Open skies | April 2011 by Motivate Media Group

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IN THE ENTIRE WORLD.

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EDITORâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S LETTER

ack when I was in school in the early 1990s, music was a currency of sorts. Saturday afternoons were spent traipsing around Dublin city centre in the rain (it was always raining) going from record shop to record shop buying 12â&#x20AC;?s from around the world. As a 13-year-old, my knowledge of geography came from dance music â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Detroit was all about techno, Chicago was house central; London? That was where drum and bass originated. Frankfurt had a crazy club under the airport called the Dorian Gray. Florida? Forget Mickey Mouse; it was all about spaced out breaks and ravers with baggy pants. It illustrates the point that music is much more than something you listen to â&#x20AC;&#x201D; itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a culture all of its own. No one emphasised the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;singer as a

starâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; more than Frank Sinatra. In Frank Sinatra Has A Cold, that wonderful writer Gay Talese captures a middleaged man battling his demons and his past. Brillianty written, Vanity Fair called the piece â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;the greatest literary-non fiction story of the 20th centuryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. If you want evidence that music can bring people together, look no further than Berlin in 1989. That a strange, electronic sound created by black teenagers in their Detroit bedrooms could help bring East and West Germany together shows the power of the right music at the right time. Someone who knows all about timing is Kevin Cummins; he documented the rise of Manchester as a musical force throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Kevin also photographed Gilles Peterson for us; a DJ who brings new meaning to the words â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;well travelledâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. Enjoy the issue.

CONOR@OPENSKIESMAGAZINE.COM

Emirates takes care to ensure that all facts published herein are correct. In the event of any inaccuracy please contact The Editor. Any opinion expressed is the honest belief of the author based on all available facts. Comments and facts should not be relied upon by the reader in taking commercial, legal, ďŹ nancial or other decisions. Articles are by their nature general and specialist advice should always be consulted before any actions are taken. PO Box 2331, Dubai, UAE Telephone: (+971 4) 282 4060 Fax:(+971 4) 282 4436 Email: emirates@motivate.ae

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EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Obaid Humaid Al Tayer GROUP EDITOR & MANAGING PARTNER Ian Fairservice GROUP SENIOR EDITOR (JOB +PIOTPO Ĺ&#x; HJOB!NPUJWBUF BF SENIOR EDITOR .BSL &WBOT Ĺ&#x; NBSLF!NPUJWBUF BF EDITOR Conor Purcell Ĺ&#x; DPOPS!NPUJWBUF BF SENIOR ART DIRECTOR 5JB 4FJGFSU Ĺ&#x; UJB!NPUJWBUF BF CHIEF SUB EDITOR *BJO 4NJUI Ĺ&#x; JBJOT! motivate.ae GENERAL MANAGER PRODUCTION & CIRCULATION S Sasidharan PRODUCTION MANAGER C Sudhakar GENERAL MANAGER, GROUP SALES "OUIPOZ .JMOF Ĺ&#x; BOUIPOZ!NPUJWBUF BF BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT MANAGER Nicola )VETPO Ĺ&#x; OJDPMB!NPUJWBUF BF SENIOR ADVERTISEMENT MANAGER +BZB #BMBLSJTIOBO KBZB!NPUJWBUF BF DEPUTY ADVERTISEMENT MANAGER Murali Narayanan ADVERTISEMENT MANAGER Shruti Srivastava EDITORIAL CONSULTANTS FOR EMIRATES: Editor: Siobhan Bardet Arabic Editor: Hatem Omar Deputy Editor: Stephanie Byrne Website Ĺ&#x; emirates. com. CONTRIBUTORS: Karen Kurycki, Simon Page, Claire Rigby, Andrew Baumgartner, Gareth Rees, Richard Luck, Michael Spearman, Hind Mezaina, Gemma Correll, Phil Oh, PuiKin Ivan Cheung, Gregor McClenaghan, Boris Hamilton, Elle Timms, Gay Talese, Mark Russell, Robin Denselow, Kevin Cummins, Adam Kennedy, David Drebin, Nick Rice, Axis Maps, Victor Besa, COVER ILLUSTRATION by Simon Page MASTHEAD DESIGN CZ 2VJOU Ĺ&#x; XXX RVJOUEVCBJ DPN INTERNATIONAL MEDIA REPRESENTATIVES AUSTRALIA Okeeffe Media; Tel +61 89 381 7425, Fax +61 89 382 4850, okeeffekev@bigpond.com.au CHINA/HONG KONG Emphasis Media Limited; Tel +85 22 516 1048, Fax +85 22 561 3349, advertising@emphasis.net CYPRUS Epistle Communications & Media; Tel +35 72 246 6555, Fax +35 72 276 9999, nasreenk@epistlemedia.com FRANCE/SWITZERLAND Intermedia Europe Ltd; Tel +33 15 534 9550, Fax +33 15 534 9549, administration@intermedia. europe.com GERMANY IMV Internationale Medien Vermarktung GmbH, Phone: 0049 8151 550 8959, Fax: 0049 8151 550 9180 w.jaeger@imv-media.com INDIA Media Star; Tel +91 22 281 5538/39/40, Fax +91 22 283 9619, ravi@mediastar.co.in ITALY IMM Italia; Tel +39 023 653 4433, Fax +39 029 998 1376, lucia.colucci@fastwebnet.it JAPAN Skynet Media Inc.; Tel/Fax +81 43 278 6977, skynetmedia@y2.dion.ne.jp TURKEY Media Ltd; Tel +90 212 275 8433, Fax +90 212 275 9228, mediamarketingtr@medialtd.com.tr UK Spafax Inflight Media; Tel +44 207 906 2001, Fax +44 207 906 2022, nhopkins@spafax.com USA Redwood Custom Communications Inc.; Tel 212-473-5679 x 313 , Fax 212-260-3509, brigitte.baron@redwoodcc.com

CONTENTS

APRIL �� CLAIRE RIGBY EXPLAINS WHY SÃO PAULO IS NO LONGER RIO’S POORER COUSIN (P29)… WE GO TO THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON AND BACK WITH A MUSIC�THEMED GRAPH (P30)… LONDON’S BEST RECORD SHOPS GIVE US THEIR ELEVATOR TWEETS (P33)… MUMBAI’S BARS, RESTAURANTS AND CLUBS GET THE ONCE OVER (P36)… WE CHART THE BRIEF HISTORY OF MUSICAL GENIUSES �AND YES, THAT INCLUDES JUSTIN BIEBER� (P46)… WE HEAD TO NEW YORK TO CHECK OUT THE CITY’S FASHIONISTAS (P50)…

BANGKOK’S BEST JAZZ BAR IS STILL GOING STRONG (P54)… DUBAI HAS SOME HIDDEN TREASURE IF YOU KNOW WHERE TO LOOK. WE DO (P56)… GAY TALESE DISCOVERS FRANK SINATRA HAS A COLD (P62)… KOREAN

POP MUSIC HAS TAKEN OVER ASIA. WE FIND OUT WHY (P72)… GILLES PETERSON IS ONE OF MOST ECLECTIC DJS IN THE WORLD TODAY. ROBIN DENSELOW VISITS HIS LONDON STUDIO (P82)… WHEN THE BERLIN WALL CAME DOWN IN ��, TECHNO HELPED REUNITE THE COUNTRY, AS ADAM KENNEDY DISCOVERS (P90)… ROLLING STONE MAGAZINE USED TO BE CUTTING EDGE. RICHARD LUCK WONDERS WHAT HAPPENED (P98)… KEVIN

CUMMINS SHARES MANCHESTER’S DEFINING MUSICAL IMAGES (P106)… 22

CONTRIBUTORS

SOUNDMURDER

BEASTIE BOYS:

& SK-1: REWIND

CHECK YOUR HEAD

DIRECT FROM DETROIT,

GREAT RAP TRACKS,

THIS IS THE ULTIMATE

FUNNY, FUNKY —

SOUNDTRACK TO ALL-

IT’S THE NEAREST

NIGHT PARTIES GONE

THING TO AN

RIGHT. TECHNO GENIUS.

INSTANT RECORD COLLECTION.

EELS: MANCHESTER GIRL

NEW ORDER: SUBSTANCE STILL LOVE IT AS MUCH AS I DID 24 YEARS AGO. I CAN LISTEN TO IT, DANCE TO IT AND IT

ORCHESTRA BAOBAB:

BRINGS BACK GOOD

SPECIALIST IN ALL STYLES

MEMORIES.

A SLINKY, TUNEFUL BLEND OF CUBAN AND AFRICAN STYLES BY THE VETERAN MALIAN DANCE BAND.

ADAM KENNEDY: A music journalist who has written for the Guardian, the BBC, NME, Arena and Kerrang! Career highlights include surviving a ﬁrearms-festooned photoshoot with a crew of angry rappers in New York and an evening with The Fall’s legendary Mark E Smith.

KEVIN CUMMINS: One of the world’s leading photographers, his iconic covers for British music magazine NME deﬁned a generation

ROBIN DENSELOW: A journalist, broadcaster and TV producer who specialises in both music and politics. He writes regularly on world

RICHARD LUCK: An award-winning feature writer, critic and author. Formerly Film4.com’s deputy editor, he regularly contributes to

HIND MEZAINA: A Dubai-based blogger who writes about ﬁlm, photography and art. Her blog, www.theculturist.com, is the leading arts

of musicians. His work has been exhibited at The National Portrait Gallery and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. His most recent monograph, Joy Division, was published by Rizzoli last year.

and folk music for the Guardian,travels extensively, and has reported from around the world for BBC TV and radio.

Empire, Esquire, and SFX and has written books on Steve McQueen, Sam Peckinpah, Beastie Boys and the Manchester music scene.

and culture blog in the UAE. She also works as a photographer and has documented the city extensively.

M A R Q U I S E BY PA S PA L E Y Ê " Ê / Ê , / - Ê Ê Ê 1 Ê Ê Ê Ê /

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WHITE TIGERS. NOW ON EXHIBIT AT AL AIN WILDLIFE PARK & RESORT. Al Ain Wildlife Park & Resort expresses its gratitude to Sheikha Latifa Bint Rashid Bin Khalifa Bin Saeed Al Maktoum for the generous donation of two extraordinary White tigers. The almost two year old White tiger siblings, a female and a male, have relocated to their new home at Al Ain Wildlife Park & Resort and are now on exhibit. Come and watch them in their new enclosure in the zooâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s cathouse. Today, White tigers are reported to live only in captivity. White tigers are ambassadors for their cousins in the wild (India, South-East Asia and Russia). Tigers are critically endangered with some subspecies such as the Sumatra tiger almost being extinct in the wild. They are in a badly need for protection and it is our obligation to conserve them for future generations. Al Ain Wildlife Park & Resort â&#x20AC;&#x201C; In Touch With Nature.

INTRO ×Þ º ã

P. 33 º London vinyl

P. ØÛ º mumbai mapped

P. ÚÙ º brown sugar bangkok

’S H OTTEST

ER MANCHEST EIR GIVE US TH D N A NEW B Y LY-IN-THE-SK ULTIMATE F G TRACKLISTIN

P42

The only flying legend without wings.

“Well, almost!” Pilot’s Watch Chronograph. Ref. 3717: Not every airborne legend comes with wings and an engine. This one, for example, has a soft-iron inner case for protection against magnetic fields and a glass secured against displacement by drops in pressure. Its irresistible aesthetic appeal is founded on more than mere flights of fancy, and even at ground level, its owner will always be flying high. IWC. Engineered for men.

IWC SCHAFFHAUSEN BOUTIQUES: DUBAI MALL – Tel: 04 339 8111, BURJUMAN – Tel: 04 355 1717, ABU DHABI MARINA MALL - Tel: 02 681 1557 Ahmed Seddiqi & Sons: Atlantis - Tel: 04 422 0233, City Centre – Tel: 04 295 3225, Wafi Shopping Mall – Tel: 04 324 6060, Mall of the Emirates – Tel: 04 341 1211, Emirates Towers Bld - Tel: 04 330 0888, Dubai Duty Free – Tel Toll Free: 800 - 4443 Rivoli Prestige: Abu Dhabi Mall – Tel: 02 645 6220

OUR MAN IN

SÃO PAULO DESPITE BEING FOREVER IN RIO’S SHADOW, SÃO PAULO HAS A NIGHT-TIME RHYTHM ALL OF ITS OWN

t’s hard being the sensible one — and even harder when your sibling is a unanimously acknowledged, effortless beauty. While visitors thrill at the beaches, lush green hills and brooding peaks of nearby Rio de Janeiro, hardworking über-metropolis São Paulo has struggled to attract tourists beyond a growing stream of industry, service and finance visitors drawn to its thriving business culture. But as every paulistano knows, beauty is skin-deep; and beneath São Paulo’s serious monochrome veneer, there’s plenty of substance. The city’s self-assured, urbane inhabitants are a testament to that; and a night spent down on Baixo Augusta, the rock’n’roll heart of São Paulo’s buzzing nightlife scene, is cast-iron proof of it. Here on the gritty, northeasterly stretch of Rua Augusta — a street that also continues south-west of skyscraper-clad Avenida Paulista — there’s not much to write home about in the way of looks. But for those in search of late-night excitement, music and street life, or an insight into some of São Paulo’s more colourful urban transitions, it’s one

of the most interesting spots in town. Stretching back to Rua Augusta’s chic 1950s incarnation and on into the 1980s, when the road’s fortunes took a dive as the shopping scene shifted to the malls, every hick cousin up for a visit to the big city has found their way to Augusta to gawp. First at its fine shops; later at the adult clubs that replaced the boutiques. Many of the clubs — ‘American bars’, as some of them call themselves — are still there, with neon signs and seedy entrances promising even seedier interiors. But these days, Baixo Augusta’s main attractions are the dozens of bars, nightclubs and music venues that have increasingly colonised the street, and the hipsters and the cool tattooed girls, the goths, the emos and the rockers who pack them out on weekend nights, spilling out of them and into the road, where hawkers sell cans of beer and sizzling meat skewers. Vegas, Studio SP, Z Carniceria: for every one of these, Augusta’s best-known nightspots, there’s a half-dozen smaller, edgy joints also pulling in the crowds, plus a scattering of the kind of old-fashioned, strippeddown bars and diners – botecos and

lanchonetes — that grace every other São Paulo street corner. Ibotirama, at the intersection of Rua Augusta and Fernando de Albuquerque, is one of Rua Augusta’s finest. A crush of party people table-hops there nightly, gearing up to head to late-night spots on Augusta and on its surrounding streets — to slick Sonique on Bela Cintra, Astronete on Matias Aires, or neon-lit Volt on Rua Haddock Lobo. But even as one more club closes (it’s currently Maison, with a ‘Closing For Demolition – Everything Must Go’ sign up) and a new bar opens (LAB Club, raising the tone — and the price – with a menu of molecular cocktails), there’s a new tribe in town. Rua Augusta’s excellent location, linking the city’s power avenue — sleek, high-rise Paulista — with the run-down city centre, plus the gentrifying trailblazed by the moderninhos — hipsters — who frequent the area, some of whom have settled there, has led to a mini property boom. Maison is to be replaced not by another grungy club but by a brand new residential building, just one of 11 currently being constructed in the area. And so the wheel turns again.

Claire Rigby is a writer based in São Paulo. You can follow her at: www.twitter.com/saopaulo_claire 29

GRAPH INFORMATION ELEGANCE

ILLUSTRATION BY: ANDREW BAUMGARTNER

TWITTER PITCH

London Record BM soho Stores Honest BM Soho, established in 1990, is London’s longest running

independent dance music record shop specialising in house/drum

Jon's

& bass and dubstep. www.twitter.com/bmsoho

Legendary reggae, jazz, soul specialists since 1974. Now with a label, releasing

phonica records

cutting edge music, sounds unlimited and outernational. www.twitter.com/honestjonsldn

London’s leading vinyl emporium: specialists in dance music on vinyl & CD, house, techno, disco, electro, funk & soul, dubstep, folk and electronica! www.twitter.com/phonicarecords

Soul Brother

rough trade

Perfect shop for new and classic/rare soul & jazz, massive range on CD and vinyl friendly. Informative staff, efﬁcient mail order. 20 years exp. www.twitter.com/soulbrotherrec

Every month we profile a number of venues in a different city. The catch? The venues must be on Twitter and must tell us in their own words what makes them so special. This month we feature London’s best record emporiums. If you want to get involved, follow us at:

UK’s largest music store, where curious minds hang out with likeminded people. Featuring the ﬁnest new music, Steidl photography books, espresso bar and in-store gigs. www.twitter.com/roughtradeshops

www.twitter.com/openskiesmag

DUBAI – SOUK MADINAT, VILEBREQUIN STORE – HAMAC STORES – HARVEY NICHOLS – SAKS FIFTH AVENUE

WWW.VILEBREQUIN.COM

BOOKED

NICK HORNBY — HIGH FIDELITY

ost people came to Nick Hornby’s best-seller through the entertaining, but inevitably Americanised US film starring John Cusack as obsessive record shopowner Rob Fleming. But before Hollywood laid its shimmering mitts on it, High Fidelity was at the bottom of every musos grubby record bag. Charting his journey from self-infl icted ruin (cheating on and losing his girlfriend Laura) to partial redemption (getting her back), and narrated by Rob in a witty, conversational tone, the novel explores his immaturity, music mania and fi xation on other women. Rob and his employees, fellow music snobs Dick and Barry, spend their time making top five lists to show off their musical knowledge. So when Laura leaves him, Rob deals with her departure in the only way he knows how – by compiling a list of his top five most memorable break-ups. He contacts his past flames to see what went wrong, which eventually leads to the resurrection of his relationship with Laura. Hornby’s talent lies in making the everyday funny, interesting and dramatic. His message? You might not have it all, but the life you already have is probably pretty good . Penguin, 1995

ROOM

NO.3013

THE CONRAD HILTON BANGKOK

INTERNET SPEED: 24MB, free PILLOW THREAD COUNT: 300 PILLOWS: 8 ENGLISH TV CHANNELS: 18 IPOD DOCK: Yes ROOM SERVICE: Yes, 117 dishes available CLUB SANDWICH DELIVERY TIME: 16

minutes COMPLIMENTARY SNACKS: Freshly

brewed coffee, fruit TOILETRY BRAND: Conrad own brand DAILY NEWSPAPER: The Nation EXTRAS: Iron and board, hairdryer, safe,

blackout curtains, pillow menu BUSINESS CENTRE: Yes VIEW: 3/5 RATE: $190 per night WWW.CONRADHOTELS1.HILTON.COM

Bangkok is one of the world’s great hotel cities with a selection of some of Asia’s best accommodation. We stayed at the Conrad Hilton, a 392room hotel in the embassy district. So what exactly is the Conrad? Well it’s not a boutique hotel nor strictly a business or family hotel. Despite this, it still works, combining touches of flair (live jazz, awesome views) with the practicalities of a business hotel (high-speed Wi-Fi, business centre). Its location, just around the corner from the main Sukhumvit drag, is perfect; close enough to walk to downtown Bangkok, distant enough to ignore the city centre chaos if you choose. The vibe is mellow — dim lighting, piped chill-out music and (this is Asia after all) superb, discrete, service. A hidden gem in the Bangkok hotel market. 35

MAPPED MUMBAI

Enticingly exotic, quixotic but never boring — Mumbai is a city rammed with 24-hour party people, worker bees, super achievers and oodles of mind-blowing human and mechanical traffic. In this bustling megatropolis, how best to make the most of your valuable time? Caroline Eden strolls its downtown streets and starry suburbs in search of where the city’s gastronomes and Bollywood royalty hang out.

Oros O ros os

Vile Parle arle East

Khar West Bandra West 1

Kurla

Sion Mahim B Bay

Mahim

Chembur

Dadar West

WWW.HG2.COM

Priyadarshini Ambica Nagar Lal Baug

Parel

10 8 Mazagaon Gi Girgaon Ch Chowpatty 13 K albad Kalbadevi Mandvi 11

12 Back Bay

Fort

ff ffe Cuffe arade Parade

5 Colaba

HOTELS 1. Taj Lands End

2. The Oberoi

3. Le Sutra

4. Gordon House

RESTAURANTS �. Indigo

6. Moshe’s

7. Tasting Room

8. Olive Bar & Kitchen

Butcher Island

Thane Creek

Ghatkopar West

Vashi

Sector 20

Sanpada

MUMBAI

Kharghar Padghe

NAVI MUMBAI CBD Belapur

Kalamboli

Sector 44â&#x20AC;&#x201C;A Panvel Creek

Ganeshpuri Chinchpada

Vichumbe

Dapoli Elephanta Island

Nandgaon

Javale

Sheva

Jasai

Jaskaar Dongri

Belpada

Rajanpada

JNPT

Karanja Lad

BARS / CLUBS 9. Blue Frog

10. Aer

11. Tote on the Turf

12. Valhalla

GALLERIES 13. Matthieu Foss

14. Project 88

15. Gallery BMB

16. Chaterjee & Lal

MAPPED MUMBAI

HOTELS 1 TAJ LANDS END

2 THE OBEROI

3 LE SUTRA

4 GORDON HOUSE

Located right on the Arabian

Attentive and intuitive service,

Billed as India’s ﬁrst ‘art

Location, location, location.

sea in Bandra — ‘queen of

location, minimal décor and

hotel’ Le Sutra is in a chi-chi

Just behind the iconic Taj Palace

the suburbs’ — this is one of

stunning views sets this hotel

neighbourhood, which has a

hotel — by staying here you are

Mumbai’s slickest hotels. The

apart. The spa is open 24 hours

far slower pace than downtown

slap bang in the centre of town.

service here is faultless and

a day too, so a jet lag massage

Colaba. The rooms are unique

This is a small, stylish hotel

sets the standard for many

is ready for your arrival. A

in their design and the hotel a

with three themed ﬂoors, buffet

other hotels in the city.

glimpse of a bygone era.

magnet for creative types.

breakfast and Wi-Fi included.

5 INDIGO

6 MOSHE’S

7 TASTING ROOM

8 OLIVE BAR & KITCHEN

The menu may change once

A respectable deli counter and

Beautifully decked out – think

The Mediterranean dishes

a year, but it’s one of the best

chefs who’ve been trained at

modern Raj with chic ethnic

are popular with Bollywood

restaurants in town with cuisine

top hotels whip up creamy

twists mixed with European

beauties, cricket megastars

‘inspired by Asia’. Book your

pastas and hearty soups with

style — you can easily kill an

and their entourages. Go for

table in advance; this is where

several branches throughout

afternoon here with a glass of

the Sunday brunch, stay all

Angelina Jolie and the Clintons

the city. This, however, is easily

wine and some tasty eats, which

afternoon and people watch

dine when they’re in town.

the best location.

is what we suggest you do.

to your heart’s content.

RESTAURANTS

BARS/CLUBS 9 BLUE FROG

10 AER

11 TOTE ON THE TURF

12 VALHALLA

Housed in a huge old mill

Champagne cocktails are the

Since opening, it’s been all

Decorated with rich reds,

warehouse, Blue Frog offers

order of the day here, perfect

about striking a pose here.

purples and velvets, this

the city’s style tribes live music

with some tapas. Be warned

Models, celebrities and assorted

restaurant-lounge space has a

most nights of the week. Expect

this place gets so congested at

hangers-on all help to prop up

boudoir feel. A good spot for

everything and anything from

the weekends that there is a

the split-level bar at Tote on

settling into some comfy seats

psychedelic trance music to

risk of an embarrassing hold

the Turf; probably Mumbai’s

and tucking into some of the

Rajasthani folk.

up in the melee at the door.

coolest joint, for now at least.

Spanish-inﬂuenced dishes.

13 MATTHIEU FOSS

14 PROJECT 88

15 GALLERY BMB

16 CHATTERJEE & LAL

Mumbai’s ﬁrst private space

At the cutting edge of the

Gallery BMB, located in the

This 1,600 sq ft gallery set

dedicated solely to photography

Mumbai art scene, Sree

heart of Mumbai’s fashionable

within a Victorian, Raj-period

— this cool, minimalist gallery

Goswami, the gallery’s director,

Fort area, houses a unique art

warehouse is one of Mumbai’s

offers classic photography and

seeks out young artists and

bookshop with a dedicated

preeminent art spaces and a

printing techniques as well as

displays them alongside

reading area and a chilled out

springboard for much of the

more recent digital methods. A

more recognised Indian and

café. A great place to spend a

country’s new artistic talent.

window on the city.

international artists.

lazy afternoon or two.16

Deﬁnitely worth a look.

GALLERIES

FLICK CELLULOID DISSECTED

FAilure to launch RICHARD LUCK EXAMINES THE CHEQUERED HISTORY OF SINGERS ON THE BIG SCREEN

he relationship between film and music is as old as the cinema itself, but for every epic score there’s been a less-than-stellar turn from a rock star wannabe. It’s perhaps harder to imagine movies without music than it is motion pictures minus dialogue. Indeed, some 30 years before Al Jolson exclaimed “You ain’t heard nothing yet!” in The Jazz Singer, the first ever talkie, music had ensured there were really no such things as silent movies. And while a lot’s changed in the years since, the soundtrack still fulfils much the same purpose — underscoring, emphasising and punctuating pictures in ways words never could. As a wise man once said, “To understand the power of music in 40

the movies, you just need to remind yourself that no one leaves a film humming the scenery.” John Williams, Hans Zimmer, the late, great John Barry — the film world’s great composers enjoy the same acclaim as legendary stars and directors. It’s just a pity that, for every musician that has enhanced a movie, there’s another who’s left a dark stain on cinema history. For as long as there has been rock ‘n’ roll, there have been rock stars claiming that what they really want to do is act. The pioneering Elvis Presley starred in 33 films over the course of his short life, virtually all of them now unwatchable. However, Elvis looks like Olivier when compared with some of those who dared to follow in his footsteps. From Sting in Dune to Mariah Carey in Glitter, a stream of

pop stars have come to Hollywood thinking acting looks easy only to prove that it isn’t. And if you’d imagine the run of failures might lead them to think otherwise, think again. This year alone we’ve already seen Christina Aguilera take to the screen in Burlesque, proving that, as an actress, she’s pretty good at remembering the American national anthem. “I see no reason why a singer should make for a good movie star,” laughs film-maker Julien Temple. And having directed Sid Vicious in The Great Rock ‘N’ Swindle and David Bowie and Patsy Kensit in Absolute Beginners, he knows of what he speaks. “The skills you require when on stage and on screen couldn’t be more different. Sure, there have been some good performances from musicians. I think David Bowie is very good in

The Man Who Fell To Earth, although I reckon he’s just playing a version of himself, or rather, the way he was at the time he made the film. I think the same’s also true of Mick Jagger in Performance — he’s great but I don’t think playing a bored rock star was much of a stretch. Oddly enough, the one musician I think could make for a good actor is Neil Young. There’s something authentic and understated about him. Most musicians are very ‘big’ on screen, but I think Neil would prove very subtle.” In lieu of the ex-Crazy Horse frontman becoming the next Al Pacino, it’s Temple rather than the musicians he’s worked with who’s proved that a healthy relationship can exist between singing and the silver screen. Over the last few years, the British filmmaker has created a string of

superb music-related documentaries. From the Sex Pistols expose The Filth And The Fury to Oil City Confidential — a celebration of the kings of Canvey Island Dr Feelgood — Temple’s demonstrated that the rock star life can make for utterly compelling movies. He’s even made a film about Glastonbury that’s so good, it enables you to experience the headiness of the festival without having to fork out for a pair of wellies and spend hours talking to a bloke called Sunshine who supports himself selling funny tasting brownies and little wooden hobbits. Nor is Temple alone in transforming stories of rock excess into fascinating documentary films. In Ondi Timoner’s Dig!, the sell-out success of The Dandy Warhols is juxtaposed with the mania and quest for authenticity that

consumed their former buddies The Brian Jonestown Massacre. And in Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky’s Metallica: Some Kind Of Monster, we find out what happens when rock behemoths spend some time with a psychiatrist. And the list doesn’t end there. The Devil And Daniel Johnston, Lemmy, Searching For The WrongEyed Jesus (crazy title, crazy film), loudQUIETloud ; it’s almost as if the movie gods decided to compensate us for every time Madonna’s made a movie by inspiring someone else to create a knockout rock documentary. Which is fair enough for, as the likes of Alex North (Spartacus), Bernard Hermann (Psycho) and Howard Shore (The Lord Of The Rings) have proven time after time, at its very best, music can really turn the movie-going experience up to 11. 41

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ORNETTE COLEMAN — STREET WOMAN Super-slippery and savage, this experimental saxophone-led jazz piece dances and jolts like a livewire. The Bad Plus did a suitably unhinged version of this on their 2004 album, Give.

JAMES BLAKE —CMYK James supported us in December and did a beautiful job, he’s an extremely talented and open-minded musician. We can’t wait to hear his album, which promises to be as skilful, soulful and fresh as this song.

WARPAINT — BILLIE HOLIDAY Quoting the Mary Wells Motown hit My Guy, this song shows the sweet side of Warpaint. Live they are brilliantly unpredictable, building to ferocious improvised climaxes and huge grungey grooves. 42

SCOTT WALKER — ON MY OWN AGAIN On My Own Again seems to allude to the disorientating nature of touring “city after city, granite grey as morning”, and some erstwhile lost love left behind. The final heartbreaking line refers to the very beginning of a relationship — “when it began I was so happy, I didn’t feel like me”.

BIG BOI – SHUTTERBUGG Retro-futuristic Sugarhill Gang-esque synths, drums in space, robots singing the bassline, it must be Big Boi. Baby, baby, you’re in my system.

STEVE REICH – NEW YORK COUNTERPOINT We all love Steve Reich and his percussive hypnotic compositions. In this piece we hear multiple clarinets and bass layered, kicking and squirming against one another and a tape.

DESTINY’S CHILD — SAY MY NAME A classic R&B premise, Beyonce wants her lover to say her name down the phone to prove he’s not at another woman’s house cheating on her. The sentiment is reflected in the music perfectly but more importantly it’s a classic slice of American pop.

THE BEATLES — A DAY IN THE LIFE A perfect fusion of classic Lennon and classic McCartney, A Day In The Life is the bravura performance that closes Sgt. Pepper’s. In 1967 it pushed the boundaries — musically, lyrically and conceptually — of what pop music could be.

RADIOHEAD — EVERYTHING IN ITS RIGHT PLACE The opening track of Kid A, which blew our minds as teenagers, Everything In Its Right Place is the first thing Radiohead fans had heard since OK Computer. For us it surpassed it. This is brave, bold and beautiful. KATE BUSH — DEEPER UNDERSTANDING It’s 1989 and Kate Bush is dreaming about the future of our relationship with information technology. It’s a song of loneliness and solace in the modern world: “As the people here grow colder, I turn to my computer.” 43

LOCAL VOICES

JUDGE A BOOK BY ITS COVER

FRAMING THE UAE HIND MEZAINA WANTS LOCAL PUBLISHERS TO IMPROVE THEIR PACKAGING OF THE UAE'S CULTURAL OUTPUT

ILLUSTRATION BY: VESNA PESIC

often wonder what kind of literature tourists take back home after their holiday in the UAE ends. Is it the ubiquitous postcard-style picture book of the city, or can we offer them something more in-depth? I hope the day comes when someone like me visits this country and can find unique books that can speak to them visually; which can be taken back to their home as memorabilia — something they can share, something to show there is more to this place than initially meets the eye. I’m always drawn to bookshops during my travels, looking for literature about the city I am visiting or memorabilia to bring back home with me, searching for books about photography, film, music, architecture and design. The Middle East has several established book publishers, but we are lacking publishers that cover the

arts. Discussions with my friends always lead to one conclusion; there’s no demand for them because no one is interested to read about the arts in our own language: Arabic. Is this the case? Do we have to resign ourselves to the fact that there is no demand amongst an Arabic reading audience for books that cover the fields of art, design and culture? There is an assumption that anything modern and creative can be found in other languages — just not in Arabic. The GCC doesn’t lack original content, it just lacks the will and dare I say, the savviness, to bring our own literature to the fore, especially when it comes to books covering the creative arts. When I recently took stock of my collection, I noticed I own just a handful of Arabic language books. I have Arabic novels translated into English, but it dawned on me I don’t have a decent selection of books in Arabic. It’s a reflection of my 45

generation’s disconnect to Arabic books, or at least the ones who went to English language schools. Although we speak the language, we’ve lost interest in seeking knowledge from Arabic books. Wanting to make small steps to change this for myself, I went in search of Arabic books, curious to see what I would discover, what would grab my attention. I headed to one of the oldest suppliers of Arabic books in the city, Dar Al Hikmah, on Diyafah Street in Dubai. A medium sized

bookstore surrounded by fast-food restaurants, It’s an ‘old school’ place that I am glad to see is still standing after 30 years. But what struck me was the heavy presence of Islamic literature and political books about the Middle East. It’s as if books in Arabic have limited categories. There were many international best-sellers translated into Arabic, but I couldn’t find any books with a strong visual edge, something that looked modern and fresh. Even

though the place is endearing — it had a feeling of a family-run bookstore — I couldn’t help but wonder if more can be done to appeal to readers like me. When I went to one of Dubai’s newer bookstores, Book World by Kinokuniya in The Dubai Mall — a place that looks like any big international bookstore — it lacked atmosphere but it did have a large selection of categories that went beyond religion and politics, which was refreshing. I felt however, for all its choice, it was still lacking

A BRIEF HISTORY OF MUSICAL GENIUSES 175 6

Combining genius with hard work, Mozart began composing at the age of ﬁve, which explains why, despite his death at 35, he remains one of the most proliﬁc classical composers. Transcends mere music.

1926

1935

1939

The genius of Miles Davis was his ability to recognise the importance of the space in between the notes. Also a very, very cool cat.

He borrowed heavily from rhythm and blues and came up with rock 'n' roll. Girls fainted, parents complained and radio stations exploded. Elvis Presley was the ﬁrst bona ﬁde global superstar before developing a dehabilitating cheeseburger addiction.

Marvin Gaye rose above the doo-wop music Motown expected him to perform and created one of the greatest albums of the 20th century, What’s Going On, despite the label initially refusing to release it. Beset by demons, he was killed by his father in 1984.

LOCAL VOICES

something. Where are the books told through a native’s perspective about the architectural landscape of the country for the past 40 years? There’s a rich history of poetry and storytelling here, which is passed on verbally, but we also need this to be recorded in books. And these books need to be contemporary in feel, utilising some of the amazing graphic designers and illustrators we have in this region. Where are the books that talk about embroidery, traditional

19 42

A perfectionist who tottered on the brink of madness (he once spent three years in his bedroom) Brian Wilson married melody, harmony and technology better than anyone else.

food and music — again told and documented from a native’s point of view, but with a modern aesthetic. I’m talking about the quality of books that are published by the likes of Booth-Clibborn and Phaidon. With so much reliance on imported expertise and opinions, more needs to be done internally to attract and reintroduce Arabic readers to their own cultural DNA. Whether it’s the role of existing publishers, new entrepreneurs or new regulations to push through this

change, it is very clear that a change is needed. Bookshops comfort me. They are places where I can enjoy a mental escape from daily life. Whether I go to buy magazines or browse for new books — and despite today’s digital options to purchase and read books — nothing can replace the feeling and experience of being inside a bookshop. It this experience that I look for when I am abroad and I hope it is something I can soon experience here in my hometown when I go in search of Arabic language books.

1955

1974

1994

Kool Herc invented hip hop by combining James Brown breaks with verbal exhortations over the top of the records. A true original.

The originators of punk and the idea that raw, stripped down rock music was more effective than the bloated music of the time, The Ramones were red-blooded musical pioneers.

Justin Bieber and his haircut have taken the world (or at least the teenage part of it) by storm. Despite his music being less inventive than a business card, his genius lies in his marketing.

INTERVIEW

MY TRAVELLED LIFE SALLY-ANNE RUSSELL, 40, MEZZO-SOPRANO

ON TRAVEL

ON MY SCHEDULE

and pronounciation. At rehearsals everyone

When I ﬁrst bought my passport I never

My schedule is booked two years in advance;

is walking around in costumes, holding

thought I would ﬁll it, but I had to get a new

Pavarotti's schedule would be booked a

books which they have to memorise. It is

one after ﬁve years. The amount of travel I do

decade in advance. You can sometimes

very intense, but exhilarating.

depends on the year, but I can be away for up

forget things are booked. You agree to do

to six months in the year. This year it will be

something and forget all about it, and then

closer to two months, but I will be travelling

next thing, you are on a plane! I get to travel

ON DIFFERENCES

a lot in Australia.

a lot around Australia, which is great.

There are so many amazing places I have been to. I could live in Vancouver, it's so beautiful. Japan was really fascinating.

ON PLANES

ON WORK

Hungary and Poland were great and Canada

You can meet some incredibly interesting

The work is complicated. You have to

is beautiful. I would love to live in Italy as

people on planes, but I do like to work. A lot

memorise the notes and memorise the

well. Stockholm had a great culture and was

of my ﬂights are long-haul so I get to work for

words, which are often in another language,

a very interesting place. My job involves

six or seven hours straight. It's a great place

in French or German or Russian. You need

a lot of travel, but it's one of the most

to memorise, so on go the headphones and

to know what you are singing, the right tone

rewarding aspects of it.

I can get a lot of work done. I also sleep! It's important to get lot of rest for my voice.

ON MY VOICE I have to protect my voice. I have sometimes moved seats on a plane if the person beside me has a cold. I chew a Jet Ease tablet every two hours when I am ﬂying and it really helps with jet lag. Water, obviously helps too. For a sore throat, I mix turmeric paste with warm water and drink that; it really helps. There is not much you can do to cure a cold.

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VENUE URBAN CARTOGRAPHY « BROWN SUGAR « BANGKOK « JAZZ

angkok’s nightlife has a lot to offer, but good live music can be tough to find in a city addicted to karaoke and cover bands. For more than 25 years, Brown Sugar, on Sarasin Road just north of Lumphini Park, has given Bangkok’s jazz lovers a home. Not far from the embassy district and far enough away from the main nightlife drags, the venue is a rarity in a rapidly gentrifying city. Small and intimate, it oozes atmosphere. The combination of neon signs, unpainted brickwork and dark wooden tables stained with decades’ worth of whiskey and beer gives the place an authentic, film noir jazz vibe before a note has been played. Although there are better places to eat in the city (the menu is small, and it’s too noisy to hold much of a conversation), and the drinks are a little more expensive than average for Bangkok (a bourbon will set you back $6), the music lives up to the promise of the venue, with two bands playing Monday to Thursday and three at weekends, including a roster of visiting guest musicians. The backbone of the club is the Brown Sugar Jazz Band, who night after night belt out a varied mix of traditional jazz standards, jazzed up versions of pop and rock songs, and occasional blues. “I love playing here because people come for the music; when you play in a hotel you get a mix of people who are there for lots of different reasons, but here you know the crowd has come for WORDS: GREGOR MCCLENAGHAN / IMAGES: BORIS HAMILTON

the jazz,” said Pandz Lewis, who spent three decades singing in jazz clubs all over Asia, from the Philippines to Hong Kong, before moving to Bangkok and the Brown Sugar Jazz Band six years ago. “Jazz can be a complicated form of music, the equivalent of an abstract painting, and it surprises me sometimes that so many people come to tell us how much they enjoy hearing us play. “For a musician that’s really a lovely feeling. Nobody does this to make a lot of money; you play jazz because you love it, and it’s wonderful to be able to share that with others.” The two-storey club attracts a mixed crowd of all ages that includes — something rare in a Bangkok venue — Thais, tourists and foreign expatriates from around the world. “I’ve come here a few times and it’s always dependable; there aren’t many places in Bangkok that are like this,” said Elliot Voth, an American who has lived in the city for two years. “Plenty of bars have live bands, but they always play the same stuff. Here you know you’re going to get something different.” His wife, Jenny, agreed. “Before I came here I thought you would only find music like this in the big hotels. Places like this make you realise how much culture there is in Bangkok,” she said. Twentyfive years old and still going strong, Brown Sugar keeps getting sweeter. Brown Sugar, 231/20 Thanon Sarasin, Bangkok. Tel: +66 (2) 2501826. Open Mon-Sat 5pm-2am; music starts at 9.30pm

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FRANK SINATRA

A R T A N I S ANK LD O C A S HA TALESE Y A G Y B

FRANK SINATRA

rank Sinatra, holding a glass of bourbon in one hand and a cigarette in the other, stood in a dark corner of the bar between two attractive but fading blondes who sat waiting for him to say something. But he said nothing; he had been silent during much of the evening, except now in this private club in Beverly Hills he seemed even more distant staring out through the smoke and semi-darkness into a large room beyond the bar where dozens of young couples sat huddled around small tables or twisted in the centre of the dance floor to the clamorous clang of folk-rock music blaring from the stereo. The two blondes knew, as did Sinatra’s four male friends who stood nearby, that it was a bad idea to force conversation upon him when he was in this mood of sullen silence, a mood that had hardly been uncommon during

SINATRA, JOHNNY CARSON (LEFT) AND DEAN MARTIN IN ST. LOUIS FOR A BENEFIT CONCERT

Frank Sinatra with a cold is like Picasso without paint, like a Ferrari without fuel

this first week of November, a month before his 50th birthday. Sinatra had been working in a film that he now disliked, could not wait to finish; he was tired of all the publicity attached to his dating the 20-year-old Mia Farrow, who was not in sight tonight; he was angry that a CBS television documentary of his life, to be shown in two weeks, was reportedly prying into his privacy, even speculating on his possible friendship with Mafia leaders; he was worried about his starring role in an hour-long NBC show entitled Sinatra

— A Man And His Music, which would

require that he sing 18 songs with a voice that at this particular moment, just a few nights before the taping was to begin, was weak and sore and uncertain. Sinatra was ill. He was the victim of an ailment so common that most people would consider it trivial. But when it gets to Sinatra it can plunge him into a state of anguish, deep depression, panic, even rage. Frank Sinatra had a cold. Sinatra with a cold is Picasso without paint, a Ferrari without fuel — only worse. For the common cold robs Sinatra of that uninsurable jewel — his voice, cutting into the core of his confidence, and it affects not only his own psyche, but also seems to cause a kind of psychosomatic nasal drip within dozens of people who work for him, drink with him, love him, and depend on him for their own welfare and stability. A Sinatra with a cold can, in a small way, send vibrations through the entertainment industry

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FRANK SINATRA

and beyond as surely as a President of the United States, suddenly sick, can shake the national economy. For Frank Sinatra was now involved with many things involving many people — his own film company, his record company, his private airline, his missileparts firm, his real-estate holdings across the nation, his personal staff of 75 — which are only a portion of the power he is and has come to represent. He seemed now to be also the embodiment of the fully emancipated male, perhaps the only one in America, the man who can do anything he wants and can do it because he has the money, the energy, and no apparent guilt. In an age when the very young seem to be taking over, protesting and picketing and demanding change, Frank Sinatra survives as a national phenomenon, one of the few pre-war products to withstand the test of time. He is the champ who made the big comeback, the man who had everything, lost it, then got it back, letting nothing stand in his way, doing what few men can do: he uprooted his life, left his family, broke with everything that was familiar, learning in the process that one way to hold a woman is not to hold her. Now he has the affection of Nancy and Ava and Mia, the fine female produce of three generations, and still has the adoration of his children, the freedom of a bachelor. He does not feel old, he makes old men feel young, makes them think 66

that if Frank Sinatra can do it, it can be done; not that they could do it, but it is still nice for other men to know that at 50, it can be done. But now, standing at this bar in Beverly Hills, Sinatra had a cold, and he continued to drink quietly and he seemed miles away in his private world, not even reacting when suddenly the stereo in the other room switched to a Sinatra song, In the Wee

Small Hours Of The Morning.

Sinatra’s men will never take a swing back at him. He is Il Padrone, the master

The two blondes, who seemed to be in their mid-30s, were preened and polished. They sat, legs crossed, perched on the high bar stools. One of them pulled out a Kent and Sinatra quickly placed his gold lighter under it and she held his hand, looked at his and the pinkies protruded, being so stiff from arthritis that he could barely bend them. He was, as usual, immaculately dressed. He wore an oxford-grey suit with a vest, a suit conservatively cut on the outside but trimmed with flamboyant silk within; his shoes, British-made, seemed to be shined even on the bottom of the soles. He also wore, as everybody seemed to

know, a remarkably convincing black hairpiece, one of 60 that he owns, most of them under the care of an inconspicuous little grey-haired lady who, holding his hair in a tiny satchel, follows him around whenever he performs. She earns $400 a week. The most distinguishing thing about Sinatra’s face are his eyes, clear blue and alert, eyes that within seconds can go cold with anger, or glow with affection, or, as now, reflect a vague detachment that keeps his friends silent and distant. Frank Sinatra does things personally. At Christmas time, he will personally pick dozens of presents for his close friends and family, remembering the type of jewellery they like, their favourite colours, the sizes of their shirts and dresses. When a musician friend’s house was destroyed and his wife was killed in a Los Angeles mud slide a little more than a year ago, Sinatra personally came to his aid, finding the musician a new home, paying whatever hospital bills were left unpaid by the insurance, then personally supervising the furnishing of the new home down to the replacing of the silverware, the linen, the purchase of new clothing. The same Sinatra who did this can, within the same hour, explode in a towering rage of intolerance should a small thing be incorrectly done for him by one of his paisanos. For example, when one of his men brought him a frankfurter with catsup on it, which Sinatra apparently abhors,

SINATRA GETTING READY TO PERFORM IN 1965

he angrily threw the bottle at the man, splattering catsup all over him. Most of the men who work around Sinatra are big. But this never seems to intimidate Sinatra nor curb his impetuous behaviour with them when he is mad. They will never take a swing back at him. He is Il Padrone. It was the beginning of another nervous day for Sinatra’s press agent, Jim Mahoney. He was worried about Sinatra’s cold and worried about the controversial CBS documentary

that, despite Sinatra’s protests and withdrawal of permission, would be shown on television in less than two weeks. The newspapers this morning were full of hints that Sinatra might sue the network, and Mahoney’s phones were ringing without pause, and now he was plugged into New York talking to the Daily News’ Kay Gardella, saying: “...that’s right, Kay... they made a gentleman’s agreement to not ask certain questions about Frank’s private life, and then

Cronkite went right ahead: ‘Frank, tell me about those associations.’ That question, Kay — out! That question should never have been asked....” On the following Monday, a cloudy and unseasonably cool California day, more than one hundred people gathered inside a white television studio, an enormous room dominated by a white stage, white walls, and with dozens of lights and lamps dangling; it rather resembled a gigantic operating room. In this room, within an hour 67

FRANK SINATRA

THE ‘RAT PACK’ RECORDING A FILM SCORE FOR COME BLOW YOUR HORN IN LA, 1963

Sinatra owns 60 hairpieces, most of them under the care of an old lady who carries them around in a satchel, earning $400 a week

or so, NBC was scheduled to begin taping a one-hour show that would be televised in colour on the night of November 24 and would highlight, as much as it could in the limited time, the 25-year career of Frank Sinatra as a public entertainer. It would not attempt to probe, as the forthcoming 68

CBS Sinatra documentary allegedly would, that area of Sinatra’s life that he regards as private. The NBC show would be mainly an hour of Sinatra singing some of the hits that carried him from Hoboken to Hollywood, a show that would be interrupted only now and then by a few film clips and

commercials for Budweiser beer. Prior to his cold, Sinatra had been very excited about this show; he saw here an opportunity to appeal not only to those nostalgic for his music, but also to communicate his talent to some rock-and-rollers — in a sense, he was battling The Beatles.

The press releases being prepared by Mahoney’s agency stressed this, reading: “If you happen to be tired of kid singers wearing mops of hair thick enough to hide a crate of melons... it should be refreshing to consider the entertainment value of a video special titled Sinatra — A Man And His Music....” But now in this NBC studio in Los Angeles, there was an atmosphere of tension because of the uncertainty of the Sinatra voice. A few minutes before 11 o’clock, word spread quickly through the long corridor into the big studio that Sinatra was spotted walking through the parking lot and was on his way, and was looking fine. There seemed great relief among the group that was gathered; but when the lean, sharply dressed figure of the man got closer, and closer, they saw to their dismay that it was not Frank Sinatra. It was his double. Johnny Delgado. Five minutes later, the real Frank Sinatra walked in. His face was pale, his blue eyes seemed a bit watery. He had been unable to rid himself of the cold, but he was going to try to sing anyway because the schedule was tight and thousands of dollars were involved at this moment in the assembling of the orchestra and crews and the rental of the studio. But when Sinatra, on his way to his small rehearsal room to warm up his voice, looked into the studio and saw that the stage and orchestra’s platform were not close together, as he had specifically requested, his lips tightened and he was obviously very upset. A few moments later, from his rehearsal room, could be heard the pounding of his fist against the top of the piano and the voice of his accompanist, Bill Miller,

saying, softly, “Try not to upset yourself, Frank.” When he strolled into the studio the musicians all picked up their instruments and stiffened in their seats. Sinatra cleared his throat a few times and then, after rehearsing a few ballads with the orchestra, he sang Don’t Worry About Me to his satisfaction and, being uncertain of how long his voice could last, suddenly became impatient. “Why don’t we tape this mother?” he called out, looking up toward the glass booth where the director, Dwight Hemion, and his staff were sitting. Their heads seemed to be down, focusing on the control board. “Why don’t we tape this mother?” Sinatra repeated. The production stage manager, who stands near the camera wearing a headset, repeated Sinatra’s words exactly into his line to the control room: “Why don’t we tape this mother?” Hemion did not answer. Possibly his switch was off. It was hard to know because of the obscuring reflections the lights made against the glass booth. “Why don’t we put on a coat and tie,” said Sinatra, then wearing a highnecked yellow pullover, “and tape this....” Suddenly Hemion’s voice came over the sound amplifier, very calmly: “Okay, Frank, would you mind going back over....” “Yes, I would mind going back,” Sinatra snapped. The silence from Hemion’s end, which lasted a second or two, was then again interrupted by Sinatra saying, “When we stop doing things around here the way we did them in 1950, maybe we...” and Sinatra continued to tear into Hemion, condemning as well the lack of modern techniques in

putting such shows together; then, possibly not wanting to use his voice unnecessarily, he stopped. And Dwight Hemion, very patient, so patient and calm that one would assume he had not heard anything that Sinatra had just said, outlined the opening part of the show. And Sinatra a few minutes later was reading his opening remarks, words that would follow Without A Song, off the large idiot-cards being held near the camera. Then, this done, he prepared to do the same thing on camera. “Frank Sinatra Show, Act I, Page 10, Take 1,” called a man with a clapboard, jumping in front of the camera — clap — then jumping away again. “Did you ever stop to think,” Sinatra began, “what the world would be like without a song?... It would be a pretty dreary place.... Gives you something to think about, doesn’t it?...” Sinatra stopped. “Excuse me,” he said, adding, “Boy, I need a drink.” They tried it again. “Frank Sinatra Show, Act I, Page 10, Take 2,” yelled the jumping guy with the clapboard. “Did you ever stop to think what the world would be like without a song?...” Frank Sinatra read it through this time without stopping. Then he rehearsed a few more songs, once or twice interrupting the orchestra when a certain instrumental sound was not quite what he wanted. It was hard to tell how well his voice was going to hold up, for this was early in the show; up to this point, however, everybody in the room seemed pleased, particularly when he sang an old favourite written more than 20 years ago — Nancy, inspired by the first of Sinatra’s children when she was a few years old. 69

FRANK SINATRA

If I don’t see her each day I miss her.... Gee what a thrill each time I kiss her.... As Sinatra sang these words, though he has sung them hundreds and hundreds of times in the past, it was suddenly obvious to everybody in the studio that something quite special must be going on inside the man, because something quite special was coming out. He was singing now, cold or no cold, with power and warmth, he was letting himself go, the public arrogance was gone, the private side was in this song about the girl who, it is said, understands him better than anybody else, and is the only person in front of whom he can be unashamedly himself. What the hell are you doing up there, Dwight?” Silence from the control booth. “Got a party or something going on up there?” Sinatra stood on the stage, arms folded, glaring up across the cameras toward Hemion. Sinatra had sung Nancy with probably all he had in his voice on this day. The next few numbers contained raspy notes, and twice his voice completely cracked. But now Hemion was in the control booth out of communication; then he was down in the studio walking over to where Sinatra stood. A few minutes later they both left the studio and were on the way up to the control booth. The tape was replayed for Sinatra. He watched five minutes of it before he started to shake his head. Then he said to Hemion: “Forget it, just forget it. You’re wasting your time. What you got there,” Sinatra said, nodding to the singing image of himself on the television screen, “is a man with 70

a cold.” Then he left the control booth, ordering that the whole day’s performance be scrubbed and taping postponed until he recovered. Soon the word spread like an epidemic through Sinatra’s staff, then fanned out through Hollywood, then across the nation, in the homes of Frank Sinatra’s parents and his other relatives and friends in New Jersey. After spending the week in Palm Springs, his cold much better, Frank Sinatra returned to Los Angeles, in time to see the long-awaited CBS documentary with his family. At 9pm he drove to the home of his former wife, Nancy, and had dinner with her and their two daughters. Their son, whom they rarely see these days, was out of town. The CBS show, narrated by Walter Cronkite, began at 10pm. A minute before that, the Sinatra family, having finished dinner, turned their chairs around and faced the camera, united for whatever disaster might follow. And like so much of Hollywood’s fear, the apprehension about the CBS show all proved to be without foundation. It was a highly flattering hour that did not deeply probe, as rumours suggested it would, into Sinatra’s love life, or the Mafia, or other areas of his private province. While the documentary was not authorised, wrote Jack Gould in the next day’s New

York Times, “it could have been.” Immediately after the show, the telephones began to ring throughout the Sinatra system, conveying words of joy and relief — it had been a tedious three weeks, he said, and he just wanted to go to Las Vegas, let off some steam. So he hopped in his jet, soared over the California hills across the Nevada flats, then over miles and

SINATRA AND SAMMY DAVIS JR., 1965

miles of desert to The Sands and the Clay-Patterson fight. The rest of the month was bright and balmy. The record session had gone magnificently, the film was finished, the television shows were out of the way, and now Sinatra was in his Ghia driving out to his office to begin coordinating his latest projects. He had an engagement at The Sands, a new spy film called The Naked Runner, and a couple more albums to do in the months ahead. And within a week he would be 50 years old. Life is a beautiful thing. As long as I hold the string, I’d be a silly so-andso, If I should ever let go... Frank Sinatra stopped his car. The light was red. Pedestrians passed by his windshield quickly but, as usual, one did not. It was a girl in her 20s. She remained at the curb staring at him. Through the corner of his left eye he could see her, and he knew, because it happens almost every day, that she was thinking, ‘it looks like him, but is it?’ Just before the light turned green, Sinatra turned toward her, looked directly into her eyes waiting for the reaction he knew would come. It came and he smiled. She smiled and he was gone.

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THE KOREAN WAVE

arcelona 2010. I am sitting in a café on the edge of the city. The piped in music is interesting. It’s not Spanish, it’s not even ubiquitous Euro-pop or saccharine R&B. It’s Don’t Go Away by the South Korean girl group Fin.KL. The young Peruvian waiter explains this weird cultural juxtaposition. “One of the staff here really likes K-pop” he says in Spanish. “It’s catchy.” It was not, admittedly, a major milestone, but it illustrated the inexorable march of Korean pop culture around the world. First came the explosion all across Asia — giant posters of the singer Rain hanging from shopping malls in Bangkok, Korean stars appearing in magazines in Singapore, sold out stadiums of K-pop acts in Tokyo, Manila, Shanghai and Jakarta. The tail end of the 1990s and the first years of the ‘noughties’ saw Korean pop music dominate Asian, and increasingly, global charts. The Wondergirls opened for the Jonas Brothers in the United States in 2009. Artists such as Rain and Lee Byung-hun appear in major Hollywood movies. Korean designers are profiled in American fashion magazines. Korean animation is turning up on TV shows in the United States, Europe and Asia. And Korean movies now routinely win awards in film festivals around the world. “It’s extraordinary, the pace of change, especially over the past four years or so,” says Tyler Brule, editorin-chief of Monocle magazine. “There is a confidence to ‘made in Korea’ now, that’s fascinating.” 74

It’s hard to believe how far Korean pop culture has come. Back in the 1990s, the movies shown on Korean TV were almost all American, the music was equally divided between homegrown and Western, and the television was just dire in general. When you travelled around Asia, you would encounter a lot of American culture, some European and some Japanese, but nothing from Korea.

Korea was the home of ship builders, dodgy cars and blue-suited salarymen grinding out six-day work weeks

Korea was known as the home of discount electronics manufacturers, ship builders, and dodgy cars. Korea was a nation of blue-suited salarymen, grinding out brutal, six-day workweeks for banks, businesses, and government bureaucracies. Korea was hardworking and shabby, not a trendsetter, not cutting-edge, and certainly not sexy. “Back in the 1990s, Koreans weren’t really fashionable. Even fashion editors were more bookish than stylish,” says Miggi Chi, a Korean club promoter and former model. So how did Korea make such a radical change in just a decade? Rising affluence shifted the country’s expectations and aspirations. The establishment of democracy and freedom after decades of military rule allowed people to concentrate on less serious matters, such as entertainment.

After the 1988 Olympics and the end of a succession of military dictatorships, South Koreans opened up to the world, they began to travel and study abroad, and, as the country opened up at home politically, it also opened up to media, fashion, and design. “Everything starting changing around 2000,” says Chi, “The young generation has really had an impact on the design world. Koreans aren't into the ‘authenticity’ of a culture. We like new, modern, practical things. We’re always building new streets, new buildings, new things.” One of the first leaders of this new zeitgeist was Lee Soo-man, founder of the music company SM Entertainment. After much success in folk and rock music in the 1970s, he lived in the United States for much of the 1980s (studying engineering, of all things); but, when he returned to Korea, he had visions of creating a conveyor belt of slick pop acts; a Korean Motown. There were several new pop acts in the charts in the early 1990s, but there was no system in place for creating new stars. Lee’s big change was to create a pop music factory, finding talented young people and giving them all the training they would need to be successful — how to sing and dance, how to deal with the media, even how to act like stars. SM Entertainment’s first success was one of their biggest, the five-man group H.O.T., who made their debut in 1996. H.O.T. would sell more than 12 million albums in Korea over the next six years, inspiring millions of teenagers to scream louder than anyone thought possible. Soon, H.O.T. would be followed by an alphabet

THE KOREAN WAVE

BIGBANG AT A MUSIC AWARD SHOW IN TOKYO

soup of pop acts, developed by SM Entertainment and a host of imitators – SES, g.o.d, Fin.KL (short for Fine Killing Liberty, seriously), Baby V.O.X., 2NE1, JTL, JYJ, and many, many more. This conveyor-belt approach was not without its problems. The contracts the performers signed were heavily skewed in favour of the production houses. In 1999 a three-sister act called Hans Band sued their production company, Yedang Entertainment, claiming their contract was grossly unfair and they had only been paid $15,000 — a fraction of what they were owed — after two successful albums. Some claimed the band received welfare 76

payments to make ends meet. After suits and countersuits, Yedang agreed to cut two years off the band’s five-year contract. Even K-pop’s biggest names were not free from problems. The biggest scandal to hit the burgeoning scene saw three members of the five-man boy band H.O.T. quit SM Entertainment in 2001 over their low fees – every time the band sold one million albums, each member would only receive $10,000. “We would complain that we never had enough money,” ex-H.O.T. singer Tony An said at the time, “and Lee Soo-man would say: ‘I even pay for your gas, what are you complaining about?’” However, the seamier side of the K-pop industry did little to stem the

spread of Korean culture around the globe — the internet was booming, transforming Korea, a country with more high-speed broadband connections than anywhere else in the world. New fashion designers, architects and directors were emerging. And they all had something in common — the need to succeed outside of their home country. “I remember in the mid-1990s, when there was only one website that provided just basic English info on maybe four or five artists,” said Elsa Rodriguez, founder of the fan club for Drunken Tiger, one of Korea’s most respected hip hop groups. “NonKoreans listening to Korean music was a rarity then. I think the internet

:3>8 B397 36 ^RT È¨

THE KOREAN WAVE

and the pioneering non-Korean fans played a huge role in making Korean music more international.” The Korean economy was built on exports, and pop culture would be no different. For the music industry in particular, there was a strong sense that Korea was just too small to be self-sustaining, and in order to flourish you needed to find new markets abroad. SM Entertainment was one of the first companies to really push for international growth, targeting China and Japan from the beginning. Indeed, the very term ‘Korean Wave’ was coined at a H.O.T. concert in China in 1999. Another SM star, Boa, was trained in Japan from a very young age, and became a big star there before succeeding in Korea. “It’s the total package of it,” says Brule. “The sexiness of the rawness of the presentation. If you look at K-pop videos on YouTube, they’re getting their numbers from around the world, not just Asia, and not just the Korean diaspora.” Helping K-pop grow was not just an improved Korean sense of style, though – the music got better, too. Throughout the period, Korean producers tried to find the hottest trends and newest ideas and give them a local twist. “The scene is very competitive,” says Jimmy Jung, president of JYP Entertainment, one of Korea’s biggest music companies. “JY [the company founder] has written for top American acts, but to do so, you have to be able to compete at that level.” “The internet helped, too,” Jung added, “with YouTube and other channels helping to spread new 78

THE WONDER GIRLS (ABOVE) AND RAIN (BELOW) HAVE STARTED PERFORMING TO FANS OUTSIDE OF ASIA IN EUROPE AND THE UNITED STATES

ideas faster than ever.” The internet also helped cut down on the oncetroublesome problem of plagiarism, as songwriters who go beyond inspiration

to outright theft face an entire planet of watchful eyes and ears. It is, as one Korean producer said, full of “psycho ‘netizens’ acting like [they are in] CSI”.

THE KOREAN WAVE

“Thanks to YouTube, going viral has become vital in putting a local act on the global map,” says Bernie Cho, founder of DFSB Kollective, an online distributor. “The fact the top K-pop fan sites overseas attract more users and generate more traffic that the top Korean music portals in Korea is unexpected, and proof that K-pop has international appeal.” Korea has essentially provided a template for modern Asian glamour. Its stars are glossy lipped and porcelain smooth. A writer in a Thai newspaper described the genre’s calling card as “flawless, surgically perfect cuteness”. Another example of the appeal of Korean culture came from television; in particular dramas. In the 1990s,

Korean TV programmes were mostly filler for Asian cable TV channels as they were cheaper than American or Japanese content. But gradually they built an audience. And then came Winter Sonata and Jewel In The

Palace, two incredibly huge hits in Japan and around Asia, creating fans of Korean culture around Asia, and as far afield as Iran and Egypt, boosting tourism, and transforming the image of Korea. It was truly a phenomenon. In Asia, it is K-pop and TV dramas that lead the way. But in the West, Korea’s more challenging movies and alternative music has attracted the most interest. Park Chan-wook made the biggest splash, when his over-the-top revenge movie, Oldboy, won the

Grand Prix prize at Cannes in 2004. But other directors have also done well in film festivals and on the art-house circuit around the world. Kim Ki-duk was known as the bad boy of Korean cinema, but he is most famous in the West for his meditative allegory Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring. Lee Chang-dong is the most literary of Korea’s directors, and the release of his films Secret Sunshine and Poetry in the United States last year saw them appear on many critics’ best-ofthe-year lists (Sunshine also earned Jeon Do-yeon the top actress prize at Cannes in 2007). Kim Jee-woon is a master of genre films, each movie seemingly tackling a new form with flair and creativity; his take on the

Mark Russell is a journalist, producer, and the author of Pop Goes Korea: Behind the Revolution in Movies, Music and Internet Culture. He also runs the music blog the Korea Gig Guide (www.koreagigguide.com).

THE NINE-MEMBER BAND SUPER JUNIOR PERFORM IN TAIPEI

spaghetti western, The Good, The Bad, The Weird, had some of the most kinetic action sequences ever seen in Korean cinema. And perhaps the most talented is Bong Joon-ho, who is able to combine smarts and fun in a truly unique way, from his murder mystery Memories of Murder, to his big-budget monster movie The Host, to the moody mystery Mother. Yet the West’s focus on Korea’s leftfield cinema is slightly missing the point. It is the middle-of-theroad pop acts that have had the biggest impact globally. Companies such as SM Entertainment have figured out how to develop and promote acts that cross through cultural and

language barriers. Cynics believe the whole K-pop phenomenon is nothing more than another Korean export, as commoditised as cars or construction. They may have a point: none of the K-pop acts are musically that inventive yet try telling that to the generation of Asian teenagers who has grown up idolising the likes of Rain or Boa. Subsequent generations seem equally enthused. Korean girl groups Kara and Girls Generation were conamed as top rookies at the Recording Industry Association of Japan’s Gold Disc Awards in January, a sign that the Asian obsession with Korean music shows no sign of abating. What’s more it may even be gaining credibility, with Korean rock

bands featuring at SXSW in Austin, Texas, Canada Music Week, and the legendary Coachella. “Spring 2011 is in many ways a watershed moment,” says DFSB’s Cho. “Thanks to the convergence of iTunes selling Korean music tracks worldwide, YouTube exposing Korean music videos worldwide, and social media tools like Twitter and Facebook connecting Korean music fans worldwide, Korean acts are not only running up the charts across Asia, but also stepping onto major music festival stages beyond Asia.”

Mark Russell is a writer who specialises in Asian culture. His book, Pop Goes Korea, explore the rise of Korean pop culture.

MELODY MAKER

MELODY

MAKER

GILLES PETERSON IS THE MOST FAMOUS DJ YOU HAVE NEVER HEARD OF. ROBIN DENSELOW TALKS TO THE ULTIMATE MUSICAL TASTEMAKER

MELODY MAKER

I had to move house when my collection of records got too big

rownswood Road doesn’t look a like centre for cutting edge music. It’s a pleasant if featureless residential street in north London, a few hundred yards from the underground station named after Arsenal football team, whose stadium is close by. But for music fans around the world who listen to Brownswood Recordings or the Brownswood Basement radio shows, this street has an historic importance. For hidden away behind a little hedge, on the ground and basement floors of one of the houses, are the office and studios of Gilles Peterson, one of the most influential and experimental tastemakers in the worldwide music industry. He’s a broadcaster who is heard around the world, a DJ who can pack clubs or festivals from London to Tokyo and New York, or from Rio de Janeiro to Almaty in Kazakhstan (which he describes as “a brilliant city!”). He’s a record collector, and a record company boss whose aim has been to provide a platform either for experimental new music, or for classic old recordings that might otherwise be ignored. Above all, he’s an enthusiast, with wildly eclectic musical interests, from jazz and funk to soul, hip hop, Latin and African styles and 84

electronica, and he’s constantly expanding his range. When I visited, he was sitting in the flat, surrounded by cardboard boxes packed with vinyl albums and new CDs. This is where he used to live until 10 years ago, but the number of records he had collected became so great that he and his family were forced to move out. The home he shares with his wife and two children is just over a mile away, but this is where he works, listens to music, and records his shows. He apologised for the mess. The studio is about to be expanded so that he can record other artists here, and the builders are about to move in. Some of his 30,000 albums have already been moved into storage, but those that remain provide a reminder of the eclectic styles he champions. There are jazz albums by the great saxophonist Pharoah Sanders, and African albums include recordings by the Ghanaian Afro-beat exponent, Ebo Taylor. I picked up a new recording of his classic song Love

And Death, but Peterson directed me to the original vinyl version, recorded in the 1980s. “I just got this and it cost me $650. I still love records. There’s always something new.” Across the room are reminders of his other musical interests. There are posters of his Worldwide Music Awards, an annual event in London.

“The new thing for me is still absolutely crucial and excites me,” said Peterson. “The new electronica scene is having a great time at the moment. But then there’s the new world music, which is being accepted by a wider audience, and that’s a good thing. People are more open to everything now”. The boxes of CDs on the floor provide examples of his own global experiments. There’s Gilles Peterson Presents Havana Cultura, an album released last year that he produced in Cuba with help from the great Cuban jazz pianist Roberto Fonseca. The aim, he said, was to “celebrate the new generation of artists from Cuba. So this is me saying ‘OK, you had Buena Vista Social Club, which was old people, and we want to do something to celebrate the youth’.” There’s the latest release on his Brownswood Recordings label, an experimental blend of British and African styles, by the Owiny Sigoma Band, with Damon Albarn playing keyboards on a couple of tracks. This, said Peterson, is exactly the sort of new music he likes to discover and promote. The project started when Jesse Hackett and other members of the British electronic hip hop band Elmore Judd went to Kenya to record with local traditional musicians, including Joseph

PETERSON AT HIS HOME IN NORTH LONDON WHERE HE RECORDS RADIO SHOWS, PREPARES FOR DJ SETS AND STORES HIS GROWING RECORD COLLECTION

MELODY MAKER

Nyamungu, a celebrated exponent of the nyatiti, eight-stringed lyre. Judd played the track they recorded on Gilles’ BBC Radio 1 show and he was delighted. “I thought ’this is brilliant’ — so I sent them back there to record a full album. It’s good, subtle, fresh and exactly the ‘world music’ that I like to discover because it’s respectful to the heritage but has a certain attitude. It’s a weird collage, with a great groove and a few bits that sound like New York disco!” In an age when music is increasingly compartmentalised, and divided into different categories, Peterson breaks down barriers. He plays the music that he loves both on stage as a DJ, and on the radio, and at the moment it’s the broadcasts that he enjoys most. He has a regular weekly show on BBC Radio 1, broadcast live in the early hours of the morning but with “95 per cent of listeners hearing it later online – the audience figures are very high”. And then there are programmes which are recorded in his Brownswood basement studio, and syndicated around the world to ‘a dozen or more stations’. His fusion of different styles can be heard in Australia, New Zealand, Serbia and on Radio Nova in Paris, “the station that inspired me most

PETERSON: FOCUSED

in the early days – they played this melange, and a lot of different black styles”. He’s particularly pleased that he is heard in Japan, on the Tokyo commercial station J-Wave. “They asked me to do a 15-minute segment which appears in a programme called Rendezvous In The Afternoon , which is really a middle-of-the-road show for Japanese housewives. But I can play the music I want — Ebo Taylor or James Blake — and it’s still going, every day, after seven years. It’s surreal.” As for his DJ work, he’s currently taking a four-month break, as he prepares to run in the London marathon, though he will be back onstage behind the turntables later

in the year. “This is the first time I’ve stopped in 26 years,” he says. “I’ve tried to lead a healthy life and carry on DJing, and doing the nightlife stuff, and it’s very hard. It takes a strong person to do the job and just drink water and go for a run in the morning! After not DJing for a while I’m really hungry to do it again.” As a DJ, he has played just about everywhere, from the London clubs where he started out, and “got a reputation as the kid who played jazz and jazz-funk records”, through to venues and festivals around the world. He says that he was unlike many DJs because “I just play what I feel. Lots of DJs have a set, like a band would have a set, and they know what they are going to play from beginning to end. But I’m from the old DJ ethos – I may go along with 500 records and see what I feel like playing.” So do his audiences always approve? “Well, I made a terrible mistake the first time I went to Brazil, and just played Brazilian music – and they didn’t want that. They didn’t want to listen to Jorge Ben. They’d already heard him, so that was a bit weird!” He’s also different from many contemporary DJs because he doesn’t compose his own music,

In an age where music is increasingly compartmentalised, Peterson breaks down barriers. He plays the music he loves both on stage as a DJ and on the radio; with his shows being broadcast everywhere from Serbia and France to New Zealand, Australia and Japan

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unlike those “young DJs who are computer-led and start DJing as an alternative to creating a band. So when they are DJing, they perform the music that they have created, but I’m doing it the old way, just playing records and other people’s music. And that’s becoming a skill that people want. I don’t know how many DJs exist today who can do a six-hour set and take you from Fela Kuti to Kanye West.” Gilles Peterson’s career started in humble style, in the south London suburb of Sutton. His mum was French and his dad a Swiss engineer “who travelled a lot, so I must have got the love of travelling from him”. At school, in the early 1980s, he defied the school fashion for heavy metal music by becoming a soul and jazz-funk fan. “So I was listening 88

to Cameo and Maze and Bobby Caldwell. I only survived at school because I was in the rugby team, or I’d have been beaten up regularly! I was good at rugby and that was the balance to being what was considered to be a camp soul boy.” He started buying imported American soul records in Sutton market, and at the age of 15 set up his own pirate radio station, recording shows in a shed in his back garden, which were broadcast from the hills of Epsom Downs, with help from his dad. “We’d put up an antenna and connect it to a car battery. We took calls from listeners in a phone box.” As an aspiring DJ, he also made money from weddings and bar mitzvahs, and his activities came to the attention of the main pirate radio stations operating in London. Radio

Invicta, then the largest pirate black music station, contacted him to ask if they could borrow his transmitter, as they’d been “busted” by the police, “and I said ‘yes, but only if you give me a show on the station’, and that’s how I got onto Radio Invicta”. He travelled across London, helping to put up aerials on tower blocks, from where the illegal broadcasts were transmitted. It was “an exciting time”. He kept working as a DJ at night, while expanding into other sides of the music business. In 1985 he was asked to make his first compilation album “and since then I’ve done over 100, including jazz albums for Blue Note. I helped to open jazz up for a younger generation”. He also moved into legal broadcasting, with stations like Kiss FM, and became involved in a series

PETERSON WITH SOME OF HIS THIRTY THOUSAND ALBUMS

PHOTOGRAPHS: KEVIN CUMMINS

PETERSON’S SETS VEER FROM FELA KUTI TO KANYE

of record companies, co-founding the Acid Jazz label, which specialised in jazz-funk styles “and for two years I put every penny I earned DJing — which was not a lot — into the label, and not getting many results, though the scene I was part of was growing.” In 1990 he moved on, invited by Phonogram, a major record company, to start his own label, Talkin’ Loud. It was successful, with artists that included Courtney Pine, Incognito and Mercury-prize winner Roni Size, but Peterson was uneasy about the experience. “It was a brutal world. What was more important to those people? Selling an extra million copies of Elton John, or breaking new artists? It was selling more Elton Johns.” So in 1999 he quit, after being invited to join BBC Radio 1, and he now began to make use of his power

as a celebrity DJ. “I realised that my name could sell records,” he said, and he began releasing compilations such as Gilles Peterson In Brazil and Gilles

Peterson In Africa. So what will he do next, once he has got fit and run the London marathon? He is launching a charity, the Steve Reid Foundation, named after the American jazz drummer, a close friend who died of cancer last year, and hopes to help musicians to pay for medical treatment. To raise money he plans to run more marathons, in Sydney, Tokyo, Paris and New York, and follow each one with a “marathon, six-hour DJ set, because that’s when I’m at my best. I need a great sound system and a great environment”. Then there’s the annual summer festival that he runs in an amphitheatre at Sète, in southern

France, where his DJ sets will be mixed with live performances from the likes of Brazilian star Seu Jorge. And there will be a return to Cuba to record a solo album with Roberto Fonseca, and the next Havana

Cultura album. This one will be more experimental as he’ll be joined by Mala, who specialises in the electronic music style, dubstep. “And that’s important for me. I could play in the same clubs, but that gets boring. It’s good to do different things, visit new places. I’m a fan of Mala and dubstep, and Roberto Fonseca is an amazing musician. So putting them together, with me in the middle, that’s what makes my life worth living”.

Robin Denselow is a broadcaster for the BBC and contributes regularly to the Guardian. 89

TEXT BY ADAM KENNEDY ILLUSTRATIONS BY KAREN KURYCKI

BERLIN ELECTRONICA

ovember 9, 1989. An historic date forever etched on Berlin's consciousness. The The day when the German capital’s most controversial 27 miles of bricks and mortar, the Berlin Wall, fi nally fell. After days of civil unrest, it was a pivotal point in communist Eastern Europe's dissolution. For electronic music, that freezing cold November day represented the kick-off point for a bloodless revolution all of its own. The oncecompartmentalised city was united, newfound freedom syphoned into a huge outpouring of celebratory energy. Berlin's harsh industrial cityscape was about to hum to the strains of an evermutating mechanical animal: techno.

Paul van Dyk, arguably Germany’s most successful DJ export, remembers the time well. “I went to the wall numerous times. My mum would show me the Brandenburg Gate on the other side, like, ‘this is where we want to go, this is where freedom is’. People smuggled records and magazines over the border. “My grandma bought me my very first record, Organisation by [British electronic rockers] OMD, and smuggled it into East Germany. There was a big black market. An album sold for 500 East German marks.” Raised by his single mother in East Berlin, the pair escaped to Hamburg shortly before the wall was toppled. Van Dyk returned soon afterward. “There was no scene in East Berlin. People like me could listen to West Berlin radio stations. It was illegal, but there were specialist shows so we got well educated about music without ever having a chance of going to the clubs.” In cosmopolitan West Berlin, meanwhile, the seeds were also sown for a soon-to-blossom germination. Enter charismatic entrepreneurial figure Dimitri Hegemann, who would later found Berlin's most celebrated club (and label), Tresor. “I had a small label, Interfisch,” he explains. “I was already connected to Detroit before the wall came down. These guys played a different type of house music. They called it techno. I liked it, but nobody really wanted to buy it. There was this need for a club

BERLIN ELECTRONICA

BERLIN DOMINATES EUROPE’S CLUB SCENE

that played more electronic music, so I started the UFO Club. It was illegal but we just did it.” By Hegemann's own admission, the scale was small. UFO opened in 1988 beneath a former shoemaker's store he transformed into a Dadaist speakeasy. The first edition of Love Parade, Berlin’s legendary electronic music festival, was similarly modest. Fast forward a decade and Love Parade would attract 1.5 million revellers. Its maiden 1989 outing saw founder Matthias Roeingh, aka Berlin DJ Dr Motte, joined by just 150 associates on their hometown's streets. That was July. Four short months later, everything changed. “Until the day it happened, on November 9, nobody expected it,” says van Dyk. “When the wall came down there was so much free spirit that led to this electronic music explosion. That energy was let loose in a very positive way. A lot of companies went bankrupt in East Berlin, so there were empty buildings. Nobody really knew what to do with them. People had the idea of putting up a PA and creating a club. This is how it all started.” 92

“As soon as the east was open, it exploded into a big youth movement, especially among people from the east,” agrees Tobias Rapp, pop music editor of Germany’s best-selling news magazine Der Spiegel and author the of book Lost And Sound: Berlin, Techno And The EasyJet Set . “I moved to Berlin in June 1990 and became part of the squatter scene in the east. The authorities didn't really know what was going on. There

We used a building on the mineﬁelds in the middle of the two walls. It had not been used since 1945

were lots of illegal clubs and raves. We danced in lots of places and made them ours, which was very important for Berlin, a city where so many bloody chapters of history were written. It changed the city. In retrospect, it was a celebration of freedom. While you're in it, you don't think that way; you were looking for

the next party, the next rush.” “The atmosphere was incredible,” Hegemann enthuses. “The kids in East Berlin celebrated their new freedom and we were happy. But nobody really understood what was going on.” Following a transitional year between the wall's demise and Germany's full reunification on October 3, 1990, Tresor opened. Beginning life in March 1991 near the Potsdamer Platz public square, Hegemann's new baby reappropriated a former bank vault beneath the disused Wertheim department store, once the largest of its kind in Europe. “A big problem in West Berlin was space,” he says. “Then the wall came down. The UFO Club was gone because it was too noisy; it was in a normal house. We checked this building in the east, on the minefields, between the two famous walls. It had not been used since 1945. We discovered this wooden door, and stairs and then this vault. It was incredible. It was a Jewish bank, I found out later, from 1926. It was in the heart of the city, but there was nothing. It was dark, maybe one lamp, and people could not find it, there were no buses. But Tresor was a very big success. The first night was completely busy, 2,000 people, and they didn't stop partying.” The music was raw and very minimal; attributes mirrored in the venue itself. “It was like walking through a dead zone, nothingness, until we came upon a few crumbling buildings and walked inside one,” says pioneering Canadian DJ and producer Richie Hawtin. “A small dirty bar, dark steps leading down

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into an old, dark bank vault full of sweat-soaked people dancing to pummelling techno, lit only by one flashing strobe light. That was my fi rst experience at Tresor.” Mike Andrawis, a Londonbased film-maker behind 2004 documentary Tresor Berlin: The Vault And The Electronic Frontier, remembers the club's infancy fondly. “I was only the second British person to visit Tresor, in 1991. I had a German girlfriend and we decided to drive to Berlin. Even getting there was eventful; we nearly got killed on the autobahn because my accelerator cable broke. “We walked down this street, Leipziger Strasse, that just had cobbles, so it was obvious we'd

TRESOR TRESORNIGHTCLUB, ON ITS CLOSING CIRCANIGHT 2005 IN 2005

crossed the rubicon and were in East Germany, even though the wall was down. Tresor had only been open for a month by then. There was water all over the floor and they were playing this really sharp, aggressive music, bouncing off concrete walls. “You felt part of something very new, but you couldn't work out what it was. In a way I felt isolated, standing there in this bunker, water running down the walls and atonal noise being thrown at me. It was unsettling, but great to experience. There were hundreds of people there. Later, in 1992 and 1993, the whole street was packed.” “Dimitri from Tresor is one of the most important figures in shaping what we think of Berlin today,” says

Hawtin. “Nearly all the successful clubs today are run by people who were spending most of their waking moments at Tresor in the early 1990s. The spirit lives through them and all of us who were there.” Andrawis agrees: “Tresor meant a lot to a lot of people. Not only my generation, but several generations afterward. The techno scene unified German youth in a way even punk rock didn't. Tresor is one of the most important clubs in history.” Thrown into a post-wall melting pot, Berlin's once-separated youth could easily have slid into divided factions. The loved-up vibe of the burgeoning Berlin scene swiftly smoothed over potential tensions, a coalescing common bond.

“It didn't really matter what you looked like; poor, rich, what colour your skin was, nobody cared,” says van Dyk. “All that mattered was that you were a respectful, tolerant person, then you could feel free to enjoy yourself. Whenever you found someone who loved the music, you were instantly friends. Music was the uniting tool.” And though many superstar DJs emerged from Berlin, van Dyk

recalls those early nights being resolutely ego-free. “The first time I ever played in front of people was in Tresor in March 1991. The DJ booth was outside the dance floor, actually in the walkway. It was all about the music. Nobody really cared what the DJ looked like.” “DJs didn't matter to me that much back then,” Rapp concurs. He saw Berlin's development from a different perspective. “In the

squatter scene, parties were quite small, a couple of hundred people. So we were astonished how many people showed up for Love Parade. We weren't used to those numbers.” The Love Parade ballooned into a monster that outgrew any one DJ or promoter, an annual symbol of Berlin's fertile underground going overground in flamboyant fashion. As the scene multiplied, the inspiration soon became the inspired.

It didn’t matter what you looked like, where you were from; poor rich, what colour your skin was, nobody cared

US HOUSE LEGEND MARSHALL JEFFERSON

BERLIN ELECTRONICA

The self same North American DJs whose creations were thumping through Berlin's sound systems began to flood across the Atlantic in person, notably from techno motherland Detroit, investigating a flourishing scene that made them almost overnight figureheads. “It grew over the period of a year or year and a half,” van Dyk says. “There was a big international exchange that brought an extra energy push. These guys were in Detroit doing their own thing, then they were suddenly huge stars on the other side of the world. The importance of Berlin as a centre for electronic music was established.” This brave new world both befuddled and bewitched US DJs who arrived, many of whom would settle permanently in the German capital. “We started an alliance with Detroit: Underground Resistance, Jeff Mills, Blake Baxter, Derrick May. We had many DJs from Detroit over. Some had never been outside of America before,” Hegemann says. “They came here, like ‘Berlin? Are there still Nazis?’ They had no idea!” “The fi rst time I went was the autumn of 1991,” says Hawtin. “I remember driving east, the roads getting worse, the buildings and sky getting greyer. The old watchtowers outside Berlin crumbling and decayed. The empty streets of Alexanderplatz, close to where I live now, wide avenues, old buildings and grey, grey, grey, except for 1970s neon. It was strange. Those early trips grabbed my imagination. “The vibe reminded me a lot of Detroit. There was something alien, but at the same time comfortable. Detroit is a city that had its core ripped out by decades of decay, but 96

still has an incredibly strong spirit of survival and passion because of the people who remain. Berlin and Detroit always had an ‘anything’s possible’ feeling.” The Love Parade was consigned to history after 21 deaths at the 2010 event. Tresor no longer stands at its original location, shut in 2005 before re-emerging two years later on Köpenickerstrasse. Yet Berlin retains its reputation as the party capital of Europe. “Berlin is still incredibly vibrant,” Hawtin says. “I don’t know another city in the world that has so much going on within the club and electronic music scene. Berlin was a breath of fresh air for me. It still is; that’s why people are still coming. Berlin is unlike any other city in the

world; it’s the centre of the universe for our scene.” “It was a cultural revolution that is bigger than ever 20 years later,” van Dyk says. “As an artist, it’s the best thing in the world if you have the chance to give your little touch to what happens. Electronic music is the biggest youth culture in the world. Everywhere, you find people loving this music. That’s really special.”

Adam Kennedy is a music writer based in London. He has written for the BBC, Arena, the Guardian and NME

ROLLING STONE

ONCE A COUNTERCULTURE MAINSTAY, ROLLING STONE LOST ITS MOJO YEARS AGO. RICHARD LUCK CHARTS THE DECLINE OF A ROCK ‘N’ ROLL INSTITUTION

We take all kind of pills, that give us all kind of thrills/But the thrill we’ve never known/Is the thrill that’ll getcha/When you get your picture on the cover of the Rolling Stone/Wanna see my picture on the cover/Rolling Stone — wanna buy ﬁve copies for my mother/Wanna see my smiling face/On the cover of the Rolling Stone.” — On The Cover Of The Rolling Stone, Dr Hook & The Medicine Show

here was a time when appearing on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine was the equivalent of walking on the moon. By far the biggest fish in the musical periodical pond, the publication launched for next to nothing by Jann Wenner in the late 1960s dominated popular culture throughout the 1970s. To this day, it still maintains a hold on what’s hip and happening in the realms of

music, movies, even politics — a young guy called Barack Obama was very pleased when the magazine decide to endorse his presidential campaign. There was an age, however, when the magazine didn’t just support politicians — it helped set the nation’s agenda. “Rolling Stone was as much a part of 1970s America as Nixon and the Vietnam War,” remembers Loaded founder James Brown. “But no sooner did it have the future of the US in its hands, than it

disappeared up its own backside.” “I launched the magazine in 1967 with next to nothing,” explains Jann Wenner, the man who is to Rolling Stone what Richard Branson is to Virgin. In fact it was a sizeable injection of cash from his future in-laws that made Rolling Stone possible — the title coming from a Muddy Waters song. Originally published in the form of a newspaper, it would take a while for the San Francisco-based

ROLLING STONE

ROLLING STONE’S JANN WENNER, 1978

publication to find an audience. By the early 1970s, however, what began life as a hobby was becoming very big business indeed. As Wenner continues, “Anyone who was anyone seemed to want to write or work for Rolling Stone. Hunter Thompson, [ Basic Instinct screenwriter] Joe Eszterhas, [M*A*S*H director] Robert Altman — we were inundated with interest from the hottest names of the day.” Of the impressive list of contributors, Dr Hunter S Thompson’s name stood out. The proud Southern son who’d become a big deal on the back of writing about Sonny Barger and his Hells Angels, Thompson introduced himself to the Rolling Stone editorial team in the 1967. Arriving at the magazine’s offices with a six-pack in one hand and a cigarette holder in the other, Thompson announced that he was about to become the mayor of Aspen, Colorado. As it turned out, the man 100

who would introduce the world to ‘Gonzo journalism’ narrowly missed out on claiming this honour. Politics’ loss was to prove Rolling Stone’s gain, however. Hired by another magazine to cover the Mint 400 off road race in Nevada, Thompson contacted Wenner with an eye to writing a piece that would lay waste to the smug self-satisfaction of Nixon’s America. Needless to say, the editor took great pleasure in publishing the essays that’d become the groundbreaking treatise Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas. And while Thompson set about redefining journalism, Wenner, Ben Fong-Torres and friends made Rolling Stone the only critical voice that mattered in the realm of American music. “There’d been music magazines before Rolling Stone,” explains Cameron Crowe, the movie director who got his first taste of fame writing for Wenner’s publication while still in his mid-teens. “What

was special about Rolling Stone was that, whatever appeared within its pages became America’s gospel. A hundred papers could write good things about your band but it didn’t mean squat until Rolling Stone had given you its blessing.” Crowe would later celebrate his younger days with the magazine in Almost Famous, a feature film in which the 15-year-old writer (reinterpreted by Spun star Patrick Fugit) goes on tour with up-andcoming rock combo Stillwater. “Virtually everything that happens in Almost Famous happened to me at one time or another during my career as a music journalist,” continues the man behind such hits as Vanilla Sky and Elizabethtown. “The egos, the groupies, the friendship with [ace music writer] Lester Bangs, the longing and the heartbreak — it’s all real. Even the near death experience is real. I think I was all of 16 when I found myself in a light

HUNTER S THOMPSON IN HIS COLORADO HOME

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ROLLING STONE

NIXON AND THOMPSON WERE POLAR OPPOSITES

Rolling Stone had a hard time admitting that anything after the early 1970s was any good. It made it seem like a boring ‘dad’s’ mag

aircraft with the Allman Brothers convinced that the end was nigh. Fortunately it wasn’t but I had to put that incident in the film, as amazing and unreal as it might have seemed.” And while Crowe was almost coming a cropper, Rolling Stone was reshaping the possibilities of what a music magazine could be. “We had real power for a while,” remembers Wenner. “Hunter Thompson’s Fear & Loathing On The Campaign Trail was amongst the most urgent political writing to come out of this country. Hunter got right under the skin of Nixon and his cronies. And he couldn’t have done more to get behind, who Hunter believed to be the only honest politician up to that point. Because

if that wasn’t enough, the day after Hunter heard Jimmy Carter speaking at a lunchtime meeting in 1976, there was no doubt that we’d be endorsing the Democrat candidate come the next election. We even put it on the front cover. I can’t think of many other music magazines that would not only deem endorsing a candidate an important enough story to appear on their cover, but would believe that what it had to say might be sufficient to help its choice make it all the way to the Oval Office.” No sooner was James Earl Carter Jr in the White House than Rolling Stone seemed to lose some of its influence. A large part of the problem was that Hunter Thompson, having for so long revelled in the position of, started to

believe the many wonderful things that had been written about him. The very definition of a functional alcoholic, Thompson memorably fouled up when he and Ralph Steadman — the Welsh cartoonist responsible for Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas’s crazed illustrations — were sent to Zaire to cover the Ali/Foreman Rumble In The Jungle. Up until this point, Thompson had enjoyed great success using events such as the Kentucky Derby and the Mint 400 to comment upon the state of 1970s America in typical ascerbic style. When dispatched to Kinshasa, however, Thompson lost the plot. He decided to spend an evening in the swimming pool rather than attending what would become the defining fight of Muhammad Ali’s career. “That was a strange night,” recalls Ralph Steadman, who’d remain a close friend of Thompson’s up until the writer’s untimely death. “There we were, in Africa with the fight of the era about to take place, and Hunter insisted on swimming laps and listening to the fight on a battered old radio rather than going to the stadium — I think he even gave our tickets away which was stupid because they were worth a fortune. Naturally I tried to get him out of his trunks but when Hunter sets his mind to something, he’s not quick to change his mind.” And while its greatest writer was behaving like a spoilt child so Rolling

Stone began to over-indulge itself. “When Rolling Stone was launched, music was enjoying a real golden age,” explains James Brown, now editor of sabotagetimes.com. “You had the Laurel Canyon scene with Fleetwood Mac and Crosby, Stills & Nash. You had The Who at the peak 103

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ROLLING STONE

of their powers, The Rolling Stones were recording their best records, Led Zeppelin — four blokes from Birmingham — had just conquered the world. It was a truly amazing era. The only problem with all of this was that Rolling Stone had a hard time acknowledging what came afterwards as anything other than a pale imitation of the late 1960s and early ‘70s. It was like your older brother who keeps telling you the music of today isn’t a patch on the stuff he grew up listening too.” Of course, it’s easy to understand why Wenner and his team had such a hard time bidding goodbye to that age — periods like that come along so infrequently. But their refusal to embrace anything after, say, 1975 made Rolling Stone seem like a boring ‘dads’ mag.” With the new movements Rolling Stone scorned including both punk and disco, the magazine had its fingers a long way from the pulse come the early 1980s, the time when a little something started coming out of the New York projects called hip hop. “Rolling Stone completely missed the boat on rap and hip hop,” says Angus Batey, the author of the acclaimed Beastie Boys biography Rhymin’ & Stealin’. “It was a huge mistake. MTV had also refused to embrace rap — when Live Aid aired on MTV in 1985, Run DMC were the only rap act on the bill and they had their performance entirely cut. So Rolling Stone, having for years seemed daring and antiestablishment, now seemed like it was owned and run by ‘The Man’. “They came around eventually. MTV did, too — Yo! MTV Raps was the station’s biggest show for ages, with the genre too big to ignore.”

CAMERON CROWE WENT ON TO BECOME A SUCCESSFUL DIRECTOR

But while MTV had always seemed a bit out-of-step, it wasn’t hurt by changing face. Rolling Stone, though, had a hard time living down its failure to recognise a new musical phenomenon. From hip style bible to safe, 1970s obsessed music mag, it would be wrong to suggest that Rolling Stone completely fell off the cultural radar. When Elton John decided to come clean about his colourful personal life in the late 1980s, it was Wenner who took his call. And when Hunter S Thompson decided to ditch the excess and remind the world that he was a writer without equal, it was through articles in Rolling Stone that he was to reclaim lost ground. As Wenner explains, “Hunter hated people talking about him as yesterday’s man. I just think that, after the heady 1970s, he had a hard time finding things to write about in the Reagan era — I think he found it as safe and stultifying as the

1950s. But Clinton and the Lewinsky scandal and the election of George W Bush — those issues had real meat on the bone and Hunter didn’t disappoint. “Do I think Rolling Stone misses Hunter today? [Thompson committed suicide in 2005, aged 67] Of course, how could we not? And what do I miss most about him? Everything. I miss everything about Hunter.” Even before Thompson died, his superb late era articles were insufficient to return Rolling Stone to its previous place as the go-to magazine for music fans. Still published by Wenner, the little magazine that could has for a long time come on like the corporate colossus that did. It might still conduct interviews with presidential hopefuls and publish the work of legends like Annie Leibovitz and PJ O’Rourke, but Rolling Stone has had to come to terms with the fact it’s no longer cool. Even those who’ve enjoyed long standing relationships with the paper admit that its best days might be behind it. “I loved working for Rolling Stone,” reminisces Cameron Crowe. “To be a young kid, writing about rock music in the age of Tommy and Led Zeppelin IV was the most amazing thrill. “A lot’s changed since then, but in its own way, that time with that magazine was as much a highlight of my career as directing movies today.” Farewell then, Rolling Stone — you might continue to be read from Perth to Pittsburgh, but the sun has set on your magic hour. But like the music you lorded, the memory lingers on.

Richard Luck has written about music and ﬁlm for Esquire, Film4.com and Empire 105

MAGNETIC NORTH

magnetic north FOR A BRIEF PERIOD OF TIME, MANCHESTER WAS THE COOLEST PLACE ON EARTH — MANCUNIANS WILL ARGUE IT STILL IS. KEVIN CUMMINS CAPTURES THE GENIUS, THE MADNESS AND THE BEAUTY OF THE CITY’S MUSIC SCENE

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FEATURE STORY

Ian Curtis, Joy Division; Hulme, Manchester, January 6, 1979 A snowy day in Manchester. I was concerned that if I shot the band in the snow the photos would date immediately, thus rendering them unsuitable for use a few weeks later when they were to be published in the NME. My editor told me to take a few but to concentrate on interior shots of the band. For this session I could only afford to buy two rolls of film. Every shot had to count. I’d taken several photos they wanted and a few band shots I wanted but I hadn’t taken a solo shot of Ian for the cover. I asked him to lean against a lamp post. He stood there, smoking in the gloomy light. If it hadn’t been for the reflective quality of the snow it would have been too dark to shoot. He didn’t say anything. I didn’t say anything. I shot the five frames remaining in my camera and that was the end of the session. 107

MAGNETIC NORTH

Salford Market; July 1977 I was shooting a series of photos of people and street scenes around Manchester and Salford. I hoped that, one day, they would contextualise some of the band shots from the era. I love the three figures in this image spanning three generations. It has the quality of a still life despite being shot on a market day.

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The Factory at The Russell Club; August 22, 1979 The Factory was on the outskirts of Hulme, a huge inner-city council estate in Manchester. The club, formerly The Russell Club, was originally intended to showcase Factory Recordsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; bands. Peter Saville [legendary UK designer] created the poster for the opening two gigs, but didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t deliver it until a couple of weeks later. This may explain why they were so poorly attended. Joy Division played several gigs here and it hosted Iggy Pop, Echo And The Bunnymen and Simple Minds, but closed as a live venue after less than two years.

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Shaun Ryder; barber’s shop, Havana, Cuba, December 1995 The record company took Shaun and Bez to Cuba to promote the Black Grape album to the US Press. I assume they thought it subversive to ship American music writers into Cuba. Shaun was pretty bored during the whole trip. He fell asleep and was belligerently monosyllabic to the writers during the interviews. Eventually, he told them to ask me the questions as I could remember more about his career than he did. A few years after this shot was taken, Shaun was interviewed by Ted Kessler (the writer who accompanied me on this trip for the NME). Ted was now working at the Guardian. As an icebreaker, Ted mentioned that he’d not seen Shaun since the Cuba trip. Shaun looked puzzled. “I haven't been to Cuba,” he said. Ted assured him that he had and that both he and I accompanied him. “Did I meet Castro?” asked Ryder. Ted assured him that we hadn’t met Castro. “Thank God for that" said Shaun. “I’d have hated to forget that I’d met Castro.” 111

MAGNETIC NORTH

Morrissey; bridge over Rochdale Canal, Manchester. September 1989 I love working with Morrissey. He has hundreds of ideas — many of which wouldn’t work visually, but it makes working with him such an interesting — and ultimately — collaborative affair. I was originally shooting him as he walked along the towpath in the fading evening autumnal light. As he walked up the brow of the hill all the elements fell into place. The cobbles, the bridge, the silhouette — it’s so northern, yet so iconic — almost sculptural. There are very few people who are recognisable in silhouette. Morrissey is one of them.

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Scott King; Joy Division Tattoo, Old Street, London I contacted British artist Scott King to shoot his Joy Division tattoo for my book, as the typeface echoed that of the font used on Ian Curtis’ memorial stone in Macclesfield crematorium. I felt the two photographs would work perfectly together for the book, in a fan fetishism kind of way. Scott deliberately wore a white work shirt with the sleeve rolled up to make the imagery ‘more northern’ — his words. 113

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The Hacienda; October 5, 1988 The end of the Summer of Love. The Haçienda — owned by Manchester’s Factory Records [home to Joy Division, New Order and the Happy Mondays] — was the UK's first destination nightclub. I wanted to capture the excitement of this period when people went to a club to dance and not to get drunk. That might have also had something to do with the drug culture too — which ultimately led to armed gangs forcing the club to close down. An apartment block now occupies the site of this former Manchester landmark. 115

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HOME COMFORTS

“THE LOUNGES ARE OPERATED LIKE FINE-DINING RESTAURANTS”

THIS MONTH EMIRATES WILL OFFICIALLY open the new lounge in Delhi, India. The Delhi lounge is the 25th international lounge and another finely conceived space that offers the refinement and consistency that Emirates customers expect. Passengers want the same meticulous attention to detail they enjoy up in the air whilst still on the ground. To ensure a consistent quality, Emirates ensures all the materials used in the lounges come from unchanging sources. The high quality leather used for all the chairs and sofas is from the same tannery. All the wood veneer is from the same source and carefully

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selected according to colour and quality. The interiors are decorated with a neutral colour palette, sidestepping seasonal colours and avoiding a dated appearance, preferring instead to maintain a timeless and classic colour scheme. The attention dedicated to making the lounges of the highest quality has repeatedly paid off, with recognition and many accolades awarded — the Emirates First Class and Business Class lounges in Dubai have a look of their own and are also frequently ranked by independent bodies as amongst the best in the world. Such recognition from independent surveys is an excellent indicator that

lounges can be crucial differentiators when customers choose an airline. As Don Surrendra, Product Development Manager, says: “The lounges are a real value add to the customer and we know that in some instances, customers choose us because of the lounge. Customers who spend so much time working can use the lounge to get work done so they can switch off and sleep on the flight.” In many ways the 28 lounges are operated like fine-dining restaurants with strict, well-designed systems adhered to. The menus are changed every month and reviewed rigorously, with international offerings always available such as fine wines and cheese in Australia and seasonal fresh produce in India. All the lounges are reviewed every six months and Emirates staff are encouraged to give suggestions based on customer feedback. As Surrendra says: “Nobody offers the level of food, beverage and ambiance that we do.” Six more lounges are in the planning phase and in the next four months an opening is expected in Colombo, as well as extensions in London Heathrow and Auckland.

EMIRATES NEWS

ENGINEERING EXCELLENCE A SMOOTH EXPERIENCE FROM THE beginning until the end of your journey is what you expect from any world-class transport service. However, the majority of passengers rarely consider the complex web of operations in place that ensures such efficiencies. A visit to the 136acre Emirates Engineering Centre on the north side of Dubai International airport reveals a facility of jawdropping scale and scope. The facility itself is so huge that there are four modes of transport used to navigate the place: tricycles, segways, buggies and feet. Thankfully, a guided tour is provided via a swift buggy with Bob Lunn, Emirates Vice President Engineering Facilities and Iain Lachlan, Divisional Senior Vice President Emirates Engineering. The whole site comprises eight huge hangars, each measuring 11,000 square metres, workshops, an administration building, engineering training centre, aircraft appearance centre, ground run-up enclosure, engine shops and the main store. The main store appears as a giant warehouse with metal shelves housing all the stock and spare parts. Two billion dirhams worth of materials are all marked and stored for easy access. Moving to

the hangars one sees the need for the different modes of transport. The eight bays form the largest freespanned structure in the Middle East, with hangar doors 88 metres wide accommodating the aircraft. It is not only the largest Maintenance, Repair, and Overhaul (MRO) facility in the Middle East, but one of the largest in the world, employing 3,500 staff. The facility was opened in 2007 costing AED2.3 billion. A quarter of this cost was dedicated to fire prevention and protection systems alone. The move from the old facility, which was four times smaller, took

“THE FACILITY ITSELF IS SO HUGE THAT THERE ARE FOUR MODES OF TRANSPORT USED TO NAVIGATE THE PLACE”

place in stages over a six-month period, without a single days loss of productivity. Again the facility is looking at expansion to accommodate the airline’s exponential growth. Even with a number of aircraft released from the fleet, space will be needed to take in this growing number of planes. Five of the hangars are kept full with c-checks, cabin refurbishment, retrofit and refreshment programmes on the 151-strong fleet. The other two bays deal with light maintenance. The eighth bay is Emirates' first in-house paint hangar. Here a team of 40 staff will take up to 15 days to paint and enhance the exterior of a plane to the level of excellence expected. Well, with Emirates huge investment in new aircraft, you would want the paint job to look the best it possibly could.

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EMIRATES NEWS

LITTLE BOOK, BIG IDEAS BOOK REVIEW COMPACT AND POWERFUL, The Little Book of Shocking Eco Facts, by geographers Mark Crundwell and Cameron Dunn, does not make for a light and leisurely read. But that’s the point. The book is supposed to render the reader uncomfortable and outraged — in the hope that one by one, people will make small adjustments to their everyday lives in order to mitigate the widespread destruction of the environment. Divided into three sections: oceans, atmosphere and land — the book delivers one or two shocking facts about the state of our planet on each page. The information is sourced and validated from the world's most authoritative sources and combined with graphic imagery from the award-winning Barnbrook Design studio in the UK to create a potent impact. Some of the analogies may seem tired — the use of a football pitch as

a gauge for how much rainforest is being destroyed on a daily basis — but the effect is disturbing. The 7,140 square metre size of an international football pitch disappears every one and a half seconds. About the time it took to read this sentence. Other startling figures include the fact that one species (humans) uses 86.6 per cent of the world’s biocapacity. The other 1.7 million species use the remaining 13.4 per cent. Although the book takes a holistic view of the threat to our planet, there is no real attempt at discussing solutions, which can leave the reader feeling powerless. But the writers do want to effect real change, and therefore are donating a percentage of the profits from each book sold to a charity, The Rainforest Alliance. WWW.FIELL.COM

THE AVERAGE REDUCTION IN FUEL�BURN THAT FUTURE IMPROVEMENTS IN AIRLINE OPERATIONS SUCH AS SINGLE�ENGINE TAXIING AND CABIN WEIGHT REDUCTION WILL HAVE

4% 392 WWW.ENVIRO.AERO

THE NUMBER OF JOBS IN MILLIONS GENERATED BY THE AVIATION INDUSTRY

EFFICIENCY KEY FOR EMIRATES THE NEED TO EMBRACE ECOLOGICAL EFFICIENCY IS AN ISSUE that affects all industries. Emirates operates three of the world's longest non-stop commercial flights, from Dubai to Los Angeles, San Francisco and Houston. It is vital to set an example by maintaining a young efficient aircraft fleet. Emirates is the largest airline in the world in terms of scheduled international passengerkilometres flown and we operate one of the youngest fleets of any major airline, using only wide-bodied aircraft. These include the Airbus A330/A340, Airbus A380 and the Boeing 777. Emirates reiterated this

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commitment to maintaining the youngest fleet possible, with an order for 70 A350 XWBs (Xtra wide bodies). When orders are placed the new aircraft are not added to the existing number of planes, but older planes are replaced. Emirates is set to replace more than 80 aircraft over the next decade. Emirates can achieve low emissions due to an average fuel burn of less than four litres for every 100-passenger kilometres flown. The A350s on order are 20 per cent more efficient than current equivalent aircraft. This commitment ensures exceptional fuel economy and more comfortable travel.

EMIRATES NEWS

BEFORE YOUR JOURNEY CONSULT YOUR DOCTOR BEFORE TRAVELLING IF YOU HAVE ANY MEDICAL CONCERNS ABOUT MAKING A LONG JOURNEY, OR IF YOU SUFFER FROM A RESPIRATORY OR

IN THE AIR

CARDIOVASCULAR CONDITION. PLAN FOR THE DESTINATION � WILL

TO HELP YOU ARRIVE AT YOUR destination feeling relaxed and refreshed, Emirates has developed this collection of helpful travel tips. Regardless of whether you need to

rejuvenate for your holiday or be effective at achieving your goals on a business trip, these simple tips will help you to enjoy your journey and time on board with Emirates today.

SMART TRAVELLER

YOU NEED ANY VACCINATIONS OR SPECIAL MEDICATIONS? GET A GOOD NIGHT’S REST BEFORE THE FLIGHT. EAT LIGHTLY AND SENSIBLY.

AT THE AIRPORT ALLOW YOURSELF PLENTY OF TIME FOR CHECK�IN.

DRINK PLENTY OF WATER

TRAVEL LIGHTLY

AVOID CARRYING HEAVY BAGS THROUGH THE AIRPORT AND ONTO THE FLIGHT AS THIS CAN PLACE THE BODY UNDER CONSIDERABLE STRESS. ONCE THROUGH TO DEPARTURES TRY AND RELAX AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE.

REHYDRATE WITH WATER OR JUICES FREQUENTLY.

CARRY ONLY THE ESSENTIAL ITEMS THAT YOU

DRINK TEA AND COFFEE IN MODERATION.

WILL NEED DURING YOUR FLIGHT.

DURING THE FLIGHT SUCKING AND SWALLOWING WILL HELP

MAKE YOURSELF COMFORTABLE

EQUALISE YOUR EAR PRESSURE DURING

KEEP MOVING

ASCENT AND DESCENT. BABIES AND YOUNG PASSENGERS MAY SUFFER MORE ACUTELY WITH POPPING EARS, THEREFORE CONSIDER PROVIDING A DUMMY.

LOOSEN CLOTHING, REMOVE JACKET AND AVOID

EXERCISE YOUR LOWER LEGS AND CALF

GET AS COMFORTABLE AS POSSIBLE

ANYTHING PRESSING AGAINST YOUR BODY.

MUSCLES. THIS ENCOURAGES BLOOD FLOW.

WHEN RESTING AND TURN FREQUENTLY. AVOID SLEEPING FOR LONG PERIODS IN

WEAR GLASSES

USE SKIN MOISTURISER

THE SAME POSITION.

WHEN YOU ARRIVE TRY SOME LIGHT EXERCISE OR READ IF YOU CAN’T SLEEP AFTER ARRIVAL.

CABIN AIR IS DRIER THAN NORMAL THEREFORE

APPLY A GOOD QUALITY MOISTURISER TO ENSURE

SWAP YOUR CONTACT LENSES FOR GLASSES.

YOUR SKIN DOESN’T DRY OUT.

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CABIN L BE CREW WIL HELP IF HAPPY TO YOU NEED

EMIRATES NEWS

ASSISTIANGNTCHEE COMPLET FORMS

TO US CUSTOMS & IMMIGRATION FORMS WHETHER YOU’RE TRAVELLING TO, OR THROUGH, THE UNITED STATES TODAY,

this simple guide to completing the US customs and immigration forms will help to ensure that your journey is

as hassle free as possible. The Cabin Crew will offer you two forms when you are nearing your destination. We provide guidelines below, so you can correctly complete the forms.

CUSTOMS DECLARATION FORM

IMMIGRATION FORM

All passengers arriving into the US need to complete a CUSTOMS DECLARATION FORM . If you are travelling as a family this should be completed by one member only. The form must be completed in English, in capital letters, and must be signed where indicated.

The IMMIGRATION FORM I-94 (Arrival / Departure Record) should be completed if you are a non-US citizen in possession of a valid US visa and your final destination is the US or if you are in transit to a country outside the US. A separate form must be completed for each person, including children travelling on their parents’ passport. The form includes a Departure Record which must be kept safe and given to your airline when you leave the US. If you hold a US or Canadian passport, US Alien Resident Visa (Green Card), US Immigrant Visa or a valid ESTA (right), you are not required to complete an immigration form.

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EMIRATES NEWS

ELECTRONIC SYSTEM FOR

YOUR PASSPORT.

TRAVEL AUTHORISATION (ESTA)

APPLY ONLINE AT WWW.CBP.GOV/ESTA

IF YOU ARE AN INTERNATIONAL TRAVELLER WISHING TO ENTER

NATIONALITIES ELIGIBLE FOR

THE UNITED STATES UNDER THE

THE VISA WAIVER*:

VISA WAIVER PROGRAMME, YOU

ANDORRA, AUSTRALIA,

MUST APPLY FOR ELECTRONIC

AUSTRIA, BELGIUM, BRUNEI,

AUTHORISATION �ESTA� UP

CZECH REPUBLIC, DENMARK,

TO �� HOURS PRIOR TO YOUR

ESTONIA, FINLAND, FRANCE,

DEPARTURE.

GERMANY, HUNGARY, ICELAND,

ESTA FACTS:

LIECHTENSTEIN, LITHUANIA,

IRELAND, ITALY, JAPAN, LATVIA,

CHILDREN AND

LUXEMBURG, MALTA, MONACO,

INFANTS REQUIRE AN

THE NETHERLANDS, NEW

INDIVIDUAL ESTA.

ZEALAND, NORWAY, PORTUGAL,

THE ONLINE ESTA SYSTEM

SAN MARINO, SINGAPORE,

WILL INFORM YOU WHETHER

SLOVAKIA, SLOVENIA, SOUTH

YOUR APPLICATION

KOREA, SPAIN, SWEDEN,

HAS BEEN AUTHORISED,

SWITZERLAND AND THE

NOT AUTHORISED OR IF

UNITED KINGDOM**.

AUTHORISATION

* SUBJECT TO CHANGE

IS PENDING.

** ONLY BRITISH CITIZENS QUALIFY UNDER

A SUCCESSFUL ESTA

THE VISA WAIVER PROGRAMME.

APPLICATION IS VALID FOR TWO YEARS, HOWEVER THIS MAY BE REVOKED OR WILL EXPIRE ALONG WITH

AIR TRANSPORT COVERS THE SHORTEST DISTANCE BETWEEN TWO POINTS, GENERALLY �� PER CENT SHORTER THAN THE SAME ROUTE TAKEN BY ANY FORM OF LAND TRANSPORT.

30% 2.2

THE NUMBER OF AIRCRAFT CURRENTLY ON ORDER BY EMIRATES�

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THE NUMBER OF EGGS IN MILLIONS THAT THE EMIRATES FLIGHT CATERING CENTRE USES EVERY YEAR:

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EMIRATES NEWS

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EMIRATES NEWS

AD 131

THE FLEET

For more information: www.emirates.com/ourf leet

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FLEET GUIDE

Boeing 777-300ER Number of Aircraft: 53 Capacity: 354-442 Range: 14,594km Length: 73.9m Wingspan: 64.8m

Boeing 777-300 Number of Aircraft: 12 Capacity: 364 Range: 11,029km Length: 73.9m Wingspan: 60.9m

Boeing 777-200LR Number of Aircraft: 10 Capacity: 266 Range: 17,446km Length: 63.7m Wingspan: 64.8m Boeing 777F Number of Aircraft: 2 Range (max payload): 5,000nm Length: 63.7m Wingspan: 64.8m

Boeing 777-200 Number of Aircraft: 9 Capacity: 274-346 Range: 9,649km Length: 63.7m Wingspan: 60.9m

Boeing 747-400F/747-ERF Number of Aircraft: 3/2 Range (max payload): 4445nm/4970nm Length: 70.6m Wingspan: 64.4m 134

Airbus A380-800 Number of Aircraft: 15 Capacity: 489-517 Range: 15,000km Length: 72.7m Wingspan: 79.8m

Airbus A340-500 Number of Aircraft: 10 Capacity: 258 Range: 16,050km Length: 67.9m Wingspan: 63.4m

Airbus A340-300 Number of Aircraft: 8 Capacity: 267 Range: 13,350km Length: 63.6m Wingspan: 60.3m

Airbus A330-200 Number of Aircraft: 27 Capacity: 237-278 Range: 12,200km Length: 58.8m Wingspan: 60.3m 135

NEXT MONTH… O

pen Skies travels to Africa next month with our entire issue dedicated to a continent of unmatched diversity, beauty and scale. It is, of course, impossible to capture a place so enchanting in one issue, but we have picked some of our favourites from Dakar to Durban. We get the low-down on South Africa’s coolest city (and it isn’t Cape Town), and bring back some intriguing booty from Senegal. One of the most respected writers on Africa profiles one of the continent’s most extraordinary leaders and we experience an aerial view of South Africa with a difference. We unearth a raft of new African creatives and showcase a classic piece of travel reportage — Africa is one of the most spectacular places on Earth; come explore it with us.

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