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Interview: Eric Clapton

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24th November 2004

Tell us about your first musical memories in the early 1950s.. The way it was set up then, there were very few windows of opportunity to hear good music on the radio. Two Way Family Favourites was one programme that you always listened to, because you never knew what you were going to hear. Uncle M...

Tell us about your first musical memories in the early 1950s..

The way it was set up then, there were very few windows of opportunity to hear good music on the radio. Two Way Family Favourites was one programme that you always listened to, because you never knew what you were going to hear. Uncle Mac’s Children’s Hour was the other. He was a strange character but he played some extraordinary music. We had a children’s party the other day and I put this little band together to play Teddy Bear’s Picnic and stuff like that. I got hold of an Uncle Mac’s Children’s Hour record and listened to The Runaway Train, which was one of his favourites. He used to play it all the time. When I heard it again I was shocked at how good it was! It’s like pure bluegrass. Real hillbilly stuff. So there was a lot of really strange, eclectic music getting played and I was responding to all of it.

Did you fall for Lonnie Donegan and the skiffle craze?

We all loved skiffle. But that was coming from a fairly safe place. The cutting edge of it was Elvis singing “Hound Dog”. There was something about that music that got me excited. Elvis was dangerous in a way that even Buddy Holly wasn’t, let alone Lonnie Donegan, and I could see already the link between Elvis and black music. One of the big haunting musical memories from those days for me is an instrumental by Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee called “Whoopin’ and Holerin’”. That was Uncle Mac again. He was playing that. Which is bizarre, isn’t it? It was regarded as a novelty record but it was really hardcore blues.

So was that the start of your love affair with the blues?

I didn’t know it was called the blues. Some part of my being responded to that record and filed it away in the right place. In later years it re-emerged as part of my musical journey. But I think I was already headed that way and it was Big Bill Broonzy who really got me. Once I heard him, I realised what skiffle was and how all these other kinds of music had evolved. Broonzy’s “Hey Hey” and “Key To The Highway” were some of the first tunes I learnt.

He was also one of the first bluesmen to visit Britain. Did you see him when he came here in the 1950s?

No. I think I missed him by a few years. But my grandparents took me to see Josh White as a special treat when I was 12 or 13. I loved that song “Scarlet Ribbons” and I remember him doing that. But he was a bit of a showman who was used to playing white audiences and I was aware that as a bluesman he wasn’t quite the full ticket.

When did you hear Robert Johnson?

That was a bit later, when I was 15 or 16. He was the full ticket all right, but you had to get to him in steps. You started out with someone like Chuck Berry and you worked your way further back, deeper and deeper until you got to Robert Johnson. I was confused and a bit intimidated when

I initially heard him. It was so powerful it was almost unlistenable at first. But eventually I was ready.

At what point were you aware that there was a community of like-minded people listening to this music?

Around the age of 12 or 13, I was still spending all my time in the country, at the secondary modern school in Ripley. But then I passed something called the 13-plus on the strength of my art accomplishment and got a scholarship to a school in Tolworth, near Surbiton. I had to go on a Green Line bus up there and I met a bunch of people at that school. They were all bright and they were all talented at art and we were all nutcases and it was a perfect breeding ground for this stuff.

And you introduced each other to different kinds of music?

There were people there who knew about Muddy Waters. That was serious stuff. And they knew other, older people who collected records and they’d have club nights where we’d go and listen to them. Of course I’d heard of John Lee Hooker. But I’d never seen one of his records until then. When I did, I was totally taken with everything about it. The cover artwork. The label. Everything. So that was the next stop on my journey. I began to meet lots of people who saw the world the same way as I did. It’s a fantastic moment when you realise it’s a fellowship and you meet other people who have respect and reverence for this music. That’s what ultimately leads you to becoming a musician. After that, I started going up to London and going to record shops like Dobells and looking through their bins and searching for these rare albums. That treasure hunt was part of the value of it. You had to hunt the music down and that made it all the more valuable. I’m still trying to find on CD the original Broonzy album I had back then. I’ve been on the Internet to look for it, but it doesn’t seem to exist any more.

You then went to Kingston art college and it’s often said that art school was the breeding ground for 60s British rock’n’roll…

I think it’s true. When I was at the secondary modern everybody was into cricket and football. I was always the seven-stone weakling. But there were others in the same predicament and we were the people who ended up buying

78rpm records. We were considered oddballs and we were scorned and ridiculed for our tastes. They used to call us ‘the loonies’. It was a hard journey. But even when you got to art school, it wasn’t just a rock’n’roll holiday camp. I got thrown out after a year for not doing any work. That was a real shock. I was always in the pub or playing the guitar.

You’d started playing Broonzy tunes on an acoustic guitar. When were you first aware of the possibilities of the electric instrument?

I knew they had electric guitars in America. I’d seen them on record covers. But it wasn’t until I saw Alexis Korner at the Marquee when I was about 15 that I thought an electric guitar might be available to me. I saw Alexis play one, and that was the first time I was aware they even existed in England. So then I had to persuade my grandparents to get me one, which they did. It wasn’t a very good guitar. The action was about two inches high and impossible to adjust.

Did you follow Alexis and his band around?

Yes, because what he had was the first real R&B band in the country. He had Cyril Davis on harmonica and it was truly exotic stuff, because it was still so rare. They played once a week at the Marquee and the rest of the week the club put on jazz. But it made me realise it could be done. I was listening to Muddy Waters by then, so I knew full well what a blues band ought to sound like. Then the second time I went to see Alexis play, Mick Jagger was there and we got talking. Brian Jones and Keith Richards were also there, and they’d all get up and play with Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce, or whoever was Alexis’ rhythm section that particular night. After that, it was only a matter of time before I thought about trying to do it for myself.

Bob Dylan – Uncut January 2005 CDs

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10th November 2004

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Tracks that Inspired Bob Dylan 1. Bert Jansch - Nottamun Town Taken from the album Transatlantic/Castle album Jack Orion When Dylan made his first trip to Britain at the end of 1962, he immersed himself in the London folk scene and picked up a number of traditional tunes from other singers whic...

Tracks that Inspired Bob Dylan

1. Bert Jansch – Nottamun Town

Taken from the album Transatlantic/Castle album Jack Orion

When Dylan made his first trip to Britain at the end of 1962, he immersed himself in the London folk scene and picked up a number of traditional tunes from other singers which he swiftly incorporated into his own repertoire. Martin Carthy was a big influence (see track four) and from Bob Davenport, he learned the tune “Nottamun Town”, which he adapted to new words as “Masters Of War”. It was also recorded by Bert Jansch, who played his first London gig at the Troubadour club on Jan 19, 1963 exactly a week after Dylan had appeared there.

2. The Mississippi Sheiks – The World Is Going Wrong

Recommended listening Stop & Listen (Yazoo) and The Best Of The Mississippi Shieks (Columbia/Legacy)

The Sheiks were a string band made up of members of the Chapman family who flourished in the early 1930s. They were a huge influence on Dylan’s 1993 acoustic album World Gone Wrong, on which both the title track and “Blood In My Eyes” were covers of their songs. In the liner note to the album, Dylan described them as ‘a little known de facto group whom in their former glory must’ve been something to behold. Rebellion against routine seems to be their strong theme. All their songs are raw to the bone and faultlessly made’.

3. Woody Guthrie – Talkin’ Dust Bowl Blues

Recommended listening, A Proper Introduction To Woody Guthriw (Proper) and Woody Guthrie: Déjà vu retro Gold Collection (Proper)

In Dylan’s Chronicles, there’s a wonderful description of the moment when he discovered the Woody Guthrie songbook. The effect was, Dylan writes, ”like some heavy anchor had just plunged into the waters of the harbour.” The early Dylan had several heroes, including James Dean and Elvis. But it was Guthrie who became his role model. The first of his own compositions he ever performed in Greenwich Village was called “Song To Woody” and as late as 1985, he was still offering aspiring young singer-songwriters this advice: ‘Disregard all the current stuff. Forget it. Listen to Robert Johnson and Woody Guthrie’.

4. Martin Carthy – Lord Franklin

Taken from the Topic album “Martin Carthy: A Collection”

On his first visit to London during the harsh winter of 1962/3, Dylan stayed with Martin Carthy at his flat in Hampstead. The weather was so freezing that Carthy recalls Dylan helping him chop up an old wardrobe to fuel the fire. The two men also visited such London folk clubs as Bunjies,

Les Cousins and the Troubadour and from Carthy, Dylan learnt several tunes.They included “Sacrborough Fair”, which influenced his “Boots Of Spanish Leather” and the traditional ballad “Lord Franklin”, which Dylan used as the basis of the melody for “Bob Dylan’s Dream”.

5. Chuck Berry – Too Much Monkey Business

Taken from the Acrobat album Rock And Roll Music

The world should not have been so surprised when Dylan went electric in 1965, for long before he fell under Woody Guthrie’s spell and became a folk singer, he had been in various high school rock’n’roll bands with names such as Elston Gunn & His Rock Boppers, playing Little Richard, Gene Vincent and Chuck Berry covers. “Subterranean Homesick Blues” was, in fact, an extraordinary three-way amalgam of Jack Kerouac, the Guthrie/Pete Seeger song “Taking It Easy” (‘mom was in the kitchen preparing to eat/sis was in the pantry looking for some yeast’) and the riffed-up rock’n’roll poetry of Berry’s “Too Much Monkey Business”.

6. Lightnin’ Hopkins -Automobile

Recommended listening, The Chronological Lightnin’ Hopklins 1949-1950 (Classics)

One of the great country bluesmen, Lightnin’ Hopkins was born in Texas in 1912. In Chronicles, Dylan recalls seeing him on a CBS television ‘folk music special’ around 1959/60, the same show on which he first saw Joan Baez. He later saw him live in Greenwich Village and was captivated by Hopkins’ sparse guitar, emotive voice and intense, narrative style. Hopkins first recorded Automobile in 1949, re-recording it as “Automobile Blues” in 1960. The song went on to form the musical template for “Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat”, in which Dylan slyly acknowledged the source in the line ‘you forgot to close the garage door’.

7. Hank Williams – Lost Highway

Recorded for the ‘Health & Happiness Show’. Recommended listening, The Final Sessions (Proper)

Dylan grew up listening to Hank Williams on The Grand Old Opry on the radio on a Saturday night and in Chronicles, he recalls as an 11 year old hearing the rumours that Hank had died in the back of his Cadillac on New Year’s Day, 1953 : ‘Kept my fingers crossed, hoped it wasn’t true. But it was true. It was like a great tree had fallen’. According to Chronicles, the youthful Dylan got hold of “Lost Highway” on a 78 and played it endlessly : ‘The sound of his voice went through me like an electric rod’.

8. Blind Willie McTell – Delia

Recommended listening, The Defininitive Blind Willie McTell 1927-1935 (Catfish) and Blind Willie McTell: The Classic Years 1927-1940 (JSP)

Nobody – as Dylan told us in one of the most profound songs of his later career – sang the blues like Blind Willie McTell. Born in Georgia in 1901, McTell made his first recordings in 1927 and died in 1959, so that Dylan never had the opportunity to see him perform. But he devoured McTell’s Last Session album, released on the Bluesville label the following year, and was soon singing McTell’s “Delia” on the Dinkytown folk circuit in Minneapolis. He later recorded the song along with “Broke Down Engine” from McTell’s Last Session on 1993’s World Gone Wrong.

9. Gene Vincent – Baby Blue

Taken from the Magnum Force album GENE VINCENT REBEL HEART VOL.6

Gene Vincent was one of Dylan’s favourite early rock’n’rollers and he openly imitated him in his high school group, The Shadow Blasters. He has since admitted that “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” was in part influenced by Vincent’s “Baby Blue”. ‘I carried that song around in my head for a long time’, he told Cameron Crowe. ‘When I was writing it, I’d remembered a Gene Vincent song that had always been one of my favourites. It was one of the songs I used to sing back in high school. Of course, I was singing about a different Baby Blue, then’.

10. Josh White – The House Of The Rising Sun

Born in South Carolina in 1915, Josh White was a big influence on the youthful Dylan, who saw him playing often at the Village Vanguard in New York. Dylan’s early repertoire included a version of White’s “Dink’s Song”, he wrote “Quit Your Low Down Ways” under the influence of the blues singer’s “Sissy Man” and “In My Time Of Dyin’” on his first album was another White favourite. Dylan’s arrangement of “The House Of The Risin’ Sun” on the same album was mostly copied from Dave Van Ronk, but he was equally familiar with White’s earlier version of the song.

11. Louise Armstrong & The Hot Five – St. James Infirmary

Recommended listening, The Best of The Hot Five & Hot Seven Recordings (Columbia/Legacy)

Dylan first visited New Orleans in 1964 and expressed his delight at being in the city of Kid Ory, King Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton and Louis Armstrong, who recorded his classic version of the blues-jazz standard “St James Infirmary” in 1928. The St. James was a real place that opened as a hotel in New Orleans in 1859, but during the Civil War was converted by occupying Union troops into a military hospital, believed to be the infirmary of the song. Dylan used the song’s melody in his “Blind Willie McTell”, and at the end of the lyric tells us he’s staying in the St. James Hotel.

12. Jimmie Rodgers – My Blue Eyed Jane

Recommended listening, The Singing Brakeman (Country Stars)

In 1996, Dylan put together a tribute album to one of his most enduring musical heroes, Jimmie Rodgers. Released on Dylan’s own Egyptian Records label, his liner note described Rodgers (also known as the ‘Singing Brakeman’ or the ‘Blue Yodeller’) as ‘a blazing star whose sound was and remains the raw essence of individuality in a sea of conformity, par excellence with no equal’. Among those Dylan asked to contribute to The Songs Of Jimmie Rodgers: A Tribute were Bono, Van Morrison, Jerry Garcia and Willie Nelson. His own contribution was a version of “My Blue Eyed Jane”, featuring Bucky Baxter on pedal steel.

13. Blind Lemon Jefferson – See That My Grave Is Kept Clean

Recommended listening, Blind Lemon Jefferson (Ace)

Blind Lemon Jefferson recorded the traditional “See That My Grave Is Kept Clean” in October 1927, two years before he froze to death on the streets of Chicago. When Jefferson learned the song it was a folk spiritual called “Two White Horses In A Line”, also known as “One Kind Favour”. He turned into something entirely his own and although Dylan followed Jefferson’s arrangement fairly closely on his debut album, the two versions are also quite different. As Robert Shelton put it: “Blind Lemon’s recording is sprightly, sweet and benevolent, while Dylan’s is stark and morose”.

14. Nic Jones – Canadee-I-O

Taken from the Topic album PENGUIN EGGS

Dylan sang “Canadee-I-O” on 1992’s Good As I Been To You and credited the song as ‘traditional, arranged Dylan’. In fact, it’s fairly clear the arrangement came from Nic Jones’s version of the song on his album, Penguin Eggs, which in 1980 was voted Melody Maker’s Folk Album Of The Year. Jones was born in Kent in 1947 and was a respected guitarist and fiddle player on the English folk scene until his career was interrupted by a car accident in 1982 that left him in a coma for six weeks. Despite recovering, his injuries left him not well enough to resume his career.

15. Robert Johnson – Come On In My Kitchen

Recommended listening, The Complete Recordings (Columbia)

‘He seemed like a guy who could’ve sprung from the head of Zeus in full armour’, Dylan writes of Robert Johnson in Chronicles, describing songs such as “Come On In My Kitchen” as ”panoramic story-fires of mankind blasting off the surface of this spinning piece of plastic.” He went on to confess Johnson’s influence on his own writing. ‘In about 1964-5, I probably used five or six of Johnson’s blues song forms, unconsciously. If I hadn’t heard him when I did there probably would have been hundreds of lines of mine that I wouldn’t have felt free enough or upraised enough to write’.

16. The Dubliners – The Patriot Game

Taken from the Sanctuary album IRELAND’S FINEST (Sanctuary)

Dylan learned Dominic Behan’s Irish rebel song “The Patriot Game” on his first trip to London in the winter of 1962/63 and, in the time-honoured folk tradition, adapted it for “With God On Our Side”. Behan promptly castigated Dylan for plagiarism, which was a little rich given that he had

in turn borrowed the tune from an old song called “The Merry Month Of May”. Dylan always had a strong affection for Irish music and was close friends in his early Greenwich Village days with the Clancy Brothers, whose international success was a great influence back home on The Dubliners.

Tracks Influenced by Bob Dylan

1. Douglas September – Lady & I

Taken from the Gold Circle album TEN BULLS

Haling from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, poet, painter, storyteller and singer-songwriter Douglas September cites among his heroes Tom Waits, Captain Beefheart, and Rimbaud. But the name of Bob Dylan heads the list. With its lyrical reference to “Desolation Row” and extraordinarily

Dylanesque voice, “Lady & I” first appeared on his 1997 self-released debut, but was re-recorded for his first commercially available album, 1998’s Ten Bulls in this superior version with Bill Frisell on guitar. September’s last album, 2001’s Oil Tan Bow, included versions of Dylan’s

“Girl From The North Country” and Woody Guthrie’s “I Ain’t Got No Home”.

2. Josh Ritter – You Don’t Make It Easy Babe

Taken from the Signature Sounds album HELLO STARLING

”I know the sound of the handcuffs as they scrape across the floor but that know thiong you’ve got I don’t know what it’s for” sings Josh Ritter in wry, Dylanesque fashion on this song from his 2004-released second album, Hello Starling. Born in Idaho in the late 70s, Ritter was inspired to buy his first guitar from the local K-MART after hearing Dylan and Johnny Cash’s duet on “Girl From The North Country.” Joan Baez, who retains her sharp ear for a great song, recently recorded his composition “Wings” and, in an echo of how she once took up another promising but little-known songwriter some 40 years ago, invited him to play support at some of her shows.

3. Warren Zevon – Knocking On Heaven’s Door

Taken from the Artemis/Ryko album THE WIND

Warren Zevon recorded “Knocking On Heaven’s Door” for his final album in highly charged circumstances that render it an over-poweringly emotional reading. Zevon knew at the time that he was dying from an inoperable cancer and it would take a heart of stone not to be deeply moved as he appends his own ad-libbed line to the end of the song, “Open up, open up, open up the gates for me”. Dylan was in turn a big fan of Zevon, recording his “Mutineer” for the posthumous tribute album , Enjoy Every Sandwich. He also played harmonica on Zevon’s 1987 album “Sentimental Hygiene” and took the title of Time Out Of Mind from Zevon’s song, “Accidentally Like A Martyr”.

4. Mary Lee’s Corvette – Shelter From The Storm

Taken from the Bar None album BLOOD ON THE TRACKS

‘They were putting on a series of gigs in New York featuring people covering landmark albums in their entirety, but everybody was scared of Blood On The Tracks’, recalls Mary Lee Kortes. ‘I love the album, so I naively said I’d do it’. Her interpretation was so well received the

performance was subsequently issued on CD. Dylan must have approved, too. Some time after Mary Lee’s album hit the stores, she was invited to open for him at the Hammerstein Ballroom. ‘He came on stage during my soundcheck and when I looked over he tipped his hat to me’, she recalls.

5. Tom Ovans – Sixth Avenue

Taken from the Evangeline album STILL IN THIS WORLD

After leaving home in Boston in his late teens, Tom Ovans arrived in Greenwich Village in the early ’70s about a decade after Dylan. ‘I hung around Gerdes Folk City a lot and I’d see guys like Ochs and Hardin. In those days, there was still a remnant of the folk community’, he recalls.

Now resident in Austin, Texas, “Sixth Avenue” comes from his sixth album, released in 2001. With its rich concordance of lyrical references to Dylan songs, it’s a wonderful tribute to the man whose influence first inspired him to hit the road and make his life in music.

6. The Coal Porters – Idiot Wind

Taken from the Prima album HOW DARK THIS EARTH WILL SHINE

With LA’s legendary Long Ryders and now The Coal Porters, Sid Griffin has always had an ear for an unusual cover. Back in 1987 the Ryders recorded an extraordinary version of Dylan’s “Masters Of War” with a keening fiddle that replaced the burning anger of the original with apocalyptic menace. On The Coal Porters’ current album, he transforms “Idiot Wind” from a raging diatribe into a bluegrass lament. And it’s not only Dylan who gets such radical treatment. One wonders what John Peel would’ve made of a version of his beloved “Teenage Kicks” complete with banjo and Appalachian folk harmonies…

7. Richie Havens – It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue

Taken from the Evangeline album “Stonehenge”

Richie Havens first met Dylan in Greenwich Village in the early ’60s when both were regulars at clubs such as the Café Wha? and Gerdes Folk City. Always primarily an interpreter of other people’s material rather than a songwriter, Havens has probably recorded as many Dylan covers as anyone over the years. His typically warm and mellow version of “It’s All Over Now, “Baby Blue” appeared in 1970, the year after he opened the Woodstock festival, and the song remains in his live repertoire to this day. ‘Those songs changed my life,” he says. “They were just so powerful I decided, ‘I’ve got to do this'”.

8. John Prine – Sam Stone

Taken from the Ulftone album SOUVENIR

Originally released on Prine’s eponymous 1972 debut album, Sam Stone is often described as ‘the best Dylan song Dylan never wrote’. Certainly the man himself was impressed enough to turn up unannounced at the Bottom Line in Greenwich Village one night shortly after its release and back Prine on harmonica on the song. The endorsement was enough to catapult Prine up there alongside Loudon Wainwright among the more convincing pretenders to Bob’s crown. His songs have since been covered by every one from Bonnie Raitt to Dylan himself, who in the early ’90s sang Prine’s “People Putting People Down” in concert.

9. Billy Bragg – Deportees

Originally released on the 12-inch single ‘Greetings To The New Brunette’ ‘It did my head in’, says Billy Bragg of first hearing Dylan in the store in Barking where he had a Saturday job at the age of 14 in 1972. It was the start of a lifelong passion and, inevitably, it soon led him back to the source of Dylan’s inspiration, Woody Guthrie. Bragg recorded Guthrie’s

“Deportees” in 1986 with Hank Wangford. The song only ever appeared as a B-side, although Bragg and Wangford also famously sang it at a Neil Kinnock rally in Islington during the 1987 general election campaign. The track appears here on CD for the first time.

10. Marc Carroll – Gates Of Eden

Taken from the Evangeline album ALL WRONGS REVERSED

Irish singer-songwriter Marc Carroll believes in honouring his heroes. He’s written a track called “Mr Wilson” based around Beach Boys’ songs titles, recorded “For What It’s Worth” for a forthcoming Buffalo Springfield tribute and Uncut readers will recall his “London Calling” on our Clash tribute CD last year. But his serious fixation is Dylan. His second album,

2003’s All Wrongs Reversed, included covers of both “Senor (Tales Of Yankee Power)” and “Gates Of Eden” – the latter earning the accolade of a recommendation on Dylan’s official website. His version of “The Times They Are A’Changin’” also appeared as the B-side to a recent single.

11. Graham Lindsey – Dead Man’s Waltz

Taken from the Catamount album, Famous Anonymous Wilderness

And still Dylan’s continues to exert a powerful hold on a whole new generation of singer-songwriters who weren’t even born when he made Blood On The Tracks and Desire , let alone Freewheelin’ and Another Side. Wisconsin’s Graham Lindsey last year released a wonderful debut collection of contemporary folk songs, seemingly plucking ghosts from the air with all the rugged spirit and fearless energy of a young Dylan. The debt is obvious on the twangy, heart-wrenching desperation blues of “Dead Man’s Waltz”, as Lindsey’s rasping vocal is backed by some superb finger picking and swooning pedal steel.

12. Steve Goodman – City Of New Orleans

Taken from the Red Pajamas album LIVE WIRE

Dylan released nothing under his own name in 1972, but in September that year he turned up at a New York studio to play piano on Steve Goodman’s Somebody Else’s Trouble, masquerading in the album’s credits as ‘Robert Milkwood Thomas’. Goodman had been discovered by Kris Kristofferson and with Dylan at the time having abdicated as leader of the counter-culture, was one of the many who in the early-’70s was briefly hailed as the ‘New Bob’. His best-known song “City Of New Orleans” was an American hit for Arlo Guthrie. He suffered from leukaemia and died following a bone marrow transplant operation in 1984.

13. Robyn Hitchcock with Gillian Welch & Dave Rawlings – Tryin’ To Get To Heaven Before They Close The Door

We always knew Robyn Hitchcock worshiped at the shrine of Bob. But the extent of his devotion only became truly apparent on 2002’s Robyn Sings, on which he covered 15 Dylan songs from “Like A Rolling Stone” and “Visions of Johanna” to “Dignity” and “Not Dark Yet” via “Desolation Row” and “Tangled Up In Blue”. The former Soft Boys frontman now follows with another cover from Time Out Of Mind on his current album in the shape of this lovely version

of “Tryin’ To Get To Heaven”, recorded in collaboration with Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings.

14. Dream Syndicate – See That My Grave Is Kept Clean

Taken from the Ryko album “The Complete Live at Raji’s”

Dylan recorded Blind Lemon Jefferson’s “See That My Grave Is Kept Clean” on his 1962 debut album. More than a quarter of a century later, Steve Wynn’s splendid take on the song drew on both sources. He recorded the song on 1988’s Ghost Stories, which proved to be Dream Syndicate’s final studio album, although this live version, recorded in Hollywood in January of that year, actually preceded the studio recording. It was released for the first time in 2004 as an additional track on the expanded two disc release of the band’s 1989 Elliott Mazer-produced swansong, Live At Raji’s.

15. Buddy Miller – With God On Our Side

Taken from the New West album UNIVERSAL UNITED HOUSE OF PRAYER

Long-time guitarist of choice among Nashville’s non-mainstream community and stalwart Emmylou Harris sideman, Buddy Miller has also made a prolific series of solo albums. The centrepiece of his current release is this epic nine minute version of “With God On Our Side”. The keening fiddle and marching drums cleverly emphasise the Irish roots of the tune which Dylan borrowed from Dominic Behan’s Irish rebel song, “The Patriot Game”. Miller’s vocal transmutes the anger of the original to a profound sorrowfulness and becomes a powerful contemporary commentary on an America catastrophically divided by a neo-con jihad and at odds with the rest of the world over Bush’s belligerent foreign policy.

The Toolbox Murders

Film
Reviews

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8th November 2004

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Tobe Hooper doesn't just do gore. He can also knock up a mean supernatural yarn, as his 1979 TV adaptation of Salem's Lot demonstrated. Unfortunately, with this remake of an obscure 1978 slasher flick, he tries to do both at once and ends up falling between two, er, tools. Angela Bettis plays a newlywed who moves into a crumbling LA tenement with paper-thin walls, a history of disappearances and a cast of creepy neighbours. When her new friend from across the hall goes missing, Bettis delves into the buidling's secrets and discovers secret passages, symbols carved into lintels and a mysterious figure who seems to come and go. The trouble is, we've already seen him. It's the nutter with the toolbox. You can't build suspense when you've revealed your monster at the start. There are flashes of Hooper's trademark hyperviolence, but nothing to engage your attention, and as a whole it feels far more creaky than creepy.

Tobe Hooper doesn’t just do gore. He can also knock up a mean supernatural yarn, as his 1979 TV adaptation of Salem’s Lot demonstrated. Unfortunately, with this remake of an obscure 1978 slasher flick, he tries to do both at once and ends up falling between two, er, tools.

Angela Bettis plays a newlywed who moves into a crumbling LA tenement with paper-thin walls, a history of disappearances and a cast of creepy neighbours. When her new friend from across the hall goes missing, Bettis delves into the buidling’s secrets and discovers secret passages, symbols carved into lintels and a mysterious figure who seems to come and go. The trouble is, we’ve already seen him. It’s the nutter with the toolbox. You can’t build suspense when you’ve revealed your monster at the start. There are flashes of Hooper’s trademark hyperviolence, but nothing to engage your attention, and as a whole it feels far more creaky than creepy.

Interview: Patti Smith

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5th November 2004

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UNCUT: Of the records you've made since you "came back", the first two - particularly Gone Again - are splenetic outpourings of grief and mourning. The mood of much of Trampin' seems much more measured, reflective. SMITH: The song that has the most outpouring of grief or anger in it is, I think, ...

UNCUT: Of the records you’ve made since you “came back”, the first two – particularly Gone Again – are splenetic outpourings of grief and mourning. The mood of much of Trampin’ seems much more measured, reflective.

SMITH: The song that has the most outpouring of grief or anger in it is, I think,

Radio Baghdad. But a song like Trespasses, or Cash, I think you’re right, they’re not so much grieving songs, but they are the result of seeing things in life. Mother Rose, I wrote for my [late] mother but it’s more of a thank you to her, and also hopefully a really pretty song. It’s not a grieving song.

This seems very much to be a record about endurance.

Well that could be so. It’s been a long road, and I’m still walking on it. I think the idea is like the Pilgrim’s Progress or something. Life indeed takes us on what journeys it takes us on. It takes us to a lot of places we hadn’t anticipated. I think the record unfolds as much as life does. It starts out with Jubilee, which as it unfolded turned out to speak of my country at the present time. It’s the point of view of a mother or a woman or a strong person who is extolling the beauty of the land and the optimism and the young spirit of

her country but also the fact that there’s trouble brewing right now, there’s things that are not right. Our present administration has put our country in a very rough position financially and environmentally and, I think, psychologically.

Do you feel uncomfortable as an American at the moment?

I don’t limit my self image to being an American. I am an America, of course, but as a human being looking at our global situation, I feel a lot of anguish for people, I feel a certain amount of anger, I feel very very… I’m very opposed to the Bush administration and all its policies, it doesn’t speak for me. But y’know when I was younger, going to Europe during the Vietnam war, it was also difficult I was completely opposed to it, but being an American, people reacted to me as an accentuator of this war.

There’s that line in Rilke “I have my dead and I have let them go”. I was wondering how you feel about that idea in the light of the serial bereavements that you’ve suffered over the last few years.

I would probably say that I have my dead and I live with them. I don’t have a philosophy of letting the dead go, I don’t grieve for them daily, but they are always with me. Because my people include my late husband, my mother, my brother, my father, my best friend, my piano player – and many of them who died rather young. So they walk with me. Even the other day I asked my mother for counsel, and received an answer, y’know, within me. I think it’s important to let one’s deep grieving go because I don’t think it’s healthy for the spirit of the departed, but I keep my communication lines with the people that I have lost. Pasolini said a line that really impressed me, “it’s not that the dead don’t speak, it’s just that we have forgotten how to listen”. One could analyse it and say it’s just your subconscious speaking to you, but it’s my subconscious, it’s a part of me that has been instructed and raised by her. So it doesn’t matter where these impulses or these things come from, the fact is I felt close with her. And y’know, sometimes I need a laugh – I can feel my brother in my heart, he always made me laugh. So y’know I have my own internal universe in the way that I deal with these things, and I find that it’s much more helpful than being stricken, grief stricken, month after month, year after year, because you can’t be productive and you can’t conduct yourself in the way that people that you lose and who loved you would like to see you conduct yourself. There’s a song on the album called Trespasses and at the end the father, obviously, dies, the mother dies, and the son at the end takes up their deaths and takes up everything and the last line is he takes up this ragged coat, the symbol of their deaths and all the things done and left undone in their lives, whistling joyfully.

The album closes with Trampin’, a traditional gospel song.

I like Marion Anderson and I have a little space where I paint and take photographs and I often listen to gospel records and spirituals. That little song, for the past couple of years, has always attracted me, and I asked my daughter if she would learn it on piano. That’s my daughter playing and it’s live, we just did it a couple of times and took one that was honest. And that’s what we did. I’m very proud of her, I think she did a beautiful job. And I intentionally wanted it to have a modest approach, because it is a spiritual and I’m certainly not Marion Anderson. I intentionally wanted the song to have a very reflective, modest feel.

There is an ambiguity – in one sense it’s Samuel Beckett’s “On I must go on”, but there’s also a weariness about it.

Exactly. The reason that I liked it, it does have a weary quality but it’s optimistic. This person is trampin’ trying to find Heaven, they’re not just trying to get to the corner store, or just trying to get to a soup kitchen, they’re going for the highest place. I like the little song, and there’s a lot of miles tramped in this album, and I think it was a good way

to end it.

Now rock and roll is officially 50 years old, do you think it can still aspire in that way?

Rock and roll is a genre, it’s people who work within the genre; whatever is happening within the genre reflects the people who are creating and the needs or desires are of the people listening. I have great faith in the genre, and continue to work within it, but I wish that people would think about the greatest aspect of rock and roll which to me is its grass-roots voice that can embrace poetry and revolution and political situations, love; it embraces everything from a grass-roots level, but can be evolved as the person writing or [performing] the work. It can be as evolved as Jim Morrison or Jimi Hendrix or just as beautiful and pure as Darlene Love singing with the Crystals. I really think that the history of rock and roll has given us so much to be proud of, and so much to draw from and so much to aspire to, and I would hope that people would draw from that, and not merely the materialistic gains that one can get – the fame and the fortune and the exploitative aspects of it, and try to dig deeper into themselves and into our history and reconnect with the great aspects of rock and roll.

Do you still feel “outside of society”?

Oh, I’ll probably always feel outside society. To me being outside society is a happy place to be.

Patti on Todd Rundgren

[Wave] was a difficult record to make because we were out of the city, in the middle of winter in Bearsville, pretty much snowed in and I thought it might be the last album I did. I felt it was time for me to evolve as a human being. I hadn’t ever really planned to make records. I came to that organically, and I felt that I had really expressed everything that I knew how to express. So there I had a lot of thoughts doing that record: both joyful thoughts and….

Todd’s an old friend of mine, I thought that it would be nice to work with a friend and also he’s a great musician and I knew that he would contribute to the musical sense of the record. He was very good with using keyboards, he was a pianist himself and a lot of those songs evolved around that. It was not an easy record to make and Todd works very quickly – I work quickly too but not as quickly as Todd, but I think the sound of that record is beautiful.

Interview: Wreckless Eric

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Since hijacking the mainstream charts with 1977’s anthemic “Whole Wide World”, Newhaven’s Eric Goulden has had a turbulent ride. Riddled with alcoholism, he quit the music biz in 1980, before returning with Captains Of Industry and excellent garage-punksters The Len Bright Combo in the mid-‘80’s. After the sobering up came a nervous breakdown, and by the end of the decade, he’d settled in France, gigging steadily. Back in Blighty by 1998, recent years have seen successful tours, his first volume of autobiography (2003’s riveting A Dysfunctional Success) and now, with new LP Bungalow Hi, the record of his life. UNCUT catches him at home, chowing down on tea and biscuits. UNCUT: Did writing A Dysfunctional Success finally close the door on a certain chapter in your life? GOULDEN: I just wanted it finished and out of the way. I was despairing of it by the end. The honesty of the book was good for me. You don’t have to be carrying stuff around with you anymore because you’ve said it. I don’t see it as therapy, that’s more of a private thing. I remember, seven or eight years ago - when I’d first written some stuff – I was travelling around Germany doing readings and people seemed to respond to it. But then some horrible git came up to me in a sub-New Romantic costume and futuristic spectacles and said “I don’t see why I should have to be subjected to your mid-life crisis”. So I hit him. Looking back at the Stiff years, you once told me you got disillusioned very quickly The start of it was very exciting. I loved the thing about Jamaican records, where they’d have a basement where they’d make the records and a pressing plant upstairs and, between the two, they’d have a shop. They’d record the thing, then the next day it’d be on sale as a white label. And Stiff had that vibe to begin with. But after Jake Riviera, it all changed. The establishment moved in. Suddenly, nobody ever had time to sit down and find out about you. It was a million miles from where I came in and I became embarrassed by what I was doing. I used to try and deny all the bad reviews, but I think those people who slagged off my records had more idea about what was going on than Stiff did. For a long time, I could hardly look at the reviews – not because they were unfair – but because I couldn’t face how I was at the time. After your nervous breakdown, you quit Britain for France. What was the main difference? The first thing about France was, it cured my depression. I used to suffer from severe depression, then I think I started to eat better. That’s got a lot to do with your state of mind. I learned to live with myself there and discovered quality of life. French society’s quite introverted in a way. The shutters go up at night and people tend to stay in, go to bed early. So for someone like me, it was isolating. I think everyone should do it. Get away from the hysteria. The good thing is that you learn to live with yourself and get to know yourself better. When you’re creative, it’s important to do that. You look at singers choosing personas which just don’t fit. Everyone’s got their own idea of self-image. I mean, I’m a bit like James Bond in my head and then I suddenly realise I’m not that at all, it’s just a boyhood dream. I’d love to be suave, tall and sophisticated – God’s gift to humanity. But I’m white, middle-aged and slightly overweight. Bugger! Did you miss England? Not at all. I did miss my friends and felt really out-of-touch with what was going on. I wasn’t able to carry on doing what I do over there, otherwise I would still be there. I miss a lot of things about France. I sort of became a French person. But I don’t think anywhere feels like home, really. When I went over, everyone expected me to come right back. It wasn’t the sort of thing you did. Now everyone on TV relocation shows are going over there, without any ideas of the language or integration at all. They know fuck-all about the culture. What we have here is a standard of living, but no quality of life. That twat Blair talks about the sanctity and value of human life and it’s a falsity on all counts. They really don’t give a fuck. It’s why the Health Service is a mess, and why they can waltz into countries in the name of peace, democracy and freedom and blow people to shit, like a badly arranged butcher’s shop. There’s a specific song on the new album - “The Sell-By Date”. Is that how you felt when you came back to Britain in 1998? It was like returning to a country that’d been through a war. When I left in ’89, the recession was about to happen. I used to come back occasionally and see that English people were pasty, unhealthy-looking and the place was falling to pieces. It was shabby, with an air of hopelessness. Nobody had any money. The pubs were full of giant-screen sports TV, trying to get people back into the pubs. And I felt guilty for missing all that, but I had my own recession. I was doing a lot of gigs in Europe and it was kind of hand-to-mouth. But when I came back for good, I could feel it wasn’t the England I knew. So I think “The Sell-By Date” is all of that finally coming out. Other songs, like “Local” and “Continuity Girl”, seem to be about saying goodbye to the past There’s a lot of that and it’s the same with the music. I’ve never wanted to keep repeating the same thing, keep moving forward. It’s just that sometimes you don’t know how to move forward. I like the instrumental stuff especially, because I thought I didn’t dare do that because I wasn’t a good enough musician. But I got a cheap sampler, took things apart, deconstructed, hacked around. “33s & 45s”, in particular, is irresistible. A celebration of your record collection, in fact When you go through any kind of a break-up, you almost have to redefine yourself, reinstate yourself. When you come out of a relationship, you’re uprooted one way or another. And your record collection is your identity. It’s like the first record you ever bought, in my case Are You Experienced? by The Jimi Hendrix Experience. Every record you’ve ever bought tells a story, whether they come from a car-boot sale or whatever. What about future plans? In the last eighteen months – since the last time I moved house – I’ve put out three albums and a book, which isn’t bad going. I’ve just been recording with Andrew Weatherall and Two Lone Swordsmen. They do a very humanised version of techno these days, where they keep all the mistakes. They have a randomness that I like. It suits me.

Since hijacking the mainstream charts with 1977’s anthemic “Whole Wide World”, Newhaven’s Eric Goulden has had a turbulent ride. Riddled with alcoholism, he quit the music biz in 1980, before returning with Captains Of Industry and excellent garage-punksters The Len Bright Combo in the mid-‘80’s. After the sobering up came a nervous breakdown, and by the end of the decade, he’d settled in France, gigging steadily. Back in Blighty by 1998, recent years have seen successful tours, his first volume of autobiography (2003’s riveting A Dysfunctional Success) and now, with new LP Bungalow Hi, the record of his life. UNCUT catches him at home, chowing down on tea and biscuits.

UNCUT: Did writing A Dysfunctional Success finally close the door on a certain chapter in your life?

GOULDEN: I just wanted it finished and out of the way. I was despairing of it by the end. The honesty of the book was good for me. You don’t have to be carrying stuff around with you anymore because you’ve said it. I don’t see it as therapy, that’s more of a private thing. I remember, seven or eight years ago – when I’d first written some stuff – I was travelling around Germany doing readings and people seemed to respond to it. But then some horrible git came up to me in a sub-New Romantic costume and futuristic spectacles and said “I don’t see why I should have to be subjected to your mid-life crisis”. So I hit him.

Looking back at the Stiff years, you once told me you got disillusioned very quickly

The start of it was very exciting. I loved the thing about Jamaican records, where they’d have a basement where they’d make the records and a pressing plant upstairs and, between the two, they’d have a shop. They’d record the thing, then the next day it’d be on sale as a white label. And Stiff had that vibe to begin with. But after Jake Riviera, it all changed. The establishment moved in. Suddenly, nobody ever had time to sit down and find out about you. It was a million miles from where I came in and I became embarrassed by what I was doing. I used to try and deny all the bad reviews, but I think those people who slagged off my records had more idea about what was going on than Stiff did. For a long time, I could hardly look at the reviews – not because they were unfair – but because I couldn’t face how I was at the time.

After your nervous breakdown, you quit Britain for France. What was the main difference?

The first thing about France was, it cured my depression. I used to suffer from severe depression, then I think I started to eat better. That’s got a lot to do with your state of mind. I learned to live with myself there and discovered quality of life. French society’s quite introverted in a way. The shutters go up at night and people tend to stay in, go to bed early. So for someone like me, it was isolating. I think everyone should do it. Get away from the hysteria. The good thing is that you learn to live with yourself and get to know yourself better. When you’re creative, it’s important to do that. You look at singers choosing personas which just don’t fit. Everyone’s got their own idea of self-image. I mean, I’m a bit like James Bond in my head and then I suddenly realise I’m not that at all, it’s just a boyhood dream. I’d love to be suave, tall and sophisticated – God’s gift to humanity. But I’m white, middle-aged and slightly overweight. Bugger!

Did you miss England?

Not at all. I did miss my friends and felt really out-of-touch with what was going on. I wasn’t able to carry on doing what I do over there, otherwise I would still be there. I miss a lot of things about France. I sort of became a French person. But I don’t think anywhere feels like home, really. When I went over, everyone expected me to come right back. It wasn’t the sort of thing you did. Now everyone on TV relocation shows are going over there, without any ideas of the language or integration at all. They know fuck-all about the culture. What we have here is a standard of living, but no quality of life. That twat Blair talks about the sanctity and value of human life and it’s a falsity on all counts. They really don’t give a fuck. It’s why the Health Service is a mess, and why they can waltz into countries in the name of peace, democracy and freedom and blow people to shit, like a badly arranged butcher’s shop.

There’s a specific song on the new album – “The Sell-By Date”. Is that how you felt when you came back to Britain in 1998?

It was like returning to a country that’d been through a war. When I left in ’89, the recession was about to happen. I used to come back occasionally and see that English people were pasty, unhealthy-looking and the place was falling to pieces. It was shabby, with an air of hopelessness. Nobody had any money. The pubs were full of giant-screen sports TV, trying to get people back into the pubs. And I felt guilty for missing all that, but I had my own recession. I was doing a lot of gigs in Europe and it was kind of hand-to-mouth. But when I came back for good, I could feel it wasn’t the England I knew. So I think “The Sell-By Date” is all of that finally coming out.

Other songs, like “Local” and “Continuity Girl”, seem to be about saying goodbye to the past

There’s a lot of that and it’s the same with the music. I’ve never wanted to keep repeating the same thing, keep moving forward. It’s just that sometimes you don’t know how to move forward. I like the instrumental stuff especially, because I thought I didn’t dare do that because I wasn’t a good enough musician. But I got a cheap sampler, took things apart, deconstructed, hacked around.

“33s & 45s”, in particular, is irresistible. A celebration of your record collection, in fact

When you go through any kind of a break-up, you almost have to redefine yourself, reinstate yourself. When you come out of a relationship, you’re uprooted one way or another. And your record collection is your identity. It’s like the first record you ever bought, in my case Are You Experienced? by The Jimi Hendrix Experience. Every record you’ve ever bought tells a story, whether they come from a car-boot sale or whatever.

What about future plans?

In the last eighteen months – since the last time I moved house – I’ve put out three albums and a book, which isn’t bad going. I’ve just been recording with Andrew Weatherall and Two Lone Swordsmen. They do a very humanised version of techno these days, where they keep all the mistakes. They have a randomness that I like. It suits me.

Interview: Tim Robbins

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UNCUT: Your controversial new play Embedded, now running in London and LA, is highly critical of the US media’s pro-war bias. Surely their reporting has sharpened up since the Abu Ghraib torture revelations? ROBBINS: They reported on Abu Ghraib, but that was only because the pictures were out on ...

UNCUT: Your controversial new play Embedded, now running in London and LA, is highly critical of the US media’s pro-war bias. Surely their reporting has sharpened up since the Abu Ghraib torture revelations?

ROBBINS: They reported on Abu Ghraib, but that was only because the pictures were out on the internet. That is where the story broke! Not to have reported it at that point would have shown how much they were in the pockets of the administration. But as soon as the handover happened, the war dropped off the front page. As far as I’m concerned, I don’t understand why they’re not calling to impeach Bush! It seems as if we were led into war with weapons of mass deception. Compare that to the amount of ink and newsreel spent on Bill Clinton when he lied about an affair. It’s surreal that we would impeach a president who lied to save his marriage, but we won’t impeach one who lied and it resulted in 15,000 Iraqi civilians dying and nearly 1000 American deaths. And an increase in terrorism! Why isn’t this man being held accountable?

You dedicated the film version of Embedded to Joe Strummer. What’s the connection?

I didn’t know him very well, I met him a couple of times. But I loved his music and I loved his approach to art. While I was writing Embedded I started playing a bunch of old Clash albums, so the

spirit of him was kind of with me at that time. When the Actors Gang started aorund 1982 we were all Clash fans, and we approached theatre the way you’d approach a punk rock concert. We really believed theatre could be infused with a new energy and commitment, and an attempt to portray stories in a way that’s entertaining, which is something Joe was amazing at doing – with beautiful music, incredible tunes and great musicianship. You hear a line like ‘Spanish bombs in Andalucia’, and you go, ‘What’s Andalucia?’ If you can widen the horizons of a person listening to your music or seeing you in the theatre, isn’t that the whole purpose? But the only way you can do that is to first understand what good rock’n’roll is, and Joe did.

You made some angry public statements last year after the Baseball Hall of Fame cancelled your Bull Durham memorial appearance because of your anti-war views. Were you surprised more of your Hollywood liberal friends did not speak up to defend your free speech rights?

Hollywood is full of closet Republicans, and also you’re sometimes not sure who your friends are. When the whole Bull Durham controversy happened there were three people who came very vociferously to our support, all either very conservative Democrats or Republicans: Clint Eastwood, Kevin Costner and Jack Valenti. And how many liberals? I didn’t see any. So I am not one that makes a judgement on someone because they are Republican. I know enough Republicans that are decent people, they love their families, we might have differences of opinion but we can find common ground. And Clint is not really a Republican, he’s a libertarian. I thought I was going to meet Dirty Harry but he’s a sweet, gentle, decent person. And here’s a way to tell – look at his crew. There are people that have been with him for years and years. He’s a loyal, honourable man. That’s what’s important. It doesn’t matter what your politics are if you’re an asshole. You have to find a way to coexist with everybody.

John Peel (1939-2004)

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Peel's impact upon British popular music of the last 30 years is simply immeasurable. In the 1960s he championed Jimi Hendrix, Cream and the psychedelic underground of Pink Floyd and Marc Bolan's Tyrannosaurus Rex. In the 1970s he was the only Radio 1 DJ brave enough to play The Sex Pistols' "Anarchy In The UK" on air and became a fearless champion of punk rock. In the 1980s he proved crucial in furthering the careers of bands such as The Smiths, Joy Division, Echo & The Bunnymen, The Jesus & Mary Chain and not least The Fall. Even into the ‘90s and beyond, he proved just as important in promoting hitherto unknown US groups such as Nirvana and The White Stripes. Peel was born John Robert Parker Ravenscroft in Heartfield near Liverpool in 1939. In spite of his public schooling, Peel traded on his Scouse roots in the ‘60s by becoming a DJ in Dallas at the height of Beatlemania. During his time there, he was an eye witness to the JFK assassination. He resumed his broadcasting career in London when returning to the UK at the end of the ‘60s, presenting the BBC's Top Gear and seminal hippy show The Perfumed Garden. By the mid ‘70s, John Peel had become a staple of night time Radio 1, breaking new groups and providing a platform for all manner of uncommercial esoterica deemed inappropriate for daytime schedulers. From reggae and punk to techno, world music and hardcore thrash metal, Peel never flinched at the shock of the new. Rather he championed it and introduced successive generations to the sounds that would, literally, shape their lives. Among the thousands of musicians to benefit from Peel's patronage is Mike Joyce, drummer with The Smiths who recorded 4 sessions for his programme between 1983 and '86 and twice topped his annual listeners' Festive 50 poll. "Every band needs some form of stepping stone and Peel was ours," says a devastated Joyce. "He was an intrinsic part of our success. I was only thinking about him yesterday because I found a sticker I'd kept from his surprise 50th birthday party in 1989. ‘He's bald, he's fat, he's where it's at!'. And he was. I used to feel literally humbled in his presence, one of the few people whom you felt literally lost for words. How many people must have walked up to him and said "John, if it wasn't for you"? I mean without him, The Undertones, The Buzzcocks, every band I've ever liked. It's unthinkable." "John Peel was timeless," states Joyce. "All he was interested in was the music. I only listened to his show last week and he was playing some stuff that sounded like people fighting. I thought ‘what the hell is this?'. But you just know that to somebody, somewhere, they're thinking ‘this is fantastic'. And that's what was so great about him. He cared only about the music and he never stopped. The only thing that was ever going to stop him was the grave. He was unique, he was uncompromising and if it wasn't for him, and his producer John Walters, bands like The Smiths would never have broken through. It's not that he'll be missed. He'll just never be replaced." Someone else indebted to Peel is punk legend Siouxsie Sioux who only last week filled in for Peel as guest presenter on his programme. "This news is totally unexpected and devastating," says Siouxsie. "John championed Siouxsie & The Banshees and many more when no-one else would, givingus our chance to discover what it was like to be in a studio with those early sessions. I know for a fact that those sessions were instrumental in getting us signed and releasing ‘Hong Kong Garden' as our first single in 1978." "I can't believe that it was only last week that I so enjoyed filling in for John whilst he was away," adds Siouxsie. "I was looking forward to reading his anecdotes of Peru in the paper when he got back and maybe doing it again for any of his next trips. You always knew that John said and played what he wanted, not what he was told to or ought to. A unique maverick of the radio has been lost and I feel so sad."

Peel’s impact upon British popular music of the last 30 years is simply immeasurable. In the 1960s he championed Jimi Hendrix, Cream and the psychedelic underground of Pink Floyd and Marc Bolan’s Tyrannosaurus Rex. In the 1970s he was the only Radio 1 DJ brave enough to play The Sex Pistols’ “Anarchy In The UK” on air and became a fearless champion of punk rock. In the 1980s he proved crucial in furthering the careers of bands such as The Smiths, Joy Division, Echo & The Bunnymen, The Jesus & Mary Chain and not least The Fall. Even into the ‘90s and beyond, he proved just as important in promoting hitherto unknown US groups such as Nirvana and The White Stripes.

Peel was born John Robert Parker Ravenscroft in Heartfield near Liverpool in 1939. In spite of his public schooling, Peel traded on his Scouse roots in the ‘60s by becoming a DJ in Dallas at the height of Beatlemania. During his time there, he was an eye witness to the JFK assassination. He resumed his broadcasting career in London when returning to the UK at the end of the ‘60s, presenting the BBC’s Top Gear and seminal hippy show The Perfumed Garden. By the mid ‘70s, John Peel had become a staple of night time Radio 1, breaking new groups and providing a platform for all manner of uncommercial esoterica deemed inappropriate for daytime schedulers. From reggae and punk to techno, world music and hardcore thrash metal, Peel never flinched at the shock of the new. Rather he championed it and introduced successive generations to the sounds that would, literally, shape their lives.

Among the thousands of musicians to benefit from Peel’s patronage is Mike Joyce, drummer with The Smiths who recorded 4 sessions for his programme between 1983 and ’86 and twice topped his annual listeners’ Festive 50 poll.

“Every band needs some form of stepping stone and Peel was ours,” says a devastated Joyce. “He was an intrinsic part of our success. I was only thinking about him yesterday because I found a sticker I’d kept from his surprise 50th birthday party in 1989. ‘He’s bald, he’s fat, he’s where it’s at!’. And he was. I used to feel literally humbled in his presence, one of the few people whom you felt literally lost for words. How many people must have walked up to him and said “John, if it wasn’t for you”? I mean without him, The Undertones, The Buzzcocks, every band I’ve ever liked. It’s unthinkable.”

“John Peel was timeless,” states Joyce. “All he was interested in was the music. I only listened to his show last week and he was playing some stuff that sounded like people fighting. I thought ‘what the hell is this?’. But you just know that to somebody, somewhere, they’re thinking ‘this is fantastic’. And that’s what was so great about him. He cared only about the music and he never stopped. The only thing that was ever going to stop him was the grave. He was unique, he was uncompromising and if it wasn’t for him, and his producer John Walters, bands like The Smiths would never have broken through. It’s not that he’ll be missed. He’ll just never be replaced.”

Someone else indebted to Peel is punk legend Siouxsie Sioux who only last week filled in for Peel as guest presenter on his programme. “This news is totally unexpected and devastating,” says Siouxsie. “John championed Siouxsie & The Banshees and many more when no-one else would, givingus our chance to discover what it was like to be in a studio with those early sessions. I know for a fact that those sessions were instrumental in getting us signed and releasing ‘Hong Kong Garden’ as our first single in 1978.”

“I can’t believe that it was only last week that I so enjoyed filling in for John whilst he was away,” adds Siouxsie. “I was looking forward to reading his anecdotes of Peru in the paper when he got back and maybe doing it again for any of his next trips. You always knew that John said and played what he wanted, not what he was told to or ought to. A unique maverick of the radio has been lost and I feel so sad.”

Ed Hamell’s Letter From New York

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5th November 2004

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Ed Hamell – aka one-man folk-punk-poet-rock’n’roll protest singer Hamell On Trial and Uncut’s man in NYC – on the Republicans in New York and wild scenes in Alaska. Of course the big news here in NY after Little Steven's Underground Garage Fest was the Republicans coming to town for the big National Convention. Which meant much stress and tension in light of security measures, 60 million dollars worth. There are terrorists lurking in every nook and cranny according to the media, and many would like to get their hands around George Bush's neck and strangle the life right out of him. And that's just the Americans. Can only imagine what the foreigners feel. To pacify the locals Mayor Bloomberg issues a "Peaceful Protester's Discount", (I'm not kidding here), and in select retail outlets if you have your officially issued card you'll receive a 20% discount. As you know, I sell CDs at my show but I won't be honouring that card. If you have your Malcolm X "By Any Means Necessary" card, I'll be giving a whopping 50% off. Jakey enjoys protesting at the convention for a couple of reasons - he's no fan of the current administration and he likes meeting the militant babes. Particularly the Pro-Choice ones, because as he says, "You know they're fucking." I meet Jakey at the tattoo parlour. Times have been tough for Jakey lately, because he's constantly having his Libertines tattoo changed depending on Pete's status. He's in, he's out, he's in, Jakey’s arm looks like raw hamburger. He's in a foul mood and wants to spit on riot gear. Pockets bulging with smoke bombs, stink gas, a laminated "Bush's head on a pole" sign, flare guns, we head to Madison Square Garden but get as far as 14th Street where we're herded to the sidewalk. Jakey starts yelling "Kill the Pigs" which does not ingratiate him to the gendarmes. I manage to escape and watch Jakey get hauled off with a few hundred others and charged with "civil disobedience". I see Jakey later on the news, handcuffed to a beautiful brunette college student so I figure he's okay. More surreal than that was seeing Arnold Schwarzenegger during his speech credit Richard Nixon for inspiring him to become a Republican. You know, the same Richard Nixon that disgraced the office of the presidency and sent thousands of innocents to their death during the Vietnam war. Needless to say, the Convention erupted in cheers. "If Adolf Hitler flew in today, they'd send a limousine anyway," as Joe Strummer sang. Yeesh. I fly out the next morning for a tour of Alaska. I wasn't aware that Alaska is a Republican state, but as I'm told: "It's always been a rape and run place." As usual, I preach to the converted - but Good Lord, they sure are enthusiastic. Kodiak particularly was like a scene from a Wild West movie. It was their first day off in 47 days and from the first chord they went bullshit. It was good to get away. I brought my new Lenny Bruce box set and I remain amused, optimistic, fearful, energetic and disgusted. You know, like our favourite rock music.

Ed Hamell – aka one-man folk-punk-poet-rock’n’roll protest singer Hamell On Trial and Uncut’s man in NYC – on the Republicans in New York and wild scenes in Alaska.

Of course the big news here in NY after Little Steven’s Underground Garage Fest was the Republicans coming to town for the big National Convention. Which meant much stress and tension in light of security measures, 60 million dollars worth. There are terrorists lurking in every nook and cranny according to the media, and many would like to get their hands around George Bush’s neck and strangle the life right out of him. And that’s just the Americans. Can only imagine what the foreigners feel.

To pacify the locals Mayor Bloomberg issues a “Peaceful Protester’s Discount”, (I’m not kidding here), and in select retail outlets if you have your officially issued card you’ll receive a 20% discount. As you know, I sell CDs at my show but I won’t be honouring that card. If you have your Malcolm X “By Any Means Necessary” card, I’ll be giving a whopping 50% off. Jakey enjoys protesting at the convention for a couple of reasons – he’s no fan of the current administration and he likes meeting the militant babes. Particularly the Pro-Choice ones, because as he says, “You know they’re fucking.”

I meet Jakey at the tattoo parlour. Times have been tough for Jakey lately, because he’s constantly having his Libertines tattoo changed depending on Pete’s status. He’s in, he’s out, he’s in, Jakey’s arm looks like raw hamburger. He’s in a foul mood and wants to spit on riot gear. Pockets bulging with smoke bombs, stink gas, a laminated “Bush’s head on a pole” sign, flare guns, we head to Madison Square Garden but get as far as 14th Street where we’re herded to the sidewalk.

Jakey starts yelling “Kill the Pigs” which does not ingratiate him to the gendarmes. I manage to escape and watch Jakey get hauled off with a few hundred others and charged with “civil disobedience”. I see Jakey later on the news, handcuffed to a beautiful brunette college student so I figure he’s okay.

More surreal than that was seeing Arnold Schwarzenegger during his speech credit Richard Nixon for inspiring him to become a Republican. You know, the same Richard Nixon that disgraced the office of the presidency and sent thousands of innocents to their death during the Vietnam war. Needless to say, the Convention erupted in cheers. “If Adolf Hitler flew in today, they’d send a limousine anyway,” as Joe Strummer sang. Yeesh.

I fly out the next morning for a tour of Alaska. I wasn’t aware that Alaska is a Republican state, but as I’m told: “It’s always been a rape and run place.” As usual, I preach to the converted – but Good Lord, they sure are enthusiastic. Kodiak particularly was like a scene from a Wild West movie. It was their first day off in 47 days and from the first chord they went bullshit. It was good to get away. I brought my new Lenny Bruce box set and I remain amused, optimistic, fearful, energetic and disgusted.

You know, like our favourite rock music.

Interview: Richard Kelly

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5th November 2004

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UNCUT: Donnie Darko is already a cult classic with a huge fan-base. Why re-cut it? KELLY: Because we lost so much material first time round, during the editing process. We had to cut it down to under two hours for a theatrical release. And it worked, beautifully too, but there were always things th...

UNCUT: Donnie Darko is already a cult classic with a huge fan-base. Why re-cut it?

KELLY: Because we lost so much material first time round, during the editing process. We had to cut it down to under two hours for a theatrical release. And it worked, beautifully too, but there were always things that I was very unhappy with.

Such as?

The theatrical cut operates on a very esoteric David Lynch level, which is valid, but I always had in mind a more provocative version that operates as a science fiction fable.

Is it true that producer/co-star Drew Barrymore only paid you $9,000?

Drew’s company didn’t put up the cash, they helped us get finance. But I got paid more than $9,000 dollars. It was somewhere between fifty and sixty thousand.

Patrick Swayze famously said that he wanted you, with this film, to ‘take a torch to his image.’ Is there a fine line between taking a torch and taking the piss?

Oh yeah, taking the piss is a much more valid way to describe it. I hear what you’re saying. But I think Patrick was really brave in this role. Hilariously so.

What did you think of Jonathan Glazer’s giant rabbit in Sexy Beast, which isn’t unlike Frank in Donnie Darko?

I was intrigued. Because I saw it, and then I saw the rabbit in Cabin Fever, and I thought that it was just a bizarre coincidence, or it was about the power of rabbits in dream culture. Or maybe there was just something in the water.

You’re currently in demand as a white-hot writer-for-hire. Is there a conflict between writing gigs and your ambitions as a director?

So far I’ve been fortunate enough to work with specific directors – The likes of Tony Scott [on the bounty hunter flick Domino] and Jonathan Mostow [the thriller House At The End Of The Street]. So it’s not as if I’m working with studio executives and it’s filmmaking by committee. It’s quite a difference when you have a 600 lb gorilla like Tony Scott in the room to protect you.

What is the legacy of Donnie Darko, besides an overplayed Christmas number one?

The legacy for me can become frustrating at times, especially as I’m trying to get bigger and bigger projects off the ground. Because in the US Donnie Darko is still seen as a cult item. And when the studios see me as a cult director it doesn’t get them too excited about writing me a cheque for $20 million.

And the “Mad World” track?

You know, I’m glad for Gary [Jules] that it went to number one, but it was meant to be this quiet little song at the end of the movie. Then it goes to number one, it gets so overplayed, so bombarded, that it really starts to bother you.

I hear there’s also a collaboration in the pipeline, with Pi’s Darren Aronofsky on Kurt Vonnegut’s apocalyptic novel, Cat’s Cradle.

I’ve just finished the first draft. I’m actually referring to it right now as Ice 9, the name of the substance in the book, because it’s a pretty liberal adaptation of Vonnegut’s novel. It’s a difficult novel to adapt, pretty schizophrenic structurally, so I’ve tried to be faithful to the essence of it, with the humour and the satire and the ideas, but it’s a pretty liberal adaptation. I’m suggesting that it’s called Ice 9, but the script is in the hands of producer Leonardo DiCaprio and his people, so I have no control over these things.

Interview: Bjork

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5th November 2004

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Uncut: Medulla was recorded in eighteen different locations including New York, San Francisco, La Gomera, Venice, Reykjavik, Salvador and Chateau Marmont. Bjork: It sounds complicated, but it was actually really simple. I had an engineer with me most of the time and we just set up a portable comput...

Uncut: Medulla was recorded in eighteen different locations including New York, San Francisco, La Gomera, Venice, Reykjavik, Salvador and Chateau Marmont.

Bjork: It sounds complicated, but it was actually really simple. I had an engineer with me most of the time and we just set up a portable computer wherever we went. Ninety percent of this album was probably recorded in bedrooms and hotel rooms between cooking and talking and chilling out with mates. It wasn’t until the mixing stage that we actually went into a fancy studio and started messing around with Pro Tools

What inspired you to use the timbres and textures of the human voice as the main instrument?

It wasn’t planned. With Vespertine and some of my earlier albums I set myself certain goals and objectives, but with this album the only plan was to do what I wanted and have total freedom. I started laying down some beats and melodies with Matmos, but for some reason they just sounded flat and one dimensional. It wasn’t until I stripped the songs down to the raw vocals that I realised they worked better without the instruments. After that, I decided ‘Fuck strings and synthesizers and sixty piece orchestras, I’m going to make an album that’s made entirely from voices’.

Both ‘Vokura’ and ‘Where Is The Line’ sound so layered and dramatic, they verge on operatic…

I kept hearing ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ in my head when I was editing those and I think they have the same epic playfulness. I don’t know if other people will detect the humour, but I think they’re both really funny songs. There’s something impressive and ridiculous about them.

Mark Bell, Mike Patton, Robert Wyatt, Japanese accapella Dokaka, Inuit throat singer Tanya Tagaq Gillis and human beatbox Rahzel all guest on the album.

Yeah, they all fell into place one by one. I’d already worked with Tanya and Mark Bell on the Vespertine tour and Mike Patton introduced me to Dokaka and Rahzel. When I realised the album was becoming a vocal record the musical fascist in me decided using any MCs or vocal percussionists would be too cheesy. I changed my mind when I saw Rahzel freestyle a whole Kraftwerk track without pausing for breath. He came to the studio to lay some beats a few days later and ended up singing on the whole album. Everytime he tried to leave I’d beg him ‘Just one more, just one more!’

The beats on ‘Who Is It’ sound so deep you could mistake them for Aphex Twin or Autechre.

I know, his noises sound so electronic Warp should commission him to do a covers album. Amazingly, ‘Who Is It’ was the first track we recorded together. He just walked into the studio, picked up the mic and did it in one take.

Did you encourage the other vocalists to improvise as much as possible?

I used different methods with each person, but I encouraged everyone to express themselves and imagine they were a human drum loop or bassline. I also got the Icelandic choir to pretend to be insects and birds and other ancient creature. The difficult job was sitting at the computer afterwards deciding what to edit. I had so much material I’d say 80% of the time spent on this album was pure editing. Sometimes I just needed to swap chunks around, other times I had to add vocals from one track to another or strip everything down to a couple of notes. As much as everyone delivered live performances, there was a lot of weaving and layering needed to bring the whole album together.

What was it like working with the legendary Robert Wyatt on ‘Submarine’ and ‘Oceania’?

Incredible. We set up a little system in his home studio, recorded a couple of tracks, then stayed up all night talking and drinking red wine. He played me some amazing bebop Sun Ra recorded in the early 60s and I deejayed some DAF and Brian Eno tracks from my laptop. It was a wonderful experience and I feel very lucky to have met him and his wife Alfie. They’re both really talented people that have created their own little universe away from the world.

One of the recurring themes throughout the album seems to be the quest for love.

I wasn’t aware of that when I was recording it, but I guess ‘Triumph Of A Heart’ and ‘Pleasure Is All Mine’ are about love. The rest of the songs are about ancestry and trying to go back to the core of civilization before religion and terrorism and George Bush. Living in New York post 9/11 I was repulsed by the racism and patriotism that swept through America and the way I survived it was by encouraging my friends to switch off their TVs and stereos and just sing together. One of us would do the beat, another the bassline and so on. It sounds naff, but it felt very liberating.

You lived in London for a large part of the ’90s. Do you ever miss it?

Definitely. I miss the music, the people and the feeling of acceptance. When I was a teenager in Iceland people would throw rocks and shout abuse at me because they thought I was weird. I never got that in London no matter where I went or what I wore. The English press were also the first to embrace The Sugarcubes. I don’t know where it stems from, but I think the English have a real appetite for difference and eccentricity.

Do you ever dig out your old Sugarcubes records?

Occasionally when I’m feeling sentimental. The interesting thing about compiling the Family Tree box set was that it made me realise just how much material I’d produced over the last decade and a half. Some of it sounds a little old and musky now, but most of it still sounds quite fresh and exciting. Like others artists, I sometimes fall into the trap of doing what I think I should be doing rather than what I want to be doing and listening to my back catalogue reminded me I should just follow my heart and be spontaneous.

Interview: Sarah-Jane

Medulla is released 30 August on One Little Indian.

Aliens Vs Predator

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1st November 2004

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Already a comic and a computer game, this extra-terrestrial smack down from Mortal Kombat and Resident Evil director Paul WS Anderson is a murky, unsatisfying mess. Lance Henriksen?playing the human antecedent to the Bishop android from Aliens and Alien 3, and easily the best thing here?is a billionaire industrialist who leads a team of archaeologists into a pyramid buried beneath Antarctica. There they discover Predators have been breeding Aliens to fight their young warriors as part of a rites-of-passage initiation. Naturally, the humans become cannon fodder, caught up in the bloody combat between these two warring species, and Anderson's movie stumbles incoherently from one poorly executed battle sequence to another. The sets are too gloomy and the aliens too gloopy; slime, acid blood and all manner of mucus splatters the screen. Anderson clearly riffs on James Cameron's Aliens, but possesses none of the imagination or intelligence to elevate this beyond a bargain basement thrill, devoid of shocks or style.

Already a comic and a computer game, this extra-terrestrial smack down from Mortal Kombat and Resident Evil director Paul WS Anderson is a murky, unsatisfying mess. Lance Henriksen?playing the human antecedent to the Bishop android from Aliens and Alien 3, and easily the best thing here?is a billionaire industrialist who leads a team of archaeologists into a pyramid buried beneath Antarctica. There they discover Predators have been breeding Aliens to fight their young warriors as part of a rites-of-passage initiation. Naturally, the humans become cannon fodder, caught up in the bloody combat between these two warring species, and Anderson’s movie stumbles incoherently from one poorly executed battle sequence to another. The sets are too gloomy and the aliens too gloopy; slime, acid blood and all manner of mucus splatters the screen. Anderson clearly riffs on James Cameron’s Aliens, but possesses none of the imagination or intelligence to elevate this beyond a bargain basement thrill, devoid of shocks or style.

Finding Neverland

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1st November 2004

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On paper, Finding Neverland sounds like a typical Miramax period movie. Johnny Depp tries out yet another of his accents, this time as Peter Pan author JM Barrie, and Kate Winslet looks on lovingly in an Edwardian frock. But take a look and you'll see it's not anywhere near as sugary as it sounds. It's suffused with melancholy and haunted by death, as is Barrie's original play. The story tracks how Barrie came to write it, inspired by the widow Sylvia Llewelyn Davies (Winslet) and her brood of four sons whom he befriends in a London park one day, out for a stroll to escape his social-climbing wife (Radha Mitchell). Although his bond with the family is platonic, rumours start swirling, suggesting his feelings for the widow?or even the boys! ?may not be strictly innocent. Depp underplays for once, letting the younger cast shine the more, especially Freddie Highmore as Peter Llewelyn Davies. Grainily shot with handheld cameras, it hardly looks like a costume drama and has the same pained honesty as Marc Forster's previous film, Monster's Ball.

On paper, Finding Neverland sounds like a typical Miramax period movie. Johnny Depp tries out yet another of his accents, this time as Peter Pan author JM Barrie, and Kate Winslet looks on lovingly in an Edwardian frock. But take a look and you’ll see it’s not anywhere near as sugary as it sounds. It’s suffused with melancholy and haunted by death, as is Barrie’s original play. The story tracks how Barrie came to write it, inspired by the widow Sylvia Llewelyn Davies (Winslet) and her brood of four sons whom he befriends in a London park one day, out for a stroll to escape his social-climbing wife (Radha Mitchell). Although his bond with the family is platonic, rumours start swirling, suggesting his feelings for the widow?or even the boys! ?may not be strictly innocent. Depp underplays for once, letting the younger cast shine the more, especially Freddie Highmore as Peter Llewelyn Davies. Grainily shot with handheld cameras, it hardly looks like a costume drama and has the same pained honesty as Marc Forster’s previous film, Monster’s Ball.

Radio On

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1st November 2004

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In 1979 Chris Petit made one of the most atypical British films of all time. Heavily influenced by US noir and the European wanderings of Wim Wenders (the associate producer) and Godard, yet it distils a very English despair and sense of dislocation. Despite a soundtrack laced with Low-era Bowie, Kraftwerk and Stiff Records stars, its perverse, introverted slowness failed to chime with its intended audience and it's since lain fallow, forgotten. This reissue suggests we may now be angst-ridden enough to embrace it. Its morose anti-hero (David Beames) is a graveyard shift DJ at a biscuit factory. Informed that his brother has died, he leaves London for Bristol to find out more. On the motorway he meets a series of oddballs: an army deserter, a garage attendant who's into Eddie Cochran (a young Sting). Arriving, he interacts with glum women, gets drunk and existential. Less happens than this synopsis suggests, but the monochrome melancholy and rain will strike a chord with anyone who's into Hopper, Ballard or always crashing in the same car. Turn on, tune in, mope out.

In 1979 Chris Petit made one of the most atypical British films of all time. Heavily influenced by US noir and the European wanderings of Wim Wenders (the associate producer) and Godard, yet it distils a very English despair and sense of dislocation. Despite a soundtrack laced with Low-era Bowie, Kraftwerk and Stiff Records stars, its perverse, introverted slowness failed to chime with its intended audience and it’s since lain fallow, forgotten. This reissue suggests we may now be angst-ridden enough to embrace it. Its morose anti-hero (David Beames) is a graveyard shift DJ at a biscuit factory. Informed that his brother has died, he leaves London for Bristol to find out more. On the motorway he meets a series of oddballs: an army deserter, a garage attendant who’s into Eddie Cochran (a young Sting). Arriving, he interacts with glum women, gets drunk and existential. Less happens than this synopsis suggests, but the monochrome melancholy and rain will strike a chord with anyone who’s into Hopper, Ballard or always crashing in the same car. Turn on, tune in, mope out.

Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow

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1st November 2004

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Computer whiz Kerry Conran's retro fantasia is, quite literally, an art deco cartoon brought to life, following the adventures of the eponymous P-40 fighter pilot (Jude Law) and his battle against the evil Dr Totenkopf's super-robots. On the plus side, Conran's CGI-created opus is a thing of technical beauty laced with clever homages to pop culture classics, referencing everything form Max Fleischer's Superman cartoons to The Shape Of Things To Come, The Island Of Dr Moreau and The Wizard Of Oz. On the negative side, the dialogue lacks the wry humour of Indiana Jones, while Law and Gwyneth Paltrow (as love interest come sidekick) appear to have forgotten how to act. Fortunately, the pace never lets up, and it kicks into overdrive when Angelina Jolie, as the commander of an amphibious squadron, replete with eye patch, ushers in a rollicking climax. All in all, it seems churlish to take issue with such a beautifully realised slice of classic pulp adventure. Particularly when the fearless hero is?at last? an Englishman.

Computer whiz Kerry Conran’s retro fantasia is, quite literally, an art deco cartoon brought to life, following the adventures of the eponymous P-40 fighter pilot (Jude Law) and his battle against the evil Dr Totenkopf’s super-robots. On the plus side, Conran’s CGI-created opus is a thing of technical beauty laced with clever homages to pop culture classics, referencing everything form Max Fleischer’s Superman cartoons to The Shape Of Things To Come, The Island Of Dr Moreau and The Wizard Of Oz. On the negative side, the dialogue lacks the wry humour of Indiana Jones, while Law and Gwyneth Paltrow (as love interest come sidekick) appear to have forgotten how to act. Fortunately, the pace never lets up, and it kicks into overdrive when Angelina Jolie, as the commander of an amphibious squadron, replete with eye patch, ushers in a rollicking climax. All in all, it seems churlish to take issue with such a beautifully realised slice of classic pulp adventure.

Particularly when the fearless hero is?at last? an Englishman.

Holy Smokers

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1st November 2004

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DIRECTED BY Jim Jarmusch STARRING Tom Waits, Iggy Pop, Jack White, Meg White, Bill Murray, Steve Coogan Opens October 22, Cert 15, 96 mins Shot chiefly in four bursts (between '86 and last year), this is Jarmusch's low-key, long-nurtured pet project: a series of short vignettes in which various c...

DIRECTED BY Jim Jarmusch

STARRING Tom Waits, Iggy Pop, Jack White, Meg White, Bill Murray, Steve Coogan

Opens October 22, Cert 15, 96 mins

Shot chiefly in four bursts (between ’86 and last year), this is Jarmusch’s low-key, long-nurtured pet project: a series of short vignettes in which various characters sit around talking. The common link is that, while they do, they’re fuelling up on caffeine and nicotine: a process which encourages cinematographers from Robby Muller to Tom DiCillo to have stylish fun with black and white. As with any set of shorts, some work better than others. The topics discussed across the table range from fame to green tea, but the success or failure of any scene lies largely with the cast. They’re nearly all names you’re curious to see, and while some are brilliantly charismatic, others fall flat on their arses. Roberto Benigni and Steven Wright get the ball rolling, very slowly. There’s comic misunderstanding as Mr Wacky and Mr Deadpan bewilder each other. Then Steve Buscemi’s explaining the true story of Elvis’ ‘disappearance’ to Mystery Train star Cinqu

Flame-Grilled

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1st November 2004

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DIRECTED BY Tony Scott STARRING Denzel Washington, Christopher Walken, Dakota Fanning, Mickey Rourke Opens October 8, Cert 18, 146 mins After the relative disappointment of 2001's underwhelming Redford/Pitt collaboration Spy Game, Tony Scott roars back to form with this gut-wrenching revenge thriller. Denzel Washington stars as John Creasy, a former black ops specialist haunted by his terrible past. Creasy winds up in Mexico City, the world capital of child abduction, working as a bodyguard for 10-year-old half-American rich-kid Pita Ramos (Fanning). A friendship of sorts develops between child and guardian as Pita breaks down Creasy's stone-faced professionalism. Redeemed by this new-found friendship, the former CIA killer becomes a caring father figure, until Pita is abducted and Creasy is left for dead. Revived in an underground hospital and confronted with the full weight of the evolving tragedy, Creasy buys a car-load of heavy weapons and dedicates what's left of his life to wiping everyone responsible off the face of the earth. Not so different, then, from last month's Punisher. But God is in the details and Brian Helgeland's taut dialogue, an A-list cast and Tony Scott's raw technical wizardry, deliver an action drama that far outstrips its genre limitations. Man On Fire clocks in at two-and-a-half hours, which enables Scott to get under the skin of his characters, devoting a solid hour to Pita and Creasy's awkward, tentative friendship. The emerging father/daughter dynamic, driven by 10-year-old Dakota Fanning's mesmerically empathic performance as Pita, makes Creasy's boundless rage in the movie's second half utterly believable and contributes a real emotional core to the hypnotic devastation that follows. Washington creates a beautifully judged performance?full of regret and suppressed emotion in the opening scenes, before dumping his good-guy persona and tearing up the screen as a furiously lethal super-assassin who just can't be stopped. Scott directs the whole package with visible relish, chucking in every piece of editing-suite trickery he can lay his hands on. Man On Fire explodes with beautifully orchestrated mayhem that's driven by a cast of fully realised characters. Never has wholesale carnage felt more dramatically justified or looked more relentlessly stylish.

DIRECTED BY Tony Scott

STARRING Denzel Washington, Christopher Walken, Dakota Fanning, Mickey Rourke

Opens October 8, Cert 18, 146 mins

After the relative disappointment of 2001’s underwhelming Redford/Pitt collaboration Spy Game, Tony Scott roars back to form with this gut-wrenching revenge thriller. Denzel Washington stars as John Creasy, a former black ops specialist haunted by his terrible past. Creasy winds up in Mexico City, the world capital of child abduction, working as a bodyguard for 10-year-old half-American rich-kid Pita Ramos (Fanning). A friendship of sorts develops between child and guardian as Pita breaks down Creasy’s stone-faced professionalism.

Redeemed by this new-found friendship, the former CIA killer becomes a caring father figure, until Pita is abducted and Creasy is left for dead. Revived in an underground hospital and confronted with the full weight of the evolving tragedy, Creasy buys a car-load of heavy weapons and dedicates what’s left of his life to wiping everyone responsible off the face of the earth. Not so different, then, from last month’s Punisher. But God is in the details and Brian Helgeland’s taut dialogue, an A-list cast and Tony Scott’s raw technical wizardry, deliver an action drama that far outstrips its genre limitations. Man On Fire clocks in at two-and-a-half hours, which enables Scott to get under the skin of his characters, devoting a solid hour to Pita and Creasy’s awkward, tentative friendship. The emerging father/daughter dynamic, driven by 10-year-old Dakota Fanning’s mesmerically empathic performance as Pita, makes Creasy’s boundless rage in the movie’s second half utterly believable and contributes a real emotional core to the hypnotic devastation that follows. Washington creates a beautifully judged performance?full of regret and suppressed emotion in the opening scenes, before dumping his good-guy persona and tearing up the screen as a furiously lethal super-assassin who just can’t be stopped. Scott directs the whole package with visible relish, chucking in every piece of editing-suite trickery he can lay his hands on.

Man On Fire explodes with beautifully orchestrated mayhem that’s driven by a cast of fully realised characters. Never has wholesale carnage felt more dramatically justified or looked more relentlessly stylish.

Saved

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1st November 2004

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There's some wicked satire in this debut from writer/director Brian Dannelly, co-produced by Michael Stipe. At American Eagle Christian High School, Hilary (Mandy Moore) domineers for Jesus. Among her serfs are Mary (Jena Malone), but when Mary gets pregnant trying to 'save' a gay boy, Hilary's flock turns against her. She bonds with other misfits?Macaulay Culkin's wheelchair-bound cynic, Patrick Fugit's skater, Jewish rebel Eva Amurri?and wages war on the pious. Feuding at the Prom ensues, while a Christian rock band plays. It's not as subversive as it believes, and in the last half-hour loses focus, copping out of offending the God squad. But the performances are feisty, and Martin Donovan's wannabe-hip preacher is a gas?"Let's kick it Jesus-style!" he exhorts. Saved begins darker and sassier than Drop Dead Gorgeous or Bring It On, but in daring to broach sensitive ground?some churches slated as locations pulled out at the last minute?conceives its own anticlimax. It can't follow through, for fear of crucifixion

There’s some wicked satire in this debut from writer/director Brian Dannelly, co-produced by Michael Stipe. At American Eagle Christian High School, Hilary (Mandy Moore) domineers for Jesus. Among her serfs are Mary (Jena Malone), but when Mary gets pregnant trying to ‘save’ a gay boy, Hilary’s flock turns against her. She bonds with other misfits?Macaulay Culkin’s wheelchair-bound cynic, Patrick Fugit’s skater, Jewish rebel Eva Amurri?and wages war on the pious. Feuding at the Prom ensues, while a Christian rock band plays. It’s not as subversive as it believes, and in the last half-hour loses focus, copping out of offending the God squad. But the performances are feisty, and Martin Donovan’s wannabe-hip preacher is a gas?”Let’s kick it Jesus-style!” he exhorts.

Saved begins darker and sassier than Drop Dead Gorgeous or Bring It On, but in daring to broach sensitive ground?some churches slated as locations pulled out at the last minute?conceives its own anticlimax. It can’t follow through, for fear of crucifixion

Into The Mirror

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1st November 2004

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Although it starts out in superior spooky fashion with an inventive murder sequence featuring, of all things, a pizza wheel, this psychological horror yarn from first-time director Seong-ho Kim quickly shifts its attentions elsewhere. A shopping centre is about to re-open following a fire five years earlier. But a series of murders?initially thought to be suicides?puts pressure on the mall's head of security Yeong-min (Yoo Ji-tae), who's already struggling with his own demons. Police procedure and Yeong-min's personal problems take up a big chunk of the film's overlong running time, with crucial revelations being so drawn out that the viewer constantly feels one step ahead of the game. Narrative frustrations aside, though, the film presents its ingredients with a real confidence, mixing the supernatural and the everyday in relatively believable fashion. It's good to see a contemporary horror film taking such care with its plot and characters, but a few extra crowd-pleasing jolts wouldn't have gone amiss.

Although it starts out in superior spooky fashion with an inventive murder sequence featuring, of all things, a pizza wheel, this psychological horror yarn from first-time director Seong-ho Kim quickly shifts its attentions elsewhere. A shopping centre is about to re-open following a fire five years earlier. But a series of murders?initially thought to be suicides?puts pressure on the mall’s head of security Yeong-min (Yoo Ji-tae), who’s already struggling with his own demons. Police procedure and Yeong-min’s personal problems take up a big chunk of the film’s overlong running time, with crucial revelations being so drawn out that the viewer constantly feels one step ahead of the game. Narrative frustrations aside, though, the film presents its ingredients with a real confidence, mixing the supernatural and the everyday in relatively believable fashion. It’s good to see a contemporary horror film taking such care with its plot and characters, but a few extra crowd-pleasing jolts wouldn’t have gone amiss.

Histoire De Marie Et Julien

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1st November 2004

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Old Nouvelle Vague warhorse Jacques Rivette resurrects a 28-year-old ghost story and transforms it into an epic paean of Parisian angst that plays like an arthouse Sixth Sense. Originally conceived in 1976 as part of a quartet that began with Duelle, but shelved soon after, ...Marie Et Julien tells ...

Old Nouvelle Vague warhorse Jacques Rivette resurrects a 28-year-old ghost story and transforms it into an epic paean of Parisian angst that plays like an arthouse Sixth Sense. Originally conceived in 1976 as part of a quartet that began with Duelle, but shelved soon after, …Marie Et Julien tells the story of clockmaker Julien (Jerzy Radziwilowicz) and his dreamy otherworldly lover Marie (Emmanuelle B

De-Lovely

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1st November 2004

0

Don't be put off by singing cameos from the likes of Robbie, Alanis, Sheryl et al: this inventive, vibrant ride through Cole Porter's life story (written by Scorsese collaborator Jay Cocks) succeeds in fusing the music's glory with both the grandeur and gutter-trawling of the man. A clever deconstruction technique has the dying Cole watching his nights and days flash before him, the mysterious Gabe (Jonathan Pryce) choreographing, from rise to fall to comeback to big reveal. It's visually sparkling. Kevin Kline, as Porter, wins you over with his commitment and sincerity. In the glittering Jazz Age he marries socialite Linda (Ashley Judd), who tolerates his gay flings as long as he keeps coming up with the goods. And these goods are greats: "Love For Sale" and "In The Still Of The Night" are wonderfully deployed. Moving to Hollywood, things hit the rocks, and Cole loses the use of his legs. Sure, De-Lovely manipulates your emotions, but, like the songs, it never insults your intelligence, giving you the grind as well as the glamour.

Don’t be put off by singing cameos from the likes of Robbie, Alanis, Sheryl et al: this inventive, vibrant ride through Cole Porter’s life story (written by Scorsese collaborator Jay Cocks) succeeds in fusing the music’s glory with both the grandeur and gutter-trawling of the man. A clever deconstruction technique has the dying Cole watching his nights and days flash before him, the mysterious Gabe (Jonathan Pryce) choreographing, from rise to fall to comeback to big reveal. It’s visually sparkling. Kevin Kline, as Porter, wins you over with his commitment and sincerity. In the glittering Jazz Age he marries socialite Linda (Ashley Judd), who tolerates his gay flings as long as he keeps coming up with the goods. And these goods are greats: “Love For Sale” and “In The Still Of The Night” are wonderfully deployed. Moving to Hollywood, things hit the rocks, and Cole loses the use of his legs. Sure, De-Lovely manipulates your emotions, but, like the songs, it never insults your intelligence, giving you the grind as well as the glamour.

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