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Introducing the new Uncut: Springsteen, The Police, Low’s Alan Sparhawk, Sturgill Simpson and more

Michael Bonner
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Introducing the new Uncut: Springsteen, The Police, Low’s Alan Sparhawk, Sturgill Simpson and more

Change – very much in the headlines here in the UK at the moment – is something of a recurring theme in this month’s issue of Uncut. We have Alan Sparhawk reflecting on his first new music since the death of Mimi Parker, his wife and creative partner in Low; Sturgill Simpson expressing his desire to move forward creatively from one project to the next; Beachwood Sparks on the way that change can sometimes only be achieved through an incremental refinement of familiar processes and shared histories.

Change – very much in the headlines here in the UK at the moment – is something of a recurring theme in this month’s issue of Uncut. We have Alan Sparhawk reflecting on his first new music since the death of Mimi Parker, his wife and creative partner in Low; Sturgill Simpson expressing his desire to move forward creatively from one project to the next; Beachwood Sparks on the way that change can sometimes only be achieved through an incremental refinement of familiar processes and shared histories.

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For our cover star, change came at a cost. Released 40 years ago in June, Born In The USA catapulted Bruce Springsteen into arenas – but the album was also among his most deeply misunderstood, from the title track down to the other, increasingly anxious laments for disappearing youth, misinterpreted by his new fans as good-time floor-fillers, primed for MTV. You’ll hear about the different shades of the album – its politics, Springsteen’s songwriting, his characters and more – from admirers including Kurt Vile, Lucinda Williams and Tom Morello.

There’s more, of course! The Police recording their best-selling album just in time to fall apart (and props here to Stewart Copeland, who is massively good value as an interviewee), plus the sagas of Little Feat’s Lowell George and The Sound’s Adrian Borland, who both left us too young. It’s perhaps astonishing, but this is the first time we’ve run a proper Lowell piece in Uncut – and the first time we’ve revisited The Sound since 2002. You’ll also find new interviews with Steve Diggle, Laurie Anderson, Nick Lowe, The Flirtations, The Jesus Lizard, John Murry and X, among others, as well as a free 15-track CD showcasing the month’s best new music.

As ever, let us know what you think…

Uncut – September 2024

Uncut Staff
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Uncut – September 2024

HAVE A COPY SENT STRAIGHT TO YOUR HOME

HAVE A COPY SENT STRAIGHT TO YOUR HOME

Bruce Springsteen, The Police, Sturgill Simpson, Alan Sparhawk, Beachwood Sparks, Lowell George, Adrian Borland and The Sound, Buzzcocks, X, Mavis Staples, Manic Street Preachers, The Jesus Lizard, Laurie Anderson, Dawn Landes, The Specials, Bob Dylan, Mark Lanegan, Brian Eno and more all feature in Uncut‘s September 2024 issue, in UK shops from July 19 or available to buy online now.

All print copies come with a free, 15-track new music CD featuring MJ Lendeman, Nathan Bowles Trio, Spiral Galaxies, Mercury Rev, Moon Diagrams, El Khat, Nick Lowe, Harlem Gospel Travelers, Amy Rigby, Krononaut and more!

INSIDE THIS MONTH’S UNCUT:

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: BORN IN THE USA may be BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN’s most successful album – but it is also his most misunderstood. As this landmark record turns 40, we investigate how The E Street Band spun stadium rock gold from Springsteen’s unflinching studies of alienation, self-doubt and the American dream gone sour. Meanwhile, long-term admirers KURT VILE, LUCINDA WILLIAMS, TOM MORELLO and ADAM GRANDUCIEL celebrate an album of relatable characters, surprisingly raw performances and “total Boss music”.

THE POLICE: At the peak of their success, THE POLICE went into battle… with themselves. But between the screaming matches and crisis meetings, they created their final album, Synchronicity: an epic, international hit that brought into focus their unwavering commitment to the music, even while the band fell apart.

STURGILL SIMPSON: The restless country music outsider has moved to Europe and adopted the alter ego Johnny Blue Skies for a new album of freewheeling love songs, influenced by Serge Gainsbourg, Gerry Rafferty and Homer’s Odyssey….

ADRIAN BORLAND & THE SOUND: A new biography and a brace of reissues finally gives this great, undervalued band and their brilliant but troubled singer the recognition they richly deserve.

BEACHWOOD SPARKS: After a 10-year hiatus, BEACHWOOD SPARKS return with Across The River Of Stars, a new studio album that brings pathos to their sun-dappled brand of country rock. From their Ventura HQ, California’s psych cowboys look back to move forward – on enduring friendships, poignant losses and anthems of cosmic love.

LOWELL GEORGE: A graduate of both Hollywood High School and Frank Zappa’s Mothers Of Invention, LOWELL GEORGE’s gifts were boundless: singer, songwriter, producer, arranger, frontman, slide guitarist supreme… now, 45 years since his untimely death, his former LITTLE FEAT bandmates and assorted collaborators hymn their fallen comrade.

AN AUDIENCE WITH… STEVE DIGGLE: The Buzzcocks bosun talks acid, existentialism, accidental genius and missing Pete Shelley

THE MAKING OF “NOTHING BUT A HEARTACHE” BY THE FLIRTATIONS: Most Northern Soul staples began l life in the States, but not this one: “We were all excited to be coming to London…”

ALBUM BY ALBUM WITH X: Exene Cervernka and Joe Doe reflect on four decades-plus of punk, pop, roots rock and metal

MY LIFE IN MUSIC WITH HORACE PANTER: The Specials’ bassist on his journey to the Dirt Road Band: “I knew that there was a new world somewhere”

REVIEWED: Alan Sparhawk, Nick Lowe, Laurie Anderson, Nilüfer Yanya, Shovels & Rope, Andrew Tuttle & Michael Chapman, Krononaut, El Khat, Mark Lanegan Band, Ten Years After, Stuart Moxham, Dorothy Carter, “Blue” Gene Tyranny, Outlaw Festival, Mavis Staples, Brian Eno, Steve Wynn and more

PLUS: Early Manics, John Murry & Michael Timmins, Dawn Landes, The Jesus Lizard and… introducing MJ Lenderman

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Slowdive and Ride to play Sonic Cathedral’s 20th birthday

Sam Richards
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Slowdive and Ride to play Sonic Cathedral’s 20th birthday

Shoegaze institution Sonic Cathedral will mark its 20th birthday this autumn with a series of four special gigs in London.

Shoegaze institution Sonic Cathedral will mark its 20th birthday this autumn with a series of four special gigs in London.

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN IS ON THE COVER OF THE NEW UNCUT – ORDER A COPY HERE

Slowdive will play one of their final Everything Is Alive shows at EartH in Dalston on October 4, supported by dream-pop disciples Whitelands and Deary.

Meanwhile, Ride will recreate their triumphant set from the 1992 Reading festival at Hackney Church on October 12, supported by Bdrmm, Pye Corner Audio and Moon Diagrams.

The 20th birthday celebrations kick-off with a show by A Place To Bury Strangers, Three Quarter Skies and Mildred Maude at Hackney’s Number 90 on September 24.

There is also a special edition of Sonic Cathedral’s regular Sunday Service events at The Social on October 13, with very special guests to be revealed on the night.

Tickets for all shows go on sale on at 10am on Friday (July 19) from here.

Bob Dylan announces UK and European dates

Michael Bonner
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Bob Dylan announces UK and European dates

Bob Dylan returns to the UK and Europe later this year, including three nights at London's Royal Albert Hall in November.

Bob Dylan returns to the UK and Europe later this year, including three nights at London’s Royal Albert Hall in November.

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN IS ON THE COVER OF THE NEW UNCUT – ORDER A COPY HERE

The shows have been announced on Dylan’s website; tickets go on sale July 19. They include Dylan’s first UK shows since the Rough And Rowdy Ways tour in 2022.

Read our reviews from the Rough And Rowdy Ways tour here:

Bob Dylan, The London Palladium, October 20, 2022

Bob Dylan, SEC Armadillo, Glasgow, October 30 & 31, 2022

Bob Dylan, New Theatre, Oxford, November 4, 2022

Dylan’s currently on tour in the States as part of the Outlaw Festival.

Meanwhile, Dylan’s 1974 tour with The Band is celebrated in an enormous 27-CD boxset, including 417 previously unreleased performances, which will be released by Columbia Records / Legacy Recordings on September 20.

The new batch of dates are…

OCTOBER 4 2024: Prague, Czech Republic, O2 universum

OCTOBER 5 2024: Prague, Czech Republic, O2 universum

OCTOBER 6 2024: Prague, Czech Republic, O2 universum

OCTOBER 8 2024: Erfurt, Germany, Messehalle

OCTOBER 10 2024: Berlin, Germany, Uber Eats Music Hall

OCTOBER 11 2024: Berlin, Germany, Uber Eats Music Hall

OCTOBER 12 2024: Berlin, Germany, Uber Eats Music Hall

OCTOBER 14 2024: Nürnberg, Germany, Frankenhalle

OCTOBER 16 2024: Frankfurt, Germany, Jahrhunderthalle

OCTOBER 17 2024: Frankfurt, Germany, Jahrhunderthalle

OCTOBER 18 2024: Frankfurt, Germany, Jahrhunderthalle

OCTOBER 21 2024: Stuttgart, Germany, Porsche Arena

OCTOBER 22 2024: Saarbrücken, Germany, Saarlandhalle

OCTOBER 24 2024: Paris, France, La Seine Musicale

OCTOBER 25 2024: Paris, France, La Seine Musicale

OCTOBER 27 2024: Dusseldorf, Germany, Mitsubishi Electric Hall

OCTOBER 29 2024: Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg, Rockhal

NOVEMBER 1 2024: Bournemouth, UK, BIC Windsor Hall

NOVEMBER 3 2024: Liverpool, UK, M&S Bank Arena

NOVEMBER 5 2024: Edinburgh, Scotland, Usher Hall

NOVEMBER 6 2024: Edinburgh, Scotland, Usher Hall

NOVEMBER 8 2024: Nottingham, UK, Nottingham Arena

NOVEMBER 9 2024: Wolverhampton, UK, Civic Hall

NOVEMBER 10 2024: Wolverhampton, UK, Civic Hall

NOVEMBER 12 2024: London, UK, Royal Albert Hall

NOVEMBER 13 2024: London, UK, Royal Albert Hall

NOVEMBER 14 2024: London, UK, Royal Albert Hall

Stevie Nicks – BST Hyde Park, London, July 12

Piers Martin
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Stevie Nicks – BST Hyde Park, London, July 12

Things were different the last time Stevie Nicks played Hyde Park. That was in 2017, when she opened for her best friend Tom Petty and joined him during his headline set for a run through “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around”, the hit the Heartbreakers wrote for her in 1981.

Things were different the last time Stevie Nicks played Hyde Park. That was in 2017, when she opened for her best friend Tom Petty and joined him during his headline set for a run through “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around”, the hit the Heartbreakers wrote for her in 1981.

Petty is no longer with us, and nor is Christine McVie, Nicks’ soulmate in Fleetwood Mac, who’d become a fixture in that band again after years in the wilderness. “Whenever I’ve been hurt in my life, I’ve always run to the stage – and it’s always helped me,” says a visibly moved Nicks at the end of tonight’s set, before gesturing to the crowd: “You’ve always helped me.”

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The stage is all Nicks has known for the past 50 years – and this sell-out Friday at British Summer Time is all about her. Her corner of Hyde Park is a sea of tasselled jackets, lace dresses, Stetsons and cowboy boots. A Nicks performance, or one by Fleetwood Mac, has been a rite of passage for millennials in the 21st century, and such occasions are becoming increasingly rare. 

These days, Nicks is a strangely ageless cosmic diva whose look, like her material, has remained unchanged since her mid-’80s prime. At 76, her voice is a little hoarser, and it was touch and go whether this show would even go ahead after she postponed earlier dates in Manchester and Glasgow following minor leg surgery. 

Nicks has been on the road pretty much full-time for two years, playing more or less the same 15-song set each show, but such is her charisma and the mythology of her songbook that you want to believe that she’s not going through the motions. She talks us through her famous shawls, and rambles endearingly about the circumstances that led to Stephen Stills writing “For What It’s Worth”, which she gives a political slant here by urging us to use our vote, maybe unaware the UK had an election last week. 

Her seasoned band, led by her longtime guitarist Waddy Wachtel, who’s flanked by the equally capable Carlos Rios, are well-oiled and more than happy to lay it on thick during a combustible “Gold Dust Woman”. They tear into “Stand Back”, “Edge Of Seventeen” and “Free Fallin’” as if they’re fresh out of college. Nicks’ mystical heartland pop is still best realised in the Mac’s “Dreams” and “Gypsy”, the latter a 1982 love-letter to her nomadic self of the late-’60s. In many ways she’s been chasing that feeling ever since, which explains why the songs she performs span that golden period from 1975 to 1983, when everything went right, and which resonate so deeply with her fans. 

She brings out her voice coach, Steve Real, for “Leather And Lace”. He sings Don Henley’s part beautifully on the Bella Donna ballad, each looking into the other’s eyes, the purity in his voice contrasting with her coarser vocal.

For the encore, it’s genuinely thrilling when Harry Styles walks onstage with a guitar to play rhythm and sing “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” with Nicks, and after that “Landslide” – songs they’ve played together before but which here elevate what would have been a decent run-of-the-mill concert to an event that will be hard to forget. 

Dressed in a loose dark suit and light green shirt, a colourful songbird brooch on his lapel, Styles is a class act and seems a little overwhelmed at first, but helps Nicks deliver an emotional “Landslide” as a montage of images of Christine McVie roll across the huge screens. Today would have been her 81st birthday, Nicks points out. “Time makes you bolder, even children get older – and I’m getting older, too,” she sings in “Landslide”. Let’s hope she’ll be back for one last dance. 

Setlist
Outside The Rain
Dreams
If Anyone Falls
Gypsy
For What It’s Worth
Free Fallin’
Wild Heart
Bella Donna
Stand Back
Leather And Lace
Gold Dust Woman
Edge Of Seventeen
Encore
Rhiannon
Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around
Landslide

Eiko Ishibashi – Evil Does Not Exist

Tom Pinnock
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Eiko Ishibashi – Evil Does Not Exist

Watch Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s new film, and you’ll see the countryside that Eiko Ishibashi and her partner Jim O’Rourke call home: the snow-capped extinct volcanoes, the dense forests and grassy meadows, frozen lakes and icy mountain streams. Yet it’s not by chance that the setting of Evil Does Not Exist matches the area west of Tokyo where the composer lives – in fact, the film is deeply interlinked with Ishibashi’s work and life, the visuals and the music both serving as inspirations to each other.

Buy Evil Does Not Exist here

Watch Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s new film, and you’ll see the countryside that Eiko Ishibashi and her partner Jim O’Rourke call home: the snow-capped extinct volcanoes, the dense forests and grassy meadows, frozen lakes and icy mountain streams. Yet it’s not by chance that the setting of Evil Does Not Exist matches the area west of Tokyo where the composer lives – in fact, the film is deeply interlinked with Ishibashi’s work and life, the visuals and the music both serving as inspirations to each other.

THE NEW UNCUT COMES WITH A FREE, ULTRA-COLLECTABLE JOHN LENNON CD – ORDER A COPY HERE

After Hamaguchi heard Ishibashi’s 2018 LP The Dream My Bones Dream, the pair began working together on 2021’s Drive My Car. It picked up an Oscar for Best International Feature Film, and Ishibashi’s jazzy, verdant soundtrack – at once accessible and experimental – was a big part of its success. When she then asked Hamaguchi to create visuals she could perform to onstage, he came to the area where she and O’Rourke live and began to film, initially inspired by a handful of electronic instrumentals she had created. The director enjoyed what he’d filmed so much, though, that he turned it into a full film, with dialogue and storyline, and requested more musical material that Ishibashi then wrote to the finished edit.

The final version of Evil Does Not Exist isn’t exactly full of Ishibashi’s music – you’ll need to search out Ishibashi’s live shows featuring the shorter, silent version, entitled Gift, for that – but when it does appear it’s the most bewitching, powerful element of the film. The more electronic pieces are those that Ishibashi wrote first, inspirations for Hamaguchi’s visuals and story: “Hana V.2”, for instance, is all gently pulsing electronic tones that slowly form shifting chords, like shapes glimpsed in clouds. Vaporous strings and the kind of harsh cymbal drones heard in Neu!’s “Sonderangebot” briefly appear, alongside the sounds of the film’s troubled protagonist Takumi chopping wood.

“Smoke” and “Fether” are perhaps the most familiar pieces here, faintly reminiscent of the Drive My Car soundtrack or Ishibashi’s 2022 release For McCoy, and also to O’Rourke’s masterful music for Kyle Armstrong’s Hands That Bind. The former is driven by fluttering drums and Ishibashi’s layered flute, once again demonstrating her love for the measured, quicksilver jazz found on the ECM label, while the latter briefly mixes granulated textures with leaf-falls of piano. The longest piece here is the most ambient, the 12-minute “Missing V.2”, which begins with what seems like a Japanese train announcement; the film, however, reveals this to be a chilling public information message about a young girl lost in the forest as night begins to fall. Low strings hum and ominous piano chords toll, as important as the abstract electronics; gradually, clattering cymbals and a warped, synthetic heartbeat raise the tension, almost unbearably. The effect is stunning and enveloping.

The remaining three tracks are the most striking, both in the film and on the album. These were composed for the completed film, and find Ishibashi writing for strings (in fact overdubbed by two performers to simulate a lush orchestral ensemble). Her albums have included strings for years, but not like this: here, huge suspended chords hang like rock buttresses, showing Ishibashi’s childhood love of Bach and her more recent appreciation of modernist pioneer Charles Ives. At times, though, the harmonies seem to stall and, as if caught in the gravity of some unseen body, they spin off into eerie discord, before finally returning to the theme. It’s a stunning trick, and the power is all in the flow: these pieces snake as organically as the streams in Evil Does Not Exist, or twist like the antlers of the stag that plays such a mysterious, pivotal part in the film.

Quite how these pieces will exist as a live soundtrack to Gift will be revealed, but as a standalone soundtrack Evil Does Not Exist is a fine addition to Ishibashi’s singular work – the mood is darker and eerier than her feted Drive My Car, but it’s the stronger album nonetheless. What’s more, this astonishing record perfectly lays the groundwork for the song-based follow-up to The Dream My Bones Dream, due to float out of those deep forests in the tantalisingly near future.

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Cassandra Jenkins – My Light, My Destroyer

Laura Barton
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Cassandra Jenkins – My Light, My Destroyer

When Cassandra Jenkins released her second album, 2021’s An Overview On Phenomenal Nature, it was in the spirit of a last hurrah. A little lost, a little disheartened, its collection of songs spoke to the dislocation of that particular time in Jenkins’ life when, following the death of David Berman, there came keen grief, a cancelled tour with Purple Mountains, a questioning of whether music was really the career for her.

Buy My Light, The Destroyer here

When Cassandra Jenkins released her second album, 2021’s An Overview On Phenomenal Nature, it was in the spirit of a last hurrah. A little lost, a little disheartened, its collection of songs spoke to the dislocation of that particular time in Jenkins’ life when, following the death of David Berman, there came keen grief, a cancelled tour with Purple Mountains, a questioning of whether music was really the career for her.

THE NEW UNCUT COMES WITH A FREE, ULTRA-COLLECTABLE JOHN LENNON CD – ORDER A COPY HERE

She half-sang, half spoke, her voice slow and dusky and beguiling, and wound her storytelling with richly drawn characters and field recordings: birdsong, a guided meditation, a security guard discussing a Mrinalini Mukherjee exhibit at The Met Breuer. The effect was beautiful, intimate, inquisitive, wise; a record that felt so complete, one wondered how she might ever devise a follow-up.

Jenkins wondered the same thing. My Light, My Destroyer was not an easy album to make. The success of its predecessor had led to a gruelling tour schedule and a surge of media attention, all of which left the songwriter physically and emotionally drained. Still, there came a first attempt in the studio, an effort to recreate the magic of the previous recording. And then disappointment, and a rethink. A few months later, somewhat replenished, Jenkins opted to reassemble her collaborators, among them producer, engineer and mixer Andrew Lappin, Josh Kaufman and Palehound’s Ed Kempner, and take a second shot at the new songs. This time, something bloomed.

The result is a record that confirms …Phenomenal Nature was no fluke. This is the sound of Jenkins hitting her stride – less disembodied than its predecessor, more grounded, its tone ranging from the easy warmth of Tom Petty to the steady discernment of Aimee Mann, via a little Laurie Anderson.

Jenkins draws, too, on the influence of prose writers such as Rebecca Solnit and Maggie Nelson, whose work gathers together disparate threads — the personal, the political, the observational, to create something profoundly illuminating. On …Phenomenal Nature, and perhaps even more on My Light, My Destroyer, Jenkins gives us a musical version of this essayistic approach: insights reached through studied songwriting, snippets of conversation, bursts of instrumentals (most notably the exquisite album closer, “Hayley”).

While comparisons to others are helpful, in reality Jenkins is quite distinctly her own thing, and the only true resemblance is to her previous record – there in My Light…’s field recordings, sonic turns and the subtle unfolding of these tracks. From the first lines of opener “Devotion”, Jenkins’ voice is a cool balm: “I think you’ve mistaken my desperation for devotion,” she sings, low and soft. It’s an arresting start: intriguing and elliptical and hopeful, in much the same way that …Phenomenal Nature began: “I’m a three-legged dog, working with what I got.”

As with last time, the listener instinctively leans in closer. Close enough to catch the spoken word of “Delphinium Blue” and “Attente Telephonique”, and the sensuous yearning of “Omakase” ­– a song named for an expensive lab-grown strawberry, and from which the album takes its title: “My lover/My light/My destroyer/My meteorite.”

At this proximity it’s easy, too, to revel in Jenkins’ observational humour – there in the casting of Sisyphus in “Only One”’s sorry tale of heartbreak, with its repeated, rolling refrain, “You’re the only one I’ve ever loved/The only one I know how to love”, in the unexpected appearances of William Shatner, and perhaps most of all in the curious details of “PetCo”, in which Jenkins wanders through a pet shop, trying to be less alone.

Most of all what infuses My Light, My Destroyer is a sense of cosmic awe. The record begins and ends at break of dawn, and at various points Jenkins looks up towards the heavens – to the ceiling, to the aeroplanes and the rocket ships and the meteorites. At others, she’s contemplating nature through glass – delphiniums and narcissus in the flower shop, the blue of earth viewed from space, the sky from a tour bus window, those laboratory strawberries and pet shop lizards.

At the album’s heart lies “Betelgeuse”, a song of lugubrious brass and rippled piano, in which a stargazing Jenkins is joined by her own mother, a science teacher, as they admire the brightness of Mars, Venus, Betelgeuse. “It’s fun to look at the moon through binoculars,” her mother says, unwittingly drawing together some of the record’s themes.

Over and again, one feels Jenkins breaking through the glass to touch the beauty of what lies beyond. “Don’t mistake my breaking open/For broken,” she sings on “Devotion”. It’s a thought that governs the record: this is the sound of an artist quietly, rapturously coming to life.

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Sean Ono Lennon: “Mind Games is my dad getting back on track”

Peter Watts
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Sean Ono Lennon: “Mind Games is my dad getting back on track”

The August 2024 issue of Uncut is packed full of goodies for the discerning John Lennon fan. As well as our cover story – a deep dive into Lennon’s creative but turbulent 1973/’74 – there’s a stunning Collector’s Cover, a mini Ultimate Music Guide to all Lennon’s solo albums and a unique, ultra-collective CD featuring new mixes, outtakes and more from the upcoming Mind Games deluxe edition box set.

The August 2024 issue of Uncut is packed full of goodies for the discerning John Lennon fan. As well as our cover story – a deep dive into Lennon’s creative but turbulent 1973/’74 – there’s a stunning Collector’s Cover, a mini Ultimate Music Guide to all Lennon’s solo albums and a unique, ultra-collective CD featuring new mixes, outtakes and more from the upcoming Mind Games deluxe edition box set.

We also spoke to Sean Ono Lennon about his work on the Mind Games release, but due to space restrictions could only run part of the interview. Here it is now in full…

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UNCUT: Can you start by giving me your personal overview of Mind Games, the period in which it was recorded and where you feel it stands in your father’s canon? 

SEAN ONO LENNON: Mind Games was always one of my favourite of dad’s albums. I grew up listening to it without realising it had to some degree been overlooked when it came out. So to me it has always been one of his strongest records. The title track alone lives on the very top shelf of my favourite John Lennon tunes. It’s an absolute masterpiece. 

To me it sounds like he was working very hard to make a more polished record after what had been a period of raw rock n roll activism with Sometime In New York City, (an album that was difficult for some fans to appreciate). The fact that he was producing himself, and doing an incredible job without Phil Spector’s help, while in the midst of a separation with my mother — it must of been a difficult time for him, and I think he really stepped up to the plate and did an amazing job. The music may not have been in sync with where the world was at commercially, but the songs stand for themselves and after all these years have come to represent some of his best work to many fans. I had an amazing time overseeing the mixes, and was really struck by the level of musicianship throughout. The band is exceptional, and you can tell (perhaps unlike on Sometime In New York City), that the musicians are really trying their best at every moment, and working hard to bring as much musicianship and beauty to each song as they can manage. My father famously made the album cover himself, an amazing collage with my mother as a mountain hovering over him as he recedes into the distance — a visually striking image that says a lot about the time period and what they were going through personally.

Unlike his previous solo albums, I think Mind Games strikes a beautiful balance between being raw and personal, speaking to his political philosophy, while also inserting a much needed feeling of fun and humour throughout. I think the chemistry of these elements is well balanced on this album, making for an extremely moving, while also extremely enjoyable musical journey.

What are the album’s biggest strengths?

The biggest strength of the album are his production and his singing. He’s really at his best. Some of the his best vocal performances are on this record. Especially the outro of Mind Games, he slides up effortlessly to a falsetto on the word ‘love’ that is as haunting and inspiring as anything he ever sang with the Beatles.

There’s a sense this record has been unfairly overlooked – why do you think that might have been?

There was a sense at the time that the album was overlooked. I think that kind of thing happens a lot for whatever reason. Rolling Stone didn’t like Led Zeppelin. The Beatles never really winning any Grammys for best album. Sometimes the world isn’t ready to give certain music a chance, or even understand it. I don’t think that’s a reflection of the music’s quality, but more about where the world is at. My parents had just confused a lot of people between Two Virgins and Sometime In New York CIty, they had thrown people off a bit—and frankly had thrown themselves off too, getting mixed up with some questionable characters (Jerry Rubin), and getting surveilled by the FBI, and then realizing many of the so called revolutionaries they had linked up with were actually not the best people. It was a strange time and I think the music and the reception of it were connected to the changes that were happening. But I do think Mind Games is clearly my dad getting back on track, after what was a very experimental, and volatile period that was very creatively fruitful, but at times went a bit out of control. Plus it was a very competitive time, with a whole new generation of talented young artists dominating the charts. But what does that say about Mind Games as an album? Not much in my view. People for whatever reason were not in the right mood for it. But looking back and listening I think we can all see it for the incredible album that it is. I do consider it a masterpiece.

What were your objectives for Mind Games when you began working on the reissue?

Well for me it’s about trying to find the most interesting and creatives ways I can of revisiting the music. If I’m going to spend time working on Dad’s music I want to work as hard as I can to innovate and be creative. So I had all sorts of potentially out-there ideas: launching citizenofnutopia.com launching the meditation mixes with Lumenate, working on the deluxe and super deluxe sets for 2 years trying to making them something memorable, something you’d never seen before. Now more then ever an artist like my dad is competing against a whole new world of music and entertainment. In order to get him the attention he deserves I feel I have to really work hard on trying new things. I want to get as much attention for his music and make it as fun as humanly possible for the fans. We have a lot of other stuff coming too that are in the works this year for Mind Games. To me there’s no point in rereleasing his music if I don’t try and push it as far as I can in terms of creativity.

As you worked on Mind Games did you learn anything new, or did anything surprise you, about this period in your parents’ life?

Listening to Ken Asher’s tracks really blew me away. I’m such a big fan of his work with Jim Henson, it was really amazing realising all the little tricks he pulled with the keys. The musicianship generally speaking is truly stellar on this album throughout. And truthfully I didn’t realise what a good song Aisumasen was until I worked on bringing out the best bits. Suddenly the song sounds like one of the best tracks off Plastic Ono Band. So I have to admit remixing did make me rediscover some songs I’d never paid as much attention to.

The Mind Games box is out-of-this-world – please tell me how this came about, which elements you are most proud of and if there is anything you wanted to do that didn’t quite make it….

We’ve been working on the box set for years now. Initially I thought, Mind Games… game, what if we ‘gamified’ mind games? So that’s all I’ll say but there are many levels to this launch including and far beyond the box set that I hope will potentially entertain and engage fans for possibly years to come. My main goal was to just do something really different. To blow minds so to speak. I think when people actually see how far we went with it, they will understand how it all fits together, and why they are as they are. The websites. The box sets. The music. They all intertwine in a way that is ready to be discovered.

What was your favourite part of the process?

My favourite part is mixing. I love getting to be that intimate with my dad’s music. It feels like an honor, but also I’ve spent my whole life getting good at that type of thing, and it’s a great feeling to be able to put those skills to work while spending time in my father’s world. I really enjoy and feel very lucky.

We are very excited to have nine exclusive Mind Games tracks on our covermount CD from the Mind Games CD. Could you please introduce this for our readers in around 100 words?

This Uncut mix shows examples of the types of mixes we’ve included. I think listening to these mixes will give you a sense of the broad scope you can expect from the box sets. From very polished and what I would consider ‘ultimate’ mixes, to raw elements, and outtakes. We’ve really tried to include everything we possibly can. Really looking forward to hearing people’s feedback. I’m very proud of the work we’ve done on an album that has always meant a lot to me personally.

Send us your questions for Steve Cropper!

Sam Richards
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Send us your questions for Steve Cropper!

As one of the greatest and most influential guitarists of all-time, Steve Cropper hardly needs any introduction. Suffice to say, as in-house guitarist, songwriter and A&R man at Stax during the 1960s, Cropper's fingerprints are all over numerous indelible classics by the likes of Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, Wilson Pickett and many more.

As one of the greatest and most influential guitarists of all-time, Steve Cropper hardly needs any introduction. Suffice to say, as in-house guitarist, songwriter and A&R man at Stax during the 1960s, Cropper’s fingerprints are all over numerous indelible classics by the likes of Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, Wilson Pickett and many more.

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As well as being a prominent member of Booker T & The MGs and The Blues Brothers band, the ludicrously in-demand Cropper has worked with almost everyone in music, from Neil Young to Dolly Parton, Rod Stewart to Frank Black.

A couple of Cropper’s many famous admirers – namely Brian May and Billy Gibbons – turn up on his new album Friendlytown, due for release on August 23 via Mascot Label Group/Provogue.

But before that, Cropper has kindly agreed to submit to a gentle grilling from you, the Uncut readers. So what do you want to ask a giant of the game? Send your questions to audiencewith@uncut.co.uk by Monday (July 22) and Steve will answer the best ones in a future issue of Uncut.

Introducing the Ultimate Music Guide to…Rod Stewart and the Faces

John Robinson
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Introducing the Ultimate Music Guide to…Rod Stewart and the Faces

Wouldn't you?

Wouldn’t you?

A legendary story about the footballer George Best concerns a room service delivery of caviar and the English papers to his Spanish hotel room. The waiter wheels his trolley into a suite where he discovers the sportsman reclining on a bed, where he is sipping a glass of champagne in the company of the recently-crowned Miss World. The bed is covered with large denomination banknotes, the result of the previous night’s substantial win at the casino. The headline on one of the papers is: “Best: where did it all go wrong?”.

As you’ll read in this latest Ultimate Music Guide, in shops a week tomorrow, it wouldn’t be a stretch to retell this anecdote replacing George Best with Rod Stewart. After all, Rod’s career brought him a similar level of massive success – and many of the same fringe benefits. The incredible 60 years of his life in music so far have also been characterised by an exceptional talent, glamorous companions and untold wealth – but as with the footballer, there has always been a small constituency who feel Rod has acquitted himself in a manner which is not quite what they had in mind for him.

Rod, to his credit, has paid them no mind, and in this magazine we hitch a ride in a selection of expensive cars to enjoy the music, and the journey. From the uproarious rock ‘n’ roll of the Faces (there’s a free poster with every issue!), to the nostalgic anthems and Dylan covers of his early solo successes, to tax exile, disco, and the rewards he has found in the Great American Songbook (a destination where Dylan has recently followed him). Even to the (brief) Faces reunion. Along the way we meet supporters, the doubters, and the gentlemen of the tabloid press. We also meet the director of his most recent pop video, the artist Jeremy Deller, who tells us about Rod and his unwavering commitment to the rock star calling.

There might have been some occasional missteps along the way, but the times on balance, have really all been good. “I enjoyed being Jack The Lad…” Rod tells Uncut in 2018, rounding off his sentence with a rhetorical question. “…Wouldn’t you?”

Well, wouldn’t you? Have yourself a real good time, and enjoy the magazine.  You can get one here

Laura Marling shares new track, “Patterns”

Michael Bonner
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Laura Marling shares new track, “Patterns”

Laura Marling has shared a track, “Patterns”, from her new album, Patterns In Repeat, which is released on October 25 through Chrysalis/Partisan Records.

Laura Marling has shared a track, “Patterns”, from her new album, Patterns In Repeat, which is released on October 25 through Chrysalis/Partisan Records.

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You can hear “Patterns” below:

The record – her eighth solo album – was recorded almost entirely at Marling’s home studio and co-produced by Dom Monks, with additional assistance from Rob Moose.

“Over the course of nine months, I had happily prepared myself for the fact that my life as a songwriter would be put on hold while I adjusted to life as a new parent,” says Marling.

“How delighted then was I to discover that for the first few months of a baby’s life, you can bounce them in a bouncer and play guitar all day. For the first time in my life, I was able to gaze into another human’s eyes as I wrote. Of course, new parents feel like they discovered that feeling – one of the very finest that life has to offer, of looking into the eyes of your child and feeling the enormity of the picture as a whole, the enormity of a precarious life, celestial, fragile and extraordinary, taking its place among the comparatively banal constellation of a family. This banal constellation seems to have dominated the writing of Patterns in Repeat – the drama of the domestic sphere, the frail threads that bind a family together, the good intentions we hold onto for our progeny and the many and various ways they get lost in time. So much complexity in the banal, the caged, the everyday.

“Being as I am, 34 years old, now 15 years and 8 albums into a life in song, I am unable to escape the fact that each record has served as a time-stamped chapter of my life (though some have appeared more a premonition). Now, here we are, following a youth spent desperately trying to understand what it is to be a woman, I am at the brow of the hill, with an entirely new and enormous perspective surrounding me.”

The tracklisting is:

Child of Mine

Patterns

Your Girl

No One’s Gonna Love You Like I Can

The Shadows

Interlude

Caroline

Looking Back

Lullaby

Patterns in Repeat

Patterns In Repeat is available to pre-order here.

Meanwhile, Marling also takes up residencies in October and November:

Hackney Church, London – October 29, 30, November 1 and 2

Bowery Ballroom, New York – November 11 and 12

J Spaceman & John Coxon announce Music for William Eggleston’s Stranded In Canton

Michael Bonner
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J Spaceman & John Coxon announce Music for William Eggleston’s Stranded In Canton

Jason Pierce and John Coxon have announced details of an instrumental score for Stranded In Canton, William Eggleston’s 1970s art film, which is released October 18 via Fat Possum and available to preorder here.

Jason Pierce and John Coxon have announced details of an instrumental score for Stranded In Canton, William Eggleston’s 1970s art film, which is released October 18 via Fat Possum and available to preorder here.

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To accompany the announcement J Spaceman & John Coxon have shared the track “Mother’s milk” from the album:

In 2015, Spaceman, Coxon and friends – including Spiritualized alumni Tony “Doggen” Foster, and drummer Rupert Clervaux – performed a new original score live at a special film screening at London’s Barbican Gallery. The recording sat on a shelf for 10 years, and will finally be unveiled through this release. In addition, Spaceman and Coxon will perform the work in London, New York, Los Angeles and Eggleston’s hometown of Memphis, on the invitation of the photographer’s son Winston Eggleston. All dates are listed below.

Stranded In Canton is a black-and-white film portrait of Memphis in 1974, shot in bars and on street corners, showing Eggleston’s friends carousing, playing music and firing pistols into the night sky. 

“With Memphis, I grew up with and I fell in love with that whole part of the world and the music that came from there,” explains Spaceman. “Memphis is infused with this magic, then this dreadful poverty as well. There’s a strangeness to it. It’s a place where I never felt comfortable. When I was making Ladies and Gentlemen [We Are Floating in Space], I went out and did some work with Jim Dickinson because, much as I wanted to have him help me with my record, I just wanted to go and meet the man. He was always a bit like Dr. John, a walking encyclopaedia with knowledge of all the music of that area, all the blues musicians and all the stuff that doesn’t get written about. So, the Eggleston film is a spying hole into that world. Jim Dickinson even plays in the movie, Furry Lewis plays in the movie too, but there’s also an unhinged craziness. It feels dangerous.”

You can pre-order the album here.

The Spaceman and Coxon live dates are:

Wednesday, November 20 – London, UK @ EartH

Wednesday, December 4 – New York, NY @ Le Poisson Rouge

Saturday, December 7 – Memphis, TN @ Crosstown Theater (WYXR)

Monday, December 9 – Los Angeles, CA @ Masonic Lodge at Hollywood Forever

Uncut’s New Music Playlist for July 2024

Sam Richards
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Uncut’s New Music Playlist for July 2024

With much talk of promise and renewal in the air, you might want to seek out some exciting new music to match the mood – as always, there's no shortage of it around. Witness the impressive returns of Laura Marling, Field Music, Mercury Rev, Osees, King Gizzard and Public Service Broadcasting for starters.

With much talk of promise and renewal in the air, you might want to seek out some exciting new music to match the mood – as always, there’s no shortage of it around. Witness the impressive returns of Laura Marling, Field Music, Mercury Rev, Osees, King Gizzard and Public Service Broadcasting for starters.

THE NEW UNCUT COMES WITH A FREE, ULTRA-COLLECTABLE JOHN LENNON CD – ORDER A COPY HERE

Meanwhile Ty Segall lives out his drum fantasies, Seun Kuti and Damian Marley extend their respective musical dynasties in fine style, and Chrystabell shows you can’t get any more Lynchian than collaborating with the actual David Lynch. Enjoy…

LAURA MARLING
“Patterns”
(Chrysalis/Partisan)

NAIMA BOCK
“Kaley”
(Sub Pop/Memorials Of Distinction)

MERCURY REV
“Ancient Love”
(Bella Union)

STEVE WYNN
“Making Good On My Promises”
(Fire)

MJ LENDERMAN
“She’s Leaving You”
(Anti-)

SEUN KUTI & EGYPT 80
“Dey feat. Damian Marley”
(Record Kicks)

PUBLIC SERVICE BROADCASTING
“Electra”
(SO Recordings)

MEMORIALS
“Cut It Like A Diamond”
(Fire)

FIELD MUSIC
“Six Weeks, Nine Wells”
(Memphis Industries)

TY SEGALL
“The Dance (Edit)”
(Drag City)

OSEES
“Earthling”
(Castle Face)

KING GIZZARD & THE LIZARD WIZARD
“Le Risque”
((p)doom)

SEX SWING
“Kings Romans Casino”
(God Unknown)

CHRYSTABELL & DAVID LYNCH
“The Answers To The Questions”
(Sacred Bones)

COLD SPECKS
“How It Feels”
(Mute)

DAWN RICHARD & SPENCER ZAHN
“Breath Out”
(Merge)

THREE QUARTER SKIES
“Crows”
(Sonic Cathedral)

LEA THOMAS
“The Gift”
(Triple Dolphin)

DIALECT
“Late Fragment”
(RVNG Intl)

Hear two tracks from Galaxie 500’s new rarities compilation

Michael Bonner
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Hear two tracks from Galaxie 500’s new rarities compilation

Galaxie 500 have announced details of Uncollected Noise New York ’88-'90, a new double LP compilation released by Silver Current on September 20.

Galaxie 500 have announced details of Uncollected Noise New York ’88-’90, a new double LP compilation released by Silver Current on September 20.

The set – curated by Dean Wareham, Noami Yang and Damon Krukowski – will feature outtakes, B-sides and assorted standalone recordings including their deathless cover of The Rutles‘ “Cheese And Onions”.

“Opening up these tape boxes was like looking into an old journal or datebook — I had forgotten most of this happened at all, but it only took a few quick details to put me right back in the drum seat,” says Krukowski. “There are songs from all the Galaxie 500 recording sessions included here.”

“There is a sweetness in hearing the progression of us finding our own sound, our own collective voice. The Proustian power of music,” adds Yang. “Listening to these early recordings I can hear myself figuring out how I wanted to play bass –- finding my way up the neck to where the notes would cut through, where there could be a counter-melody to the singing. Making the bass my singing voice.”

THE NEW UNCUT COMES WITH A FREE, ULTRA-COLLECTABLE JOHN LENNON CD – ORDER A COPY HERE

You can pre-order the set on a variety of different formats direct from the Galaxie 500 Bandcamp page here.

You can hear two tracks from the set below: “Shout You Down” and “I Wanna Live”.

Tracklisting is:

“Shout You Down” [Previously Unreleased]
“See Through Glasses” [Previously Unreleased]
“On The Floor (Noise Ny Version)” [Previously Unreleased]
“Can’t Believe It’s Me” [Ryko Box Set Bonus CD, Otherwise Unreleased]
“Oblivious” [Ryko Box Set Bonus CD, Chemical Imbalance Fanzine 7”]
“King Of Spain” [Today CD Bonus Track, Aurora Records 7” B-Side] [7/88 Session]
“Jerome” [Ryko Box Set Bonus CD, Otherwise Unreleased]
“Song In 3” [Ryko Box Set Bonus CD, Otherwise Unreleased]
“Crazy” [Ryko Box Set Bonus CD, European Today CD Bonus Track] [2/89 Session]
“I Wanna Live” [Previously Unreleased]
“I Will Walk” [Previously Unreleased]
“Cold Night” [On Fire CD Bonus Track, Rough Trade Blue Thunder Ep]
“Ceremony” [On Fire CD Bonus Track, Rough Trade Blue Thunder Ep] [8/89 Session]
“Never Get To Heaven” [Previously Unreleased]
“Maracas Song” [Ryko Box Set Bonus CD, Otherwise Unreleased]
“Victory Garden” [On Fire CD Bonus Track, Rough Trade Blue Thunder Ep]
“Blue Thunder (W/Sax)” [Ryko Box Set Bonus CD, Rough Trade Ep] [6/90 Session]
“Cheese And Onions” [Ryko Box Set Bonus CD, Rutles Highway Revisited Shimmy Disc Lp]
“Fourth Of July (Video Mix)”
“Cactus” [Previously Unreleased]
“Moonshot” [Previously Unreleased]
“Them” [Ryko Box Set Bonus CD, Otherwise Unreleased]
“Final Day” [Ryko Box Set Bonus CD, Otherwise Unreleased]
“Here She Comes Now” [This Is Our Music CD Bonus Track, Rough Trade Fourth Of July 12” B-Side]

Mark Lanegan’s Bubblegum to get the deluxe reissue treatment

Sam Richards
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Mark Lanegan’s Bubblegum to get the deluxe reissue treatment

To celebrate its 20th anniversary, Mark Lanegan's 2004 album Bubblegum is to be expanded into a 4-LP / 3-CD boxset containing 40 remastered tracks, 12 of which are previously unreleased.

Pre-order Bubblegum XX on vinyl here

To celebrate its 20th anniversary, Mark Lanegan’s 2004 album Bubblegum is to be expanded into a 4-LP / 3-CD boxset containing 40 remastered tracks, 12 of which are previously unreleased.

THE NEW UNCUT COMES WITH A FREE, ULTRA-COLLECTABLE JOHN LENNON CD – ORDER A COPY HERE

The limited-edition Bubblegum XX 4-LP box contains a 64-page hardcover book with essays by Troy Van Leeuwen, Josh Homme, Chris Goss, Alain Johannes, David Catching, Greg Dulli, Duff McKagan and Brett Netson, along with studio notes and previously unseen photographs by Steve Gullick.

Bubblegum has been cut as a double LP and remastered by Geoff Pesche at Abbey Road. The set also includes a remastered edition of Here Comes That Weird Chill (Methamphetamine Blues, Extras & Oddities) to which three bonus tracks have been added.

The fourth LP contains demos and unreleased tracks, comprised of outtakes from the Bubblegum sessions and tracks recorded, produced and mixed by Troy Van Leeuwen in various hotel rooms with Lanegan singing and Van Leeuwen playing all the instruments. As per Lanegan’s original wishes, the track “Union Tombstone” has been recently updated to include new vocal and harmonica parts by Beck.

“These hotel demo sessions were basically forgotten,” says Van Leeuwen. “When I heard the news of Mark’s passing, these memories started rushing back to me. I searched through my archive of drives and somehow magically was able to open up these sessions… The original rough mixes are a real time capsule that stands up to the 20 years that have passed. It’s a true gift from Mark to those of us who love him and his unvarnished expression of beauty.”

The original Bubblegum album will also be available separately as a double LP, with a limited transparent red vinyl version available via indie retailers and the Beggars webstore.

Bubblegum XX will be released by Beggars Arkive on August 23. For full tracklistings and pre-order details, go here.

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Bob Dylan and The Band’s 1974 tour chronicled in colossal 27-disc boxset

Sam Richards
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Bob Dylan and The Band’s 1974 tour chronicled in colossal 27-disc boxset

Bob Dylan’s legendary 1974 tour with The Band was previously captured for posterity on the contemporaneous live album, Before The Flood. Now that double live album has been expanded to an enormous 27-CD boxset including 417 previously unreleased performances.

Pre-order the box set here

Bob Dylan’s legendary 1974 tour with The Band was previously captured for posterity on the contemporaneous live album, Before The Flood. Now that double live album has been expanded to an enormous 27-CD boxset including 417 previously unreleased performances.

THE NEW UNCUT COMES WITH A FREE, ULTRA-COLLECTABLE JOHN LENNON CD – ORDER A COPY HERE

Bob Dylan – The 1974 Live Recordings will be released by Columbia Records / Legacy Recordings on September 20. There will also be a somewhat more manageable 3-LP boxset issued via Third Man Records’ Vault mail-order series, featuring songs from the 1974 run not included on Before The Flood.

Hear a previously unreleased version of “Forever Young”, live at the Seattle Center Coliseum on February 9, 1974:

Peruse the full tracklisting for Bob Dylan – The 1974 Live Recordings and pre-order here.

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Introducing…The Ultimate Genre Guide to Glam

John Robinson
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Introducing…The Ultimate Genre Guide to Glam

Get down and get with it! The UGG Glam is in shops on Friday!

Get down and get with it! The UGG Glam is in shops on Friday!

As you will discover when you read this stomping new publication, there were many ways to be glam. Conceptual, like Roxy or Bowie. Flashy, and made for colour television, like Slade. Theatrical, like Alice Cooper or chaotic like the New York Dolls. For our cover star Brian Eno, it was the start of a 50-year career in experimental ideas – currently being celebrated in an excellent new documentary. 

Perhaps more than anything else, glam could be a key to reinvention and self-discovery. Roy Wood was a joint-passing hippy before he became the glitter-bearded star of Wizzard. Mott The Hoople were longtime triers about to quit, given another shot when they performed Bowie’s “All The Young Dudes” – essentially glam’s national anthem. Elton John began the 1970s as an earnest balladeer, and was possibly more a glam rocker from expediency than anything else. Still, it allowed him to access elements of his showmanship, sexuality and general high-spirits than he had previously managed. 

There was no one way to be glam. There were some recognizable features – the intersection of ambiguous sexuality and hard, often1950s-inspired rock; an emphasis on performance, posing and showmanship; great singles – but this was no straitjacket. 

Some artists – like Lou Reed or Iggy Pop – drifted into glam, took what they wanted and moved on. The lesser talents had their brief moment basking in its reflective glow. All round, it offered freedom, not confinement. (Unless you were The Sweet, of course – for whom the whole experience turned into a struggle for independence from their production team.) 

As the late David Cavanagh pointed out here in his writing about glam singles, not everyone could be as talented as David Bowie. Glam offered both the sublime and the ridiculous, whether that was the stellar run of albums Bowie made between 1970 and 1974, or a one-off exploitation single by one-hit wonders we’d now find filed under “junk shop glam”.

You can read about all versions of the glam experience here, in a range of hilarious archive features – just who were Hair, Nose & Teeth? – and insightful new commentary. There are thoughts on glam film, glam art and glam’s legacy. You’ll read how our artists, from Bowie, Bolan and Slade through to Eno, Queen and Sparks (in 2024, glam’s only real survivors) made, and were remade, by glam rock. 

Melody Maker’s Richard Williams sets the scene: “While the rest of the band were mixing the B side of the new single Eno was sitting in the control booth with a set of logtables, a notebook and a rapidly blunting pencil. “I woke up this morning,” quoth he, “with a theory about prime numbers…’”

Get it on, and get yours here

New film about Jimi Hendrix’s Electric Lady Studios to open in August

Sam Richards
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New film about Jimi Hendrix’s Electric Lady Studios to open in August

Electric Lady Studios: A Jimi Hendrix Vision, a new film from Experience Hendrix LLC, is due to open at The Quad in New York City on August 9. A global rollout will follow, distributed by Abramorama.

Electric Lady Studios: A Jimi Hendrix Vision, a new film from Experience Hendrix LLC, is due to open at The Quad in New York City on August 9. A global rollout will follow, distributed by Abramorama.

The documentary chronicles the building of what became the first ever artist-owned commercial recording studio, in the heart of Manhattan – although Hendrix had originally envisioned Electric Lady as a nightclub and jam space.

“Jimi loved jamming at The Generation nightclub in the Village and when it went bankrupt, he and [manager] Mike Jeffery purchased it with a view to making it a place for him and his friends to relax and possibly record their jams on an 8-track tape machine in the corner,” explains Hendrix’s engineer and long-time collaborator Eddie Kramer, a key contributor to the documentary.

“I knew at once that a club would be disastrous. I remember saying something like ‘You guys must be out your #$%^&ing minds! Do you have any idea of what Jimi spends in studio time in a year?’ Let’s build the best studio in the world for him so when he walks in, he can relax and record whenever he wants.

“The club idea was scratched, and Electric Lady Studios was born. By June of the next year [1970] Studio A was completed and after a few test sessions Jimi came in to record in his studio. Man, was he proud of it. He loved the way it sounded and its vibe. We recorded many tracks for a new album over the next four months, which became The Cry Of Love. The legacy of what Jimi wanted endures to this day: a place where one could create without being interrupted. Every artist who comes to Electric Lady Studios feels the spirit of Jimi Hendrix, a spirit that helps them create their own music!”

Among the many artists who have subsequently used Electric Lady Studios are Stevie Wonder, John Lennon, David Bowie, U2, Prince, Lana Del Rey, Beyoncé, Jay-Z, D’Angelo, The Clash, Chic, Taylor Swift and AC/DC.

The documentary is directed by Hendrix biographer John McDermott, who also helmed 2022’s Music, Money, Madness: Jimi Hendrix Live In Maui. It features interviews with Steve Winwood (who joined Hendrix on the first night of recording at the new studio), The Cry Of Love bassist Billy Cox and original Electric Lady staff members, plus never-before-seen footage and photos, as well as track breakdowns of “Freedom”, “Angel” and “Dolly Dagger” by Eddie Kramer.

Send us your questions for Thurston Moore!

Sam Richards
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Send us your questions for Thurston Moore!

The first time Thurston Moore ever sang into a microphone, it was to scream back the lyrics of “Oh Bondage! Up Yours!” to Poly Styrene when X-Ray Spex played CBGB in 1978. It was a moment of teenage catharsis that he’s seemed to carry through his whole career, consistently advocating for noisy rock’n’roll and expressive free music of all kinds as the best vessel for transcending workaday existence and sticking it to the man.

The first time Thurston Moore ever sang into a microphone, it was to scream back the lyrics of “Oh Bondage! Up Yours!” to Poly Styrene when X-Ray Spex played CBGB in 1978. It was a moment of teenage catharsis that he’s seemed to carry through his whole career, consistently advocating for noisy rock’n’roll and expressive free music of all kinds as the best vessel for transcending workaday existence and sticking it to the man.

After looking back over his storied career in last year’s memoir Sonic Life, Moore is once again facing forward on new solo album Flow Critical Lucidity – although devotees of the dazed guitars and jagged street poetry of Sonic Youth touchstones Sister and Daydream Nation will find plenty to love in this new material.

To celebrate its release in September, Moore has kindly consented to undergo a gentle grilling from you, the Uncut readers. So what do you want to ask the godfather of alternative rock? Send your questions to audiencewith@uncut.co.uk by Monday July 15 and Thurston will answer the best ones in a future issue of Uncut.

Robyn Hitchcock’s 1967 playlist: “Let’s get the kaftans out…”

Tom Pinnock
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Robyn Hitchcock’s 1967 playlist: “Let’s get the kaftans out…”

Robyn Hitchcock’s first book, a memoir titled 1967: How I Got There and Why I Never Left, is out now. In Uncut’s July issue, he spoke about the book and his memories of that pivotal year in his youth – from the strange customs of Winchester College to the mind-blowing new music he was hearing – and here Hitchcock exclusively takes us through a playlist of some of his favourite tracks from '67.

Robyn Hitchcock’s first book, a memoir titled 1967: How I Got There and Why I Never Left, is out now. In Uncut’s July issue, he spoke about the book and his memories of that pivotal year in his youth – from the strange customs of Winchester College to the mind-blowing new music he was hearing – and here Hitchcock exclusively takes us through a playlist of some of his favourite tracks from ’67.

Comprising 10 songs by British artists and another nine by Americans, the list has been curated by the singer-songwriter to best encapsulate the feel of that psychedelic period. He’s also kept away from the songs he covers on his accompanying album, 1967 – Vacations In The Past.

Take a listen here, and scroll down to read Robyn’s commentary…

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ROBYN HITCHCOCK: These are not necessarily the best songs by those artists. Like “Hole In My Shoe” isn’t my favourite Traffic song from that period – I’d rather listen to “Mr Fantasy” or “Heaven Is In Your Mind”, and I cover “No Face, No Name, No Number” on my [1967] record – but “Hole In My Shoe”, with the sitar and those high harmonies at the end, is the most 1967 track, you know? And “Flying” by The Beatles, I’ve always felt that really encapsulated Magical Mystery Tour more than any of the other songs on it. Again, it’s not one of their better-known pieces. It’s a four-way co-write too!

It was kind of obvious that Satanic Majesties was a response to, or slight rip-off of, Sgt Pepper. But the atmosphere of the music was so different. And I’m one of those Stones fans who actually really likes Satanic Majesties. I don’t know if Keith Richards disowned it or not, but I think they get the dark side of psychedelia. It’s still got that Stones pulse, but they are probably quite cynically just going, ‘Okay, psychedelia is what’s happening this year… come on, folks, let’s get the kaftans out… oh, we can use Brian on this, wake up Brian! Come on. Put that down, you can have it after the session…’ I do think “She’s A Rainbow” is a really beautiful piece, and that’s largely down to Nicky Hopkins playing the piano. There’s a point when Charlie Watts and everybody comes in at the end, and you’ve got that Stones thrash underneath, and you’ve got Jagger being sort of Prince Michael on the occasions he gets fey.

I think the Stones did their best stuff when Brian Jones was still in the band, before Keith became dominant. I think they did actually write some pretty good songs, but there’s just something about them that they didn’t get taken as seriously as Ray Davies and The Beatles. There’s some pretty good stuff on things like Aftermath and Between The Buttons.

Talking of The Kinks, Ray Davies has got that fabulous ambivalent smile, sort of crinkled… there’s an awful lot of doubt in him, but he also had written these appallingly catchy songs and he still was quite a showman. These days he’s one of those guys that will play his old songs just as they were, like McCartney does, like Donovan does, he doesn’t do a Dylan on them. You get “Dead End Street” and “Autumn Almanac” and “Waterloo Sunset” as they were, and that’s just beautiful.

It was hard to know what to pick from Forever Changes, but “The Red Telephone” is pretty creepy. Extraordinary chords as well. I play it from time to time, and I have to relearn them all every time. I don’t know how Arthur Lee came up with that. It’s quite amazing. He was an influence on Syd Barrett as well – Barrett was a big Arthur Lee fan.

Most people in the UK hadn’t heard The Velvet Underground in 1967, although probably Brian Eno had, seeing as he was doing that thing with the electric violin in the basement [a story told in Hitchcock’s book]… that makes me think that he had got a copy [of The Velvet Underground & Nico] from somewhere, and he was thinking of John Cale. We had kids at school from the States, and it was an American kid who brought in that first copy of Highway 61… that I heard, it was an American one with a red label. Somebody else had a copy of the first Byrds album, which I bought from them. I’ve still got it! And there were people who had the first Velvet Underground album, so I heard it – actually just over the border into 1968. The Velvet Underground is now seen as kind of what came after hippies. All the other songs on my playlist are sort of hippie music, and I deliberately put The Velvet Underground at the end to go, ‘And here’s the next chapter folks, this is where it gets really dark…’

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