THE SUNLINERS
BASS COMMUNION (I)
IN THE GOOD OLD COUNTRY WAY
BEYOND THE PALE
MR. BROWN EYED SOUL VOL. 2
HIDDEN ART CD
CALL OF THE VOID 2LP / CD
SPACE AGE RECORDINGS CD
BIG CROWN RECORDS LP / CD
Solo project of English musician Steven Wilson, best known for his lead role in the rock band Porcupine Tree. Remastered, new artwork and now including the brilliant extra track, No News Is Good News.
Their last original full-length for 2 decades stands as the final masterpiece postpunk album released before the C86 era. Now includes 1985’s 7” single “It’s A Cracker” & “What A Carry On” 12” EP. “Lloyd’s cracked it. A f*****g good album.” Mark E. Smith, The Fall.
Produced & mixed by Sonic Boom & has been repressed in a limited run for 2022. The new, deluxe digifile, looking crisper, brighter & cleaner retains the original artwork, created by artist Anthony Ausgang. Ltd vinyl edition available later in the year.
A compilation of hits & rarities from The Legendary Sunny & The Sunliners, a group that helped define the San Antonio Chicano Soul Sound.
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MOJO 346
INCLUDES
15-TRACK
SEPTEMBER 2022
CD!
CELTIC SOUL
145
REV I
EWS
ELVIS DAVIES COSTELLO, D AVE , CAS JULIA J S McCOMBS ACKLIN & M OR E
AMERICAN DREAMS!
THE 50 GREATEST SONGS OF
UNSEEN!
JOAN JETT
STILL LOVES ROCK’N’ROLL
BRUCE
U PL S!
40 SKA A
T
NEB
RA
★★
★★
PROCOL HARUM BEYOND THE PALE
DR JOHN GRIS-GRIS COUNTRY!
BURNING SPEAR
CHANTS DOWN BABYLON
DANNY THOMPSON WWW.MOJO4MUSIC.COM
“NICK DRAKE, JOHN MARTYN, KATE BUSH AND ME”
THE REAL ELVIS PRESLEY If your CD is missing please inform your newsagent. For copyright reasons the CD is not available in some overseas territories.
SEP 2022 £6.25 US$12.50 CAN$15.75 AUS$14.99
CON T EN T S LONDON
✦
MEMPHIS
✦
COLTS N
SEPTEMBER 2022
FEATURES
28 DANNY THOMPSON Punch-ups with John Martyn. Pub sessions with Nick Drake. On the bus with Roy Orbison. Sixty-odd years of low-end hi-jinks with the British bass master.
34 ELVIS PRESLEY
As Panto Presley hits the screens, the King comes to life in the jawdropping photographs of Alfred Wertheimer. MOJO gets first dibs from a new book.
38 JOAN JETT The Runaways
derailed at their peak, but their everstubborn guitarist has forged on – to the delight of riot grrrls, Nirvana and The Goddess Of Rock.
42 DEXYS MIDNIGHT RUNNERS It’s 40 years
since Too-Rye-Ay, the Celtic soul-pop milestone that was a double-edged sword for mainman Kevin Rowland. But have the wounds finally healed?
48 DANGER MOUSE & BLACK THOUGHT The über-producer with feet in the Black Keys and Kiwanuka camps gets down with The Roots’ revered rapper. Voilà! Hip-hop like mutha used to make.
52 BURNING SPEAR
Last standing of the roots originals, reggae’s wise one grants a rare audience. “I don’t deal with colourism, nationality, or religion,” he reminds David Katz.
KEVIN ROWLAND, DEXYS MIDNIGHT RUNNERS, P42
How Guy Stevens, J.S. Bach and a drug dealer’s cat paved the way for A Whiter Shade Of Pale. And how angst over attributions drove them apart.
COVER STORY
62 BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN His 50 Greatest Songs. Entrapment and escape, love and betrayal, murder and mayhem, cars and girls: all human life encapsulated by a force of nature and his Swiss Army band. Plus: Springsteen Alone – Nebraska at 40 by David Fricke.
Getty
“I remember thinking, ‘People are fed up with brass, I’m going to have to do something new.’”
58 PROCOL HARUM
MOJO 3
REGULARS 9
ALL BACK TO MY PLACE
Bret McKenzie, Moor Mother and Jon Spencer spin the platters that matter.
112 REAL GONE Julee Cruise, Patrick
So why didn’t Grohl, Macca and Springsteen play Maxwell’s Silver Hammer at Glasto? See p21.
Adams, Kelly Joe Phelps, Jim Seals, Steve Broughton and more, hail and farewell.
120 ASK MOJO Which rockers went rogue and kicked off on live TV?
122 HELLO GOODBYE They hit the alt-rock jackpot, then old internal pressures came to an awkward head. Dean Wareham looks back on the glory of Galaxie 500.
WHAT GOES ON! 14
St. Vincent makes her point in new mock-doc, p111.
STOOGES IN LONDON
Photographer Alec Byrne throws open his archive to reveal unearthed shots of Iggy Pop’s infamous 1972 show in King’s Cross.
16
DR. JOHN Mac Rebennack passed away in 2019. Now the album he was making has been completed with the help of some eminent admirers – but what arguably unexpected genre does it explore?
18
THE WAEVE Blur’s Graham Coxon and former Pipette Rose Elinor Dougall have music from their new project cooking. “I was getting it out quite a lot,” says Graham of his sax.
20
TOM PAXTON Still at it more than
21
BEATLES CATALOGUE NUGGETS After Macca’s awe-inspiring
six decades on, the Greenwich Village folk hero remembers Pete Seeger, the terror of LSD and the wonder of remote writing sessions.
Glastonbury headline slot, a question: which of the Fabs’ songs were never, or rarely, played live by those involved? A debate ensues.
MOJO FILTER 84
NEW ALBUMS Cass McCombs
98
REISSUES Blondie all boxed up, plus
opens his Heartmind, plus Elvis Costello, Julia Jackson, Rich Ruth and She & Him.
George Scott, Earl McGrath and Nada Surf.
108 BOOKS Kink David Davies’ second
autobiography, plus Bowie 72 and Kraftwerk.
111 SCREEN Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis, plus
Pistol, St. Vincent and Felt/Denim’s Lawrence.
Inside the mind of Cass McCombs, Lead Album, p84.
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4 MOJO
Andrew Male
David Katz
Tom Sheehan
A MOJO magazine luminary, Andrew is now also the presenter of the MOJO Record Club podcast. For this issue he dissected Springsteen’s Brilliant Disguise, and played his 8-track really fucking loud for the Steve Albini How To Buy… He lives in London with his dog, Nico, and two cats, Klaus and Sir Thomas Browne.
David had a musical epiphany when he experienced Jack Ruby’s mind-blowing soundsystem in his native San Francisco, aged 17. Author of People Funny Boy: The Genius Of Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry and Solid Foundation: An Oral History Of Reggae, Katz’s lengthy chin-wag with Burning Spear appears on page 52.
A music photographer since 1975, Tom was excited to shoot Danny Thompson (page 28) for MOJO this month: “a great man with a fantastic sense of humour”. His stately pictures of Dexys Midnight Runners from 1982 also feature. Tom’s book on the The Cure, Pictures Of You, will be published in October by Welbeck Publishing.
Étienne Bordet, Getty, Quinton Winter
THIS MONTH'S CONTRIBUTORS INCLUDE...
COVER ME THE SPRINGSTEEN SONGBOOK
1 MITCH RYDER & THE DETROIT WHEELS
2 EDDIE FLOYD
3 THE BIM BAM BOOS
4 GINO WASHINGTON
Springsteen’s Detroit Medley has been a consistent showstopper since the mid ’70s, built around Ryder’s frantic garage-soul mash-up from 1966. Hear a dynamic E Street version on Hammersmith Odeon ’75.
Punchy, impassioned soul in the classic Stax style, written by Floyd and Steve Cropper and taken from the Detroit belter’s 1967 debut, Knock On Wood. Another banger Springsteen co-opted in the mid ’70s – including that opening guitar shimmy, a direct precursor of Prince’s Kiss.
Written by Marascalo, Long, Stevenson, Blackwell. Published by Prestige Music Ltd/ Robin Hood Music/ Jandora Music/Prestige Music Ltd/Janvier Music/ Jobete Music (UK)/Third Story Music, inc. &©1966 Parlophone Records Ltd, a Warner Music Group Company Licensed courtesy of Warner Music UK Ltd.
Written by Eddie Floyd and Steve Cropper. Published by Almo/Irving Music/Universal Music Publishing Ltd./Warner Chappell North America/ Irving Music (East Memphis SP acct) &©1966 WEA International Inc. Licensed courtesy of Warner Music Ltd.
One of those songs that bounced from version to version in the late ’50s and early ’60s, Springsteen’s has lyrics similar to the one that The Dovells took into the US Top 3 in 1963. Here, though, is the lesserheard original from 1959, a phenomenally giddy groover powered by co-songwriter Cornell Muldrow’s organ and, allegedly, jazz/soul legend Phil Upchurch on guitar.
Not to be confused with Geno Washington, hardworking stalwart of the UK soul circuit (and subject of the Dexys hit), Gino Washington was another Detroit favourite of Springsteen, thanks mostly to this rare local hit from 1964. The song, a full-blooded grappling with male vulnerability, became a core part of the Tunnel Of Love tour, played 67 times in 1988 before disappearing entirely from the repertoire.
9 BO DIDDLEY The Bo Diddley Beat is one of the foundational elements of rock’n’roll, and Springsteen has found various ways to honour and deploy it. In the late ’70s, Mona (B-side of Hey! Bo Diddley in 1957) was given a regular slot in the E Street live set, usually as a prelude to She’s The One – a song built on a very similar staccato rhythm. Audience clapalongs were, of course, obligatory.
DEVIL WITH A BLUE DRESS ON & GOOD GOLLY MISS MOLLY
Alamy (2), Getty (11), Norton Records Archive
MONA
Written by Ellas McDaniel. Published by Arc Music. First released 1957.
6 MOJO
RAISE YOUR HAND
CAN’T SIT DOWN
I’M A COWARD
Written by Dasher and Muldrow. Published by Dasher Music. First released 1962.
Written by Ronald David. Published by Brian Bert. First released 1962.
10 U.S. BONDS
11 HAROLD DORMAN
12 THE CONTOURS
Springsteen has covered few songs more frequently than Gary U.S. Bonds’ 1961 doo wop gem – 215 times, according to Setlist. fm’s stats. A major influence on Dion as well as Bruce, Quarter To Three was locked into E Street sets for much of the ’70s, the most famous version appearing at the 1979 No Nukes spectacular, with Clarence Clemons’ ecstatic honking very much to the fore.
A rock’n’roll one-hit wonder in 1960, Dorman’s signature tune was a crafty mix of doo wop harmonies, country twang and chintzy strings, which Springsteen adopted and supercharged for a dozen shows in 1975 (and very occasionally over the next 40 years). A great version from Upper Darby appears on Songs Under Cover Vol. 2. Dorman, meanwhile, also wrote songs for another Bruce fave, Moon Mullican.
“Watch me now!” A frenzied litany of dance crazes and attendant passion, Do You Love Me was written by Berry Gordy, handed to The Contours for a 1962 hit, and adopted by sundry Britbeat groups – notably The Tremeloes and The Dave Clark Five. Springsteen folded it into his repertoire for some typically ampedup and dramatic renderings in 1984 and ’85. A master, clearly, of the mashed-potato…
QUARTER TO THREE
Written by Barge, Guida, Anderson, Royster. Published by Pepe Music. First released 1961.
MOUNTAIN OF LOVE
Written by Harold Dorman. Published by Vaughn Pub. First released 1960.
DO YOU LOVE ME
Written by Berry Gordy Jr. Published by Jobete. First released 1962.
B
RUCE SPRINGSTEEN IS, AS YOU MAY HAVE SPOTTED, A master of many things. But as we celebrate his rousing, poignant, empathetic understanding of North America, its landscape and communities, its culture and people, one key Bruce skill can be overlooked – his ability to channel pure, unbridled rock’n’roll joy. He might be the heroic bard of the dispossessed, but he’s also a connoisseur of ancient goofy dance crazes, of classic R&B, blues, country and proto-rock platters. A walking, jive-talking, Watusi-dancing human encyclopaedia of great American music. This is the music we’ve gathered together for Cover Me: The Springsteen Songbook. We’ve pored over nearly 50 years of Bruce and E Street Band setlists and chosen 15 songs that have cropped up time and again in their live shows. Some of them are cornerstones of the 20th century canon you’ll know well. Others come from the wilder edges of the charts, weird and exhilarating marginalia from the last juke joint standing. All, though, still sound fantastic – a bulletproof party soundtrack for when the sparks fly on E Street. Everybody form a line…
5 THE SEARCHERS
6 JOHN LEE HOOKER
A keen student of the British Invasion, Springsteen has leaned hard on The Animals (It’s My Life), Manfred Mann (Pretty Flamingo) and, in a way, The Beatles (Twist & Shout), as well as these jangling Merseybeaters. When You Walk In The Room landed in Bruce sets in 1975 – the version from Hollywood’s Roxy made his Songs Under Cover digital comp in 2019.
Not much explanation needed for this deathless masterpiece of the blues, from 1962. Boom Boom was another chestnut to enter the Springsteen show in 1988 for the Tunnel Of Love tour, where its mantric, relentless minimalism was given a blitzing revue makeover. Again, the Songs Under Cover set is a good place to hear a sensational E Street Band take, in this case from Madison Square Garden.
WHEN YOU WALK IN THE ROOM
Written by Jackie DeShannon. Published by EMI United Partnership Ltd. &©1964 Sanctuary Records Group., a BMG company Licence courtesy of BMG Rights Management (UK) Ltd.
BOOM BOOM
7 RICHARD BERRY AND THE PHARAOHS HAVE LOVE WILL TRAVEL
Another breakout cover on Springsteen’s 1988 Tunnel Of Love tour, Have Love Will Travel is probably best known in its 1965 version by garage-rock archetypes The Sonics. This is the original by LA doo-wopper Berry, a frequently neglected songwriter who wrote not only Have Love Will Travel but the ultimate garage rock Ur-text – Louie Louie – too.
Written by John Lee Hooker. Published by Conrad. First released 1962.
Written by Richard Berry. Published by Limax Music. First released 1960.
13 CHUCK BERRY
14 MOON MULLICAN
15 SONNY BOY WILLIAMSON
Springsteen didn’t strictly cover Berry’s 1960 tune, but he did reference it as the basis for his own, rather more reflective Johnny Bye Bye, a tribute to Elvis Presley that turned up on the B-side of I’m On Fire in 1985. The E Street Band backed the notoriously capricious Berry twice: a fraught Maryland gig in 1973 and at a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame concert in 1995.
A 1956 single by the Texan ‘King Of The Hillbilly Piano Players’ Moon Mullican, Seven Nights To Rock wasn’t originally much of a hit, but has had a long afterlife as a rockabilly nugget covered by, among others, Nick Lowe. Springsteen didn’t get to grips with it until 2002: a setlist standby in 2003, it’s subsequently cropped up in a few shows most every year.
Like Bye Bye Johnny, this one wasn’t strictly covered by Bruce. But bluesman Williamson does get a co-songwriting credit on the Human Touch album track Cross My Heart thanks to some lyrical congruities – chiefly the “At your bedside/Down on my knees” couplet. A bit of a rarity in the Springsteen canon all told; after two live shows in ’92, it remains to be played again.
BYE BYE JOHNNY
Written by Chuck Berry. Published by Arc Music. First released 1960.
SEVEN NIGHTS TO ROCK
Written by Trail, Innis, Glover. Published by Mar-Kay. First released 1956.
CROSS MY HEART
Written by Sonny Boy Williamson. Published by Arc. Music First released 1958.
8 THE BOBBY FULLER FOUR I FOUGHT THE LAW
Though Bobby Fuller popularised this Clash-approved rabble-rouser, it was actually written by one Sonny Curtis, who recorded the original with The Crickets in 1959 when he replaced Buddy Holly in the band. Springsteen’s been intermittently revisiting it since 1974; the version included on Songs Under Cover comes from an Australian show in 2017. Written by S Curtis. Published by Sony/ATV Music Publishing (UK) ltd &©1997 WEA International Inc. Licenced courtesy of Warner Music UK Ltd.
INTRODUCING
PODCAST
CRATEDIGGERS ASSEMBLE! Join ANDREW MALE and the extended MOJO family of record obsessives, musicians, writers and fans, as we hunt down unheralded gems, reconsider classic albums, bring you the very best new music – and much more. AVAILABLE ON APPLE, SPOTIFY, PLANET RADIO, AND ALL YOUR REGULAR PODCAST PLACES.
SCAN ME TO LISTEN
www.mojo4music.com/podcast
Bret McKenzie CONCHORD FLYING SOLO
What music are you currently grooving to? Cate Le Bon’s Pompeii. A few years ago, she came through Wellington and borrowed a keyboard off me, that’s how I learned about her music. Also, Sad Hunk by Bahamas, and Steve Gunn, particularly New Moon from The Unseen In Between. What, if push comes to shove, is your all-time favourite album? I have two – the first one is Songs From The Front Lawn by The Front Lawn, a quite experimental, really cool New Zealand band from the ’80s. The other one is Bob Dylan, Blood On The Tracks. He was on a roll! What was the first record you ever bought? And where did you buy it? The soundtrack to Breakin’ 2: Electric Booglaoo – on cassette, in 1984. I got it for my ninth birthday party – I held a breakdance competition as one of the party games and this was the soundtrack. My particular move? The
Dolphin Dive. I think it was from the local department store. Which musician, other than yourself, have you ever wanted to be? My grandfather. He was an amazing piano player, who could play classical songs from memory. And later on, I guess I’d be very happy to be Bowie. What do you sing in the shower? I’m not really a singing-in-the-shower type of person. The only time I do is if I’m rehearsing a song. What is your favourite Saturday night record? Innervisions by Stevie Wonder. Don’t You Worry ’Bout A Thing just blows up on the dancefloor! And your Sunday morning record? Something by Nadia Reid – an amazing singer-songwriter. I’ll be mooching around my house, drinking tea and reading the newspaper. Bret’s Songs Without Jokes is released on August 26 on Sub Pop.
A LL B AC K TO MY PL AC E THE STARS REVEAL THE SONIC DELIGHTS GUARANTEED TO GET THEM GOING...
Jon Spencer
FOREVER BLUES-EXPLODING What music are you currently grooving to? Buck Owens And His Buckaroos – that’s some tough music. And Wynn Stewart, he really tugs at my heartstrings. Also, mid-late ’60s Tom Jones – he was a true student of American soul music. And I got to throw Charlie Rich in there, when he was over at Mercury. It just puts me in such a good mood.
Michael Lavine, UV Lucas, Rebecca McMillan
What, if push comes to shove, is your all-time favourite album? I want to say Eskimo by The
Residents because it’s such a perverse choice. (Ponders) Computer World by Kraftwerk, I love that record. And the first Devo record. What was the first record you ever bought? And where did you buy it? I grew up in a small town in New Hampshire where there was a college bookstore where they sold records. I do remember buying Yellow Submarine, but I had to take it back, because I got some weird pressing with something else on one side. I was maybe 10.
Moor Mother AFRO-FUTURIST INSURGENT
What music are you currently grooving to? I really love Lonnie Holley. I’ve been listening to his album Just Before Music. It reminds me of home. I usually listen to it when I’m on a flight, because it gets so crazy flying from country to country, you need something that’s going to be a balance.
Which musician, other than yourself, have you ever wanted to be? Tony Joe White. A great songwriter, fantastic guitar tone and harmonica player, fantastic voice, great use of the wah wah… that guy’s cool.
What, if push comes to shove, is your all-time favourite album? Pharoah by Pharoah Sanders. The track Harvest Time in particular is everything to me – I see myself in it. It gives me so much.
What do you sing in the shower? I’d love to sing something in a bathtub – Tonight from West Side Story, or Ice Cube’s You Can’t Fade Me/ JD’s Gaffilin’. I don’t sing in the shower, I rap in the bathtub!
What was the first record you bought, and where did you buy it? It was this compilation that Hellcat Records put out, Give ’Em The Boot. I loved Rancid and bands like that, street punk. My sisters had CDs which I could borrow but this was something I got with my own money, it was like six bucks, but I can’t remember where I got it. That was how I was able to discover punk. I had all this rich history of hip-hop and soul and reggae, but with the punk thing I really had to ask questions in school, like,
What is your favourite Saturday night record? I love the Osees. And if it’s Saturday night, some punk rock – Black Flag or Misfits, and old-school rap like Public Enemy, NWA or Geto Boys. And Eddie Bo or Rufus Thomas. You want to at least be thinking about dancing, even if you’re too shy to dance! And your Sunday morning record? I wasn’t raised with a religion but I do like gospel music – the older and weirder the better. Jon Spencer & The HITmakers’ Spencer Gets It Lit is out now on Bronzerat.
“A Love Supreme is a nice way to clear the air.”
“What bands do you like?” “Who are Less Than Jake?” Which musician other than yourself have you ever wanted to be? There’s so many. Nina Simone is big, Tracy Chapman’s big, Patti LaBelle is big. Did I ever stand in front of the mirror with a hairbrush as a kid? Oh, all the time. It was all I did. What do you sing in the shower? I have a shower song. It’s called Closer and it’s by Goapele. What is your favourite Saturday night record? If I wanted to get people pumped I’d play some 700 Bliss [Moor Mother’s collaboration with DJ Haram]. Last night I played in Toulouse, and I played this 700 Bliss track called Anthology, and it was perfect. And your Sunday morning record? Definitely A Love Supreme by John Coltrane. It’s a nice way to clear the air. Jazz Codes is out now on Anti-.
MOOR MOTHER MOJO 9
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Editor John Mulvey Senior Editor Danny Eccleston Art Editor Mark Wagstaff Production Editor Simon McEwen Associate Editor (Reviews) Jenny Bulley Associate Editor (News) Ian Harrison Deputy Art Editor Del Gentleman Picture Editor Matt Turner Senior Associate Editor Andrew Male Contributing Editors Phil Alexander, Keith Cameron, Sylvie Simmons Thanks for their help with this issue: Keith Cameron, Del Gentleman, Ian Whent Among this month’s contributors: Manish Agarwal, Martin Aston, John Aizlewood, Mark Blake, Mike Barnes, Glyn Brown, David Buckley, John Bungey, Keith Cameron, Chris Catchpole, Stevie Chick, Andrew Collins, Andy Cowan, Max Décharné, Grayson Haver Currin, Bill DeMain, Dave DiMartino, Tom Doyle, David Fricke, Andy Fyfe, Pat Gilbert, Will Hodgkinson, David Hutcheon, Jim Irvin, Colin Irwin, David Katz, Ted Kessler, Dorian Lynskey, Andrew Male, Bob Mehr, James McNair, Kris Needs, Chris Nelson, Lucy O’Brien, Mark Paytress, Andrew Perry, Clive Prior, Jude Rogers, Jon Savage, Victoria Segal, David Sheppard, Michael Simmons, Sylvie Simmons, Mat Snow, Ben Thompson, Kieron Tyler, Charles Waring, Lois Wilson. Among this month’s photographers: Cover: Eric Meola (Inset: Shig Ikeda), A.J. Barratt, George Bodnar, Adrian Boot, Tibor Bozi, Alec Byrne, David Corio, Brad Elterman, David Gahr, Kim Gottlieb Walker, Ian Hooton, Shervin Lainez, Jenny Lens, Ebet Roberts, Peter Sanders, Tom Sheehan, Paul Slattery, Frank Stefanko, Alfred Wertheimer.
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IF YOU’VE BEEN READING MOJO FOR A
while, you’ll hopefully understand that the magazine shouldn’t be judged on its cover alone. Our Bruce Springsteen story this month is a work of great love and scholarship, a showcase for the MOJO hive mind in action as we reconsider the highlights of Springsteen’s career, and manoeuvre a few more obscure cuts into his canon. But what you’ll find deeper in this issue is every bit as important. A reggae legend and a fine new Chicano R&B group interviewed, for instance. A remarkable ambient jazz album and a long-lost soul classic – featuring Hendrix! – in reviews. A rummage through the rock rarities in a playboy’s closet. How To Buy hardcore’s most uncompromising operator. And a far-out eco-suite hymning the American wilderness in Buried Treasure. It’s this mission to expand musical horizons – ours as well as yours – that informs a lot of what we do. And it’s also a big part of our latest enterprise – a brand new podcast called The MOJO Record Club. Hosted by our very own Andrew Male, the plan is to bring together the MOJO community of musicians, writers and readers every fortnight, to share our musical discoveries. Please join ribing tto The MOJO Record Club wherever you listen to podcasts. us, by subscribing
JOHN MULVEY, EDITOR I shoot people every now and then. Not that I deserve a medal.
Forty years ago, I was David Leaf ’s postman: “Hey, I have your book!” I exclaimed when I met him for the first time. Leaf replied sardonically, “Oh, so you’re the one.” I was puzzled by his response because The Beach Boys And The California Myth was a beautiful and groundbreaking contribution to music history [MOJO 345]. Leaf explained to me that a devastating 1979 review in Rolling Stone had caused his publisher to lose all faith in the book, which quickly became a rarity. In the most biased, wrong-headed and clueless book review in the history of rock criticism, with the gratuitously insulting title, “Making Nothing Out Of Something”, Greil Marcus had wondered if The Beach Boys even deserved a book, and disparaged Leaf ’s magnum opus as “tiresome”, a “nonbook”, and a “cheat”. Yikes! Who in their right mind would buy such a book? David Leaf and his wife Eva graciously invited me into their circle of friends, and I eventually got to hang out with Brian at their dining room table. All Beach Boys fans (and Brian himself) will be forever in Leaf ’s debt, and the forthcoming publication
of God Only Knows is a sweet vindication and cause for rejoicing – a rare instance of excellence triumphing over the opinions of fools.
Neal McCabe, Los Angeles
He was handsomer than anybody Iʼd ever met
Your feature on all things Ziggy Stardust [MOJO 344] reminded me of one of my favourite incidental characters in rock: the rather gormless-looking boy who can be seen throughout the famous Starman clip, jiggling around self-consciously at the back of the stage in a tank top with a rainbow across the middle. (You can see his face in the bottom right picture on page 77.) Has anyone ever identified this unfortunate lad, whose visible awkwardness must have been noted by untold millions of music fans over the years?
Tim Turner, via e-mail
…As the only Viennese boy back in 1974 who knew who Jobriath was, I can’t thank you enough for the glorious CD that came with issue 344 of my beloved MOJO. As an avid collector of junkshop glam, some of the stuff was new even to me.
Robert Wolf, Vienna
➢ MOJO 11
The whole country was out looking for us
➣
I can’t tell you how elated I was to finally see a piece on Manfred Mann [MOJO 345]. I had long wanted to a see a feature on this most excellent of ’60s musicians who appears to be criminally overlooked. After all, which other musician has led four completely different-sounding bands in eight years, all of which were varied and interesting? My first introduction to Mann live occurred on 6/8/73 at the Alexandra Palace. Uriah Heep headlined, supported by the Sensational Alex Harvey Band, Gary Moore, Heavy Metal Kids and Manfred Mann’s Earth Band. I was fully expecting to hear a lot of the old hits, so I couldn’t believe this mindboggling transformation. To say they blew me away would be an understatement – they instantly became my top band. I vowed that I would never miss a single gig and have since attended 100-plus shows over the years. I have also spent some considerable time in Manfred’s company and can vouch for what a lovely person he is.
Barry Winton, via e-mail
Youʼre gonna give me a cauliflower ear, Sheriff
Great issue [MOJO 345], with features on two of my all-time favourite acts, Patti Smith and the New York Dolls. One slight correction: The Beatles, of course, not Manfred Mann, were the first British Invasion act to score a US Number 1, when I Want To Hold Your Hand topped the Billboard charts for the week ending February 1, 1964. They subsequently stayed at Number 1 for 13 straight weeks, at one point holding down the top five positions. The next British Invasion act to top the US charts was The Animals with House Of The Rising Sun, six weeks before Doo Wah Diddy Diddy did the same.
Bruce Paley, Nolton Haven, Pembrokeshire
…Just listening to your Break It Up! CD [MOJO 345] again… WOW! Thank you so much!
Margaret McDaid, Brighton
We lived in utter loneliness, neither here nor there
My consumption of every edition of MOJO always starts with the Crossword. 345 was no different and, amongst the huge number of clues (105 this time!), was “Yorkshire jazz-rock trio (4,4)”. The answer was “Back Door”, and this immediately took me back to 1973 and seeing them in Washington, County Durham. I took along their self-titled debut LP and, after the gig, gate-crashed their dressing room. I don’t know who was more surprised, me for getting in so easily, or them that anyone would want to meet three jazzers! Asking for their autographs broke an awkward silence; as a budding bassist I was enamoured by the playing of Colin Hodgkinson and
probably asked him a couple of inane questions to cover my teenage embarrassment. I saw them again later that year and they brought along a familiar face to sit in with them, the great Alexis Korner. Back Door never really caught on but I’ve followed Colin’s career from afar. He was the first bassist I saw playing chords and often singing a solo blues tune.
Keith Barclay, via e-mail
Listen, maybe we ought to tell somebody about this
How come you’ve used an old photo of Patti Smith on the cover of the latest issue [MOJO 345]? Twenty-plus years into the 21st century, over 50 years of feminism, but the sexist music press still can’t bring itself to feature an older, grey-haired woman? Not even when she’s an absolute trailblazing icon. There would, quite rightly, be an outcry if you treated any other discriminated-against group in this way, by using a photo which deliberately disguised a physical disability for example, but hey it’s OK, women are fair game, it’s fine so long as they’re pleasing men. Let’s pretend older women don’t exist. That right? Grow up, lads, wake up, and try not to be such misogynists.
Ros Kellock, via e-mail
Gosh, what was everybody talking about?
I’ve just finished reading MOJO 344, yet again another fascinating and entertaining read. In November 1973 I saw the New York Dolls at the Leeds University refectory. We were stood outside for 6 o’clock expecting a big crowd but there were only six of us there. At 6.30 the band bus pulled up and the Dolls tottered off in their finery and stacked heel boots. I remember thinking Arthur Kane is a big bloke as I’m 6’ 2” and he towered over me as they all filed past. The band were great but sadly there were only about 300 in the audience. Bowie was touring Ziggy in ’73 and I also had the chance to see him at the Leeds Roller Arena but I passed up the ticket because I thought there would be too many screaming girls! What a berk I felt.
Michael Dunham, Leeds
Thereʼs always an outside chance you can learn something Well, this is a first for me. No sooner had MOJO 345 landed on my doormat when the page fell open to Theories, Rants, etc and I could hear the voice of a weary Harry Dean Stanton asking: “How long have I been gone, do you know?” – and, well, the rest of the jigsaw just fell into place. The quotes must be from Wim Wenders’ Paris, Texas. And the connection? Surely we’re talking Nastassja Kinski who stars in the film and also makes a cameo in Simple Minds’ Up On The Catwalk?
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Head of Magazine Media Clare Chamberlain MD Bauer Media Advertising Simon Kilby Head Of Magazine Brands Anu Short Brand Director Joel Stephan Sales Operations Co-ordinator Talys Andres Regional Advertising Katie Kendall Classified Sales Executive Imogen Jackaman Classified Sales Manager Ben Peck Inserts Manager Simon Buckenham Production Manager Carl Lawrence Sales Operations Executive, BMA Finance Helen Mear CEO of Bauer Publishing UK Chris Duncan EA to CEO Vicky Meadows Chief Financial Officer, Bauer Magazine Media UK Lisa Hayden EA to CFO Stacey Thomas Group MD Women‘s Mass & Celebrity, Premium and Entertainment Helen Morris Publisher, Premium and Entertainment Lauren Holleyoake PA to Group MD and Publisher Elisha Thomas Commercial Marketing Director Liz Martin Managing Editor Linda Steventon MOJO CD and Honours Creative Director Dave Henderson Senior Events Producer Marguerite Peck Business Analyst Mita Parekh Marketing Manager Philippa Turner Direct Marketing Manager Julie Spires Direct Marketing Executive Raheema Rahim Printing: William Gibbons MOJO (ISSN 1351-0193; USPS 17424) is published 12 times a year by H Bauer Publishing Ltd, Media House, Peterborough Business Park, Lynch Wood, Peterborough PE2 6EA, United Kingdom. H Bauer Publishing is a company registered in England and Wales with company number LP003328, registered address Academic House, 24-28 Oval Road, London NW1 7DT. VAT no 918 5617 01. For subscription or back issue queries, please contact CDS Global on Bauer@subscription.co.uk Phone from the UK on 01858 43 8884. Phone from overseas on +44 (0)1858 43 8884. For enquires on overseas newsstand sales e-mail Paul.Maher@seymour.co.uk No part of the magazine may be reproduced in any form in whole or in part, without the prior permission of Bauer Consumer Media. All material published remains the copyright of Bauer Consumer Media and we reserve the right to copy or edit any material submitted to the magazine without further consent. The submission of material (manuscripts or images etc) to Bauer Consumer Media, whether unsolicited or requested, is taken as permission to publish that material in the magazine, on the associated website, any apps or social media pages affiliated to the magazine, and any editions of the magazine published by our licensees elsewhere in the world. By submitting any material to us you are confirming that the material is your own original work or that you have permission from the copyright owner to use the material and to authorise Bauer Consumer Media to use it as described in this paragraph. You also promise that you have permission from anyone featured or referred to in the submitted material to it being used by Bauer Consumer Media. If Bauer Consumer Media receives a claim from a copyright owner or a person featured in any material you have sent us, we will inform that person that you have granted us permission to use the relevant material and you will be responsible for paying any amounts due to the copyright owner or featured person and/or for reimbursing Bauer Consumer Media for any losses it has suffered as a result. Please note, we accept no responsibility for unsolicited material which is lost or damaged in the post and we do not promise that we will be able to return any material. Finally, whilst we try to ensure accuracy of your material when we publish it, we cannot promise to do so. We do not accept any responsibility for any loss or damage, however caused, resulting from use of the material. For syndication enquiries go to: syndication@bauermedia.co.uk H Bauer Publishing is authorised and regulated by the FCA (Ref No. 845898). To find out more about where to buy MOJO, contact Frontline Ltd, at 1st Floor, Stuart House, St Johns Street, Peterborough PE1 5DD. Tel: 01733 555161. COMPLAINTS: H Bauer Publishing is a member of the Independent Press Standards Organisation (www.ipso.co.uk) and endeavours to respond to and resolve your concerns quickly. Our Editorial Complaints Policy (including full details of how to contact us about editorial complaints and IPSO’s contact details) can be found at www.bauermediacomplaints.co.uk
WH AT GOE S ON! THE HOT NEWS AND BIZARRE STORIES FROM PLANET MOJO
Cometh The Power
Fifty years on from Iggy & The Stooges at King’s Cross, Alec Byrne’s unseen images of the night.
P
UBLISHED IN 2017, Alec Byrne’s remarkable photographic chronicle London Rock: The Unseen Archive is crammed with rock’n’roll legends before the era of image management and celeb-inaccessibility. Inside, up-close portraits of The Beatles, Dylan, Hendrix, the Stones, Marley and more suggest an odd equality of photographer and subject. Also within the pages, though, is jarring malevolence – shots of Iggy Pop & The Stooges at the King’s Cross Cinema on July 15, 1972. With a ticket price of £1, it was their
In time for the 50th anniversary of that infamous night, Byrne has reopened his archive, where dozens more shots of the night lurk, for MOJO. The world may be more familiar with Mick Rock’s images of the event (one Raw Power), but these are just as potent. Strangely, they remained in the vaults for decades. “It was shot on spec,” says Byrne, who started work for NME aged 17 in 1967 and was busily running his own photo agency in ’72. “After I made prints was just another show. So it was unseen – by anyone, even by me – until we found the negs a few years ago when we were looking for photos for the book.”
“That was kind of… the beginning of the punk scene.” ALEC BYRNE While The Stooges and their oeuvre their demise, Byrne posits that at the time they were a largely unknown quantity looking for a break, having come to Britain at the behest of David Bowie’s MainMan management company. “I don’t think Iggy really meant that much at that point,” he says, adding that such was the volume of round-the-clock work he was doing at the time, he doesn’t remember anything about the night. “[Also] it wasn’t really my scene. That was kind of the beginning of the music starting to change, the beginning of the punk scene. If I had to guess, I would have gone because of his connection to Bowie.” He does, however, recall the challenges of live photography in those days. “The lighting is bad, everyone’s constantly moving around so it’s hard to
Alec Byrne/RPMarchives
Photoshop. You either got it or you didn’t.” As for the wider availability of the images – MOJO’s force is strong in them – the photographer is encouraging. “We’re planning to show some of the unseen photos at the Rock Photography Museum in LA later this summer,” he says. “We could probably squeeze out a book, but it would be pretty thin. I’m a big believer in quality control.”
Ian Harrison
London Rock: The Unseen Archive – Photography By Alec Byrne is available via www.rockphotographymuseum.com
14 MOJO
Let’s split!: Iggy & The Stooges (from left) Ron Asheton, Pop, Scott Asheton at King’s Cross Cinema, London, July 15, 1972; (below) the King Sound poster for the event.
W H AT G O E S O N ! Orleans,” she explains, “which opened him up to all kinds of music, including country, and the greats who appeared on the Louisiana Hayride. He admired the work of George Jones, w ent… he long had a country project in mind.” After f core sessions at New Orleans’ Esplanade Studios in winter 2017, which Rebennack passed. “He was in no way thinking about dying,” Pratt maintains, who as executive producer for his estate has scrupulously followed his instructions. “He once told me, ‘I have no plans to die during my lifetime.’ Dad wasn’t one to put his health issues in the street… he was in excellent
Anutha zone: the late Dr. John and (above) his new posthumous LP, Things Happen That Way.
COMIN’ SOON – DR. JOHN’S POSTHUMOUS VENTURE INTO COUNTRY ‘FONK’
W
HEN MALCOLM John ‘Mac’ I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry), as well as Rebennack Jr, AKA Dr John Creaux, The Night Tripper, Nelson, a long-standing amigo who also departed on June 6, 2019, aged 77, this earth duets on a rustic tilt at gospel traditional was deprived of its most energetic and Gimme That Old Time Religion. Other colourful advocate for New guests include Nelson’s son Orleans music – from Lukas with Promise Of The “[Dad] foundation jazz through to AKA Neil Young’s what he lovingly termed ‘fonk’. latterday backing band), and, once told But it now transpires that prior on a downhome take on the me, ‘I have to his unexpected passing from a heart attack, he was working The Line, Aaron Neville. no plans on a genre record of an unlikely According to his daughter to die and executive producer, Karla Posthumously completed R. Pratt, Rebennack’s during my and readied for release, Things penchant for country shouldn’t lifetime.’” Happen That Way come as a surprise. “My KARLA R. PRATT tackling a pair of Hank father’s father ran a combinawampy tion appliance and record store in the Gentilly area of New Ramblin’ Man, and a breezy
touches on his album.” This included facilitating the Lukas Nelson collaboration on a new version of Gilded Splinters, which Rebennack had
me that he’d followed my music and really wanted to hang with me,” says Nelson Jr down the line from his home in Hawaii. “[So] they sent us the track, and we stripped out everything that was on it, and built it up again around his vocal. New Orleans music is so cool and trippy, and you have to talk to the spirits, and walk into the stars – we felt like we really needed to tap into that feeling, late at night with the lights down low.” Equally, the record label in question, Rounder, have got in the mood by licensing for boutique vinyl pressings in ‘Mardi Gras Splatter’ and ‘Nite Tripper Purple’, available September 23. “Dad spent decades plotting his counabout any further archival gems. “He always liked to keep people guessing what’s next. He would probably say, ‘Do one thing at a time, all in the right season – because ‘things happen that way’.’”
Andrew Perry
Things Happen That Way is out on September 23.
GIMME FIVE… POTATO SONGS Dee Dee Sharp
Mashed Potato Time
Bruce Weber
(CAMEO/PARKWAY, 1962)
16 MOJO
One of the biggest hits to accompany the venerable dance craze – but why the elegiac tone? And don’t miss Dee Dee’s follow-up, Gravy (For My Mashed Potatoes) or Dee Dee Ramone’s hip-hop tribute with Debbie Harry on BV’s.
ASAP Rocky & Tyler, The Creator Potato Salad (COLUMBIA, 2018)
Odd Future/ ASAP mob duo rap over the piano riff from Monica’s 2003 track Knock Knock. Sadly, one introductory reference to the aforementioned salad dish apart, the track seems more concerned with weed, money and mumble rapping.
Jorge Ben
Jazz Potatoes (PHILIPS, 1973)
The prolific Brazilian maverick gets funky on an endless samba groove, and makes the alluring promise, “Jazz potatoes is coming!” Fine dining and beautiful women may also be involved (was his 1979 song Ive Brussel about sprouts?).
Louis Armstrong & His Hot Seven
The Shadows Of Knight
(OKEH, 1927)
(AURAVISION, 1967)
Recorded in Chicago, the Louisiana trumpet immortal and band encompass joy, struggle and the mysteries of life with transcendent ease, with a tuba parping out the bass parts and a stop-start metre influenced by tap dancing.
Released on flexi-disc for Chicago-area crisp-makers Fairmont, Potato Chip is a chugging garage snarl about a girl who only eats crisps, preceded by some joshing comment from the band members.
Potato Head Blues
Potato Chip
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ROCK’N’ROLL CONFIDENTIAL
The cap fits: Tom Paxton, still rambling after all these years.
PAXTON’S SUPERB Tom’s top tunes 1 Francisco
Tárrega Recuerdos de la Alhambra
(DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON, 1983)
2 Luciano
Pavarotti O Holy Night (DECCA, 1976) 3 Pete Seeger Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There Is A Season) (COLUMBIA, 1962) 4 Bob Dylan One Too Many Mornings
first I thought, “My God, this guy can’t sing at all”, and then I changed my mind. By the time I left college, I knew this is what I had to do. So you moved to New York… The US Army, bless their hearts, brought me to Fort Dix, New Jersey an hour and a half from New York and every weekend I’d be in the Village. So when I got out of the army I stayed. I feel incredibly lucky to have been there at that time.
Did songwriting come easily? I wrote a lot of songs that just weren’t very good, but luckily I wrote one that caught on, (COLUMBIA, 1964) a children’s song called The 5 Judy Collins Marvelous Toy, which was recorded Golden Apples Of The Sun (ELEKTRA, 1962) by the Chad Mitchell Trio and became something of a hit and got me a contract with Milt Okun, my publisher for 50 years. It was quite a time, wasn’t it? The civil rights movement, war in Vietnam, LSD and what-have-you… I didn’t get into the drug stuff at all. It scared me then and it scares me now, so I left it alone. You were great friends with Phil Ochs, weren’t you? Yeah, I loved him. We’d sing together, criticising one another’s work creatively and supporting each other. He was wound very tight, edgy and agitated, but I didn’t think it would lead to his destruction. In fact I don’t think it did, it was more about clinical depression.
TOM PAXTON The Greenwich Village elder talks miracles, Phil Ochs and why the music never stops.
F
Getty
OLLOWING THE path of Woody Guthrie, Tom Paxton left Oklahoma and arrived in New York in 1960. He found himself at the epicentre of the Greenwich Village folk boom alongside Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Judy Collins et al. Paxton and trademark cap were a staple part of the protest song movement, penning widely covered songs like The Last Thing On My Mind and Ramblin’ Boy. Now 84, he’s touring with Jon Vezner and Don Henry in The Don Juans; he’s also releasing All New, a live LP with Cathy Fink and Marcy Marxer. The trio have released single Don’t Say Gay, a response to Florida’s controversial House Bill 1557, which features the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington DC. You’re still keeping busy, then? I’ve got about six writing partners I work with
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on a weekly basis. When the portcullis came down and everything dried up in 2020 I discovered this miracle called Zoom, which changed my life. I started writing like a fiend and I’ve written or co-written over 200 songs during the pandemic. The ideas just come roaring and I’m having more fun than ever. My brain is humming. Your new album includes Pete’s Shoulders, a tribute to Pete Seeger. If it weren’t for Pete, I’d still be in Oklahoma doing nothing. He showed me a road I could actually go down. There was no way I could be a rock star but there was this niche called folk music for nerds like myself. And here I am, 62 years later, still doing it. Where did Woody Guthrie figure in it all? I didn’t know about Woody until I went to university and started learning his songs. At
Were you close to Bob Dylan? We were friendly but I don’t think anyone’s close to Bob. One night I went to the Gaslight [in Greenwich Village] and he pulled paper out of the typewriter and gave me five typed pages and asked what I thought. I said, “This is fabulous – it’s like you have written [AngloScottish ballad] Lord Randall for 1962”, and he had. He asked what he should do with it and I said, “Put a tune to it.” Two nights later he got up at the Gaslight at one in the morning and sang it for the first time – A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall. It was clear where he was heading. What have you learned? That music goes on. It’s different now, as it should be. I listen mostly to BBC Radio 3 now, which I love. There’s lots of good music out there and always will be. You wrote a song once called Peace Will Come – how do you feel about the world now? Go to YouTube and find a song called Ukrainian Now, which I wrote with John McCutcheon. That will tell you how I feel.
“I started writing like a fiend… my brain is humming.” TOM PAXTON
Tell us something you’ve never told an interviewer before. I’m not gay! As told to Colin Irwin The double album All New, by Tom Paxton, Cathy Fink and Marcy Marxer, is out now on Community Music, Inc.
Ezra Furman The Chicago indie-rocker salutes The Magnetic Fields’ 69 Love Songs (Merge, 1999). Picture me at 18, away from home, striving to overcome my apathy about attending a prestigious university [Tufts in Boston], wildly anxious, separated from my high school girlfriend. I am thrown together with thousands of other 18-year-olds. One of them asks me if I’ve heard of The Magnetic Fields. I haven’t. She puts headphones on my ears and I hear heavenly harps accompanying the deep voice of Stephin Merritt. Apparently it’s just one-third of a 3-disc LP called 69 Love Songs. I end up with Disc 2, to this day my favourite, but I didn’t love it at first. At first sight, 69 Love Songs seems cute, likeable, possibly slightly annoying, on the edge of too clever, maybe a joke. But then comes the next song, and the next, ingenious, concise little crystallisations hitting you like a storm of snowflakes. You start to see that it’s not clever but brilliant, not cute but beautiful. A crucial element is that I was a budding songwriter, trying to figure out what makes a song work. Stephin Merritt provides one of the best educations I could have hoped for. He is as steeped in Tin Pan Alley and Broadway-style songwriting as he is in synth-pop, techno and Depeche Mode. It’s also crucial that I was in the thick of figuring out that I was queer. It was years before I learned that Stephin is gay; he doesn’t write about that identity as much as he inhabits it. It mattered a lot that the LP throws gender to the wind, and plenty of his addressees’ genders are unspecified. These were lyrical modes I had never encountered before. I was never the same. I had understood myself to be a straight boy who was into punk rock and folk. I’d maybe become a teacher or a lawyer and stay together with my girlfriend. Instead, I fell in love, learned to write music and became myself. 69 Love Songs held my hand the whole way.
W H AT G O E S O N !
AFTER MACCA’S HIT-PACKED GLASTONBURY, WHICH FABS SONGS HAVEN’T BEEN PLAYED?
P
AUL MCCARTNEY’s epic Saturday night set at this year’s Glastonbury was a showstopper, replete with joyous surprise. Alongside Bruce Springsteen coming on and a virtual duet with Lennon, performance of Abbey Road’s She Came In Through The Bathroom Window. Which begs the question: which of the Fab Four’s songs did they ignore on tour, and in subsequent solo guises? According to the statisticians of the Beatles Bible website, 79 songs were never played live, from Across The Universe to You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away. A handful were played just once, such as And I Love Her and I’ll Follow The Sun. One obvious reason was The Beatles’ retirement from touring in August 1966, and even then, they hadn’t attempted anything from the freshly released Revolver. “The band didn’t want to deal with the complexities of Womack, Professor of English and Popular Music at Monmouth University in New Jersey, and author of numerous Beatles-related books. “It would have been like a fool’s errand
Beatles songs, including Come Together and Yesterday, at one-off shows. George only toured twice, and understandably showcased his own Beatles cuts, with the exception of In My Life and I Saw Her Standing There (once). Ringo’s All-Starr Band always cover Yellow Submarine and With A Little Help From My Garden this year and has occasionally played Lady Madonna and Norwegian Wood. That leaves Paul, whose top 30 most-played songs includes 22 by The Beatles, among 81 in total. Of those, Revolution and I Feel Fine have been aired only once. Meanwhile, only the lyrics to Why Don’t We Do It In The Road and Maxwell’s Silver Hammer have been heard, at a poetry reading in 2001. “They’d both make great live songs,” says Womack. “So would one of my favourite tunes, Rocky Raccoon. In My Life could be a wonderful tribute to John, and Paul’s never touched Here Comes The Sun. But with an embarrassment of riches like The Beatles’ catalogue, you can never satisfy people.” Tessler sees it from Macca’s perspective, arguing, “as he’s got older, it makes sense to have a standard set and throw in the odd surprise.” Womack considers the fans. “Not the diehards, who want something from Paul’s nooks and crannies,” he says, “but some kid who’s dreamt all their life of seeing McCartney. How can he not play Hey Jude, or Blackbird that night?” Still, we live in hope. MOJO did spot Dhani Harrison up at the Strummerville
Even when The Beatles were touring, their stage sets were short and scream-drenched. “They’d play something raucous like I’m Down, so if they screwed up nobody could hear,” Womack adds. “They stuck to their comfort zone in an impossible situation.” The three further occasions that The Beatles played live, ending on Abbey Road’s roof in January 1969, are well-documented. Post-split, says Holly Tessler, programme speculation that he was going to help pay tribute to George in the leader for Liverpool Universicompany of Paul – Here ty’s MA course in The “Paul’s never Comes The Sun perhaps? – Beatles, “they all made clear that’s clearly a fantasy decisions to get out from touched Here but setlist for another time. under The Beatles’ shadow. Comes The Martin Aston And, of course, John never had the opportunity to look The Journal Of Beatles Studies is Sun.” Lennon never even toured on his own, and only played
KENNETH WOMACK
published by Liverpool University Press in September, edited by Holly Tessler.
Joel C Ryan/Invision/AP/Shutterstock
L A ST N I G H T A RECORD CHANGED MY L I F E
Ezra Furman’s All Of Us Flames is released on Bella Union on August 26.
Fab three: Paul McCartney, Dave Grohl MO O 21 at and Bruce Springsteen this year’s Glastonbury.
C U LT H E RO E S
AUGIEORGY! Suited and booted: The Sir Douglas Quintet (above, from left) Johnny Perez, Frank Morin, Augie Meyers, Jack Barber and Doug Sahm in 1965; (left) Meyers and his squeezebox, 2014.
VOX CONTINENTAL KING AND SESSION ACE AUGIE MEYERS PUSHES ON
“W
E WERE IN England doing a TV show,” says Augie Meyers, remembering when John, Paul and George came to see his San Antonio roots rockers The Sir Douglas Quintet in ’65. “John said, ‘Man, we love your music, but we can’t get the same sound as you do out of our Vox organ.’ I told them they needed this brand new amp I used called a Super Reverb. I remember Lennon playing it and saying, ‘This is fucking great!’” There was a time when Meyers was the only musician in America who owned a Vox – when the Dave Clark Five were on a US tour and theirs broke, they had to rent his. the reverse-coloured keys in an ad in a British magazine in 1962/63. “I went to the music store and the man said, ‘Oh, those are in England. I’m going to have to write a letter,’” he says, recalling a four-month wait
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“He’s the master of syncopation and timing… something that cannot be taught.”
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BOB DYLAN
for delivery. “It cost me $285, a lot of money back then, but I had to have it.” He started playing it in his pre-Sir Douglas band, The Golden. Then Huey P controversial) producer, got Meyers to leave his band and team up with Doug Sahm. Meyers and Sahm had been friends since they were 12 years old. “We grew up together,” says Myers. “Doug’s parents used to trade at my momma’s grocery store. I saw he had a guitar in the back seat and we started talking, and we’d play together.” Meaux wanted a group that could help him cash in on the British Invasion, recalls Meyers. “He said, ‘I have a studio in Houston and I’ll record y’all.’ So me and Doug put a band together and we recorded She’s About A Mover and Rain Rain [AKA The Rains Came], a mix of Tex-Mex. Six months
Meyers’ three of the best. The Sir Douglas Quintet The Best Of The Sir Douglas Quintet (TAKOMA, 1980)
Whatever Huey Meaux was looking for, the Quintet was way more San Antonian than The Beatles. Classic Tex-Mex and country soul songs featuring Meyers’ distinctive keyboards include Mendocino, She’s About A Mover, Wasted Days & Wasted Nights and great ballad At The Crossroads.
Texas Tornados The Best Of Texas Tornados (REPRISE, 1994)
Virtuoso musicians playing music for honky-tonks – what could be wrong? Meyers shines in this infectious, rootsy band on songs like Guacamole, Una Mas Cerveza and Is Anybody Goin’ To San Antone?.
Augie Meyers
Loves Lost And Found (EL SENDERO, 2013)
This solo album, recorded with a country band, shows a different side of Meyers: eight self-penned, soulful country songs, plus fine covers of Doug Sahm’s Be Real and Lefty Frizzell’s I Love You A Thousand Ways.
later it was a big hit.” The group’s hit-making days came to an end in 1968, though Meyers would continue to work with Sahm. In 1989 the Quintet gave way to the Texas Tornados, a major-label Tejano supergroup of Sahm, Meyers, accordionist Flaco Jiménez and Latino country singer Freddy Fender. When Sahm died unexpectedly in 1999 – “I just went crazy, man; Doug was like my brother” – his son took over and changed its musical direction. Meyers moved on but continued to play with his former bandmates. He’s been working on an album with Jiménez and has a new solo LP underway. As ever, there’s also the session work – playing keyboards live and on LPs with
Bad As Me Time Out Of Mind; Love And Theft). Dylan has described Meyers as “the master of syncopation and timing, and this is something that cannot be taught.” Now 82, Meyers laughs: “People always ask me, ‘How do you get that sound?’
Sylvie Simmons
has kindly donated this space
MOJO R I S I N G
“Soul will always be our backbone.” JOSH LANE
FACT SHEET
For fans of: Smokey Robinson & The Miracles, Sunny & The Sunliners, Dimas Garza ● It wasn’t until joining the band that Lane got schooled in the lowrider sound. “Alex and Sal showed me how Latino artists had started out covering black soul music and then evolved into their own sound… Chicano soul was like this glorious shaking of hands between the black and brown communities.” ● During lockdown, Thee Sacred Souls recorded and released their first – and, to date, only – protest song, Give Us Justice, in aid of the Black Lives Matter movement. “George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor inspired the song,” says Lane. “Meditating on the murders of these beloved black people, all I could think was, This could have been me.” ● Producer Roth runs an analogueonly operation. “It involves a lot of discipline and patience, and a lot of practising before you enter the studio, but it results in better-sounding recordings,” says Garcia. “Recording live like that really puts you in the moment, too,” adds Lane. “It’s like walking a tightrope without a net.” ●
JUMPSTART THE LOWRIDER!
THEE SACRED SOULS HOTWIRE CHICANO SOUL A singer-songwriter FOR THE 2020s. Instagram. devoted to Toro y Moi and Tame
Gustavo Olivares
W
HILE THEY grew up in different neighbourhoods of car-crazy San Diego, every weekend for Alex Garcia and Sal Samano of neo-soul serenaders Thee Sacred Souls had the same soundtrack. “At every family get-together, carne asada and classic car show, all you would hear was lowrider oldies,” says Samano, referencing the Chicano soul of Sunny & The Sunliners, The Royal Jesters, and many more Latino acts. “Chicano soul is the sweeter side of soul,” clarifies Garcia. “It’s not raw or upbeat like Northern soul or Motown. It’s the slower, smoother ballads.” In their early twenties when their paths first crossed in 2018, the pair were already veterans of the local music scene, “jumping between different sounds and genres,” says Garcia. Having bonded over their shared love of lowrider oldies, they met up for drinks and jammed some of the songs they grew up on. But once Samano heard instrumental demos of Garcia’s own Chicano soul gems, Thee Sacred Souls quickly got serious. They found vocalist Josh Lane via
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Impala, Sacramento native Lane was a student of classical voice who began singing in church. Within moments of meeting Garcia and Samano, however, he’d found his true calling. Garcia played Lane his self-recorded instrumental for what would become Thee Sacred Souls’ debut single, Can I Call You Rose?. “I loved it instantly,” beams Lane. “Alex said, ‘Want to try and sing on it?’ He had a vintage blanket in his studio he’d bought at a swap-meet, and it had roses on it, so that inspired the lyric. The song wrote itself, really.” Such fortuitous energy characterised Thee Sacred Souls’ early days. In the audience for their second-ever gig, erstwhile bandleader of Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings Gabe Roth signed them to his Daptone label’s South California offshoot, Penrose. The Roth-produced Can I Call You Rose? stirred a fire among Daptone’s dedicated fanbase of soul-aficiona-
KEY TRACKS:
Can I Call You Rose? Easier Said Than Done ● Weak For Your Love ● ●
Easy ’riders: Thee Sacred Souls (from left) Sal Samano, Josh Lane and Alex Garcia.
dos; first pressings now exchange hands for hundreds of dollars. This prodigious forward motion was halted by the pandemic, but the trio hunkered down in the studio finessing the songs that would make up their debut LP. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the ballad-heavy genre they operate within, many are love songs. “I’m a hopeless romantic, and I have been since I was a kid,” says Lane, with no hint of bashfulness. “I’m a storyteller, spinning tales of what I’ve experienced, or what I’d like to experience.” There’s a timeless quality to Thee Sacred Souls’ brown-eyed soul, but the group are wary of being pigeonholed as a retro act. “I wear vintage clothes, and I like older styles and older music, but we don’t sound like a ’60s group – we still sound modern,” argues Garcia. For Lane, though, “Soul will always be our backbone – we’re not about to add Auto-Tune or hip-hop beats. We’re not afraid to experiment, though – just you wait until albums two and three.” Stevie Chick Thee Sacred Souls’ self-titled debut is released by Daptone/Penrose on August 26.
MOJO PLAYLIST
FROM FIDDLES TO FALCONRY – AMANDA SHIRES PREYS ON COUNTRY STEREOTYPES
“I could take a falconer on tour.”
Another country: Amanda Shires shakes things up.
bought her first violin for $60 in a thrift store. “I’m no hippy, but it just looked exotic and seemed to be beaming at me.” ● Growing up, the family often had to hunt for food. “What does squirrel taste like? Very tough and weird, it’s not a gourmet dish.”
KEY TRACKS Hawk For The Dove ● Don’t Be Alarmed ● Lonely At Night ●
Get down! For the best lowlands rock, monorail twang and electro. YOUNG AND PROMISE OF THE REAL FROM HANK TO HENDRIX 1 NEIL
A wistful meditation on time, recorded live in 2019, after Young’s manager Elliot Roberts passed. From Noise & Flowers, out August. Find it: YouTube
SPECTRA FEAT. THE ANCHORESS HUMAN RECIPROCATOR 2 BAND A double-hit of caffeinated electro-pop: beneath the Moog groove, a reservoir of politically-fuelled disgust. Find it: YouTube
NEU! HALLOGALLO 3 (STEVEN MORRIS AND GABE GURNSEY REMIX)
From upcoming box set 50!, Rother guitars ride a new battle droid ‘Apache’ beat, thanks to heavy friends. Find it: streaming services
4 BRUTUS DUST
Young Belgian rock trio meld speed metal with grungey emotional heft. A bit like Mogwai at the wrong speed. Find it: streaming services
5 BONNY LIGHT HORSEMAN CALIFORNIA
An exquisite country-rock balm encapsulating the ache of departure – like leaving a house for the final time and taking one last look. Find it: YouTube
ROUTES TRANS 6 THE EUROPE EXPRESS
Japanese surf rockers turn Kraftwerk into a Dick Dale/ Ventures stompalong with maximum whammy bar. From KW covers set The Twang Machine. Find it: Topsy-Turvy Records LP
KLAUS FEAT. LIESELOT ELZINGA NIGHTCLUB MARILYN (ROOM 1) 7 ACID Be-hatted Moonlandingz zoomer and Dutch singer pal make frothing electro-disco pogo. Find it: YouTube
PROCLAIMERS THE WORLD THAT WAS 8 THE
The Reid twins nail our current political condition in one amiably satirical locution: “Worship of a past that never was/Is totally demented.” Find it: streaming services
TUNDRA LYSINE 9 MAX (JULIA HOLTER REMIX)
A song for cold sore cream becomes a piano immersed in blue shallows; Holter then turns on the sun before throwing moves in the debris. From Remixtape. Find it: streaming services
SECT ALL NIGHT WORKER 10 DOWNLINERS
From ’66, chugging Thames blues, with a deerstalker. And! There’s a charity tribute to the late Don Craine at The Half Moon, Putney, on August 21 – be there. Find it: streaming services
Michael Schmelling, Alamy
T
HERE ARE times when Grammycontinues the themes of her country winning Americana singer-songwriter supergroup The Highwomen (said fast in her Amanda Shires hits a wall. Growing up accent, it’s almost indistinguishable from in Lubbock, Texas, she learned violin rather Johnny, Kris, Waylon and Willie’s Highwaythan the guitar, classical training that men), challenging gender roles and expresssometimes makes moving a song from A to B ing thoughts that country gals just aren’t a struggle. supposed to have. “I learned music playing a lead instrument “Americana is kinda gender balanced, so passing chords don’t come easily,” she says but country isn’t. Women make up only from a New York hotel suite that looks bigger 16 per cent of country radio playlists, and they’re often old-fashioned roles, being than Manhattan itself. “Luckily I have a demure yet available to their world-class guitar player to hard-living men. Apparently, call on who goes, ‘You need a women still can’t be sexual diminished C flat five seven’ or outside marriage.” something I would’ve taken The LP’s lead track, Hawk forever to arrive at.” For The Dove, flips prey The guitarist is her – women – into predator, its husband, Jason Isbell. They AMANDA SHIRES remarkable video showing met when she joined his Shires getting ready for a date backing band The 400 Unit and ultimately transforming herself into the and, after cleaning him up and dusting them both off, they’re about to celebrate their tenth hawk-like hunter. “I recently read about women still being sexually active into their wedding anniversary. Don’t, however, think Shires is riding Isbell’s eighties, and I do like the sound of that. But there’s milestones along that road, so don’t coattails. At 40, she’s been a gigging musician get startled if I start writing about HRT. I for 25 years. Although she took classical violin promise it’ll be something everyone can listen lessons, country fiddling called to her and by to though, not like, ‘Turn your ears away, she’s 15 she was already playing with Western singing about the menopause again!’” swing legends The Texas Playboys, before Meanwhile, Shires has less musical things working with – among many others – Chris on her mind, too. Like whether her sevenIsaak, Neal Casal, Shovels & Rope, Justin year-old daughter can join her on tour, or Townes Earle and the late John Prine. about the official wildlife sanctuary she It was while touring with Prine that she built around their home during lockdown. accepted her destiny as a solo artist. “I’m really into falconry, and hopefully “We were filling out immigration cards in the sanctuary will eventually attract a Norway and he wrote ‘songwriter’ as his falcon – they have to choose you. Maybe occupation. I’d been writing songs on the side one day I could even take a falconer on so I asked, ‘When do you get to write that as tour with me. That would your job?’ He just looked at me and said, ‘You be cool.” FACT SHEET could’ve started about a year and a half ago’.” ● For fans of: Andy Fyfe The title of Shires’ seventh solo album, Emmylou Harris, Take It Like A Man, may hark back to ’90s Brandi Carlile, Frazey Amanda Shires’ Take It Like A Ford country stars like Shania Twain, but they Man is released by ATO ● Shires’ father Records on July 29. couldn’t be more dissimilar. The album
MOJO 25
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THE MOJO INTERVIEW
With Pentangle, Nick Drake and John Martyn, he marked out virgin territory, before booze and the black dog bit. At 83, Battersea’s bass explorer has some ‘plonks’ left in him – but in what genre? “I’ve got no prejudices about music at all,” says Danny Thompson. Interview by TOM DOYLE • Portrait by TOM SHEEHAN
‘‘M
Y BRAIN IS STILL 18,” SAYS Danny Thompson, “even if I’ve got an 83-year-old body.” Sitting in his living room, in his home of 30 years on the outreaches of north-west London, the octogenarian double bassist is indeed a sharp and sprightly presence. Next door in the dining room, resting on a stand, is his constant companion for his past near-seven decades of playing: the Gand bass (built in 1860) that he bought in 1954,
Tom Sheehan, Sandra Vijandi
When the MOJO photographer suggests lying the antique bass lengthways on two chairs to get a particular shot, your worryingly clumsy writer is nervously entrusted with cradling the instrument’s afterwards in his chewy Cockney tones. Close-up, the double bass bears some interesting scars, the evidence of years of being played by Thompson both on-stage and on key records by – deep breath – Alexis Korner, Pentangle, Donovan, The Incredible String Band, Tim Buckley, Nick Drake, Rod Stewart, T. Rex, Kate Bush, David Sylvian, Talk Talk, Richard Thompson, The Blind Boys Of Alabama, Peter Gabriel and Paul Weller. In fact, it was Weller who suggested to MOJO that Thompson’s life and career were ripe for examination in these pages. And what a
and American music, there is little evidence here in his home of Thompson’s occupation. He doesn’t even have any basic recording equipment. “Nah, ’cos everyone’s got a studio now,” he points out. bilia on the walls: a framed panoramic photo of the crowd at the third Isle Of Wight festival in 1970 where Pentangle appeared rendered in stained glass) by Scottish artist Alec Galloway that also features an image of the bassist with his greatest musical foil and old (sometimes literal) sparring partner, John Martyn. Today, Thompson will talk to MOJO for close to three hours: a great, animated raconteur who’s seen and done it all. Although
credits include playing on the original Thunderbirds theme tune in 1965 and Cliff Richard’s ’68 Eurovision runner-up, Congratulations. “Well, what else would I be doing… working in a factory or something?” he grins. WE’RE NOT WORTHY “I love playing and getting paid for it. At one Paul Weller on the wonders stage, I was with Alexis Korner, Pentangle and of Danny Thompson. doing Ronnie Scott’s. You can’t get more “In his own words, he’s there to ‘serve the song’. And that stuck with me. As primarily a jazz player, he’s realised there’s a beauty in playing three notes if you want. This year, I’ve done a song with Kathryn Williams, and Danny played bass on that. He reckons that’s his last plonk. I’m not convinced, man.”
Away from music, Thompson is honest about the emotional potholes, bored by alcoholism and depression, he’s negotiated, although today he politely declines to speak on the Islam he has practised since 1990 (“I’d rather tell the whole story later – ➢ MOJO 29
maybe in a book”). Born in 1939, in Teignmouth, Devon, he lost the father he never knew during World War II and moved to Battersea, south London with his mother, who worked hard as a cleaner but remained a remote presence. “When I think back, I didn’t have any love as a kid,” he says. “I never had a cuddle. You got lost in your music. It just takes you away from everything…”
➣
What was the first music you heard that really grabbed you? Blues. Big Bill Broonzy was my real favourite. I was only a 12-year-old. I mean, that was unheard of. Kids were listening to Frankie Laine and stuff like that. The first record I ever bought was Sonny Terry, Train Whistle Blues. And then 500 years later, they’re asking me to go on the road with them, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee. I mean, there’s lots of stories about my life that are like that. We had a little skiffle band when I was 12, 13, singing all these blues songs. We’d sit around, and I was trying to play mandolin, and I’d say, “What are the chords?” “It’s the chord [we learned] at Paddy’s house, the chord that hurts and the funny chord.” That was it. You tried out various instruments – guitar, mandolin, trumpet, trombone… Yeah, well, I found that I couldn’t handle instruments that you had to press a valve and that was the note. A trombone is an instrument of judgement. Like the bass. I then progressed to traditional jazz. And I had every [New Orleans clarinetist] George Lewis record that he ever made. The trombone player was Bill Robinson and he used to play all these soaring countermelodies and things. And I think that’s what influenced me. But, the trombone… it was just a small romance with it.
But then the big romance starts when you’re 14 and you build yourself a tea chest bass? Yeah, yeah. It was impossible to cart it on buses. What I did was I took it apart, so I had five flat pieces. I’d get to a gig and then I’d screw it together into a box and get my broom handle. And I had a bit of piano wire, instead of a bit of string. (Laughs) ’Cos even then I had to have a better sound. You were only 15 when you bought the Gand double bass that you still play now. It only cost you a fiver but was worth much more? I got it off this old geezer. I was playing table tennis in this youth club and this girl said, “My grandad’s got one of those funny things.” I went, “Eh?” So I went to his house near Battersea Dogs Home and there it was in the corner. I said, “How much, mister?” He said, “A fiver.” Which was loads of money. I said, “Can I give you five bob a week out of me paper round?” So, this trumpet player in a trad jazz band that I knew, he had a car. We strapped it on top of the car, and I just wrapped an old red curtain round the bass. And it started to rain. When I took the curtain off, I started to wipe the bass and all this black gunge came away. Because the old boy had been in the corner with his pipe, coal fire. It had probably been standing there for years. These blokes in the band who were much older than me said (gasps), “It’s probably a Stradivarius.” Who never made basses, of course. “We’ll take it up tomorrow to Footes in Denman Street.” And Mr Folds there, he looked at it, and said, “Lovely. We’ll give you 130 quid.” So, I went back to the old boy, and I said, “Listen, mister, it’s worth much more than a fiver.” He said, “Never mind about that, son. If you want to play, give me a fiver.” What is really weird about that is he could’ve said, “Really? Oh [and taken it back].” I mean, your life can change in a second.
A PICTURES 2 ALIFE LIFE IN PICTURES
The double bass is quite human in its physicality. Is that why you named yours Victoria? Well, ’cos she’s regal and queen-like and she’s old. So, I thought, Oh, it’s like Queen Victoria. So, it was Victoria. You apparently practised for anything up to 10 hours a day? Yeah. So, I’m playing all my blues records and now I am that bloke, Alcide ‘Slow Drag’ Pavageau, playing with George Lewis. I joined this little rehearsal band, playing Glenn Miller stuff and all that, to practise my reading. On the way home from one of those rehearsals, a big American car pulls up by the side of me going up St John’s Hill [in Battersea]. And this bloke jumps out, goes, “Well, you’re obviously a bass player. I’m looking for a bass player. I’ll come and see you tomorrow for an audition.” What he used to do was American bases, like Brize Norton and High Wycombe. So, I’m with this band and it was unbelievable to be on American bases. But you quickly moved into the serious London jazz scene? When I was 16, I was doing strip clubs. I did a famous one called The Spider’s Web in Meard Street, Soho, which was run by Cab Calloway. About one o’clock, the strippers used to go, and all the dirty old men used to clear off, and then it used to get invaded by all the musicians that had come out from the pub. So there’d be Ronnie Scott and Tubby Hayes and Phil Seamen. All these names. I was gobsmacked looking at all these geezers. They’d play ’til six or seven in the morning because it became a drinking club, unlicensed, and they’d be drinking. Then one of the bass players at the time said, “D’you want to have a play?” And I went, “What? With the real geezers?” I remember Tubby saying to me, “Some of the notes you play hurt my eyes. But you’ve got a great sound and you’ve got great time. You’ll be all right.”
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Courtesy Danny Thompson, Courtesy Chris Bolton, Courtesy johnmartyn.com, Getty (4), Peter Sanders, Robert Ellis
Bass face: Danny through the years.
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Life’s a beach: a young Danny Thompson, 1944.
On a jazz tip: (from left) The Tubby Hayes Quartet at Bournemouth Ritz, 1966 (from left) Tony Levin, Thompson, Tubby Hayes, Mick Pyne.
British blues explosion incorporated: Thompson (centre) with (right) Alexis Korner and drummer Barry Howten, 1965.
Road, 1975. “He was a dirty bastard,” says Danny.
Performing with The Blind Boys Of Alabama’s George Scott (left) and Clarence Fountain, The Bottom Line, New York, May 8, 2001. ”Music just takes you away from everything”: Danny Thompson performing with Pentangle, Redcar Jazz Club, 1968.
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Five-point plan: Pentangle (from left) John Renbourn, Thompson, Jacqui McShee, Terry Cox and Bert Jansch, Isle Of Wight Festival, August 1, 1969.
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Thompson twins: Danny and Richard, from the cover shoot of 1997 album Industry.
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Rolling with the punches: John Martyn (centre) has Thompson on the ropes at the Thomas A’ Becket on London’s Old Kent
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When you got a job playing with Tubby Hayes in the early ’60s, you had a reputation for playing loud and aggressive. You’d sometimes end up with blood on your fingers? Yeah, but there was no amps. You were either a silent player in those days, or you wanted to be heard and kick the band, y’know. Come 1963, you were playing with Roy Orbison on a package tour on the same bill as The Beatles. It was the one and only time you played electric bass guitar? I ended up with the Sons Of The Piltdown Men, backing Roy Orbison. He was a really great bloke and he refused to travel in a limousine. He wanted to come on the bus with us. So, we’re on our way to Glasgow and I said to Roy, “You’ve never been to Scotland?” And he said, “No, no.” I said, “In that case, you’ve got to kiss the stone of Killie McCrudden over the border.” He went, “Huh?” So I went to the bus driver, and I said, “As soon as you’ve got over the border, pull up at the nearest lay-by.” So the bus pulls in. I said to Roy, “Come on!” I get him out and we climb over this gate. Roy Orbison! He was bigger than Elvis. We go through this field and there’s a big boulder covered in lichen and moss and rubbish. And I said, “There it is.” I’ve got him on his knees, kissing this rock, and he was saying, “I promise to uphold the traditions of the country of Scatland (laughs).” He was fantastic, Roy Orbison.
Back in London in the mid ’60s, you were drawn into the folk scene. But there was a divide between the jazzers and the folkies? Yeah. There shouldn’t have been. I’ve got no prejudices about music at all. So I’m doing a TV show with Alexis Korner and one of the guests was John Renbourn with an American singer, Dorris Henderson. In the break we’re having a chat and he said, “Really like your playing. I do a gig with a bloke called Bert Jansch in a pub on a Sunday, if ever you fancy coming down.” So I went to this pub, the Horseshoe on Tottenham Court Road, and I played stuff that
and sell-out concerts at the Albert Hall, bosh. But it never affected us. We didn’t suddenly all start wearing fur coats and all that. In 1970 though, after recording your parts on the fourth Pentangle album, Cruel Sister, you quit. How come? Well, you do a third album, and you’ve got a tour to sell it, and then you do the fourth. I’m thinking, I’m not seeing my kid grow up. Then, we’re out in New Zealand, and someone says, “You’ve got to admit, it’s pretty boring, but the money’s good.” And I thought, It’s time to go. And it was like hunting for material to ‘Pentangle’ it. It became kind of a recipe. And I wasn’t happy. Because, make no mistake, I play to enjoy myself. I don’t go on-stage for the fame and the glory. If I don’t like it, then there’s no meaning for me.
“Tubby Hayes said to me, ‘Some of the notes you play hurt my eyes. But you’ve got a great sound.’”
Did The Beatles stand out on the bill as being special? Totally. They ended up at the top of the bill. But they used to go on-stage, and you couldn’t hear ’em. They could’ve been singing the national anthem. But they were great. We used to have a beer. They were proper, normal people.
they were not used to. Maybe over the top, ’cos when I hear myself now, I think, How did I get away with that? But I’d do anything to play. I didn’t say (sniffily), “Oh, that’s not my scene.” I’d listen to these Scottish folk songs but be putting my bit in, as I’ve done with everybody. Then we got [drummer] Terry Cox and [singer] Jacqui McShee and that was the five. This, of course, being Pentangle. You got together in 1967 and quickly became very successful, both here and in the US… There was no grand scheme to become famous. There was no thought that we were something different or special. And yes, it did become successful. We did Carnegie Hall twice,
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By this point, you’d played on Nick Drake’s Five Leaves Left, released in ’69. On that album you’d mainly improvised your bass parts against Harry Robinson and Robert Kirby’s amazing string arrangements… Well, we’re talking about the ’60s, when people like Lulu or Cilla Black would have strings and it was like wallpaper. I mean, I’d be at Abbey Road or somewhere to do a Matt Monroe LP and the bass part would be written [by the arranger] on a fag packet on the tube or something. But these arrangements were a real marriage between the composer and the artist. The musicians were from the LSO. I’m feeling intimidated and I look at the bass parts and I said to Robert Kirby, “Is it OK if I do my own thing?” He said, “Well, just don’t take the mick.” So, on River Man, for example, that’s my part, and I’m really happy with that. You’ve said that Nick Drake seemed to you to be “very fragile”? He was fragile and very introvert, but I ➢
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don’t know the reasons for that. I lived in Suffolk at the time. I had a house and horses and acreage. And I thought, Well, he just needs a kick up the arse, y’know. I used to get him laughing. I said, “Come out to my house in Suffolk,” took him down the pub, cajoled him. I kicked him up the arse, I patronised him, I did everything. And there was just no getting through. He asked me to go on the road with him. But he’d spend the whole gig looking down [at his feet]. Pentangle were like that. I’d be on-stage and they had this constant tuning up in-between. I’d be wanting the floor to open up. I’d be embarrassed. It was that folky thing. Whereas John [Martyn] would be (adopts Glaswegian bellow), “Hey you, shut yer noise or I’ll come down and punch ya.” And then go into a serious, heart-wrenching song. But he didn’t want all that fluffy fanny in-between, either.
Meeting John Martyn felt almost predestined to you? Oh (sighs). My brother. The thing about John is we never ever talked about music. He’d never say to me, “Dan, here’s a song about…” He’d just come in and go (claps hands), “Right, son, I’m gonna do one for ya. Do your thing.” Was it like there was telepathy at work? It was, totally. He’d never say to me, (whispers) “Too many notes.” ’Cos I had a lot of that. With the Bless The Weather album (1971), he was writing the songs on the same day as you were recording them. By the time of Inside Out (’73), he didn’t even have any songs when you got to the studio? Nothing. I can see him now, sitting in the middle of the studio on a chair. Two weeks booked. Island Studios. I went, “All right John. Right, what’re you doing first?” He goes, (throaty whisper) “I haven’t got anything. I haven’t got any songs.” I said, “We’re in here for two weeks. You haven’t got anything?” “Aw, let’s go and get a drink.” So, we go off to the pub. We come back and, now, John didn’t know chords, he knew shapes. So I said, “Play the first shape on The Man In The Station. Now play the second shape of Solid Air.” And then we’d have a [musical] conversation and that became Inside Out. I mean, if you’re talking about empathy, that’s it. But it was a brotherly relationship, wasn’t it? You were so close but then you physically fought. You did a mock boxing match photo session for the 1975 Live At Leeds LP that actually turned into a real fight? He was a dirty bastard (laughs). We’ve got some false blood and we’re gonna be posing. It was at the Thomas A’ Becket [boxing club], where Henry [Cooper] used to go. There’s all these famous boxers there, but we’ve rented the ring for an hour for a photo session. I said, “Right, John, just stand there like that…” and he hits me. I goes, “No, John, don’t hit me.” And he goes, bop. I said, “John, if you hit me again, I’m gonna do ya.” He goes, bop. I go, “That’s it!” Boff, boff. He’s Glaswegian, so his knee’s coming up, his head’s going in. I’m against the ropes and he’s going, “Ya bastaaaard.” You came off best though? I got stuck into him. He’s got claret all coming down. We arranged to go into the dressing room and get some photos taken on the bench. There was no need for the false blood. John Martyn had a reputation as a wild man. Did you feel he had a core of sadness that he was trying to obliterate with the drink and the chemicals? Well, we all had demons. Y’know, my childhood. His childhood [being passed between 32 MOJO
his mother and father and grandmother] was pretty tragic. But we were not alone. I’ve met loads of musicians and the way they used to avoid the horrors of life was to get in the bathroom and practise. The pair of you had a great creative run, but split in ’77 when his management wanted to re-market him? Like he was the new Dylan or whatever. The new manager [thought], We’ve gotta split these two. Danny’s a bad influence. You’ve admitted though that you were a “bit of a raver”… Oh yeah. I could drink all day and all night, it wouldn’t touch me. People would be collapsing, and I’d still be going. But, by the late ’70s, you’ve said you “went through the slow dive with alcohol and the phone stopped ringing”. Were you suffering from depression?
WHAT A PLONKER! Three hits of Danny Thompson, by Tom Doyle. SUPERGROUP TAKES OFF
Pentangle
Basket Of Light
★★★★
(TRANSATLANTIC, 1969)
The standout album by the pioneers of British folk rock opens with Light Flight (a near hit at Number 43 after featuring in BBC drama Take Three Girls), spotlighting the jazz-informed rhythmic interplay of Danny Thompson and drummer Terry Cox. In Once I Had A Sweetheart, the bassist meanwhile provides elegant, play-for-the-song support for John Renbourn’s wandering sitar.
“BROTHERS” BEYOND
John Martyn Solid Air
★★★★★ (ISLAND, 1973)
Thompson’s beautifully fluid part on the gorgeous (Nick Drake-inspired) title track could perhaps be chosen as the time capsule of his expressive, intuitive playing. (The bassist himself cites his and Martyn’s 1998 YouTube-available version for the BBC’s Transatlantic Sessions as their absolute peak.) Later, the smoky, whisky-soaked wee small hours that the pair knew only too well are captured by the hushed Go Down Easy.
THE GLOBAL BLUES
Eric Bibb & North Country Far With Danny Thompson The Happiest Man In The World
★★★★
(DIXIEFROG, 2016)
American blues revivalist meets Battersea blues veteran, in the company of Finnish trio Petri Hakala (mandolin/ mandola), Janne Haavisto (drums) and Olli Haavisto (dobro/lap slide guitar). Wholly groovesome, this 14-song set returned the late-seventysomething Thompson to the musical enthusiasms of his youth, before taking an atmospheric closing track spin through Ray Davies’ You Really Got Me.
Double (bass) vision: Danny Thompson at home near Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire, with Victoria, the Gand bass he bought in 1954 for £5.
It was a real black period, the late ’70s. The world was black. I was in total depression. I’d burnt all the clothes, all the scrapbooks. I said, “It’s meaningless.” Did you think maybe that was it for you and music? Oh, yeah, yeah. I got in a terrible state. I was an alcoholic. I left Suffolk and went to Bermondsey, and I was getting 100 quid a week cleaning out warehouses. And that just kept me boozing. I’d wake up in the morning and have half a bottle of vodka. Yeah, I was finished, on the street. And I was looking at moving into a Salvation Army hostel. So, I ended up going into rehabilitation. A 13-week course. It’s one of the toughest things I’ve ever done. People talk about jazz musicians with heroin, but y’know… the biggest killer of musicians was alcohol. You got yourself back in the game, and the early ’80s saw you playing with Kate Bush, first on The Dreaming, and then Hounds Of Love. She’s said about you, “He loves to know what the track’s about, and who or what he’s meant to be.” You should always know what the song is about. I just think she’s a wonderful lady. She’s in charge of her own music. She said to me, “When you did [Well Hall Open Theatre in] Eltham with John Martyn [August 25, 1973], I was there.” She was a fan of folk music, I think. Maybe with her brother, Paddy. She was like, “Do what you do.” ’Cos I remember saying, “Well, if there’s something you don’t like, please say.” And there was this chorus from people [in the studio] saying,
“It was a real black period, the late ’70s. I’d burnt all the clothes, the scrapbooks. I said, ‘It’s meaningless.’” “Don’t worry… she will.” She had me in for a few other things. Rubberband Girl on Director’s Cut [in 2011]. I went down there to her studio, and I pulled up in my car and she’s in the garden. She went, “Hello Danny! Would you like a cup of tea?” There’s no airs and graces with her. She is the business. Soon, various other maverick types, such as David Sylvian and Talk Talk, were bringing you in to play on their albums and add that woody Danny Thompson sound. It helped those records, particularly Spirit Of Eden, transcend their time period…
Tom Sheehan
Well, let’s not make any mistake, I’m just a colour on an artist’s palette. Talk Talk hired Wessex Studios for a complete year. So I’d have a whole day just playing. Mark [Hollis] would be in the box. I’d play something and I’d say, “How’s that, Mark? D’you want something like that?” He went, “’Ere Dan, you know you sort of do that one? (waves hands out wide) If you could do more sort of like (moves hands in tighter, curvier shape).” I said, “You know what’s really weird?” “Yeah, what, man?” “I know exactly what you’re saying.” I had a great time. Mark was a lovely bloke. In ’87, you made Whatever, the first of your sporadic solo albums. Why were there only a handful of them? Was it harder to be fully in the spotlight? I’d always wanted to do my own album, and I’d
tried a million times. I said, “It’s not going to be, like, bass solos.” And the reason it’s called Whatever is I got fed up of people saying, “Is it folk or is it jazz?” And I’d say, “It’s whatever.” If you hear the albums, it’s not all bass, it’s tunes and melody. I call it improvised British contemporary music. I didn’t do many of them because we had no money. Playing on Spirit Of The Century with The Blind Boys Of Alabama in 2001 – did that feel as if you’d come full circle back to your blues beginnings? Well, I did a concert in Los Angeles with The Blind Boys, a white boy from Battersea, and they’re all black from Alabama. There was a [photograph on the] cover of the LA Times colour supplement, us on the stage. It’s got them, with me in the middle. I went, “Blimey, I’m the only white geezer.” And Clarence [Fountain] says, “Danny… there ain’t no white folk in that picture…” (laughs) I thought, I’ve arrived! In recent years, you’ve worked with Paul Weller. How did that come about? I was sitting here. Brrring brrring. “Hello.” “Oh hello, you don’t know me. It’s Paul Weller. I just heard your album with The Blind Boys Of Alabama. Just killer playing, man. I just had to tell you.” So I said, “Oh thanks.” That was it. So, it wasn’t like, “Oh, by the way, I want you to do an album.”
But you ended up on his 2004 covers album, Studio 150, and 2018’s True Meanings. Why do you reckon you click so well? He’s so honest and he’s got no prejudices at all about music, and he lets you do your thing. So, you have that freedom to play how you play. But it’s his energy. The fact that he’s been around for so long and still retains that energy. He keeps producing stuff, and it’s meaningful. It’s not just to please the public. It’s not manicured. It’s not cosmetic. It’s real and honest. And we have a really good laugh. How often do you listen back through the records you’ve made? Never. Someone said, “What’s your favourite John Martyn album?” I said, “It’s just one big album for me.” I can’t hear myself [playing] because I think, Oh, I’d like to do that again. I always want to do better. And you’ll never, ever reach the perfection that you’re looking for. Or you shouldn’t think you have. Because even playing one note, I can find a fault with the note. On my death bed, I’ll think, I wish I could play the scale of B flat perfectly. And that is the beauty of music. But it’s also the downside. So, are you basically retired-ish now? I’m not sure. But I want my last notes to be with Paul. I’ve lost a lot of mates who’ve died recently. But, I’ve got to say, death is a small price to pay for the life I’ve had. M MOJO 33
Elvis played two shows at the Mosque that night, at 5 and 8pm. Promoted by Country & Western diskerie Railey’s Appliance Center, support acts include square dance performers Doris and Lee Strom and comic magician Phil Marquin. In between sets Elvis entertains himself by playing an accordion. He also does an interview with a local reporter, and runs through some songs with The Jordanaires. For the latter rehearsal, he has to open a theatre window and ask for some quiet from the screaming fans outside, who readily comply.
admits he didn’t know any better – and amassed over 2,500 images. “Most of the time, Elvis never even knew I was taking his picture,” he recalled. “He was laser-focused on whatever he did, so I would wait until he was engaged – and he was always immersed in being Elvis – whether rehearsing, flirting with women, combing his hair, buying a ring… “I wanted to be an unobtrusive observer – like a good psychiatrist with a camera,” he said,
citing an image of Elvis about to brush his teeth as a favourite: “I just love that picture of Elvis with a couple of pimples on his back.” The mostly black-and-white book, whose chapters are headed in period-sympathetic design by Nashville institution Hatch Show Print, who provided Elvis with posters in the ’50s, remains similarly close-up throughout. Other episodes include Elvis in RCA Victor Studio 1 in New York that July, picking up new threads Broadway, smooching with a lady friend, and enjoying July 4 with his family in Memphis. Another live engagement was Elvis’s charity show at Russwood Park later that day, which Wertheimer captured in spectacular style when
light in front of Elvis and backlit the crowd,” he wrote. “It’s what Kodak tells you never to do, but it was a wonderful accident.” Two years later, Wertheimer photographed Elvis shipping out to West Germany to do his military service. They would not meet again. as a cameraman (one eminent credit was the 1970 Woodstock movie) and observed that his Presley archive lay inert until Elvis’s death on August 16, 1977. After that day, his pictures were recognised and celebrated as the unique documents they were, prompting the photogsignment of my life.” ➢
Alfred Wertheimer
UCH WAS PHOTOGRAPHER Alfred Wertheimer’s access to Elvis Presley in the early part of 1956, he quipped that he even followed him into the bathroom. Accordingly, new photobook Elvis And The Birth Of Rock And Roll portrays Presley in disarmingly naturalistic style, as a rising star who could still take a train or visit his parents without the National Guard being deployed. Wertheimer was only 26 himself, and had never heard of Elvis, when RCA Victor publicist Anne Fulchino hired him to document the movements of their up-and-coming client from Memphis. He first photographed the singer that Saturday, March 17 for his TV appearance on Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey’s variety broadcast Stage Show, when he sang Blue Suede Shoes and current Number 1 Heartbreak Hotel. Wertheimer, who passed away in 2014, recalls in the book’s text how he shadowed Elvis
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The image titled Starburst, created when a photographer in the crowd’s flashbulb serendipitously went off just as Wertheimer’s camera shutter opened. That night headliner Elvis promises to donate one of his own diamond rings as a prize on the door, and tells the crowd, “Tonight you’re going to see what the real Elvis Presley is all about.”
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Elvis, Scotty Moore and Bill Black play his hits at the Studio 50 theatre on Broadway. It’s Elvis’s final appearance on the TV variety show. As for the rocking sound that’s made him a star, Elvis muses this month, “nobody knew what they were doing, until we had already done it.” He also threatens to start wearing purple, after earlier causing a stir and outraging public decency by wearing a pink jacket.
At home, Elvis gets on his Harley-Davidson, only to find that it’s out of gas. After a volunteer goes for a full jerry can, he goes for a ride with Wertheimer, who had run out of film. “I call these the best photographs I never got,” commented the photographer.
Alfred Wertheimer (4)
With TV host Steve Allen (left), Elvis plays ‘Tumbleweed’ Presley on Country & Western spoof Range Roundup, where he takes part in a comedy song which pastiches Blue Suede Shoes. On the same show, in evening dress, he’d sung Hound Dog to a Basset Hound in a top hat. “Steve has a weird M mind, you know,” Elvis later observed.
Alfred Wertheimer’s Elvis And The Birth Of Rock And Roll is published by Taschen. The hardcover edition contains 336 glossy pages of images and text, and costs £50. See www.taschen.com for more information.
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T I E K A T T I E V A E L R O
In The Runaways and with The Blackhearts, JOAN JETT fought for a woman’s right to rock. In 2022, disquiet over one man’s role in her rise casts a shadow, but should not tarnish her victories. “For women, it’s a no-win,” she tells VICTORIA SEGAL . “You’ve got to make your own rules and follow them.”
Brad Elterman/Buzzfoto/FilmMagic/Getty
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ALKING THROUGH Los Angeles in 1979, Joan Jett felt she could hear the whole city laughing at her. The Runaways, the teenage all-girl glam-metal powerhouse she had founded four years earlier with drummer Sandy West, had just collapsed in a heap of musical differences, leaving Jett devastated. “I just felt we were such a great band,” the singer and guitarist remembers now. “It didn’t work and nobody got it. I started partying too much – I was drinking my brains out. I was not in good shape and I started thinking, I can’t do this. I’ve got to straighten up. Maybe I’ll join the military. They’ll straighten my ass out.” Within weeks, however, Jett met Kenny Laguna, the songwriter and producer who would become her enduring collaborator and manager, and relaunched her career with 1981’s Bad Reputation, then with her band The Blackhearts. She might have been saved from a soldier’s life, but as a rock musician, her tour of duty is never-ending. Currently, she’s sitting in an Orlando hotel room before another soundcheck, looking just as you’d hope Joan Jett would look (“I took a shower, I put on make-up for you, everything,” she says, louchely), as her team, Laguna included, mill around. The Blackhearts have recently released thirteenth album Changeup, invigorating acoustic interpretations of her songs initially developed to accompany screenings of Kevin Kerslake’s 2018 documentary Bad Reputation. “I’d always kept acoustic at arm’s length because when I started it was ‘girls can only play acoustic guitar’,” she explains in her Jets-And-Sharks drawl. “I didn’t even own one until maybe 10 years ago.”
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sound like “a female Marc Bolan”, Black Sabbath’s “fat chords” and a love of Suzi calling card, an elemental force allowing her to move through changing times. She was in London during punk, hit New York for new wave, hung out in LA’s glitter kids pivoted to hardcore nihilism, she produced The Germs’ 1979 album GI (“just getting those songs down where they’d be listenable, that was the mission”) and later worked on Bikini Kill’s 1993 single Rebel Girl. Kathleen Hanna calls her “family”. When Nirvana were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall Lorde and Kim Gordon channelling Kurt Cobain. (Appropriately, given her 17-yearold self seems just a scratch below the surface, she performed Smells Like Teen in turn, inducted Joan Jett And The Blackhearts in 2015. Is this scene-shiftdecades, of defeating boredom? “I know what you’re saying but the thing is, my music doesn’t change,” she smiles. “My stuff, our stuff, is us and it together. It works together.”
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Jett’s slightly out-of-tune chord she picked up
body, it hit me in places that now I know what it means.” She was entranced by magazine ➢
Rebel girl: Joan Jett gives it straight, backstage at the Whisky A Go-Go, Los Angeles, 1977.
E AG EN TE X, SE T OU AB K IN TH S RL GI GE NA EE “T VE GIRLS TALK ABOUT SEX. YOU NEED TO GIIC VOICE TO THAT BECAUSE BOYS HAVE A VO E.”
Hollywood highs: (clockwise from left) The Runaways and Kim Fowley at the Whisky, December 31, 1976 (from left) Sandy West, Joan Jett, Fowley, Lita Ford, Jackie Fox, Cherie Currie; Jett at a Slash magazine benefit with Germs’ Darby Crash (on floor) and Pat Smear (pointing); with The Runaways, 1977.
“Teenage girls think about sex, teenage girls talk about sex, and just because it makes society uncomfortable doesn’t mean they’re going to stop. So you need to give voice to that because boys have a voice, being able to sing about their puberty, growing up, all that stuff. Mick Jagger can able to do it. As a kid, that’s what bugged me most – the unfairness of it. It’s the principle.” She decides the statement needs more emphasis. “It’s the fucking principle.” Fairness, though, didn’t come easy. “I’d put our musicianship up against anybody’s,” Jett asserts. “Sandy’s drumming up against any drummer. Lita’s guitar playing u against any lead guitar player.” That didn’t stop up
dispatches from LA’s glitter-rock scene, marvelling at the platform boots. When her
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for underage Sunset Strip hangout Rodney Bingenheimer’s English Disco, where she informed notorious pop hustler Kim Fowley she was plotting an all-girl band; he immediately introduced her to Sandy West. At suburban teen disco/vice den The Sugar Shack, where tricked“grooving to Bowie. ‘She can sing lead. She’d look good’ – that’s really how it happened: Kim and I scoping the girls out.” Guitarist Lita Ford and bassist Jackie Fox completed the line-up. As Iggy Pop says in Bad Reputation, “Joan Jett didn’t want to be Joni Mitchell. Joan Jett wanted to rock.” Yet she was also driven by a desire for justice. 40 MOJO
b bitches suck”. (Jett wrote a letter offering to kick th writer’s “fuckin’ ass in”.) The idea that boys the w were “beating off against the stage” became a d depressingly persistent trope. In Japan and Scandinavia, fans were largely f female, but they were outliers. Was she annoyed m colonised the audience? men “I was disappointed to a degree that the a audience was full of guys leering – but I also understood why. I guess that had to be kind of scary for girls to go in there and watch to a degree – I wasn’t in the audience but I can only imagine the guys had Yet there was also quite an “energy” in their iinner circle ircle – tthe grotesque parody of Svengali-style management offered by Fowley. The scene that created The Runaways was profoundly exploitative. Jett says the rock stars preying on underage girls had mainly left the clubs by the time she arrived, that she found these transgressive spaces more exciting than creepy. “I know people say this, but it was the ’70s, it was a completely different time and mindset and everything. That doesn’t make bad things
Pure and simple: (clockwise from left) Joan Jett today; with Bikini Kill in 1994 (from left) Tobi Vail, Billy Karren, Jett, Kathleen Hanna, Kathi Wilcox; Jett on-stage with Nirvana’s Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl at Cal Jam, San Bernardino, October 6, 2018.
QUEEN OF
NOISE JOAN JETT’s key albums, by VICTORIA SEGAL.
THE RUNAWAYS ★★★★
The Runaways (Mercury, 1976)
Getty x3, © Jenny Lens, Brad Elterman/Buzzfoto.com
“I’m sweet sixteen/A rebel queen…” The Runaways’ debut gets no points for subtlety, turning up the heat under the teenage rampage of signature track Cherry Bomb, Jett’s You Drive Me Wild and the pure Sweet schlock of Dead End Justice. Contractual obligations ensured it was just seven months until second album, Queens Of Noise.
acceptable – I’m just saying your offence level was set at a different place. I was aware of the creepy shit as I think the other girls were – we were certainly able to take care of ourselves on a certain level.” She is openly enraged that it has been overshadowed by Fowley’s dark legend. “Absolutely. A thousand per cent. I’m very tired of hearing ‘Kim Fowley’s idea, Kim Fowley’s creation.’ No no no. We – myself and Sandy West – came up with the idea.” Since his death from bladder cancer in 2015, there have been numerous sexual abuse allegations against Fowley – most notoriously Fox’s claim that Fowley raped her on New Year’s Eve 1975 in a motel room where Jett and Currie were present. Does she feel the band’s legacy has been contaminated by these allegations? Jett largely reiterates the statement she made after Fox’s initial comments. “The way I feel, if I’d seen something weird going down and someone in distress there’s no way I would have put up with it. That person [the abuser] would have been very hurt.” Yet she is just starting to query why “none of these things were discussed while Kim was alive”, when Laguna bursts through the door. “No win!” he shouts. “No win! No win!” He retreats again. There’s an uneasy silence. Jett shrugs. “I don’t know what that was. But that’s all I’ve got to say about it.”
F
LORIA SIGISMONDI’S 2010 FILM The Runaways returned some agency to the band: Jett, an executive producer, “felt like it got close to the essence of what we were trying to do – and I’ll tell you that the actresses took it so seriously. Kristen Stewart was serious about becoming me.” Yet despite the band’s enhanced reputation, she says no reunion is possible. She speaks to
JOAN JETT AND THE BLACKHEARTS ★★★★
I Love Rock’N’Roll
(Boardwalk, 1981) With Mick Rock’s neon new wave nod to Horses on the sleeve, Jett’s second post-Runaways album bristled with sharp-lapelled confidence. Opening with its superhit title track, it also contains an audacious cover of Tommy James And The Shondells’ Crimson And Clover, and Jett’s own whip-cracking anthem Love Is Pain.
JOAN JETT AND THE BLACKHEARTS ★★★
Pure And Simple
(Blackheart/Warner Brothers, 1994) Riot Grrrl’s recognition of Jett as punk godmother is underscored by five tracks co-written with Bikini Kill’s Kathleen Hanna. Spinster starts with a mangled wedding march; Go Home is a tribute to Mia Zapata of Jett associates The Gits, murdered in Seattle in 1993. Here, Jett’s reputation – bad or otherwise – was on the rise.
JOAN JETT AND THE BLACKHEARTS ★★★
Unvarnished
(Blackheart, 2013) Opening with exuberant Dave Grohl collaboration Any Weather (“hey!”), The Blackhearts’ twelfth album smartly brought their sound up to date without losing their ageless swagger. Yet it’s the wistful Hard To Grow Up and Fragile, about the death of Jett’s mother, that really shift the emotional tone.
Currie and Ford: “We seem to be on good terms. The other ones I have not spoken with.” Yet West, whom she was closest to, died in 2006. “It couldn’t happen, just because Sandy’s gone, number one,” says Jett. “Number two, I just wouldn’t want to see all the things people would say. It’d be like, ‘Women trying to reach back for their youth’ – they wouldn’t get it for what it is.” But The Runaways’ youth often worked against them – is there ever a perfect age for a woman to be in a band? “For women, it’s a no-win. You’re either too young or too old. You’ve got to make your own rules and follow them and just hope other people recognise and go, ‘Yeah, I agree with her.’” In 1981, Jett’s cover of The Arrows’ 1975 song I Love Rock’N’Roll became a global hit and a vindication of her vision, its carnal, rolereversing snarl a reassertion of a power lost in The Runaways: “I saw him dancing there by the record machine…” There was nothing pure about it – but then, Jett, who has spent so much of worrying about purity. She and The Blackhearts are about to tour with Mötley Crüe, Poison and Def Leppard, but the prospect of the poster girl for jumpsuited rock empowerment sharing stages with such largely unreconstructed hair-metallers has raised some eyebrows. “People get really weird about stuff,” she sighs. “A girl should be able to go out and play rock’n’roll in this environment as well; are you saying that I shouldn’t be able to do the show? Because what – these guys sing about girls? And that’s a problem? Come on. Give me a break. It’s a little pearl-clutchy for me. You’re talking about rock’n’roll. Rock’n’roll.” What else? The world keeps changing, but for Jett, that beat’s still going strong, playing her favourite song. M MOJO 41
More please, and thank you: Dexys’ Celtic soulmates Helen O’Hara and Kevin Rowland, London, July 1982.
T WAS WHILE WALKING on Walthamstow Marshes near
on his constitutional in 2020. And remix
government-approved exercise during lockdown in 2020, TooRye-Ay Rowland. He chuckles at the -
One day, however, while riding a motorseemed to heal normally. So, once he was -
During his stroll, he’d pondered the upcoming 40thh an-
hhome to London. d an internal tear that required an immediate operation. -
-
-
Too-Rye-Ay, though. It’s
Too-Rye-Ay is now
liver a record that measured up sonically to the other hit -
Tom Sheehan
Too-Rye-Ay
Too-Rye-Ay Ah, well.
Rebels
Searching For The Young Soul
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MOJO 43
the exodus before Rowland paid him a visit. “He made me an offer I couldn’t refuse,” recalls
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together,’ know -
such a miserable event; the band had had enough of reau, but Kevin said he couldn’t do it without me.” Rowland told him he wanted them to write
but Rowland said he couldn’t hear it -
he improvised I Couldn’t Help If I Tried in a panic when asked if he had
tape with him. So I did. The next time
had a radical new sound for the previ-
the radio…”
unique direction.” The destination Rowland had in mind was Celtic folk
er’s demo. It was lighter than the texture he’d been working on with Pater-
Rowland, “I was thinking, Oh, OK,
ton. He even said, ‘She might be good
Rowland, meanwhile, had been re-
cepts this. “The important thing, however,” clari-
message had been left for him from Kevin Rowon the spot, agreeing to Rowland’s one stipulation.
Rowland thinks if he’d stuck with a viola, violin and cello with Paterson’s trombone behind them talking about slagging me off. Let’s see who pulls this off.” There are two songs on Too-Rye-Ay -
about rascal school lads slipping into adulthood. stalled at Number 16 in the charts,” recalls Rowland, thought it had a great hook. I remember thinking, People are fed up with brass, I’m going to have to do something new. I started experi-
idea not to use.
ers, because it uses three violins and a piano, creating a similar
he’ll put his out.” .”
-
Getty (5), Avalon, Paul Slattery
-
on cloud nine. I hadn’t seen Kevin Rowland for six months, but I
44 MOJO
young group
Rowland was distraught. Little did he know that the other shoe was about to drop.
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Bull Mid left) righ Billy and pro Wils Dex Bre
Don’t Stand Me Down, 1985;
MO O 45
“Kevin led rehearsals like a conductor in an orchestra,” remembers O’Hara. “It was disciplined, hard work.” When they were fully prepped, Dexys joined Langer and W Winstanley at Genetic Studios in Berkshire to begin recording. The producers, p who’d recently enjoyed huge success with Madness, w used to moulding an album in its entirety. This was not to be were the t case on Too-Rye-Ay. “They were stumped by how tightly rehearsed we were,” says Rowland. “There was no work to be done, not on the sound, the R so songs or even the sequence, we just needed to be recorded. They’d suggest double-tracking brass and I’d say no. ‘Oh, let’s try it.’ I was su us used to having Jim or Kevin Archer back me up, but I was alone. That didn’t feel great. I actually had less control now.” T Nevertheless, the recordings were smooth. “The performances pl played well.” what he heard. “It wasn’t right. It’s so easy to fuck things up in tthe mix.” th Everyone else – label, management, even the band – th thought Too-Rye-Ay remix argument. By August, Dexys had a hit on their hands re anyway. “Eileen was Number 1. I was thinking, Wow, this an is great!” Helen O’Hara says the atmosphere immediately changed. ““Dexys felt lighter, happier. We’d shrunk to a nucleus, plus session players, and that diluted the intensity. Everyone was se hhaving fun, even Kevin.” By the time they got to Top Of The Pops for the album’s ssecond single, a re-recording of Too-Rye-Ay’s Van Morrison ccover, Jackie Wilson Said (“the label’s decision: big mistake”), R Rowland was growing bored with pop stardom. At the studio hhe asked a technician to hang a photo of chunky, eccentric ddarts champion Jocky Wilson as a backdrop. “But people will think it’s a mistake!” came the reply. ““Yeah, Ye that’s the joke,” replied Rowland. Now he says, “I can’t believe people thought we were serious. I was pissing myself.” “Kevin could be really funny,” says O’Hara, who by this stage was in a typically intense, ultimately doomed romance with Rowland. “People miss his humour. But I sensed the end of the cycle was approaching on the second US tour of ’83. The promotion was endless and it was wearing him down.” In New York on that tour, he took O’Hara shopping to Brooks Brothers, pointing out the button-down shirts and loafers he’d seen, hinting at the stylistic swerve he’d insist on for Dexys’ next
Getty (3), David Corio
IN MARCH 1983, Dexys re-released The Celtic Soul Brothers as a single, hopeful that it might avenge its previous Number 45 position in the UK singles chart. It did: it hit Number 20. But for Kevin Rowland it represented another missed opportunity. He wanted the new song on its B-side, the conversational stroll of Reminisce (Part 1) to be the A-side. Mercury said no. “I felt Reminisce (Part 1) was a big step forward for us,” says Rowland today. “It was new and radical, I love the rhythm section on it, the production by Colin Fairley. I’d done spoken parts of songs before but that was the first conversation we’d incorporated into a song.” The rambling lyric refers to a visit to Dublin Rowland had undertaken with Dexys in 1980, before the March take-off of Geno changed everything for the band. “It was the first time I’d been back to Ireland since I was 16 – 10 years,” say Rowland. “I was excited. I’d been reading Brendan Behan, all that. Dublin wasn’t commercialised like now and I wanted to go and look at the bars Behan may have gone to. I took a couple y asked a guy in a bar where I might find the spirit of Brendan Behan. He smiled and said, ‘New York.’” After this, the song takes an unusual g his lips and exclaiming “It don’t matter!” “That was inspired by me and Helen,” says Rowland. “We were going out, but we weren’t that close. I was intense, not much fun to be around. I wanted more. That ad-lib bit is just me pouring my heart out about her.” The eccentric end to what would have been a fairly eccentric single release by a hit band involved Rowland referring to controversial left-wing Labour head of Greater London Council (back then, effectively the capital’s mayor) as a “folk hero”. “The ending about Ken Livingstone was because he’d been given absolute hell in England about inviting Gerry Adams over to London to discuss why the IRA wanted to bomb his city. I thought that was really brave. So Billy and I have that conversation over the ending. All scripted, of course.”
By now, he had an eight-piece band, plus a new string section, all looking to him. This added to the tension. “I was trying hard to keep everyone together, but we were broke. Not everyone was being paid. The record label looked like they might drop us. Everyone was sick of it.” The day in early ’82 that he brought Come On Eileen to rehearsals did not go well. Rowland didn’t have words for it yet, so he asked the band to sing the main refrain. The alto sax player, Brian Brummitt, kept doing it differently. Brian’s got an attitude, thought Rowland. “No,” he told Brummitt, “you’re singing it wrong.” “I know what it is,” replied Brummitt. “I just don’t like it!” Rowland snapped. “If you don’t like it then fuck off!” Brummitt left immediately to catch a train home to Newcastle, followed out by Paterson, who drank a bottle of vodka and then returned to rehearsals to say he was also quitting. “I’ll always regret leaving,” says Paterson, “because there was no reason to. I was drinking a lot and I was angry, confused. I let everyone down.” Helen O’Hara couldn’t believe it. “I didn’t understand why ternally, but they had superb musicianship, focus, and an exceptional leader. There was something extraordinary there.” Paterson and Brummitt formed the TKO Horns and were immediately hired by Rowland as session players for the Too-Rye-Ay
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Getting personal: Rowland and O’Hara take TooRye-Ay on the road; (below) “folk heroes” Brendan Behan and Ken Livingstone.
All aboard the emerald express: Dexys Midnight Runners, Birmingham, September 1982 (from left) Roger MacDuff, John ‘Rhino’ Edwards (front), unknown, Nick Gatfield, Steve Brennan, Seb Shelton, Kevin Rowland, Helen O’Hara, Billy Adams, Mickey Billingham (back), Spike Edney.
album, 1985’s Don’t Stand Me Down. One afternoon at Rowland’s house in the summer of 1983, O’Hara was sitting outside when Rowland walked by carrying all the dungarees he’d worn over the last 18 months and threw them in the bin. “That was the indication that Kevin had moved on from Too-Rye-Ay,” she says. ET, KEVIN ROWLAND NEVER TRULY MOVED ON from Too-Rye-Ay. That mix nagged away for 38 years. the Tim Burgess Twitter Listening Party for Too-Rye-Ay. It was the in too. time I had.” “Kevin Archer called me up after the Listening Party and we had a good chat,” explains Rowland. “He said, ‘So, the sound of Celtic Soul Brothers and the build-up, breakdown, speed-up on Eileen. That’s it.’ Yeah, that’s it. He does get a sizeable percentage of the song-writing royalties, has done for many years, and a cut of the recording royalties.” “The money helps,” agrees Archer. “Oh, it does.” After he’d spoken to Archer, Rowland called Helen O’Hara. He was really excited. “I felt quite emotional hearing Kevin talking about remixing Too-Rye-Ay ,” shee says. “It brought home how frustrating it must have been living with it all this time.” Rowland told her the label weree going to pay for a remix, alongside a lavish box ox set, and lls her the that he wanted her involved. He calls Ministry of Tuning. “Helen’s got great at ears.” The pair collaborated with producer ducer Pete with Rowland mixing Don’t Stand Me Down in a difficult recording process to a swift conclusion. They’ve maintained a close working relationship
ever since. “Pete understands drama and dynamics in music,” explains Rowland. “He knows what I like.” As soon as Schwier put all the multitracks up, he realised how well the band had played. There’d be no need to reas possible back into the songs. The principal change I hear is Kevin’s vocal. You can hear all the spirit from the recording now.” Schwier worked on the tracks in sequence, referencing Rowland and O’Hara’s notes, methodically rebuilding each mix until he felt it was ready. Then he’d move on to the next song. When he was “Kevin sent me a voice message straight away and you could hear the emotion in his voice. ‘I’m dancing around the room, Pete…’” “Kevin called me in tears,” says O’Hara. “He was so happy.” “I was tearful,” explains Rowland, “because I felt proud of it, something that had never happened before.” Too-Rye-Ay – As It Should Have Sounded also secures Dexys’ legacy for Rowland. “It’s stand up against anything else as three quality albums.” OR KEVIN ROWLAND, THE REHABILITATION OF Too-Rye-Ay has also unlocked Dexys’ future. Over the last year, the singer has been working on new songs for a Dexys album, se sending ideas to current collaborators including multi-ins multi-instrumentalist Sean Read and keyboardist Mike ished with music, but the Too-Rye-Ay fresh crea creativity. That pprocess has now hit the natural limit of what can be achieve achieved remotely. He needs to meet with his band to rehearse, record. Rowland shrugs. “You ccan’t rush it,” he says. “It’s frustrating but I’ll get there.” Some w wounds take a little longer to heal. M Too Too-Rye-Ay – As It Should Have Sounded is released by UMC on September 9. U MOJO 47
Meeting of minds: Danger Mouse (left) and Black Thought settle some unfinished business.
MOJO PRESENTS
‘Rapper’s Rapper Meets Super Producer!’ reads like a recipe for anticlimax. But DANGER MOUSE and BLACK THOUGHT’s Cheat Codes team-up, marinading for 16 years, is the hip-hop chef d’oeuvre that reinvents old-school classicism for 2022. “You’re who this record is for!” they assure DORIAN LYNSKEY. HE ABSURDLY LONG ROAD TO 2022’S MOST WINNING HIP-HOP ALBUM began with a little bit of shoplifting. When The Roots released their second album, Do You Want More?!!!??!, in January 1995, Brian Burton was a 17-year-old highschool student in suburban Atlanta. He couldn’t afford a copy so he paid a friend $10 to steal one for him, a reminder of how expensive CDs were in the 1990s. During schoolyard debates about the greatest MC of all time, Burton never wavered: it had to be Tariq Trotter, AKA Black Thought. “It was the cadence, it was the lyrics, it was the consistency,” Burton says fannishly. “He’s never done one mediocre verse. He was my guy.” In 2004, now a producer trading as Danger Mouse, Burton created The Grey Album clever and extremely unlicensed mash-up of Jay-Z’s The Black Album with The Beatles’ White Album which set EMI’s lawyers on his trail. The hullabaloo landed Burton on an industry panel alongside Richard Nichols, The Roots’ late manager. “Rich was the ultimate gauge of character,” Trotter says. “For Rich to say, ‘Dude’s aight’ meant the fucking world. So that was my entrée into the world of Danger.” Shortly thereafter, the two men started putting some tracks together under the not entirely serious name of Dangerous Thoughts. The collaboration was reported in the press in 2006 before life got in ➢
Shervin Lainez
T
Photography by SHERVIN LAINEZ
MOJO 49
Out of the blue: Danger Mouse & Black Thought made Cheat Codes (sleeve below) “for each other”; (below right) Brian Burton with collaborator Karen O in 2019.
“IT’S THE END OF THE WORLD. SO ALL OF THE THINGS WE’VE ALWAYS WANTED TO DO, NOW IS THE TIME.” Black Thought
the way. The Roots were locked into a hectic cycle of recording and touring while Burton was racking up production gigs and making waves with his CeeLo Green collaboration Gnarls Barkley. Their album to-
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business, neither resumed nor wholly abandoned. “It was bugging me a little bit,” Trotter says. “The more years went by without us working on anything, the less likely it looked like it was going to happen. It was heavy on my heart.” Reconnecting in 2017, they realised that they’d both been desperate to revive the collaboration but had been too polite to press
Shervin Lainez, WENN, Getty (2), Retna/Avalon, Eliot Lee Hazel
all-new material on Cheat Codes, a lean and vibrant masterclass in the synergy of beats and rhymes. As long-gestating projects go, says Trotter, “this takes the cake.”
I
This is new territory for me. Maybe that has something to do with why I feel so fresh. I still feel like it’s early on in the evolution of my career.” Burton is also in New York but he’s at home, running at a calmer tempo. He’s a softly spoken introvert in a black hoodie, and loath to accept praise for a production CV which includes Damon Albarn, Michael Kiwanuka, Norah Jones, The Black Keys, U2 and Beck. “These are all people whose music I loved before I went anywhere near them so I’ve just been fortunate to be able to work with them,” he says nonchalantly. “It makes me look good.” Cheat Codes The Mouse & The Mask with MF Doom in 2005, but he’d rather call it his could sing on these songs.” For him, the borders between hip-hop, soul, rock and psychedelia have always been leaky. Hip-hop was his Floyd’s Wish You Were Here at college blew his horizons wide open. make hip-hop, even though my process was sampling, beats and
T’S A WEEKDAY EVENING IN NEW YORK, WHICH means that Trotter – a huge black-and-silver cloud of beard topped with sunglasses and a broad-brimmed hat – is in the back of a car en route to The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,
Brooklyn rapper Jemini, 2003’s Ghetto Pop Life. After The Grey Album, Damon Albarn rewired Burton’s career by inviting him to produce the second Gorillaz album, Demon Days. Albarn had the clout to call off EMI’s cease-and-desist hounds and the insight to realise that Burton could do a lot more. “I learned more from Damon than any other artist I’ve ever worked with,”
band and Trotter was the rapper’s rapper, conscious and complex, but they could never quite break through. “I’d spent my whole career feeling like I hadn’t arrived,” Trotter says. Instead, that nightly national platform opened door after door, from an album with Elvis Costello (2013’s Wise Up Ghost) to Questlove’s Oscar-winning documentary Summer Of Soul. “We’re a better band for it,” Trotter says. Being a television mainstay has enabled him to “be more transparent, show more vulnerability, smile more.
the time when I needed it most, lasted a long time.” His production style has since expanded to accommodate artists
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even become a kind of long-term bandmate to The Black Keys (four way-democracy. He’s a very funny, thoughtful guy. If we ever worked with another producer again, Brian would be the one we’d call.”
Crazy times: (clockwise from main) Gnarls Barkley’s Burton and CeeLo Green, London, 2008; The Roots (Black Thought in cap) with Sesame Street characters on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon; Questlove and Trotter on-stage in 1997; Burton with Gorillaz’s Damon Albarn (centre) and Jamie Hewlett, 2005.
TEAM GOALS
Danger Mouse and Black Thought: the path to Cheat Codes, by Dorian Lynskey.
THE ROOTS
★★★★ Phrenology (MCA, 2002)
The hard-nosed follow-up to 1999’s Grammy-winning Things Fall Apart tore off the ‘jazz-rap’ label, venturing as far afield as hardcore punk and German techno. With Black Thought and Cody Chesnutt going head-tohead over taut, Princely funk-rock, The Seed (2.0) kicks the door in.
DANGER DOOM
A common thread in his work is an ability to kle; deep, wide knowledge without retro reverence; unlikely meetings of minds… “When I was at school I never saw black people making some of the music I loved,” says Michael Kiwanuka. “It was very rigid. Danger Mouse could make hip-hop but he could work with Norah Jones and Beck. I was like, Somebody’s doing
T
ROTTER LIKES TO SAY THAT HE’S almost exactly as old as hip-hop itself. He was born in October 1973, just a few
party in the Bronx. He was already a promising MC when he met Questlove in the principal’s formed a band called the Square Roots. hip-hop during the golden age of monogamous DJ/MC duos like Gang Starr and Eric B & Rakim. remotely, Burton and Trotter worked face to face, building a stockpile of songs that they could sculpt into Cheat Codes. “It’s about Tariq really,” Burton says. “I tried to make music I wanted to hear my favourite rapper on.” Every Trotter vocal would prompt Burton to take the music up a notch. “I’d be feeling like, ‘Damn he killed it. Now the beat is weak. I gotta do better.’ The pandemic allowed me to take more time trying to keep up with him.” Keeping up with Trotter might be easier said
★★★★ The Mouse And The Mask (Lex, 2005)
Burton could have had a great career producing nothing but hip-hop. Exhibit A: this punchy, playful team-up with self-proclaimed rap supervillain MF Doom. Samples from Keith Mansfield, REO Speedwagon and the cartoon Family Guy display not just range but wit.
MICHAEL KIWANUKA
★★★★★ Kiwanuka (Polydor, 2019)
The dream team of Kiwanuka, Danger Mouse and Inflo surpassed itself second time around, channelling Marvin Gaye, Charles Stepney, David Axelrod and Pink Floyd into 21st-century psychedelic soul. The crowning example of Burton’s ability to unlock an artist’s vision in tandem with his own.
BLACK THOUGHT
★★★★ Streams Of Thought, Vol. 3: Cane & Able
(Republic, 2020) Two decades after he first mooted a solo album, Trotter made a trilogy. On the climactic instalment, produced by New York veteran Sean C, rap’s most amenable featured artist calls in favours from Pusha T, Killer Mike and Schoolboy Q, but outshines them all.
than done. In recent years, outside of the Tonight Show, the rapper has released a three-part solo project called Streams Of Thought, guested with everyone from Eminem to Michael Bublé, co-written and starred in the stage musical Black No More, acted in The Deuce and Tick, Tick… “I’m as good or better as a writer, as a vocalist, as a performer, as I’ve ever been,” Trotter says. “I feel like I’m just reaching my prime.” And there’s of the world,” he says cheerfully. “So all of the things we’ve always wanted to do, I feel like now is the time. Shit or get off the pot, as they say.” When Burton and Trotter were teenagers, there was no such thing as a hip-hop elder statesman and each new wave of artists made the previthough, the genre can better accommodate the show went viral among older hip-hop fans hungry for old-school virtuosity in an age of Auto-Tuned mumbling. Cheat Codes is no historical re-enactment but this product of fandom and friendship does represent the classic verities of hip-hop. “You’re who this record is for!” Trotter tells Machine Gun Kelly and Harry Kane. “We made this record for people from a certain place and “Things change,” Burton adds, “but we weren’t going to adjust that to appeal to anyone. M It was literally for each other.” MOJO 51
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movement. Bob Marley quoted him in Redemption Song. Burning Spear’s most celebrated album – one of the most celebrated, still, in all reggae – took Marcus Garvey’s name. Jamaica’s north coast and the capital of St Ann Parish, Spear perhaps unsurprisingly sees himself as part of a trinity of local heroes, together with Garvey and Marley. “I-man were born at 12 King Street, off Market Street,” he tells MOJO today, “which was where Marcus Garvey were born, and Bob also was from the same parish, so it’s the three of us as one.” PEAR’S UPBRINGING WAS TOUGH EVEN for rural Jamaica. He was the second youngest of 13 – with four brothers and eight sisters, and religiously strict parents. “My mom was a cook and my father do road construction and my parents was Pentecostal,” he recalls, “so I had to go to church two times for the day – you ain’t chickening out on that!” School meant soccer and swimming and running, but music wasn’t on Rodney’s radar until his teens, as the stars to rival the ascendancy on the airwaves of US R&B. “I started to feel this music from the late ’50s into ➢
Adrian Boot/Urbanimage.tv
REETING MOJO AT THE PRE-APPOINTED hour, the man born Winston Rodney but known for over 50 years as Burning Spear begins our conversation with a song that is also a kind of benediction. “As far as I can see, everything is all right with me,” he keens in a quavering vibrato, before shifting up an octave to introduce a favourite topic. “Marcus Garvey has been accused many times wrongfulleee, we need his name to clean up and set his record free… free… free…!” At the age of 77, Burning Spear is among the last surviving reggae icons, one whose wide-ranging tenor remains remarkably undiminished. A pioneer of roots reggae – the early-’70s innovation that brought Rastafari, black consciousness and economic injustice to the fore in Jamaican popular music – he is closely associated with the figure of Marcus Garvey, the Jamaican political activist of the 1920s and ’30s. While Garvey remains controversial – his support for black separatism was applauded by those other racial separatists, the Ku Klux Klan – his Afrocentrism resonated throughout the roots reggae
“My work is a gift given to I-man by the Most High…”: Burning Spear, AKA Winston Rodney, at home in St Ann’s Bay, Jamaica, 1978.
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the early ’60s,” he says, “and this music’s coming from a distance, ’cos it was mento, ska, rocksteady, all those changes the music came through, and it’s the same music that turn itself into reggae. Jamaica had so much musicians, like there was the great trombone player, Don Drummond, the guitarist Ernest Ranglin, and there was some great people out there who were singing, like The Heptones, Larry Marshall, Peter Tosh, Alton Ellis. All those brethren were there before I-man, so I was listening to the real hardcore, I wasn’t listening to the fancy side of reggae music. And one of my main people who I was listening to is Bob Marley – I would listen to every one of Bob’s songs.” Along with the music, Rodney began to absorb some of the spiritual and political ideas that were circulating on the island. Local
Getty (4), Iconicpix, Urbanimage.tv (3), Jean Bernard Sohiez/urbanimage
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before Rodney’s birth and whose Black Star Line shipping company had been established to begin the return to Africa he advocated for the black population of the Americas. The Rastafari faith, a feature ences combined in a mystical epiphany that hit Rodney one day in the late 1960s. “I was on Key Largo Beach, near where Marcus Garvey used to be located at 1 Jail Lane,” he relates, “and that’s where everything start to happen: I-man start to see my roots, my culture, my history, where I’m coming from originally, my people before me and my great-grandfather’s-father’s-father. The awareness come to I-man based upon my energy, for you’ve got to be open thinking, and the energy just came right there on the beach.” Rodney had been earning his bread dry cleaning, car washing and tiling. But from that moment, he says, music started to come to
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hi and with it the conviction that it was “Jah wish” that he was “to him, be a musician or an artist”. “I don’t even know where the lyrics came from, but the lyrics did come,” he says. “And after a while, here comes melodies, so I sing it and I do the best I could with it. Lyrics or melodies is not something you really look for, and when it comes you’ve got to accept it and store it.” On the beach a stone’s throw from Garvey’s birthplace, a new time,” says Spear. “That’s where I grow my dreads.” Although Rodney was not yet a musician, his spiritual journey was well under way. Hitchhiking the 80-odd kilometres to Kingston, he would reason with Rastafari brethren in the sprawling slum of Back-O-Wall. It was here that he acquired his distinctive stage name. “I used to go to Industrial Terrace off Spanish Town Road,” he says. “That was the joint where you could get your little smoke and drink a beer, talk a little with a guy named GG, a man who love to play him guitar, and there were this man, we call him Nyah.” One time Nyah asked Rodney if he knew anything about Jomo Kenya. Nyah told Rodney what the Kikuyu name ‘Jomo’ meant in English and noted, “Man, it’s a good name to carry as an artist.” Rodney promised to give it some thought. “Then I decided to go with the name, now that I get the full understanding of who is esident of Kenya.”
th the excitement too much attention,” he explains. “I just w want to go there and express myself musically and let ou out what’s inside of I-man, that I’ve been carrying for al all these times. So I came to Studio One and tell Mr D Dodd, ‘Bob say I should come to you,’ and Mr Dodd say is Door Peeper. And Mr Dodd was happy. He never he heard anything like that before, so to him, perhaps this can be gold!”
Blazing a trail: (opposite page, clockwise from top left) Burning Spear (from left) Delroy Hines, Rodney, Rupert Willington in the mid-’70s; inspiration Bob Marley, 1974; regular Spear drummer Leroy ‘Horsemouth’ Wallace, 1981; live and direct at London’s Rainbow Theatre, October 26, 1977; (this page, clockwise from above) Rodney on the beach, St Ann’s Bay, 1978; Kenya PM Jomo Kenyatta, London, 1962; political activist Marcus Garvey, Harlem, New York, 1922; producer Jack Ruby; second LP Rocking Time (1974) and ’75’s game-changer Marcus Garvey.
N HIS 2000 SINGLE, AS IT IS, SPEAR looked back on key moments in his career. “I start singing in the late ’60s,” he sang. “Told about Studio One by Bob Marley.” It was no elaboration either. The two had met by chance deep in the St Ann’s countryside, close to Marley’s birthplace of Nine Mile, while Spear was seeking marijuana plants and other produce to barter back in town. “That area is where most of the herb was cultivated at that time, so we went into that area to get some good smoke,” says Spear with a chuckle. “And I saw Bob coming down the street with his donkey and a lot of plants. Bob was going to his farm, doing his own cultivation, and at that time, Rastaing him how I could get started in this music business and Bob asked I if I know of Studio One.” That’s how Rodney made his way to the recording facility founded by Clement ‘Sir Coxsone’ Dodd in the early 1960s, travelling to Brentford Road, Kingston, with Rupert Willington, who sometimes carried harmony when Rodney sang informally in St Ann’s Bay. “When I reach in town, it was exciting, but I wasn’t even paying
led dance tunes and sweet love ballads, but the song Spear Sp auditioned with was startlingly different. fe Ominous, forceful and weighty, its biblical bi lyrics delivered in thick patois with uncommon un vocal phrasing, Door Peeper warned w of the informers who reported on Rastafarian R activity to the police, and exhorted ho the sect’s faithful to join together in peace, chanting down the oppressive forces fo of so-called Babylon. “The styling hit me as something new and a different,” said Dodd when I visited Studio S One in 2002. “The guy singing with w him [Willington] wasn’t saying nothing, in so I had to take [Spear] to one side and a say, ‘I’m willing to invest in you, but don’t worry about harmony, because we d always have house harmony in the studio.’ a And A there again, I am really happy to know that th I can pick a winner.” Spear’s stint with Dodd produced the alStudio One Presents Burning Spear (1973) bums b and an Rocking Time (1974), and yielded a second hhit in 1972 with the hypnotic, devotional He Pr Prayed (AKA Joe Frazier), framed by a subtle tr trombone refrain. “In the song, I speak about Jah prayed for I and you, until his sweat turned Ja blood,” says Spear. “I don’t deal with colourism, nationality, or religion; I say glory be to Jah, the creator. We give thanks to the universe, to nature.” Like many of his peers, Burning Spear rangements at Studio One, but concedes that he gained invaluable experience at Jamaica’s Motown. “When The Heptones and Delroy Wilson were recording, I see what’s going on, and after that I started to think for myself and arrange all my songs,” he ssays. “But Studio One wasn’t bringing me anything ffor himself. So going to Studio One is like, when yyou’re a kid, you go to school until you graduate, aand when you graduate you move on. So I walked aaway but I didn’t walk away from the music; I walked away from Studio One still maintaining w my creativity.” m HE TIMING OF HIS BREAK WITH DODD PROVED fortuitous, since soundsystem proprietor Lawrence Lindo, AKA Jack Ruby, based a few miles east of St Ann’s Bay in Ocho Rios, was contemplating a move into record production. Having long championed Burning Spear’s work on his soundsystem, Ruby convinced Rodney to record with two backing vocalists, resulting in the temporary return of Rupert Willington, along with another St Ann’s Bay hopeful, Delroy Hines. “There was an audition taking place at the Federal Theatre in my town, so I went there and sing about Marcus Garvey and about ➢ MOJO 55
Slavery Days, but I was turned down,” he continues. “Then here comes Jack Ruby on the beach, saying he heard that I have two good songs and he wouldn’t mind working with me.” Spear’s Marcus Garvey album, recorded at Randy’s Studio on North Parade, Kingston, paired the singer’s contemplative style – more like a monk overheard at prayer than a pop performance – with the ebullient musicality of a band Ruby dubbed The Black Disciples, including guitarist Earl ‘Chinna’ Smith, drummer Leroy ‘Horsemouth’ Wallace and bassist Robbie Shakespeare. Bemoaning the betrayal of Garvey and his ideals and exhorting listeners not to
➣ ★★★★ (Fox/Island, 1976) Less militant than Marcus Garvey, Rodney’s third LP for Island finds the singer in bucolic reverie, seeking to escape the inequities of Babylon and retreat to a community-based rural existence. But it’s not all meditative irie-ness; the likes of No More War and Lion showcase Spear at his most potent and righteous too.
★★★ (Island, 1977)
★★★★★ (Studio One, 1973) Tipped to Jamaica’s foundational studio by Bob Marley, Winston Rodney’s astonishing debut for producer Clement ‘Coxsone’ Dodd kickstarted Rasta-conscious roots reggae. On immortal debut 45 Door Peeper, Spear’s smoky tenor chants down Babylon with a haunting, spiritual quality which surpasses even Marley’s Studio One output.
★★★★★ (Fox/Island, 1975) Produced by soundsystem operator Jack Ruby and bolstered by backing band The Black Disciples (Soul Syndicate/Wailers) and harmony singers Rupert Willington and Delroy Hines, Marcus Garvey established Spear as the leading light in the new generation of reggae artists concerned with black self-determination and pan-African solidarity. In a word: dread. 56 MO O
While it’s almost impossible to fully capture the majestic power of Burning Spear live, this recording of an October 1977 show at London’s Rainbow Theatre comes closest. Backed by Aswad’s stellar rhythm section and gifted Jamaican trumpeter Bobby Ellis, tracks such as Throw Down Your Arms and I And I Survive (Slavery Days) pack a considerable, roots-heavy punch.
★★★★ (Island, 1978) From pain-racked opener Marcus Children Suffer to the brooding intensity of closer Marcus Say Jah No Dead (covered by Sinéad O’Connor in 2005), Social Living is a perfect distillation of Burning Spear’s devotional vision. “It takes behaviour to get along” implores Rodney repeatedly over the title track’s dense groove, like a mantra he’s been reciting all his life.
expertly arranged by veteran trumpeter Bobby Ellis, was captured in all its sonic glory, as Horsemouth’s furious drumrolls and accented rimshots locked tightly with Shakespeare’s rumbling bass. It marked the end of Spear’s alliance with Ruby (all of his subsequent work has been self-produced), but he maintained a keen respect for the sound system entrepreneur. “Jack was a good producer because Jack was a music lover,” says Spear today. “If Jack sees something in any young person out there, Jack would try to help them, musically. Jack did some good work, and there was no problem amongst us; we do two albums together and after those two albums, that was when I start my independence.” S BURNING SPEAR TOOK OFF, MARLEY’S MANAGER Don Taylor took him on. A former pimp linked to organised crime leaders in Miami, Taylor was adept at negotiating with overseas labels, reaping dividends in the short term. (Spear would later express dissatisfaction with the publishing deal he signed with Taylor’s Tammi Music, resulting in a lawsuit served on his behalf in a New Jersey courtroom in 2015.) From the recording of Dry & Heavy (1977), another mix of old and new material, Taylor acted as manager and executive producer. By this time, Spear had broken with Willington and Hines, but another potent team-up was nigh. When Island brought the singer to the UK for h Aswad. As the British band’s singing sticksman, Drummie Zeb, recalls, it was a thrilling yet terrifying prospect. if we mess this up, it’s over,’” he says. “I remember setting up in the rehearsal room and Bobby Ellis came and started showing us little things, and about four hours later, Winston Rodney entered the rehearsal room, and it was like Moses himself walked in, ’cos to us as kids, Bob Marley, Burning Spear and The Abyssinians were like biblical names. The more we played, the more it felt real, so by the song and the crowd went mad, and when Burning Spear ran on, they just went 10 times worse.” With Ellis and Spear as their teachers, all the British youngsters had to do was pay attention. “It was a good time of learni
Getty (2), Urbanimage.tv, Kim Gottlieb-Walker, © Kim Gottlieb-Walker, from Bob Marley and the Golden Age of Reggae
Well dread: Winston Rodney’s music is militant, righteous and spiritual.
Jamaica’s post-colonial aftermath, yet sweet-sounding enough to propel Burning Spear to the top of Jamaica’s charts and interest Chris Blackwell’s Island Records, who would distribute it to the world (NB: their mixes differ slightly from domestic releases on Ruby’s Fox and Wolf labels). “We do Marcus Garvey and Bob Marley do Natty Dread that year too, and Marcus Garvey Natty Dread – it was unbelievable,” remembers Horsemouth, who’d later star in the 1978 movie, Rockers. “Then I went to America with Burning Spear in 1976, for the Schaefer Music Festival, and then everybody say, ‘Who’s this guy, Horsemouth? Where these guys come from?’” A dub companion – Garvey’s Ghost – would follow, then Man In The Hills (1976) – also produced by Jack Ruby, in sessions at Randy’s and the better-equipped Harry J’s on Roosevelt Avenue. Along with Rastafari-oriented scorchers like Lion and a jazzy scat vocal titled No More War, aimed at Jamaica’s politically-aligned street gangs, it allowed Spear to record new versions of songs he had not been properly recompensed for at Studio One, including Door
guitarist and frontman Brinsley that people really began to break down the stigma that classic reggae music couldn’t be made in England, ’cos there we were, a British band, playing with Burning Spear.” For his part, Spear still values the musical chemistry with Aswad, as heard on the 1977 concert album, Live. “When I hit the Rainbow Theatre and other places in England, see my fans in England, and it was good for Aswad too.” Aswad would make a guest appearance on Social Living, the last album Burning Spear cut before leaving Island for EMI, which released Hail H.I.M., Farover and The Fittest Of The Fittest in the early 1980s, the point Spear broke with Don Taylor. The singer would continue to record the bulk of his music in Jamaica, but by the time he began releasing it through American independents such as Slash and Heartbeat, he had shifted his base to New York. “Because of my works, I think this is the right country to come to, because in this country, musically, things can happen,” he says. “What are you gonna do back in Jamaica? How much records you gonna sell? Who gonna be there to give you that kind of promotion to the record buyers? How much people is it going to be reaching to? When you’re in business, you have to think where you can go to make your business continue to be successful.” N THE NEW MILLENNIUM, BURNING SPEAR performed in South Africa and Kenya, momentous occasions that helped him to reconnect with his African heritage; he also helped build an infant school and little new music since 2008’s Jah Is Real and only a handful of ensuing live gigs, the last of which was in 2016. After that, Spear appeared to embrace off-grid hermitage, and a series of caustic social media posts suggested that industry rip-offs had taken a heavy toll.
R 19 S S R
Jah Is Real; Dry & Heavy (1977), the third Jah Is Real), 2009.
Then, during the early days of the pandemic, as conspiracy theoments, with Sizzla even recording a song titled No Vaccine. But Burning Spear showed courage when he spoke publicly about his double-vaccination status during a lengthy interview, broadcast on radio station WPKN in April 2021. “It meant a lot to me as an old guy, where something went wrong in another country and it reach up to where you live, and they come up with protection that you can protect yourself from getting that about criticism, and what about the man who took the vaccine and hide? I live in health, and I don’t live in criticism, so I didn’t pay that no mind.” Thankfully, roots reggae’s elder statesman sounds hale and hearty as he contemplates the live dates in August that will constinotes, “People are always requesting me, and I know that the people There’s a projected release, Living Dub Volume 7 – showcasing dub versions of tracks from the 2005 album Our Music. And even a hint of new Burning Spear material in the works, although fans are perhaps best advised not to hold their breath; the voice of Marcus Garvey “For the last 12 years I’ve been working on an album by the name of No Destroyer the release of this album,” he warns. “It will be when the time is right. And everything I’ve done, I’m proud of it. My work is a gift given to I-man by the Most High, and I accept that and M t.” MOJO 57
Ready for breakthrough: Procol Harum in May 1967 (from left) Matthew Fisher, Gary Brooker, Ray Royer, David Knights, Bobby Harrison; (right) their debut LP and 45.
MOJO EYEWITNESS
PROCOL HARUM TURN A WHITER SHADE OF PALE, 1967 As the Summer Of Love’s Aquarian energies proliferated across the globe, Southend’s finest former R&B group were there to furnish one of its most glorious and enigmatic variations. Rooted in Bach, a dope dealer’s Siamese cat and house party inebriation, their soulful, poetic masterpiece took the world by storm. Yet with a writing credit dispute waiting in the wings, they found it impossible to top. “A Whiter Shade Of Pale p p y , y members, friends and onlookers. “But it did become a weight around their neck.” Interviews by MARTIN ASTON • Portrait by TONY GALE
Tony Gale/Alamy
Chris Copping: The organiser of a band competition in Southend had the idea of putting the best guys, who’d taken part, together, which became The Paramounts. We played covers, stuff like Jerry Lee Lewis. Robin Trower: We had a singer but he didn’t last long, so we invited Gary [Brooker], who had a great voice and was playing piano with a friend of my brother’s. [Coasters cover] Poison Ivy [Number 35 in January 1964] earned us a name, but the work dried up. We backed Sandie Shaw for a month, but I was getting more into blues, so in 1966 I left. But that was a good thing, because Gary went on to form Procol Harum. Keith Reid: I was 10 or 11 when I first became fascinated by lyrics, but I couldn’t see how to MOJO 59
Conquistadors: (clockwise from above) Procol Harum in 1967 (from left) Royer, Knights, Brooker, Harrison, Fisher; arriving at Heathrow Airport after a US tour, November 28, 1967; Brooker on-stage at Isle Of Wight Festival, August 28, 1970.
“I HADN’T TAKEN ACID OR WAS STONED WHEN I WROTE IT.” Keith Reid
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emulate anyone until Dylan. Back then, you could go around the offices, so I met people like Mickie Most, and Chris Blackwell. Chris introduced me to Guy Stevens, who became my mentor. Guy introduced me to some heavyweights, like Stevie Winwood, who was starting Traffic and turned down using my lyrics. Guy loved The Paramounts too, so I met Gary, who had plans to become a songwriter.
Roland Clare: Southend was seething with artists of all different kinds. Gary could have written with Viv Stanshall, who lived a couple of miles away, but he was introduced to Keith, and Gary was a firm believer in fate.
Alamy (6), Shutterstock, Getty (3), James Gilmore
KR: I sent Gary maybe a dozen lyrics. We wanted to get songs recorded by other artists, but nobody was interested. [In spring ’67] I told Gary, “We have to form a band.” We used to score dope from a guy who had a Siamese cat called Procol Harum, which he said meant ‘beyond these things’ – a very loose translation as we discovered! We had our name, but we also needed a Hammond organist, as all the records we liked had that Hammond-piano combination. Matthew Fisher: I’d just left Screaming Lord Sutch’s band and bought a Hammond with a Leslie tone cabinet. I was hoping to make some serious money, so I placed an ad in Melody Maker. Keith responded, so we had a rehearsal with the band as it was then: Gary, David Knights [bass], Ray Royer [guitar] and Tubs [Bobby Harrison, drums]. I didn’t realise how good Gary’s voice was until we demoed A Whiter Shade Of Pale. KR: Like A Rolling Stone had come out, and my thought was we should have a really long song too. It’s a fallacy [that Guy Stevens originated the phrase “a whiter shade of pale”]. I’d been at a
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party at Guy’s house, and he said something about his wife Diane looking a bit ropey. He didn’t say, “She’s turned a whiter shade of pale”, that’s what I translated it into. It was all written in order, all four original verses. Franky Brooker: Gary wrote the music on his father’s piano. He says he was influenced by Bach [notably Air On The G String, popular from the Hamlet cigar ad of the time]. It really stood out, because it’s an unusual song but you can immediately hum it. KR: A Whiter Shade Of Pale was originally 10 minutes long. In rehearsal, we’d decided to cut one verse, and we cut out another verse during the recording. I didn’t mind, I was just happy to be making a record. MF: Ever since I saw the film 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea when I was nine, I’d been obsessed with pipe organs and Bach, and as soon as we started rehearsing A Whiter Shade Of Pale, I’d found the perfect vehicle [for that]. Conquistador was the band’s first great white hope [for a single], until I played along to A Whiter Shade Of Pale, and things switched around. KR: David Platz at Essex Music [publishers] said, “That’s a hit, we’ll make a record.” The band were worried about some sibilance in the recording, so [PR man] Tony Hall got it played on Radio London, to see how it sounded. Afterwards, the phones went berserk, and Deram started selling records the next day! [The single hit UK Number 1 on June 14, 1967, staying for six weeks]. RC: I was 14, living in the provinces. I remember hearing this voice from my tinny transistor radio. Most pop lyrics were trite but this was more Lewis Carroll or Edward Lear. It was a new, authentic
way of looking, like dreaming out loud. Tony Visconti: I met [AWSOP producer] Denny Cordell by chance in New York. We both worked for the same in-house company, and he played me an acetate of A Whiter Shade Of Pale. I nearly fainted. It was so beautiful, and I couldn’t believe that what I took to be an R&B song and a black singer was coming out of the UK. It reminded me of Wilson Pickett, but mixed with Bach. Everything about it – the organ, Gary’s soulful voice, Keith’s lyrics, the mood – were breathtaking [it hit US Number 5 in early July]. KR: We went to America [in October ’67]. We’d always end with Repent Walpurgis, because it’s too heavy to be followed, whereas you could follow A Whiter Shade Of Pale. We’d regularly play New York, and if we had time off, we’d head up to Woodstock, through Albert Grossman, who we talked to about managing us, and got friendly with The Band, and we’d jam with them. People in America would give you loads of drugs, like Owsley Stanley, the big acid guy in San Francisco, he gave us a carrier bag-full – DMT, STP, everything you can imagine. They’d destroy you if you took them. CC: The song was perfect for the psychedelic times. Not that I think A Whiter Shade Of Pale was influenced by drugs, though “as the ceiling flew away” had a vibe. KR: We weren’t hard drinkers, and just recreational when it came to drugs. But [AWSOP] didn’t come from a drug experience, and I hadn’t taken acid or was stoned when I wrote it. The lyric is quite literal, like a little film, with things getting crazy in a crowded room. The other stuff, about vestal virgins… people find it hard to understand that you can let your imagination run free.
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
● Keith Reid (lyrics)
Skipping the light fandango: in full psychedelic plumage (clockwise from left) Robin Trower, Fisher, Brooker, BJ Wilson, Knight; (left) proto-Procol group The Paramounts in 1964 (from left) Trower, Wilson, Brooker, Diz Derrick; (top left) poster for the November 9, 1967 gig at the Fillmore, San Francisco.
● Matthew Fisher (organ)
MF: I’d cherished the idea that a pop record could be constructed along the same lines as a Bach chorale prelude, and the first thing I’d seen on the sheet music to A Whiter Shade Of Pale was the first eight bars of my organ solo… but, “Music By Gary Brooker.” Gary was totally dismissive and uncompromising: he said, “That’s just a piece of Bach.” He couldn’t relinquish total ownership of the music – he was the big star, and I was a nobody. TV: Without Matthew’s quasi-Bach organ intro, I don’t think it would have been such a hit. But Denny and Gary would have said: “that’s an arrangement, you didn’t write the words or melody.” Writers are very reluctant to give up anything: songs are their retirement and inheritance.
Robin Trower (guitar) ●
● Chris Copping (bass/organ)
● Tony Visconti (producer)
RT [who joined in July ’67]: Gary and Keith seemed thick as thieves. It was their band – they created the songs and the ideas. I wasn’t aware of Matthew’s unhappiness; I wasn’t much of a mixer. KR: The trouble was, we had various managers, but no one astute enough to advise us. We thought Homburg was the right follow-up, though it didn’t blow the doors off [it reached Number 6 in October]. Later, we realised “why the hell didn’t we release [debut LP track] Conquistador?” RT: A Whiter Shade Of Pale was impossible to follow, because you’ll never have another worldwide smash
● Franky Brooker (wife of Gary Brooker)
● Roland Clare (Procol Harum expert)
like that. But I think audiences respected what we were doing. They had to listen to our set, or they wouldn’t get to hear A Whiter Shade Of Pale at the end! TV: A Whiter Shade Of Pale was a serious, poetic song, and the band wanted to be taken seriously and not be seen as a pop band. Dylan remained Dylan even though he had hits, and that was Keith’s goal. MF: I was always making noises about leaving, and I’d always dreamed of being a producer, and I ended up producing [May ’69 LP] A Salty Dog, and then I left [in September 1969]. If I’d got the recognition for A Whiter Shade Of Pale, I’d probably have stayed and swallowed the fact that Procol was no longer churning out hits. After I left, Gary gradually stopped playing it. I can speculate why: subconsciously, he realised a lot of what people liked about the song was my contribution. Gary couldn’t appreciate that what worked was the combination of what we did, which neither could have done on our own. CC [who replaced Fisher]: When we played A Whiter Shade Of Pale, it never sounded as good as with Matthew. It’s an absolute classic, but it did become a weight around their neck. KR: I went through a period when I couldn’t stand hearing it. It frustrated us that people just couldn’t get past the song. We had our ups and downs
after. We’d been at the point of disbanding many times, and the gigs in 1977 were miserable, so things just faded out. FB: Gary wanted to do something on his own, so he went on tour with Ringo, then Eric Clapton, and started recording solo albums. KR: I moved to New York in 1984, working with other songwriters. A friend at Atlantic Records kept saying, “Get the band together, there’s a lot of interest.” Gary was interested, but I said, “We need Matthew and Robin, that’s the Procol people want,” and they were both into it [both reunited with the group in 1991]. MF: I was tired of the studio, and I did like playing Procol songs. But in 2002, Bobby Valentino successfully sued The Bluebells over his violin part to [1984 smash] Young At Heart, so I started investigating copyright specialists, and in 2004 I took Gary to court, and won. Gary thought it was me getting even with him, but it wasn’t personal. Otherwise, the world would never know my contribution. FB: Gary felt let down that he never got the wider recognition that he deserved. On the radio, they always play A Whiter Shade Of Pale, as if it’s the only song they wrote. But when it was the song’s 50th anniversary, Procol were barely mentioned, and Gary wasn’t interviewed on TV. Probably now he’s gone [he died in February 2022], they know they should have, but now it’s too late. KR: Later I came to realise how great A Whiter Shade Of Pale was, and how lucky we were to have a hit that big – it’s sold over 10 million. That it lives on to this day is like getting an MBE. It can’t just be nostalgia, because young people are fans too. So, any time I hear it now, I love it. M MOJO 61
THE
50
GREATEST
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN
SONGS
VOICE OF
AMERICA A 20-PAGE CELEBRATION
ONCE YOU’VE BEEN CALLED ROCK’N’ROLL Irish and Italian stock, his dreams of escape fuelled Future – where do you go? The answer, for Bruce music of romantic aspiration, yet his sense of place Springsteen, over six decades of singing, shouting, remained so strong (his current address in Colts rocking and writing, turned out to be just about Neck is less than 8 miles from his childhood home) anywhere, everywhere. Walking like Elvis, talking like that, barring the disorientating effects of mega-fame Dylan, rocking like a full-force in the mid-’80s, he has gale, he revived rock’s golden remained steadfastly grounded. youth and fused it with a talent There were aspirations, too, for creating worlds that sucked to write better, and differently, you in: characters that fought, aspirations fulfilled on startling loved, drove, feared and loathed small-scale albums – Nebraska, The Ghost Of Tom Joad – and in a in an America whose sense of memoir, Born To Run, that cut self and stark reality collided MOJO delves into Springsteen’s to the core of what makes him and combusted. Around, riskiest transformation, and its tick. These days, he pens songs beneath and behind him, most shocking real-life inspiration. and plays shows that burn as of the time, the E Street Band intensely as ever, from Broadway have stoked his fire, a big group to Glastonbury, while he with a juggernaut sound that John Aizlewood, Martin Aston, Mike Barnes, Mark Blake, hobnobs with politicians and could play all night, will play John Bungey, Keith Cameron, all night given half a chance. intellectuals seeking his take Grayson Haver Currin, Bill DeMain, Dave DiMartino, Tom Doyle, And yet Springsteen’s is on the issues of the day. His Danny Eccleston, Pat Gilbert, mostly a personal journey – country’s conscience? An Jim Irvin, Colin Irwin, Andrew Male, albeit one that tracks that of unlikely outcome for that skinny James McNair, John Mulvey, Chris Nelson, Victoria Segal, his nation, in his lifetime and kid in a singlet with a Fender Michael Simmons, Sylvie Simmons, back through history. Born in Esquire slung across his back. Mat Snow, Lois Wilson. Long Branch, New Jersey, on Maybe there’s something to that September 23, 1949, of Dutch, American Dream, after all.
PLUS!
HUNGRY HEARTS
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Portrait by Frank Stefanko. Illustration by Mark Wagstaff.
NEBRASKA AT 40
50
GREATEST
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN
PINK CADILLAC
IF I SHOULD FALL BEHIND
(B-side to Dancing In The Dark, 1984)
(from Lucky Town, 1992)
Fundamentally, it’s Chuck Berry playing Peter Gunn. The distilled run-off of rockabilly, garnished with a twist of Mancini sax and served with a gunshot snare every second and fourth beat, this stark, unyielding track didn’t make it onto Born In The USA, yet it’s tooled to rev up any jukebox. “My love is bigger than a Honda, it’s bigger than a Subaru,” declares Bruce in a steely, greasy delivery, dripping with slapback echo. “Honey I just wonder what it feels like in the back of your pink Cadillac.” Don’t they all? JI
BOSS COVERS
THE WRESTLER
5 Springsteen songs properly rocked.
(from Working On A Dream, 2009) Gut-wrenching bonus track on ugly duckling album. Working On A Dream was a surprisingly slight, poppy affair, affected by whimsy (Outlaw Pete) and dipped in Beatles-y strings. But this piercing song, written for the Oscar-nominated Mickey Rourke film about a washed-up grappler, and its sparse sounds stood apart. Its lyrical play on singularities – “one-trick pony,” “one-legged dog,” “one-armed man” – hints at our fundamental aloneness, while the refrain of “You’ve seen me” confesses a need for connection. Four decades into his career, The Wrestler reveals Springsteen still working on his craft, honing his mission. CN
SHENANDOAH
(from The Seeger Sessions, 2006) Blissful surrender to the American folk tradition. Few songs are more heart-achingly beautiful – or more embedded in the American psyche – than the early-19th century story of a fur trader’s doomed love for the daughter of an Indian chief along the banks of the Missouri. Stripped of its later baggage as a shanty, work song and barroom singalong, this abandons all guile to the raw, unashamed sentiment at the song’s core. A choked vocal, sublime Patti Scialfa harmonies and Soozie Tyrell’s ghostly violin underpin a restrained Chieftains-esque arrangement. Pete Seeger loved it. CI
MURDER INCORPORATED
(from Live In New York City, 2001) Blood meets thunder in a bruising bout between message and medium. This remixed Born In The USA outtake first released in 1995 can be so ferocious live – on the full-roar Live In New York City video counterpart to the audio-only album Nils Lofgren, Steve Van Zandt and Springsteen gurningly shred their asses off – that the noise often drowns out the message. Yet unplugged, its scathing denunciation of the American “body count” deemed “the price of doing business” lacks heft, as does even the studio original. A gut punch needs heavyweight delivery. MS
WAITIN’ ON A SUNNY DAY (from The Rising, 2002)
The happiest one of all… A live mainstay until 2016, this was a burst of untrammelled singalong joy, but regarded with suspicion by the cognoscenti, who winced 64 MOJO
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THE BAND Atlantic City
(Pyramid, 1993) These Americana forefathers nail Bruce’s paean to the gaudy, once-decaying New Jersey seaside resort – a quintessential American lost and found fable about death, rebirth and life’s circularity. Beautifully sung with thrumming mandolin by Levon Helm.
THE POINTER SISTERS Fire
(Elektra, 1978) The Sisters slinkily sing of the flammability of the smooch in this combustible soul-rocker. The protagonist denies any attraction to her partner, even though she knows that he knows “I’m a liar.” Romeo and Juliet, Samson and Delilah make cameos in this oh-so-sexy ode.
DAVE EDMUNDS
From Small Things (Big Things One Day Come)
(Arista, 1982) Ostensibly a tale of murder and adultery wrapped in a Chuck Berry rocker, it’s ultimately an amusing anatomical joke rooted in the title. Edmunds’s arrangement careens around corners, with a killer chord modulation that demands dancing.
STEVE EARLE State Trooper
(New West, 2004) Earle has called Springsteen “a pretty good hillbilly singer from New Jersey” and here’s evidence of the influence. Few do menace as well as Earle, hoping against hope that the state trooper (a notorious bunch) doesn’t stop his car or mayhem will ensue.
FRANKIE GOES TO HOLLYWOOD Born To Run
(ZTT, 1984) (Above) ’80s kids will cherish this rendition of Bruce’s classic. Emphasising the thrilling moments of the original with highlighted and effective peaks and valleys, simultaneously punked-up and synthesized, it’s a period piece that transcends its time. Michael Simmons
at its cheesy lyrics (“gonna chase the clouds away”) and relentless smiley optimism. Even Springsteen admitted it was the sort of stomper manager Jon Landau invariably rejects, but the artist was right to prevail. Written before 9/11, the recorded version was a counterweight to the more downbeat preoccupations of The Rising and another welcome showcase for Soozie Tyrell’s violin. JA
A wedding ring in song form. A pledge of – and an appeal for – undying devotion come what may, this was recorded at Springsteen’s Thrill Hill West home-studio shortly after his marriage to second wife Patti Scialfa. No thundering back-beat and no heroics, just a simple sidestick-on-snare country tune acknowledging even true love’s challenges (“Oh, but you and I know/What this world can do”). Gary Mallaber’s on drums, but Bruce handles guitar, keys, bass, harmonica and percussion. A human touch for her indoors, and on-stage. JMcN
LAND OF HOPE AND DREAMS (from YouTube of Joe Biden’s inauguration)
All aboard the train to glory, via the White House. This anthem of hard-bitten optimism has usually featured as a barnstorming concert climax (a studio version appears on 2012’s Wrecking Ball). But opening the Biden broadcast in January 2021, Springsteen offered a moving solo acoustic reading. The choice was significant – after his farewell address in 2017, Barack Obama left the stage to this song. Springsteen takes the train image from the gospel tradition – specifically This Train, first recorded in the ’20s. But whereas its carriages are reserved for the godly, Springsteen has seats for all: “saints and sinners”, “whores and gamblers”, “losers and winners”. JBun
NEW YORK CITY SERENADE (from MSG 11.07.09, 2020)
A lusty Jersey boy conjures the city of his dreams. When Springsteen stitched New York Song and Vibes Man together in the summer of 1973, he was a 23-year-old roughneck from central Jersey, 50 miles south of Manhattan, and, from David Sancious’s grand piano prelude onwards, the result was pure projection. Four decades after its debut on The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle, at Madison Square Garden he and his band had grown into the adult experiences of this “mad dog’s promenade”. From the archive of shows available at live.brucespringsteen.net, no performance better encapsulates Springsteen’s endless intimacy and cinematic spectacle. GHC
HIGHWAY PATROLMAN (from Nebraska, 1982)
Good cop, bad brother. This Cain and Abel fable feels like a police report filled out at 3am on a muggy August night. But as flat and stoic as it is on the surface, the undercurrent of conflicted ache in the narrator’s voice can put pimples on your goosebumps. Campfire fingerpicking, distant harmonica, a melody that barely moves – that these ingredients add up to something so devastating is pure songcraft genius. Potent enough to inspire both a Sean Penn movie and a Johnny Cash cover. BM
Alamy
THE
Still on the line: Springsteen drives on through the devil winds.
THE BOSS RIDES OFF INTO THE SUNSET? NOT SO FAST, SAYS TOM DOYLE WESTERN STARS
(from Western Stars, 2019)
A grand gesture towards the songs of Jimmy Webb, and particularly Glen Campbell’s masterful interpretations of the late ’60s, Western Stars, the album, involved a series of character studies: the patched-up thrill-seeker of Drive Fast (The Stuntman), the freewheeling youth thumbing his way around the US in Hitch Hikin’, the regret-filled jobbing songwriter of Somewhere North Of Nashville. But none was more vivid and haunting than the timeworn movie cowboy of the title track. Over muted acoustic guitar and Marc Muller’s keening lap steel, our protagonist wakes with relief to find that he’s still alive and not under the “whispering grasses” at LA’s cemetery for the stars, Forest Lawn Memorial Park. And yet life’s struggle continues. He arrives on set, feeling old and battered, eschewing a breakfast cocktail of gin and raw eggs. Instead, he necks a Viagra to get his blood pumping. Springsteen throws himself so deeply into the role that, with his dusty vocal, he’s almost unrecognisable, and truly believable as the worn-out actor who at the weekends travels out to the desert to tame wild horses with Mexican charros who “cross the wire and bring the old ways with them”. Back in the city he has few claims to fame – being shot by John Wayne in a late-career film (maybe 1976’s
Don Siegel-directed The Shootist?); being vaguely recognised by a girl in a bar as someone in “that commercial with a credit card” that he doesn’t confirm was actually him. Western Stars is not just a depiction of a dying age of Hollywood, but also of what remains wild about Los Angeles, with its coyotes in the hills making off with pet chihuahuas and the Santa Ana desert winds – or “devil winds”, said to unsettle Angelenos – blowing through the traffic on Sunset Boulevard. There are also fleeting expressions of deep, human feelings for others: the charros are “our American brothers”, the bar girl is “some lost sheep from Oklahoma”. Equally sympathetic is the musical arrangement – drummer Matt Chamberlain’s echoes of The Wrecking Crew’s Hal Blaine, Rob Lebret’s Wichita Lineman baritone guitar. In the soaring middleeight repeating the main melodic theme, the screen feels like it stretches out, with the Stone Hills Strings playing as if they’re accompanying the epic conclusion to a John Ford film. As a defiant celebration of a Hollywood that is fading or, more likely, already gone, our narrator’s big chorus statement – “tonight the Western stars are shining bright again” – is stirring yet filled with pathos. It’s all the more moving for the narrator’s sense of sad acceptance (see Springsteen’s beautifully gutsy-to-tender delivery of the couplet, “Hell, these days there ain’t no more/Now there’s just again”). But for all its resignation, Western Stars is a stunner, brought to you in VistaVision.
“SPRINGSTEEN THROWS HIMSELF SO DEEPLY INTO THE ROLE HE’S ALMOST UNRECOGNISABLE.”
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RADIO NOWHERE
assumptions replaced by a foul accumulation of “devils and dust”. AM
(from Magic, 2007)
Communication breakdown drives The Boss insane. Some tagged Radio Nowhere’s broiling affirmation of rockin’ virtues as a less goofy counterpart to 1992’s 57 Channels (And Nothin’ On), an ageing dude disgruntled by modern ways. Yet the void intimated by its rotary riff progression and Springsteen’s repeated entreaty “Is there anybody alive out there?” is spiritual; a howl against the alienating impact of our technological apocalypse. Connection can be found only amid one of the E Street Band’s fiercest performances. Released as a single, Radio Nowhere flopped – a very ironic kind of vindication. KC
ADAM RAISED A CAIN
(from Darkness On the Edge of Town, 1978) Let’s just say Bruce has dad issues. Springsteen’s fourth album starts out pretty angry with Badlands, but the song that followed, with its searing guitar and aggressive vocal, has a Biblical fury and pain all its own. A hard rock song (complete with squealing guitar) about hard truths. “You inherit your sins, you inherit the flames,” he sings in the song inspired in part by John Steinbeck’s East Of Eden, and even more by feelings about the man with “the same hot blood” burning in his veins. SS
4TH OF JULY, ASBURY PARK (SANDY)
(from The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle, 1973)
HOT ROD ANGELS Five of Bruce Springsteen’s actual cars.
1960 CHEVROLET CORVETTE C1
(Above) It’s the one BS is sat on in the Frank Stefanko shot on the cover of his Born To Run autobiog, bought for $6k from an ice-cream stand attendant after Born To Run hit big. Great for: haunting this dusty beach road.
1957 CHEVROLET BEL AIR CONVERTIBLE
A real American Graffiti set of wheels, pointy at all four corners, bought for $2k in 1975. In Born To Run he recalls its “dual, four-barrel carbs, a Hurst on the floor and orange flames spread across the hood”. Subtle.
1963 CHEVROLET IMPALA
A present from Gary US Bonds after Springsteen’s song This Little Girl gave him a career-reviving hit. Bonds also recorded Springsteen’s Your Love and Dedication, so maybe three cars would have been fairer.
1982 CHEVROLET Z28 CAMARO
“I blew that Camaro off my back,” reports Bruce in 1978’s Racing In The Street. Yet in 1982 he’d splash $10k on what was then his first new car: “It felt as conspicuous as if I were driving a solid gold Rolls-Royce.”
2009 RANGE ROVER L322
Because, once you’ve ridden through mansions of glory in suicide machines for so long, it’s time to settle for something more practical – less drag-strip shut-down; more dropping-daughter-off-at-the-gymkhana.
LETTER TO YOU
(from Letter To You, 2020) A thrilling celebration of living life in the moment. The placing of this song in its album’s tracklisting is crucial. After the muted, sombre opener One Minute You’re Here, with its musing on mortality and the approach of the metaphorical “big black train”, Letter To You bursts in, a full-band surge of vital energy decorated by Charles Giordano’s Al Kooper-ish organ swirls. Letters have been a perennial subject, but here Springsteen wants to cram everything – “All the sunshine and rain/All my happiness and all my pain” – into this missive in song. MBa
DOWNBOUND TRAIN
(from Born In The USA, 1984) A Nebraska refugee finds its home on …USA’s dark side. One of Springsteen’s most perfectly realised dramatic visions, Downbound Train flips the pop song’s traditional deployment of trains as 66 MOJO
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escape vehicles. Narrator Joe has already lost his job when his girl leaves “on the Central Line”, condemning him to haunting by whistle whines as his life descends into an existential shunt between dead ends. We leave him in a railroad gang hammering down cross ties, inevitably “in the rain”, comforted only by the E Street Band’s empathetic trudge into the lonely eternal. KC
DEVILS & DUST
(from Devils & Dust, 2005) Dylan’s With God On Our Side, now with less hope! Written from the perspective of a US soldier in Iraq, this is the Springsteen hero at his most doubt-filled. Bruce’s Gibson J-45 strum and harmonica summon the desolate acoustic landscapes of Nebraska, while French horns and Nashville strings offers an illusion of uplift. None comes. Only a question: “What if what you do to survive, kills the things you love?” and the realisation that Springsteen’s soldier is also a metaphor for his country, post-9/11, God-on-our-side
The ultimate boardwalk elegy. Watch out for greasers! If Springsteen’s second album was his Jersey shoreline take on Astral Weeks, 4th Of July was his Cyprus Avenue; a mythopoetic torrent of imagery that specified and idealised his home turf – The factory girls! The tilt-a-whirls! – even as he sought to transcend it. Danny Federici’s accordion leans hard into the carny romance. But there’s a subtext, too, of an artist keen to escape his backyard while memorialising it in perpetuity: “For me,” as Bruce tells Sandy, “this boardwalk life is through, babe.” JM
REASON TO BELIEVE (from Nebraska, 1982)
Did you hear the one about the noshow wedding, the funeral and the dead dog? You could possibly see it as a chink of hope at the end of Nebraska’s long, dark, corpse-stacked journey into night: that somehow, “at the end of every hard earned day people find some reason to believe”. Springsteen himself, however, contends that this spartan, incongruously jaunty song represents “the bottom”. Audible proof follows verse two’s depiction of Mary Lou hopelessly waiting for mean Johnny to return, as the singer sneers, almost spits the word “funny”. But no one’s laughing. Life’s a sick joke, and then you’re a dead dog on Highway 31. KC
TOUGHER THAN THE REST (from Tunnel Of Love, 1987)
Pick-up lines from inside the mind of a bad man. It’s Saturday night. We’re in a bar. Our narrator is watching a woman, been watching her a while. An emotionless snare plays over a cold Linn drum sample and the brassy drone of a synth. “Well if you’re looking for love,” sings a weary Springsteen, “Honey I’m tougher than the rest.” Tough means strong, difficult, violent. The song moves through all those meanings until we arrive at an ultimatum: “If you’re rough enough for love… all you got to do is say yes.” Do not say yes. AM
PROVE IT ALL NIGHT
(From Berkeley, July 1, 1978, 2021) According to Springsteen, how “success requires sacrifice”. Inspired by a conversation with a cab driver who moaned how he had to prove it all day to his boss and all night to his wife (and the kids at the weekend), this first single off Darkness explores macho bravado, the speed of life and seeking male validation through sexual agency. While the studio version is great, the extended live version from the ’78 tour with that blissful, soulful piano/guitar intro is better. LW
Getty, Joel Bernstein
THE
“Mind your car for 50 cents, mate?”: The E Street Band (from left), Garry Tallent, Steven Van Zandt, Clarence Clemons, Springsteen, Roy Bittan, Danny Federici, Max Weinberg, in New York during The River recording sessions, August 1979.
THE CAR SONG TO END THEM ALL. RECLAIMED BY SYLVIE SIMMONS WRECK ON THE HIGHWAY (from The River, 1980)
On an empty highway on a rainy night, a man sees a wrecked car. On the side of the road amid the blood and glass lies its young driver, dying. Later that night, the man lies awake beside his sleeping wife, haunted by existential thoughts. “He realises,” as Springsteen wrote about the song in his 1991 book Songs, “you have a limited number of opportunities to love someone, to do your work… to parent your children, to do something good.” It’s a strange one, Wreck On The Highway. Melodious, moving and straightforward in structure – other than the instrumental coda that feels oddly tacked on – but still something of an outlier, even on a double album noted for its mix of sombre and light-hearted songs. It was the last song he wrote and recorded. He didn’t need another song – as the 35th anniversary The Ties That Bind box set shows, there was no shortage of leftovers. What’s curious is that this song he seemed compelled to write at the last minute had to some degree already been written by someone else decades before.
Dorsey Dickson, an old-time country singer and mill worker, wrote his Wreck On The Highway in the 1930s. Roy Acuff popularised it in the ’40s; George Jones and Gene Pitney recorded it in the ’60s. The basic story it told isn’t much different – fatal crash, victims lying in blood and glass. Springsteen’s lyrics are more personalised – one victim, one witness – and unlike Dickson’s say nothing about alcohol or God. Though if you removed the E Street Band backing you’ll hear a large dash of clapboard-church hymn in Springsteen’s plain, meditative, country-folk melody. A ballad of four verses, the most telling are the last two which muse on mortality. Springsteen was 30 when he wrote it – young to contemplate running out of time, unless you’re Jesus. He was single, no children, a rock star. In interviews he mentioned his father’s bitterness at having wasted his life. It seems he felt he was wasting his own, racing in the street, running ’til he drops. There’s no sex or glory in this Springsteen car song. Side 4, Track 20, Wreck On The Highway was the last song on The River. You can’t help wondering if, as he wrote it, he already had his next album in mind. That this solemn, haunting song was a bridge over the river to the bleak and beautiful Nebraska.
“THERE’S NO SEX OR GLORY IN THIS SPRINGSTEEN CAR SONG.”
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resonance and elegant simplicity (he wrote it, quickly, for the Ramones). Whether it’s new sex, love, or adventure, we are, as Tennyson offered, “always roaming with a hungry heart”. GHC
(from Nebraska, 1982) Taxi Driver: The Musical relocated to the highway. “One of the most amazing records I ever heard,” quoth Bruce on Suicide’s horrifying 1977 tune Frankie Teardrop; seldom has one classic mapped so brilliantly onto another. Where despairing factory worker Frankie shoots his family then himself, Springsteen’s loner heads towards final deliverance down the New Jersey Turnpike in the wee, wee hours – a bleakly ironic echo of Chuck Berry’s gallivanting relish. More chilling still, as the song dissolves, Bruce echoes the animal yelps of Suicide’s Alan Vega, rockabilly as psychological apocalypse. MS
DARKNESS ON THE EDGE OF TOWN
(from Darkness On The Edge Of Town, 1978)
“I DIDN’T REALLY KNOW WHAT IT MEANT!” The baffling glory of Blinded By The Light, by its hitmaker Manfred Mann.
TENTH AVENUE FREEZE-OUT (from Born To Run, 1975)
The E Street Band Origin Story. The song wasn’t happening in the studio until Miami Steve Van Zandt sang those exuberant horn parts to the session guys. That moxie got him in the band. And forming a band is what this celebrates – the bonding of gypsy running buddies and “professional hitmen”, all mirrored in an elbow-rubbing groove and private lingo lyric. Springsteen called the title “just a cool phrase”, but it conjures up an inaccessible street of dreams for his gang to thaw and conquer. They did that soon enough. BM
I’M ON FIRE
(from Born In The USA, 1984) Declaration of lust swaps starsand-stripes for a red flag. John Sayles’s video – Springsteen as flirty mechanic – sold this single as adult rock erotica. Alone in “soaking wet” sheets with its “bad desire”, though, it lands differently. “Hey little girl” might be standard pop idiom, but alongside insistent percussion, violent imagery (a knife, a “freight train running through the middle of my head”), tensed vocals and synths that shade from John Hughes into John Carpenter, it’s less quaint come-on, more stalker’s lament. This burning, suggests Springsteen, ever alert to the damaged, is an infernal flame. VS
GROWIN’ UP
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(from Greetings From Asbury Park, NJ, 1973) The frustrated smalltown teenage rebel’s tale… “My biography,” admitted Springsteen, who advised that a song which was part of his Columbia audition is best consumed when the temperature is 95 and the humidity 90. Propelled by David Sancious’s twinkling piano, it combines teenage insecurity with teenage
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“With Blinded By The Light I didn’t really know what it all meant, just that each line sounded right to me. I really should have checked more carefully, as Springsteen had written ‘cut loose like a deuce’, and in the process of rehearsal I somehow landed up with ‘wrapped up like a deuce’ and the record was so difficult to make that I just overlooked the error. I also landed up with a slightly different chord structure, just through my endless fiddling about, not by design. Our [ie, Manfred Mann’s Earth Band] version was slightly prettier than Springsteen’s. His version is rougher and has so much energy. Our Blinded By The Light became a very big hit, in the UK, across Europe, and then it started to do well in the US. One day Warner Brothers told us that they had a problem. The radio stations in the Southern bible belt were very reluctant to play the record because the chorus line sounded like ‘douche’ not ‘deuce’. They were hearing the phrase ‘wrapped up like a douche’. This was a problem because it seemed to be possibly referring to a well-known sanitary product. After several more weeks the record climbed to Number 1. Many months later we toured the States, and, on many occasions, people said to me, ‘The reason that the record made it all the way to the top was because everyone is discussing whether it is “douche” or “deuce”.’ It seems ridiculous, but it may be true.” As told to Lois Wilson
swagger and the need to blend in with the need to stand out. Setting the template for so much of what was to come, Springsteen was as poetic as he was direct. And, of course, a potentially brighter future lies in an “old parked car”. JA
HUNGRY HEART
(from Live/1975–85, 1986) Tennyson + Ramones + chimes? Your first hit. On the 1980 single that became his first smash, Springsteen sounded a touch short of the grit and longing inside his would-be adulterer’s anthem. But on-stage he couldn’t hide his happiness or himself. Here, from the same year, a Nassau Coliseum crowd shouts the first verse before he can, speaking to its universal
What we do in the shadows. There’s such theatricality in this song’s introduction – strutting piano, shiny tambourine – that it feels like Springsteen bringing up the house lights on the world he’s brought to life. It fits a track so interested in façade and performance, from the woman “with a style she’s trying to maintain” to the insistence that “everybody’s got a secret”. The street-racing narrator is flesh-and-blood solid but there’s a fantastic sense of Springsteen stage-managing his own universe here, prowling a backlit set in a rock’n’roll Our Town. VS
GIRLS IN THEIR SUMMER CLOTHES (from Magic, 2007)
Beach Boys go Proust. It’s Kurt Weill’s September Song re-purposed as a Brian Wilson lamentation for lost youth, with requisite 12-string guitars and Jack Nitzschestyle string arrangement. Yet the wry, melancholy note to Springsteen’s delivery (“The girls in their summer clothes… pass me by”) hints at the layered, self-reflexive pop of The Magnetic Fields, and gradually this romantic narrator reveals himself as more bitter than bittersweet, someone who believes the waitress pouring him coffee “went away [and] cut me like a knife”. A cloud moves across the sun. AM
MEETING ACROSS THE RIVER (from Born To Run, 1975)
It’s a deal. Not the last time the worlds of Tom Waits and Bruce Springsteen would collide (they’d share the former’s Jersey Girl). In this island of Porgy & Bess amidst the sturm und drang, our hero is heading for a pow-wow with some made guys, and he needs his pal Eddie to look like he’s packing heat. Around him swirls Randy Brecker’s bluesy trumpet and Roy Bittan’s solemn piano, telling you what you already know – these doomed small-timers are headed for a dip in the Hudson. DE
STREETS OF PHILADELPHIA (from Philadelphia OST, 1993)
A Grammy and Oscar winner that’s hardly there. Jonathan Demme’s groundbreaking Philadelphia, in which Hollywood icon Tom Hanks played a gay AIDS patient, required a theme that captured the narrative’s devastating core. The director cried when he first heard Springsteen’s response. Backed only by Tommy Sims’s ethereal backing vocal, Springsteen ghosts in on a drum machine, shaded by synthetic strings, haunted and haunting. He tried a band version but junked it; what we hear is the demo. “I can feel myself fading away,” sings Springsteen. It’s like the music feels the same. MA Continues on page 76
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Solar flare: Springsteen soaks up the street heat, Long Branch, New Jersey, August 29, 1973.
A ‘NEW DYLAN’ CUTS LOOSE LIKE A DEUCE. DAVE DiMARTINO DEALS BLINDED BY THE LIGHT
(from Greetings From Asbury Park, NJ, 1973)
It is the very first song on the very first album to be released by Bruce Springsteen, and that context alone makes it important. That it was also the man’s first single underlines its significance as an introduction to the man, his music, and his world. And what did Blinded By The Light tell us about Bruce Springsteen? That he’d swallowed a rhyming dictionary? That he was here to be noticed, at any cost? Its ambitious, phonetic jumble dually evoked Subterranean Homesick Blues and My Back Pages and was the sort of thing that tempted record execs to toy with nicknames like ‘the New Dylan’. Yet it’s to record execs that we owe the song’s existence – because Columbia label boss Clive Davis told Springsteen he didn’t hear a hit on the first version of the album, so he came back with Spirit In The Night, and this, and all was forgiven. Blinded… wasn’t a hit, but it served its purpose, and with saxophonist Clarence Clemons well up in the mix, it may be the most E Street Band-ish track of the entire LP. Within the non-stop lyrical flow – opening line: “Madman drummers bummers and Indians in the summer with a teenage diplomat/ In the dumps with the mumps as the adolescent pumps his way into his hat” – were discernible
hints of a reckless, joyous autobiography that we all would watch develop in the years to come. And the payoff offered by the song’s final line – “Mama always told me not to look into the sights of the sun/Woah but mama that’s where the fun is” – was an impressive jolt of prescience from a 23-year-old just launching his career as the sun blazed overhead. But wait – not a hit? Don’t tell that to Manfred Mann’s Earth Band, who covered Blinded By The Light on their 1976 The Roaring Silence set and, remarkably, gave Bruce Springsteen his first and only Number 1 single as a songwriter on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. As an added bonus, Mann vocalist Chris Thompson seemed to be singing “wrapped up like a douche” (the original lyric is “cut loose like a deuce”), which popularised the song to an entirely new set of sniggering young listeners (see panel on opposite page). An unexpected bit of closure? Blinded… was performed at the last full gig Clarence Clemons played with the E Street Band before his death in 2011. It was November 22, 2009, in Buffalo, and Springsteen & Co played the Greetings… album from start to finish. “This was the miracle,” Springsteen announced before the band launched into Blinded… “This was the record that took everything from way below zero to… (significant pause)… one. A big, big, big moment. A big time.”
“AN IMPRESSIVE JOLT OF PRESCIENCE FROM A 23-YEAR-OLD JUST LAUNCHING HIS CAREER.”
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Forty years ago, BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN released Nebraska, a lo-fi fever dream populated by troubled cops and serial killers, the lost and the lonely. The songs were a new kind of writing, with a depth that rendered his credibility “forever bulletproof”. But at the time, even Springsteen asked himself if, by releasing it, he was throwing everything away. “I got to wondering, What the hell am I doing?” Words by DAVID FRICKE. Portrait by FRANK STEFANKO.
Frank Stefanko
HE CASSETTE FIT INTO THE FRONT POCKET of Bruce Springsteen’s denim jacket, which is where he kept it for months – without a case – in early 1982: more than a dozen new songs in stark, solo demos, some in multiple versions and mixes, recorded that winter on a portable 4-track machine in his New Jersey home. But the tape weighed a ton in the singer’s head – part talisman, part conscience – as he started working with the E Street Band on a new album, the intended follow-up to Springsteen’s two-disc epic, 1980’s The River. For three weeks in late April and May at the Power Station in New York City, the music came like a freight train. Hot and tight after 138 shows in 1980 and ’81, then February ’82 sessions for an album by R&B legend Gary U.S. Bonds, Springsteen and the E Street Band caught early, cassette, including the foreboding grind of Downbound Train and Child Bride, a set of lyrics rewired into the hardluck rockabilly jolt Working On The Highway. “We had a particular way of working – which was everything was live,” recalled Chuck Plotkin, a mixing engineer on 1978’s Darkness On The Edge Of Town and The River who was back at the console, co-producing this time with Springsteen, his manager Jon Landau and E Street guitarist Steven Van Zandt. “It was a rock band, and the guys could play,” Plotkin went on. “There was a certain vitality that you got from not doing 2,700 takes of things” – a refreshing change from the leader’s notorious perfectionism in the studio. One song came to unexpected life at the Power Station when Springsteen called for a pass at an idea that had evolved over several demos, in different tempos and vocal approaches, from a blues simply called Vietnam into a scathing indictment of patriotic hypocrisy. Springsteen called it Born In The USA. “To me, it was a dead song,” Landau later confessed to Springsteen biographer Dave Marsh, “one of the lesser songs” on the cassette – until the singer came up with the titanic entrance: a synthesizer riff played by pianist Roy Bittan and detonated like an arena-rock bomb by drummer Max Weinberg. Everything else came together in the second take. ➢
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In the wee wee hours: Bruce Springsteen, Haddonfield, New Jersey, 1982.
Hear my last prayer: Springsteen in the rented ranch house in Colts Neck, NJ, where he wrote and recorded Nebraska, 1982.
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“All popular artists get caught between making records and making music,” he continued. “If you’re lucky, sometimes it’s the same possibilities and every blind alley, I pulled out the original cassette I’d been carrying around in my jeans pocket and said, ‘This is it.’” Five months later, on September 30, 1982, Springsteen issued 10 songs from that tape – unchanged, with the murk intact after it after the desolate setting and harrowing chill of the opening ballad: Nebraska.
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ORTY YEARS ON, NEBRASKA IS ONE OF ROCK’S GREATest accidental triumphs, one of the most important albums Springsteen has ever released – he had just turned 33 – yet originally made with no thought of it being a record at all. It is a masterpiece of uneasy listening: raw drafts in field-recording
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turbulence of a terse, visceral turn in Springsteen’s songwriting, steeped in blood, sorrow and the blunt, confessional vernacular of the jailhouse and unemployment line. “Ten innocent people” die in of the real-life teenage serial murderer Charles Starkweather; harmonica breaks rise over the song’s blasted plains and badlands like eulogies in smoke. “I had no conscious political agenda or social themes,” Springsteen claimed in his autobiography. “I was after a feeling, a tone that felt like the world I’d known and still carried inside me.” Here are the working-class strivers, dropouts from that race and escape and ecstasy that peaked on 1975’s Born To Run. But there is a lot less hope in these cycles of crime and reckoning, of ordinary folk pressed to desperate measures: the spectral fatalism at Sunrockabilly speed in Johnny 99 and State Trooper; the paychecks that never go far enough in the haunted country of Mansion On The Hill and simmering anger of Used Cars; the slim chance at redemption in the ghostly sweetness of Atlantic City, undercut in the last verse by the tug of a fast, tainted buck. “I was only making ‘demos’,” Springsteen reiterated in Born To Run. And the stadium-scale last-chance dance of 1984’s Born In The USA is clearly shaking in these bones – “The characters and the setting,” as he told Rolling Stone at the time – while Nebraska was waiting for its second chance on E Street. Two years after its release, week of his Born In The USA tour. Of those, Atlantic City, Johnny 99 and Mansion On The Hill, all of which failed the Power Station test, were still coming around in 2016 and 2017 set lists.
Frank Stefanko
But then Springsteen hit a brick wall: the eerie, insular force of the tape in his pocket. “There wasn’t a single song on there that we didn’t record with the band,” Plotkin noted. But many resisted the full-group brawn: the recurring violence on devastated landscapes in Atlantic City, Johnny 99 and Highway Patrolman; the bitter cycles of aspiration and disappointment in Mansion On The Hill and Reason To Believe. “We were squashing all of the dark, strange particularity,” Plotkin said – skeletal hooks propelled by distant, solitary guitars; the low, wounded range of Springsteen’s mantra-like singing inside ocean-fog reverb. “I realised I’d succeeded in doing nothing but damaging what I’d created,” Springsteen said of the Power Station treatments in his 2016 memoir, Born To Run. “We got it to sound cleaner, more hi-
Nebraskan roots: (clockwise) Suicide’s Alan Vega, 1982; Springsteen at the Power Station, New York, 1980; Woody Guthrie; Flannery O’Connor; the Echoplex reverb unit and Teac Tascam 4-track recorder.
“I THOUGHT IT WAS ONE OF MY ALBUMS THAT I HAD FORGOTTEN ABOUT. BUT IT WAS BRUCE!” SUICIDE’S ALAN VEGA
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N SEPTEMBER 14, 1981, SPRINGSTEEN AND THE E The River with a 28-song marathon at the Riverfront Coliseum in Cincinnati, Ohio. It was Springsteen’s last concert with his group for three
years. Nebraska was already underway. Springsteen wrote Mansion On of shadows and troubles – on the road. In Hank Williams’s ballad of the same name, a T Top 20 hi hit iin March 1949, the singer’s longing is for the woman in that house, teen’s song came from his own youth. “My father was always night of the Born In The USA tour in St Paul, Minnesota. “He used to drive out of town and look at this big white house. It became a kind of touchstone for me. Now, when I dream, sometimes I’m on the outside looking in – and sometimes I’m the man on the inside.” Springsteen tried multiple takes of Mansion On The Hill with the E Street Band, over three days at the Power Station. He only needed one – forlorn harmonica against tip-toe acoustic picking; a surprisingly clear vocal in watery ripples of reverb – to get it right, at home, on that cassette. At the time, Springsteen was renting a ranch house in Colts Neck, New Jersey – the very area where he would later settle down and raise a family with his second wife, singer Patti Scialfa. “I didn’t go out much,” he admitted to Rolling Stone’s Kurt Loder in a 1984 cover story, “and for some reason, I started to write. I wrote Nebraska, all those songs, in a couple of months.” Nebraska the song arrived after Springsteen saw Badlands – Terspree in Nebraska and Wyoming – and read a biography of the latter’s girlfriend-accomplice Caril Fugate. “You can get to a point where nihilism, if that’s the right word, is overwhelming,” Spring-
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But Nebraska was a compelling, coherent mission in its own right, long before Springsteen decided it was an album: the artist documenting a profound change in his lyric voice and rock’n’roll classicism with nothing but the band in his head. “Never before has a major recording artist made himself so vulnerable or open,” Joel Selvin wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle, reviewing Nebraska in October, 1982. “Only somebody who is as trusted, known and loved as Springsteen could get away with dashing off a few, quick sketches, throwing them in frames and mounting them on the gallery walls.” “The Nebraska demos turned the idea of urban folk music on its head,” Marsh wrote in 1987’s Glory Days: Bruce Springsteen In The 1980s. “Rather than appropriating the folk songs themselves, Springsteen worked with his own characteristic melodic ideas and lyrics that were utterly contemporary.” The effect was improbably commercial: Nebraska went to Number 3 in both the US and the UK, ultimately selling over a million copies in America. “An artist could never get closer to his audience than this,” Steve Van Zandt told Marsh in Glory Days. “Not because it was done with an acoustic guitar, but because he was literally singing for himself.” The guitarist went even further in his own memoir, 2021’s Unrequited Infatuations, declaring Nebraska “among the most uncompromising and uncommercial recordings any major artist has ever released.” After that album, he said, Springsteen’s “credibility” was “forever bulletproof ”.
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society has set up – either religious or social laws – become meaningless. Things just get really dark.” As he sang at the song’s end, channelling Starkweather, “They wanted to know why I did what I did/Well sir I guess there’s just a meanness in this world.” “I was interested in writing kind of smaller, writing with just detail,” Springsteen went on in that interview, citing the taut,
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also gone deeper into, as he wrote in Born To Run, the “toughness, wit and common wisdom” of Woody Guthrie after reading Joe Klein’s 1980 biography of the folk icon. Then there was Suicide – the New York electro-punk duo, whose 10-minute murder ballad Suicide was a vivid, if Nebraska’s claustrophobic tensions and chugging low-end drone. Suicide’s late singer Alan Vega, who met Springsteen in 1980 at the Power Station where they were both recording, remembered hearing State Trooper – with its whoopingNebraska came out: “I thought it was one of my albums that I had forgotten about. But it was Bruce!”
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taped everything on the Nebraska cassette in a single day, -
heard at least four stabs at Born In The USA. Recording certainly took longer, but the urgency was real – Springsteen getting the songs down in bare-minimum arrangements spiked with dramatic yelling down a subway tunnel; the yodelling kickoff of Johnny 99) Mike Batlan, assisted.
– who worked for the singer for nearly 40 years and was instrumental in getting the Nebraska cassette through its tortuous mastering phase – ran down the album’s genesis, pointing out the inexperiTascam machine was relatively new on the professional-audio market, and Batlan “didn’t have much of a chance to get familiar” with it, Scott said. “But Bruce was eager to get going,” resulting in “a bit of distortion” on some songs. Springsteen mixed the 4-track recordings on a Panasonic boom died soon after. And the ghetto blaster had previously survived a drowning after Springsteen took it on a canoe ride and it fell overstudio and saying, ‘There’s just something about the atmosphere on Nebraska went through four different mastering rooms in New York before Springsteen found satisfaction at the Atlantic Records studio on Broadway. solo like the rest of the Nebraska picking, Springsteen singing in a raspy baritone like he was shaking himself out of a bad dream – which, in effect, he was: a vision of dated, the troubled relationship with his father past any repair. There was truth in it too: Springsteen’s frequent drives through his live in,” he recalled, introducing the song on-stage in 1990. Springsteen continued, describing a visit to a psychiatrist who said, “Something bad happened and you keep going back to see if you But Springsteen was still going back decades later – performing
“I WAS AFTER A FEELING, A TONE THAT FELT LIKE THE WORLD I’D KNOWN AND STILL CARRIED INSIDE ME.” BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN
Broadway. It was the only Nebraska song in the show.
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ing revealing how at one point in his embarrassment of riches, he thought of releasing Nebraska and Born In The USA together as a double album – then thought better of it. “The tonality of the music was just too different, too oppositional,” he said, expanding on that decision in his memoir. Nebraska “had been so funkily recorded” that Springsteen considered putting it out in its original format – cassette – until Plotkin found the “old mastering lathe” at Atlantic. And there was no tour for Nebraska, the Instead, he went back to writing and wrestling with Born In The USA, going through 80-100 songs (depending on the source) released one of his demo versions of that title track, including it on the rarities box set, Tracks. The rhythm was a bluesy swing, the vocal more restrained than what was to come – until an electric guitar burst in, Springsteen howling behind it like he was already hearing the noise around the corner. “I had a lot of sorting out to do,” Springsteen said, summing up through the issues that make up your emotional life rises.” And “I was at a place where I could start to really feel that price,” he added. “There are things that make sense of life for people: their friends, the work they do, your community, your relationship with your There was always the redemption in music. “Radio’s jammed up
through “New Jersey in the mornin’ like a lunar landscape” to get So cold and alone: Bruce feels the Nebraska chill, 1982.
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Springsteen sang in Nebraska’s one straight-up rock’n’roll party,
AMERICAN HORROR STORY A meanness in this world: Charles Starkweather at court, May 1958, with (right) Sheriff Merle Karnopp; (right) Starkweather’s 14-year-old accomplice Caril Ann Fugate under police custody.
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HRISTMAS 1957 WAS coming, and Charles Starkweather just wanted to buy his girlfriend a toy dog. For more than a year, Starkweather – a diminutive 19-year-old trash collector with bad vision, bowed legs, and big dreams of James Dean-style intrigue – had been dating Caril Ann Fugate, a 14-year-old whose affection was the first thing that ever gave him a sense of self-worth. Still, Starkweather’s father warned, the underage dalliance could only mean trouble: “She’s jailbait,” he reportedly told his son. But it was Starkweather himself who paved their way to prison. When the new night clerk at a Crest petrol station in their hometown of Lincoln, Nebraska, refused to sell him that toy dog on credit, Starkweather returned after 3am on December 1 with a 12-gauge shotgun. He forced the clerk to fill up a canvas satchel he’d salvaged on his garbage route, then drive his hotrod down an isolated country road. There was a scuffle, then several shots. It was Starkweather’s first kill; by the end of January 1958, when Starkweather finally surrendered amid the flatlands of eastern Wyoming, there would be 10 more. Starkweather’s rampage proper began seven weeks later. After evading suspicion for killing the clerk, he arrived at Fugate’s home on January 21, where he quarrelled with her parents about whether or not he could carry on seeing her. He murdered the mother and the father, then bludgeoned their two-year-old daughter, Betty Jean, to death with a shotgun, disposing of their bodies in an outhouse. Fugate always insisted she returned home only after the deed was done, but the pair played house for several days, like
husband and wife, mere feet away from the dead family. “They lived like kings… had never had a more wonderful time,” William Allen wrote in his exhaustive 1976 account of the case. “At last, there was nobody to order them around.”
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FTER NEARLY a week hiding out in the scene of the crime, rebuffing visitors by claiming everyone at home had flu, the couple fled. The first stop was the farm of a friend, unceremoniously murdered when he became suspicious. After a pair of teenagers in an old Ford offered them a ride, Starkweather killed them too, stuffing them in a storm cellar and telling Fugate to get in their car. They returned to Lincoln, taking the wife and maid of a steel magnate hostage. Starkweather stabbed them and subsequently shot the husband, just before bands of armed citizens and a unit of the Nebraska National Guard launched a statewide search for the young fugitives. With the body count now in double digits, the couple stole a fashionable 1956 Packard and aimed west toward Washington state – across Nebraska, through its western badlands, and toward the foot of Wyoming’s massive mountain ranges. Starkweather stopped to steal a Buick from a shoe salesman sleeping alongside the highway and shot him. Just before the couple
Wyoming geologist and a deputy s a h A little more than a year later, Starkweather was executed in a Nebraska State Pen electric chair. “She should be sitting on my lap,” he famously said of his girlfriend – a detail Springsteen was careful to include in his song. In a note to his parents, however, he was more charitable to Fugate: “For the first time me and Caril have more fun,” he wrote. “Don’t hate her she had not a thing to do with the Killing.” After serving 17 years, marrying, changing her name, and working as a hospital orderly in Michigan, Fugate applied for a full pardon in 2020. It was denied. The Starkweather-Fugate case remains one of the United States’ most notorious killing sprees, catapulted to attention by contemporaneous television coverage and since perpetuated by movies like Natural Born Killers and, most obviously, Terrence Malick’s 1973 Badlands. Played by Martin Sheen, the trash collector Kit Carruthers first finds the freckled Holly Sargis – played by Sissy Spacek – standing in her front yard, twirling her cheerleader’s baton. After a secret tryst, they take a ride together into Montana with visions of a Canadian escape, killing everything in their path.
Getty (3), Alamy
How Nebraska’s raw material – the Charles Starkweather murders – shocked a nation. By GRAYSON HAVER CURRIN.
“HE MURDERED Going for a ride: Martin Sheen THE MOTHER AND THE Sissy Spacek as Kit and FATHER, THEN BLUDGEONED and Holly in Terrence Malick’s 1973 film Badlands, based on the THEIR TWO-YEAR-OLD Starkweather murders; (below left) the poster for Oliver Stone’s DAUGHTER, BETTY 1994 film Natural Born Killers. JEAN, TO DEATH.” could continue, however, a
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Looking at you looking at me: Springsteen en route to the Tunnel Of Love.
FRAILTY, DOUBTS AND LIES COMBINE TO BEGUILE ANDREW MALE BRILLIANT DISGUISE (from Tunnel Of Love, 1987)
Sometimes, when listening to Brilliant Disguise, you find yourself hankering to hear the demo, the version Springsteen recorded at his New Jersey home studio in February 1987. If only we could experience this song of romantic doubt and insecurity as its ‘true’ self, without the deceptive synthetic warmth of that ubiquitous Yamaha DX-7, Roy Bittan’s Roland D-50, or Max Weinberg’s somewhat cheesy maracas and castanets… But that would be missing the point. Brilliant Disguise is a song about what goes on beneath the surface; the internal monologue of a man already suspicious of the new love he’s found, a suspicion rooted in his own lies and guilt: “I want to know if it’s you I don’t trust/’Cos I damn sure don’t trust myself.” It’s also a song about masks and self-identity, about what hides behind the front we present to the world. As such, it exists both as artifice and truth. Whether intentional or not, its synthetic gilding, that cold-room Bob Clearmountain reverb on Bruce’s voice, is part of its meaning. Of course, there is more here. Springsteen had recently married the model and actress Julianne Phillips but the two were already experiencing problems in their relationship. Almost simultane76 MOJO
ously, he had invited the singer Patti Scialfa into the E Street Band and the two had become close friends. On one level, Brilliant Disguise can be easily read as a song about Phillips and the doubts the singer had had about her ever since their wedding (“Oh, we stood at the altar/The gypsy swore our future was right/But come the wee wee hours/Well maybe, baby, the gypsy lied”). Yet, as Springsteen himself said in ’05’s VH1 Storytellers DVD, “Songs shift their meanings in time [and] with who you sing them with. When you sing this song with somebody you love, it becomes a reaffirmation of the world’s mysteries. Its shadows, our frailties, and the acceptance of those frailties, without which there is no love.” It’s a great point but Springsteen is too modest to add that it only works if those ambiguities, those shadows, exist in the song in the first place. As is so often the case with great Boss songs, Brilliant Disguise places its narrator at a mid-point between certainties, that intangible wee-wee-hours landscape he returns to so often, where mystery holds sway. It’s a song that will never be fixed in its meaning because it purposefully resists certainty and resolution. Even its final line is a puzzle, a koan-like statement with no solution, a phrase intended to resist interpretation yet resonate with everyone who hears it: “God have mercy on the man/Who doubts what he’s sure of.”
“A SONG ABOUT MASKS AND SELF-IDENTITY, ABOUT WHAT HIDES BEHIND THE FRONT WE PRESENT TO THE WORLD.”
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with his customary gravitas. But it’s the E Street Band’s gallop, as much as the singer’s Roy Orbison melodrama, that makes the song so extraordinary: starting with Max Weinberg’s pulse-quickening cymbals; peaking like a punkvelocity Spector production. On this occasion, overdriven pace enhances rather than defuses the passion. JM
BACKSTREETS
(from Born To Run, 1975) Love and betrayal united in sweltering song. Backstreets is all about delayed gratification: Roy Bittan’s piano intro lasts a full minute, racking up the tension before his organ peals spearhead the band charge. And then the vocal, hot and heavy to match the opening line, “One soft infested summer…” In this tale/trail of broken promises and trust, Springsteen gets so carried away remembering his hurt that he ends up hollering “hiding on the backstreets” a full 26 times at the end, lost and found in the moment. MA
DANCING IN THE DARK
(from Born In The USA, 1984)
AMERICAN SKIN (41 SHOTS)
(from Live In New York City, 2001) Social commentary of sadly enduring relevance. When an NYPD union calls for a boycott and refuses to work security at your shows, you know you’ve hit a raw nerve. Written in response to the death at police hands of a young unarmed student – and the subsequent acquittal of four officers accused of his murder – American Skin has proved sadly prescient in the light of subsequent tragedies. Some songs work best live and Springsteen’s simmering rage is the perfect, emotional tone. If music offers a window on society, the view here is intense. CI
BECAUSE THE NIGHT
(from Live/1975-1985, 1986) Because everything seems possible after dark. Jimmy Iovine persuaded Springsteen to gift Patti Smith the work in progress he’d first titled The Night Belongs To Lovers. How best to respond to her more graceful and incantatory take, a stunning UK Number 5 in 1978? This gnarly 1980 Nassau Coliseum instance opts for pooled E Street muscle, the night a crucible of desperate passions as (forbidden?) lovers loose the chains of work and duty. It ain’t subtle and Bruce retires Smith’s refinements to his lyrics, but the stakes feel thrillingly high. JMcN
ATLANTIC CITY
(from Nebraska, 1982) The rot of Jersey’s Las Vegas as metaphor. Fans of HBO’s Boardwalk Empire won’t need telling of Atlantic City’s history as a mobbed-up resort made by Prohibition. Here, Springsteen
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“IT WOULD BE FAIR TO CALL HIM A POET” LUCY DACUS: she does a mean cover of Dancing In The Dark. “My dad is a huge Bruce Springsteen fan, and Dancing In The Dark was one of the first songs I realised was a masterpiece. I think it sums up the restless anxiety of youth so well, and actually expresses some thoughts that I believed were reserved for teenage girls – like body image issues and just wanting to, like, wreck your room – but it seems that Bruce feels them too. Playing it at the [legendary Asbury Park venue] Stone Pony was one of the best nights of my life. My dad drove the six hours from Richmond, Virginia and played guitar with us. Towards the end of the song, I started to tear up, but I don’t think anybody noticed. I have phases with each of his albums. There’s just so much. There’s a song on Human Touch, I Wish I Were Blind. It goes, ‘I wish I were blind when I see you with your man.’ He lists all these beautiful things he can see, but says he’d give them all up, would rather be blind. It’s so poetic. I think it would be fair to call Springsteen a poet. Classic, stomping Bruce? Like Jungleland? I love that too. He was being really bold, theatrical. Even though he was wearing jeans and a T-shirt – not outrageous things like Bowie and Elton John, these birds of paradise – he was being equally dramatic. He was creating just as much of another world with his music.”
reads more recent crime stats – “They blew up the chicken man in Philly last night” refers to the gang murder of Phil ‘The Chicken Man’ Testa in 1981 – and turns Atlantic City into any place the spectres of hope still whisper, even now “our luck may have died and our love may be cold”. His scratchy mandolin provides the death rattle. DE
CANDY’S ROOM
(from Darkness On The Edge Of Town, 1978) A lifelong romantic’s priapic sprint. “Baby if you want to be wild…” A widescreen blockbuster in domestic miniature, a five-minute epic squeezed into 2:46, Candy’s Room is Springsteen on fast-forward and in tight-focus. The subject is frenzied carnal satisfaction, a boilerplate rites-of-passage-withprostitute vignette that Springsteen elevates
A song about lost spark, that started a fire. “Man I’m just tired and bored with myself,” Springsteen sings, worn down by a jag of writing 80-plus songs when he dashed this off overnight at the insistence of manager Jon Landau, who said his new album lacked a single. The vaguely sexy promise of the title hid a song dripping with washed-up self-loathing, but with its ’80s synths and an uplifting melody that hinted at the glory of early Bruce, it was a huge hit, still his hugest, and his first Grammy winner. SS
THE PROMISED LAND
(from Darkness On The Edge Of Town, 1978) The Boss sounding anything but like a boss. “Mister, I ain’t a boy, no I’m a man,” implores Springsteen, who’s working in his father’s garage here but wishing he was anywhere else. The line also captures how emasculated he felt in real life; tied up by legal red tape and unable to record. Written after a road trip to Reno, Nevada, the song bubbles with all that hope and frustration, and a wheezing harmonica intro and outro suggesting he’s briefly lost for words but still has more to say. MB
THE GHOST OF TOM JOAD
(from The Ghost Of Tom Joad, 1995) His most powerful of many invocations of Steinbeck. The heroic protagonist of The Grapes Of Wrath was first celebrated musically in Woody Guthrie’s Tom Joad Parts 1 & 2. Fifty-five years later, Springsteen invoked Joad again, with a vision of contemporary America taken straight from Steinbeck’s Dust Bowl classic – Hooverville-style camps, preachers vainly quoting Matthew 19, the myth of a Promised Land. If Nebraska was bleak, this solemnly-intoned album leitmotif is bleaker still: for America’s poorest, nothing changes – or ever will – and you can almost taste Springsteen’s bitter helplessness. PG
JUNGLELAND
(from Born To Run, 1975) Bruce’s Baba O’Riley. Epic in ambition, duration and production – 19 months from first recorded rehearsal to completion, with Clarence Clemons’s celebrated sax solo requiring 16 hours of takes before Springsteen was satisfied – Jungleland is a nineminute slogfest between starry-eyed Broadway romanticism and The Who’s grandstanding defiance. (Praising Pete Townshend for making rock’n’roll “spiritual, a quest”, Springsteen has described Jungleland as “all night, the city and the spiritual battleground”.) Guaranteed to bring the house down on-stage, every live version is terrific too. MS
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Burning down the road: Springsteen in the line of fire during the Born In The USA tour, 1984.
AMBIGUOUS? ONLY IF YOU’RE NOT LISTENING, SAYS GRAYSON HAVER CURRIN BORN IN THE USA
(from Born In The USA, 1984)
In 1968, when Bruce Springsteen dropped out of Ocean County college, he almost dropped directly into the draft and the jungles of Vietnam. Student deferment had not only kept the teenage longhair at home but also enabled him to spend nights in clubs, galvanising his guitar chops. When his notice to show in Newark for potential service arrived, Springsteen – who had already lost friends in the war – resolved to dodge. He played crazy, played up wounds from a motorcycle crash, and, deemed ineligible for service, continued to play his songs. As the war ground into disaster, killing millions, Springsteen crept toward stardom. But survivor’s guilt has a long tail, and caught up with the singer at the dawn of the ’80s. A string of activists, authors, and survivors enlisted him in the fight for veterans’ rights and respect. “Unless we can look into the eyes of those men and women,” he said during a 1981 benefit, “we’re never gonna get home.” Written and first recorded during the same rush of down-and-out character studies that yielded Nebraska, Born In The USA charts the course of those waylaid veterans, trying to get back to a home he had never left. Despite a refrain that Republican President Ronald Reagan tried to make a campaign rallying cry, Born In The USA proffers a sexless, hopeless, 78 MOJO
futureless void, a Springsteen anomaly. Raised in a de-industrialised and crumbling country, its soldier only finds work in the killing fields; back Stateside, he finds home only in the prison where he presumably dies, dreams burning like the toxic “gas fires of the refinery” next door. With its war-holler chorus and sunburst keyboards, the five-minute E Street version sounds every second like a hero’s theme; its brilliance is the human wreckage buried beneath that glittering façade. Springsteen dodged the draft, but he would not dodge what his country had done to its sons and daughters, his brothers and sisters. The singer has often suggested he got the song wrong, that the hit single’s hyper-charged ambiguity made it vulnerable to appropriation. The lugubrious acoustic original should have been on Nebraska, he said; a subsequent solo harmonica-and-stompbox rendition on tour suggested he was auditioning for Swans. No to all that. More powerful than Max Weinberg’s gated snares, Roy Bittan’s magnetic keys, and even that Pentecostal refrain, are the questions the classic implies: What lies are you telling yourself to live? What is the cost of your freedom? And just what is that freedom anyway? Born In The USA imagines a patriotism without facile jingoism or belligerent nationalism, a foreverprobing state of mind where you can venerate overarching ideals while mourning the rot within. This paradox is more striking now even than then, an unshakable reminder that your city on a hill often rests on a pile of corpses.
“ITS BRILLIANCE IS THE HUMAN WRECKAGE BURIED BENEATH THE GLITTERING FAÇADE.”
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coming out of the speakers on a boardwalk fairground waltzer. MB
BADLANDS
(from Darkness On The Edge Of Town, 1978)
THE PROMISE
He wants the world and he wants it now. On the lead track to Darkness…, Springsteen channels his adoration for The Animals – the sedition of It’s My Life with the riff from Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood – to produce a rebel tale full of hard living and blue-collar struggle. It’s a proper rock’n’roll anthem and a blueprint for what The Clash did next, with Springsteen bellowing lines borrowed from Elvis – “Poor man wanna be rich, rich man wanna be king” – before Clarence Clemons’s triumphant, even heroic sax blowing solo. LW
(from The Promise, 2010) Darkness… holdover fine-tunes the tao of Bruce. Written circa 1976, The Promise’s “Johnny works in a factory…” wasn’t Bruce’s freshest opening gambit even then, but with its references to Thunder Road and some profound lyricsheet reveals further in, it played the long game. Epic via stealth and ennobled by a masterful, reined-in feel that perhaps only the E Street Band could muster, it’s also in the perfect key for Springsteen’s solemn lead vocal. The glockenspiel glints, stately piano and Ken Ascher’s 2010-recorded string arrangement further elevate. JMcN
“IT’S AS GOOD AS SONGWRITING GETS” THE RISING
(from The Rising, 2002) The finest 9/11 song. No surprise that nobody articulated America’s post-9/11 pain with as sure and tender touch as Springsteen, but his unblinking portrayal of a firefighter in the twin towers was both balm and horror. Infused with Biblical and Shakespearean imagery, it begins with our hero disorientated in the darkness and ends with his apocalyptic final visions and the prospect of rebirth. It could have been a ballad, but instead the E Street Band kicked up a claustrophobic cacophony which still feels right, 20 years later. JA
NEBRASKA
(from Nebraska, 1982) The Banality Of Evil. The story of 19-year-old Charles Starkweather’s 1958 killing spree is vividly caught on this solo acoustic demo with harmonica blowing across the bleak landscape like a chill wind. The numbed, matter-of-fact narrative heightens the protagonist’s sense of disconnection from his actions and makes his announcement that he will die, at “Midnight in a prison storeroom with leather straps across my chest”, even more shocking. Previous Springsteen antiheroes had been romantic fictions; here was stark reality. MBa
THUNDER ROAD
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(from Born To Run, 1975) A fanfare for the common man (and woman). Thunder Road opens Born To Run by cramming a Steinbeck novel’s worth of narrative into its four minutes and 48 seconds. Springsteen’s given us half of Mary’s story before the first 70 seconds, plus the greatest damned-with-faint praise lyric ever: “You ain’t a beauty, but, hey, you’re all right.” Like any doomed romance it’s all soaring highs one moment, melancholy lows the next, with Clemons’s closing solo sounding like it’s
SONGS
The War On Drugs’ ADAM GRANDUCIEL on Bruce Springsteen, teacher and seeker. “The thing about Springsteen’s music is, once you get inside of it, once you find your way in, you can go anyplace you want. You can go to Nebraska, you can go to Darkness…, you can go to Tunnel Of Love… All these different destinations. And you can be in it for life, too, because the way you look at, say, The Ghost Of Tom Joad when you’re 40 is different from how you first heard it, like I did, in high school. I’m knocked out by his craft and his dedication. There are songs that are so simple – like Galveston Bay on The Ghost Of Tom Joad, this catastrophically beautiful song. So simple yet I know I could never write it. It’s beyond my abilities. At the same time, reading about how he made his records, especially the early ones, you read about how he and the band slaved to get them right, the arrangements, the notes. He was trying to uncover something special, and sometimes he was the only one in the room who knew it was there. It’s how I learned that the toil of working on a record is the record. It’s what taught me how to go deep when you’re recording. It’s OK to be frustrated in the control room. That’s the way it’s got to be. Follow Bruce! Racing In The Street is probably my peak. I just love that story, those characters. They grow old in the span of, like, four verses. They’re young and they’re crazy. And then they’re old. It’s dangerous, and then it’s sad, all within six or seven minutes. Like, how did we get here? And Bruce is just watching. He’s in there somewhere, of course, but actually it feels like it’s all about these characters. But even on Tunnel Of Love, you have Brilliant Disguise. This song, with all its hooks and its huge bridge, the last line of this song is “God have mercy on the man who doubts what he’s sure of”. Oh, man! That’s the greatest line! You can get lost in just one verse of a Bruce Springsteen song but you can also be blown away by how biting one line can be. It’s as good as songwriting gets.”
ROSALITA (COME OUT TONIGHT)
(from The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle, 1973) Let the best times roll, with Jack The Rabbit, Weak Knee Willie, Sloppy Sue, Big Bone Billy et al. The first great E Street showstopper was also an epitaph of sorts for the band’s early line-up. By Born To Run, keyboardist/arranger David Sancious and drummer Vini ‘Mad Dog’ Lopez had left the ranks, but here they’re critical to the band’s joyous flex: scrappier, jazzier than what came next (with a great Byrdsy intro, too). Did Springsteen ever write more explicitly about his own naked ambition? Rosalita, remember, reaches its ecstatic highpoint at 5:10, when the singer flaunts his record company advance at her dad. JM
THE RIVER
(from The River, 1980) Current affair: man hands on misery to man. “That’s my life,” said Springsteen’s sister Virginia on first hearing this Hank Williams-inspired tale of teen pregnancy and mid-life despair. Opening with a ship’s horn blast of harmonica, The River bends its ancient symbolism towards modern hopelessness, as high-school sweethearts (their marriage ceremony the bleakest outside $1000 Wedding) watch their dreams silt up. It’s the flashes of something better, though – the undammed piano, green fields, a girl’s “body tan and wet” – that turn this song from heartbreaking commentary to heroic myth-making. VS
BORN TO RUN
(from Born To Run, 1975) The Asbury Park Kid takes a shot at the title. The snare-pummelling fill. The turbo blast of sax, orchestra bells and surf-twang guitar. Within seconds, it’s clear this record means business. It’s both a brass ring grabber and “last chance power drive” for a Springsteen on the brink of being dropped. With nowhere to go but up, he keeps ratcheting the sweat and adrenaline until he’s like ’68 Comeback Elvis vaulting over Spector’s Wall. “It’s a 24-year-old kid aiming at the greatest rock’n’roll record ever,” he said. Certainly, it’s close. BD MOJO 79
THE
50
GREATEST
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN
SONGS
BECAUSE SOME THINGS HURT MORE, MUCH MORE THAN CARS AND GIRLS. RACING IN THE STREET
Frank Stefanko (2), Getty
(from Darkness On The Edge Of Town, 1978)
In the three years that separated Born To Run from Darkness On The Edge Of Town, Bruce Springsteen became America’s new rock’n’roll star and its anointed saviour. He also got locked out of the recording studio by a contractual dispute with his manager Mike Appel that went to court and got ugly. Springsteen’s response to this new status and its consequences was to dig deep beneath the surface and attend to his working-class roots. “I had a reaction to my own good fortune,” he later reflected. “I asked myself new questions. I felt a sense of accountability to the people I’d grown up alongside.” If Born To Run was the American dream – the offer of escape, the possibility of renewal, unlimited abundance of freedom – then what came next was a harsh dose of American reality. Adam Raised A Cain, Streets Of Fire, Factory, Darkness On The Edge Of Town: tough songs for tough times that spoke of a nation’s collective disillusionment as the ’60s’ brave new future unravelled into the ’70s’ political scandals and economic recession following defeat in the Vietnam War. Springsteen realised that freedom
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comes with responsibility, and no matter how far you run you can’t escape yourself or where you’re from. August 1977 saw the death of Springsteen’s hero Elvis Presley and punk rock rattling the old order while the E Street Band hunkered down in New York’s Atlantic Studios, pointedly stripping away their music’s neon stardust. No song better calibrated the distance between the dream and the reality than Racing In The Street. Here, Bruce revisits the young lovers he’d dispatched down Thunder Road “to case the Promised Land” flying on the notion that “these two lanes can take us anywhere”. He finds them chastened and broken (“There’s wrinkles around my baby’s eyes”). They’re either back in the same “town full of losers” they’d left, or stuck in a different one. Where Thunder Road was giddy and hopeful, Racing In The Street reeks of dearth and despondency. Over the weary piano motifs that carry the whole song, we meet the main protagonist reciting the specifications of his customised car, any sense of thrill long gone: “I got a ’69 Chevy with a 396/Fuelie heads and a Hurst on the floor…” To his chagrin Springsteen was soon made aware that the car was a technical impossibility, because Chevrolet’s 396 cubic-inch engine obviated the need for fuel injection. Yet he stuck with it, perhaps
“SPRINGSTEEN REALISED THAT NO MATTER HOW FAR YOU RUN YOU CAN’T ESCAPE YOURSELF.”
No free rides: (clockwise from left) Bruce Springsteen in photographer Frank Stefanko’s backyard, Haddonfield, New Jersey, 1978; with E Street’s Clarence Clemons, Roy Bittan and Steve Van Zandt at Shellow’s Luncheonette, East Camden, NJ, 1978; during the Darkness tour, 1978.
BY pleased at the irony of a song about utt thwarted dreams built aroundd a vehicle that couldn’t actually exist.. We hear tales of drag race glory: the driver and his sidekick Sonny ride “from town to town”, challenging h ll nging rivals across the northeast states (“We shut ’em up and then we shut ’em down”), but there’s no light in his voice. The lyric’s repeated quotation of Martha And The Vandellas’ Dancing In The Street suggests the previous decade’s euphoric promise is no longer sufficient to sustain these people, while the instrumental bridge ruefully references The Beach Boys’ Don’t Worry Baby, a car song from more innocent times. (At a solo 2005 show, Springsteen prefaced Racing In The Street by mentioning its similarity to Two-Lane Blacktop, the 1971 existential road movie starring James Taylor and Dennis Wilson.) On an album where the performances are predominantly defined by white-heat muscle, throughout its near-seven-minute entirety Racing In The Street is a masterclass in restraint, from singer and band alike. There’s barely any guitar, and no part at all for Clarence Clemons’s saxophone, the E Street Band’s totemic lifeforce. Springsteen’s exclusion of his soul brother was justified: live recordings of the song from the ’78 Darkness tour feature Clemons honking awkwardly during the bridge. Those same shows, however, especially July 7 at The Roxy in Los Angeles (released in 2018 as part of Springsteen’s Live Archive Series), underscore pianist Roy Bittan’s pre-eminence, every note an intimation of our hero’s fate. Danny Federici is equally vital, his organ shadowing Bittan like a
troubled conscience. “Some guys, they just give up living,” the h narrator says, whereas others “come home from work… wash up and go racin’ in the street”. Only after the bridge do we eventually learn that Springsteen’s racer has another love: “I met her on the strip three years ago/In a Camaro with this dude from LA”. He shut down the Camaro and drove off with the girl, but three years on, “all her pretty dreams are torn/She stares off alone into the night/With the eyes of one who hates for just being born.” The band drops to a hush, only Bittan and a single-note, funereal chant. In the final verse, Springsteen extends a promise, or perhaps a prayer, to “all the shut down strangers and hot rod angels”: the racer and his girl will “ride to the sea – and wash these sins off our hands”. For its final two minutes, Racing In The Street turns into one long fade, as Bittan and Federici wrap around each other like a disappearing road on a map, Max Weinberg’s stick taps marking each white line along the way. We’re right there with the couple on their baptismal exit, wondering where they’ll go afterwards – or indeed, whether they’ll get to the ocean at all. Just before he cedes the spotlight to his keysmen, Springsteen sings one last “summer’s here and the time is right”, noting also: “Tonight, tonight the highway’s bright”. It’s hope against hope. In this case, at the end of maybe his greatest song, that’s as good as things get. M MOJO 81
PINK FLOYD ESSENTIALS. THE DEFINITIVE COMPANION.
AVAILABLE NOW! Buy online at greatmagazines.co.uk/mojo-specials
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MOJO FILT E R YOUR GUIDE TO THE MONTH'S BEST MUSIC EDITED BY JENNY BULLEY jenny.bulley@bauermedia.co.uk
CONTENTS
84 ALBUMS
• LA connection: Cass McCombs ponders the Heartmind • Rusty never sleeps: Elvis Costello rekindles an old flame • Julia Jacklin: a short story in every line • Tim Finn and Phil Manzanera are a perfect match • Spiritual jazz wonder, Rich Ruth • Plus, Panda Bear and Sonic Boom, Marcus King, Amanda Shires, Ezra Furman, Muse, Porcupine Tree, Chris Forsyth, Lisa Gerrard and more.
98 REISSUES
• Chris Stein opens the Blondie vaults • Lost soul star George Scott • A 20-year event for Nada Surf’s Let Go • File Under star collector Earl McGrath • Plus, Tony Joe White, Doris Troy, Little Feat, Tall Dwarfs and more.
106 HOW TO BUY
• Steve Albini: noise icon, star sound recorder, mate of Lil Bub’s.
108 BOOKS
• Dave Davies: a more kontemplative, less kontroversial Kink. • Plus, P.P. Arnold, Ziggy 72, Karl Bartos and more.
111 SCREEN
“A peripatetic digression down the curious path of a singular life.” ANDREW MALE FOLLOWS LAWRENCE OF BELGRAVIA, SCREEN PAGE 111
• Pistol, Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis, Nick Cave’s This Much I Know To Be True and more.
INDEX American Aquarium 94 Bains, Lee 93 Belief 89 Black, Frank 103 Blondie 98 Breathless 95 Calypso Rose 91 Combs, Andrew 93 Danger Mouse & Black Thought 86 Deslondes, The 91 Ferkat Al Ard 100 Finn 104 Finn, Tim & Manzanera, Phil 90 Forsyth, Chris 95 Friendship 89 Furman, Ezra 89 Gerrard, Lisa 93 Girls At Our Best! 103 Gold, Gwilym 93 Harper, Ben 87 Hot Chip 91 Jacklin, Julia 88 James, Matt 94 Jamie T 87
Katalyst 90 King, Marcus 86 Kiwi Jr. 93 Kode9 87 Konstrukt + Brotzmann, Peter 103 Little Feat 100 Max Creeps 94 McCombs, Cass 84 McGrath, Earl 102 McKenzie, Bret 93 Miraculous Mule 91 Moebius 100 Moor Mother 89 Motorpsycho 89 Mountain Goats 95 Muse 89 Nada Surf 103 Osees 93 Pale Blue Eyes 94 Panda Bear & Sonic Boom 86 Paxton, Tom, Fink, Cathy & Marxer, Marcy 95 Porcupine Tree 87 Prekop, Sam And
McEntire, John 90 Reed, Lou 101 Roach, Max 101 Rouse, Josh 95 Rusty 87 Ruth, Rich 92 Scott, George 101 She & Him 94 Shires, Amanda 86 Szun Waves 91 Tall Dwarfs 101 Tallies 94 Thomas, Leon 100 Troy, Doris 100 Tuttle, Andrew 86 VA: Dub No Frontiers 89 VA: Happy In Hollywood 104 VA: Ska La-Rama 104 VA: Womad 1982 101 Vanderwolf 94 Wainwright III, Loudon 90 White, Tony Joe 103 Wolfhounds, The 103 Wu-Lu 90 Zeitlin, Denny 103
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F I LT E R A L B UM S
Let’s get metaphysical Does the body rule the mind or the mind rule the body? Californian singer-songwriter gets on the case with tenth album. By Victoria Segal. Illustration by Quinton Winter.
Cass McCombs
cottony sprawl of guitar, Uilleann pipes and Moog. “These are streets that I know well, that I’ve walked by millions of times,” explains McCombs. “Everybody knows these intersections between realities and there’s a lot of people suffering at these Heartmind crossroads, but the crossroads can also take you off ANTI-. CD/DL/LP into new possibilities and tangents.” LAT INSIDE THE sleeve of every vinyl copy of From the first track, McCombs is heading for Cass McCombs’s 2019 album Tip Of The Sphere those crossroads, on a mission to find out where lay a paper tribute to British/Canadian artist the heart and mind intersect, what’s real and Brion Gysin’s high-concept invention the Dream what’s not. He’s had issues with his muse before – Machine. Bend the laser-cut sheet into a cylinder, as on cautionary allegory A Knock Upon The Door direct an appropriate light-source, set it spinning from 2011’s Wit’s End – but here the disillusionment “Cass along with the album on the turntable, and listeners seems profound. “Once upon a time,” it begins, McCombs could close their eyes and induce a flickering like a fairy story, “I told myself music was all there hypnogogic state. (“I was an acid kid,” McCombs was/Like a ghost town in quarantine/No way in/ is looking at said in 2013, “anything that remotely suggested No way out.” It lurches and clangs, as if you need the world acid, I was there.”) While there are plenty of to hang on for dear life or one song has become moments in the Californian wanderer’s back too small to contain all the demands music makes differently, catalogue that would be complemented by such him. Karaoke, meanwhile, initially seems watching as life upon a device – Equinox from 2005’s PREfection, for like a smart idea for a love song, McCombs example, with its thorny riff and reference to re-purposing the titles of standards to tell his story strobes by in owls, wolves and “silverfish quilting testicle” – – “Are you going to Stand By Your Man?/Or is all its curious it’s better to keep your electrical brain oscillations it just karaoke?” Yet it’s more than a neat pop about you when faced with Cass McCombs and his gimmick, like bands putting “radio” in a song forms.” title: it quietly questions whether everyone complicated work. lip-syncs to feelings they’ve heard before, Since the low-grade, big-sky psychedelia of his seconding and thirding that emotion without experiencing 2003 debut A – a title wildly promising a whole alphabet of their own response. releases – McCombs has been an uneasy and inscrutable figure on the singer-songwriter horizon. “I’m against extroverted Yet there is a real emotional impact here. Heartmind is personalities,” he said in 2016. “I’m against talking heads, I’m dedicated to three of McCombs’s friends who died in the past against cult of personality, rock’n’rollers who wanna kiss ass and three years – Neal Casal, Love Is Laughter’s Sam Jayne and Chet make everyone like them.” Yet he’s not – no ‘JR’ White of Girls – and it’s hard not to connect these losses to matter what his more florid moments of the record’s sense of urgency. Belong To Heaven is a beautiful ink-and-scrimshaw storytelling or gnomic elegy to a complicated person, somebody both “lunar” and a gnosticism might suggest – an artist out “grease fire”. “Call me anytime for bail/From the jail/In heaven,” of step with the world. In 2012 he released sings McCombs, before the almost relentlessly angelic backing a song called Bradley Manning; in 2020, vocals flood back in. It’s moving in a way McCombs hasn’t always he remodelled “misunderstood” early cared for – witty and strung with vivid images (“a rosary of Dos song Don’t Vote as Don’t (Just) Vote, Equis beads”), yes, but also delivered with a conversational featuring Angel Olsen, Bob Weir and phrasing that underlines the humanity, the guilt, the love. Noam Chomsky – all useful co-ordinates Even when he breaks into an impromptu literary lecture about for zooming in on McCombs’s patch Mary Shelley and Stephen Crane in the middle of antique reapof Americana. what-you-sow lament Unproud Warrior, a song about a regretful BACK STORY: Heartmind is unlikely to break him FISTIC MYSTIC young soldier backed by Charlie Burnham on fiddle and vocals, ● The LP credits feature out of the smoked-glass shell of cultdom, it’s for heartfelt reasons. “You were only 17 when you enlisted,” a quote from 12th especially when astringent post-prog he sings, worrying at personal responsibility, growing up and the century Sufi mystic Ibn opening track Music Is Blue gyrates so Arabi (above): “My heart terrible passage of time and potential. “You remember SE Hinton has become capable of aggressively on a ley line between wrote The Outsiders when she was just 15.” any form/My heart has Canterbury and Chicago. Yet this album Like Bill Callahan, also fond of writing about his various become receptive of does display notable lushness after its every form.” What is apocalypses, McCombs doesn’t always feel like the most reliable McCombs’s take on the dour predecessor, its ember-like warmth narrator. Most disturbing is the lovely chirrup of New Earth, heart-mind divide? “The fanned by backing vocals from Wynonna a song set on “the day after the last day on Earth”, fluttering heart and the mind are Judd, Danielle Haim, and Lily and Abigail its pop wings as if there’s nothing to worry about. For all the like room-mates – they live together and they Chapin. The arrangements bring out joyfulness, it lands less like a utopian idyll and more like a get on each other’s the ’90s Jim O’Rourke in his music, wry comment on the “old” Earth – especially with its playfully nerves sometimes, like especially the gentle Latin American vicious image of “Mr Musk”, “stewing in his bullion”. It proves room-mates do, but percussion of Krakatau. they need each other that McCombs doesn’t need any dream machine to induce new and when they find each The title track comes with a strong visions: 10 albums in, he’s more than capable of looking at the other it’s a whole other Elliott Smith mood, there in its use of world differently all by himself, watching as life strobes by in spiritual feeling – a specific street names (“at Turk and Taylor”, whole new character. all its curious forms. Smoosh the two words a significant San Francisco crossroads) together and it’s pretty and its struggle to master itself, to gain MCCOMBS ON THE PAINFUL CREATIVE simple in my mind.” PROCESS, KARAOKE FUN AND MR MUSK. emotional control, ending in a diffuse,
★★★★
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F
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CASS SPEAKS!
Friends reunited: Elvis Costello and Allan Mayes dip back into their old songbook.
Last year’s model Elvis Costello back together, 50 years on, with Allan Mayes, his partner in obscure duo Rusty. By Tom Doyle.
Rusty
★★★
The Resurrection Of Rust EMI. CD/DL/LP
IN HIS 2015 memoir, Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink, Elvis Costello wrote of Allan Mayes, his co-conspirator in short-lived Merseyside pub and club turn, Rusty: “He was a better guitarist than me and sang with a strong, true, voice, but he must have seen something in me.” Throughout 1972, and into ’73 (when they played their last gig supporting Cockney Rebel), the pairing of Mayes with the thenD.P. MacManus gave the latter teenager an intensive schooling in performance and songcraft before he moved to London, put on the horn-rimmed glasses and changed his name. Down the decades, Mayes kept performing, on cruise ships in the Pacific and bars in the southern US states, before settling in Austin, Texas. Last year, he got in touch with Costello, reminding him that their halfcentury anniversary was looming in 2022, and wondering if he fancied getting together to play some of the old songs. Costello responded by upping the ante: they should make the Rusty record that never was. The Resurrection Of Rust isn’t quite that full-blown album imagining a different past.
Jamie T
★★★★
The Theory Of Whatever
Instead, at six tracks and 23 minutes, it’s a mini-LP-length delve back into the pair’s old songbook, as backed by The Imposters and produced by Costello and his now-regular mixing desk sidekick, Sebastian Krys. Rusty’s greatest influence back in ’72 was Brinsley Schwarz, and so two Nick Lowe songs feature here from the pub rock band’s LP of that year, Nervous On The Road. Both tracks are treated faithfully: Don’t Lose Your Grip On Love continues to pay off its debt to The Band; Surrender To The Rhythm swings like Van Morrison. Neil Young was another hero for the duo, and so here we have an enthusiasticallywelded-together cut-and-shut of Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere and Dance Dance Dance. Better is D.P. MacManus original Warm House (And An Hour Of Joy), a long-
skills, from A Million & One New Ways To Die’s chorus euphoria and British Hell’s gnarly street Strummerisms, to spooked, borderline hiphop (Keying Lamborghinis) and a lovelorn inner London troubadour’s withering romantic post-mortem (St George Wharf Tower). Treays reputedly whittled down some 180 contenders for The Theory Of Whatever. From a songwriter of his observational and lyrical pungency, it’s extra-colourful and top quality. Andrew Perry
POLYDOR. CD/DL/LP
Mark Seliger
The Wimbledon Strummer bites back. When Jamie Treays first lurched from south-west London suburbia with 2007’s Panic Prevention, early-decade rock’n’roll revivalism was waning, and his volatile, vinegar-y self-recordings spoke with equal potency to lairy Mike Skinner-venerating millennials and old-guard Clash fans alike. In the intervening decade and a half, his lone-wolf sonic/spiritual coordinates have only become more isolated, and more cherished: just as 2014’s Carry On The Grudge presented him at his most brooding and coherent, this latest return after a six-year lay-off persuasively captures his many
Ben Harper
★★★
Bloodline Maintenance CHRYSALIS. CD/DL/LP
Harry Styles guitarist’s seventeenth album. Being instrumental, Ben Harper’s album of 2020, Winter Is For Lovers, suggested its author had run out of things to say, an appearance of drift his contribution to Harry Styles’s Boyfriends did little to dispel. Yet, galvanised by the death of Juan Nelson, Harper’s bassist for 27 years, Bloodline Maintenance finds him back on musical track. Without straying too
far from his usual template, it’s a diverse collection, which showcases his Robert Craystyle guitarwork on Where Did We Go Wrong? and a voice which exudes both grief on Maybe I Can’t, and quiet fury on We Need To Talk About It (the ‘it’ in question being slavery). More adventurously, there’s freeform saxophone on Problem Child, a gospel hue envelopes Need To Know Basis, while Knew The Day Was Comin’ is as earthy as Harper has ever been. It’s no reinvention, but it’s certainly a restatement of intent. John Aizlewood
Kode9
★★★
Escapology HYPERDUB. CD/DL
Sensuous, sonic experimentalism from dubstep veteran. With his first Kode9 album in seven years, dubstep pioneer and experimental music champion Steve Goodman eschews the traditional approach. It’s the first of a twoalbum release supporting what Kode9 calls his “sonic fiction” work, Astro-Darien, on Flatlines, the book publishing
hidden gem, rescued from a dusty reel-to-reel tape box and polished anew. Over wistful country-rock stylings, its yearning, repeated hook of “running… running…” brilliantly recalls one night in his youth when Costello was hassled by louts in Wallasey. Mayes’ voice – gritty, lived-in – comes to the fore on country/soul writer (for Bobby Womack) Jim Ford’s I’m Ahead If I Can Quit While I’m Behind. But it’s on the pair’s sole co-write, Maureen & Sam, that there’s a real insight into what Rusty might have become. In this tale of a struggling cabaret act, Mayes takes the ’60s folky verses, before MacManus/ Costello bursts in for the punchy crescendos. A diverting curio, then, rather than essential. But it’s certainly poignant to hear two men in their late sixties reunite their voices for the first time since they were teenagers. They should do it more often.
arm of his much-lauded Hyperdub label, and which has already featured as an audio installation in London. Escapology is frequently, characteristically unsettling. Toxic Foam is two minutes of teeth-rattling metallic skirls, Torus a frenzied take on the Chicago footwork sound that Kode9 helped bring to a wider audience – but this only serves to heighten the senses to the beatless, crepuscular SimDarien and T-Divine’s funereal mix of static interference and otherworldly tics. On perhaps Escapology’s most accessible track, Lagrange Point, Kode9 harks back to the junglist rhythms that captivated him on arriving in London from Glasgow in the mid-1990s. As ever with Kode9’s forwardthinking approach, you’ll find trace elements of what’s gone before. Stephen Worthy
Porcupine Tree
reassembled after a dozen years apart for what is probably their last record; singer/leader Steven Wilson’s solo work and career as classic album remixer now occupying most of his time. Closure/ Continuation reinforces their idiosyncratic character: opener Harridan sounds like Moving Pictures-era Rush filtered through Kid A. Drummer Gavin Harrison powers the trio through hairpin polyrhythmic bends, Richard Barbieri’s synth contours pleasingly recall his former band Japan, while Wilson spotlights a reflective side in aching acoustic ballad Of The New Day and at the start of the slow-building nine minutes of Chimera’s Wreck. With their often-lengthy running times and permarestless arrangements, Porcupine Tree remain an acquired taste. But if this is indeed closure rather than continuation, it’s a fine way to go out. Tom Doyle
★★★
Closure/Continuation MUSIC FOR NATIONS. CD/DL/LP
Ambitious yet tuneful (likely) final album from art-prog rockers. Misunderstood or overlooked for nigh on four decades (while accruing a devoted hardcore fanbase), Porcupine Tree have
MOJO 87
The ties that bind Australian singer-songwriter keeps herself to herself on third album. By Victoria Segal.
Julia Jacklin
★★★★
Pre Pleasure TRANSGRESSIVE. CD/DL/LP
ON 2019’s ambiguously titled Crushing, Julia Jacklin seemed engaged in a fierce struggle to maintain autonomy. “I don’t want to be touched all the time/I raised my body up to be mine,” she sang on the Blue Hotel twang of Head Alone; Pressure To Party analysed social expectations while Don’t Know How To Keep Loving You was queasily reluctant to dissolve into another human’s mind and body. Recorded in Montreal with members of The Weather Station, the Melbourne-based singer-songwriter’s third album is even more preoccupied with the tensions between connection and control – not just those that warp romantic love, but those that buckle friendships, families, even communities. Her concern is clearest on I Was Neon’s steely chug, its creeping disassociation reminiscent of Eleanor Friedberger’s Rebound or recent
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Sharon Van Etten: “Am I going to lose myself again,” sings Jacklin, propelled by a cold, relentless groove, “I quite like the person that I am.” In tune with its careful vintage tones – Owen Pallett’s string arrangements, a bourbon-and-tobacco, wrecking crew polish – Pre Pleasure looks back too, finding the formative experiences that have become embedded and intractable, splinters grown over with skin. Lydia Wears A Cross examines the confusions of a religious childhood, alert to the power of early messaging (“Eyes to the board/Thoughts to the Lord/We were praying for Princess Diana”). The gentle country strum of Less Of A Stranger balances the pain of a malfunctioned mother-daughter relationship, another unstable bond. The songs highlight what a concentrated, clever lyricist Jacklin is – there’s a short story in Moviegoer’s every line, its golden Wichita Lineman glow softening its desolation – while the confiding sweetness of her voice often triggers a double take as the words slowly land. There’s no fear of complexity here, no unwillingness to tackle pain or confusion.
The powerful Ignore Tenderness, its Hollywood strings a mockery of textbook romance, suggests the impact of malign forces on women’s sexuality, JJacklin delivering a parody of sex columnist advice – “Let them slap you about/Go on choke yourself out” – before startling imagery of emptiness and loss. Magic, a haunting Velvet Underground meditation, is devastating on the fragility of desire, how it can be flooded out by the past, by the world outside. The love songs on Pre Pleasure are complex, almost deliberately over the top. Devotional hymn Too In Love To Die nearly mocks the lover’s delirious, dangerous sense of invincibility. Be Careful With Yourself taps into the anxiety that comes when there’s something to lose. Here, “let’s keep all our doctor’s appointments” is a declaration of purest love. There is a bravery to Pre Pleasure, a commitment to swerving cliché, to pushing at hard truths. I Was Neon might express doubt, but with every album, Jacklin is finding more of herself, strengthening her own voice. It’s complicated, but Pre Pleasure is a joy to hear.
Nick Mckk
Pleasure principle: Julia Jacklin is pushing at hard truths.
F I LT E R A L B UM S own quivering delivery. Other thrilling styles of resistance include Dressed In Black’s girl-group homage and Poor Girl A Long Way From Heaven, which adds electronic distortion to soft-shuffle AOR, plus an intro that nails Furman’s valiant manifesto: “The human mind is a pile of shit/New life takes root in it.” Martin Aston
Moor Mother
Vari Va riou ouss
★★★★
Adrian Sherwood Presents: Dub No Frontiers REAL WORLD. CD/DL/LP
All-women reggae comp featuring non-English voices from around the globe. While it’s true to say the reggae sphere has unfortunately always been male-dominated, nobody could accuse On-U Sound’s dub don Adrian Sherwood of underrepresenting female voices – see Akabu, New Age Steppers’ Ari Up, Little Annie and, more recently, his daughter Denise. But Dub No Frontiers, a project Sherwood has been working on with singer/choreographer Kerieva McCormick (her contribution here, the Romaniflavoured Chavale, is a highlight) for over a decade, shows a deeper commitment to the cause. Over reactivated Dub Syndicate rhythms, with Sherwood holding back on the effects button, Japan’s Likkle Mai soars on Haste Makes Waste, Rita Morar’s Hindi-sung Meri Awaaz Suno (Hear My Voice) is a stirring roots workout, while Tunisia’s Neyssatou locates emotional nuance on Bob Marley’s militant War. And don’t be put off by the language barrier because, like the singing on this immaculate set, the message of unity and solidarity is crystal clear. Simon McEwen
Ezra Furman
★★★★
All Of Us Flames BELLA UNION. CD/DL/LP
Ali Lee Hollon
Chicagoan’s ongoing queer outlaw drama takes a more uplifting turn. Last time, 2019’s Twelve Nudes’ punk rock howl gave “permission to feel how it felt to live in a broken world.” If All Of Us Flames feels more hopeful, rest assured there is no downscaling of tension or combat. Inspired by the support network within queer communities, Furman taps the Springsteen DNA (both Thunder Road and Philadelphia models) in her helix of influences, starting with Train Comes Through’s scene setting: “It’s a quiet night on Main Street where the poisoned water runs.” If Bruce looms large, so does Furman in the form of wobbly synths and her
the hushed Americana intimacies of Vic Chesnutt and Townes Van Zandt, and also the wry imagistic poetry of David Berman, but, ultimately, Wriggins remains his own elusive self, his songs forever moving between the prosaic and the ecstatic. Andrew Male
Friendship
★★★★
Love The Stranger MERGE. CD/DL/LP
Fourth LP from Philadelphiabased quintet fronted by Dan Wriggins. There is a deceptive narrative simplicity to Dan Wriggins’ songs. They sound so much like diary entries, or texts from friends, that when they slide into poetry and profundity, which they do so regularly, they catch you completely unawares. That disarming mood of nothing much going on is compounded by the lazy twilight-porch country sounds created by his band, guitarist Peter Gill, drummer Michael Cormier-O’Leary, and bassist Jon Samuels. Take recent single Hank, which moves from an observation about manual labour (“Everything we’ve got that isn’t busted yet/Is wearing down every time we use it”) to Wriggins being, “Gripped by fear/With no discernible beginning”. Comparison points might be
★★★★
Jazz Codes ANTI-. CD/DL/LP
Bewitching bitches’ brew from the intersection of jazz and rap’s avant-garde. More scattered than 2021’s dense Black Encyclopedia Of The Air, companion piece Jazz Codes is Camae Ayewa’s most digestible fusion of hiphop and out-jazz yet. Of the same constellation as Georgia Anne Muldrow and Shabazz Palaces, Jazz Codes reprograms avant jazz into disruptive hybrids, swinging between bruised beauty and bristling dissonance. Her visions are often freeform – she’s “Betty Carter, scatting from the fourth dimension” on Evening, penning devotionals to the unruly magic of music – but when polemic surfaces within her streams of consciousness (as when she mutters, “I guess AR may save your life/In this American racist high-life” on Arms Save), the effect is succinct and powerful. Inspired accompaniment by harpist Mary Lattimore, flautist Nicole Mitchell
and trumpeter Aquiles Navarro, meanwhile, keeps Ayewa’s productions unpredictably alive and electrifying. Stevie Chick
Muse
★★★★
Will Of The People WARNERS. CD/DL/LP
Teignmouth stadium-fillers’ colourful ‘meta-centrist’ ninth outing.
Motorpsycho
★★★★
Ancient Astronauts RUNE GRAMMOFON. CD/DL/LP
Veteran spaced explorers deliver the right stuff in the middle of a plague. Roaring back to basics to keep charging forward, this Norwegian juggernaut – four albums, three of them doubles, just in the last five years – spent the summer of 2021 in an Oslo studio recording this spell of jagged-metal frenzy, acid-ballad chant and prog-epic ascent in live takes: a storming gig without a crowd. There are only four tracks but Motorpsycho – back in their original trio format of bassist Bent Sæther and guitarist Hans Magnus Ryan with current drummer Tomas Järmyr – go everywhere in them, at length. The Ladder is a highspeed spin cycle of switchback riffing and molten-fuzz soloing, King Crimson’s Red taken for a ride by Rush; Mona Lisa – Azrael is druid-hymn suspense disrupted by airtight freakout. And Chariot Of The Sun (there is a lot of subtitle) justifies its 22 minutes in ghostly mood and spiral stomp – a trip that feels like it’s over way too soon. David Fricke
Matt Bellamy’s thoughtful pyro-rock trio, much like Queen and Led Zeppelin in the ’70s, are critically under-appreciated in their own era. Come mid-century, Muse will surely be more charitably appraised for impassioned, politicallycharged blockbusters such as Will Of The People. Its overload of big-picture polemic, explosive virtuosity and tune-rich entertainment certainly takes some unpacking, yet is consistently thrilling. While it’s impossible not to think Bohemian Rhapsody during Liberation’s roller-coaster pocket operetta, its tongue-in-cheek indulgence is counter-weighted by an urgency for systemic change – a welcome development after the sci-fi fantasy of 2018’s Simulation Theory. Bellamy defines his politics as ‘Meta-Centrism’ – rock’s liveand-let-live ethos, in fancy language. Issues tackled elsewhere include tech-numbed apathy on Euro-rave epic Compliance, the title track’s hilarious glam/choral Trump satire, and the Dead Kennedys-like funny-scary conclusion, We Are Fucking Fucked. Also finding time for heart-wrenching piano balladry (Ghosts), here is Muse’s mid-career highlight. Andrew Perry
Belief
★★★★ Belief
LEX. CD/DL/LP
Warp speed ahead: inspired collaboration hits retro techno overdrive.
“The dreams are real!” jabbers a voice on Belief’s debut, the moment where the duo’s dynamic ’90s techno homage left-turns into dancefloor paranoia. It could also be a salute to a plan coming together: a collaboration between Warpaint drummer Stella Mozgawa and producer and Neon Neon member Boom Bip, Belief has been germinating for nearly a decade. Time’s immaterial once you push through the doors and into the lusciously vibrating path of this music, however, the pair’s love of LFO and early-’90s Warp Records inspiring them to pull at reality’s stitches. The radiant expansions and contractions of I Want To Be and Luther could make any space feel
True believers: Belief’s Boom Bip and Stella Mozgawa pull at reality’s stitches.
hhuge; claustrophobia with the Drexciya ph obia b kkicks ickks iinn wit intensity of Dreams and WOT. There are more abstracted electronic
moments (Charch, Art Of Love) but Belief’s heaviest frequencies are where their true faith lies.
Victoria Segal
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Portrait of the artists: Tim Finn (left) and Phil Manzanera up the intensity.
Stranger Things Quietly impressive second album from art-rock luminaries. By David Buckley.
Tim Finn & Phil Manzanera
★★★★
The Ghost Of Santiago EXPRESSION. CD/DL/LP
DESPITE NOT having met in person for over a decade now, New Zealand’s Tim Finn (ex-Split Enz, Crowded House and accomplished solo artist) and Phil Manzanera (Roxy Music and co-creator of dozens of releases) have produced their second album in just over a year. In many ways, the two musicians are perfectly matched. There is a
Wu-Lu
★★★★
Loggerhead WARP. CD/DL/LP
Getty
Brixtonian polymath delivers inspired fusion of hip-hop, alt-rock and heavy vibes. The turbulent electrical storm of Wu-Lu’s second album finds the south London producer/composer/vocalist confronting the country’s war on its vulnerable, and exploring the murky tumult of his own mind. His hybrid of subterranean hip-hop and guitar noise is crafted with enough grace and feeling to avoid any potential for Frankenstein ugliness. The music on Loggerhead is an organic beast all its own, songs swinging from dubby introspection to taut drummachine workouts, to cloudbursts of guitar rage. The result is an album balanced
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hesitancy and understatement to both; Manzanera’s guitar is never here on maximum volume, while Finn’s quiet delivery seldom rises beyond the intimate and conversational. The LP marks a subtle switch from last year’s Caught By The Heart; the emotions more personal, more intense, and the melodies more memorable. The subject matter is a vivid mix of the experienced and the imaginary. On the title track, a ghost story set in Chile (a place Finn has never visited in reality), spectral strings, bright and screeching, swirl as a waltz rhythm sets the musical bed for the narrative. On the touching Llanto (Crying) Finn sings, “I got to marry you/But I didn’t get to bury you”, expressing the lived experience of so many during lockdown, against an incongruously joyous salsa horn melody. Yet by the ending of
between slow-burning contemplation (the swampy, string-laden dirge of Calo Paste, with its haunted chorus “I don’t want to see your mental health go to waste”) and cathartic explosions. On the likes of South and Broken Homes, Wu-Lu’s use of feedback and grungy squall becomes eloquent and expressive. Stevie Chick
Katalyst
★★★★ JID013
JAZZ IS DEAD. CD/DL/LP
Los Angeles jazz-funk collective impress on their second album. Up ’til now, the focus of Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad’s Jazz Is Dead label has been to provide a platform for veteran performers to engage with younger listeners, but their latest release highlights a relatively new nine-piece band who recorded an indie album in 2020 and appeared on earlier JID albums by Roy Ayers and Gary Bartz. The ensemble’s allusive, horn-rich meld of jazz and funk flavours, which chan-
nel the ’70s work of Donald Byrd and Herbie Hancock, strikes a balance between cerebral improv and earthy funk, chiming perfectly with Jazz Is Dead’s retro-futuristic aesthetic. Highlights range from Reflections, whose fluid groove resonates with echoes of Fonce and Larry Mizell’s Sky High production sound, to the more intense jazz interplay of Dogon Cypher with its intricate brass. Best of all is the trippy Summer Solstice, which shimmers with a sunlit refulgence. Charles Waring
Loudon Wainwright 111
★★★
Lifetime Achievement STORYSOUND. CD/DL
Wainwright Snr.’s first original new material in eight years. Still incorrigible. It’s impossible to think of Loudon as reflective patriarch of the Wainwright clan when his whole musical demeanour remains boundlessly embedded with selfdeprecating irony and boyish mischief. The title track is unexpectedly sentimental and How Old Is 75 confronts his
the song, the destination is clearer and the mood elegiac: a quiet electronic pulse leads to a horn melody which has the same emotional weight as The Last Post. There are love songs too: Our Love is a ballad with a sweet melody, while Falling Asleep, its melody close kin to Missing You by John Waite, is equally warm and rich. There is Costeño, fullsynth cheese, flutes, bouncy carnival music and, by contrast, there’s ambient guitar shadings, piano and violin on Rosemullion Head. Best of all is the opener and something of a musical outlier, Space Cannibal: weird, electro, prog-rocking joy with a catchy descending one note motif, astral synthy zooms and organ. The final song, Curtain Call, ends with solemnity and some bitterness: “You hurt me some, I came back for more.” There’s a guitar solo, a drum roll and a numbing finality. One would think that a musical project conducted via file transference would lack something, and in a way, perhaps The Ghost Of Santiago is just everso-slightly too perfect, both in sound and execution. One wishes for more of the musical daring of Space Cannibal, and on occasion, it does sound formulaic, such as the guitar solo on Curtain Call, straight from the school of Knopfler and Gilmour. You can’t have, or have easily, the accidental and the unpredictable when you’re not playing in one space. And you can’t easily get a groove, that indefinable sound of musicians organically creating and experiencing the lived joy of music in the moment. That said, the Finn/Manzanera collaboration is obviously a good fit musically, and prolific too. The logical next step would be for them to actually create together in person.
latest milestone with stark directness (“In five years I’ll be 80 and I’ll hear the fat lady”), yet this set is imbued with an irresistible wink as he lays his life and neuroses on the line in a well-trodden but still welcome welter of wit and pathos. Family, vacations, cities and mortality are all evocatively scrutinised as he contemplates old age in a telling mix of poignancy, nostalgia, bravado and killer couplets. His voice remains strident as the album veers from pared-down solo (One Wish is even unaccompanied) to spritely contributions from the likes of Chaim Tannenbaum (including a gorgeous banjo arrangement) and David Mansfield (violin, mandolin and pedal steel), plus a less successful string arrangement. No sign of the fat lady yet. Colin Irwin
Sam Prekop & John McEntire
★★★★ Sons Of
THRILL JOCKEY. CD/DL/LP
Chicago veterans’ debut as a duo offers groovy, bright-eyed electronica. Sam Prekop & John McEntire have spent nearly 30 years as members of woozy Chicago
jazzy popsters, The Sea And Cake. As a duo, they resemble a fusion of Prekop’s solo modular synth project, and McEntire’s work as a driving force of Tortoise, one of postrock’s defining bands. Across four sprawling tracks the pair slip into hazy grooves characterised by complex sub-rhythms and melodies that invite the listener to come get lost with them. Crossing At The Shallow is meandering deep house meets motorik, but everything feels like the supporting cast to A Yellow Robe. Originally created as a freeform live jam, technical difficulties recording it on the night led its protagonists to recreate it in the studio. The result is a sparkling 24-minute digital raga that builds to a tumultuous mid-point crescendo, before gliding elegantly out of the other side. Euphoric synth-pop that’s smart and never po-faced. Stephen Worthy
JAZZ B Y A N DY C O WA N
Calypso Rose
★★★★
Calypso Rose Forever BECAUSE MUSIC. CD/DL/LP
Glorious follow-up to 2015’s Far From Home, featuring Manu Chao and Machel Montano. The queen of calypso returns after seven years iridescent and with a spring in her step, breathing new life into old classics. Recorded in Belize, New York, Paris and Trinidad & Tobago, the rich mix of musics, alongside the obligatory calypso, includes soca, rocksteady, mento and Garifuna soul. Covers of Lord Pretender’s Never Ever Worry and the Garifuna Collective’s Watina provide two of many highpoints. The first-named is the perfect vehicle for the now 82-year-old’s tenet of living, her spirited version a joy to behold. The latter, featuring Carlos Santana, is both a history of Garifuna slavery and a celebration of their cultural legacy. Meanwhile, dancehall singjay Mr Vegas brings extra colour to One By One, a unity anthem propelled by a ska beat. Lois Wilson
Hot Chip
★★★★
Freakout/Release DOMINO. CD/DL/LP
Anxiety gives way to joyous release on eccentric dancepoppers’ live-sounding eighth LP.
Robbie Jeffers
Possibly the world’s meekest dancefloor subversives, Hot Chip sound fresher than ever as they enter their third decade. Recorded at new studio space Relax & Enjoy, their latest builds on the sprawling dancefloor existentialism of 2019’s A Bath Full Of Ecstasy, aiming straight at the hips on the title track’s beastly
bassline and robotic refrain (licked into shape by Belgian production maestros Soulwax), four-to-floor house steamer Down, Sun Ra nodding techno shuffler Hard To Be Funky and electro yacht rock earworm Eleanor. And while the prevailing mood of optimism is infectious, there’s no mistaking the hurt and confusion in Alexis Taylor’s tender tones on plaintive ballads Broken and Not Alone. A mix of pulsing, oven-ready bangers and darker reflections, Freakout/Release exudes the confidence of a band operating at its giddy peak. Andy Cowan
Miraculous Mule
★★★★
Old Bones, New Fire LIGHTNING ARCHIVE/JUKE JOINT 500. CD/DL/LP
Deep Southern gospel, from north London. An occasional four-piece led by Michael J Sheehy, former singer in mid-’90s avant-indie act Dream City Film Club, Miraculous Mule are just as hard to pin down as his old band. This fourth album echoes the gospel blues of their 2013 debut Deep Fried rather than the high-voltage garage rock of 2017’s Two Tonne Testimony. If anything, it digs even deeper into oldfashioned, chain-gang testifying, sounding more authentic than any white Brits have a right to. Their love of the music is more than evident enough to dodge cultural appropriation accusations, the shared vocals mixing true grit and toil into the largely a cappella I Know I’ve Been Changed, the chilling O Death or the country pop of You Got To Take Sick And Die. Darkly
Szun Waves: on a spiritual quest.
uplifting, heartbreaking and hands-in-the-air amazing. Andy Fyfe
Szun Waves
★★★★
Earth Patterns THE LEAF LABEL. CD/DL/LP
Wide-eyed cosmic jazz voyagers return to terra firma with a bang. Forged from a three-day session recorded at end of 2019’s European tour, Szun Waves’ forward-leaping third LP bares no audible strains of road weariness. Pieced together remotely, with added input from Border Community DJ/producer James Holden, the sci-fi abstractions of New Universe, Garden and Willow Leaf Pear retain all their live urgency – Jack Wyllie’s quick-fire soprano sax phrases and unpredictable melodies traversing Luke Abbott’s reaping synths and squalling arpeggios as Laurence Pike’s rhythmic trickery holds down the backline. The Sun Ra-like intensity of out-of-body centrepiece Be A Pattern For The World and dripping synth menace and haunted sax screed of Atomkerne – songs seemingly locked in a spiritual quest – delve deeper still, suggesting Szun Waves’ freeseeking mystical adventures still have plenty of ground yet to run. Andy Cowan
Jeremy Cunningham/ Dustin Laurenzi/ Paul Bryan
★★★★
A Better Ghost NORTHERN SPY. DL/LP
Experimental Chicago duo merge
harged first outiing
Built from five years’ worth of melodic fragments shared between drummer Cunningham and tenor saxophonist Laurenzi (best known for their work in Resavoir and Twin Talk, respectively), they turned to LA producer Bryan to broaden them out. His sympathetic touch and loping basslines allow the Chicago duo to move in myriad directions, from the shifting fusions of Worlds Turn and layered brass of With What We Have – an odyssey of longing – to the Pharoah Sanders-inspired title track, a celestial haze of electronics, rumbled percussion and melodies that sing with natural grace. All three seem to value atmosphere over technique, their roles shifting within songs on a less-is-more triumph that echoes the intricate technique of Makaya McCraven and easy intimacy of BADBADNOTGOOD.
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The Deslondes
Lorenzo Morresi & Tenderlonious
Kibrom Birhane
Ways & Means
Cosmica Italiana
FLYING CARPET. CD/DL/LP
★★★
★★★★
★★★★
Here And There
NEW WEST. CD/DL/LP
22A. CD/DL/LP
Third outing from New Orleans country-funk raconteurs.
Inspired by Italian soundtrack/library music masters Umiliani, Roelens and Morricone, this joyful set by the self-taught UK jazz autodidact Tenderlonious, and Italian DJ/producer Morresi, offers a box-fresh take on jazz funk. From the Rhodes-laced title track and polyrhythmic central motif of Nuda Sorgente to the slinky synths and strings of the spy-themed Acqua, the pair touch expected bases and then surpass them.
Part of LA’s sprawling Ethio-Cali ensemble alongside Kamasi Washington, this Ethiopian keyboardist’s third LP treads similar territory, mixing up Mahmoud Ahmed and Mulatu Astatke with Ethiopian folk and low-slung Cali funk. Birhane’s originals are unhurried, snaking affairs that take their time seducing the listener, although there’s pep in the step of the vocoder-driven Tinish, Tinish and the 11/8 time Enate, a showcase for sax lion Randal Fisher.
JoVia Armstrong
Fast DE
The five Deslondes share writing and swap vocals, but this clutch of tracks could be from just two distinct viewpoints, even outfits. Drowsy opener Good To Go features gravel-voiced Riley Downing in Lee Hazlewood mode, spinning a sardonic, lo-fi tale of just keepin’ goin’. A celebratory sax bursts in halfway and you know it’s been a fine time amid the old cars, backyards and barroom card games (“If you’re good at losin’, they might let ya play again.”) It’s followed by Five Year Plan, sung by Sam Doores – buoyantly breezy countryrock that could be The Band crossed with Dean Friedman, about a dude who won’t grow up. The styles and narrators alternate; Downing is back again for the Beefheartian Standing Still, recalling a blissful acid trip against a gently wacko, psychedelic background, but ending in burnedout longing. Glyn Brown
★★★★
★★★★
The Antidote Suite
Sight Inside
BLACK EARTH MUSIC. CD/DL
BLOOMER. DL/LP
Commissioned for The Black Index art exhibition, the Detroit percussionist lets the spirits of Sun Ra and Alice Coltrane ghost through her shapeshifting mix. Whether it’s Nicole Mitchell’s probing flutes and Jeff Parker’s Santana-like solos (Meditations Of Oya), Leslie DeShazor’s left-field violin turns (Beautifully Black) or Yaw Agyeman and Teh’Ray Hale’s meditative raps (Zebra), this Afro-futurist delight possesses an embarrassment of riches.
Having worked up a pedigree playing with Jo Goes Hunting and Karsu, Dutch bassist Daniël Eskens’ new band is a sassy meld of electronic loops, insistent rhythms and groove-along four-string action. While Hopelijk shows his taught interplay with guitarist Dario Trapani, and Good To Get Lost revels in synthy introspection, all are grafted together by forceful melodies. A future-leaning slab of psychedelic jazz ripped with sonic quirks. AC
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F I LT E R A L B UM S
More than a healing
Nashville-based ambient composer’s latest is a modern spiritual jazz-indebted wonder, says Andrew Male.
Rich Ruth
★★★★★
I Survived, It’s Over THIRD MAN. CD/DL/LP
ALTHOUGH IT was Mary Parks, partner and business manager of free jazz saxophonist Albert Ayler, who first patented the phrase “music is the healing force of the universe”, it’s a belief ingrained for centuries in the oldest of religions. Naturally, since 2020, modern musicians have been using it as their own mantra, expressing the significance of music-making in the wake of Covid. It’s become a PR cliché, something to be assessed and, if possible, avoided when writing about new releases. Yet here we are and Rich Ruth, perhaps more than anyone, deserves a pass. It was 2018 when Tennessee touring musician Michael Rich Ruth took a break from the road and retreated to his small Nashville
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home studio to compose ambient music. A gunpoint car-jacking outside his house gave his music purpose, a means to channel his subsequent anxieties. The result, 2019’s Calming Signals – a striking Fourth World mélange of Ingram Marshall drones, spiritual noir sax, Another Green World electronics and small-kit jazz drumming – was followed by 2021’s meditative New Age sketches Where There’s Life. Both were special recordings, yet locked within the organised, over-determined space of a home studio. With I Survived, It’s Over Ruth has retreated further while somehow also expanding outward. Conceived in the wrecked aftermath of a 2020 tornado, whilst listening to Keith Jarrett’s The Köln Concert and John Coltrane’s Ascension, and recorded alone, under the loft bed of his guestroom, I Survived has no right to sound this collaborative, this free, this massive. Although Ruth is sampling and re-purposing remote contributions – from drummer Reuben Gingrich, upright bassist Cameron Carrus, three saxophonists (Caleb Hickman, Sam Que and Jared Selner), numerous other session musicians and Valerie Adams’ flute – this sounds like a record cut live in the studio. Opener, Taken Back is exploratory, keyboard and fuzz guitar space-jazz where the players find their groove, followed by the
Mwandishi safari of Older M But Not Less Confused, before Desensitization And Reprocessing locks into a sublime slice of Alice Coltrane harp-glissando trance gospel. Yet it’s with track four, the ironically titled Heavy And Earthbound, that I Survived really starts to break free. Beginning with an Albert Heath-style phased drum pattern, Coltrane sax wail and dirty Larry Young organ from Kent Toalson, it eventually rises to dense, Ascension-level crescendos of magic noise. It’s an act of euphoric release that prepares us for the organic shifting beauty of side two; three six-minute-plus meditative numbers that move towards a state of peaceful rest and suggest an EG Records collaboration between Jon Hassell, John Surman, Daniel Lanois, Bobby Hutcherson and Bush Of Ghosts-era Eno, where spiralling bird-song sax interweaves with wood block vibraphone patterns, the impassioned voices of TV preachers, Whit Wright’s pedal steel lullabies and the pulses and phasing reminiscent of Steve Reich’s Electric Counterpoint. Mixed by Tortoise’s John McEntire in a manner that favours individual instrumentation over overall weight, I Survived, It’s Over is a complete trip, a record that successfully re-purposes the isolation, trauma and selfcare of Covid into what might adequately be described as an instrumental masterpiece for this peculiar era. Prepare to be healed.
Angelina Castillo
Let’s take a trip: Rich Ruth brings the magic noise.
Stadium rock: Lee Bains (centre) and his Glory Fires deliver another stirring sermon.
And An drew Comb bs
★★★★ Sundays
LOOSE. CD/DL/LP
Dallas-native’s exceptional fourth album of sublime songwriting. Amongst the flood of howhave-we-all-survived-Covid albums coming down the pipeline, Nashville-based songwriter Andrew Combs’s album is one of the more desperate. Not in terms of Zeitgeist, but in terms of being written and recorded in the wake of a nervous breakdown suffered in the depths of the pandemic. It’s testament to Combs’s complexity as a songwriter, however, that from such despair and dysfunction these spartan, Americanaadjacent songs possess a lightness that never drags the listener down. Instead he focuses on the incredible human capacity for recovery, recalling better, more naive days of first love (Adeline), being kind to ourselves (Still Water) or, on the sublime opener God(less), simply taking responsibility for our actions. Combs’s developmental arc as a songwriter continues to soar, and this deep, deep reflection suits him to a tee. Andy Fyfe
Lee Bains + The Glory Fires
★★★★
Old-Time Folks DON GIOVANNI. CD/DL/LP
The impassioned Southern bard finally finds his refrains.
For a decade now, Lee Bains has been the irate poet of the modern American South, delivering rapidfire deconstructions and excoriations of his racially and the wide-eyed That’s L.A. and the more plaintive Up In Smoke, but McKenzie is so focused on craft ahead of melody that an album this determined to be without jokes might have actually benefited from a couple. John Aizlewood
Kiwi Jr.
★★★
Chopper
★★★
SUB POP. CD/DL/LP
Songs Without Jokes
Nervy words get deeper, but the sounds around them get shallow.
SUB POP. CD/DL/LP
It’s a brave career move, not wholly dissimilar to one made by Ken Dodd in the ’60s and Freddie Starr in the ’80s. Having established an enviable reputation as a comedy actor/songwriter in Flight Of The Conchords and progressed to writing Oscar-winning Muppets songs, Bret McKenzie has made precisely what the self-conscious title of his first solo album since his work as Video Kid promises. Made in Los Angeles with a crack team of sessioneers including Joey Waronker and Dean Parks, it harkens to both the nostalgic, faux-shambolic approach of Harry-era Harry Nilsson – especially on the loose-limbed, brassy A Little Tune, or on the opening This World – and, when it’s pianopropelled, Randy Newman. There’s euphoric gentleness in
music used by certain highbrow podcasts. It’s an approach which is especially beguiling on The Whale, where rippling harp arpeggios foldback on themselves and Gold’s voice recalls a more nasal Bon Iver, and on Hover, where aleatory melodies echo a peaceful stream’s gurgles. James McNair
t hooks, so that these the llessons take better hhold. Gentlemen is a ssardonic string-laced bballad for the evil men ho sold ld out fellow citizens for fast who cash, while Outlaws inverts the immortal mantra of I Fought The Law to extol people’s power to beat back their oppressors. Perhaps for the first time, you don’t need a glossary to get Bains’s points, even if it helps.
Gwilym Gold
★★★★
Blue Garden SA RECORDINGS. CD/DL/LP
Former Golden Silver evokes the serenity of a dawn chorus. Formerly frontman and keyboardist with London art-pop trio Golden Silvers, Gwilym Gold helped develop Bronze, a 2012 music-tech innovation enabling electronic compositions to re-invent themselves with each successive playback. He’s still envelope-pushing on Blue Garden, wherein former Cabaret Voltaire man Chris Watson’s field recordings of rivers and birdsong anchor abstract, allegorical songs exploring love in all its forms. Largely based around hybrid harp sounds triggered from a piano keyboard, the spare, drum-less arrangements have shades of New-Age tranquillity and that subtly stark, meditative feel of incidental
Recruiting a proper producer seems an inevitability for a band like Toronto’s Kiwi Jr., whose gleefully jittery garage-pop earned the quartet a deal with Sub Pop and high praise for 2021’s quivering Cooler Returns. But Wolf Parade leader Dan Boeckner might not have been the ideal choice for the knobs. Fluorescent keyboards crowd Kiwi Jr.’s once-open spaces on Chopper, making the surface of their first ‘produced’ LP feel more like an oil slick than the band’s past terrain of jagged delights. Think The Cars going slow, The Cure with only a common cold. Still, Jeremy Gaudet’s hyper-absurdist approach to songwriting, where Judy Garland and Aperol or Kobe Bryant and Nudie suits nest into neighbouring verses, is both sharper and more abstruse than ever, causing you to nod along in agreement even as you wonder what’s
Grayson Haver Currin
going on. Even this slight misstep charms. Grayson Haver Currin
Osees
Lisa Gerrard/ Marcello De Francisci
A full-throttle tribute to the “weirdos and art freaks” who first inspired them.
★★★★ Exaudia
Bret McKenzie
Flight Of The Conchords funnyman makes deliberately unfunny album.
economically striated homeplace. That remains intact on OldTime Folks, his second consecutive 2-LP epic alongside his Glory Fires. s It’s a sermon so stuffed with the region’s fables, histories and contradictions that it reads like a progressive Southern professor’s stream-ofconsciousness syllabus. But working with noted Georgia producer David Barbe for three years, Bains also slowed it down and strengthened
ATLANTIC CURVE. CD/DL/LP
Dead Can Dance singer and LA-based composer reunite. After collaborating on the Janie’s Got A Gun and Samsara soundtracks and 2010’s Departum album, Lisa Gerrard and Marcello De Francisci took inspiration for Exaudia from both Hans Zimmer’s Inception soundtrack and Departum standout Diary For The Fallen. The results go beyond those inspirations though, most thrillingly on Stay With Me, which begins in unassuming soundtrack fashion, introduces Gerrard’s otherworldly vocals, before exploding into a percussive frenzy with a choral backdrop and stentorian brass. Elsewhere, while Until We Meet Again is a showcase for Gerrard’s voice, De Francisci is more than an enabler, adding baroque strings, Krautrockian pulse and tubthumping drums. Meanwhile, his funeral-paced magnificence on the opening call to arms, When The Light Of Morning Comes, owes more to Vangelis’s Blade Runner than Zimmer. A rich, layered work which yields more wonder with each airing: it’s what Gerrard’s vocals have always deserved. John Aizlewood
★★★★
A Foul Form CASTLE FACE. CD/DL/LP
Hard, really, to better Osees frontman John Dwyer’s description of A Foul Form as, “Brain-stem cracking scumpunk recorded tersely in the basement of my home.” Seven of its savage, blood vesselbusting assaults clock in at well under two minutes, the unhinged, up-tempo stramash of the title track, Scum Show and Funeral Solution conjuring that Saturday Night Live skit wherein the anarchic reunion of Fred Armisen’s hardcore punk band Crisis Of Conformity ruins his daughter’s hitherto sedate wedding. Here, though, the anger is real and righteous, calling out corruption within The Church (Frock Block) and the abuse of power within The Police (Perm Act). Dwyer brings discordant guitar fizz and an irked, cartoonish energy to tribal-sounding standout Too Late For Suicide, while an explosive one-minute cover of Rudimentary Peni’s Sacrifice closes proceedings. Breathlessly brilliant stuff. James McNair
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FOLK BY COLIN IRWIN
Breathless
★★★★
See Those Colours Fly TENOR VOSSA. CD/DL/LP
Sad-eyed Londoners’ first LP in 10 years, described by mixer Kramer as “excruciatingly beautiful.” The artwork for See Those Colours Fly is blatantly ironic, focused on two laughing mouths, perfect teeth framed by glossy red lipstick. Whereas Breathless’s irretrievably downbeat mood says that, beneath the surface happiness, heartache lurks. With Dominic Appleton still effortlessly out front in the ‘earth’s saddest voice’ stakes, their eighth album leans even more toward misty introspection, given drummer Tristram Sayer’s absence after a serious car accident. With very occasional faint programmed pulses and only We Should Go Driving upping the tempo, See Those Colours Fly resembles dream pop in suspended animation; no wonder Kramer, overseer of Galaxie 500’s similarly luxurious drift, was hired to lend his reverb-heavy Midas touch. Let Me Down Gently; So Far From Love… Appleton simply can’t cheer up, culminating in the lengthy dissolve of I Watch You Sleep, the LP’s peak moment of exquisite romantic solitude. Martin Aston
Chris Forsyth
★★★★
Evolution Here We Come NO QUARTER. CD/DL/LP
Philadelphian cosmic guitarist continues quest for final form.
Ryan Collerd
The first track on this record is called Experimental And Professional – a title taken from ZZ Top’s Beer Drinkers & Hell Raisers. Chris Forsyth, the guitarist behind such cosmic Americana as 2013’s Solar Motel and 2019’s All Time Present, hits those targets, quick to float into space – accompanied by Sun Ra Arkestra’s Marshall Allen playing electronic valve instrument on that urgent
Evolution for dummies: Chris Forsyth leaps forward, brings it home.
opening blast – but still able to deliver a classic rock warmth. A rowdy twig-in-beard version of Richard Thompson’s You’re Going To Need Somebody and Heaven For A Few’s Teenage Fanclub-Television sweet spot balance out the heavy transformations of Bad Moon Risen or the 14-minute Robot Energy Machine. With backing from musicians including Tortoise’s Douglas McCombs, The Dream Syndicate’s Steve Wynn and Tom Malach of Garcia Peoples, Forsyth knows exactly how far to let out the line before returning to the earth’s atmosphere, leaping forward, bringing it home. Victoria Segal
Josh Rouse
★★★★
Going Places YEP ROC. CD/DL/LP
The follow-up to 2018’s Love In The Modern Age sees the Nebraskan singer-songwriter looking to the world. Sequestered in Spain with his family during 2020-21, Nebraska’s Josh Rouse wrote the breezy, guitar-centric songs on Going Places for performance in a small bar venue owned by friends, then finessed them for this charming studio LP. The sunny, kick-off-your-shoes mood prevalent on Henry Miller’s Flat and There’s Somebody Whose Job It Is proves a welcome salve for current world ills, while fans of Paul Simon’s early solo work, JJ Cale’s sweet indolence and Richard Thompson’s incisive electric guitar leads will find much to savour on City Dog and She’s In LA. Though the classic singer-songwriter influences so clearly signposted by Rouse’s esteemed 2003 LP 1972 don’t amount to quite so much this time out, rockabilly toe-tapper The Lonely Postman is irresistible, Rouse sketching forlorn nights at the sorting office with gentle Midwestern wit. James McNair
The Mountain Goats
★★★
Bleed Out MERGE. CD/DL/LP
North Carolina indie rockers continue their late-period penchant for concept records. Folks haven’t had enough of silly love songs, but we can always use more bile, too. Mountain Goats frontman and best-selling novelist John Darnielle’s song-cycle about the allure and futility of vengeance packs a dozen wrathful snapshots, but there’s a twist: each track was inspired by the plots, tropes and punchy dialogue of the pulpy action movies he mainlined at home in North Carolina during winter 2020. Though the ingenuity of the project occasionally outguns the quality of the songwriting, Darnielle’s spadework has resulted in a zesty, spontaneous-sounding record nailed in one week with Alicia Bognanno of Nashville altrockers Bully at the controls. In places broadly reminiscent of Jonathan Richman or early R.E.M., Bleed Out peaks with playful stab-in-the-back Mark On You and taut, angular standout Guys On Every Corner. James McNair
Tom Paxton, Cathy Fink & Marcy Marxer
★★★★ All New
COMMUNITY MUSIC, INC. CD/DL/LP
Old-school folk protesters raising sadly timeless issues. Cathy Fink and Marcy Marxer have been playing together since the early ’80s, and with folk eminence Tom Paxton only in recent years. Their bond was cemented during Covid Zoom sessions and they finally patched together these 28 songs just because it all worked so well. The sound harks back to Paxton’s days as a pre-Dylan folk contemporary of Pete Seeger, here given tribute on the sweetly elegant track Pete’s Shoulders (The Power Of Song), but as guitars, fiddles, ukuleles and banjos strum and plink, it’s damning that we’ve come no distance, the same old inequalities and concerns still being aired in these new tunes. Given a contemporary punch on the likes of eco-protest Dry Times or the positive vibes of The Freedom Of Forgiving, the wit and clarity of thought on All New should make us all ashamed we still haven’t done enough to make these songs redundant. Andy Fyfe
Ye Vagabonds
★★★★
Nine Waves RIVER LEA. CD/DL/LP
Clearly crafted with love and care, the Irish duo’s third LP hits the spot. g gets another shot in th he arm from this rather beautiful third album by Dublin brothers Diarmuid and Brían Mac Gloinn. Their accomplished multiinstrumental abilities and graceful harmonies have already found favour at home, but with added sophistication, sharper production and an array of empathetic guest musicians (wonderful Cormac Begley concertina and Alain McFadden harmonium), they’ve moved to a new level. At least part of this expanding depth is due to producer Spud Murphy and the obvious influence of Lankum, whose patient and understated construction of layered melodies plays a key role here, particularly in the instrumentals. The playing is dexterous enough to carry it, while their songwriting on Blue Is The Eye and An Island in particular is compelling. Their traditional pedigree is underlined by a Paul Brady-esque Lord Gregory and an attractive telling of Her Mantle So Green.
ALSO RELEASED
Bryony Griffith & Alice Jones
★★★★
A Year Too Late And A Month Too Soon SPLID. CD/DL
Well-known on the grass roots scene for multifarious adventures with different outfits, this pair pitch together their fiddle and guitar and passionate vocals with winning vitality on a vividly enticing bunch of traditional music from their home county of Yorkshire. No fancy frills here – we get songs of fratricide, coal mining, betrayal, cockfighting and drinking, delivered in all their raw glory. Honest, wholesome and thoroughly enjoyable.
Heidi Talbot
★★★
Sing It For A Lifetime ABSOLUTE. CD/DL
Eight years since we last heard from her and the winsomevoiced Irish singer has plenty of tales, notably of her break-up with fiddle player/producer/partner John McCusker. To tell them, she’s gone all Americana with Appalachian fiddle player/ producer Dirk Powell at the controls. The raw emotion is deflected in part by an array of guest musicians, including Mark Knopfler on three tracks. Not sure she gets to grips with all the covers – Bob Marley’s She’s Gone and Cohen’s Famous Blue
Raincoat aren’t quite there – but it’s noble, heart-wrenching stuff.
Damien O’Kane & Ron Block
★★★
Banjophonics PURE. CD/DL
The banjo polarises opinion, but such joy runs through this collaboration of two masters of contrasting styles (Northern Irishman O’Kane is best known for his work with Kate Rusby; California’s Block with Alison Krauss & Union Station) few could deny its charms. The blend of bluegrass and Celtic influences is both appealing and spectacular; Mike McGoldrick sprinkles stardust and O’Kane sings a winning Margaret Barry tribute, Woman Of No Place.
Kim Carnie
★★★★
And So We Gather CÀRN. CD/DL
This is the Mànran singer’s solo debut but, with Donald Shaw producing and an array of talent in her corner (Karen Matheson, Megan Henderson, Julie Fowlis), the young Scots Gaelic singer sounds long-accomplished. Beyond the innate beauty of her voice and a well-balanced mix of self-written and traditional material, there’s real majesty in these bold arrangements, while the Scottish Session Orchestra add richness. CI
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F I LT E R A L B UM S E X T R A
A
★★★★
New Pleasures
MEXICAN SUMMER. DL/LP
Paul Bevoir
★★★★
A Balloon To The Moon ACCIDENT. CD/LP
Several bounds on from his early arpeggiated symphonies, Alexis Georgopoulos’s sixth abuses vintage synths, drum machines and ’80s fretless bass to create a wonky instrumental world. Its mercurial art-pop is dotted with contrary pulses and unexpected detours. AC
Strong fourth from ex-Jetset frontman, now children’s TV soundtracker, full of Heroes And Villains-styled LA pop; Bevoir’s wistful songs build upon escapist melodies with sunshine harmonies, parping horns and the occasional fluttering piano. LW
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Stella Donnelly
C
★★★★
Renaissance BBE. CD/DL/LP
South London keyboardist hymns his home city on tightly orchestrated debut. Whether merging drum’n’bass with ’70s jazz-rock (Amalgamation) or railing against injustice (Black Liberation), it’s conveyed with a vivid sense of drama and sharp grasp of atmospherics. AC
★★★★ Flood
SECRETLY CANADIAN. CD/DL/LP
Donnelly wrote her second LP while on staycation in Australia, so adding nature and broader perspectives to her portrait songs. Though musically more fulsome, lyrics are still key: “You’re scaring all your housemates with your monologuing” (Medal). JB
Galya Bisengalieva
Th C k Quintet
Sh ki Copeland
Hold Your Breath: The Ice Dive
The Path
Done Come Too Far
★★★
★★★
DO RIGHT! MUSIC. CD/DL
★★★★
ALLIGATOR. CD/DL
The Kazakh-British violinist’s score for the Netflix doc about freediver Johanna Nordblad employs swirling drones and saturated textures to evoke a fragmented world. AC
Toronto jazz quintet’s fourth LP revels in unashamedly retro hard bop instrumentals. Its swinging grooves variously evoke Horace Silver, Hank Mobley and, on the outstanding title track, Wayne Shorter. AC
Will Kimbrough-produced defiant protest from the powerful-voiced blues singer. From the rockin’ Too Far To Be Gone to the stirring Gullah Geechee, featuring Cedric Watson on African gourd banjo, it’s all great stuff. LW
Esmerine
Kokoroko
John Moore
Everything Was Forever Until It Was No More
Could We Be More
All’s Well That Ends Well
ONE LITTLE INDEPENDENT. CD/DL/LP
★★★★
CONSTELLATION. CD/DL/LP
Percussionist Bruce Cawdron and cellist Rebecca Foon explore ever more intricate constructs; their classical/folk/ post-rock melds reward after repeat immersions. AC
★★★
BROWNSWOOD. CD/DL/LP
Nérija’s Sheila Maurice-Grey (trumpet) and Cassie Kinoshi (sax) feature on mixture of West Africa and Caribbean influences. Oscar Jerome’s glowing highlife guitar opens Dide O, a midway tryptic with Soul Searching (Afrobeat) and We Give Thanks (soul). JB
★★★★
THE GERM ORGANISATION. DL
Weathered, bruised and just about hanging on, the ex-JAMC boho presents his fourth digest of despair and hope. Chancers, cricket and Class-A’s feature amid aromatic pop, rock’n’roll, Cajun and more. IH
EXTENDED PLAY
★★★★
Choice Tapes Vols 1-3 BANDCAMP. DL
WHEN THEY first emerged in 2007, it was hard to imagine a less hippyish band than Vampire Weekend. Arch, preppy, apparently fresh from lacrosse practice, they weaponised an uptight indie rock at odds with the Grateful Dead’s ultra-loose aesthetic. But if 2019’s Father Of The Bride drolly alluded to a jam band influence, it’s nothing compared to Taper’s Choice, a supergroup of sorts anchored by VW drummer Chris Tomson. On three Choice Tapes volumes downloadable from bandcamp.com, the psychedelic posture remains knowing – “Lick the toad,” implores Vol. 3 – but there’s no doubting the love and skill they bring to this hairy, exploratory sound. MVP is guitarist Dave Harrington, who’s diced and spliced the jams – limber Can-isms, Scandiadjacent prog-folk, slurred dub, peak Lips/Rev whimsy and more – into collaged freak-outs: Grayfolded might be a decent reference point, Deadheads. And if you want the full trip, epic live bootlegs are of course available at: www.archive.org/details/ TapersChoice. John Mulvey
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★★★★
Estrela Acesa MEXICAN SUMMER. CD/DL/LP
Sérgio Sayeg cites Johnny Clarke’s roots reggae as an influence, fused with the sounds of his Brazilian heritage on astral-themed bossa ballads. Arrangements are blissfully intimate, often just acoustic guitar, female choir, percussion and Sessa’s sensual croon. JB
M
V l
★★★★
i
Future Obscure ARCANE WIRES. CD/DL
Ace solo debut from the Last Great Dreamers frontman; a masterclass in melody and energy, its gender-subverting powerpop and bubblegum glam nuggets the kind Greg Shaw would have loved. Wreckless Eric and The Boys’ Matt Dangerfield guest. LW
Getty
Taper’s Choice
Taper’s Choice’s Chris Tomson brings the hairy, exploratory sound.
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F I LT E R R E I S SU E S
Parallel Lives Deep dive into the NY punk-pop trailblazers’ archive, including home tapes, lost gems and an embarrassment of hits. By Mark Blake.
Blondie
from a trip to London, waving a copy of Dr. Feelgood’s Malpractice. But Kung Fu Girls, The Attack Of The Giant Ants and Love At The Pier could only have originated on Planet Blondie, with its eco-system of trash TV, surf pop, the paranormal Blondie: Against The Odds and garage rock. All music was up for grabs there. 1974-1982 “‘New wave’ sounds like the name of a laundry UMC/NUMERO GROUP. CD/DL/LP detergent,” remarked Harry at the time. Britain fell for Blondie before the States, though. OMETIME IN 1975, Blondie’s vocalist Debbie Chrysalis Records spent half a million dollars Harry and her boyfriend, guitarist Chris Stein, buying them out of their contract with Private visited an opera singer-turned-clairvoyant Stock and were rewarded with the hits Denis and named Ethel Meyers in New York. Blondie were still (I’m Always Touched By Your) Presence, Dear, a “Blondie were two years shy of having hits, but Meyers predicted song about a psychic event between Gary Valentine Harry was going to become a star. adventurous and his girlfriend. English bassist Nigel Harrison’s Years later, Stein listened back to a recording of and contrary, arrival saw Infante switch to guitar, in time for the meeting, and the clairvoyant’s voice had faded. 1978’s Parallel Lines, recorded with Sweet/Suzi “In the way of a ghost deteriorating over time,” he sometimes Quatro producer Mike Chapman. said. Harry reminded him that the world was a messed-up.” In the studio, Chapman behaved like a drill different place in 1975: “There was a lot more acid sergeant with a bunch of rookie recruits. He coaxed in the air, Chris,” she cautioned. four Top 20 hits out of them, including Heart Of In Debbie Harry’s memoir, Face It, Stein Glass, plus One Way Or Another, a Trojan Horse of a pop song confessed to spending most of Blondie’s golden years selfabout Harry’s real-life stalker. Chapman bravely includes his vocal medicating. So much so he couldn’t always differentiate between demo for The Nerves’ Hanging On The Telephone, which what he called “psychic events” and “merely induced delusions”. illustrates how much Harry’s witty nuances brought to the piece. This admission comes to mind on Against The Odds, which On her debut composition, Platinum Blonde, included here, corrals Blondie’s first six albums with dozens of demos, home Harry sang about being like “Marilyn and Jean, Jayne, Mae and tapes and 36 previously unissued tracks. These rarities float, Marlene”. Parallel Lines fulfilled her wish, and Harry stepped out sometimes half formed, between the cracks, like a clairvoyant’s of the cartoon and onto the cover of fashion magazines. Blondie voice or flashbacks to an ancient trip. With the music remastered wasn’t quite the same after that. at Abbey Road and accessorised by expansive linernotes, it all The follow-up, 1979’s Eat To The Beat, suffered from a variation demonstrates how adventurous and contrary, sometimes messedon Difficult Second Album Syndrome. Chapman loosened the reins up and uniquely brilliant Blondie were. and let Clem Burke scatter his Moon The Loon drum fills all over Stein, a guitarist and New York School Of Visual Arts student, Dreaming. But it’s striking how melancholy Harry sounds on Shayla’s met waitress and model Debbie Harry in 1973, when she was psychedelic country and the hits Atomic and Union City Blue, and performing with vocal group The Stilettoes. By the following year, sub-zero cold on Call Me from the American Gigolo soundtrack. they’d found a Who-worshipping drummer, Chrysalis wanted the group to keep re-making Parallel Lines, Clem Burke, bassist Gary Valentine, and a but Planet Blondie was now riven with civil unrest and hard drugs. fanbase at punk haunts CBGB’s and Max’s Chapman persuaded them to record 1980’s Autoamerican in LA. Kansas City. The arrival of keyboard player They brought New York with them, though, talking up hip-hop Jimmy Destri completed the picture. pioneers Grandmaster Flash and ‘Fab Five Freddy’ Braithwaite on Tracks from Blondie’s October 1974 and Rapture. Meanwhile, Europa, where Harry narrated a poem about June ’75 recording sessions sound like machines conquering the world over Hollywood movie-score musical DNA samples. Harry and Stein’s strings and death-march synths, probably turned their A&R man’s artistic vision (“Like a comic coming to bowels to ice, and is all the better for that. life,” said Debbie) was still ahead of their Blondie signed off for almost two decades after 1982’s The abilities. But what’s fascinating about ’74’s BACK STORY: Hunter . Harry was exploring a solo career, Stein’s health was failing SHAKEN NOT The Disco Song is how rounded it already STIRRED and Destri had thrown a Moog Vocoder at Mike Chapman. Every was, years before it morphed into the UK ● While recording 1982’s LP before looked and sounded timeless, but most of The Hunter The Hunter, Blondie and US Number 1 hit, Heart Of Glass. seemed as distant as Harry’s thousand-yard stare on the sleeve. thought they’d been Before then, Hang On Sloopy approached to compose The demos here colour in the blanks and the alternative mixes co-producer Richard Gottehrer signed them the theme for the new are like watching a favourite movie from a different camera angle. James Bond movie, For to Private Stock Records and oversaw Blondie But Against The Odds reminds the listener that there were always Your Eyes Only. “I don’t and Plastic Letters (the second with Frank know if we were really two Blondies. Even at the height of their imperial pop-star phase, Infante taking over from Valentine). Most of offered it,” admits Chris they were smuggling Robert Fripp onto Parallel Lines, and for every Stein. “But we thought, the pieces were in place on Blondie’s debut Heart Of Glass or The Tide Is High, there’s a version of the theme if we did it, we’d give it single, X Offender, where Harry’s deadpan to somebody and they’d to the 1964 crime caper Topkapi or a scuzzy home recording of voice tells the story of a prostitute falling for go for it anyway.” Johnny Cash’s Ring Of Fire. Blondie’s melancholy her arresting police officer. Later, Rip Her “We always wanted to be uncool,” said Debbie Harry in 1978. ballad For Your Eyes Only To Shreds’ verbal destruction of “Miss Against The Odds proves it was the best mission statement Blondie “would have been a Groupie Supreme” floats over Destri’s rinkygreat James Bond song,” could have had. insisted Debbie Harry. dink Farfisa organ, like a ’60s beat group Sadly, they lost out to with punk phlegm on their tonic suits. BLONDIE’S GUITARIST ON MEMORIES, Sheena Easton. LA, AND POGOING IN BOURNEMOUTH. Apparently, Clem Burke had returned
★★★★
© Adrian Boot/Urbanimage.tv, Getty
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STEIN SPEAKS!
Picture this: Blondie (from left) Nigel Harrison, Chris Stein, Debbie Harry, Jimmy Destri, Clem Burke and Frank Infante on the road for their first US tour, Boston, MA, May 21, 1978.
“I’ve had so many fucking experiences…”: Chris Stein and Debbie Harry in 1977.
Leon Thomas
★★★★ Doris Troy
Spirits Known And Unknown
Sings Just One Look & Other Memorable Selections
Jazz vocalist’s 1969 debut as bandleader. Features Pharoah Sanders and Lonnie Liston Smith.
REAL GONE. LP
Produced by Bob Thiele for Flying Dutchman, Leon Thomas’s first outing as bandleader is characterised by sedition, social conscience and striving for the divine. It begins spectacularly with his condensed reading of The Creator Has A Masterplan, the astral jazz meditation he co-wrote with the tenor saxist Pharoah Sanders and first recorded with Sanders on the latter’s Karma album. Another highpoint is Malcolm’s Gone, also written with Sanders. A confluence of hard blowing, flute trilling and loud, rhythmical verbalisation – what the album subtitle refers to as “New vocal frontiers”; Thomas wails, yodels, scats, howls – it’s both potent protest and a poignant eulogy to the black nationalist leader killed in 1965. Damn Nam (Ain’t Goin’ To Vietnam) is equally strong, highlighting the black experience of war over a swinging blues. Lois Wilson
★★★★
“I have an unreleased Dee Dee Ramone rap.” Chris Stein speaks to Mark Blake. A lot of the rarities on Against The Odds came from your archive. Is it true you have a barn full of old tapes? “It’s actually a garage, which is a very different animal to a barn. But it’s just an accumulation of all my home recordings going back years. But I’m discovering that I don’t know everything that’s going on this damn box set (laughs).” Did they find anything you’d completely forgotten about? “Our version of the Doors song Moonlight Drive. I wasn’t aware that had even been recorded. We used to play it live and this is just us jamming during the making of the first or second LP. Whoever was recording didn’t turn the tape on immediately, so the front is missing. That, and the Sunday Girl demo, which is kind of cool.” What do you recall about Blondie’s first British tour in May 1977? “We played a warm-up gig in Bournemouth, and we weren’t used to the physical dancing. In New York there was no physical dancing. Everyone there was still in ’60s coffee-shop mode, just standing and watching. In Bournemouth we had all these people pogoing and flinging themselves around. A revelation and very exciting.” It’s said producer Mike Chapman really knocked Blondie into shape for Parallel Lines. “Ha! Mike was great and he was the right element to put into the mix at that time. Making Parallel Lines was very… repetitive. Making [the follow-up] Eat To The Beat was not as hard. But Mike was always charming and had a great bedside manner. I learned so much from him – it’s affected everything I’ve done since.” Blondie were such a New York group, but Chapman took you to LA for 1980’s Autoamerican. “I found Los Angeles interesting and atmospheric, but it was still a little bit seedy back then. All the smog and the hills on fire and these strange characters drifting by the studio. You can hear it on the record.” How is it hearing all this music again? Does your life flash before your eyes? “I’ve become used to it. I can’t differentiate, though. The albums are all movements in one large piece. It’s so long ago and these songs are so ingrained in my DNA, I go to CVS, a drugstore near me, and I hear our songs playing as muzak. I experience a strange combination of emotions.” Glen Matlock has taken your place on the current Blondie tour. Do you miss playing live? “I still like it, but I can’t tour now because of health stuff [Stein has atrial fibrillation]. But I have been doing it for years (laughs). I’ve just written my memoir which was interesting and challenging. It’s been a test remembering everything because I’ve had so many fucking experiences.” Presumably, this is the last word in Blondie box sets? “Could be. But this is just scratching the surface of my archive. I still have a lot of material people haven’t heard. I just saw a photo of the tapes in my garage prior to them being moved and it reminded me that I have a Dee Dee Ramone rap song that has never been released. Now that is pretty great.”
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Classic early-’60s soul album revived on vinyl. A familiar name to rock fans – she cut an album for Apple co-produced by George Harrison and recorded with The Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd – Troy was a preacher’s daughter who worked as an usherette at the Apollo Theater before James Brown plucked her from obscurity. Her debut single, 1963’s immortal and much-covered Just One Look, which she co-wrote, climbed to Number 10 in the US pop charts although the parent LP bearing its name had little commercial impact. But as this reissue reveals, it deserved a wider audience. Unlike many early-’60s R&B albums, it was packed with original material; eight of its 12 songs were co-written by Troy (under the name Doris Payne) and range from soulful pop excursions (What’cha Gonna Do About It?) to jaunty guitar-driven rhythm and blues tracks (Be Sure) and earthy Latin grooves (Bossa Nova Blues). Charles Waring
Ferkat Al Ard
★★★★ Oghneya
HABIBI FUNK. CD/DL/LP
Lebanese Braziliana, rarely spotted since its 1978 release. If you have been following the Fairuz reissue campaign on We Want Sounds, you’ll know Ziad Rahbani, her son/producer, who turned her music on its head by introducing outside influences. He pulls a similar trick here with Ferkat Al Ard, a Beirut-based trio of left-wing musicians/ songwriters, active at the tail end of the 1970s, who already possessed an appreciation of Brazilian pop – perhaps surprisingly, the two countries are strongly linked through migration. Over the course of eight songs, the acoustic guitars are totally bossa, the keyboards play Mediterranean jazz and the multitracked vocals inhabit a woozy fug, with a lightness to the results that suggests imminent collapse. Opener Matar Al Sabah may be one of
FLYING DUTCHMAN. CD/DL/LP
Little Feat
★★★★
Waiting For Columbus (Super Deluxe Edition) RHINO. CD/DL/LP
Director’s cut version of the US swamp-rockers’ 1978 live album. Essentially, their greatest non-hits live, Waiting For Columbus was a marking post in the Little Feat story. Mercurial guitarist Lowell George’s debilitating lifestyle and crea-
Ferkat Al Ard’s Issam Hajali: on a Lebanese jazz/Brazilian pop tip.
tive squabbles pulled them apart soon after. But LF’s Southern gumbo-meets-West Coast rock was too off kilter to ever achieve Eagles/Doobie Brothers-style chart success. This 45th-anniversary reissue puts their 1977 tour under the microscope: fleshing out the original album with previously unreleased tracks, and six bonus discs from dates in Manchester, London and Washington DC. Day At The Dog Races followed by All That You Dream summates Little Feat’s dilemma. The first is an icy jazz-rock indulgence; the second is warm and soulful. It’s the middle ground, explored on Oh Atlanta, Fat Man In The Bathtub and Dixie Chicken, where Little Feat excel, softening their virtuosity with a heartfelt groove. Music with a big stoned grin on its beardy face. Mark Blake
Moebius
★★★
Solo Works BUREAU B. CD/DL/LP
Compilation spotlights the discrete charms of Cluster and Harmonia’s late motorik minimalist. An ambient pioneer alongside Harmonia bandmates Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Michael Rother, responsible for 1974’s shimmering Musik Von Harmonia, Dieter Moebius’s sporadic solo efforts revealed a detail obsessive with something of the night about his creations. Curated by composer Asmus Tietchens, Solo Works hones in on Moebius’s unhurried, fully atmospheric approach to synths and tape loops from the minimal kosmische of Rattenwiesel and dark undercurrents of Flag, to the machine-heavy pulse of The Tracker. Less a god of repetition than an expert in layering ideas, Moebius’s evermorphing shifts in sound and rhythm rarely resorted to chasing the tails of the melodic fragments that swirled through the mix. He made an exception with his score for Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (posthumously issued in 2017), as Das Ende’s delicate coda demonstrates. Andy Cowan
Getty
the finds of the year, a beautifully orchestrated slice of West Coast-like MOR you could imagine Andy Williams taking all the way to the bank. David Hutcheon
F I LT E R R E I S SU E S Lou Reed
★★★★★
Words & Music, May 1965 LIGHT IN THE ATTIC. CD/DL/LP/MC
Velvet Underground classics of legendary transgression – folk and blues style. Much rumoured but never heard until now, Lou Reed’s ‘copyright tape’ was discovered at Reed’s office in New York shortly after his death in 2013; a five-inch tape of original material, notarised and sent in a package to himself to prove he wrote the songs contained within. And what songs they are: Waiting For The Man as a lazy, lamenting blues, Heroin as a jaunty folk song, Wrap Your Troubles In Dreams – which ended up on Nico’s first album – as an early experiment in industrial minimalism, with John Cale on atonal vocal duties. There is also Men Of Good Fortune, which sounds like a traditional ballad but appears to be an original, and the bawdy, rugby chant-like The Buttercup Song. All this displays Lou Reed pitching himself as the next Bob Dylan, before Andy Warhol and the whole Velvet Underground adventure had other plans for him. It is absolutely fascinating, and required listening for anyone who thought there could be nothing left in the VU vaults. Will Hodgkinson
Max Roach feat. Abbey Lincoln, Coleman Hawkins, Olatunji
★★★★
We Insist! Max Roach’s Freedom Now Suite CANDID. CD/DL/LP
The classic 1960 jazz ode to the civil rights movement. In the early days of the 1960s civil rights movement, drummer Max Roach gathered a group of jazz greats to contribute a statement in support of the fight to end American apartheid. At its heart is Roach’s then-wife, singer Abbey Lincoln, whose taut anger, mournful wail and painful screams literally give voice to the project. The opener is Driva’ Man, Lincoln’s spitting mad description of a slave driver, with the dissonant horn section mimicking her accusations and a sly solo by veteran tenor saxophonist Coleman Hawkins. African conga master Olatunji plus two Afro-Cuban percussionists join Roach in layering rumbling polyrhythms throughout, a tribute to the participants’ pre-American heritage (Tears For Johannesburg stresses the international theme). As the album’s
title explains, this music is not a plea, but a demand – one that remains topical. Michael Simmons
Tall Dwarfs
★★★★
Unravelled: 1981-2002 MERGE. CD/DL/LP
Melodies tumble to the fore on 55-track round-up of the lo-fi New Zealand duo. Renegades from spiky New Zealand punks The Enemy and Toy Love, Chris Knox and Alec Bathgate conducted their own sardonic, psychedelic cabaret as Tall Dwarfs, when an intended one-off EP spiralled into a two-decade-plus career. Unravelled has a strong focus on the primitive sonics and roughshod charms of their home-recorded early EPs – their limited set-up no barrier to an asylum of ideas, as obstinate melodies carve through the hollered verses of Nothing’s Going To Happen, freakfolk tartness of Maybe, compulsive electro flip-out of The Brain That Wouldn’t Die and organ-drenched euthanasia fable The Slide. While slightly slicker later efforts demand less listener immersion and carry vague echoes of Half Japanese, Ween or a less buttoned-up They Might Be Giants, the payback is still worth it. Andy Cowan
Various
★★★★
Live At WOMAD 1982 REAL WORLD. CD/DL/LP
The first ever WOMAD festival relived. The debut World Of Music, Arts And Dance weekend, held in Shepton Mallet 40 years ago, is arguably mostly remembered for the financial black hole that followed in its wake (causing festival founder Peter Gabriel to reunite with Genesis to ensure everyone was paid). Yet it should primarily be recalled for changing the musical landscape, presenting groups from 20 counties as equals (rather than ‘rock acts plus international colour’), and its eclecticism still impresses on the cuts chosen for this celebration. An avant-garde Robert Fripp is comprehensively outfripped by The Musicians Of The Nile; Echo And The Bunnymen “bring on the Burundi brothers” for Zimbo; The Chieftains and Salsa De Hoy get the dust flying; Simple Minds and Gabriel unveil new material; and both The Beat and the strong Bristolian contingent show how much ‘world’ music was already seeping into the mainstream. David Hutcheon
Great Scott!: George is the full package on his one and only album.
Lost hearts The greatest soul singer you’ve never heard of reissued for the first time. By Lois Wilson.
George Scott
★★★★★
Find Someone To Love REAL GONE MUSIC. LP
GEORGE SCOTT is one of soul music’s mystery men. Growing up dirt poor in Pineland, South Carolina, the eighth of nine children, on the strength of this, his one solo LP from 1971, he deserved to be a star. Find Someone To Love is not just a great ‘lost’ soul album but a great soul album full-stop. And yet straight after its recording Scott disappeared, never to be heard of again. (He’s not – as cited elsewhere – the George Scott who co-founded The Blind Boys Of Alabama.) Produced by Atlanta’s Johnny Brantley and issued on Brantley’s Maple label, Find Someone To Love got some radio airplay from DJ Eddie O’Jay – he provided the short linernotes on the original release – but then disappeared like Scott. The album is known today, if at all, for featuring a pre-fame Jimi Hendrix on one track: the Billy LaMont-scribed Sweet Thang, a blistering funk number recorded in ’66 with Lonnie Youngblood on horn. Scott, a screamer in the mould of Maple label-mate Lee Moses, clearly is the full package, delivering a tough, Southern-styled soul, his raw vocal fraught and urgent, framed by rough-
edged R&B garage rhythms. These 10 tracks mark him out as an Otis Redding or Wilson Pickett in the making. Half of the songs are written by brothers Edward Lewis and James Tony Lewis with Marion Farmer, producer Brantley’s go-to songwriting team at Maple – they provided Lee Moses with his scorched earth signature Time And Place. Of these, Why Is It Taking So Long, I’m A Fool For You and My Neighborhood are all devastating heartbreakers, the first-named recorded by Nate Adams in ’67 on Atlantic. Adams’ version is good, but here, Scott’s on-the-edge-of-breakdown gospel hits like a sucker punch: “Please let me back in,” he sobs. Other tracks are equally impactful; in Scott’s hands, Jimmy Norman’s Family Tree is a Northern soul dancer, perfect for night-time kicks, while This Aching Heart is a James Brown-styled slab of Live At The Apollo show-stealing. But it’s the fierce, energetic title track that sees Scott at his electrifying best. Written by Brantley and James Lewis, who had previously recorded a more tame version with The Ohio Players in ’68, Find Someone To Love captures the explosive spontaneity of an improvised vamp, an emotional delirium driven by smarting horns, lively guitar and topped with Scott’s fervent shout-outs to Johnnie Taylor and Wilson Pickett. The mystery surrounding T George Scott is likely never to G bbe solved but his LP, reissued for the first time on (green) vinyl, can finally reach the audience it deserves.
MOJO 101
The last of the bohemians: (clockwise from above) Earl McGrath kicks back in the ’70s; Hall & Oates – McGrath’s first signings; plus Closet artists Johnny Angel; Len & Betsy Greene; Terry Allen.
F I L E U N D E R ...
Earl McGrath was beloved by the grandees of art, movies and rock, yet little known outside those circles, and he stashed a trove of forgotten music. By Jim Irvin.
I
T’S HARD, they say, to accurately describe what Earl McGrath did. He did moving, he did shaking, he did living it up and hanging out. A piece in the music trade press described him as a “writer, bon vivant and confidant to tycoons”. Somewhere on his merry way he found himself at the heart of the ’70s music business, being put in charge of record labels by Ahmet Ertegun and Mick Jagger. Jagger met Jerry Hall – then dating Bryan Ferry – at one of McGrath’s soirées. He scooped her up and later hired Earl to run Rolling Stone Records. “Earl was a wonderful man,” he says, “and such an amusing companion, too.” “Bryan Ferry stopped speaking to me for a year,” McGrath noted. Born in poor circumstances in 1931, in Superior, Wyoming, McGrath left home at 14 after his abusive father broke his arm, having discovered that Earl was the result of a fling and not his child. Earl joined and left the merchant marines, hung out in the Middle East, then, arriving in LA, befriended literary luminaries WH Auden and Henry Miller. In New York he was introduced to Italian opera via Leonard Bernstein. In Italy he organised a jazz festival. By 1963, the penniless ex-marine
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enthusiasms.”
Getty, John Seakwood, Gary Krueger, Frank Pettis, Camilla McGrath
Insider dealing
Earl’s Closet: The Lost Archive Of Earl McGrath, 1970-1980 ★★★★ gathers rare and unheard music from his private collection with a marvellous, enlightening booklet written by Joe Hagan, who interviewed was married to an Italian countess and collecting fine art. A spell in Hollywood led McGrath while researching his excellent Jann Wenner biography, Sticky Fingers, to him writing film scripts. He claimed to have had the original ideas for The Monkees and came upon the titular closet crammed with tapes shortly after McGrath’s death and Saturday Night Live stolen from him. in 2016. He was a friend to Warhol, Joan Didion – This 2-LP set (also on CD and download) who dedicated her celebrated book The includes tracks by Hall & Oates – the rootsy White Album to him – Annie Leibovitz Baby Come Closer; Detroit sax legend (“He was so handsome, so seductive”), and Harrison Ford, briefly McGrath’s handyman Norma Jean Bell on the frantic disco of Just Look-Ah What You’ll Be Missing (“Let me and pot dealer, who called him, in a Vanity blow…”); the strange Steely Dan-like Little Fair obituary, “one of the last great Whisper And The Rumours’ unfinishedgentlemen and bohemians”. seeming Waiting For Me; Jim Hurt’s Many remember his ribald sense of humour. Clowning around at a party on country-soul tear-wringer Dixie Darling; New York’s Upper East Side, McGrath singer Tom Snow’s forgotten band Country (a great track called Killer); caught the attention of an punky poet Jim Carroll’s amused Ahmet Ertegun, gutsy Catholic Boy outtake sparking an instant Tension (“This methadone friendship. “He called me is like a telephone, I hear up the next day and every the voices…”); and demos day after that until he died by shoulda-been Terry 30 years later,” stated Allen and ex-Doll, McGrath, who, in 1969, David Johansen. introduced Ertegun to The An entertaining lucky Rolling Stones. In return dip of this charming Ertegun gave McGrath his man’s varied enthusiasms, own label, Clean, with third represented by the kids partner Robert Stigwood. trying to catch his attention. Their first signing was Hall “An A sweet ride from country & Oates, when they were entertaining to yacht to disco that never called Whole Oats and really got anywhere: the sounded slightly like The lucky dip of dashed desires of the 1970s Band. this charming summarised in a (limited Now this unique figure is being celebrated by reissue edition, multicoloured) man’s vinyl nutshell. label Light In The Attic.
F I LT E R R E I S SU E S
Nada Surf
★★★★ Let Go HEAVENLY. LP
20th-anniversary vinyl reissue of under-appreciated New York trio’s powerpop landmark.
Denny Zeit De itli lin
★★★★
The Name Of This Terrain NOW-AGAIN RESERVE. CD/DL/LP
Gifted psychiatrist, jazz pianist and Sesame Street scorer’s worlds collide on rare 1969 demo disc. Never intended for public consumption, it’s taken half a century for Denny Zeitlin to endorse his great lost album. A six-piece suite that takes the ‘freer’ moments of 1967’s Zeitgeist (his last for Columbia) and pitches them deep into the avant-garde, the flippedout, rock-edged likes of Gonna Take You Away, What’s In It For You? and near-13-minute title track (with its warped exhortations to “dig up the bones of your mind”) all keep multiple plates spinning at once. Wiggy wordplay aside, the complicity between Zeitlin’s electronic keyboard experiments, Mel Graves’s loping, magic carpet basslines and George Marsh’s backbeats is an improvisational wonder, foreshadowing routes taken by many modern jazz trios since. Cosmic, funky, riddled with left swerves, once heard it’s not easily forgotten. Andy Cowan
Frank Black And The Catholics
★★★
The Complete Studio Albums DEMON. LP
Carles Rodriguez Marin
Vinyl box set collects six LPs of garage-y songcraft preceding Pixies’ reunion. Several albums of beguiling tunes about UFOs having failed to endear him to a generation belatedly discovering the Pixies post-Nevermind, Frank Black changed tack in 1998. Loving the bare sonics of the two-track demos he’d recorded for his next solo album, Black released these supposed roughs as-is, establishing the back-to-basics concept for his vehicle for the next five years. The garage-y spareness and absence of overdubs on the six albums collected herein showcase Black the crafting songsmith, rather than Black the bansheescreaming freak, but he’s on strong form throughout. There’s some vintage lyricism on display, too, from His Kingly Cave’s autobiographical tale of
BACK IN 2002, when Let Go was released by Heavenly in the UK, Nada Surf were an almost forgotten band. Six years earlier, singer/guitarist Matthew Caws, bassist Daniel Lorca and ex-Fuzztones drummer Ira Elliot were MTV darlings, their videos for Popular and Treehouse in heavy rotation. But dropped by Elektra in 1998 for no longer making MTV singles, the New York trio licked their wounds, consolidated and used their own tour money to record this, their finest record. The best kind of powerpop, where damaged bachelor tales of romantic failure, self-pity and 24-hour drunkenness are invested with sweet harmonies, and uplifting melodies of underserved romanticism. Reissued across four sides of vinyl Let Go now sounds bigger, warmer, while its songs of youthful excess have seemingly grown richer and more complex with age: time investing their songs with a profound euphoric melancholy.
Raw powerpop: Nada Surf’s songs have a profound euphoric melancholy.
Andrew Male
visiting Graceland while tripping on mushrooms, to I Love Your Brain’s chivalrous poesy: “When I saw your fine physique I was into you like a train”, which is perversely hilarious enough to be an outtake from Surfer Rosa. Stevie Chick
the ineptitude of their NYC DJ interlocutor notwithstanding, suggests GAOB! were not wholly innocent parties in their demise. John Aizlewood
The Wolfhounds
Girls At Our Best!
★★★★
Bright And Guilty
★★★★
OPTIC NERVE. DL/LP
Pleasure
Romford indie-rockers’ 1989 sophomore LP plus extras.
CHERRY RED. CD
First (and last) album from long-lost Leeds post-punks. They came from the fringes of the late’70s alternative Leeds scene. After four dazzling singles and the album Pleasure, Girls At Our Best! went straight back there. What precisely happened remains a mystery, but 41 years after it tickled the underbelly of the ‘proper’ charts, Pleasure remains a post-punk joy overflowing with invention and soaring melodies. Based around Judy Evans’s winsome Marine Girls-style vocals (she’d later pop up on a Thomas Dolby album), a ferocious energy and James Alan’s penchant for an irresistible tune, they seemed destined for great things, rather than the abyss which enveloped them. This three-disc version adds all the singles (including their absolute peak, the fabulous Go For Gold), Radio 1 sessions, demos and Edinburgh and New York concerts of variable sound quality. There’s also a car-crash interview, which,
when Brötzmann pulls a neardiaphanous birdsong from the melee of Kurtlar or when he and Korhan Futacı launch into reed plea that yearns like raw gospel on Tepe. Amid the tumult, spirits rejoice. Grayson Haver Currin
Konstrukt + Peter Brötzmann
★★★★ Dolunay
KARLRECORDS. LP
Four young Turks and their German inspiration walk into a studio… For 14 years, amorphous Turkish outfit Konstrukt have released a string of collaborations with a murderers’ row of heated improvisers – Thurston Moore, Keiji Haino, and William Parker, just to sample. Impetuous and enthusiastic, heavy and hard, Konstrukt emphasise the abandon possible within free jazz. It’s a thrill, then, to hear them in their earliest days alongside the saxophonist powerhouse who helped to trailblaze this field of fierce inquiry, Peter Brötzmann. These six tracks, cut late in 2008 when Konstrukt was very new, roil and then boil, explode into riots of competing interests, and caterwaul until they collapse. But the revelatory moments are the more cantered ones, as
Bright And Guilty’s cover was a riotous collage of images and phrases, including “it’s freedom and it’s prison”, “instant happiness” and “you do not know your place”. One of the C86 generation’s better singers – abrasive, sharp and nasally – and arguably its finest lyricist, Dave Callahan was fuelled by equal amounts of political bile and emotional baggage; in support, the quintet meshed choppy and lean post-punk with garage rock, like a younger Fall, or a proto-Fontaines D.C. Happy Shopper and Ropeswing showed their breezier pop chops; the latter is the source of the album title (“We told stories that were all lies… About how bright and guilty the world really was out there”), decrying the false promises of yuppie culture. Callahan’s vision was out of sync with his more prosaic C86 peers, but totally in step with 2022, making this a timely reissue. Martin Aston
Tony Joe White
★★★★
The Beginning NEW WEST. CD/DL/LP
First time on vinyl for the late swamp-bluesman’s 2001 self-released solo LP. White was in his late sixties and 29 albums into his career when he went into the studio with producer son Jody and recorded a gem of an LP, entirely solo, just voice, stomping foot and guitar. Here it is remixed, its tracks now in a different order and one of its 11 songs (Clovis Green) missing. Still a great record though. Stark and raw with the feel of a field recording, or an empty bar. So intimate sometimes it sounds like he’s beside you on a front porch chair, singing in a deep, dark voice on a hot, black night. His guitar playing on these blues songs (best: Who You Gonna Hoo-Doo Now; Ice Cream Man; Rich Woman Blues) is both light-fingered and swampy. Unveiled, we see another side of him too: the coffee-house folk of Drifter; the soft folk guitar and Tex-Mexness of South Of The Border. As he sings his mission statement on Rebellion: “I don’t give a damn about the formula… I play this guitar any way I want.” Sylvie Simmons
MOJO 103
F I LT E R R E I S SU E S
Finn
NEEDLE MYTHOLOGY. CD/DL/LP
First vinyl release for Tim and Neil’s duo debut.
Various
★★★
Happy In Hollywood ACE. CD/DL
Cherry pick of Gary Usher productions spanning 1964 to ’87. LA’s Gary Usher helped develop ‘the California sound’ with a warm production style that typically features tight harmonies and lush orchestration. At the birth of surf rock, folk rock and sunshine pop, he enjoyed a close relationship with Brian Wilson, The Byrds and Curt Boettcher, all whom feature on this 24-track spotlight on his work; the first-named with 1987 solo comeback Let’s Go To Heaven In My Car, the lastnamed as a part of California, whose 1976 single lends this compilation its title.
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Maria De Fátima
Paul McCartney
Rhythm Revolution
Bahia Com H
McCartney
★★★★
★★★★
ACID JAZZ. CD/DL/LP
★★★★
When Capitol Records initially rejected Crowded House’s third album, 1991’s Woodface, Neil Finn asked brother Tim if he could repurpose co-writes from recent sessions for their stand-alone duo project. In 1995 the remainder of those sessions emerged, re-recorded, as Finn, Neil’s (and Tim’s) blurry but brilliant first post-House outing together. As great as the original Finn is – and it is great– the reissue fascination is Disc 2’s demos of songs largely sacrificed to Woodface. How Will You Go, It’s Only Natural, a less smug There Goes God, and forever hits Four Seasons In One Day and Weather With You are already wondrous, awaiting only bigger but not always better production; Catherine Wheels appeared on 1993’s Together Alone; two more surfaced in better nick on Tim’s 1993 solo album Before And After. A masterclass in polishing an underrated gem to a regal lustre. Andy Fyfe
Ferry Djimmy
★★★★
Putting the party into the People’s Revolutionary Party Of Benin, this high-energy cocktail of psych guitar, keyboards, brass and Afro-funk was funded by Benin’s leadership in 1975. While it failed to ignite the youth then, it’s likely to induce blissful abandon in funk fans now. JB
ALTERCAT. DL/LP
CAPITOL/UMG/MPL. CD/LP
A revered backing singer with Flora Purim, Milton Nascimento, Marcos Valle and Arthur Verocai, Maria De Fátima only recorded one solo LP, this unique 1981 blend of ethereal bossa, synthesized tropicália and MPB pop grooves, all anchored by De Fátima’s seductive vocals. AM
The ‘McCartney’ trilogy in a box more lavish than either McCartney or McCartney III’s cherished recordings. Separated by 50 years, they bookend 1980 cult fave McCartney II, with its delirious early-electro vibe, later yielding noughties dancefloor cut Temporary Secretary. JB
Nick Power
Various
Various
Caravan
Ban The Bomb
Catch A-Fire: Treasure Isle Ska 1963-65
Various
★★★★
Ska La-Rama: Treasure Isle Ska 1965-1966 DOCTOR BIRD. CD
Duke Reid’s top ska killers, with bonus outtakes disc. In the early days of Jamaican popular music, Studio One was the home of ska and Treasure Isle the foreground of rocksteady, but this exceptional 2-CD compilation of Treasure Isle ska reminds that Duke Reid produced plenty of excellent ska too. With the bulk of The Skatalites on board, Tommy McCook’s Rocket Ship, Roland Alphonso and Baba Brooks’ Nuclear Weapon and Don Drummond’s Thoroughfare (Treasure Island) are the equal of any Studio One ska instrumental, while Stranger Cole’s Run Joe and The Zodiacs’ Renegade are singalong favourites. Better still, Disc 2 treats us to 26 previously unreleased gems, taken from unearthed master tapes, the alternate versions and omitted outtakes allowing fresh insight on the creation of classics such as Baba Brooks’ Guns Fever, Lyn Taitt’s Storm Warning, and Justin Hinds’s Rasta epic, Peace And Love. David Katz
COMING NEXT MONTH...
Wilco, Beth Orton, Dr. John, Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, Neu!, Marlon Williams, Marisa Anderson, Suede, Stereolab, Lambchop (pictured), Miles Davis, Neil Young and more.
★★★★
★★★
★★★
AV8. DL/LP
CHERRY RED. CD
Gorgeous orange vinyl reissue of The Coral keyboard player’s 2017 semi-concept album (it soundtracks a book of poems), apparently “recorded for £0” in a static caravan park in North Wales. A rough-edged collection of hushed and lonesome 3am ballads that quietly gets under your skin. AM
‘Music From The Aldermaston Anti-Nuclear Marches’, where CND galvanised middle-class Brits in 1958. Folk protest song (Ewan MacColl, Peggy Seeger) meets popular jazz (Ken Colyer’s Jazzmen). Actress Sheila Hancock and poet Sydney Carter provide gentle theme song, Coming Down From Aldermaston. JB
Various
Various
Paul Weller
The Saravah Sound
22 Dreams
★★★★
★★★
Down & Out NTS. DL/LP
Taken from 1970s US and UK private press releases, this collection of loner folk obscurities is both beautiful, haunting and terrifying. Compilers Bruno Halper and Samuel Strang have wisely gone for an overall mood; one where lonesomeness and singularity can easily slide into the unsettling. AM
DOCTOR BIRD. CD
More great ska from Duke Reid & Co: a predecessor to the Ska La-Rama (see opposite). Many are on CD for the first time, including melodic instrumentals Donkey City Parts 1 & 2 from trumpeter Baba Brooks and Glen Adams’s cautionary groover, Look Before You Leap. JB
★★★★★
WE WANT SOUNDS. CD/DL/LP
UNIVERSAL. LP
Sixteen-track overview of Pierre Barouh’s groundbreaking ’60s and ’70s label, best known as the home of French chanteuse Brigitte Fontaine. Everything from pop and soul to weird and astonishing jazz, underground, African and Brazilian grooves. We Want Sounds can do no wrong at the moment. AM
Weller’s ninth solo album, released in 2008, ushered in a daring new experimental phase, with electronica and spoken word augmenting established folk, soul and psychedelic vibes. Here, the chart-topping careerlivener is reproduced in its original double vinyl format with poster and booklet. PG
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
Sophie Hur
Finn
Sagittarius’s My World Fell Down, recorded in 1967 before Boettcher joined, captures Usher at his most experimental – an avant-garde sound collage, it features Glen Campbell on lead vocal. Usher is at his most commercial, meanwhile, on The Surfaris’ Catch A Little Ride With Me, an archetypal fairground song from ’65. Lois Wilson
REISSUES EXTRA
Soul to soil: Wilderness America mastermind David Riordan (left) with (middle) co-producer Peter Scott and musician Tom Salisbury.
B U R I E D T R E A SU R E CREDITS
The Gaia Sermon Sprouting this month from rock obscuria’s compost heap, a folk/ jazz/synth eco-suite for the world.
Various
Wilderness America, A Celebration Of The Land PRIVATE PRESS, 1975
A
David Riordan
MONG THE sobering challenges the 21st century presents, the need to protect the natural world is increasingly urgent. In the middle ’70s, time of the mysterious death of nuclear whistleblower Karen Silkwood, the publication of Edward Abbey’s eco-anarchist novel The Monkey Wrench Gang, and the growing environmental awareness of such artists as Neil Young, Stevie
who’d previously produced promotional records in Warehouse Sound’s in-house studio. “David was very passionate about saving our environment long before it was fashionable,” Branch told writer, designer and DJ Paul Hillery in 2020. Riordan, a Berkeley-raised ex-beatnik and folk guitarist, had tuned onto the psychedelic currents of mid-’60s San Francisco with his bands The
Tracks: Dawn/ Metropolis/Water Cycle/Mountain/ Manchild/Flight Of The Egret/ Windsong/Before I’m Gone/Manchild Reprise Personnel: David Riordan (vocals and guitar), Caryn Robin, Walter Hawkins (vocals), Lee Ritenour, John Blakeley, Pete Maunu (guitar), Rob Moitoza, Doug Lunn, David Dunaway (bass), Harvey Mason, Gaylord Birch (drums), Mike Melvoin, Ed Bogas, Tom Salisbury (keyboards), Iasos (synths), Mel Martin, Dan Patiris, John H. Krueger, Jr. (horns), various string players, percussionists, flautists and backing vocalists, John McFee (pedal steel), Patrick Gleeson, (arranging, conducting), wolves and whales (themselves). Producer: David Riordan and Peter Scott/Cliff Branch (executive producer) Released: 1975 Recorded: Beggs/ AZ, Different Fur Music, Wally Heider’s Studio C (all San Francisco), Golden West Recorders (Los Angeles) Available: Ebalunga!!! CD/LP reissue
Electric, who became The
1968. Later he co-wrote Sugarloaf ’s 1970 US chart hit Green-Eyed Lady and made two LPs with rockers Sweet Pain. Yet by the mid ’70s he was growing unenthused with music: remained a more atomised, grass roots affair. “Airplay was being governed more by One such ground level activist who sought watered-down national playlists and it just lost to widen and promote the struggle was Emily some of the magic for me,” he told Hillery in DeSpain Polk, the poet and conservationist 2019. “I just didn’t have any desire for the born in Washington state in 1910. In 1971 corporate media circus.” she founded SWAP, or Small This project, clearly, was a Wilderness Area Preservation, world away from such things. to prevent the bulldozing of As well as producing, Riordan ancient Californian woodland would sing, play guitar and for development. Shortly after, write six of the album’s nine with a grant from the Bank Of songs. Elsewhere, such America’s charitable foundaseasoned players as Herbie tion, she hit upon the idea of, Hancock/Santana drummer “a musical exploration of our Gaylord Birch, jazz guitar and place within the cycle of living Floyd collaborator Lee things.” To help assemble what Ritenour, and Wrecking Crew would become the consciouskeysman Mike Melvoin (father ness-raising album Wilderness “I just of Prince foils Susannah, America, A Celebration Of The didn’t have Wendy and Jonathan) would Land, she asked Cliff Branch be channelled into an of San Luis Obisbo’s mail-orany desire eco-narrative of particular for the Sound Co if he knew any focus and enlivening stylistic likely candidates. breadth. “All my life, my corporate He immediately suggested writing retreats were always in media his friend David Riordan, natural places,” Riordan told
circus.”
DAVID RIORDAN
Hillery. “I wrote most of the lyrics for this album on a road trip through all my favourite western US nature places. So, this was a theme close to my heart.” Recorded mainly in San Francisco, it’s a concept piece with a clear narrative thrust. The work of Greek-American New Age pioneer Iasos, opener Dawn rises from the primordial ocean on the day of creation: there’s darkness on the face of the deep, until lighthouse beams of synth begin to trace the skies. Suddenly, with Metropolis, we’re oppressed in the gritty modern city, with gospel voice Walter Hawkins (brother of Edwin, leader of The Edwin Hawkins Singers) singing of alienated soul-sickness over urbane funk with strings. With songs linked by the sounds of birdsong and running water, and instrumental pieces that take in sylvan balms for orchestra and swinging folk-jazz, further conceptual weight is borne by a Riordan song-sequence addressing humankind’s dependence on and estrangement from nature. Sung breathily by the producer, the soft rocking, acoustic Mountain sees the divine fecundity in the eternal landscape (“she whispers gentle warnings as she stands against the skies… I am a dwarf within her halls”) and, climactically, recognises the destruction that ignoring it will bring. Sung by Caryn Robin, Manchild is a sweet country soul lament where Mother Earth asks her wayward, consumption-addicted child to come home, and asks, “is it really all that bad to be a part of me?” As enlightenment settles in, the sunshine pop chorus of Windsong seeks to renounce the city and rejoin the endless symphony of nature, while mellow, denimy upliftment Before I’m Gone turns outwards again, acknowledging the work to come and making common cause with all: “before I’m-a-gone, I’d like to see us turn the corner, give up being spoilers of the land.” The calls of wolves and whales – serendipitously in the same key as the song – complete the vista. Released in early 1975 via a variety of environmental groups, organisations including Friends Of The Sea Otter and sales. Yet Riordan considered the album his farewell to songwriting and recording. “The end had been coming for a while. I did not want to go back on the road and I was beginning to think my new songs were stale,” he told Hillery. “I saw [the album] as sort of a swan song.” He later worked in emerging media with in Hollywood. While some of Wilderness America’s songs, in particular Metropolis, have emerged on deep-digging compilations, the album can once more be appreciated in full with a new reissue on Austria’s Ebalunga!!! label. Its message remains timely and its delivery beauteous – even on vinyl and CD. Ian Harrison Interviews and research by Paul Hillery, curator at mix series Folk Funk & Trippy Troubadours. For more on David Riordan see tinyurl.com/ ms7hfvyr. Paul’s comp We Are The Children Of The Sun is out now on BBE. MOJO 105
The Proprietor: Steve Albini, brilliant yet unknowable.
Shellac 10 Excellent Italian Greyhound TOUCH AND GO, 2007
You say: “See Shellac live and you’ll realise how funny and weird and clever they are. This is the best showcase for that.” Lou Murrison, mojo4music.com
Big Black to Shellac, the Chicagoan iconoclast’s own recordings. By Andrew Male.
This month you chose your Top 10 Steve Albini LPs. Next month we want your Staples (Singers/Mavis/ Pops) Top 10. Send selections via Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or e-mail to mojo@ bauermedia.co.uk with the subject ‘How To Buy Staples’. We’ll print the best comments.
for “a sharp, zinging attack”. When Big Black folded in 1987, they had become popular, the aggressive sound, misanthropic lyrics and coiled, skinny violence of E KNEW Big Black were going to be their live performances attracting making ugly, obscene music,” Steve Albini told Toronto filmmaker Daniel what Albini called “people [who saw] your music as an expression Sarkissian in 2020, “noisy music [with] limited of their ugliness and hatred.” appeal… There was no point in entertaining notions Rather than mitigate that of popularity.” Initially conceived as a one-man response, Albini doubled down. project in 1981 in Chicago, Illinois, where Steve His next group, formed with Scratch Acid rhythm Albini was a journalism student at Northwestern University, Big Black began as an exercise in dissident section David Sims and Rey Washam, were named Rapeman, after a Japanese superhero manga comic. misanthropy, inspired by the aggressive electronic It was, Albini now admits publicly, an inexcusable act minimalism of Tuxedomoon and Cabaret Voltaire; of provocation. Perhaps appropriately, that group split out-of-phase cheesewire guitars and militaristic due to incompatible intra-band tensions, and Albini machine rhythms allied to Albini’s in-character formed the group he’s been associated with ever lyrics, nightmare reportage from the dark heart since, Shellac. of a corrupted America. Recorded during downtime from his full-time job However, as Albini himself insists, the ‘group’ as a recording engineer at his Electrical Audio studio didn’t truly exist until he was joined by guitarist complex in Chicago, Shellac are a hobby, an ongoing Santiago Durango of Chicago punk band experiment in the power of analogue recording and Naked Raygun, and later, bassist Dave Riley. what Albini has called “a 100-year The Big Black sound developed around the high, chiming train-yard commitment”. Shellac have recorded wail of Durango’s Telecaster guitar just five official studio LPs in 30 “There was – played through a distortion pedal years, yet each one is worthy of no point in and a Fender Twin amp – the ownership and comment. What relentless attack of the Roland we’ve tried to do here is place those entertaining TR-606 drum machine and Riley’s records in the context of his entire notions of bass sound, marinaded in the cosmic career in a way that hopefully makes slop influences of Funkadelic. Albini artistic sense, and, in the process, popularity.” heightened the high-tensile sound by single out what makes Albini such a issuing twin-headed thin-copper continually thrilling and iconoclastic music maker. guitar picks that hit the strings twice
“W
106 MOJO
4 Shellac 1000 Hurts TOUGH AND GO, 2000
You say: Is this Shellac’s most brilliant, most misunderstood record? There is an acoustic Frank Turner cover of Prayer To God that would support this opinion.” Nick Wickham, mojo4music.com Lyrically, with the misanthropic Prayer To God (“Just fucking kill him, I don’t care if it hurts”) and anti-JFK rant Canaveral (“Stick his cock in my wife/ What on Earth could make him stoop so low?”), 1000 Hurts moved away from At Action Park’s notebook abstractions to something more akin to Big Black’s jaundiced worldview. Yet while Albini himself believes “we somehow [got] into a nasty cul-de-sac on some of those songs”, the results are more wry than previously, helped by a clear yet complex band sound that suggests a supercharged Meat Puppets; Trainer and Weston invest everything with a taut yet exhilarating brute power.
Tibor Bozi/Redux/eyevine
Steve Albini
CAST YOUR VOTES…
Shellac’s fourth LP (seven years after 1000 Hurts) is the group’s most experimental and arch and finds them in what Albini calls “light-hearted” mode. It repurposes The End Of Radio as an even more sparse and desperate cry for help (“there is no special girl!”), repeatedly stops and starts in its quest for purpose, quotes from Fugazi’s final LP The Argument, and in Genuine Lulabelle features a nine-minute nightmare Child Ballad interspersed by exploratory guitar and drum hammering, and the voice of Word Jazz poet Ken Nordine. Not a starting point for the uninitiated, but once you’re into Shellac’s world it’s great to hear them fuck things up like this.
H OW T O B U Y
Black 9PartyBig The Hammer HOMESTEAD/TOUCH AND GO, 1986
You say: “Racer X is a good ’un, and relatively overlooked. Love that cosmic industrial guitar sound.” Joe Banks @JoebanksWriter, via Twitter This protean Big Black primer includes 1982’s solo Albini EP Lungs, plus 1983 Bulldozer EP with Naked Raygun’s Jeff Pezzati on bass and Pat Byrne assisting on the Roland TR-606, plus 1984’s Racer-X EP in which Byrne is ousted. The Lungs home-recordings are aggressive, distorted, mechanical but also very funny (“I’m a bricklayer/I kill what I eat!”). Thanks to Byrne’s drums, and the lack of distortion on Albini’s vocals, Bulldozer sounds echoing, chilly, hopeless. On Racer-X the use of the Roland is minimal, ruthless, perfectly suited to Albini’s tales of hired killers, speedaddicted delivery drivers, and weasel barroom cowards.
Shellac 8Shellac The End Of Radio 7Terraform TOUCH AND GO, 2019
TOUCH AND GO, 1998
You say: “The closest you can get to hearing how exciting they are in concert.” MW Carden, mojo4music.com
You say: “Shellac take their time, stretch their legs, open up a little after the dry claustrophobia of Action Park. Funny, brittle, perfect.” @ cowsarejustfood, via Twitter
Culled from the band’s two BBC Peel Sessions, recorded a decade apart in 1994 and 2004, this is a document of band evolution. Straight from the opening cry of “Radio 1, play the drums!”, their debut session, recorded just prior to cutting At Action Park, is an absolute joy, the sound of Shellac as a (relatively) loose heavy rock trio. The 2004 session, a precursor to 2007’s Excellent Italian Greyhound, recorded live shortly after Peel’s unexpected death, is loose, improvised and continuously startling. It also features Shellac masterpiece The End Of Radio in its finest form, a valedictory, postmodern, sometimes comic farewell to broadcast radio, repurposed as a salute to Peel himself.
Their most underrated work, thanks, in part, to the divisive opening track, the eerily hypnotic 12-minute mantra of space, sound and rhythm Didn’t We Deserve A Look At You The Way You Really Are. Checkout after that track and you miss arguably Shellac’s finest-sounding record. Recorded at Abbey Road, utilising their collection of vintage microphones, it’s a warm, crunchy, aggressive collection of wry disquisitions, from the prowling, self-explanatory House Full Of Garbage to a wry tribute to Canada (“Imagine a country so blue/Backwards it’s “adanaC") and Copper, Albini’s Ken Nordine-esque paean to a “decent” material that “will never be gold”.
Rapeman 6Shellac Dude Incredible 5A Pack Two Nuns And Mule TOUCH AND GO, 2014
You say:“This is how I like my Shellac: no fat, all power, but rich and complex – delicious.” Ben Sharp, via e-mail
Seven years on from the contrary and occasionally indulgent Excellent Italian Greyhound, Shellac returned in lean and healthy form with these 30 minutes of precise, controlled and surprisingly warm-sounding withholdand-release strafe-attacks. With its songs about dangerous group dynamics (Dude Incredible; Riding Bikes) and Founding Fathers (All The Surveyors; Mayor/ Surveyor; Surveyor), there may also be a conceptual coherence to Dude Incredible operating just below the surface, something to do with American ownership and collective violence, but the integrity is there in the music, even if it’s hidden in the words.
TOUCH AND GO, 1988
You say: “When I read he was teaming up with SA’s rhythm section I was very excited and it didn’t disappoint… caught them live, off me noggin on mushrooms.” @ MarkAlexPreston, via Twitter While this might justifiably be the most overlooked Albinirelated release, thanks to that conceptually reprehensible band name (see intro), it’s also one of the strongest, and strangest. At first, it’s hard to find a location within the group’s alien sound. Albini’s distorted vocals seem too buried in the mix, the guitars too sharp to the point of piercing, while Sims and Washam’s bass and drums strike like blunt instruments. The band split due to tensions between Sims and Washam and Albini’s own hubris. That stress, agitation, arrogance and power-play is all part of the Rapeman sound.
NOW DIG THIS
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2
TOUCH AND GO, 1987
TOUCH AND GO, 2015
You say: “Cortex-crushing songs full of repressed anger, hurt and rage. A chastening listen!” DC Kneath, Swansea, via e-mail
You say: “Kerosene is monstrous: an almost-but-notquite-entirely caged explosion of rawness, rage & pain. My favourite thing he’s done by far.” @MatthewJLyons, via Twitter
Big Black Songs About Fucking
Released amid the PMRC’s attempts to police explicit releases, Songs About Fucking is Big Black’s purposely incendiary farewell. The reductio ad absurdum title also applies to the album’s sound, which took the Atomizer template and represented it as the blackest of self-parodies, showcasing the group at their absolute peak in their final throes. Side one (‘Happy Otter’, a manga term for an erect penis), road-tested live, is short, brutal, unassailable. The second side (‘Sad Otter’ = flaccid penis) features astonishing highs but was, the band later admitted, a forced exercise in finding their voice. “We realised there were [only] a finite number of ideas we could explore as Big Black.”
Big Black The Rich Man’s Eight Track Tape
The 2015 remaster, not the brittle original. A compilation of 1986 debut LP Atomizer, plus the Headache EP/Heartbeat 7-inch from the following year. It still sounds like nothing else. Kerosene, My Disco, and Jordan, Minnesota soundtrack the horrors and desperations of small-town American life (paedophilia, self-immolation, infanticide) with pummelling, raw, brutalising, metal-onmetal noise, while Big Money, Things To Do Today and Pete, King Of The Detectives placed us in Albini’s nightmare noir landscape of hired killers, deadbeat gumshoes and corrupt cops. A complete, terrifying world fully realised.
1
Shellac At Action Park
TOUCH AND GO, 1994
You say: “This record contains Albini’s best and most ‘pop ’ songs.” Dan Wolff @Torrence79, via Twitter As statement of intent, the debut LP from Steve Albini, bassist Bob Weston and drummer Todd Trainer takes some beating. Right from the opening track, the elastic crunch and grind of My Black Ass, here was a sound both familiar and unknown, the power trio model refitted with tungsten exo-skeleton, moving with unnerving, unreadable poly rhythmic precision. It is the sound of machines performing some horrible, never-to-be-defined action with relentless purpose, while the lyrics are abstract, overheard narratives plucked from the edge of reason. Allied to Albini’s jagged sawtooth guitar, Weston’s dread-purpose elastic bass and Trainer’s hieroglyphic drum patterns, they combine to suggest something vast, cinematic, brilliant yet unknowable.
As @GlenShadey on Twitter writes, “For a great sense of Big Black’s live metallic attack you can’t beat the semibootleg Sound Of Impact LP.” The early Shellac 1993 singles are still awaiting compilation and contain, in The Guy Who Invented Fire, Rambler Song, Billiard Player Song, Doris and Wingwalker, five of their finest tracks. 1997’s Futurist, recorded for Montreal dance troupe La La La Human Steps, is two-sides of rhythmic gnarl, the Shellac undercoat before colours are added. There are no definitive Albini books, though the Big Black chapter in Michael Azerrad’s Our Band Could Be Your Life is excellent. On recent YouTube interviews Albini talks engagingly about record production, the music business and his ongoing moral enlightenment. See also Stories From The Felt, about his rebirth as a championship poker player, and Lil Bub’s Big Show Episode 3, in which Steve is interviewed by late celebrity cat, Lil Bub.
MOJO 107
All lined up: The Kinks (from left) Ray Davies, Mick Avory, John Dalton, Dave Davies.
WHAT WE’VE LEARNT In 1965 Dave had “an intense affair” with Ready Steady Go! presenter Michael Aldred, who “reminded me of a young Dirk Bogarde, with his dark good looks and deep brown eyes filled with mystery.” ● Briefly considered to replace Mick Avory, future Jimi Hendrix drummer Mitch Mitchell moved into Dave’s house. “He was obsessed with pigeons, and kept a flock in the bedroom. The whole place stank. He had to go.” ● During The Kinks’ ill-fated 1965 US tour, the Springfield, Illinois show was promoted by John Wayne Gacy, the ‘Killer Clown’ later executed for 33 murders: “He threw us a party and I thought he was a really nice guy. Which shows what a good judge of character I was.” ● Dave has been a Trekkie since 1966. ● A keen footballer, Dave played with the Showbiz Eleven: “Tommy Steele was a very effective winger.” ●
Some brothers do ’ave ’em Second, more thoughtful autobiography from the younger Kink. By Mat Snow.
Living On A Thin Line ★★★★ Dave Davies HEADLINE. £20
I
N JUNE 2004, aged 57, Dave Davies, Kinks guitarist and younger brother of the more famous Ray, collapsed with a stroke. “Lying in hospital for all those weeks handed me a
addresses not just who he is but the very meaning of life. Where Kink was a product of its era’s Lad Culture – all booze, pills, broken glass and hapless groupies puked up on –
guitars, and even a version with barrelhouse piano.
Dave was already trying to process extraordinary experiences involving extra-terrestrials, spirit guides and psychic energy; now it all coheres more persuasively.
those earlier attempts did
smoothly written, Kink has the edge for the Kinks kronicle kompletist. However, where
of nailing Dedicated Follower Of Fashion merit a cursory summary in Kink, we now get this recollection: “I never thought that song years earlier in 1997 he’d published Kink, would lead anywhere when he a hair-raising memoir of brought it along – it sounded hell-raising days, now out of “I never overly frivolous to me, and we went through hell trying to crisis 50, he’s now a relatively thought serene 75, and in this shorter, Dedicated more thoughtful autobiograthe sound he had in his head, phy he develops some Follower nor communicating what he interesting insights and would lead wanted to the rest of us. We connections as he evolves tried different combinations of a personal philosophy that anywhere.”
Getty
in 1964,” he writes.
DAVE DAVIES 108 MOJO
Ray, and eventually we stumbled towards a solution through trial and
sardonic lyric and it was decided that the guitars needed to be clanky and mechanistic, like George Formby’s cheeky ukulele sound, then – bingo! – it worked.” two can’t be disentangled), you also have the life – one driven by emotion rather than cool is his lost teenage love Sue and the misguided conspiracy by both families to split them apart and deny him fatherhood to their daughter since seem largely to have healed the wound. f course, is Ray. Bonded by brotherhood, their lifelong shared experience complicated genius and to overcome some sentments.
F I LT E R B O O K S
B
i Od
★★★★
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Simon Goddard OMNIBUS PRESS. £20
Goddard’s ’lectric eye tells the story of Ziggy’s UK breakthrough year. Book Three in the once-a-year retelling of the Bowie story takes us to 1972, the year of Ziggy of course. Too young to remember first-hand, Goddard deploys a novelistic approach backed up by a forensic attention to the detail of the period, as Bowie’s otherworldly music is set against the very worldly backdrop of power cuts, crippling unemployment and commonplace street violence. Goddard’s literary bent is displayed early on when one chapter, describing Bowie and the Spiders’ trip to watch A Clockwork Orange in January of the year, is written completely in Nadsat. The real-life cast of characters that year is a godsend, as Iggy Pop, Mott The Hoople and Lou Reed all walk through Bowie’s cluttered personal life, making 1972 a much richer source for stories than the previous two years in the season. The year ends with Bowie in America, his music changing, “harder and scarier, not the light dreamy Ziggy of Starman but the dirty sex Ziggy of The Jean Genie.” A semantically intense but always engaging book. David Buckley
Incidental Contact
★★★★
Jim White
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STUFFED MONKEY PUBLICATIONS. £16
Memoir of the former surf champ, model and taxidriving Wrong-Eyed Jesus. “Beautiful, weird dark stuff”, is how David Byrne describes this remarkable book. Oh to be a fly on the wall watching Byrne read the bits about himself, likely the darkest, weirdest, story of a labelsigning ever. White is a natural storyteller and has the strangest stories to tell. His memoir doesn’t start at the beginning – actually it starts, and ends, with two different parts of the middle, about a wild pig, a crazy ex and
hurricanes – and slips back and forth chronologically as all manner of paranormal synchronicities put paid to the time-space continuum (including a very odd Nick Cave story). The more harrowing tales concern his years as a poor, mentally damaged, suicidally-depressed New York taxi driver, with a savant’s knowledge of its traffic lights and all of human/ inhuman life in his backseat. Some make their way into songs. Fascinating, philosophical and unputdownable. Sylvie Simmons
The Sound Of The Machine: My Life In Kraftwerk And Beyond
★★★
Karl Bartos OMNIBUS PRESS. £20
A human-after-all MenschMachine gives his side. Had neon signs cost less, we learn, the classic Kraftwerk line-up may have seen a member billed on-stage as ‘Karlheinz’. His name truncated, endearing narrator Karl Bartos would play an essential creative role in the group’s mighty Gesamtkunstwerk for 16 years. Fulsomely bookended by pre- and post-KW activities, this 634-page “travel journey through time” – sparked in part by what he sees as a partial re-editing of the legacy – is how he saw it. Punctuated with technical album-byalbum breakdowns, its personal perspectives aren’t gossipy like bandmate Wolfgang Flür’s I Was A Robot, but do afford a thorough glimpse behind the curtain, with chief operators Hütter and Schneider seemingly unable to grasp the loss of momentum that followed 1981’s Computer World. Other revelations include Elton John wanting to work with them, the group going to see the Eagles together, and Ralf and Florian’s golf obsession, sadly never realised as a Tour De France-style concept piece. Ian Harrison
Paper Cuts
★★★★
Ted Kessler WHITE RABBIT. £18.99
Subtitle: How I Destroyed The British Music Press And Other Misadventures. MOJO contributor Ted Kessler was the last editor of our sister magazine, Q, before its Covidsped closure in 2020, and his memoir is a bid to make sense of how he, and we, got there. From a feral
youth spent partly in France, he moves through McJobs and music epiphanies (cf. The Cramps at L’Eldorado, Paris) until finding not just work, but something more like sanctuary in ’90s music magazines. Kessler describes their mores and denizens with a love that rises headily off the page (indie maven Steve Lamacq, we’re told, has the “face of a Victorian pickpocket, voice like a Galaxy bar”), and he tackles the forces and business decisions that subsequently undermined his utopia with clarity and a resonant sadness. What makes his Decline Of The Music Press more compelling than most is how it is humanised. Readers in many ‘disrupted’ industries in 2022 – not just Kessler’s – will empathise. Danny Eccleston
P.P. Arnold
★★★
Soul Survivor NINE EIGHT BOOKS. £20
Rollercoaster memoir of the renaissance woman Ikette. P.P. Arnold’s jaw-dropping memoir begins with a startling anecdote of how she found fame as a teen. Badly beaten by her husband, she begs her parents to take her two kids so she can complete an undercover audition to be an Ikette. Then her life does a dazzling, 180-degree turn. Soul Survivor rockets us through Arnold’s years with Tina and Ike Turner, orgies with Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithfull, and the making of her ambitious, orchestral 1968 solo debut, Kafunta. She pulls
h b t th i she faced or the tragedies she overcame after that, all while recording vocals on immortal albums like Nick Drake’s Bryter Later and Peter Gabriel’s So. The storytelling sometimes meanders, but Arnold’s resilience sparkles throughout, as does her voice on later work with house music pioneers The Beatmasters, Primal Scream and Ocean Colour Scene. This isn’t just surviving. It’s flourishing. Jude Rogers
present the difficult, the weird and strange with knowledge, insight and intelligence. It’s a style she brings to this, her vital and necessary profile of 10 pioneering 20th-century composers. Molleson writes in a rich, clear, amiable style, making sense of each composer’s music within the context of their biography and nationality and, so often, illustrating how fear, prejudice and misogyny play a role in silencing, forgetting or overlooking them. Highlights include Molleson’s interview with the 93-year-old Ethiopian composer and nun Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou, and a wonderfully bizarre chapter on Filipino maximalist nationalist composer José Maceda. One gripe: given this is a book about radical creativity and freedom from imposed norms, you occasionally wish Molleson had abandoned her rigid structure – an introduction and 10 self-contained chapters – for a more fluid narrative approach. However, as a primer on adventurous musical listening it takes some beating. Andrew Male
Sound Within Sound: Opening Our Ears To The 20th Century
★★★★
Kate Molleson FABER. £18.99
The writer and broadcaster assembles 10 forgotten voices of classical music and asks why they’ve been overlooked. As a presenter on Radio 3, Kate Molleson has the ability to
P.P. Arnold: her resilience sparkles.
F I LT E R S C R E E N
The business of show: Tom Hanks’s Colonel Tom Parker signs up Elvis, with help from Gladys and Vernon Presley.
The Nowhere Inn
★★★★
Dir: Bill Benz WIENERWORLD. DVD/ST
St. Vincent mock-doc probes fame and projected identity. Referencing 1975 Bowie doc Cracked Actor, The Nowhere Inn opens with Annie Clark sitting in the back of a limo, a star being driven through desert. Except in this version, the driver takes pains to point out that he’s never heard of St. Vincent, and forces her to sing a few bars of New York. It’s a smart entry into this pastiche fly-on-the-wall co-written by and featuring Clark’s SleaterKinney buddy Carrie Brownstein, which riffs on the idea that a bright light shone on an artist off-stage might reveal not much at all. The pair have fun with the concept: Brownstein as director blindfolds Clark and takes her outside the prison housing her father to “elicit something authentic from you”. The showstopper title track, meanwhile, revisits Twin Peaks, with Clark chasing through red velvet curtains after her faceless doppelgänger. Entertaining, and quite a trip. Tom Doyle
performances are dazzlingly shot, piercing light and sudden darkness doing the symbolic lifting; brief interviews illuminate their intuitive process (“an ocean of bullshit”, says Cave, that “clicks into the transcendent”). The title suggests a built-on-rock relationship; chasing down the ineffable, however, remains their mission. Victoria Segal
This Much I Know To Be True
★★★
Dir: Andrew Dominik
Rarely has a King suffered such lèse-majesté. When a legend is as large as Elvis Presley’s, or an icon as burnished, it can be hard to look around or behind, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try. Baz Luhrmann’s encapsulation of one of the most important individuals in the history of music is typically lavish and hyperactive – there’s not a second of it that doesn’t feel like a fairground ride – but the story is strictly Elvis 101, while the decision to weave contemporary artists (from Swae Lee to Kacey Musgraves) into the soundtrack will annoy as many as it persuades. Austin Butler’s Presley is really, really, ridiculously good-looking, but is outshone by Tom Hanks’s Colonel Tom Parker, a panto Mephistopheles who recruits his client in a carnival hall of mirrors but is conflicted enough to be something more
BAD SEED LTD/UNCOMMON CREATIVE STUDIO. C
The world according to Cave (and Ellis), version 2021. “Well, there are some things/ That are hard to explain,” sings Nick Cave on Bright Horses, one of the songs performed during Andrew Dominik’s documentary This Much I Know To Be True. That’s never stopped Cave trying, though – through his music, obviously, but also through outreach project The Red Hand Files, or his theologically inspired ceramics (he jokes he took the government’s advice to “retrain” during lockdown). Filmed during spring 2021, Dominik’s second film about Cave, after 2016’s One More Time With Feeling, follows the singer and his charismatic collaborator Warren Ellis as they rehearse songs from 2019’s Ghosteen and 2021’s Carnage with choir, strings and, briefly, a queenly Marianne Faithfull. The
Jimmy Is A Punk
★★★
Dir: Duco Donk DOC’N ROLL TV. ST
Elvis
★★★★
than a cartoon. Ultimately, Hanks/Parker’s failing is also Luhrmann’s: they’re too in love with the business of show to properly serve Elvis, the man, or his genius. Danny Eccleston
Dir: Baz Luhrmann WARNER BROS PICTURES. C
Fifty-minute doc on the mercurial career of obscure Dutch punks Panic. “If there’s one thing we can say about Panic, it’s that we’ve never heard of them before,” says the narrator of this film’s arcane subjects, not without pride. And, indeed, we wouldn’t be hearing of them now, if it wasn’t for the fact that the Amsterdam quartet paid for a May 1978 gig to be shot in colour from multiple angles, thus preserving their catchy Johnny Moped-style gumby punk act for posterity. Star of the show is charismatic frontman Peter Panic, a former champion hurdler who performs in nothing but stars’n’bars briefs and a red cagoule, the latter to protect him from the showers of beer thrown by rowdy fans. Things get nasty after the show, when Peter tussles with the club’s owner over a smashed washbasin in the bogs, though it’s the group’s provocative song Requiem For Martin Heidegger – as in the Nazi philosopher – and Peter’s skimpy pants which seem to upset the straights the most. A
self-titled album and one-off gig at CBGB’s followed, we learn, before obscurity inevitably beckoned. An entertaining curio with oodles of period charm/ repulsion, then. Pat Gilbert
and Rotten. And the music ain’t bad either. Pat Gilbert
Lawrence Of Belgravia
★★★★ Pistol
★★★★
Dir: Danny Boyle DISNEY+. ST
The Sex Pistols’ rise and fall, seen through the eyes of Steve Jones. The controversy over John Lydon’s failed High Court attempt to effectively kill off Pistol has added a curious moral weight to scrutiny of this six-part bio-drama. And while it’s a given that Pistols fans – and Rotten himself – might laugh out loud at the dramatic elisions, sometimes overexplanatory dialogue and broad caricatures (Matlock, Vivienne, Nancy), Pistol nonetheless possesses a frightening energy and wonderful Day-Glo allure. Thomas Brodie-Sangster fizzes as an insouciant Malcolm McLaren, Sydney Chandler is splendidly droll as Chrissie Hynde – the main love/sex interest here – and Anson Boon is chilling as razor-sharp, super-sussed, glowering Rotten. Toby Wallace’s nuanced portrayal of (a suspiciously eloquent) Jones, meanwhile, enables Boyle to impress the deeply human cost of the Pistols’ punk revolution – culminating in powerful re-imaginings of Jones’s tense, post-split summits with both McLaren
Dir: Paul Kelly BFI. BR
2011 profile of Felt, Denim and Go-Kart Mozart frontman, now with extras. Influenced by the eerie, static poise of Patrick Keiller’s Robinson films, Paul Kelly is the director as eavesdropper, politely listening in to softly told tales from the margins of English life. This hushed, careful style is perfectly suited to Lawrence’s singular small-ad world of pop fame eternally deferred. As a reissue, this offers little in the world of extras; a hesitant commentary track from Kelly, a handful of very short deleted scenes, and an even shorter Q&A with Kelly and Lawrence. However, the booklet is an essay-packed bounty, and the film is the thing: funny, haunting and strangely moving. When I first watched it, as a work-inprogress back in 2008, I was convinced it was a portrait of failure. I now think that was wrong. Much like Arena’s 1986 Jeffrey Bernard documentary it’s a peripatetic digression down the curious path of a singular life; a portrait of an utterly unique musical genius using art as his survival mechanism. Andrew Male
MOJO 111
RE AL GONE Something was different: Julee Cruise, maverick talent and angel-voiced muse to David Lynch.
Ethereal voice of mystery and dreams, Julee Cruise left us on June 9.
T
HERE WAS something preternaturally calm about Julee Cruise’s strange and dreamlike singing voice, so it made sense she’d become known as the muse/ singer-in-residence of the master of the strange and dreamlike, David Lynch. By nature, though, Cruise’s voice was loud and strong: born in Creston, Iowa in 1956, she’d played Janis Joplin in an off-Broadway musical. The Lynch connection came via Angelo Badalamenti, a musician and film
score composer that Cruise knew from the theatre circuit. Lynch had asked him to write a song – Mysteries Of Love – for his 1986 movie Blue Velvet, and was struggling to find a woman with “the voice of an angel” to sing it. Cruise asked Badalamenti if she could try. Approaching it like an acting role, she created an otherworldly woman who breathed the song as much as sang it, slow, hushed and airy. Lynch loved it. The song won her a record deal with Warners, resulting in her debut album Floating Into The Night (1989), a collaboration with Badalamenti and Lynch. Later she won a Grammy for Floating, the dream-pop theme song of Twin Peaks. Cruise
Jim Seals Soft rocker
BORN 1942
Jim Seals: spirituallyinclined pop harmoniser.
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JIM SEALS, like his musical partner Dash Crofts, was born in central west Texas. Already an award-winning fiddler, he played sax with Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran in the late ’50s, also joining Crofts and Glen Campbell in The Champs. Coming together again in Bahá’í Faith band The
Dawnbreakers, Seals & Crofts finally formed the duo that bore their name in 1969. Harmonising closely on folk-influenced, spiritually-inclined pop balms, they reached Number 6 on the US singles chart with autumn 1972’s jasmine-scented Summer Breeze and repeated the feat the following year with Diamond Girl. They courted controversy with 1974’s anti-abortion Unborn Child, but continued to have hits
including yacht rock fave Get Closer in 1976, though 1978’s disco-flavoured You’re The Love was their last hit. They split and reunited numerous times, often for Bahá’í causes, and released their final album Traces in 2004. As the duo’s music found an afterlife being sampled by the likes of J Dilla, DJ Shadow and Busta Rhymes, Seals also played in a duo with his hit-making brother England Dan. He retired from music in 2017. Clive Prior
Getty, A.J. Barratt
Forever Falling
appeared in a number of episodes of Lynch’s TV series, playing the role of a singer in a lonely local bar. After 1993’s second album collaboration with the pair, The Voice Of Love, Cruise spent much of the ’90s taking a different direction, standing in for Cindy Wilson and touring with The B-52’s, and enjoying herself creatively. She released two more albums with different collaborators – electronica-jazz for The Art Of Being A Girl (2002), trip-hop for My Secret Life (2011) – and starred in the New York musical Radiant Baby, about graffiti artist Keith Haring. She returned to Twin Peaks for the third series in 2017. But suffering from lupus, depressed and in pain, Cruise retired from performing soon after. She took her own life. Sylvie Simmons
Goblin’s guitar maestro Massimo Morante – psycho rock jams a speciality.
Massimo Morante Goblin guitar BORN 1952 BORN IN Rome, guitarist ‘Max’ Morante co-founded the group that would become Goblin with keyboardist Claudio Simonetti in 1973. Initially known as Oliver, and then Cherry Five, the group signed a deal with soundtrack imprint Cinevox, who proposed them to director Dario Argento as composers for his new horror film Profondo Rosso in 1975. Renamed Goblin, the union would prove a success, and the group’s dark mix of scary vocals, intense psycho rock jams and big hair on scores for Suspiria, Dawn Of The Dead and more became the best-selling and most distinctive sound of Italian cinema. Morante left in 1978, releasing solo LPs and playing with Simonetti’s Italo-disco group the Crazy Gang, but returned to the ever-fluctuating mothership on numerous occasions to tour and record. While other rival formations have existed, at the time of his death Morante was playing alongside four-fifths of the classic line-up. Jonny Trunk
Kelly Joe Phelps Multi-faceted guitar hero BORN 1959
Getty (3), Christelle de Castro/Red Bull Content Pool
KELLY JOE Phelps fulfilled many roles – slide guitar master, free-form jazzer, born-again blues fiend, folkie stylist, country
interpreter, soulful singer-songwriter, avant-garde improviser – yet followed no template. Versatility may have cost him mainstream appeal, but the combination of his fluent acoustic playing and rugged vocals earned widespread respect. From a religious family in farming country in Sumner, Washington, he was initially inspired by his father’s Miles Davis and Ornette Coleman records but, subsequently hooked on the Delta blues of Mississippi Fred McDowell, played brilliant slide guitar with a steel bar on his acclaimed debut solo album Lead Me On, in 1994. His following 10 albums – including duets with Corinne West on Magnetic Skyline – explored different styles with a stripped back approach, from his own understated songs to classic covers like Goodnight Irene and radical reinventions of hymns like Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah. He passed away at home in Iowa. Colin Irwin
Patrick Adams NY dance eminence BORN 1950 BORN IN Harlem, Patrick Adams recalled hanging out at the Apollo Theater as a teenager, watching groups rehearse and sometimes handing out scores to the in-house band. This affinity with how music was conceptualised, constructed and realised stayed with him. A choral singer and trumpeter until The Beatles on Ed Sullivan
converted him to electric guitar, early forays involved playing with R&B triers The Sparks. Soon, as an A&R man at Perception Records, he met vocalist Leroy Burgess, whose group Black Ivory made waves with the Adams-penned-and-produced Don’t Turn Around in 1971. Having accrued writing and playing credits on albums by Astrud Gilberto, Sister Sledge and J.J. Barnes, in the middle ’70s he turned increasingly to production as well. Ensnared by synthesizers and disco, the rest of the decade saw eccentric, characterful releases including Cloud One’s Atmosphere Strut, Musique’s In The Bush and Phreek’s Weekend – Adams used “goofy” as a term of approval – find favour on such discerning NY dancefloors as The Loft and the Paradise Garage. After disco, Adams prospered in hip-hop, engineering LPs including Eric B & Rakim’s Paid In Full and Salt-N-Pepa’s 1986 Hot, Cool & Vicious. He additionally worked with Herbie Mann, Shannon, Candi Staton, Rick James, The Main Ingredient, Jocelyn Brown, Keith Sweat and many others, while in 1991 Cathy Dennis had a Top 5 UK hit with Adams co-write Touch Me (All Night Long). Though arguably
“Patrick Adams was the greatest to ever do it.” KIRK DEGIORGIO
Open road: Kelly Joe Phelps, master of folk, jazz, blues and more.
under-represented as the history of disco was written, his champions included Nile Rodgers, François Kevorkian and Kirk Degiorgio, who called him, “the greatest to ever do it.” Adams’s daughter Joi announced his June 21 passing, “after living a life of music.” Ian Harrison
Deborah McCrary Divine voice BORN 1954 FROM GERMANtown, Nashville, Deborah McCrary was the second of four sisters born to the Reverend Samuel McCrary, co-founder of the gospel group The Fairfield Four. Honing her deep, supple voice at home and in church, in her early teens she performed with the BCM mass choir, sang Everything Is Beautiful with Ray Stevens at Madison Square Garden, and performed with both Elvis and Isaac Hayes on Dinah Shore’s TV specials. After working as a nurse, she finally joined her siblings Ann, Regina and Alfreda in the McCrary Sisters in 2009. 2010’s Our Journey, their first of four studio albums, fanfared a new era for gospel, their exuberant close harmonies framed with uplifting, uptempo soul, R&B, funk and country. As well as recording their own albums, the sisters also performed with The Black Keys, Sheryl Crow, Dr. John, Mary Gauthier and more. Despite suffering a stroke in 2013, Deborah continued to sing right up to the end. Lois Wilson MOJO 113
RE AL GONE
Blond ambition: Hair co-author James Rado.
James Rado Hair heir
BORN 1932 BORN IN Los Angeles, a teenage dream of James Radomski was to write a Broadway musical. After he moved to New York, he met
Gerome Ragni in 1964. The two would become personal and creative partners, and would write the hugely successful Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical, with score by Galt MacDermot. Premiering in October 1967 and opening on Broadway the following April, it was perfectly
timed for the counterculture going overground, and covers of its songs of sexual revolution, radical peace, environmentalism and more proliferated into the charts, with Nina Simone, The Fifth Dimension, Ramsey Lewis and the crowd of the Woodstock festival being just a few who sang them. After Hair, which ran for years, Rado’s later theatre works include the Hair semi-sequel Rainbow (1972) and, reunited with Ragni, the environmentalist Sun (Audio Movie) (1974). He was also consultant on 2013 rock musical Barcode, and continued to develop new productions of Hair worldwide, his life’s work. Clive Prior
Steve Broughton
Broughton Band drummer BORN 1950 WHEN EDGAR Broughton brought his feral, blues-based power trio
from their Warwick hometown to London in 1968, his drumming younger brother Steve supplied the tribal bedrock as the band became an attraction on the UK underground club circuit, cutting a charismatic figure precisionpounding and singing from under his curtain of hair. Signing with Blackhill Enterprises landed them Hyde Park free concert spots and a Harvest deal, bringing counterculture anarchy to the UK charts, with 1970’s Sing Brother Sing hitting Number 18 as controversial live exorcism Out Demons Out and Apache Drop Out ram-raided the Top 40. Many more heard Steve’s drumming when Mike Oldfield hired him for 1973’s smash Tubular Bells, and he also played percussion with Roy Harper. Post-Harvest, the Broughton Band released Bandages on NEMS before splitting in 1976, reuniting over the decades until Edgar went solo in 2010. Later activities included playing with rock bands in Norway. Kris Needs
THEY ALSO SERVED
Courtesy of Kim Bloxdorf/Record Research Inc, Getty (2), Alamy
Keys, who won Williams a Grammy when she and Kanye West sampled The Main Ingredient’s Let Me Prove My Love To You for her 2003 track You Don’t Know My Name. He also recorded solo singles in the ’60s and ’70s.
MUCH-GARLANDED writer, producer and guitarist BERNARD BELLE (above, b.1964) was best known as co-creator of the New Jack Swing sound with his production partner Teddy Riley. The pair were behind hits including Remember The Time and Why You Wanna Trip On Me for Michael Jackson’s 1991 LP Dangerous, and the title song for Mario Van Peebles’ New Jack City soundtrack. His numerous credits include Patti LaBelle, Boy George, Mavis Staples and, later, many gospel recordings. Winner of four Grammys, his sister is R&B singer Regina Belle.
AUTHOR, HISTORIAN AND EXPERT JOEL WHITBURN (below, b.1939) was a pioneer statistician of popular music charts. An avid teenage record collector and magazine subscriber, he tracked Billboard chart placings on handwritten index cards. His first book, Top Pop Singles, came out in 1970: hundreds more essential pre-digital reference books followed. Whitburn’s personal vinyl collection ran to hundreds of thousands, including every single ever to make the Billboard Hot 100 and pop charts since 1936.
SONGWRITER KEN WILLIAMS (b.1939) was most noted for co-composing The Main Ingredient’s 1972 hit Everybody Plays The Fool. The Florida-born songsmith’s works were sung by talents including Donny Hathaway, The Four Tops, Tom Jones, Millie Jackson, The Shirelles and Alicia
KEYBOARDIST BRETT TUGGLE (b.1951) performed live with Fleetwood Mac from their reunion in 1997 until 2018, having previously played in Mick Fleetwood’s solo project, The Zoo. In the ’80s Tuggle was a founding member of The David Lee Roth Band, and co-wrote
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Roth’s 1987 hit single Just Like Paradise. Over a five-decade career, he also played with Jimmy Page, David Coverdale, Chris Isaak, and Belinda Carlisle. ENGINEER DAVE SMITH (b.1950) devised innovations that changed the face of music. In 1977, the San Francisco-born developer designed the world’s first polyphonic synthesizer with a fully programmable memory, the Prophet-5, as heard on albums by Peter Gabriel, Madonna, Vangelis and Radiohead. Then in 1983, Smith helped create MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface), essentially a universal digital language enabling any electronic instruments to communicate and play in time and in tune. COUNTRY songwriter HAL BYNUM (b.1934) is best known for co-writing Kenny Rogers’ 1977 smash Lucille: his other C&W credits included Patty Loveless’s Chains and the Johnny Cash/Waylon Jennings duet There Ain’t No Good Chain Gang. Originally from Texas, Bynum’s compositions were also sung by George Jones, Jim Reeves, Ernest
Tubb, Charley Pride, Bill Monroe, Wynn Stewart and many others. He also recorded solo. BASSIST ALEC JOHN SUCH (b.1951) was a founding member of Bon Jovi, playing with them from 1983 to 1994. Previously, he was a familiar face on the New Jersey music scene, and as manager of local venue the Hunker Bunker Ballroom booked Jon Bongiovi & The Wild Ones to play, before later joining the band. A childhood friend of drummer Tico Torres, it was Such who invited Richie Sambora to first see the band live. BROOKLYN songwriter PAUL VANCE (b.1929) had transatlantic hit co-writes with Catch A Falling Star (Perry Como, 1957) and Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polkadot Bikini (Brian Hyland, 1960). His songs were also recorded by Johnny Mathis, Astrud Gilberto and The Cuff Links. In 2006 he had to publicly declare he was not dead, as an erroneous news report had claimed. GUITARIST and singer DEREK McMANUS (b.1966) played with Glasgow indie-rockers The Supernaturals, who had five Top 40 singles from 1996 to 1998 and a Top 10 LP with their ’97 debut It Doesn’t Matter Anymore. That year’s
barbed hit Smile was memorably used on TV spots and ad campaigns. After their 2002 split, McManus rejoined the group in 2012 for live shows and two more LPs. PIANIST/COMPOSER ARTIE KANE (below, b.1929) was a child keyboard prodigy in Iowa, pianist for Norwegian figure skater Sonja Henie, and played on MGM film soundtracks, before Nelson Riddle asked him to play Hammond B3 organ on Frank Sinatra’s 1966 LP Strangers In The Night. Sessions for Peggy Lee, Sarah Vaughn and Quincy Jones followed, as did film work with Michel Legrand, Henry Mancini and Lalo Schifrin. Later he conducted movie scores including Jurassic Park, Freejack and Waterworld, and composed music for TV shows including Wonder Woman, Dynasty and The Love Boat. Jenny Bulley, Chris Catchpole and Ian Harrison
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T I M E M AC H HIIN INE
Soul not dole: (clockwise from above) and Black Moses, via Isaac Hayes, spake unto the people; Jesse Jackson and Al Bell (right) take the salute; OSTs; The Staple Singers; Richard Pryor and pal; funky people; Rufus Thomas.
AUGUST 1972 …Wattstax hits Los Angeles “We’re here to commemorate a revolution, that started the movement, and was one of the milestones in black pride,” said filmmaker and recording artist Melvin Van Peebles from the stage of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum this hot afternoon. “Some folks may find it a little strange that we laugh, we sing, and we joke – but we’re doing our thing the black way to commemorate.” Then he introduced The Staple Singers, who sang 1971 hit Heavy Makes You Happy (Sha-Na-Boom Boom) to wild acclaim. Today was Wattstax, a seven-hour feast of soul, gospel and R&B starring Stax label talent including Isaac Hayes, Rufus Thomas, Albert King, Carla Thomas, Eddie Floyd, and many more. It also remembered the Watts riots of 1965, when 34 died and buildings burned as the city’s African-American community protested against police brutality, poor living conditions, lack of opportunity, and racism. Van Peebles was in charge of the all-black, unarmed security team, but as was widely observed, there was no trouble that day apart from a swiftly resolved hotdog shortage. The event was part of the Watts Summer Festival, founded in 1966 by community activist Tommy Jacquette. After Stax artist John KaSandra proposed the Memphis
Getty (6), Alamy (3), Shutterstock (3)
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imprint stage a ‘Black Woodstock’ early in the year, label co-owner Al Bell recalled West Coast rep Forest Hamilton suggesting they get involved. Significantly, the show would be filmed. Speaking in 2008 at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Bell likened the resulting movie to, “a mirror to us as African-Americans, so we got a glimpse of ourselves [and] so that the larger segment of society can kind of peep through that window.” Director Mel Stuart, whose recent credits included Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory, was engaged. On the day, he admitted to being shocked when no one in the estimated 112,000-strong crowd stood for The Star-Spangled Banner, but noted that they did when Kim Weston sang Lift Every Voice And Sing, the 1900 hymn dubbed “the black national anthem”.
“We’re doing our thing the black way.” MELVIN VAN PEEBLES
From the funkily-dressed revellers who’d paid just $1 entrance fee – thanks to sponsorship from Schlitz beer and acts playing for free – the mostly-black camera crew captured much audio-visual gold that day. The bill was packed and the turnover relentless: although The Staple Singers played for more than 20 minutes, many of the day’s 26 acts performed just one song. Still, the highlights were abundant, as when Jesse Jackson recited the Rev William H Borders’ 1940s poem I Am – Somebody as part of a powerful call to power and pride, or The Bar-Kays’ show-stopping performance of Son Of Shaft. Or indeed when, resplendent in pink shorts and white boots, veteran entertainer Rufus Thomas did the Funky Chicken and had to persuade the excited crowd to get back in their seats. The final artist was Isaac Hayes, who was riding high on the success of the previous year’s Black Moses LP and soundtrack for the Shaft movie. “Brothers and sisters, we are now about to bring forth a bad, bad… I’m a preacher, I can’t say it,” declared Jackson before Hayes came on and removed his floppy hat to reveal his bald dome, bowing to each corner of the stadium as Theme From Shaft played. When he threw off his robe to reveal his trademark gold chain suit, the crowd went even wilder. The show was closed
ALSO ON! in titanic style, with, reported Billboard, $73,363 going to worthy causes including the Watts Summer Festival, the Martin Luther King Hospital and the Sickle Cell Anaemia Foundation. Yet there was more work to be done: with Richard Pryor acting as hard-hitting Shakespearean narrator, additional footage was filmed of acts edged out of the running order, plus philosophical interviews with black Los Angelenos in the streets and barber shops. There was also an unexpected hurdle when the MGM movie studio called, banning the use of Shaft. “There was some big disagreement about publishing rights and I was devastated,” Stuart told Kathleen Fairweather in 1999. “[It] was my big ending to the film. I had no choice but to re-shoot a different song [Rolling Down A Mountainside] with Hayes on a soundstage.” There were similar liberties taken with Wattstax’s two soundtrack LPs, where newer recordings were added with canned applause. After the film Wattstax premiered in February 4, 1973 at LA’s Ahmanson Theatre, the New York Times called it “a slick souvenir program,” though Melody Maker’s Richard Williams was more enthused, writing, “Its value, particularly to those of us who’re 3,000 miles away from the action, is immense.” Stax went bankrupt in 1975, and for a time the film languished in cinematic limbo-land. But restored and reappraised in 2003, the inspirational glory that was Wattstax burns on. Or as Mavis Staples told The Guardian in 2002: “Black people were showing they were proud to be black. We were singing songs to lift the people.” Ian Harrison
TOP TEN SINGAPORE SINGLES AUGUST 12 SONG SUNG 1DIAMOND BLUE NEIL MCA
GURU 2METAL T.REX TAKE ME 3SLADE BACK ’OME MARY HAD A 4WINGS LITTLE LAMB THE 5 CIRCLES NEW SEEKERS MAN 6 ROCKET ELTON JOHN 7DAYOOH-WAKKADOO-WAKKAGILBERT T.REX
DUDES MOOD
12 The Ted Scare: Wembley rattles those pots and pans.
Mott The Hoople (lead singer Ian Hunter above)’s All The Young Dudes enters the UK charts at Number 22. After a Top Of The Pops appearance, the band spend the rest of the month playing dates in Guildford, Plymouth and Torquay.
Rock’n’roll 12 again, London
DUTCH TOO MUCH
bash The London AUGUST 5 Revival Rock And Roll Show is held at Wembley Stadium. Entertaining the teds, rockers and bikers today are Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Bo Diddley and Bill Haley & His Comets. Other acts include the MC5, Wizzard and Screaming Lord Sutch. In Sounds, the latter accuses Alice Cooper (soon to hit Number 1 with School’s Out) of stealing his act and challenges him to “a battle of our acts… I’ll blow him completely off the stage. There’s only one Cooper I’m afraid of, and that’s Henry Cooper.” Peter Clifton’s movie of the day is released in 1973: it also stars Mick Jagger and Malcolm McLaren, who can be seen selling his ‘Vive Le Rock’ T-shirts, later sported by punks.
It’s reported that Dutch musicians union ANOUK have protested about The Beach Boys being allowed to move to the Netherlands to record new LP Holland. “Dutch artists could not expect similar hospitality in the US,” says a spokesman.
MAKE IT ZIG
Ziggy Stardust at Number 10 in the LP 19charts,With David Bowie plays the
Rainbow. Lindsay Kemp and dance troupe The Astronettes also appear. Support comes courtesy of Roxy Music and Lloyd Watson. “It’s going to be the most exquisite concert of the year,” Bowie says in NME. “I wish Lou would come.”
POLYDOR
APPLE
PHILIPS
DJM
O’SULLIVAN MAM
BITTY 8THELITTLE PRETTY ONE JACKSON 5 MOTOWN
SYLVIA’S 9HOOK MOTHER DR. AND THE MEDICINE SHOW CBS
LITTLE 10 WILLY THE SWEET RCA VICTOR
BLUE FUNK
Estranged Grand Funk Railroad manager Terry 26 Knight takes out media ads
saying the band’s name is his and threatens legal action if the band try to use it. A two-year legal battle ensues.
FRISKY WHISKY
Sylvester & His Hot Band make their LA debut at 28 the Whisky A Go Go. Also at the Whisky this month are Stevie Wonder, Foghat and Flo & Eddie.
The New Seekers: doing the rounds at Number 5.
AD ARCHIVE 1972
Broadway bound: Bob and (right) Johnny Nash, who’s at Number 16 with I Can See Clearly Now.
MARLEY’S UK CAMPAIGN Alexandra Palace hosts a reggae and soul night to benefit Oxfam and Dr Barnardo’s homes. Compered by Emperor Rosko, billed artists include Jimmy Cliff, Johnny Nash, Doris Troy, Marsha Hunt and little-known Jamaican talents Bob Marley & The Wailers. Marley has been supporting his fellow managerial client Nash at various British dates this year, including
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shows at Bexhill’s De La Warr Pavilion and the Croydon Top Rank, plus a lunchtime appearance at Peckham Manor School. The group have also recorded demos for the CBS label, who release the Nash-produced solo Marley 45 Reggae On Broadway before The Wailers move to Island Records. “I don’t want to put him down,” reflects Marley of Nash in Melody Maker, “but reggae isn’t really his bag.”
Forget Watergate, Idi Amin and the dock strike, how to set off your new pair of bell-bottoms? Bring back shoes with stars on them, we say.
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MOJO C OM PE T I T I O N ANSWERS
MOJO 344 Across: 2 Rainbow, 5 Hotcakes, 9 Dio, 11 Willie Mitchell, 13 Ice, 15 We Are Time, 17 New Wave, 19 MOR, 20 Ari, 21 PP Arnold, 23 Antenna, 25 Star, 26 Totale’s Turns, 29 Pama, 30 Ash, 32 UR, 33 Agora, 34 Tago Mago, 36 Gem, 37 Stroll, 39 Ut, 40 Nadir, 41 Rise, 44 Drill, 47 Freda, 49 Bushy, 50 O.D., 51 OST, 52 Ragga, 54 Pixies, 55 T.B., 57 Lai, 58 Waltz For Debby, 61 Natty, 63 Kuti, 65 Alarm, 66 Cali, 67 Ashra, 68 Cecilia.
Remake Remodel Relisten
device. Connect the adapter to power and plug the cable into your stereo, and you’re ready to play sounds from your Apple device: just tap the AirPlay button in your music app to instantly start playing on your existing system. Belkin SoundForm Connect retails for £89.99 and we have FIVE to give away! So solve this month’s cruciverbal brainteaser and send a scan of it to mojo@bauermedia.co.uk, making sure to type CROSSWORD 346 in the subject line. Entries without that subject line will not be considered. Please include your home address, e-mail and phone number. Closing date for entries is September 2. For the rules of the quiz, see www.mojo4music.com
Win! A Belkin SoundForm Connect adapter and revitalise your hi-fi.
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1 See photoclue A (5,6) 7 Successor to Pye Records (3) 9 Holger Czukay’s LP for Chairman Mao? (3,5,3,3) 11 Indie music festival, once of Camber Sands (1,1,1) 13 Butter Wolf or Butter Conspiracy (6) 14 Whitehouse’s construction set? (7) 15 Atari Teenage Riot’s Mr Empire (4) 17 Chief Bad Brain (1,1) 18 How Dave Pike’s Silence was (5) 20 Sticky Chicago post-hardcore band (3) 23 Randy California’s metaphysical outfit (6) 25 Georg Kajanus’s maritime crew (6) 27 Creation’s Sunshine Smilers (8) 28 Heatwave/Walker Bros/Dooleys label (3) 29 Big or Sk8er? (3) 31 Sham 69 got one on sports day (4) 33 Sinatra arranger Mr Stordahl (4) 35 See photoclue B (4,6) 36 Anti-Nowhere League’s frontman (6) 37 Foo Fighters’ 2005 hit (1,1,1) 38 Student radio network who broadcast sessions by Elbow, Killers, Peaches (1,1,1) 40 Mark ‘E’ Everett’s slitherers (4) 42 Level 42 guitarist Mr.Gould (4) 44 Euro-label of The Young Gods, Chris & Cosey (2) 45 Gutsy Rob Ellis side-project (5) 47 German black metallers named for demons from The Bible (4) 48 Rainey, Remy or Jono (2) 49 This Heat telling porkies? (6) 51 Bee Gees on the Black Sea (6) 53 They debuted with Improvised Munitions in ’89 (6) 55 The Stooges’ was Metallic (1,1) 56 The Smiths enquire (3) 58 Russian chart-toppers of 2002 (1,1,1,1) 59 Billy Idol’s nuptials (5,7) 62 Thrasher, Stasium or O’Brien (2) 63 Stax bassist Mr Dunn gets quacking (4) 66 He hit huge with Calypso in 1956 (5,9) 68 Warren Zevon’s juvenile live wire (9,3) 69 Human Clay was their 1999 megaseller (5)
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Winner: Terry Hill of Doncaster wins a pair of Q Acoustics M20 HD wireless speakers.
For more info, go to: www.belkin.com
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Down: 1 Edgar, 2 Rowetta, 3 Illuminations, 4 Odeon, 6 Orc, 7 Kilimanjaro, 8 Siberia, 10 Wigwam, 12 Elektra, 14 Corn, 16 Evaporators, 18 Amata, 21 Piano Red, 22 Dungen, 24 Names, 25 Spanish Fly, 26 Tutu, 27 Rag, 28 Soma Dub, 31 Helpless, 35 ACR, 38 Tad, 42 Ida, 43 Egg, 45 Rox, 46 Idiot, 47 Fon, 48 Etta, 52 Rez, 53, AC/DC, 54 Pinball, 56 Bloke, 59 Faith, 60 Basic, 62 Tamla, 64 RCA, 65 Arc.
ACROSS
2 On the cards in 1973, Walter Wegmüller (5) 3 Judy Henske’s partner Jerry (6) 4 Tottenham’s maker of numerical albums (5) 5 The Fall get knotted in ’88? (7) 6 Elvis’s postal demand (6,2,6) 8 Glam metal vermin! (4) 9 AKA Dean Martin (4) 10 Maria Muldaur’s midnight playground (5) 12 On-U Sound settles the account (3,2,3,4) 13 See photoclue C (4,4) 16 Jordan, Neville or Davies (5) 17 Bowie’s pagan revel (8) 19 Van McCoy’s production company (3) 21 Gryphon get wet in 1975 (9) 22 Pistols’ corporeal shocker (6) 23 Pavement’s direction, when enchanted (7) 24 (Hed) --, Cali rockers (2) 26 Rappers on a bagel (3) 30 Peter Hammill’s unwise chess move? (5,4) 32 Donnie, Marie and the gang (7) 34 The Bunnymen’s drum machine (4) 39 ----- 4 Love (Raze) (5) 41 Steeleye, Mike Stuart or Norman (4) 43 Madness bootleg, in tribute to Marley’s seventh? (5,5) 44 Humorous Mancunians who recorded Paul McCartney in ’87(5) 46 Masked men – with horns? – from Gothenburg (4) 47 Badfinger’s donkey (3) 50 Where Jean-Michel Jarre took snapshots (3) 52 Sad musical feelings from Portugal (7) 54 Wayne Shorter’s was All Seeing (3) 57 Beck’s breakthrough (6) 59 Andrew, he advised us to Party Hard (1,1) 60 The Scream’s fallen guitarist (5) 61 Coyne, Hussey or Kramer? (5) 64 Nile Rodgers’ well-dressed groovers (4) 65 How often Alan Parsons will try anything (4) 66 Davy Graham’s sombrero? (3) 67 Initially, Steele, Cox and Gift (1,1,1)
MOJO 121
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45:43 MATADOR RECORDS
