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Disney+ unveils new Beatles ’64 doc from Martin Scorsese and David Tedeschi

Sam Richards
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Disney+ unveils new Beatles ’64 doc from Martin Scorsese and David Tedeschi

Beatles '64, an all-new documentary from producer Martin Scorsese and director David Tedeschi, will be available to stream on Disney+ from November 29.

Beatles ’64, an all-new documentary from producer Martin Scorsese and director David Tedeschi, will be available to stream on Disney+ from November 29.

According to a press release, “The film captures the electrifying moment of The Beatles’ first visit to America. Featuring never-before-seen footage of the band and the legions of young fans who helped fuel their ascendance, the film gives a rare glimpse into when The Beatles became the most influential and beloved band of all time.”

THE CURE, BRYAN FERRY, THE MC5, RADIOHEAD, KIM DEAL, PAUL WELLER AND MORE STAR IN THE NEW UNCUT – ORDER A COPY HERE

Beatles ’64 includes rare footage filmed by documentarians Albert and David Maysles, restored in 4K by Park Road Post in New Zealand. Live footage from The Beatles’ first American concert at the Coliseum in Washington, DC has been demixed by WingNut Films and remixed by Giles Martin, along with their appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show. The documentary also includes new interviews with Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, as well as fans whose lives were transformed by The Beatles.

In case you missed it, you can read all about The Beatles’ first trip to America – along with our investigation of The Beatles: 1964 US Albums In Mono box set – in the November 2024 issue of Uncut, which is still available to buy from our webstore.

Send us your questions for Joe Boyd!

Sam Richards
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Send us your questions for Joe Boyd!

When you write out Joe Boyd's biography in bullet points, it looks almost unbelievable: production manager when Dylan went electric at Newport; co-founder of London's UFO club; enabler of Britain's folk-rock boom; music supervisor for Deliverance and A Clockwork Orange; producer of Nick Drake, Nico and REM; champion of world music via his Hannibal label.

When you write out Joe Boyd’s biography in bullet points, it looks almost unbelievable: production manager when Dylan went electric at Newport; co-founder of London’s UFO club; enabler of Britain’s folk-rock boom; music supervisor for Deliverance and A Clockwork Orange; producer of Nick Drake, Nico and REM; champion of world music via his Hannibal label.

THE CURE, BRYAN FERRY, THE MC5, RADIOHEAD, KIM DEAL, PAUL WELLER AND MORE STAR IN THE NEW UNCUT – ORDER A COPY HERE

All of these experiences and more have fed into his new book, a mightily impressive tome called And The Roots Of Rhythm Remain (after a lyric from Paul Simon’s Graceland). Subtitled A Journey Through Global Music, it explores – in a series of compelling anecdotes – how Western popular music is interwoven with and indebted to cultures from all around the world.

Boyd has kindly agreed to take some time out from his current book tour to submit to a gentle grilling from you, the Uncut readers. So what do you want to ask this font of all musical knowledge? Send your questions to audiencewith@uncut.co.uk and Joe will answer the best ones in a future issue of Uncut.

THE CURE, BRYAN FERRY, THE MC5, RADIOHEAD, KIM DEAL, PAUL WELLER AND MORE STAR IN THE NEW UNCUT – ORDER A COPY HERE

Introducing the new Uncut CD – curated by Kim Deal!

Sam Richards
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Introducing the new Uncut CD – curated by Kim Deal!

The new issue of Uncut – in UK shops from today or available to order direct from us by clicking here – comes with a FREE 14-track CD curated by none other than the legendary Pixie, Breeder and now solo artist, Kim Deal.

The new issue of Uncut – in UK shops from today or available to order direct from us by clicking here – comes with a FREE 14-track CD curated by none other than the legendary Pixie, Breeder and now solo artist, Kim Deal.

“I don’t know if it’s a driving compilation,” she explains. “But that might be good, because if it’s a real CD then a lot of readers might listen to it in their cars…”

Read on for our track-by-track guide…

1 Joy Division
Warsaw
Kim kicks off with the opening track from the Manchester crew’s debut EP, “An Ideal For Living”. Here are Joy Division at their punkiest, with Ian Curtis sneering and Bernard Sumner’s guitar slashing and savage. Stephen Morris’s innovative drum beat points towards their future, though.

2 Th’ Faith Healers
This Time
One-time support act to The Breeders, this London group were bizarrely called ‘baggy metal’ back in the early ’90s – listening from 2024, though, this track, taken from their 1992 debut Lido, sounds like an impossibly cool and feral collision of Neu! and The Stooges. A rediscovery is definitely overdue.

3 Omertà
Kremer & Bergeret
A psychedelic group from the modern-day French underground, Omertà use two bass guitars to anchor their Gainsbourg funk grooves and Tortoise-esque post-rock keyboards, but it’s Florence Giroud’s voice that calmly mystifies on this highlight from their 2022 album Collection Particulière.

4 Booker T & The MG’s
Green Onions
A bona fide classic largely improvised in the studio around a 12-bar blues riff of Booker T’s, this 1962 B-side (shortly becoming a single in its own right, of course, and then one of the most famous songs of all time) is charged with a spiky electrical rush. The rough energy is infectious, especially during Steve Cropper’s guitar solo.

5 Stereolab
Lo Boob Oscillator
These days one of the ’lab’s best-known tracks, this 1993 single was collected on the peerless Refried Ectoplasm (Switched On Volume 2) two years later. In many ways, it captures the essence of the group, with Laetitia Sadier’s indelible melody and vocals eventually giving way to a motorik beat and grinding organ drones.

6 The Stooges
Dirt
The swaggering heart of Fun House, The Stooges’ second and arguably greatest album, “Dirt” pairs a slow funk beat and bassline with Iggy Pop’s transcendent vocals and Scott Asheton’s wah-wah guitar. As its seven minutes draw on, the atmosphere becomes eerier and darker: it’s quite unlike anything else.

7 Radiohead
Bodysnatchers
Thom Yorke and co have long been inspired by the tumbling rhythms of Can, but on this highlight from 2007’s In Rainbows they channel the power-driving beat of Neu!’s Klaus Dinger. As always with Radiohead, this is an instrumental masterclass, with all five playing their part, fuzzed guitars interlocking until the quieter middle section lets in some fresh air.

8 Neu!
Hallogallo
To maintain that groove, here are the inventors of what they themselves called the ‘apache beat’ with the 10-minute opener of their self-titled debut. There’s no bass guitar; instead, Klaus Dinger keeps that unique beat steady, rising and falling in power, while Michael Rother weaves otherworldly echoed and wah-wah’d guitar. In so many ways, it never gets old.

9 The Trashmen
Surfin’ Bird
From the sublime to the silly, this 1963 surf-rock delight was the debut single by Minneapolis’s Trashmen, and effectively
a medley of two songs by LA doo-wop group The Rivingtons. Covered by The Cramps and the Ramones, the original isn’t short of unhinged mania itself.

10 Kim Deal
Crystal Breath
Here’s a taste of Deal’s album Nobody Loves You More; recorded in her Dayton, Ohio basement, it’s a caustic electro-garage track with buzzing keys, a distorted funk beat and white-noise guitar stabs. Quite simply, no-one else would put a song together quite like this.

11 Courtney Barnett
City Looks Pretty
Another pulsing track from Deal’s pal Barnett, taken from her second album, Tell Me How You Really Feel. Melodic and catchy, it’s elevated by Barnett’s out-there lead guitar work and finally by the closing section, a very Pavement-ish, supremely stoned waltz.

12 Black Sabbath
War Pigs
Keeping the ’eavy 6/8 vibe going is the opening track from Sabbath’s 1970 LP, Paranoid. Veering between stoner-rock riffs and dramatic silences, it climaxes in the lengthy instrumental known on some releases as “Luke’s Wall”. You can easily imagine this blasting out
of cars in Dayton in the ’70s – and, let’s be honest, ever since.

13 Elizabeth Cotten
Freight Train
Taken from her 1958 album Folksongs And Instrumentals With Guitar, here’s ‘Libba’ Cotten with a song she wrote decades earlier. It’s hard to overstate the influence of her unique picking style, and it’s evident all the way through the timeless “Freight Train”.

14 Teenage Fanclub
Everything Flows
“A Good Time Pushed” on Nobody Loves You More features the Fanclub’s Raymond McGinley on lead guitar, and when Deal talks of his meandering solos it’s hard not to think of the band’s debut single. Combining Neil Young with the overdriven clatter of Glasgow grunge, it’s a fine way for Kim to conclude her compilation.

THE CURE, BRYAN FERRY, THE MC5, RADIOHEAD, KIM DEAL, PAUL WELLER AND MORE STAR IN THE NEW UNCUT – ORDER A COPY HERE

Robert Smith: “I thought that was the end of The Cure”

Sam Richards
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Robert Smith: “I thought that was the end of The Cure”

In the new issue of Uncut – in UK shops from today or available to order direct from us by clicking here – Robert Smith reveals how he almost disbanded The Cure upon reaching the group's 40th anniversary in 2018.

In the new issue of Uncut – in UK shops from today or available to order direct from us by clicking here – Robert Smith reveals how he almost disbanded The Cure upon reaching the group’s 40th anniversary in 2018.

“I thought that the Hyde Park show would be it, I thought that was the end of The Cure,” says Smith. “I didn’t plan it, but I had a sneaky feeling that this was going to be it. But it was such a great day and such a great response, I enjoyed it so much and we got
a flood of offers to headline every major European festival. ‘Do you want to play Glastonbury?’ So I thought maybe it’s not the right time to stop.

“I wasn’t stopping because I didn’t want to do it any more, I just thought it would allow me a few years when I’d still be able to do something else. I wasn’t that bothered, funnily enough. I’d arranged everything to end in 2018, so when we got to 2019, I felt relieved. ‘We did it!’ I’ve had a different outlook to everything since.
Pretty much everyone that died that meant something to me died prior to 2019, so I felt like I’ve got to make the most of it.”

Not only was this sequence of events the spur for writing much of new album Songs Of A Lost World, it prompted Smith to start looking even further ahead, to The Cure’s 50th anniversary in 2028 and beyond. “We’ll probably be playing quite regularly through until the 2028 anniversary… The last 10 years of playing shows have been the best 10 years of being in the band. It pisses all over the other 30-odd years!”

You can read much more from Robert Smith in the December 2024 issue of Uncut, in UK shops from today or available to order direct from us by clicking here.

“I actually have a six-hour cut!”

John Lewis
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“I actually have a six-hour cut!”

Alex Gibney is a film director who, as well as making journalistic documentaries on dozens of subjects, has also made inventive films about some key musicians, including James Brown, Fela Kuti, Frank Sinatra and now Paul Simon with In Restless Dreams: The Paul Simon Story.

Alex Gibney is a film director who, as well as making journalistic documentaries on dozens of subjects, has also made inventive films about some key musicians, including James Brown, Fela Kuti, Frank Sinatra and now Paul Simon with In Restless Dreams: The Paul Simon Story.

“It was my Sinatra film, All Or Nothing At All, that Paul Simon and his people liked,” says Gibney. “So when they sent out feelers for me to make a film about Paul, of course I was interested. I’m a huge admirer of his work and, as with Sinatra, Paul’s career is like a history of America over a 60-year period. But it got interesting when Paul said, ‘I’m working on a new album, do you wanna watch me work on it?’ So that became the entry point – we move back and forth between the history and the present day. And, as well as being a biography, it becomes an extraordinarily moving story of a great composer struggling with his loss of hearing, making an album that deals with mortality and belief and suffering and spirituality, and allowing us intimate access to his creativity during a vulnerable moment.”

THE CURE, BRYAN FERRY, THE MC5, RADIOHEAD, KIM DEAL, PAUL WELLER AND MORE STAR IN THE NEW UNCUT – ORDER A COPY HERE

The film runs to three-and-a half hours, but doesn’t feel overlong. “I actually have a six-hour cut!” says Gibney. “So I’ve had to cut a lot out. But we had access to so much new archive footage that has barely been seen before. Paul was very generous with his archive, as were Sony Records. There was a lot of film in the vaults that we had to restore just to find out what it was, and then we’d have to transfer it. We found amazing footage of Art, Paul and Roy Halee working on the Bridge Over Troubled Water album, we found live footage from Zimbabwe, and from both the big Central Park concerts.”

Gibney wanted to avoid the standard music biopics that he finds “formulaic, dreary and routine-ised. Who wants to see a ten-second clip of a song, then a montage of famous celebrities saying how great an artist is? If the artist is any good, you don’t need people to tell you that! The only secondary voices we use are friends and collaborators who have something interesting to say – in this case, the likes of Lorne Michaels, Wynton Marsalis, Edie Brickell. And we wanted to play long clips of songs: once you get involved in a song, it takes you some place, like a dream. And, for an album that’s inspired by a dream, that’s fitting.”

In Restless Dreams: The Paul Simon Story is in cinemas for one night only on October 13 – buy tickets here – and then on Blu-ray and digital platforms from October 28

Listen to The Cure’s new track, “A Fragile Thing”

Michael Bonner
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Listen to The Cure’s new track, “A Fragile Thing”

The Cure have shared a second track from their upcoming album, Songs Of A Lost World. You can hear "A Fragile Thing" below.

The Cure have shared a second track from their upcoming album, Songs Of A Lost World. You can hear “A Fragile Thing” below.

THE CURE, BRYAN FERRY, THE MC5, RADIOHEAD, KIM DEAL, PAUL WELLER AND MORE STAR IN THE NEW UNCUT – ORDER A COPY HERE

In September, the band previously released “Alone“, their first new single for 16 years.

Read a new interview with Robert Smith in the new Uncut – in shops from October 11

Songs Of A Lost World will be released on November 1 by Fiction/UMe as a 1LP, a half-speed master 2LP, marble-coloured 1LP, double Cassette, CD, a deluxe CD package with a Blu-ray featuring an instrumental version of the record and a Dolby Atmos mix of the album, and digital formats.

The tracklisting for the album is:

Alone
And Nothing Is Forever
A Fragile Thing
Warsong
Drone:Nodrone
I Can Never Say Goodbye
All I Ever Am
End Song

Hear Nadia Reid’s new track, “Baby Bright”

Michael Bonner
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Hear Nadia Reid’s new track, “Baby Bright”

Nadia Reid returns with a new track, "Baby Bright", which you can hear below. This latest release follows "Changed Unchained" which she released last month.

Nadia Reid returns with a new track, “Baby Bright“, which you can hear below. This latest release follows “Changed Unchained” which she released last month.

THE CURE, BRYAN FERRY, THE MC5, RADIOHEAD, KIM DEAL, PAUL WELLER AND MORE STAR IN THE NEW UNCUT – ORDER A COPY HERE

Both tracks will appear on Enter Now Brightness, Reid’s new album which is released by Chrysalis on February 7, 2025. You can pre-order a copy here.

The tracklisting for Enter Now Brightness is:

Emmanuelle

Cry On Cue

Baby Bright

Hold It Up

Changed Unchained

Second Nature

Even Now

Hotel Santa Cruz

Woman Apart

Send It

Down The Line 

Reid also plays the UK and ROI. You can buy tickets here.

10.03.25 UK, London – EartH Theatre
11.03.25 UK, Brighton – CHALK
12.03.25 UK, Leeds – Brudenell Social Club
13.03.25 UK, Glasgow – Room 2
14.03.25 UK, Bangor – Court House
15.03.25 IE, Dublin – Whelans
17.03.25 UK, Nottingham – The Bodega
18.03.25 UK, Bristol – Strange Brew
19.03.25 UK, Manchester – YES (Pink Room)

Watch Timothée Chalamet as Bob Dylan in a new trailer for A Complete Unknown

Sam Richards
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Watch Timothée Chalamet as Bob Dylan in a new trailer for A Complete Unknown

A new trailer has been released for James Mangold's upcoming Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown, due in cinemas on January 17.

A new trailer has been released for James Mangold’s upcoming Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown, due in cinemas on January 17.

THE CURE, BRYAN FERRY, THE MC5, RADIOHEAD, KIM DEAL, PAUL WELLER AND MORE STAR IN THE NEW UNCUT – ORDER A COPY HERE

The first trailer released back in July featured lead actor Timothée Chalamet singing “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”; here, he can be heard having a crack at “Girl From The North Country” before hooking up with Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro) – we see them duetting at the 1963 Monterey Folk Festival – and controversially going electric with “Like A Rolling Stone” at Newport.

We also get a glimpse of Boyd Holbrook as Johnny Cash. Watch the trailer below:

Introducing the new Uncut: The Cure, Bryan Ferry, Radiohead, MC5, Queen, a free 14-track CD and more

Michael Bonner
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Introducing the new Uncut: The Cure, Bryan Ferry, Radiohead, MC5, Queen, a free 14-track CD and more

March 2, 2022. I’m at the Brixton Academy, backstage during the NME Awards, waiting for an audience with Robert Smith. Smith is co-recipient of Best Song By A UK Artist with CHVRCHES for “How Not To Drown” and he’s taken the opportunity to reveal the title of The Cure’s long-awaited new album, Songs Of A Lost World. Eventually – things move very much at Robert’s place – we meet. A firm handshake, strong eye contact. Conversation touches on The Glove – the one-off band he formed with fellow Banshee Steve Severin – a memorable Cure gig at Crystal Palace Bowl in 1990 and his latest, tantalising update on the new album. Smith, politely, won’t be drawn further. “That is for another day,” he says with a smile.

March 2, 2022. I’m at the Brixton Academy, backstage during the NME Awards, waiting for an audience with Robert Smith. Smith is co-recipient of Best Song By A UK Artist with CHVRCHES for “How Not To Drown” and he’s taken the opportunity to reveal the title of The Cure’s long-awaited new album, Songs Of A Lost World. Eventually – things move very much at Robert’s place – we meet. A firm handshake, strong eye contact. Conversation touches on The Glove – the one-off band he formed with fellow Banshee Steve Severin – a memorable Cure gig at Crystal Palace Bowl in 1990 and his latest, tantalising update on the new album. Smith, politely, won’t be drawn further. “That is for another day,” he says with a smile.

THE CURE, BRYAN FERRY, THE MC5, RADIOHEAD, KIM DEAL, PAUL WELLER AND MORE STAR IN THE NEW UNCUT – ORDER A COPY HERE

That day has finally come, of course. Songs Of A Lost World underscores the singular creative vision of its chief architect – an album of ravishing, windswept musicality and lyrical intensity, as Smith grapples with notions of ageing and mortality, made all the more vivid by his own relatively recent losses. In many ways, Smith is a singular British artist along with Kate Bush and Radiohead, who have the ability to create compelling worlds from their own idiosyncratic preoccupations.

As well as a new interview with Robert Smith, there’s plenty else inside this issue of Uncut, including new interviews with sundry members of Radiohead (Colin and Jonny can both be found in these pages), Art Garfunkel, Howard Devoto, Bryan Ferry, Joan Armatrading and Paul Weller. I can’t recommend highly enough Jennifer Castle’s new record Camelot, which is our Album Of The Month on page 24. Finally, I’d also draw your attention to what’s outside the magazine – and a wonderful CD compiled for us by Kim Deal, which includes (deep breath) studio tracks from the Stooges, Black Sabbath, Neu!, Th Faith Healers and Joy Division. It’s quite a thing, as I hope you agree.

The sad news of Kris Kristofferson’s death reached us just as we were going to print, but we’ll carry a full tribute to him next issue.

Uncut – December 2024

Uncut Staff
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Uncut – December 2024

CLICK TO GET THE NEW UNCUT DELIVERED TO YOUR DOOR

CLICK TO GET THE NEW UNCUT DELIVERED TO YOUR DOOR

Every print edition of this issue comes with a free, 14-track CD compiled by Kim Deal and featuring music from The Stooges, Radiohead, Black Sabbath, Joy Division, Neu!, Stereolab and more

THE CURE: 16 years on from their last album, The Cure return with a powerful and emotional new record. But as Robert Smith reveals, Songs Of A Lost World is only half the story…

KIM DEAL: The Pixie, Breeder and now solo artist explains how iguanas, ukeleles and the Florida Keys have shaped her new album

THE MC5: This extract from a new oral history tells the turbulent tale of Kick Out The Jams

RADIOHEAD: Bassist Colin Greenwood guides us through two decades of behind-the-scenes photography

MAGAZINE: Howard Devoto and his cohorts reflect on their brilliant but doomed trajectory as post-punk pioneers

JOAN ARMATRADING: Looking back over half a century’s work as a new album continues her journey

AN AUDIENCE WITH… ROGER TAYLOR: The Queen drummer on predicting punk, cocaine myths and tiger skin trousers

THE MAKING OF “SUPPLEMENT 66” BY PAUL WELLER: The inside story of his new EP – and the final recordings of a Brit-folk legend

ALBUM BY ALBUM WITH DANNY KORTCHMAR: The session musician’s session musician on James Taylor, Carole King, Dylan and more

MY LIFE IN MUSIC WITH PHIL MANZANERA: The Roxy Music guitarist on his most impactful albums

REVIEWED: Jennifer Castle, Mount Eerie, Underworld, Rogê, Warmduscher, Andrew Gabbard, Bryan Ferry, Aphrodite’s Child, Tina Turner, Talking Heads, Jack White, Ryley Walker, Leonard Cohen, Mike Batt and more

PLUS: The Animals, The Hacienda, Art Garfunkel, Suzi Quatro and introducing One True Pairing

CLICK TO GET THE NEW UNCUT DELIVERED TO YOUR DOOR

Paul Heaton – My Life In Music

Sam Richards
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Paul Heaton – My Life In Music

The Housemartins and Beautiful South singer on his happiest hours by the stereo: “It still sounds exciting now”

The Housemartins and Beautiful South singer on his happiest hours by the stereo: “It still sounds exciting now”

THE CURE, BRYAN FERRY, THE MC5, RADIOHEAD, KIM DEAL, PAUL WELLER AND MORE STAR IN THE NEW UNCUT – ORDER A COPY HERE

DAVID BOWIE

The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars

RCA, 1972

I shared a room with my middle brother growing up, and this is one of the records that seeped through the walls of my oldest brother’s room into ours. It was just really different – it was on the edge of glam rock, I suppose, but it was also totally by itself. I had no idea what “Suffragette City” was, or “Moonage Daydream”, and Ziggy Stardust sounded like the name of a wrestler. But it was really exciting to watch it have influence over ordinary people. You could see quite hard lads in Sheffield trying to have their hair cut like Bowie and wearing these big stack heels. Some of the songs make no sense at all – I didn’t know what “Lady Stardust” meant and probably still don’t – but his voice is beautiful.

ARETHA FRANKLIN

Aretha With The Ray Bryant Combo

COLUMBIA, 1961

The first soul record I got was called This Is Soul – there’s a song by Wilson Pickett, Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, and I worked backwards from each of the artists on there. I think I’ve got about 25 different albums by Aretha, but this was one I found quite late. It’s jazzy but it’s also very gospel-y as well. There are a couple of really nice songs: “Are You Sure”, which I think is from a musical, “Today I Sing The Blues” and “Love Is The Only Thing”… It’s more uptempo than her other early stuff, and I used to like Ray Bryant anyway. It’s just a really nice album to find after you thought you’d secured most of her records.

THE LURKERS

Fulham Fallout

BEGGARS BANQUET, 1978

I was really struggling to decide which punk album to pick. I was thinking the Buzzcocks or The Clash or maybe even Siouxsie & The Banshees, but I went for The Lurkers’ first album <Fulham Fallout>. I wanted to be Pete Shelley, but I also wanted to be Howard Wall, the lead singer from The Lurkers. I just loved the album because it felt like it was within my grasp, in terms of musical ability. They were obviously quite an underrated band. They were really good live, but they were unassuming – they didn’t speak much, didn’t say much outrageous, which a lot of people used to go to concerts for then. So it doesn’t surprise me that they went under the radar a little bit.

OWEN GRAY

The Singles Collection 1960-1962

NOT BAD RECORDS, 2014

When punk was happening, I started pinching bluebeat records from upstairs at Beanos in Croydon – I do apologise to Beanos for this! There was one artist called Owen Gray who I absolutely loved. So a few years ago I went out and bought this compilation, which had all four of the singles I’d pinched. It was a weird era for Jamaican music, because it was before ska and reggae and everything that came after that. It’s basically blues, but with a very faint skank on it. The musicianship on those early Jamaican records, especially with the brass, was quite out-there. They weren’t like the jazz musicians of New York – they were a lot more free with the tuning, but the trombone solos were fantastic. It still sounds exciting now.

THE PERSUASIONS

Street Corner Symphony

ISLAND, 1972

Of all the a capella bands, they’re probably the most well-known – one of their songs, “Good Times”, is in an advert that’s on permanently at the moment. My Mum went to see Lou Reed in Sheffield in 1973 with The Persuasions supporting, which is pretty incredible, and she brought this record back with her. I didn’t play it until much later, but obviously The Housemartins went on to sing quite a bit of acapella vocals live, so it became quite an influence. Even before “Caravan Of Love”, we used to do a lot of quasi-religious stuff like “Joy Joy Joy” and “We Shall Not Be Moved”. So Street Corner Symphony really set that up.

SILAS HOGAN

Trouble

EXCELLO, 1971

When I was 17, I was a massive blues fan. I played this a lot when I was learning harmonica, and it’s an absolutely brilliant album. Silas Hogan was only discovered later in life, in his fifties, and you can tell it in the way he plays. It’s electric guitar instead of acoustic, a little bit like Jimmy Reed, that sort of sound. He didn’t play harmonica himself, but the guy who does, Moses Smith, is absolutely fantastic. It’s one of those records that I went out and bought on CD much later, because I needed it in my CD collection as well. I still occasionally play it, which says a lot because I don’t listen to a lot of blues at the moment.

VARIOUS ARTISTS

The Gospel At Colonus

WARNER BROS, 1984

This was something my Mum recorded off the telly. She knew I was a fan of gospel music, so she sent the video up to me. It was such a good thing to do, because it’s beautiful. It’s the story of Sophocles’ Oedipus At Colonus but it’s got The Blind Boys Of Alabama in it, and the JD Steele Singers – Jevetta Steele’s got an incredible voice – and Morgan Freeman doing the main source of speech. I think you have to watch it before buying the record which may sound daft, but it’s quite a spectacle. It’s one of the last chances to see really powerful performances by Clarence Fountain and people like that. It was a big influence on me making [2012 stage show and album] The 8th.

BILL WITHERS

Making Music

CBS, 1975

It’s not one of his famous ones, but it’s such a great example of his songwriting. “Paint Your Pretty Picture” was the song that me and my wife came out to when we got married, so it has enormous significance for me. I do think Bill Withers is a bit underrated because the modern era cuts it down to a couple of songs, “Lean On Me” and “Lovely Day”. They were great hit records, but there’s so much more to his character than that. There’s a beautiful documentary called <Still Bill> where you can see why he’s underrated, because he’s not impressed by his own ability at all. He will not blow his own trumpet, and he’s just a very nice fella. So I was sad when he died.

Paul Heaton’s new album The Mighty Several is released by EMI on October 11; he tours the UK from November 29, see paulheaton.co.uk for the full list of dates

Chuck Prophet: “It’s been a journey”

Rob Hughes
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Chuck Prophet: “It’s been a journey”

2022 was a crisis year for Californian roots veteran Chuck Prophet. Diagnosed with stage four lymphoma, the ex-Green On Red guitarist was kept waiting on his chances of survival. “After they discovered I had a mass in my intestines, I was in a kind of no-man’s land for about 14 days,” he explains. “That was real fear, like a wooden stake being driven into me. Eventually I was told there were options in terms of treatment, and things lifted from there. But it was music that got me out of my head.”

2022 was a crisis year for Californian roots veteran Chuck Prophet. Diagnosed with stage four lymphoma, the ex-Green On Red guitarist was kept waiting on his chances of survival. “After they discovered I had a mass in my intestines, I was in a kind of no-man’s land for about 14 days,” he explains. “That was real fear, like a wooden stake being driven into me. Eventually I was told there were options in terms of treatment, and things lifted from there. But it was music that got me out of my head.”

THE CURE, BRYAN FERRY, THE MC5, RADIOHEAD, KIM DEAL, PAUL WELLER AND MORE STAR IN THE NEW UNCUT – ORDER A COPY HERE

Stretching back three decades, Prophet’s highly eclectic solo work tends to involve surf, punk, rock‘n’roll, folk and country. Yet it was the hitherto unexpected delights of cumbia music that guided him during his illness and recovery from chemotherapy. In particular, a band of brothers from Salinas, a farming community a hundred miles south of his San Francisco home.

“I’d seen ¿Qiensave? at a club in the Mission District,” he explains. “They were such characters. I think they were getting a kick from the fact I was digging them. They invited me to Salinas, so I started going down there and jamming with them. Then I asked them to play with me at a festival in Big Sur. The whole place was dancing, it was a real thrill. Cumbia music transcends language. I became a complete evangelist.”

The upshot of this unlikely collaboration – a year since Prophet was finally given the all-clear from cancer – is the aptly-titled Wake The Dead. Recorded with ¿Qiensave? and Prophet’s regular backing band The Mission Express, the album teems with infectious grooves, cumbia rhythms and what Prophet calls “blast-off choruses”. In the studio, “there were eight guys all playing at the same time. It was pretty exciting, but also chaotic.”

Wake The Dead deals with hope, terror, unseen forces and the restorative properties of love. Inspired by the Mexican tradition of honouring the deceased with altars laden with offerings, the title track feels very much like a mission statement. “It’s part Day Of The Dead, part zombie movie, part resurrection, the way I felt after being done with my treatment,” says Prophet. “I just fell into that song. It’s been a journey.”

The album’s arrival roughly coincides with the 40th anniversary of Green On Red’s first ever show in London. “It was in a basement called Gossip’s, I think it was a goth club,” he recalls. “There were probably 25 people there, as well as these other guys lurking around. They turned out to be the Jesus And Mary Chain. They got thrown off stage after three songs, for pushing amps over to get feedback, but they were super-charming.”

Green On Red’s messy career was ultimately doomed to failure, but not before they hit artistic peaks with blasted country-rock gems like Gas Food Lodging and Here Come The Snakes. “There was never really a plan,” Prophet offers. “That led to a lot of hard feelings and things that eventually broke us up, [but] we had our moments, for sure.”

Plans are afoot for a Green On Red boxset next year, though by the time it lands, Prophet will be deep into his Wake The Dead tour. The logistics are proving a challenge he’s only too willing to take on: “We’ll have a six-piece band: half of ¿Qiensave?, a couple of my guys and me. It’s a real leap of faith. And there’s a little mischief involved. It’s like, ‘This is gonna be fun to lay on people!’”

Wake The Dead is released on October 25 by Yep Roc Records; Chuck Prophet’s UK tour kicks off at The Bullingdon, Oxford, on February 19 – see chuckprophet.com for the full list of dates

Simon Raymonde – My Life In Music

Sam Richards
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Simon Raymonde – My Life In Music

The Cocteau Twin turned Bella Union boss itemises his aural treasures: “It sounds like it’s from another universe”

The Cocteau Twin turned Bella Union boss itemises his aural treasures: “It sounds like it’s from another universe”

THE CURE, BRYAN FERRY, THE MC5, RADIOHEAD, KIM DEAL, PAUL WELLER AND MORE STAR IN THE NEW UNCUT – ORDER A COPY HERE

PUBLIC IMAGE LTD

Metal Box

VIRGIN, 1979

Me and my friends were obsessed with punk. Of course, it burned out rather quickly. John Lydon was such a divisive figure, but at that point in time I still loved him. The stuff he said was confrontational but always tinged with a certain amount of intelligence. I don’t feel like that about the latter part of his career, I should add! I wasn’t a fan of anything after Metal Box, really. But when that came out, it was like, ‘What is this? What are these sounds?’ They were subverting everything they’d been in other bands. It’s such an anarchic record because they’re literally making stuff up in the studio as they go along. There isn’t another record in history that is comparable sonically to Metal Box.

CULTURE

Two Sevens Clash

JOE GIBBS RECORD GLOBE, 1977

Reggae was as important to many of us as punk. I think it was The Clash who brought this record to our attention. Joe Gibbs was the producer, and having him at the controls was really important. I love Lee Perry, I love King Tubby, but this is not a dub record – these are beautiful songs where the lyrics are really important. The singer Joseph Hill had a vision that on the seventh of July 1977, an apocalypse would happen. Back in Jamaica, people actually believed this, and all the businesses shut! It’s almost like a pop record, the songs are so catchy and memorable, and I think that’s why it’s lasted so long in people’s minds. It’s just a proper, proper, great reggae album.

THE BIRTHDAY PARTY

Prayers On Fire

4AD, 1981

I’m sure Nick Cave has probably said a million times that he can’t listen to those early records and they’re embarrassing or whatever. But I don’t look at it like that. For me, it’s a little time capsule. When I hear those songs, I’m back in the in the Moonlight Club in West Hampstead, thinking, ‘Fuck me, this the greatest thing I’ve ever seen.’ It’s so visceral and in-your-face, just pure energy and aggression, but done in such an artful way. I was madly in love with The Birthday Party for a brief period of time, and it helped my friendship with Robin and Elizabeth from Cocteau Twins because they were huge fans too. We had this little bond immediately.

TELEVISION

Marquee Moon

ELEKTRA, 1977

I’ve probably bought this 20 times over the years. It’s an immaculately made record – it’s hard to believe there’s only four four people playing on it. What’s interesting to me is that Eno was touted as a producer. He did some demos and Tom Verlaine hated the coldness of the sound. He did not want to go in the studio with somebody that would tell him what to do, that was his biggest fear. And I can totally relate to that from our career. Weirdly enough, we did meet Brian Eno with a view to him producing Treasure and that didn’t work out either! Not really anything that Brian did, more because we all realised that we should just do it ourselves.

THE ASSOCIATES

Sulk

ASSOCIATES / BEGGARS BANQUET, 1982

My first job was working at the Beggars Banquet record shop in South Kensington. Billy MacKenzie would ask me to walk his dogs for him while he was having his meetings with the label upstairs. So I already had a deeper connection with The Associates before Sulk came out. It’s one of the best-sounding records ever. I used to listen to it and think, ‘How did they do that? What instruments are they?’ It does sound like it’s from another universe. After Billy died, I got a call to ask if I’d be interested in co-producing the unfinished tracks that Billy had left behind. It was obviously very sad working on songs by someone who’s not there anymore, who you’ve idolised for twenty years. But it was a massive privilege.

PRINCE

Lovesexy

PAISLEY PARK / WARNER BROS, 1988

Here’s a bit of an outlier. I don’t know if your readers know this, but Prince was a huge Cocteau Twins fan. He wanted to sign us to Paisley Park, and he said some really lovely things about us in the press. So there was obviously a kind of mutual admiration there. I went to see the Lovesexy tour at Wembley when he played in the round. He drove a car onto the stage, it was so over the top! It was delightfully camp and very theatrical – I’d never seen anything like that before. But if you strip all that away, what he’s actually doing on those records is very pioneering and adventurous. He’s a phenomenal musician, and one of the greatest guitarists I’ve ever seen.

RICHARD H KIRK

Virtual State

WARP, 1993

When this came out, it was a very difficult period in the Cocteau Twins’ history. We’re on tour around the US in a big bus, Robin and Elizabeth have split up, and I’m stuck in the middle. When I was 17, music was all about expanding my awareness of what’s going on, energy, emotions, all that stuff. But at this point I am definitely using music as a way of just getting out of my head. I only bought this CD because I was like, ‘Oh, that’s the guy from Cabaret Voltaire.’ But it got me through that tour. It uses lots of found sounds and beats and textures from other cultures. I would lay in my bunk and it would take me off into other worlds where I could be at peace.

VINCE GUARALDI TRIO

A Charlie Brown Christmas

FANTASY, 1965

This is partly inspired by my wife, because she was like, ‘Oh, you’re gonna pick some cool records again. Why don’t you look at the ones by the turntable that you’ve been playing constantly?’ So I found A Charlie Brown Christmas. I’ve probably listened to that album more than any other – it comes out every single Christmas, without fail. It’s so joyous: the children’s choir, the jazz feel. It’s one of the biggest-selling Christmas albums of all-time, which is weird if you think about it, because there’s not really any songs you can sing along with. Obviously the motifs are very memorable, but it’s not like Slade, is it? It’s just an exceptionally evocative record. Listening to it makes you happy.

Simon Raymonde’s memoir In One Ear is out now, published by Nine Eight Books

Anna Butterss – Mighty Vertebrate

Wyndham Wallace
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Anna Butterss – Mighty Vertebrate

‘Jazz.’ It’s a funny old word, isn’t it? Encompassing over a century of music, it conjures a mass of styles, from Dizzy Gillespie’s bebop to Ornette Coleman’s freeform extemporisation to Nubya Garcia’s afro-futurism, and all stops in-between. Even Jamiroquai is classed as, of all things, ‘acid jazz’, and like ‘classical’ – which embodies Beethoven, Shostakovich, Cage and Max Richter – and, of course, ‘indie’, ‘jazz’’s almost limitless scope has rendered the word strangely meaningless.

Buy Mighty Vertebrate here

‘Jazz.’ It’s a funny old word, isn’t it? Encompassing over a century of music, it conjures a mass of styles, from Dizzy Gillespie’s bebop to Ornette Coleman’s freeform extemporisation to Nubya Garcia’s afro-futurism, and all stops in-between. Even Jamiroquai is classed as, of all things, ‘acid jazz’, and like ‘classical’ – which embodies Beethoven, Shostakovich, Cage and Max Richter – and, of course, ‘indie’, ‘jazz’’s almost limitless scope has rendered the word strangely meaningless.

THE CURE, BRYAN FERRY, THE MC5, RADIOHEAD, KIM DEAL, PAUL WELLER AND MORE STAR IN THE NEW UNCUT – ORDER A COPY HERE

Indeed, the genre’s become such a broad church its associations can seem bewildering, contradictory and even occasionally off-putting. These days it’s often used as a mere nod to instrumentation, but to some it’s a signal of free-thinking improvisation, to others technical discipline, while it’s as good as a red flag to those whose prejudices are based on limited experience (or The Fast Show’s Louis Balfour).

Nonetheless, it covers 2022’s Activities, Anna Butterss’ acclaimed debut, and Jeff Parker’s gently free-wheeling Mondays At The Enfield Tennis Academy, released the same year and on which Butterss also performs. Then there’s last year’s Lados B, recorded by Daniel Villareal with Parker and Butterss, and this year’s fusion-filled Small Medium Large by quintet SML, which Butterss co-founded in her adopted Los Angeles hometown.

Now it’s to be applied to Mighty Vertebrate, which provokes an urge – albeit unnecessary – to be defensive of Butterss’ second solo album. Not that it’s undeserving of the label. The bassist studied jazz at the University of Adelaide, the city where they were born, and afterwards received a scholarship to earn a Master of Music at Indiana University. In addition, aside from the aforementioned Parker, to whom the 33-year-old is something of a protégé, they’ve worked with, among others, Grammy-nominated Larry Goldings and Grammy-winning Meshell Ndegeocello.

Certainly, “Ella” is a nocturnal number on which SML bandmate Josh Johnson’s breathy saxophone casts a smoky spell, and “Lubbock” explores brighter but similar territory, a lilting tremolo guitar joining co-producer Ben Lumsdaine’s brushed cymbals and, again, Johnson’s saxophone. But any emphasis on such traditions risks overlooking other influences – afrobeat, hip-hop, post-rock, funk – with which this record’s been ‘jazzed up’.

Given the nature of others who’ve called upon Butterss’ talents, this is hardly surprising. They include Phoebe Bridgers, Bright Eyes and both Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Karen O and MGMT’s Ben Goldwasser, to whose Where Is Anne Frank? soundtrack the Australian contributed. Each has found something in Butterss’ work that aligns closely with their own, and it’s most likely a shared innovatory spirit. Of Activities, they told online zine Off Shelf, “I didn’t want to make a jazz record, or that if there were jazz elements in the music – which there definitely are – that we filtered them through a different lens.”

Thus, like their debut, Mighty Vertebrate exhibits broad but blurred horizons on which jazz is just one of many features, often only a shade more prevalent than on, say, Tortoise’s TNT (on which Parker himself played in 1998, and whose Johnny Herndon provides this album’s artwork). Opener “Bishop”’s intoxicatingly airy shuffle starts with Butterss’ winding bassline, easily mistaken for one from The Smile’s Wall Of Eyes – like “Read The Room”’s or “Friend Of A Friend”’s – but adds Latin percussion and flashes of a guitar riff recalling TNT’s “In Sarah, Mencken, Christ And Beethoven There Were Women And Men”. There are also hints of the latter in the fragile “Pokemans”, while “Breadrich” is built around a simple riff and a lumbering, looped rhythm which patiently develops into a dramatic, funk-and prog-fuelled feast of soaring synths and haphazard guitar solos which Lalo Schifrin might have admired.

There’s a hint of Schifrin, too, in the delightfully meandering “Shorn”, whose polyrhythms spur on Johnson’s often racing saxophone lines, while a muted, pastoral breakdown heralds a return to Butterss’ first instrument, flute. The brooding “Seeing You” builds in the manner of Every Day-era Cinematic Orchestra, and “Dance Steve” opens like a track from the same band, adding spartan programmed drums to cultivate a daylight comedown before Parker steps in on guitar, energising the track with pleasingly breezy melodies in a soulful, almost ’80s vein.

Mighty Vertebrate concludes with “Saturno”, whose complex rhythm carries another smooth sax solo over Butterss’ solid bass. It’s ‘jazz’ through and through, and yet not long ago this progressive approach might also have been called post-rock – had the right ’90s Chicago band, for instance, performed it – while nowadays one might be tempted instead to call this ‘post-jazz’. Nonetheless, perhaps the best way to think of Butterss’ work is as simply ‘jazz plus’. It’s suitably inclusive and ultimately most reflective of her sweeping ambitions.

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Faces – Faces At The BBC Complete BBC Concert And Session Recordings 1970-1973

Peter Watts
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Faces – Faces At The BBC Complete BBC Concert And Session Recordings 1970-1973

“Our second group this evening is the excessively rowdy Faces,” promises John Peel, whose voice introduces this set of (almost) complete BBC sessions from the Faces. It’s an appropriate start. When the Faces released their debut single, “Flying”, the Beeb didn’t take them seriously. It took John Peel to step in as an early champion, recording their first BBC session in March 1970. Peel pops up throughout this 8CD/1Blu-ray box that has rescued almost every Faces BBC session from archives and private collections – there’s just one set of three songs missing, believed wiped. It includes the Faces playing outstanding versions of “You’re My Girl”, “Oh Lord I’m Browned Off”, “Stay With Me” and “Miss Judy’s Farm”, singing Christmas Carols and performing one infamous concert that was never actually broadcast.

Buy Faces At The BBC here

“Our second group this evening is the excessively rowdy Faces,” promises John Peel, whose voice introduces this set of (almost) complete BBC sessions from the Faces. It’s an appropriate start. When the Faces released their debut single, “Flying”, the Beeb didn’t take them seriously. It took John Peel to step in as an early champion, recording their first BBC session in March 1970. Peel pops up throughout this 8CD/1Blu-ray box that has rescued almost every Faces BBC session from archives and private collections – there’s just one set of three songs missing, believed wiped. It includes the Faces playing outstanding versions of “You’re My Girl”, “Oh Lord I’m Browned Off”, “Stay With Me” and “Miss Judy’s Farm”, singing Christmas Carols and performing one infamous concert that was never actually broadcast.

THE CURE, BRYAN FERRY, THE MC5, RADIOHEAD, KIM DEAL, PAUL WELLER AND MORE STAR IN THE NEW UNCUT – ORDER A COPY HERE

The box begins with 10 songs from John Peel’s Sunday Concert – one set of five songs recorded in July 1970 and another five from November – and by the time you reach the deranged cover of “Maybe I’m Amazed” from November that year, you can see what the BBC were worried about – and grateful that Peel had such sway. Those Sunday Concert sessions weren’t the first appearance by the Faces on the BBC. They came in March 1970, when the band recorded sessions for Top Gear and Dave Lee Travis in quick succession. These shorter studio sessions are on Discs 7 and 8, with the first six discs reserved for longer live sessions.

One of those Top Gear sessions sees the band play a great medley of “Around The Plynth” and “Gasoline Alley” – the latter of course being a Rod Stewart solo number that became assimilated into the Faces setlist. It isn’t the only Rod number the band would perform at the BBC: the set ends with a rousing rendition of “Maggie May” from October 1971 sans mandolin solo while Disc 4’s 13-song set recorded for John Peel’s Sunday Concert in February 1972 includes a rollicking “Every Picture Tells A Story” and three-song medley of “That’s All You Need/Country Honk/Gasoline Alley”.

This concert is classic Faces: unpolished, good times, well lubricated. There are moments on “Three-Button Hand Me Down” where it sounds like everything is about to fall apart, but then the band plunge straight into “Miss Judy’s Farm”, propelled by Ian McLagan’s thunderous boogie piano, and it’s all good again. The band tear through “Too Bad”, “(I Know) I’m Losing You” and “Stay With Me”, then sing short bursts of Frankie Vaughan’s “Give Me The Moonlight” and “Underneath The Arches” to the appreciative studio audience. Always up for a laugh, the Faces take part in a Christmas concert for John Peel on Disc 7, with Rod crooning “Away In The Manger” before the band, crew, Peel and Marc Bolan sing a medley of carols.

The Faces have never really been well served by live albums – Coast To Coast: Overture And Beginners came at the very end of their career, when Ronnie Lane had already departed. That makes the Sunday Concert shows and two longer In Concertdiscs (Disc Five and Disc Six) particularly welcome, as it presents the Faces in a live but controlled environment. Or relatively controlled, anyway. The first In Concert show at the BBC’s Paris Cinema in February 1973 was never broadcast because of exchanges between the band and a crowd that included record label hangers-on who’d had too much sherbet. The BBC invited the band back a couple of months later to do it all over again – some of these tracks featured on Rhino’s Five Guys Walk Into A Bar box.

Both shows are fabulous and chaotic, with the unbroadcast concert featuring terrific versions of “Memphis, Tennessee” and “You’re My Girl (I Don’t Want To Discuss It)” before Stewart announces that “(I Know) I’m Losing You” will be the last number because they want to get to the pub before it closes. The second Paris show is tighter, with a similar setlist, but this time including covers of Free’s “The Stealer” and Lennon’s “Jealous Guy” plus three additional ones from Ooh La La: “Borstal Boys”, “My Fault” and Ronnie Lane’s “If I’m On The Late Side”.

This is the first in a series of Faces reissues, which will include rarities and unreleased material. The sound quality is superb, and the accompanying booklet contains interviews with Rod Stewart, Ronnie Wood and Kenney Jones, all of whom have been involved in the process. “The Faces… still the best rock’n’roll band in the world for those of us who really care,” says Peel at the end of an electric “(I Know) I’m Losing You” from the Paris Cinema show. Take it from a man who knew.

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Michael Shannon and Jason Narducy to tour R.E.M.’s Fables Of The Reconstruction

Michael Bonner
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Michael Shannon and Jason Narducy to tour R.E.M.’s Fables Of The Reconstruction

Following the success of their tour this year, performing R.E.M.'s debut album Murmur in full, Michael Shannon and Jason Narducy have announced plans to play the band's third album Fables Of The Reconstruction next year to mark it's 40th anniversary.

Following the success of their tour this year, performing R.E.M.‘s debut album Murmur in full, Michael Shannon and Jason Narducy have announced plans to play the band’s third album Fables Of The Reconstruction next year to mark it’s 40th anniversary.

THE BEATLES, JONI MITCHELL, VAN MORRISON, MICHAEL KIWANUKA AND MORE STAR IN THE NEW UNCUT – ORDER YOUR COPY HERE!

Shannon and Narducy — along with Superchunk/Mountain Goats/Bob Mould drummer Jon Wurster, Wilco’s John Stirratt on bass, guitarist Dag Juhlin and keyboardist Vijay Tellis-Nayak — begin their tour in February.

The tour dates are:

Friday, February 14 – Pioneertown, CA @ Pappy & Harriets
Saturday, February 15 – Los Angeles, CA @ Bellwether
Sunday, February 16 – Solana Beach, CA @ Belly Up
Tuesday, February 18 – San Francisco, CA @ The Fillmore
Friday, February 21 – Seattle, WA @ Neptune Theatre
Saturday, February 22 – Portland, OR @ Revolution Hall
Monday, February 24 – Indianapolis, IN @ The Vogue
Tuesday, February 25 – St. Louis, MO @ Delmar Hall
Thursday, February 27-28 – Athens, GA @ 40 Watt
Saturday, March 1 – Carrboro, NC @ Catʼs Cradle
Monday, March 3 – Richmond, VA @ The National
Tuesday, March 4 – Washington, D.C. @ 9:30 Club
Thursday, March 6 – Philadelphia, PA @ Union Transfer
Friday, March 7 – Boston, MA @ Royale
Saturday, March 8 – Brooklyn, NY @ Brooklyn Steel
Wednesday, March 12 – Minneapolis, MN @ First Ave
Thursday, March 13 – Milwaukee, WI @ Turner Hall Ballroom
Friday, March 14 – Chicago, IL @ Metro

Introducing the Ultimate Record Collection: Lana Del Rey

John Robinson
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Introducing the Ultimate Record Collection: Lana Del Rey

As we take a moment to collect ourselves after her visit to the UK and celebrate the 10th anniversary of her debut album, we’d like to introduce the latest Ultimate Record Collection: Lana Del Rey. 

As we take a moment to collect ourselves after her visit to the UK and celebrate the 10th anniversary of her debut album, we’d like to introduce the latest Ultimate Record Collection: Lana Del Rey. 

The dark and involving albums. The slyly controversial singles. We’ve reviewed them all to bring you a definitive guide to the music of Lana Del Rey. Alongside, we’ve told the story of her journey from philosophy student and trailer home resident, the aspiring singer-songwriter Lizzy Grant, to globally influential artist. We’ll be unpacking the songs, and creating the definitive timeline as we go. 

But that’s not all. Our people have been on the ground to report back on the most recent dates of her sell-out 2023-4 tour. We’ve got deep inside Lana’s cultural references compiling the definitive A-Z from Slim Aarons to Frank Zappa. We’ve also located the key Lana interviews, which chart her path from young singer facing down incorrect assumptions to a brilliant and self-assured artist, who has proved her doubters wrong. 

Enjoy the magazine. You can get your here.

John Robinson, Editor 

Stevie Van Zandt’s essential British Invasion 45s!

Peter Watts
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Stevie Van Zandt’s essential British Invasion 45s!

The November 2024 issue of Uncut celebrates The Beatles' first US visit in February 1964 and the subsequent British Invasion that shook America.

The November 2024 issue of Uncut celebrates The Beatles’ first US visit in February 1964 and the subsequent British Invasion that shook America.

Who better to assemble a crack Top 10 list of British Invasion 45s than Brit Beat disciple, Stevie Van Zandt?

THE BEATLES, JONI MITCHELL, VAN MORRISON, MICHAEL KIWANUKA AND MORE STAR IN THE NEW UNCUT – ORDER YOUR COPY HERE!

THE BEATLES

“I Want To Hold Your Hand”

CAPITOL, 1964

“The completely took over the charts. You have to mention this as it was the first salvo of the British Invasion. They continued to do great things all year right up to ‘I Feel Fine’.”

BILLY J KRAMER

“Bad To Me”

IMPERIAL, 1964

“Billy was managed by Brian Epstein so he had some Lennon-McCartney songs like ‘Bad To Me’ but he would have success with other songs. He was pretty big that year, right there with the rest of them.”

THE ROLLING STONES

“Tell Me”

LONDON, 1964

“It’s one of the great ballads of all time. I don’t think it was released in the UK. but it was a single in the US. Although it wasn’t a hit, I got it in my local store so it had some distribution.”

THE DAVE CLARK FIVE

“Any Way You Want It”

EPIC, 1964

“This is as powerful as music gets. The sound of the drums is incredible. It’s a mystery to me why they are not more respected as they made some of the greatest sounding records of the era. What’s not to like?”

DUSTY SPRINGFIELD

“I Only Want To Be With You”

PHILIPS, 1963

“Dusty was definitely part of it. One of the greatest white singers, she made amazing records with a phenomenal sensibility. It’s a shame she didn’t appreciate her own greatness. She was right there very early and had a sexiness and a soulfulness.”

THE ANIMALS

“House Of The Rising Sun”

MGM, 1964

“This was huge. The Stones had prepared us for a group like the Animals, a different kind of pop. Eric Burdon had that same way of singing as Mick Jagger, in a lower register. He was right down there with that more primitive vibe. It was No 1 for weeks.”

THE KINKS

“You Really Got Me”

REPRISE, 1964

“This was a radical sounding record. When this came on the Top 30 radio it was completely new to us. It went very high, as did ‘All Day And All Of The Night’. It was radical and you have to give (producer) Shel Talmy credit for that.”

MANFRED MANN

“Do Wha Diddy Diddy”

ASCOT, 1964

“Paul Jones was another great singer. The uniqueness of every one of these acts cannot be over emphasised. To our parents, they all sounded the same but every one of the bands had to have a unique identity. It was a pre-requisite.”

HERMAN’S HERMITS

“Can’t You Hear My Heartbeat”

MGM, 1964

“They were great, but quite under-rated. Herman’s Hermits were one of the bands along with Manfred Mann and The Animals who used the great Brill Building writers right through the ‘60s turning us on to another group of Americans that we had no idea existed.”

THE ZOMBIES

“She’s Not There”

PARROT, 1964

“This was a different sounding record and by the end of the year The Zombies were getting big. They ended up with three big hits, one of which came after they broke up.”

Lush – A Far From Home Movie

Stephen Troussé
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Lush – A Far From Home Movie

The 1964 World’s Fair in New York saw the launch of colour TV, IBM personal computers, the Mustang Ford and, just in time for the Beatles first tour of the USA, a new development from the Eastman Kodak company, Super 8mm film.

The 1964 World’s Fair in New York saw the launch of colour TV, IBM personal computers, the Mustang Ford and, just in time for the Beatles first tour of the USA, a new development from the Eastman Kodak company, Super 8mm film.

THE BEATLES, JONI MITCHELL, VAN MORRISON, MICHAEL KIWANUKA AND MORE STAR IN THE NEW UNCUT – ORDER YOUR COPY HERE!

Since that point rock ‘n’ roll and the Super 8 were inseparable. It’s hard to think of any British band touring the States that wasn’t photographed at some point or other earnestly documenting their tour bus adventures with their own handheld movie camera. By the time he joined Lush in 1992, bass player Phil King was already a veteran of Felt, Biff Bang Pow and the Servants and naturally had a Sankyo Super 8. Now, with Brian Gates, he has edited footage shot on tours of England, America, Europe and Japan thorough 1994 – 1996 into a kind of dream journal of life in a rock band at the end of the twentieth century.

What’s uncanny is how the pale grainy 8mm black and white stock renders so much of the material out of time. Footage of the Seattle Space Needle or the Chrysler Building, Cadillacs and doughnut stores, feels like it could have been shot any time between the late ‘50s up until last week. Only the very specific historical references – a poster for the second Frank Black solo album, a bill showing Lush supported by Weezer, a magazine feature on Ice Cube – pins it to a particular historical moment.

It was certainly a weird moment for Lush. The film opens with footage from the launch of Split, in the summer of 1994, a couple of months after Parklife and a couple of months before Definitely Maybe were to transform the landscape of British indie forever. It’s not Lush’s first rodeo by any means. You can see the rush of new corporate money flooding into the business – Lush have their own black cab plastered in 23 Envelope typography, taking them on a tour of London landmarks (including a still woebegone Battersea Power Station in the days before the Sky Pool). But posing for photos in empty swimming pools they don’t seem thrilled at the prospect.

The footage is soundtracked by the rueful songs the band were promoting at the time – from “Lovelife” (“We blow around like tiny leaves in a big storm”) to “When I Die” (“Curse the English day / For what it forces us to say”), but there’s barely any footage of the band performing. Instead here are the inbetween days, loading up flight cases, rolling down the interstates, taking time out for the tourist pleasures of a ferry across the San Francisco Bay or a trip up the Empire State Building.

Emma Anderson mostly looks bored, Miki Berenyi is game to cartwheel for the camera, but the only one who seems to be truly enjoying the ride is Chris Acland, the band’s livewire drummer. The camera clearly loves his floppy indie fringe, shades and leather jacket – this seems a life he was destined for, posing for pics by the pool, signing records for fans, dressing up as a werewolf and being serenaded by Elvis impersonators. You can practically see the fun draining from his body as the film progresses, returning from west coast palm trees to the bare branches of a north London winter.

Chris tragically took his own life in October 1996, shortly after one final tour of America and Japan and the film is dedicated to his memory. As well as serving as a beautiful testament to his life, the film feels like a very timely eulogy for a lost world of rock ‘n’ roll – of weekly music papers, expense accounts and transatlantic flights – that feels more distant than ever.

Stevie Van Zandt – Disciple

Stephen Troussé
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Stevie Van Zandt – Disciple

“There are no second acts in American lives,” said Scott Fitzgerald, but he obviously never met Stevie Van Zandt. As this intimate and epic HBO documentary makes clear, he’s currently on his fourth or fifth incarnation and showing no signs of stopping any time soon.

“There are no second acts in American lives,” said Scott Fitzgerald, but he obviously never met Stevie Van Zandt. As this intimate and epic HBO documentary makes clear, he’s currently on his fourth or fifth incarnation and showing no signs of stopping any time soon.

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Born Steven Joseph Malafronte, in Massachusetts in 1950, he became Stevie Van Zandt after his mother remarried when he was seven and the family moved to New Jersey. Growing up, like many Italian American self-mythologiser, he felt his options were the “priesthood or the Mob”, but found himself transformed by the mid-sixties revelations of the Beatles and then the Stones (the first made being in a band seem glorious, the second made it seem possible).

Falling in with the Jersey Shore scene coalescing around the Hullabaloo, the Stone Pony and the Upstage clubs, with his preternatural musical facility, his encyclopedic knowledge of old soul and blues and his whole-hearted dedication to the vocation of rock ‘n roll, he became a key architect of the Sound of Asbury Park – Steel Mill, the Asbury Jukes and eventually the E Street Band – and trusted consigliere to Bruce Springsteen. By now he was onto his third name, “Miami Steve” (after touring through Florida he decided to “fuck winter – I’m tropical from now on”. It was a rock ‘n roll Ratpack: “I was Dean, Bruce was Frank and Clare was Sammy,” he laughs. This material is rich enough for a whole documentary series by itself.

The rise seems unstoppable, until by sometime in the mid-‘80s a rival consigliere has Bruce’s ear. As Bruce tells it, he had two songs, “No Surrender” and “Dancing In The Dark”, but only one of them could go on Born In The USA. Steve counselled that he should drop the later, but Bruce’s manager Jon Landau insisted it was the lead single. Bruce kept both songs, but it was clear whose party was in the ascendant.

Van Zandt had a solo deal since the early ‘80s and now threw all his energy into his new venture – no more Miami, now he was Little Stevie and the Disciples of Soul. Commercially, he had chosen precisely the wrong moment to leave the E Street Band and even Van Zandt realises this: a few years later, talking to ANC activists in Soweto and trying to persuade them of the futility of violent struggle, he feels no fear. “What could they do to me?” he says. “I’d blown my life.”

There’s abundant, astonishing documentation of the recording of “Sun City”, the song that lead to the formation of Artists United Against Apartheid: Melle Mel, Lou Reed, Keith Richards and Miles Davis, among others make for the most thrilling all-star protest single ever recorded. Van Zandt is in his element, part circus ringmaster, part rock and roll statesman. Though claims that “brought down apartheid”, admittedly rooted in the genuine lobbying success of overturning Reagan’s veto on sanctions, have a whole lot of white saviour vainglory.

And we’re not even up to his implausible third act as Silvio Dante in Sopranos, his burgeoning media empire and his eventual heart-warming reunion with the Boss. Through the turning decades and his shifting fortunes, Van Zandt remains a steadfast true believer in rock ‘n roll in all its awesome absurdity, and a stream of A-listers, from Bruce to McCartney and Bono to bear ample testament to his inspirational character. And it’s not without a certain knowing self-mockery: there’s something about the Blue Steel pose he’s still pulling in the documentary promo shots that indicates that Ben Stiller could create a really magnificent American equivalent to 24 Hour Party People from this material.  Inspirational, exhausting, heartbreaking, insane and frequently transcendent, it’s hard to think of another life that captures the last seventy years of rock and roll quite so vividly.

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