The dark and involving albums. The slyly controversial singles. We’ve reviewed them all to bring you a definitive guide to the music of Lana Del Rey. Alongside, we’ve told the story of her journey from philosophy student and trailer home resident, the aspiring singer-songwriter Lizzy Grant, to globally influential artist. We’ll be unpacking the songs, and creating the definitive timeline as we go.
But that’s not all. We’ve scrutinised the livestream of her most recent show, and reviewed the new songs. We’ve gone deep inside Lana’s cultural references compiling the definitive A-Z from Slim Aarons to Frank Zappa, via new entry Morgan Wallen. We’ve also located the key Lana interviews, which chart her path from young singer facing down incorrect assumptions to a brilliant and self-assured artist. The mag’s in shops now – or you can get your copy here.
In this epic interview - originally published in Uncut's December 2004 issue - Neil Young talks us through the songs on his Greatest Hits album. "I wrote a lot of songs when I couldn’t talk…"
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Neil Young is just back from playing several dates on the “Vote For Change” tour...
In this epic interview – originally published in Uncut’s December 2004 issue – Neil Young talks us through the songs on his Greatest Hits album. “I wrote a lot of songs when I couldn’t talk…”
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Neil Young is just back from playing several dates on the “Vote For Change” tour and he’s still sporting the button badge and a custom-made “Canadians For Kerry” T-shirt to prove it. “Too bad you guys in Europe don’t get to vote. Then it would be a landslide, right?” he jokes.
Politically, Young has often appeared an ambivalent figure. He made potent early socio-political statements with songs such as “Ohio” and “Southern Man”, both of which have a prominent place on his forthcoming best-of compilation. But then in the ’80s he appeared to flirt with Reaganism. At the end of the decade, as the Cold War was coming to an end and global communism was collapsing, he wrote “Rockin’ In The Free World”. It’s also on the new ‘hits’ collection, and is one of those ambiguous songs claimed equally by both sides. To the right it’s a celebration of capitalism’s ultimate triumph. To the left it’s a critique of ‘freedom’ American-style, with its litany of victims who fall between democracy’s cracks.
On the Vote For Change tour, it’s become a ‘stop Bush’ anthem, Young performing the song with the likes of Pearl Jam and the Dave Matthews Band.
“It seems to be resonating again,” he says. “But it depends on how you cut it and what words you leave in and what you take out.”
He’s clearly pleased with the way Michael Moore adapted the song for the soundtrack of his recent Fahrenheit 9/11. “The way he edited in the film made it very topical for now,” he enthuses, and reveals that Moore has now made a four-minute video for the song. “I just saw it for the first time half an hour ago,” Young says. “He’s done a great job.”
There are two ways of viewing rock stars who pontificate about politics. On the one hand, there’s the ’60s notion that artists have a duty to “speak out against the madness”, as David Crosby put it on CSNY’s “Almost Cut My Hair”. The other holds that just because we enjoy the music of citizens Springsteen, Stipe, Vedder or Young, why should we care a hoot about their political views?
Uncut wonders where Young stands within this spectrum of opinion.
“At both ends, because they’re both right,” he says. “Half the people feel musicians should be listened to simply as artists and shouldn’t step outside their area as political spokesmen. But the other half feel what musicians have to say is meaningful. Maybe it’s not going to change your mind. But it’s going to reinforce what you feel if someone whose music you relate to agrees with you. It can be a very effective thing if people go and vote for whatever they feel the music says.”
Whether humanity has made any progress since the titanic social and cultural battles that rock’n’roll seemed to embody in the ’60s is a moot point.
“It’s 50:50 right now,” Young reckons. “I like to think things are getting better. But there are so many levels of control through the media. It’s confusing. You think you’re making progress. And then you see how strong the other side is and how they’re manipulating the media to change the meaning of things and put out their take on it. People have to learn to think for themselves.”
Away from his contribution to the campaign to oust Bush, Young has been busy readying his new compilation, his first career overview since Decade in 1977. A long-term obsessive about sound quality, typically the record comes in various formats, including not only standard CD but something he calls “super-saturated DVD-Stereo” and a new, enhanced vinyl format he claims is “the best ever”.
“Sound quality hit the dark ages in the early ’80s. But it’s starting to come back thanks to DVD-Stereo,” he enthuses. “There’s just no comparison between that and a regular compact disc or even 5.1 sound. It’s the difference between a true reflection of the music and a mere replica.”
In reality, Young has had very few ‘hits’ in the conventional sense; his only solo Top 30 single to date has been “Heart Of Gold” in 1972. Was the selection his or his record company’s, and what were the criteria?
“There was a large list that was created,” he explains. “Then we based it on sales and airplay and downloading. We took all the information that we could and came up with what would fit.”
The result is a collection on which all but two of the 16 tracks date from the period 1969-79, with only “Rockin’ In The Free World” and “Harvest Moon” to represent the last 25 years.
“Well, that’s when the hottest hits happened, or what you might call hits,” he shrugs. “So that’s real.”
A greatest hits album will hardly satisfy those who were hoping 2004 would see the release of the multi-CD Archives boxset (at various times rumoured to consist of anything between six and 20 CDs) that he’s been promising for years. But, he insists, the project is now “big and real close” and the hits album is intended to “set the bar” for the Archives release.
Yet he denies all this journeying through his past has put him in nostalgic mood. “Like Dylan said, ‘Don’t look back.’ I can only play the old songs if there’s also new material. Greendale is what gave me enough belief in myself to continue and to sing the old songs. If it wasn’t for things like Greendale, I’d just be replicating myself, travelling round the world doing things I’d already done. Which would be very depressing and probably life-threatening.”
At the moment he admits there are no new songs. “I don’t have anything. Greendale completely drained me, to the point where I’m just standing here, the wind is blowing and I’m waiting.”
Perhaps he could fill the time by giving us his literary version of events, like Dylan’s Chronicles?
“Boy, I hope I’ll be too busy doing something else to do that. It’d be a heck of a job. But maybe at some point in my life it will become a relaxing thing to do.”
If he ever does write the book, though, don’t expect too many insights on what inspired the songs.
“Fact is, when it comes to songwriting, it’s all just a bunch of information coming from the same place. And I don’t know how to relate to the thoughts behind it. I really don’t. The songs are on their own little trip, I go out and ride along with them and sing them and sometimes I won’t sing them because I don’t feel like it.”
Despite this protestation, he’s perfectly happy to range over the album’s track selection for Uncut’s edification, and reveals he’s still particularly enamoured of the trio of songs from 1969’s Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, which forged the Crazy Horse sound.
“That was the beginning of playing electric guitar and jamming and being able to play those extended instrumentals for me,” says Young. “That was a great band and Danny Whitten was a great guitar player. I love all those records that I made back then. Those tracks still kick ass.”
Then came the success of “Heart Of Gold” and 1972’s Harvest album, which categorised him in the minds of many as a lovelorn troubadour. Did he then make a conscious decision to subvert that image?
“That’s what success does – it will categorise you. But luckily I haven’t had that much success. That was the one time and the first thing an artist will do if he doesn’t want to be categorised is to react and fight back. There’s a spirit inside you that’s like an animal. And it’s cornered when it’s categorised. So we’re not dealing with thought here. It’s an animal reaction.”
And does he still believe it’s better “to burn out than to fade away”? He wrote the line when he was in his thirties. A quarter of a century on, he appears to have successfully avoided both fates.
“I was exactly 33 and a third when I wrote that so I was on long play,” he jokes. “It wasn’t a literal thing. It was a spontaneous description of a feeling rather than endorsing a way of life. But what a line like that means changes every time you sing it, depending on what’s going on in the world. If you really believe in something when you write it or you’re open to some channel and things comes through you, then that’s going to happen. What you write will reapply itself to whatever’s happening around you. And that’s the fun of what I do.”
Next year, Young will turn 60. With Greendale having left him “drained” and no new songs jostling for his attention, perhaps it will be the year that the long-awaited Archives boxset, with its treasure trove of unreleased tracks, finally makes its appearance. In the meantime, as a curtain-raiser, we give you the low-down on his new best-of…
Down By The River Album: Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere Released: May 1969
Recorded: Wally Heider’s, Los Angeles, Jan 1969
Dissatisfied with the sound of his debut album and bored and exhausted by the long hours in the studio that its endless overdubs entailed, Young determined “to be real instead of fabricating something” when it came to recording the follow-up. And the key turned out to be a band called The Rockets he found playing the clubs on LA’s Sunset Strip.
After sitting in with the band at a gig at the Whiskey A Go-Go in August 1968, he invited three members of the six-piece – Danny Whitten, Ralph Molina and Billy Talbot – to help him record his next album. For reasons nobody can now remember, he renamed them Crazy Horse (after his initial suggestion, The War Babies, had been rejected) and by January 1969 they were in the studio recording Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere.
“Down By The River” defined the guitar sound Young perfected with Crazy Horse, played on a vintage instrument he called “Old Black”, a 1953 Gibson Les Paul that he’d bought in 1967 for $50. Years later, he was still recalling the excitement of the first time he played it through a vintage 1959 Fender Deluxe: “Immediately, the entire room started to vibrate. I went, ‘Holy shit!’ I had to turn it halfway down before it stopped feeding back.” The sessions for Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere were the first time he’d used the combination in the studio.
Despite being nine minutes long, “Down By The River” was edited down from a much longer jam. “We got the vibe, but it was just too long and sometimes it fell apart, so we just took the shitty parts out,” Young explained. “Made some radical cuts in there – I mean, you can hear ’em. Danny just played so cool on that. He was playing R’n’B kinda things. He made the whole band sound good.”
Bassist Billy Talbot confirms that it was “Down By The River” which patented the Crazy Horse sound: “At first we played it double-time, faster like the chorus is now. It was almost a jazz thing.” They then borrowed a James Brown-style beat, but slowed down to a more stoned pace.
According to drummer Ralph Molina, Young borrowed the chord sequence from a Danny Whitten composition called “Music On The Road”, although Young’s biographer Jimmy McDonough reckoned it owes more to “Let Me Go”, another Rockets song, which appeared on their only album (released in ’68).
Written in bed with a fever on the same day as “Cinnamon Girl” and “Cowgirl In The Sand”, once the sickness passed Young still didn’t seem to have much idea where “Down By The River” ’s lyric came from, with its “I shot my baby” refrain.
“No, there’s no real murder in it. It’s about blowing your thing with a chick. It’s a plea, a desperation cry,” he insisted in 1970.
Yet in a long preamble to the song at a 1984 concert in New Orleans, he told a different story, claiming it was about “a guy who had a lot of trouble controlling himself”. He went on to describe a very literal meeting by a river in which the man tells the woman she’s cheated on him once too often: “He reached down into his pocket and pulled a little revolver out and he said, ‘Honey, I hate to do this, but you’ve pushed me too far.’”
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Cowgirl In The Sand
Album: Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere
Released: May 1969
Recorded: Wally Heider’s, Los Angeles, Jan 1969
The second of Young’s ground-breaking early guitar epics with Crazy Horse was written in bed with a fever on that same day as “Down By The River” – on an acoustic guitar, in which style it can be heard in a stunning take on 1970’s live CSN&Y album Four Way Street.
But it’s the electric version that remains the most memorable, and includes some of the finest guitar interplay between Young and Whitten.
“Nobody played guitar with me like that,” Young says of Crazy Horse’s main man, who died of a heroin overdose in 1972. “That rhythm, when you listen to ‘Cowgirl In the Sand’, he keeps changing. Billy and Ralph will get into a groove and everything will be going along and all of a sudden Danny’ll start doing something else. He just led those guys from one groove to another, all within the same groove. So when I played those long guitar solos, it seemed like they weren’t all that long, that I was making all these changes, when in reality what was changing was not one thing but the whole band. Danny was the key. A really great second guitar player, the perfect counterpoint to everything else that was happening.”
On another occasion, Young said of his style with Crazy Horse: “A lot of people think we play simple and there is no finesse. But we’re not trying to impress anybody; we just want to play with the feeling. It’s like a trance we get into.”
The trance-like quality is reflected in a dreamlike lyric, addressed to some idealised woman with intriguing references to sin and rust. In a much-bootlegged performance at London’s Royal Festival Hall in 1971, Young obscured its meaning further by introducing the song as about “beaches in Spain”, a decidedly odd comment given that at the time he’d never even been to Spain.
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Cinnamon Girl
Album: Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere
Released: May 1969
Recorded: Wally Heider’s, Los Angeles, Jan 1969
That day when Young took to his bed in early January 1969 with a debilitating dose of flu turned out to be one of the most productive of his career. Lying in his Topanga Canyon house with his mind in an altered state due to a fever that rolled up to 103 degrees, and with scraps of paper covering the bed, he composed his third classic of the day – “Cinnamon Girl”.
“Sometimes [when] I get sick, get a fever, it’s easy to write,” he explained. “Everything opens up. You don’t have any resistance. You just let things go.”
Within days of his recovery, he was trying the songs out with Crazy Horse. “Cinnamon Girl” was the first one to be recorded, and the euphoric marriage of crunching riffs and sweet melody made a dramatic album opener. Again the dreamy lyrics reflected his feverish state, and the mysterious effect was only enhanced by the hand-scribbled non-explanation that accompanied the song’s inclusion on the 1977 compilation Decade: “Wrote this for a city girl on peeling pavement coming at me through Phil Ochs’ eyes playing finger cymbals. It was hard to explain to my wife.” Or anyone else, come to that.
The guitar sound was based on an open tuning, which he had first used on Buffalo Springfield’s “Bluebird”. “We discovered this D modal tuning around the same time in 1966,” he told Nick Kent. “That was when ragas were happening and D modal made it possible to have that droning sound going all the time. That’s where it started, only I took it to the next level, which is how ‘The Loner’ and ‘Cinnamon Girl’ happened.”
A version with a slightly different vocal performance was released as a single in America, where it charted at No 55. “The parts are switched, Danny is on the bottom and me on top,” Young explains. “That was so you could hear my voice clearly, which Reprise wanted for the single. We left the album version alone because it was better and we knew it.”
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Helpless
Album: Déjà Vu
Released: March 1970
Recorded: Wally Heider’s, San Francisco, Oct 1969-Jan 1970
When Stephen Stills took David Crosby and Graham Nash to Young’s house in Topanga Canyon in the early summer of 1969 to persuade them that his old Buffalo Springfield colleague should join the group, “Helpless” was allegedly the song that convinced them. “By the time he finished, we were asking him if we could join his band,” David Crosby recalled.
This doesn’t fit with Young’s own claim in the sleevenotes to the Decade anthology, in which he insists the song was written in New York in 1970. But the simple chronology of the recording of the Déjà Vu album suggests Crosby’s account is more likely.
During the sessions for the album, Young stayed in the sleazy Caravan Lodge Motel in San Francisco’s run-down Tenderloin district, possibly because it was the only place that would tolerate the presence in his room of his two pet bush babies Harriet and Speedy.
Young also attempted to record “Helpless” with Crazy Horse at Sunset Sound around the same time, but when he and the band had completed what he believed to be the perfect take, he turned around to the control room to find the tape machine hadn’t been running.
“We were doing it live, everybody playing and singing at once and we did an eight- or nine-minute version of it with a long instrumental in the middle. And the engineer didn’t press the button down,” he says. “I took that as an omen. That’s why I did it with CSN.”
But it took CSN some time to get the song right, with Young consistently complaining that they were taking it too fast. “I had to play it with them until four in the morning, doing it over and over again to get everybody tired enough so that they would stop doing this extra stuff where everyone was playing too much,” he said in a 1989 radio documentary. “We kept on going for a long time. Finally we got one where they were half-asleep and they didn’t know they were doing it.”
The song gave Young more trouble when he performed an inept version in November 1976 at The Band’s farewell concert, The Last Waltz. His appearance was not helped by the cocaine binge he had been on for the previous 48 hours and a large rock of the white stuff, which was horribly visible in his nostril, had to be rotoscoped away from the scene in the film at a cost of several thousand dollars.
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After The Gold Rush
Album: After The Gold Rush
Released: Sept 1970
Recorded: Topanga, early 1970
“After The Gold Rush” shared its title with a screenplay by Dean Stockwell for a disaster movie in which Young had entertained hopes of making his acting debut. In the event, the movie failed to secure financial backing, and was never made.
Stockwell was a neighbour of Young’s in Topanga, and the plot of his proposed film involved the flooding of the canyon by a tidal wave following an earthquake. The screenplay then followed the effect of the disaster on a number of residents, including a local folk singer – a part that was tailor-made for Young.
Performed solo at the piano, accompanied only by a mournful French horn, the title song opened with an apocalyptic vision of ecological catastrophe. But then it took off into the realms of science fiction, with extra-terrestrials arriving in silver ships to save life on earth by transporting it to start a new colony in space. According to producer David Briggs, the song was written within half an hour.
Many years later, Young claimed the track to be an exercise in time travel, with scenes set in past, present and future: “There’s a Robin Hood scene, there’s a fire scene in the present and there’s the future. The air is yellow and red, ships are leaving, certain people can go and certain people can’t. I think it’s going to happen.”
To biographer Jimmy McDonough, he elaborated: “Civilisations. Dropping seeds. Races. Blending. Species getting stronger. Like plants do. I see it all as the same thing. Who knows how big the fucking universe is?”
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Only Love Can Break Your Heart
Album: After The Gold Rush
Released: Sept 1970
Recorded: Topanga, early 1970
“Only Love Can Break Your Heart” might sound heart-breakingly self-confessional and have helped to cement the early-’70s image of Young as a forlorn, lovesick troubadour, but the song was actually written for Graham Nash, whose relationship with Joni Mitchell had just hit the rocks.
As such, it contributes to the soap opera that was the CSN&Y axis at the time, for Young became the third songwriter to document the relationship, Nash having written the sentimental “Our House” for Déjà Vu and Mitchell including “Willy” (her nickname for Nash) on Ladies Of The Canyon.
Coincidentally, the same Mitchell album included “The Circle Game”, written for Young in response to his “Sugar Mountain”. In turn, Young would write another, unreleased song about Mitchell called “Sweet Joni”, which he played several times in concert during 1972-73. It was also rumoured – probably unfairly – that “Stupid Girl” on Young’s 1975 album Zuma was also about her.
Not to be left out of the tangled web, Stephen Stills recorded “Only Love Can Break Your Heart” on his 1984 album Right By You – and Crosby and Mitchell had been lovers before Nash even arrived on the scene.
Released as a single, “Only Love Can Break Your Heart” gave Young his first solo Top 40 hit in America in December 1970.
Southern Man
Album: After The Gold Rush
Released: Sept 1970
Recorded: Topanga, early 1970
A scathing indictment of racism and bigotry, “Southern Man” had its roots in an incident that took place during a Buffalo Springfield tour of the Deep South with The Beach Boys in early 1968. Beating up longhairs was at the time a popular sport in certain parts of the South and, sitting in a diner one night with members of the tour retinue after a gig, Young heard a bunch of rednecks planning to attack them.
A quick phone call to summon reinforcements from the road crew prevented an Easy Rider-type scenario. But Young was left both angry and shaken by the event. Dennis Dragon, one of The Beach Boys’ backing line-up, recalls: “Neil was really upset. Just the vibration, the ignorance, the stupidity. He’s a very sensitive guy. That did it. He went straight to work writing ‘Southern Man’.”
Young tells a more confused story. “This song could have been written on a civil rights march after stopping off to watch Gone With The Wind,” he joked later. Then he claimed, “Actually, I think I wrote it in the Fillmore East dressing room in 1970.” Even later, he told McDonough he had written it in his home studio in Topanga.
Certainly CSN&Y were playing it live by May of that year, and an epic version appears on Four Way Street. But the studio recording is more indignant and angry, although, according to Young, this had as much to do with marital strife with his wife Susan as his hatred of racism. “Susan was angry at me for some reason, throwing things. They were crashing against the [studio] door. We fought a lot. There’s some reason for it, I’m sure. It was probably my fault.”
He revisited the theme of the South on his 1972 Harvest album with the song “Alabama”, which provoked Lynyrd Skynyrd to respond with “Sweet Home Alabama”, in which they chided: “I hope Neil Young will remember, a Southern man don’t need him around, anyhow.”
Young later announced that he had stopped singing the song: “I don’t feel like it’s particularly relevant. It’s not Southern Man. It’s White Man. It’s much bigger than Southern Man.”
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Ohio
Single: with CSN&Y (B-side “Find The Cost Of Freedom”)
Released: May 1970
Recorded: Los Angeles, May 1970
On May 4, 1970, four student protesters were gunned down and killed by National Guards at Kent State University, Ohio. At the time, Young was hanging out with David Crosby at road manager Leo Makota’s place in Pescadero. When Crosby expressed his outrage, the far less political Young picked up a guitar and wrote “Ohio” on the spot.
The pair then took a plane to LA, rounded up Stills and Nash and went straight into the studio to cut the song live. According to Crosby, the tape was delivered to Atlantic Records boss Ahmet Ertegun that same night. Within little more than a week it was in the stores, with Stills’ “Find The Cost Of Freedom” as the B-side. Banned by various radio stations, it nevertheless climbed to No 14 in the US singles chart.
“It’s still hard to believe I had to write this song,” Young observed in 1977 when he included “Ohio” on the retrospective Decade. “It’s ironic that I capitalised on the death of these American students. Probably the biggest lesson ever learned at an American place of learning.”
Crosby, whose voice can be heard towards the end of the song emotionally yelling, “Why? How many more?”, broke down in tears after they had finished. “I was so moved, the hair was standing up on my arms. I freaked out because I felt it so strongly,” he recalled.
The track remains Young’s proudest moment as part of CSN&Y. “That’s the only recording where CSN&Y is truly a band,” he says. “It felt really good to hear it come back so fast – that whole idea of using music as a message and unifying generations and giving them a point of view. That song gave the band a depth. Aside from that one thing, I was a hindrance to their progress.”
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The Needle And The Damage Done
Album: Harvest
Released: March 1972
Recorded: UCLA (live), Feb 1971
The inspiration behind Young’s stripped-down junkie lament, which stood in stark contrast to the other tracks on the bucolic Harvest, was the descent into heroin addiction of Crazy Horse’s Danny Whitten. It’s less dark than some of the drug songs that would subsequently appear on Tonight’s The Night (1975), for by then Whitten was dead. In 1971, Young still hoped that he could save his friend, whose addiction had already led him to sack Crazy Horse in March 1970 after Whitten had reputedly nodded off onstage at the Fillmore East.
Young began playing the song live during his solo tour in early 1971. He introduced the cautionary tale by telling the audience: “This is a serious song I’d like to do about some people you know, some people I know and some people that neither one of us knows. It’s about heroin addiction. Somewhere in the universe there’s probably a place where all the great art is that didn’t get out. A museum of incredible lost art that didn’t get out because of heroin.”
Hearing that Whitten had cleaned up, Young took him back into the fold in the fall of 1972, when he invited him to rehearsals for the forthcoming Time Fades Away tour at his Broken Arrow ranch. When it turned out Whitten was as wasted as ever and barely able to hold a guitar, Young sacked him for a second time on November 18, giving him $50 and a ticket back to LA. He used the money to score, and died of an overdose later that same night. The following day Young wrote “Don’t Be Denied”, which would later appear on 1973’s Time Fades Away album.
“I loved Danny. I felt responsible,” he later told Cameron Crowe.
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Old Man
Album: Harvest
Released: March 1972
Recorded: Nashville, Feb 8, 1971
Never a great one for literal explanations of his songs, Young made an exception over “Old Man” when even his own father, Scott, a well-known Canadian sports writer/broadcaster, came to believe the song was about him. In fact, as Young took to making clear when introducing the song onstage, the inspiration was Louis Avila, a foreman who worked on his Broken Arrow ranch at La Honda.
“When I bought the place there was this old man who was working there for the people I bought it from. He was about 70 years old. He was a cattleman and that’s like something that’s never going to happen again, so I wrote a song about it,” he explained.
Recorded one weekend in Nashville in early February 1971, Young had in mind a sound similar to Dylan’s Nashville Skyline, and asked producer Elliott Mazer to recruit similar personnel. In the end, he got Dylan’s drummer Kenny Buttrey, supported by Ben Keith on pedal-steel and Tim Drummond on bass. They became the nucleus of the band Young would call The Stray Gators. James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt, who were in Nashville as Young’s fellow guests on a Johnny Cash TV show the day before, added harmony vocals. Taylor also contributed the six-string banjo picking – the only time he has ever played the instrument on record.
Released as a follow-up to the US No 1 single “Heart Of Gold”, “Old Man” was to prove less successful, only reaching No 31 on the Billboard chart.
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Heart Of Gold
Album: Harvest
Released: March 1972
Recorded: Nashville, Feb 8, 1971
“This song put me in the middle of the road,” Young remarked of “Heart Of Gold” – before he famously added that’s when he decided it was time to head for the ditch. A No 1 single in America and a Top 10 hit in Britain, the song has been dividing his fans ever since, with music writer Sylvie Simmons – otherwise one of Young’s most fervent supporters – claiming in her book on the man that she winces every time she hears it.
Critics point to a trite lyric and simplistic rhyming scheme. But those present in the studio knew instantly they had a hit on their hands. The first track tackled during the same Nashville session which spawned “Old Man” in February 1971, producer Elliott Mazer recalled: “We all knew there was something very special going on. When Neil played ‘Heart Of Gold’, Kenny [Buttrey] just looked at me and raised one finger in the air to say, ‘That’s a No 1.’”
The melody was allegedly inspired by “Love Is Blue”, once recorded by Jeff Beck. After the basic track had been laid down, Taylor and Ronstadt then added harmony vocals, just as they did to “Old Man”.
“I’d happened to be in the right place at the right time to do a really mellow record that was really open because that’s where my life was at the time,” Young later remarked. “I was in love when I made Harvest. So that was it. I was an in-love and on-top-of-the-world type of guy.”
That he then added, “Good thing I got past that stage,” is indicative of how swiftly he came to regard the success of “Heart Of Gold” as a mixed blessing. “I thought the record was good. But I knew something else was dying,” he observed.
There’s an interesting postscript in the decidedly odd reaction the song produced in Bob Dylan. “I used to hate it when it came on the radio,” he complained. “I always liked Neil Young but it bothered me every time I listened to ‘Heart Of Gold’. I’d say, ‘Shit, that’s me. If it sounds like me, it should as well be me.’ I needed to lay back for a while, forget about things, myself included, and I’d get so far away and turn on the radio and there I am. But it’s not me. It seemed to me somebody else had taken my thing and had run away with it and, you know, I never got over it.”
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Like A Hurricane
Album: American Stars ’n Bars
Released: June 1977
Recorded: Broken Arrow, La Honda, autumn 1975
One of Young’s most ferocious guitar epics, “Like A Hurricane” came together in typically unpredictable Young fashion. “We’d been trying to record it with two guitars, bass and drums and Neil was giving up on it,” recalls guitarist Frank Sampedro, who had replaced Danny Whitten in Crazy Horse. “We kept playing it two guitars and Neil didn’t have enough room to solo. When he started walking out of the studio I started diddling with this Stringman [keyboard] and he decided to pick up his guitar.
If you listen to the take on the record, there’s no beginning, no count-off, it just goes voom! They just turned on the machines when they heard us playing because we were done for the day. We played it once and at the end of the take he said, ‘I think that’s the way it goes.’ And that’s the take on the record. The only time we ever played it that way.”
Young later attempted to describe the song’s hypnotic power on a promotional interview disc. “If you listen to that, I never play anything fast,” he said. “All it is is four notes on the bass. Billy [Talbot] plays a few extra notes now and then, and the drumbeat’s the same all the way through… Sometimes it does sound as if we’re really playing fast, but we’re not. It’s just everything starts swimming around in circles.”
The song was written in July 1975 after Young had just undergone an operation for nodes on his vocal cords. He couldn’t sing, so he partied instead, and “Hurricane” was written after a cocaine-fuelled night with friend and La Honda neighbour Taylor Phelps in the back of his car, a Desoto Suburban.
“We were all really high, fucked up,” Young recalls. “Been out partying. Wrote it sitting up at Vista Point on Skyline. Supposed to be the highest point in San Mateo County, which was appropriate. I wrote it when I couldn’t sing. I was on voice rest. It was nuts – I was whistling it. I wrote a lot of songs when I couldn’t talk.”
It was premiered live with Crazy Horse in Britain in March 1976, a full 14 months before it appeared on record on the American Stars ’n Bars album.
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Comes A Time
Album: Comes A Time
Released: November 1978
Recorded: Florida and Nashville, 1977
“Comes A Time” and the rest of the album that bears its name was originally recorded as a solo acoustic record in Florida, but when Young played it to Warner Brothers label boss Mo Ostin, he suggested the sound needed filling out. For once Young, who usually greeted such record company interventions with truculence, took the advice.
“I decided, ‘Hey, that sounds like fun. I’ll try that – go to Nashville, have ’em all play on it at once,” he recalls. “So I got all these people out there to play along with these existing tracks of me. Bobby Charles was like our guru. He was at all the sessions.”
The band included Drummond and Keith from The Stray Gators, augmented by, among others, Spooner Oldham and Rufus Thibodeaux, who plays the Cajun-style fiddle on the title track and went on to play with Young in his Hawks & Doves band (1980). According to Keith, Charles’ role was to “roll the joints”, which, given Young’s smoking habits, certainly qualified him for ‘guru’ status.
Also appearing on the sessions was Nicolette Larson. At the time she and Young were having a brief romance, and as they harmonise on the title track you have to imagine they’re thinking about their own situation, as they sing, “You and I we were captured/We took our souls and we flew away.”
“We sang on the same mic. I could look in his eyes and keep up with him and that’s as much rehearsal as he wants,” recalled Larson, who died in 1997.
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Hey Hey, My My (Into The Black)
Album: Rust Never Sleeps
Released: July 1979
Recorded: The Cow Palace, San Francisco, Oct 28, 1978
The idea of Neil Young as a punk, of course, was ludicrous. By the time the Sex Pistols arrived to consign rock’s bloated dinosaurs to the dustbin, he was a 31-year-old superstar millionaire. Nevertheless, when he first witnessed the gathering punk explosion on tour in Britain during 1976, he immediately identified with its ethos. He liked punk’s rejection of pomposity, saw in it a resurrection of the original rebel spirit of rock’n’roll, and proudly sported a Never Mind The Bollocks T-shirt.
Young expanded on his enthusiasm for punk in an LA radio interview: “When you look back at the old bands, they’re just not that funny. People want to have a good time. That’s why the punk thing is so good and healthy. People who make fun of the established rock scene, like Devo and The Ramones, are much more vital to my ears than what’s been happening in the last four or five years.”
In turn, the punks recognised in Young a true maverick, and exempted him from the brickbats they hurled at his CSN&Y bandmates.
“Hey Hey, My My (Into The Black)”, with its name-checking of Johnny Rotten, encapsulated Young’s sympathy with the punk zeitgeist, and its insistence that “it’s better to burn out” sounded like a sentiment Sid Vicious would have subscribed to.
Some, including John Lennon, criticised Young for glorifying rock’n’roll’s self-destructing casualties. But Young stood by the song, and when challenged in a 1979 radio interview, he explained: “It’s better to burn out than to fade away or rust because it makes a bigger flash in the sky.”
The words returned to haunt him in April 1994 when Kurt Cobain made a sizeable flash by blowing his brains out. Near the body was found a suicide note which quoted the line from Young’s song. Young then wrote “Sleeps With Angels” about Cobain and his widow Courtney Love, and was (mis)quoted as saying he would never perform “Hey Hey” again. In fact, he sang it on his second live appearance after Cobain’s death. “It just made it a little more focused for a while,” said Young. “Now it’s just another face to think about while you’re singing it.”
Love responded by including the line “It’s better to rise than fade away” on Hole’s 1998 album Celebrity Skin, and Oasis have also played the song live, dedicating it to Cobain’s memory.
The Rust Never Sleeps album opened with an acoustic version of the song listed as “My My, Hey Hey (Out Of The Blue)” and closed with the dramatic electric version, recorded live with Crazy Horse at the Cow Palace, San Francisco on October 28, 1978. Somewhat hilariously, Frank Sampedro reckons that Crazy Horse based their approach to the song on the stomping beat of Queen’s “We Will Rock You”.
The song is co-credited to Jeff Blackburn, part of the ’60s San Francisco duo Blackburn & Snow and who later toured with The Ducks, the incognito band Young put together to play local bars in the Bay area. The line “It’s better to burn out than it is to rust” first appeared in one of Blackburn’s songs. Young reports: “I called him up after I’d written the song and said, ‘Hey, I used a line from your song. Want credit?”
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Rockin’ In The Free World
Album: Freedom
Released: October 1989
Recorded: LA/San Francisco, summer 1989
As the 1980s came to a close, the post-WWII international settlement was crumbling. In the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev had ushered in the era of “perestroika” and “glasnost”. Soon the old communist regimes were crumbling all over eastern Europe, in Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and Romania. The Berlin Wall was about to be torn down and Germany reunited. The Cold War was over. The free world had won.
Many of these events were yet to happen when Young recorded “Rockin’ In The Free World” but they were already in train, and the song found Young astutely tapping into a moment of world-shattering change. Indeed, when the Berlin Wall did come down, television footage was often accompanied by the strains of the song.
Yet like Springsteen’s “Born In The USA”, “Rockin’ In The Free World” is misunderstood if it’s regarded as some kind of celebratory anthem to the triumph of Western capitalism, for its lyric actually focuses on the heavy price which can accompany democracy, painting a nightmarish picture of a free world populated by derelicts, burnt-out cases and junkie mothers.
As a father, Young admitted he was particularly worried about the availability of drugs on the streets. “The lyrics are just a description of events going on every day in America. Sure I’m concerned for my children, particularly my eldest son, and he’s a Guns N’Roses fan,” he told Nick Kent in Vox. “He has to face drugs every day in the school yard that are way stronger than anything I got offered in most of my years as a professional musician.”
“This is like the Bible. It’s all completely out of control,” he went on. “The drugs are gonna be all over the streets of Europe. We’ve got a lot to deal with here.”
Asked if the song was intended to be a celebration or an indictment, Young answered: “Kinda both, you know? You asking the question means you got the song.”
As with “Hey Hey” on Rust Never Sleeps, two versions of “Rockin’ In The Free World” were used to bookend the Freedom album. The acoustic take which opened the LP was recorded live at Jones Beach, Long Island, while the electric version which closed it contained an additional verse.
The ghost of Harvest, the most commercially successful album of Young’s career, had haunted him ever since its release in 1972, creating what he regarded as a false impression of him as a gentle singer-songwriter to rank alongside the likes of James Taylor and Jackson Browne.
Although there had been further acoustic records, notably 1978’s Comes A Time, he spent much of the next 20 years attempting not to follow-up his most successful release. It was a considerable surprise, therefore, when he let it be known in 1992 that he was assembling an album that he openly referred to as “Harvest II”.
“There’s nothing angry or violent about this new music. It’s about relationships and feelings. There’s a lot of love in it,” he told Nick Kent prior to the album’s release. “It certainly sounds like the sequel to Harvest. I have no problem with that, though. I’m not backing away from that side of me any more. When’s the next Harvest coming out? Farmers have been asking me that for years.”
He even reassembled The Stray Gators and arranger Jack Nitzsche, along with James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt, who’d provided backing vocals on Harvest.
Yet by the time Harvest Moon was released, Young had grown more wary of the comparison. “This is not ‘Harvest II’, ” he insisted to Johnnie Walker on Radio 1. “They only compared it to Harvest because Harvest was a big success and this has Harvest in the title. There are obvious things to connect up the two. But without Harvest this would still be Harvest Moon and stand on its own.”
The title track typified the album, an acoustic collection of songs about relationships, but written from the perspective of someone in their forties rather than their twenties.
“The idea is I sang about the same subject matter with 20 years more experience,” Young explained. To Allan Jones, he added: “Harvest Moon is about continuance, about trying to keep the flame burning. It’s about the feeling that you don’t have to be young to be young.”
The following works were also invaluable in preparing this article: Shakey – Neil Young’s Biography by Jimmy McDonough (Jonathan Cape); Neil Young – Zero To Sixty by Johnny Rogan (Calidore Books)
The phrase “difficult second album” might have been coined specifically for Mike Oldfield, such was the enormity of his Tubular Bells debut in 1973. A soon to be iconic calling card, it squatted in the UK Top 10 for close to a year, its longevity partially due to a signature passage featuring prominently in The Exorcist that same year; a high profile that (initially, at least) sat awkwardly with its reclusive maker.
The phrase “difficult second album” might have been coined specifically for Mike Oldfield, such was the enormity of his Tubular Bells debut in 1973. A soon to be iconic calling card, it squatted in the UK Top 10 for close to a year, its longevity partially due to a signature passage featuring prominently in The Exorcist that same year; a high profile that (initially, at least) sat awkwardly with its reclusive maker.
His paymasters at Virgin Records were still counting the not-inconsiderable cash from their out-of-leftfield runaway success when Oldfield jumped in his car and drove off to find somewhere conducive to writing a follow-up. He alighted upon Kington, a Herefordshire town of 3,000 inhabitants close to the border with Wales, and in the shadow of the elongated hill that would ultimately give the new LP its title.
The label might have been happy with more of the same, but for Oldfield the intention was perhaps to escape the hullabaloo that went hand-in-hand with being flavour of the month, to turn his back on the noise of it all. In a rare interview for Melody Maker shortly after the second record’s release, he described music industry hub London as “lots of confusion and lots of nasty overtones; things going bang, crash. Hergest Ridge, on the other hand, is smooth, uncluttered. There are no tube trains, very few car doors, lots of open countryside, smooth hills, a general feeling of well-being and non-hysteria.”
Yet there are obvious parallels to be drawn between Tubular Bells and Hergest Ridge; both are split into two “movements”, each occupying the full side of a vinyl LP, both employ repeating motifs, and both feature a “wash” of sound achieved by multi guitar overdubs. The latter, though, is a more of an exercise in serenity, more of a dream-like, bucolic sonic adventure.
Having mapped out the new album’s compositions at his hillside retreat, Oldfield eventually returned to The Manor, the Oxfordshire studio where Tubular Bells was birthed, for the recording process, after shelving initial sessions in London studios. Unlike the overdub frenzy of going it alone on Tubular Bells, his thoughts turned to the debut’s subsequent concert performance and he opted for additional musicians to fully realise the next stage of his career.
Consequently, the pastoral, more atmospherically melancholic passages are achieved by enlisting oboe, flute and trumpet players, and a “choir” (in practice, two multi-tracked voices, one of which is his sister, Sally). Oldfield adds vintage Farfisa and Lowrey organs to the many instruments he plays himself, resulting in warmer textures than were evident on the record’s more precise and clinical forebearer.
Overall, the modus operandi of Hergest Ridge is less concerned with earlier triumphs than it is in expressing Mike’s own inner peacefulness via an elegant collage of sound that largely evokes images of the English landscape, of a paradisaical safe space for fellow souls of an introspective bent. In that respect, the album could be interpreted as a form of autobiography.
There’s a greater accent on melody here as well, with sections of “Part Two” floating into mood movie music territory, as if A-list film score composers the stripe of Elmer Bernstein or Jerry Goldsmith have been filtered through traditional English folk mores. The shift towards electric guitars and synths around the eight-minute mark sounds jarring at first, but it’s indicative of Oldfield’s desire to surprise or even wrong-foot the listener.
This anniversary edition, in its deluxe incarnation, brings together the original LP mix, the ’76 mix for quadrophonic hardware, Oldfield’s own 5.1 Surround Sound mix from 2010, and a brand new Dolby ATMOS mix by DJ/producer David Kosten, whose own releases under the name Faultline have included collaborations with The Flaming Lips, Michael Stipe and Chris Martin.
In truth, the variations on offer might result in a game of frustratingly futile ‘spot the difference’ for more casual listeners, but there are intriguing pockets revealed by Oldfield’s 2010 return to the source material. A palpable separation of specific instruments comes to the fore, elements that were arguably obscured due to available technology when the original album was being readied for public consumption.
Inevitably, maybe, the juggernaut of Tubular Bells means Hergest Ridge will always be seen as the lesser sibling, the exercise in consolidation that builds on its predecessor by adding a few new flourishes while mindful that a modicum of familiarity is a wise path to follow. As expected, it was a huge success, although its three weeks at Number One in the UK were ended when Tubular Bells returned to the top of the charts, casting the shadow that still exists today.
There's a lot here, so I hope there'll be something for everyone. Some returning favourites - Steve Gunn, Cass McCombs, Margo Price, David Byrne - as well as some relative newcomers like Ethel Cain and Wednesday. Thanks to Sam for a bunch of suggestions, too.
There’s a lot here, so I hope there’ll be something for everyone. Some returning favourites – Steve Gunn, Cass McCombs, Margo Price, David Byrne – as well as some relative newcomers like Ethel Cain and Wednesday. Thanks to Sam for a bunch of suggestions, too.
While I’m here, a small plug for the new issue of Uncut which goes on sale tomorrow: Bruce, Sly, Neil, Scott, Wet Leg, Booker T, B-52s, Sade, Blondie, John Fogerty, Billy Idol, Caroline and plenty more.
I’m off to see Neil in Copenhagen on Sunday – very excited, as you’d imagine – so please come and say hi if you spot me. Man, that ‘Take America back’ t-shirt…
The drama stars The Bear’s Jeremy Allen White as Springsteen with Stephen Graham also starring as his father, Douglas Frederick “Dutch” Springsteen and Jeremy Strong as manager Jon Landau.
The film is directed by Crazy Heart director Scott Cooper and is based on Warren Zanes’ 2023 book.
Deliver Me From Nowhere will be released in October.
Meanwhile, Springsteen is on the cover of the new Uncut, as we go deep inside his archives – accompanied by collaborators, confidants and the Boss himself. “He’s never shown you more of his cards than he does here…”
The first lot to be revealed is a 7” test pressing of Queen’s legendary single “Bohemian Rhapsody”, donated by David Munns OBE, who in 1975 was in charge of marketing at EMI and was involved with the Queen campaign. “Bohemian Rhapsody” was initially released on October 31, 1975, so the auction coincides with its 50th anniversary.
Further lots for the White Label Auction will be revealed in due course. Previous auctions have raised well over £160,000 for The Brit Trust, which works to improve lives through the power of music, and supports hundreds of causes across the UK that promote education and wellbeing, including The BRIT School, Nordoff And Robbins, ELAM, Music Support and Key4Life.
EVERY PRINT EDITION OF THIS ISSUE OF UNCUT COMES WITH A COPY OF HOPES AND DREAMS – 15 TRACKS OF THE MONTH’S BEST NEW MUSIC FEATURING GWENNO, ALICE COOPER, US GIRLS, GINA BIRCH, GOLOMB AND MORE!
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: To celebrate the release of Tracks II: The Lost Albums, Uncut takes a revelatory trip inside the archives of Bruce Springsteen – with help from collaborators, confidants and the Boss himself. “If you want to understand how Springsteen works, he’s never shown you more of his cards than he does here…”
NEIL YOUNG:Zuma at 50! Crazy Horse tell all. Plus Neil heads – including Evan Dando, MJ Landerman and Blake Mills – go deep on the album’s musical marvels. “It is the arrival of an band that would anchor an era and influence generations…”
SLY STONE: Uncut looks back on life of an inspirational rock’n’soul icon.
WET LEG: The Isle of Wight noisemakers return – emboldened by love and new sounds: “It’s nice to live in the space somewhere between fantasy and reality…”
BOOKER T: The teenage prodigy who helped shape the sound of Stax on his path from “Green Onions” to Drive-By Truckers. “You have to be able to speak through your instrument…”
SCOTT WALKER: Thirty years after the startling experiments of Tilt defined Walker’s latter-day career, we uncover his transition from teen idol to avant garde hero. “It was a rejection of his past…”
CAROLINE: South-east London’s confoundingly brilliant eight-piece, fusing choral folk with fractured post-rock. “There has to be a vulnerability of some sort. Or what’s the point?”
BILLY IDOL: The Bromley veteran on Television, Siouxsie & The Banshees and Terminator 2.
SADE: How punk attitude and minimalist soul grooves took the smooth operator from London’s club scene to global success.
WAR: The ground-breaking LA band’s triumphant passage through rock, soul, jazz, funk and beyond.
REVIEWED: New albums by Ryan Davis & The Roadhouse Band, Mark Stewart, The New Eves, Ben LaMar Gay, Rebecca Shiffman, Murry Hammond, Shelley Burgon, His Lordship, Mike Polizze; archive releases by The B-52s, Jackie O Motherfucker, Mickey Newbury and Miles Davis; Iggy Pop live; David Cronenberg and Wes Anderson on Screen; Genesis P Orridge on Screen Extra and Budgie and The Beatles in books.
PLUS:Blondie unseen; John Fogerty reclaims; Wilko Johnson – the play; Geoff Barrow x Jason Williamson; Dave Davies‘ favourite albums… and meet the effortless three-part harmonies of Folk Bitch Trio.
The news broke of Sly Stone's death hours before this issue of Uncut was due at the printers, so huge thanks to the team for some frantic but ultimately successful work remaking the issue to honour his memory.
The news broke of Sly Stone‘s death hours before this issue of Uncut was due at the printers, so huge thanks to the team for some frantic but ultimately successful work remaking the issue to honour his memory.
What constitutes a ‘lost’ album? It’s a question we routinely ask ourselves, as record companies empty their cupboards of old tapes in the hope of finding unreleased gold. As countless Uncut features attest, Neil Young has been steadily releasing caches from his fabled repository of ‘lost’ albums – the most recent, Oceanside Countryside, arrived in March. Now Bruce Springsteen has opened his vault to unveil unreleased full-length records of his own. For this issue’s cover story, Peter Watts’ research and interviews reveal the unexpected nature of Springsteen’s shadow discography: for an artist so closely associated with a specific band, it’s fascinating how much of this music has either been recorded solo or in the company of musicians other than his doughty lieutenants in the E Street Band. Critically, though, while Young’s ‘lost’ records have been the subject of intense speculation for decades, it transpires that the contents and extent of Springsteen’s archival motherlode were largely unknown, even among the most die-hard Bruce Tramps.
Did I mention Neil? Not long after this issue of Uncut goes on sale, he is due to begin his first European tour since 2019, including stopoffs at Glastonbury and Hyde Park. Meanwhile, we take a trip back to 1975 to celebrate Zuma, his first album with the new lineup of Crazy Horse. Elsewhere, we discover the secrets of Scott Walker, War, Booker T and Sade; untangle a bumper month of albums that includes releases from Wet Leg, Ryan Davis & The Roadhouse Band, Marianne Faithfull, Mark Stewart, The New Eves, the B-52s and Mickey Newbury; witness Iggy Pop live; discover all about the Wilko Johnson play; meet Caroline, Folk Bitch Trio and plenty more.
Incidentally, if you’re going to see Neil over the summer, we’ll see you there.
Writing in the latest instalment of his Red Hand Files newsletter, Nick Cave has revealed that he turned down an invitation from Morrissey to perform “slightly silly anti-woke screed” on new track.
Writing in the latest instalment of his Red Hand Files newsletter, Nick Cave has revealed that he turned down an invitation from Morrissey to perform “slightly silly anti-woke screed” on new track.
“We had a few pleasant email exchanges last year in which Morrissey asked if I’d sing on a new song he had written.
“I would have been happy to do so, however, while the song he sent was quite lovely, it began with a lengthy and entirely irrelevant Greek bouzouki intro.
“It also seemed that he didn’t want me to actually sing on the song, but deliver, over the top of the bouzouki, an unnecessarily provocative and slightly silly anti-woke screed he had written.
“Although I suppose I agreed with the sentiment on some level, it just wasn’t my thing. I try to keep politics, cultural or otherwise, out of the music I am involved with. I find that it has a diminishing effect and is antithetical to whatever it is I am trying to achieve.
“So… I politely declined. I said no.”
More positively, Cave also wrote that “Morrissey is probably the best lyricist of his generation – certainly the strangest, funniest, most sophisticated, and most subtle.”
Other musicians on the record include early Bay Area cohorts Jason Quever (Papercuts) and Chris Cohen, as well as regular collaborators Matt Sweeney and Mike Bones.
You can pre-order Interior Live Oakhere and peruse the tracklisting below:
Priestess
Peace
Missionary Bell
Miss Mabee
Home At Last
I’m Not Ashamed
Who Removed The Cellar Door?
A Girl Named Dogie
Asphodel
I Never Dream About Trains
Van Wyck Expressway
Lola Montez Danced The Spider Dance
Juvenile
Diamonds In The Mine
Strawberry Moon
Interior Live Oak
Cass McCombs will cross the Atlantic for some live shows later in the summer. Check out his updated tour itinerary below and grab tickets here.
13 Aug – Porto, PT @ Paredes de Coura ^ 17 Aug – Crickhowell @ Green Man Festival ^ 19 Aug – Bristol @ Lantern Hall ^ 20 Aug – London @ Bush Hall ^ 21 Aug – Manchester @ YES ^ 23 Aug – Galway, IE @ Leisureland * % 24 Aug – Dublin, IE @ Wider Than Pictures Festival * % 25 Aug – Belfast, IE @ Ulster Hall * % 26 Aug – Cork, IE @ City Hall * % 28 Aug – Glasgow, SCT @ Barrowland * % 29 Aug – Glasgow, SCT @ Barrowland * % 10 Sep – San Diego, CA @The Casbah ^ 11 Sep – Los Angeles, CA @ Shrine Expo Hall & ^ 12 Sep – Riverside, CA @Farmhouse ^
* with Father John Misty & with MJ Lenderman, Nap Eyes % Solo ^ Full Band Performance
In this feature from Uncut's January 2003 issue [Take 68], Roger Daltrey reviews his side of The Who's story, providing track-by-track commentary on the band's most explosive singles...
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A miserable October day in London, 2002. Roger Daltrey is staring out of the window at t...
In this feature from Uncut’s January 2003 issue [Take 68], Roger Daltrey reviews his side of The Who’s story, providing track-by-track commentary on the band’s most explosive singles…
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A miserable October day in London, 2002. Roger Daltrey is staring out of the window at the colourless metropolitan sky, looking smart but sombre in a dark pin-stripe suit. Ominously, Uncut’s interview with The Who’s vocal powerhouse comes the afternoon following a memorial service for bassist John Entwistle, who died on June 27 this year; on the eve of a scheduled tour of America which they valiantly honoured (roping in Pino Paladino as an emergency replacement for ‘the Ox’).
Twenty-four years after the death of drummer Keith Moon in September 1978, Entwistle’s passing now means that Daltrey and guitarist/songwriting genius Pete Townshend are the last men standing in England’s other great surviving rock band.
Lest we forget, back in the ’60s The Who were the only British combo who proved themselves worthy of ranking alongside The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, turning the hierarchy of UK pop from a dynamic duo into a holy trinity. Beginning as a pop-art explosion of R’n’B feedback and mod frustration, by the end of the decade, along with Jimi Hendrix (who was already indebted to the unorthodox musicianship of early Townshend), on a purely sonic level The Who had permanently transformed the molecular structure of rock’n’roll. Be it patenting the modern ‘rock opera’ with 1969’s behemoth Tommy, setting the sound levels for the next decade of headbanging metal-heads with 1970’s Live At Leeds or the technological ambition inherent in the synthesized sheen of 1971’s Who’s Next, The Who broke barriers, moulds and eardrums at virtually every turn. The secret of their success?
“Two things,” considers Daltrey. “One, Pete wrote fucking great songs. And two, he had such incredible individual people to play them. I mean, talk about icing on the cake! Pete had a good cake, but he also had the same thickness of icing on top.”
The new Who CD, The Ultimate Collection, is partly in memoriam for Entwistle and partly for those who need reminding of The Who’s matchless contribution to the rock acropolis. Though at the height of their powers The Who prided (and possibly over-indulged) themselves on their albums, it was always the 45rpm pop single that provided the greatest thrills, from the brusqueness of 1965’s “I Can’t Explain” through to 1981’s Moon-less curtain call “You Better, You Bet”. Where their ’60s counterparts either split (The Beatles), struggled (The Kinks) or, in the case of The Stones, stopped caring about singles, the “’Orrible ’Oo” continued to churn out provocatively original A-sides well into the ’70s, regardless of whatever ambitious (and often abortive) rock opera Townshend may have had up his sleeve at the time.
As Townshend wrote himself in a 1971 review of their own Meaty Beaty Big And Bouncy singles collection for Rolling Stone magazine, The Who’s earliest mandate was a religious belief in the 45 format and little else: “We, I repeat, believed only in singles.”
Thirty years on, Roger Daltrey, too, has plenty to say about the purity of the singles aesthetic in the age of Pop Idol. “I made some rude remarks recently about Simon Cowell in an interview,” he guffaws, “but I’ve changed my opinion of him because you need to have a bland period so that all these young groups will get pissed off and start coming through. You can see it happening now with a lot of the new groups, The Coral and all that lot: they’re saying, ‘We’ve had enough of this shit, let’s get out and make some noise!’ So thank you very much, Simon Cowell, you did it, mate! Make no bones about it, shit like Pop Idol and American Idol will lead to the creation of the next punk. The seeds are already out there. It’s great!”
Young men going out and making noise was exactly how one might describe The Who’s raison d’être when they first formed as The Detours in Shepherd’s Bush, west London, in 1962. Youth, in all its arrogance, was a vital ingredient in those early days, an attitude crystallised three years later on “My Generation” in which they unwittingly provided their future critics with a well-worn taunt in the infamous decree of “hope I die before I get old”. For a man now fast approaching 60, Daltrey’s healthy pallor is a terrific advertisement for the merits of four decades of the rock’n’roll lifestyle; a shockingly well-preserved yin to the dilapidated yang of his peers (there’s only four months between them, but he looks a decade or two younger than, say, Keith Richards). All the same, even today, one broaches the “My Generation” conundrum with Daltrey at one’s peril.
“I find it incredibly tedious when people bring that against us now,” he glares. “For me, age has nothing to do with it. It’s a state of mind.”
Of his own mortality, and the question mark that hangs over the future of The Who – wherever he and Townshend decide to step on from here – Daltrey is quite confident.
“It can’t be the same because John Entwistle was a genius at his style, there’ll never be another like him,” he says, unruffled. “But that’s not to say we can’t go on. As soon as you start playing that music, John is alive again, just the same as Keith’s always been alive whenever we play. That’s the great thing about music, it transcends this life. We never know when we’re gonna pop our clogs, we’re all in the drop-zone at our age, but life goes on and music will certainly go on. The Who’s music will go on long after I’m gone and Pete’s gone, and that’s everything I believe in. Right now, I’m very optimistic about our future.
“I mean we have been incredibly lucky,” Daltrey concludes. “I wake up every morning thinking, ‘Gawd – what a life!’ When you think about the great bands of all time, there’s only a handful like the Stones or The Who who’ve gone on for as long as we have. And you think – why us? It’s an extraordinary life we’ve had. Why we should come together and make that noise and create that extraordinary thing? God knows. Life is weird.”
A case of “I Can’t Explain”?
“Ha!” laughs Daltrey, rolling forward in his seat, “Exactly! I can’t explain!”
Tonight, Jarvis Cocker tells the audience, is a “high pressure evening”. It’s Pulp’s first time playing The O2 – capacity: 20,000 – and the third night of their arena tour in support of new album More; the gig is also being filmed; and, perhaps most importantly, it’s Cocker's wedding anniversary and his wife is in the audience.
Tonight, Jarvis Cocker tells the audience, is a “high pressure evening”. It’s Pulp’s first time playing The O2 – capacity: 20,000 – and the third night of their arena tour in support of new album More; the gig is also being filmed; and, perhaps most importantly, it’s Cocker’s wedding anniversary and his wife is in the audience.
Why, then, does Jarvis seem so relaxed in front of the thousands filling the floor and lining the walls of this huge space? Perhaps it’s the number one album they’ve just bagged today, or perhaps it’s the fact that More has been a bigger success with fans and critics alike than anyone would have imagined, even the band. After all, it’s been 24 years since Pulp last released an LP – 2001’s excellent but awkward We Love Life – and it’s been a long time since their stock was this high. In 2002, for instance, their Hits album reached the giddy heights of #72 in the UK.
I saw Pulp for the first time almost 27 years ago, on December 5, 1998, on the last night of the This Is Hardcore tour at another arena, the Bournemouth International Centre. Things were very different then: they had just two extra musicians onstage, including Richard Hawley, plus Gareth Dickinson, a Jarvis impersonator from Stars In Their Eyes, who came on for the opening “The Fear” and sang a closing cover of Queen’s “Crazy Little Thing Called Love”. There’s no such messing about tonight: Pulp, augmented by an army of additional players, are performing two sets on this tour, with an intermission, all the better to be able to fit in all the hits, quite a few deep cuts and a bunch of new songs.
As on the rest of the tour so far, they start with two energetic More tracks, “Spike Island” and “Grown Ups”, and those seated immediately get up and remain on their feet for most of the night. Their live returns in 2011/12 and 2023/24 didn’t come with any new material (aside from a James Murphy-produced single, “About You”), but the Pulp that we see in 2025 are no nostalgia act. Such is the love for More, it’s as if they’ve just carried on directly from where they left off; or to be exact, from just before their commercial appeal started to wane, a year or so before I saw them in Bournemouth.
“Slow Jam”, prefaced with a photo of Sheffield’s Limit nightclub, where Cocker and the band would go “before 10pm, as it was free”, is a slow-burning delight, but Pulp’s supreme confidence is shown by sticking “Sorted For Es & Wizz” and “Disco 2000” as the fourth and fifth songs of the night. The crowd gasp at Cocker’s sheer gall, and all that. They’re playing these old songs in their original keys too, unlike a fair few bands of their vintage and older, and it adds something. Or perhaps it’s the opposite, that messing with the keys takes some magic away, and our ears can sense that something’s not quite right. Here, Cocker has to work to reach the notes, but he’s spot on.
The string section are a welcome addition to the musicians onstage, and they also provide backing vocals, clap on “Disco 2000” and play shakers, whistles and horns on “Sorted…”, all while clad in ravey bucket hats on the latter. Also excellent are the five additional band members joining the core quartet onstage, with a besequinned Emma Smith particularly brilliant as she covers former member Russell Senior’s guitar and atmospheric violin parts. With so many great contributors onstage, covering all kinds of instrumentation, it feels like Pulp could genuinely pull off anything from their back catalogue, and they cover a wide range tonight: from the gothic synth disco of “OU (Gone Gone)” to the pulsating “Do You Remember The First Time?” to the ornate folk-country of “A Sunset”.
“FEELINGCALLEDLOVE” and “Party Hard” (played for the first time since 2012, and the winner in a fan vote against “Seconds”) – are a little ramshackle and tentative, though, perhaps due to the mix, but no-one minds. Pulp have never been super-slick, after all, and these slightly raw moments are a welcome counterpoint to the showbiz elements tonight: giant screens, VT/CGI backdrops courtesy of director Garth Jennings (also filming tonight) and light-up disco steps for Jarvis to frolic on.
Stronger is “This Is Hardcore”, which begins with a queasy new violin intro, Cocker moodily lounging on a leather chair at the top of the steps, sipping a coffee. For all its sleazy imagery and grubby lust, it’s probably the most complex, cinematic moment in their catalogue, and its crushed velvet, Bond-esque grandeur is well suited to this expanded lineup and a venue of this size. Hardcore’s “Help The Aged” is also a triumph, and seems to be more beloved than it was at the time. The epic “Sunrise”, too, which closes the first set, garners a warmer reception than it did on release as We Love Life’s first single alongside “The Trees”. It’s the only track from that album we hear tonight.
The second set begins with just Cocker, Mark Webber, Candida Doyle and Nick Banks playing an acoustic version of the beautiful “Something Changed”, which the entire crowd seem to sing along with. Compare its profound, funny lyrics about the magic of chance meetings and fate to “This Is Hardcore”’s horny “that goes in there, and that goes in there, and that goes in there” for Cocker’s range.
As this is an arena show we get a costume change from the man himself for the second set – pinstripe jacket and denim shirt swapped for a velvet jacket and checked shirt – and the arrival of two glittering backing singers for “The Fear” onwards. Soon we’re into a finely tuned run of favourites to finish: “Do You Remember The First Time?”, “Mis-Shapes”, “Got To Have Love” (a More track that’s already become a classic), “Babies” (on which Jarvis shows off his lead guitar skills for the only time) and “Common People”.
Perverse as it may sound, “Common People” wasn’t a song I was looking forward to, but the band tackle it with such energy that it shrugs off the shackles of overfamiliarity and sounds fresh again, as brilliant as it did in 1995. What we loved about it all those years ago is brought to the surface again, and I’m struck by lyrics I’ve heard a thousand times, especially the furious and still relevant: “You will never understand how it feels to live your life/With no meaning or control/And with nowhere left to go…”
It would be hard for anyone – from casual fan to diehard – to argue too much with the setlist, but it’s tantalising to think of what else they could have played: “Glory Days”, “Bad Cover Version”, “I Spy”, “Underwear”, “Dishes” (performed in Dublin a few days ago), “Joyriders” and many more… and from the new album, “My Sex” and “Background Noise” would have been welcome.
But, assuming the huge success of More inspires Pulp to carry on, there’ll be other times. While they’ve come back for live work over the years, making a new album has changed everything about this band. Pulp have caught the zeitgeist in a way no-one could quite have predicted, and their return has not only given us a clutch of great new songs, but made their old songs seem more vital than they have in years. Tonight Pulp feel alive again. What a hell of a show.
Let’s go back. Let’s go way, way, way back – to the mystic avenue and the ancient highway; to the days when the rains came and the days of blooming wonder; to Orangefield, Hyndford Street and the Church of Ireland where the Sunday six bells chime. To the days before dodgy anti-lockdown sermonising and endless albums of duets and re-recordings, skiffle, R&B and blues covers. To the time, one might argue, when Van Morrison took his unique and vaulting talents seriously.
Let’s go back. Let’s go way, way, way back – to the mystic avenue and the ancient highway; to the days when the rains came and the days of blooming wonder; to Orangefield, Hyndford Street and the Church of Ireland where the Sunday six bells chime. To the days before dodgy anti-lockdown sermonising and endless albums of duets and re-recordings, skiffle, R&B and blues covers. To the time, one might argue, when Van Morrison took his unique and vaulting talents seriously.
Without wishing to oversell it, the best of Remembering Now – at least half of the 14 tracks – finds Morrison on his finest form since the late ’80s and early ’90s. The title refers not only to the recurring lyrical theme of a man in his eightieth year simultaneously inhabiting both his past and present, but the rich sense of musical retrieval, too.
Throughout, Morrison consciously invokes key moments from across his six-decade recording career, most frequently the lushly meditative landscape of albums such as Poetic Champion’s Compose, Avalon SunsetandEnlightenment, but also the expansive explorations of Veedon Fleece, Into The Music and Common One. As they were on the first of those two groups of records, Fiachra Trench’s simpatico string arrangements are a prominent texture, alongside horns, Hammond organ, Seth Lakeman’s fiddle and warm, gospel-infused backing vocals. What truly stands out, however, is Morrison’s renewed commitment to making (almost) every song count: musically, vocally and emotionally.
“The concept of the flow is beyond thought, beyond analysis,” he said of writing songs for this record and, indeed, it sounds very much as though he has resumed a dialogue with the inarticulate speech of the heart. There is ample evidence of spiritual curiosity being reawakened. The words to the easefully swinging “Love, Lover And Beloved” are taken from a book by Michael Beckwith, leader of Agape, an LA-based spiritual centre. The song ends with a burbling testimony to “my precious one”, Morrison once again trysting at the point where earthly and heavenly love connect. The becalmed contemplation of “Haven’t Lost My Sense Of Wonder”, meanwhile, provides proof of the holy magic Morrison can conjure with just three chords and an ache for the “green fields of summer”.
Remembering Now is not always so thrillingly airborne, but even at cruising altitude it offers a pleasing variety of styles and approaches. “Down To Joy”, which first appeared in Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast, makes for a solidly soulful opener in the mould of “Tore Down A La Rimbaud” and “Real Real Gone”. The lithe, jaunty “Back To Writing Love Songs” boasts the closest thing to a pop hook Morrison has produced in many years. “The Only Love I Ever Need Is Yours” is a miniature chamber piece, and one of three songs with lyrics written by Don Black, Morrison’s occasional collaborator in recent years. Black’s words on “Once In A Lifetime Feelings” skew towards bland, but the song itself is lovely, graced by Lakeman’s campfire violin and Morrison’s bluesy guitar picking.
At its midpoint, Remembering Now starts pushing from the foothills towards transcendence. “Stomping Ground” is a wondrous litany of significant Belfast landmarks, its simple elegance crowned by a glorious string arrangement blossoming into Morrison’s heartfelt saxophone solo. He walks the same haunted hometown streets on the snappy, noirish R&B of the title track, in which our man is trapped between all that then and all this now, rapping with a mantra-like intensity. Here, the need feels urgent: “This is who I am!” The stately “Memories And Visions” finds him more composed, back on higher ground, communing serenely with the spirit. Though the energy levels are a tad sluggish, Morrison pushes through to the revelation that “that ain’t all there is…”
“When The Rains Came” is a sparse, stilled folk-blues, a masterful exercise in suspense and atmosphere unspooling over six and a half minutes. While the title references the opening lines of “Brown Eyed Girl”, during the closing moments Morrison is utterly lost in the kind of rapturous incantation – “take my hand, child, walk with me” – which briefly evokes the farthest reaches of “When Heart Is Open” from Common One.
Remembering Now is too long. It could do without “If It Wasn’t For Ray”, a throwaway patchwork of offhand rhymes and rote melody, and the blandly pedestrian “Cutting Corners”. The painfully punning “Colourblind”, meanwhile, has no business breaking the spell Morrison conjures on the album’s home stretch, which peaks with the magnificent closer, “Stretching Out”.
Fulfilling the promise of the title, it’s a nine-minute tour de force which revisits the pulsing musical landscape of “You Don’t Pull No Punches, But You Don’t Push The River” from Veedon Fleece. Morrison fixates on the locale of “Shady Lane”, which one fancies is the totemic magnetic north of his youth, Cyprus Avenue, viewed through the lens of his older self. It’s almost impossibly thrilling, the kind of song you longed for him to write again but never quite believed he would.
“Do I know you from way back?” he keens, wonderstruck all over again. Remembering Now is the deeply heartening sound of an artist recognising himself.
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Born in 1942 and raised in Hawthorne, California, Wilson formed The Beach Boys in 1961, with his younger brothers Carl and Dennis, cousin Mike Love and friend Al Jardine.
In February 2024, it was revealed Wilson had dementia.
Paul McCartney and The Beach Boys have led tributes to Wilson.
On his website, McCartney wrote: “Brian had that mysterious sense of musical genius that made his songs so achingly special. The notes he heard in his head and passed to us were simple and brilliant at the same time. I loved him, and was privileged to be around his bright shining light for a little while. How we will continue without Brian Wilson, ‘God Only Knows’.
Thank you, Brian. – Paul”
While The Beach Boys posted this message on their social media accounts.
“The world mourns a genius today, and we grieve for the loss of our cousin, our friend, and our partner in a great musical adventure. Brian Wilson wasn’t just the heart of The Beach Boys—he was the soul of our sound. The melodies he dreamed up and the emotions he poured into every note changed the course of music forever. His unparalleled talent and unique spirit created the soundtrack of so many lives around the globe, including our own. Together, we gave the world the American dream of optimism, joy, and a sense of freedom—music that made people feel good, made them believe in summer and endless possibilities.
“We are heartbroken by his passing. We will continue to cherish the timeless music we made together and the joy he brought to millions over the decades. And while we will miss him deeply, his legacy will live on through his songs and in our memories.
“Our hearts go out to Brian’s family and his loved ones during this difficult time.”
Anyone who really knows me knows how heart broken I am about Brian Wilson passing. Not many people influenced me as much as he did. I feel very lucky that I was able to meet him and spend some time with him. He was always very kind and generous. He was our American Mozart. A one… pic.twitter.com/OOT0eVwQJ7
“Godspeed” was produced by Brad Cook (Bon Iver, Waxahatchee, Nathaniel Rateliff) and features spoken word vocals by songwriter and Youth Poet Laureate, Kara Jackson.
“Channel Orange was my first introduction to Frank Ocean and I was just amazed at the writing and soulfulness coming from his voice,” says Staples. “And I loved Blonde when that record came out. That first line in ‘Godspeed‘ of “I will always love you” just crushes me every time I hear it… or sing it. It’s just such a beautiful song and he sounds amazing on it so I was a little nervous if we could pull it off. I was honoured to sing his words.”
Staples is also going our on tour, including a handful of European dates.
TOUR DATES June 21 – Ottawa, ON @ Ottawa Jazz Festival June 23 – Toronto, Canada @ Toronto Jazz Festival June 26 – Montreal, Canada @ Montreal Jazz Festival June 28 – Knoxville, TN @ Bijou Theatre June 29 – Brevard, NC @ Brevard Music Center July 5 – Sioux City, IA @ Saturday in the Park July 13 – Winnipeg, MB @ Winnipeg Folk Festvial July 18 – Detroit, MI @ Concert of Colors July 20 – Columbus, OH @ Jazz & Rib Fest July 22 – Cincinnati, OH @ Memorial Hall Aug 2 – Notodden, Norway @ Notodden Blues Festival Aug 5 – Utrecht, NL @ TivoliVredenburg Aug 7 – Gothenburg, Västra Götaland County @ Way Out West Aug 10 – San Jose, CA @ San Jose Jazz Summer Fest Aug 22 – Winston-Salem, NC @ The Ramkat Aug 23 – Rocky Mount, VA @ Harvester Performance Center Aug 25 – Ocean City, NJ @ Ocean City Music Pier Sept 11 – Solana Beach, CA @ Belly Up Tavern Sept 13 – Napa, CA @ Blue Note Summer Sessions Oct 4 – Memphis, TN @ Mempho Fest Oct 9 – Tucson, AZ @ Fox Theatre Oct 12 – Chandler, AZ @ Chandler Center for the Arts
When Pete Shelley returned to Genetic Studios in leafy Berkshire in February 1981, the plan had been to sketch out songs for the fourth Buzzcocks album with the band’s trusted producer Martin Rushent. Trouble was, neither Shelley nor Rushent could face working on Buzzcocks material. That ship had sailed: 1980 was not a vintage year for the band whose effervescent power-pop had shown that punk could be fun and vulnerable, whose run of blistering singles from ’77 to ’79 meant so much to so many, and the way Shelley was withholding his new ideas from the rest of the group suggested that something was up. Other warning signs, noted by bandmate Steve Diggle in his book Harmony In My Head, included Shelley moaning to the press about how unhappy he was and how restricted he felt in the band, telling journalists, “Punk is dead”, and saying how he wanted to explore the possibilities of electronic music.
When Pete Shelley returned to Genetic Studios in leafy Berkshire in February 1981, the plan had been to sketch out songs for the fourth Buzzcocks album with the band’s trusted producer Martin Rushent. Trouble was, neither Shelley nor Rushent could face working on Buzzcocks material. That ship had sailed: 1980 was not a vintage year for the band whose effervescent power-pop had shown that punk could be fun and vulnerable, whose run of blistering singles from ’77 to ’79 meant so much to so many, and the way Shelley was withholding his new ideas from the rest of the group suggested that something was up. Other warning signs, noted by bandmate Steve Diggle in his book Harmony In My Head, included Shelley moaning to the press about how unhappy he was and how restricted he felt in the band, telling journalists, “Punk is dead”, and saying how he wanted to explore the possibilities of electronic music.
Buzzcocks formally split in March ’81 and by then Shelley and Rushent were certainly testing the limits of the new technology recently acquired for Genetic, Rushent’s plush Thameside HQ. “The computer or synthesizer is the great leveller. It is no longer necessary to be a virtuoso to make good things,” Rushent told Rolling Stone in July ’82. Shelley had arrived with a 12-string guitar but was soon immersed in electronic sound – Genetic had a rare Fairlight CMI, banks of modules and a full range of analogue synths, including a Roland Microcomposer, which the pair got to grips with as Shelley assembled older songs such as “Homosapien”, “Love In Vain” and “Maxine” from his first band Jets Of Air, and wrote the likes of “Witness The Change” and “I Don’t Know What It Is”: familiar Buzzcocks titles for atmospheric tracks built up from programmed rhythms and basslines. Genetic also had an arrangement with Island and offered Shelley a solo deal.
Shelley, who died in December 2018 aged 63, will be remembered for his pithy and poignant Buzzcocks songs which he seemingly dashed off at will in his teens and early twenties. But he loved electronic music too: from Can, Tangerine Dream and Neu! to more wayward experimental gear, he was intrigued by sound, and its strange immediacy suited his impulsive nature. In 1980, he released his solo debut Sky Yen – two 20-minute blasts of wild oscillations recorded in 1974 – on his own Groovy label, which Drag City reissued in 2011 alongside LPs by his ramshackle industrial acts Free Agents and Strange Men In Sheds With Spanners. His 2002 reunion with Howard Devoto for Buzzkunst used synth-driven post-punk to make its tongue-in-cheek point.
In many ways, writing for himself and arranging his ideas on computer allowed Shelley to express himself more freely, in bolder, funkier, even saucier terms. His bisexuality and queerness – there if you look for it in the Buzzcocks’ hits – surfaced quite naturally on Homosapien and inevitably colours perception of the record and its follow-up XL-1. “Homosapien” and Rushent’s groundbreaking 10-minute “Elongated Dancepartydubmix” of it were hits on the radio and in the club, even though the BBC banned the song for its “explicit reference to gay sex” – the “Homosuperior, in my interior” line – not quite appreciating Shelley’s self-deprecating humour: “I’m the cruiser, you’re the loser”; more Rising Damp than Are You Being Served?. Eagle-eyed admirers might’ve spotted the green carnation in the lapel of Shelley’s white suit on the album cover and in the video for “Homosapien”, a symbol for gay men, once used by Oscar Wilde.
Homosapien is an exciting record but not necessarily a great album. With “Homosapien” becoming a sizeable hit across the pond, the Americans, to their credit, replaced the weaker ballads “Keats Song” and “It’s Hard Enough Knowing” with the strident “Witness The Change” and poppier “Love In Vain” on the US version, releasing this in October ’81, three months before the pushed-back UK release in January ’82. By then, the Human League’s Dare – an album programmed and produced by Rushent immediately after Homosapien, using the same machines – had already topped the charts, giving the impression that Shelley’s effort was somehow inferior or lacked that elusive X factor.
In their arrangement, the way they burst into life, Shelley’s “Qu’est-ce Que C’est Que Ça” and “Yesterday’s Not Here” could be demos for Dare. Equally fruitful for Rushent was his prescient decision to cut and splice certain tracks to create extended mixes for the club. The dub of “Witness The Change”/“I Don’t Know What Love Is”, at once tough, hallucinogenic and tuneful, has been a Balearic banger for decades – a portal to Shelley for those who’d never bothered with Buzzcocks. From XL-1, the masterful funk flex of “Many A Time” and a 13-minute album megamix teem with ideas Rushent deployed on his widescreen revamp of Dare for the League Unlimited Orchestra’s Love And Dancing LP the year before.
Released in May ’83, XL-1 was shaped by the same machines but had more human involvement (Barry Adamson joined on bass and “ideas”, Genetic’s session player Jim Russell drummed) and was carried, like Homosapien, by its opening track, in this case “Telephone Operator”. The sole remaining unrecorded original song from Shelley’s Jets Of Air days – YouTube footage shows them playing it in 1973 – it became another cult club hit, but the album’s lack of traction could come down to the fact that as a leading man, Shelley’s coy, happy-go-lucky demeanour didn’t command the same attention as characters like Boy George, Kevin Rowland or George Michael.
Suitably for Shelley, XL-1 is a mixed-up affair (not helped, perhaps, by the revelation in Adamson’s autobiography that he came on to Shelley during the sessions). There are beautifully restrained songs (“Twilight”, “What Was Heaven”), sprightly cuts that sound like Buzzcocks (“You Know Better Than I Know”, “XL1”) and head-spinning electro-funk (“Many A Time”, “If You Ask Me (I Won’t Say No)”). It also came with its own ZX Spectrum program so that computer users could experience the album onscreen as a kind of 8-bit karaoke, which gives you a sense of Shelley’s enthusiasm for technology. This program was designed by Shelley’s longtime pal Joey Headen who would go on to work on video games in the US, including Call Of Duty and a Pac-Man reboot.
Taken together, Homosapien and XL-1 paint a portrait of a young man in the full bloom of life, creating and coming of age on his own terms, with little regard to how it might be perceived. It wouldn’t last, of course, and a few years later Shelley’s next album, the Stephen Hague-produced Heaven And The Sea, fared even worse than XL-1. These Domino reissues – available on vinyl for the first time since their original release – arrive just six years after the two albums were included in Shelley’s The Genetic Years boxset. Both also feature all the dub mixes and extra tracks, and there are no new or unreleased surprises here. But this is more than enough to reflect again on the genius of Shelley, whose hot streak from 1977 to ’83 is still underappreciated. These reissues should go some way to setting that record straight – though straight was never the right word for Shelley.
Talking Heads fans were left disappointed last week when (admittedly very spurious) rumours of a reunion turned out to herald nothing more than a new video for “Psycho Killer”.
But there is a silver lining. Today, David Byrne has unveiled details of his first solo album since 2018’s American Utopia.
Who Is The Sky? will be released by Matador on September 5, and you can watch a video for lead-off single “Everybody Laughs” below:
“Everybody lives, dies, laughs, cries, sleeps and stares at the ceiling,” says Byrne. “Everybody’s wearing everybody else’s shoes, which not everybody does, but I have done. I tried to sing about these things that could be seen as negative in a way balanced by an uplifting feeling from the groove and the melody, especially at the end… Music can do that – hold opposites simultaneously. I realised that when singing with Robyn earlier this year. Her songs are often sad, but the music is joyous.”
The album was produced by Kid Harpoon and arranged by the members of New York-based chamber ensemble Ghost Train Orchestra. It features guest appearances from St Vincent, Paramore’s Hayley Williams, The Smile drummer Tom Skinner and American Utopia percussionist Mauro Refosco.
Peruse the tracklisting for Who Is The Sky? below and pre-order the album on various formats here, including a limited cantaloupe orange / strawberry pink vinyl featuring a lenticular cover.
Everybody Laughs
When We Are Singing
My Apartment Is My Friend
A Door Called No
What Is the Reason for It?
I Met the Buddha at a Downtown Party
Don’t Be Like That
The Avant Garde
Moisturizing Thing
I’m an Outsider
She Explains Things to Me
The Truth
Byrne will also return to the road with a brand new live show in support of Who Is The Sky? The touring band will comprise 13 musicians, singers and dancers, all of whom will be mobile throughout the set. See the UK/Ireland dates below. Tickets go on sale on Friday (June 13) from here; sign up for the artist pre-sale here.
03/03/2026 – London, UK – Eventim Apollo 03/04/2026 – London, UK – Eventim Apollo 03/06/2026 – Glasgow, UK – SEC Armadillo 03/07/2026 – Glasgow, UK – SEC Armadillo 03/09/2026 – Manchester, UK – o2 Apollo 03/10/2026 – Manchester, UK – o2 Apollo 03/13/2026 – Dublin, Ireland – 3Arena 03/15/2026 – London, UK – Eventim Apollo
The show at New York’s CBGB‘s marked the end of a busy year for the band, who’d released their debut album Today in February. Billed alongside Sonic Youth, B.A.L.L. and Unsane, the CBGB’s show was a benefit for the celebrated East Village ‘zine shop, See Hear.
Much bootlegged, the recording – captured by the band’s producer Kramer and now restored from the analog source by Alan Douches at West West Side Music – is now officially available for the first time on LP, CD, cassette and digital.
Over the course of 22 studio albums, countless tours and several key collaborations, Roy Harper has proved himself to be of these islands’ finest ever singer-songwriters, renowned for his inventive acoustic guitar-playing, vivid lyrical imagery and refusal to play the industry game. As a result, he’s been cited as a major inspiration by artists as diverse as Led Zeppelin, Kate Bush, Johnny Marr and Joanna Newsom.
Later this month he’ll headline the Acoustic Stage at Glastonbury before embarking on The Final Tour: Part 2 in the autumn, accompanied by his son Nick Harper (dates and ticket info here).
But first up, he’s kindly submitted to a gentle grilling from you, the Uncut readers. So what do you want to ask a British folk-rock titan? Send your questions to audiencewith@uncut.co.uk by Monday (June 16) and Roy will answer the best ones in the next issue of Uncut.
In a post on his official website his family wrote, “It is with profound sadness that we announce the passing of our beloved dad, Sly Stone of Sly and the Family Stone. After a prolonged battle with COPD and other underlying health issues, Sly passed away peacefully, surrounded by his three children, his closest friend, and his extended family. While we mourn his absence, we take solace in knowing that his extraordinary musical legacy will continue to resonate and inspire for generations to come.
“Sly was a monumental figure, a groundbreaking innovator, and a true pioneer who redefined the landscape of pop, funk, and rock music. His iconic songs have left an indelible mark on the world, and his influence remains undeniable. In a testament to his enduring creative spirit, Sly recently completed the screenplay for his life story, a project we are eager to share with the world in due course, which follows a memoir published in 2024.
“We extend our deepest gratitude for the outpouring of love and prayers during this difficult time. We wish peace and harmony to all who were touched by Sly’s life and his iconic music.
“Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for your unwavering support.”
Multiple tributes have since been paid by fellow musicians, including Questlove, who directed the documentary Sly Lives! (aka The Burden of Black Genius). Writing on his Instagram account, The Roots drummer said:
“Sly was a giant — not just for his groundbreaking work with the Family Stone, but for the radical inclusivity and deep human truths he poured into every note,” he began. “His songs weren’t just about fighting injustice; they were about transforming the self to transform the world. He dared to be simple in the most complex ways — using childlike joy, wordless cries, and nursery rhyme cadences to express adult truths.
“All of you disciples will be geeked to receive you.”
Also on Instagram, Chaka Khan called Stone “a true innovator and pioneer of funk who reshaped music and culture”. “His work with Sly & the Family Stone broke barriers – bringing together races, genders, and genres with bold sound and unapologetic joy,” she added.
Other tributes came from The Waterboys‘ Mike Scott: “Travel on well SLY STONE 1943-2025, singer, songwriter, musical director, producer, frontman, funkster, pioneer, genius. Thankyou for all the inspiration, for breaking ground so others could follow and for being the sassiest, funkiest Being on planet earth.”
