Steve Earle has earned the indulgences and deferences of statesmanhood: the discography he has assembled these last thirty years is marvellous and important. Not for the first time, however, Earle has released an album which prompts the wish that he’d stop being quite so statesmanlike. Terraplane ...
Steve Earle has earned the indulgences and deferences of statesmanhood: the discography he has assembled these last thirty years is marvellous and important. Not for the first time, however, Earle has released an album which prompts the wish that he’d stop being quite so statesmanlike. Terraplane – the title alludes to Robert Johnson’s “Terraplane Blues” – is Earle’s blues album, the sort of thing artists of a certain age and gravitas tend to release when they feel they’re entitled to, akin to a distinguished bishop having a go at saying mass in Aramaic, as if to demonstrate that he could totally have mixed it with his legendary forebears.
Terraplane is a perfectly decent blues album. It’s beautifully played, and Earle’s songs are respectful of their heritage while (mostly) sufficiently confident and idiosyncratic to transcend pastiche. It’s just difficult to believe that this is the best imaginable use of Earle’s time and talents.
Even the title of the opening track, “Baby Baby Baby (Baby)”, self-mockingly admits a tendency towards the generic, and the song does not disappoint at least in that respect: a twelve-bar plod which sounds written as it went along. There’s a stretch too much of this sort of thing: see also “You’re The Best Lover That I Ever Had”, “Gamblin’ Blues” and “Acquainted The Wind”. The latter suffers especially from being irresistibly evocative of Spinal Tap’s early incarnation The Thamesmen playing their hit song “Gimme Some Money”.
The lighter the shade of blues, the better Terraplane sounds. “Ain’t Nobody’s Baby Now” is a winning back-porch strum, “Go Go Boots Are Back” revives the Stonesy sleaze of vintage Dukes, and “Baby’s Just As Mean As Me” is a lovely, waspish duet with Dukes violinist y. But Earle’s last real classic, 2002’s Jerusalem, is now more than a decade behind him. Word is that Earle’s next album will be a determinedly country one: an appealing prospect, but perhaps less so than just letting Earle be Earle.
Mike Porcaro, Toto's bass player, has died aged 59.
Rolling Stone reports that Pocaro [above; far left] passed away on March 15 following a battle with Lou Gehrig's Disease, also known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.
The news was confirmed by Porcaro's brother, Steve - the band's keyboardist - v...
Mike Porcaro, Toto’s bass player, has died aged 59.
Rolling Stone reports that Pocaro [above; far left] passed away on March 15 following a battle with Lou Gehrig’s Disease, also known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.
The news was confirmed by Porcaro’s brother, Steve – the band’s keyboardist – via Facebook.
“Our brother Mike passed away peacefully in his sleep at 12:04 AM last night at home surrounded by his family,” he posted. “Rest in peace, my brother.”
Porcaro joined his brothers Steve and Jeff as a member of Toto in 1984, playing on the band’s singles, “Rosanna” and “Africa“.
Jeff Porcaro died in 1992. Mike, meanwhile, stopped touring in the mid-2000s due to declining health, but was inducted into the Musician’s Hall of Fame alongside the band in 2009.
Toto are due to release a new album, Toto XIV, in March, with a European tour to follow in May.
Roebuck “Pops” Staples left it until late in his seventh decade before embarking on a solo career. Until that point he had been the mentor of his family gospel group, the Staple Singers, guiding them through 30 years of progress to international fame. Only when Mavis, his younger daughter and th...
Roebuck “Pops” Staples left it until late in his seventh decade before embarking on a solo career. Until that point he had been the mentor of his family gospel group, the Staple Singers, guiding them through 30 years of progress to international fame. Only when Mavis, his younger daughter and the group’s lead singer, decided to strike out on her own did he take the chance to step into the spotlight himself.
Not that he made much of a fuss about it. Anyone who met Pops Staples before his death in 2000, at the age of 85, recognised that here was a man of quiet modesty, who lived by the words he sang. His gentle vocal delivery and his distinctive reverb-soaked guitar tone were of a piece with that wise humility.
Musicians loved him. Ask Curtis Mayfield, who built his early hits songs on an adaptation of that guitar sound. Or Ry Cooder, who co-produced the two solo albums released during Pops’ lifetime: Peace To The Neighborhood (1992) and Father, Father (1994). They knew that this was a man who, born in 1914, grew up picking cotton on Will Dockery’s plantation in Sunflower County, Mississippi, where he heard Charley Patton play in front of the general store. At 12 years of age Roebuck got his first guitar, and learnt to play the blues – although later on he averred that his heart was never in it.
He made the classic migration north to Chicago in 1935, a handful of dollars in his pocket. Within a year his earnings from a job in the stockyards enabled him to call his wife and the first of their children to join him. He abandoned the guitar for 10 years, but hearing Big Bill Broonzy and others inspired him to buy a new instrument and rediscover his skills. Soon he was performing gospel songs in storefront churches, and teaching his growing family to sing along in simple harmony. Their recording career began in 1952 and the run of hits lasted until “Respect Yourself” and “I’ll Take You There” brought them a global audience 20 years later.
The first of his solo albums was nominated for a Grammy and the second actually won one. When he died he left a number of unfinished tracks in Mavis’s keeping; they now see the light of day as Don’t Lose This, restored and refurbished by Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy, who produced Mavis’s well received albums You Are Not Alone and One True Vine in 2010 and 2013 respectively.
The Wilco frontman knows not to try anything fancy with this material. There’s a hint of Americana in the rustic-sounding drums, but no post-production tricks are allowed to get in the way of the signature Staples sound. Roebuck’s lead vocals, with that confiding intimacy that made him sound like the precursor of Bill Withers, take centre-stage on songs such as “Somebody is Watching Me” and “Friendship”, while Mavis steps forward from time to time, notably on “Love On My Side”.
The guitar is at full strength on “Nobody’s Fault But Mine”, unaccompanied but as big as any band (interestingly, Roebuck seemed to be able to get his signature sound on any combination of equipment, from the Gibson Les Paul and matching amp set-up of his ’50s VeeJay sides to the Stratocaster and Fender Twin of his later years). On the slinky groove of “The Lady’s Letter”, the family vocal blend first supports him and then takes over for a nostalgic chorus (“Hmm,” Roebuck murmurs appreciately as the track ends). On “Better Home”, Mavis wraps her voice around his with infinite tenderness in a gorgeous duet. There’s an appealing remake of “Will The Circle Be Unbroken”, one of the Staple Singers’ early hits, and the album closes with a driving live version of Dylan’s gospel-blues “Gotta Serve Somebody”, reminding us that Bob once unsuccessfully proposed marriage to Mavis.
However much work Tweedy needed to do to complete this record, the result is never lacking in sensitivity, authenticity or integrity. “What do you think?” Pops asks his daughter as the last notes of the lovely “Sweet Home” die away. “I think it’s good, Daddy,” Mavis replies. I’ll go with that, and raise the mark a notch for the very fact of the album’s existence.
Jarvis Cocker has penned a "Nu-Troglodyte Manifesto" which extols the virtues of benefits of living offline.
The manifesto, which has been published in Another Man, envisages "no phone reception. No wi-fi. No TV. No radio".
"Now it's time to come home," he wrote. "Time to come back to the source. ...
Jarvis Cocker has penned a “Nu-Troglodyte Manifesto” which extols the virtues of benefits of living offline.
The manifesto, which has been published in Another Man, envisages “no phone reception. No wi-fi. No TV. No radio”.
“Now it’s time to come home,” he wrote. “Time to come back to the source. Time to escape the constant, endless, meaningless jabbering that distracts you from who you really are and what you really want to do.”
Meanwhile, Cocker has returned to BBC 6 Music, where his Sunday Service show resumed on March 1.
Two independent labels, Sonic Cathedral and Howling Owl, have claimed that Record Store Day is "not beneficial to small labels."
The labels have joined forces to release a new split single - Spectres and Lorelle Meets The Obsolete covering each others’ songs - one copy of which will be released ...
Two independent labels, Sonic Cathedral and Howling Owl, have claimed that Record Store Day is “not beneficial to small labels.”
The labels have joined forces to release a new split single – Spectres and Lorelle Meets The Obsolete covering each others’ songs – one copy of which will be released every day for the next year.
Their intention is highlight the way Record Store Day has become co-opted into the music industry calender to the detriment of smaller labels.
The labels have released a joint statement which list their motive as trying to illustrate “how every day should be record store day” and that the current Record Store Day “rules and regulations” mean that it’s “not beneficial to small, backs to the wall labels”.
Read the full statement below:
“We are releasing one copy a day for a whole year via selected shops and Recordstoredayisdying.com to make some sort of point about how every day should be record store day, and because it seemed like an amusing, foolhardy thing to do. Make no mistake, though, this is not a protest against record shops, because we love record shops (some copies of this record will actually be available in them). It’s not even really a protest against Record Store Day, which is essentially a good idea, or was when it began in 2007, even if it is far too focused on ‘product’ rather than the actual shop spaces and their role in the communities they serve.”
“If it’s a protest against anything, it’s what Record Store Day has become: just another event in the annual music industry circus that begins with the BBC Sound Of… list and ends with the Mercury Prize, co-opted by major labels and used as another marketing stepping stone, like an appearance on ‘Later… With Jools Holland’ or bagging the sunset slot at Glasto. If you want to queue up from the early hours of April 18 to buy Mumford & Sons’ 7” or an overpriced Noel Gallagher 12” to flip on eBay, then fine, but what the hell has it got to do with us? U2 have already shat their album into our iTunes, why should they constipate the world’s pressing plants with it too? And there’s a picture disc of A-ha’s ‘Take On Me’ as well. Of course it’s a fine pop single, but there’s bound to be a copy in the Oxfam around the corner.”
“No, because of the rules and regulations (minimum pressing amounts, no direct to customer sales, blah blah blah) Record Store Day really isn’t fun, and it’s certainly not beneficial to small, backs to the wall labels like Sonic Cathedral and Howling Owl. But we are still affected by it. Badly. There are currently no copies of Spectres’ album ‘Dying’ on vinyl in the shops because the repress is somewhere towards the back of the queue after some Foo Fighters studio scrapings, a host of EPs by The 1975 and about a million heavyweight ‘heritage rock’ reissues that no-one really needs. Less Cheap Trick, more bloody expensive con.”
“The final irony was getting a call to say that this very 7” was going to be delayed and might not be shipped until after Record Store Day. We’ve switched plants, and fingers crossed they will appear on time for the first copy to go on sale on April 18. If they don’t, well, there are 364 other days on which to buy and release records…”
This year, Record Store Day takes place on April 18.
Paul Weller was joined on stage by Mick Jones last night [March 12].
The show, at Victoria Hall, Stoke-on-Trent, was part of Weller's current tour.
The two played "The Changingman".
Jones has recently been producing Sugarmen, the support band at the Stoke show, at Weller's Black Barn studios.
ht...
Paul Weller was joined on stage by Mick Jones last night [March 12].
The show, at Victoria Hall, Stoke-on-Trent, was part of Weller’s current tour.
The two played “The Changingman“.
Jones has recently been producing Sugarmen, the support band at the Stoke show, at Weller’s Black Barn studios.
Paul Weller is joined onstage by Mick Jones of The Clash for 'Changing Man' in Stoke tonight. Wow! pic.twitter.com/dwHvnM3PHA
Weller releases his latest album, Saturns Pattern, on May 11 on his new label Parlophone. You can hear the first track from the album, “White Sky“, below.
Though Neil Young gave extensive instructions on how not to fade away, he declined to discuss the benefits of fading in. There are, of course, a great deal of positives to be taken from plying your trade in the gutter before heading for the spotlight, and Duke Garwood is a perfect example.
Now in h...
Though Neil Young gave extensive instructions on how not to fade away, he declined to discuss the benefits of fading in. There are, of course, a great deal of positives to be taken from plying your trade in the gutter before heading for the spotlight, and Duke Garwood is a perfect example.
Now in his early forties, the Kent-born guitarist, singer and songwriter has been involved in music for decades. As well as releasing four previous albums under his own name, Garwood has played guitar with The Orb, been a member of Inchworm and Little Wet Horse, and provided horns on record for the likes of Savages (whose Jehnny Beth appears on “Heavy Love” itself) and the Archie Bronson Outfit; yet only in recent years has he received notable attention.
The unlikely patron who has helped Garwood reach a new audience is Mark Lanegan; recognising a kindred spirit, the former Screaming Tree and Queen Of The Stone Age organised for the pair to record an album as a duo, released in 2013 as Black Pudding, and much of Heavy Love was tracked at Josh Homme’s Pink Duck studio in Los Angeles after wrapping those sessions with Lanegan.
While Black Pudding featured primarily steel-string reveries, Heavy Love is mostly electric, though like its spiritual predecessor, and his previous albums, it takes its roots from the Delta. If the ten tracks here are closest to blues, though, they are wonderfully warped and narcotically sluggish mutations, as well as beautifully stripped-down. Lyrics are repeated abstractedly as if they’ve just come to mind, the music rarely strays from one chord or key, and deconstructed riffs circle ominously.
With songs as spectral and hushed as these, sympathetic production is crucial, and the subtle textures and atmospheric touches are perfectly tailored. “Burning Seas” features only Garwood’s single-tracked voice, a guitar woozy with vibrato, and some backwards tones, while “Sweet Wine” is just guitar and vocals, with a ghostly organ intruding, as though it’s being played softly by the neighbours.
On other cuts, the instrumentation is broader, though only just: “Disco Lights” is a sultry delight in swung 6/8, Paul May’s jazzy drums lifted by a mass of echoed guitars on the edge of feedback, while “Snake Man” floats by on a bed of muffled drums and grainy shaker. The whole trip is swathed in luminous reverb, threading a sumptuous twilight feel throughout the album; at times listening to Heavy Love is like happily drowning in honey.
Its blues is global, too; the sound of West Africa lurks like a watermark, as on the closing epic, “Hawaiian Death Song”, with its desert drones and sinuous, fingerpicked electric. It comes as little surprise to discover that Garwood has previously collaborated with the Master Musicians Of Jajouka and Tinariwen.
As his sound has matured and grown organically across his solo albums, Garwood has developed into an evocative lyricist and singer. Unsurprisingly, Heavy Love is deeply concerned with matters of the heart. Throughout, love is portrayed as a drug, an obsession that could at any point turn poisonous. “Love is all there is,” he mutters on the title track, before imploring his lover to crush his chest, so they “can take all of me”; on “Burning Seas”, he describes his paramour and he, deliciously, as “bound by sin”.
It’s not hard to see why Mark Lanegan has long been enamoured with Garwood – the pair share similar tattered and guttural voices, which both reveal beautifully soulful nuance. The only real weakness in Heavy Love is the slight sense of artifice involved in Garwood’s transatlantic accent; a necessary evil, perhaps, as his native intonation would likely not blend into the smoky background so well.
One benefit of getting older is often a kind of acceptance of yourself, of feeling more comfortable in your own skin. With his fifth album, you get the impression Garwood is making precisely the kind of music he wants to make, with no thought for anything but self-expression. As a result, Heavy Love is a supremely self-confident record, ten brackish mood pictures that swell out of your stereo like the most redolent film soundtracks. If this is what Garwood has been working towards, then those decades spent honing his craft were surely worth it. After all, it takes a lot of effort to make something so gloriously effortless.
Q&A
Duke Garwood
You’re increasingly getting better known… is it good this is happening when you’re a bit older?
Yeah I think so. I had very high aspirations when I was young, and unfortunately my technique and maturity maybe couldn’t quite live up to them. And so my music might have sounded very ambitious, but like I was scratching at something rather than actually holding it. Now I’ve got the chops, and I’ve got the understanding to know when something isn’t working. Some people keep kicking at the thing until it falls over; I don’t really like treating music quite so harshly as that.
How was the writing process for the album?
There isn’t a song on there that hasn’t done quite a lot of gig time. Those tunes have been worked and worked and worked. You know, I’m playing all the time, and in however many hours of playing maybe a small song will appear, in the flow of it. But like I say those tunes are battle ready on that record. I can play them all, the only one I’ve never played live is Snakeman, which is kind of a sort of little strange piece on there, this unusual one in a sense, compared to the rest of them. I wouldn’t mind doing that live, maybe with Prince or something [laughs].
What was Mark Lanegan like to work with?
He’s inspiring because his internal editing machine is very good. He’s very sharp. So if something’s not happening, it’s out. It’s deleted. It’s not saved for a rainy day or something. And when he gets on the mic in the studio that’s when you see that he’s such a heavyweight, because he completely nails it so precisely. It was quite amazing. Inspiring cat.
By way of tribute to Daevid Allen, whose death was confirmed earlier today, we thought we'd post John Lewis' Gong feature from Uncut, issue 149. Featuring an extensive interview with Allen, as well as other key players in the Gong story, it's a predictably whimsical, meandering trip through A...
Allen’s stage appearances started to become erratic. In December 1974 he went AWOL before a gig in Paris; the next year he felt physically unable to go on stage in Cheltenham. He soon left his own band. True to their soixante-huitard roots, Gong never really had a “leader”, and Allen, even as its founder and key writer, was happy to cede authority to others. The group continued without him, with Malherbe as the only original survivor on 1975’s Shamal, an album led by him and Mike Howlett. Both had left by 1976’s fusion outings Expresso and Gazeuse!, leaving a band dominated by the jazz-rock guitarist Allan Holdsworth and drummer Pierre Moerlen.
“Gong, like Soft Machine many years earlier, turned into a jazz rock band when Daevid left,” says Malherbe. “Interesting, but less humorous. The silliness we had with Daevid disappeared.”
Daevid Allen
For much of the next two decades, Gong’s alumni continued in various separate projects. Steve Hillage started a successful solo career, became a big-name producer and, after being championed by The Orb, started his own ambient dance-music collective, System 7. Didier Malherbe pursued a series of jazz and world music ventures; Moerlen continued the Gong franchise as a jazz-rock project well into the 1980s; and Gilli Smyth launched an occasional outfit called Mother Gong. Daevid Allen was embraced by some punks (he toured with The Fall, and visited CBGB’s in 1979) and pursued several side-projects (Planet Gong, Euterp, Invisible Opera Company of Tibet and the University Of Errors).
Gong eventually reformed in 1992 for the album Shapeshifter, and have toured with various lineups on several occasions since then. In Amsterdam in 2006, a three-day festival called the Gong Un-Convention featured every Gong-related project along with a full reunion of the classic lineup. This year they celebrate their 40th anniversary with an extensive world tour and a new album, 2032. Recorded in Australia (where Allen and Smyth now live, albeit separately) and London (where the band is effectively led by Steve Hillage), it sees them continue their obsessions – aliens, cheese, pixies – in a 21st-century setting.
“It sounds like silly stuff, but there is always a serious side to it,” says Allen. “Gong pokes fun at our own folly, at our attitude towards the alien. For me, absurdism is the highest form of comedy. I think that’s why people still love Gong.”
Bill Hicks' entire catalogue of stand-up comedy albums and specials are to be reissued, beginning next month.
The late comedian's entire discography - Arizona Bay, Dangerous, Flying Saucer Tour Vol. 1, 12/16/1961, Love, Laughter And Truth, The Adventure, Philosophy, Rant In E-Minor, Relentless, Rev...
Bill Hicks‘ entire catalogue of stand-up comedy albums and specials are to be reissued, beginning next month.
The late comedian’s entire discography – Arizona Bay, Dangerous, Flying Saucer Tour Vol. 1, 12/16/1961, Love, Laughter And Truth, The Adventure, Philosophy, Rant In E-Minor, Relentless, Revelations and Salvation – will be made available digitally beginning April 28.
The Bill Hicks Collection
On the same date, Hicks’ video catalogue will be made avaiable through Comedy Dynamics’ VOD streaming platform – It’s Just A Ride, One Night Stand, Totally Bill Hicks, Relentless, Revelations and Sane Man.
A DVD boxed set of video catalog will be released on August 18.
Meanwhile, an album of previously unreleased audio material will be available October 27.
Daevid Allen has died aged 77.
The Guardian reports that Allen's son, Orlando Monday Allen, confirmed the news earlier on Facebook.
Allen, the leader of the prog-jazz group Gong, had been suffering from cancer.
Orlando Monday wrote, "And so dada Ali, bert camembert, the dingo Virgin, divided alie...
Daevid Allen has died aged 77.
The Guardian reports that Allen’s son, Orlando Monday Allen, confirmed the news earlier on Facebook.
Allen, the leader of the prog-jazz group Gong, had been suffering from cancer.
Orlando Monday wrote, “And so dada Ali, bert camembert, the dingo Virgin, divided alien and his other 12 selves prepare to pass up the oily way and back to the planet of love. And I rejoice and give thanks… The gong vibration will forever sound and its vibration will always lift and enhance. You have left such a beautiful legacy and we will make sure it forever shines in our children and their children. Now is the happiest time of yr life. Blessed be.”
Allen was born in Melbourne, Australia, in 1938. He moved to the UK in the early Sixties, where in 1966 he became founding guitarist of the Soft Machine, along side Robert Wyatt, Kevin Ayers and Mike Ratledge.
While in France in 1967, Allen was denied re-entry back to the United Kingdom following a visa complication; he stayed behind, effectively leaving the Soft Machine.
His next project, Gong, became Allen’s defining life’s work, reflecting many of the best qualities of the era in its warm embracing of psychedelia, prog, avant garde music and poetry.
Gong released their debut album, Magick Brother, in 1970.
Meanwhile, Allen released his solo debut, Banana Moon in 1971; the same year as Gong’s Camembert Electrique.
Between 1973 and 1974, Gong recorded their Radio Gnome Trilogy, made up of the albums Flying Teapots, Angel’s Egg and You.
Allen left Gong in 1975; although he resurrected the name in the late Eighties.
In 1992, the band released the Shapeshifter album, which Allen considered a continuation of the Radio Gnome project.
Allen continued to play with Gong until 2014. In February this year, he released a statement outlining the status of his health.
“The cancer is now so well established that I have now been given approximately six months to live,” he wrote, saying he was “not interested in endless surgical operations and in fact it has come as a relief to know that the end is in sight. I am a great believer in ‘The Will of the Way Things Are’ and I also believe that the time has come to stop resisting and denying and to surrender to the way it is.”
This Top 30 originally appeared in Uncut's December 2003 issue...
30 This Is England
Single A-side, September 1985, from the album Cut The Crap, November 1985
DON LETTS: I made a Clash documentary called Westway To The World. We stopped at Combat Rock, right? But to deny “This Is England” ...
1 (White Man) In Hammersmith Palais Single A-side, June 1978
JONES: Really? That’s Number 1?
SIMONON: I think this is the overall Number 1 for me, too. It was such a change from what we’d been doing, from what the audience was expecting. They thought we were just gonna charge along with another bunch of numbers and then we came out with this. It’s like a couple of songs in one. Same with “Complete Control” and “Clash City Rockers”. They’re almost like mini operas. It’s got that reggae element, but it’s also a rock song. It’s not a punk song but then again it is. It’s a combination of all those elements.
JONES: I knew the moment we came up with the music it was gonna be a big number. Then taking it home after we’d finished it and listening to it the next day thinking, “Wow!”
SIMONON: It became one of those sing-song sort of tunes, really, one where everyone sways along when they’ve had too much beer on New Year’s Eve. It’s a Hogmanay song!
JONES: I remember some years ago I was up in Liverpool at this party after The Farm did a gig. Suddenly all these guys started singing “(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais”. They knew all the words. I was so moved. It was so entrenched in them, y’know. That song really means something.
NORMAN COOK: This was very influential on me; the way the Clash used reggae, but were never a cod reggae band. I also identified with being the only white face in a crowd. Key line would be: “Ha you think it’s funny turning rebellion into money.” It came absolutely out of nowhere, it was like nothing I’d ever heard before. I was born in 1963, and I’d have been 15 or 16 when I heard this. My brother had brought home the first Damned album and “White Riot” and I’d bought them off him by the time the records finished playing. At school, you were either a Clash fan or a Jam fan, but I found the Jam a bit humourless and po-faced. The Clash had the swagger. If you were looking for rock’n’roll idols, they were it. I saw them 13 times, saw every line-up.
MOBY: It’s funny, with a lot of bands, people’s choice of favourite song tends to be very subjective, but with The Clash I feel there’s almost a universal consensus among friends I talk to as to what that best song is. And it’s “White Man In Hammersmith Palais”. It’s like, you get a bunch of Clash fans together, at the end of the day and, after one or two minor rows, everyone will probably agree that’s their finest hour.
It’s definitely their most EPIC song. If anything it’s almost like a weird prog rock number. In the sense that it begins one way, develops another way, and ends in another way again. It just has so many different facets. It starts out kinda light-hearted, then gets very intense and emotional, then has this big build, then ends quite, well, delicately. And it tells a great story.
RODDY FRAME: It’s the obvious classic Clash song. People like my brother, who was 10 years older than me and he hated the whole punk thing – he liked Bob Dylan – even he liked “(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais”!
It was the first time The Clash had actually been well-recorded. The first album was a bit tinny, but by the time they did this, they’d got their head round the recording process a bit better. It was so melodic, it had harmonies, a middle eight, a reggae beat. It was much slower than any punk record I’d ever heard up till then. It wasn’t really a punk record, but it seemed to encapsulate everything about The Clash and what they were gonna do.
Being in Scotland, of course, the whole London thing sounded exotic. God, I must have been about 13 at the time. We used to read the NME from cover to cover and backwards again. They had great writers in those days, people like Julie Burchill, Tony Parsons. So you’d be reading it and wishing you were in London the whole time. When you heard The Clash sing about “Hammersmith Palais” it did seem exotic – it seemed like London was the place where you wanted to be.
It’s funny now that I live in Notting Hill, I remember when I first came down in the early ’80s, when Aztec Camera were on Rough Trade, you used to see Joe Strummer walking around in the street. I used to think “Wow! That’s really weird!” I remember once having to restrain my dad when we saw him in the pub. “Oh look – it’s Joe Strummer, I’ll just go and have a wee word.” I went, “Nah, just leave him alone!” That was the great thing about Strummer. I can see him standing in the Earl Of Lonsdale pub wearing all that amazing Clash stuff – those cut-off sleeveless jackets with the epaulettes – it was fantastic. Joe Strummer looked like Joe Strummer wherever he went.
ED HAMELL: I once opened up for The Clash in some band I was in. It was the Cut The Crap era, no Mick Jones or Topper Headon, so I guess it doesn’t count, but Strummer was very cool, letting me play the “Question Authority” Telecaster during soundcheck, and I was in awe. But what was brutally apparent, particularly during the check where they were warming up and you could hear them playing solo and individually, was what a distinctive and unique bass player Simonon was. There were four forceful personalities in that band (when Topper was aboard), and Paul’s came through in his instrument. This song rocks hard and the bass player, amateur though he might have been at that time, carries the band. He also brought the reggae, and though I’ve always been suspect of white pop bands doing the reggae thing (read: The Police), these guys pulled it off. Some maintain that the morphing of the two styles was their greatest contribution, but I ain’t buying it.
CLINT BOON: The thing about “Hammersmith Palais” is that after Joe died, it seemed to become more poignant. It was the mood of the track. The week he died, that was The Clash record that I used to play out in the clubs. I’d stick it on at the end of the night. It was like “Fookin’ hell” – hairs on the back of your neck, y’know? It was like we all realised that we’d lost somebody really important. Certain people you don’t imagine ever dying, and Joe was one of them.
GARY CROWLEY: An incredible record, and one that always makes me think of being at school just off the Edgware Road. It was mainly all black kids so when we used to go away on organised trips, they’d bring their reggae albums and I’d bring some punk records to play ’em, and they really liked “White Man…” It was around this time that I actually got to interview them for the school mag, which I’d turned into a punk fanzine called The Modern World, after The Jam song, obviously. I used to go to Mickey’s Fish Bar every lunchtime, and one day I saw Joe over the road coming out of the Metropolitan Café. I thought, “Fucking hell, there’s Strummer!” So I went up to him, still in me school uniform, and asked if he’d give me an interview. He said “yeah” and told me to come down to Rehearsal Rehearsals in Camden the next day. About eight of us ended up going, me to do the interview and seven mates to hold the tape recorder! When we turned up, Roadent – a rather intimidating Clash roadie – took one look at us and said, “What the fuck is this? A school outing?!” “White Man…” just takes me right back there.
PETE WYLIE: The dynamic of the song, it’s almost like a novel. And that last bit – “I’m the all night drug- prowling wolf” – the lyrical imagery is great. Strummer could sing the telephone directory and throw in one line that made it stunning. In some ways, it sums up The Clash in one record. The reggae, Joe bringing in his Dylan thing with the bit with the harmonica, Strummer’s great yowl and Mick’s great backing vocals. A microcosm of everything there is to love about them. And what great lines. “If Adolf Hitler flew in today, they’d send a limousine anyway” – you could take them out and have them on Quote Of The Week on bloody Teletext.
JAKE BURNS: This isn’t just my favourite Clash song. It’s my favourite song, period. It’s the perfect record and I’d have killed to have made it. Because it’s unorthodox, because it’s a weird structure it holds your attention all the way through. I mean, there isn’t even a chorus as such, but it still manages to be big and anthemic. Even now, just that little guitar click at the beginning before they’ve even started playing and the “One, two, a one-two-three-four”, it just sends the hairs on the back of my neck shooting up. The lyrics are fantastic, they really evoke that whole era. I know exactly what he means because even though I never went to the Palais, I did go and see Dennis Brown at The Rainbow and I felt like the only white guy in there. The whole thing was so obviously written from the heart, y’know. And that was The Clash’s big strength. That honesty, that commitment.
MARK REFOY: I remember the first time I heard John Peel play this in the summer of ’78, saying, “Here’s the new Clash single,” and then on came this thing that at the time I thought was nothing like The Clash, but was still great. Then hearing the mouth organ and thinking, “Wow!” I know it sounds a cliché, but it was one of those musical epiphanies.
LAURENCE BELL: Reggae was such an enormous presence back then. If you were a punk rock kid, you’d normally end up at a blues dance or something where there’d be people toasting and everyone drinking cans of Red Stripe. It was a really cool period and “White Man…” seemed to sum it up. It’s very Dylan, very “Positively Fourth Street”. You’re so entranced by it that by the end of it, it’s your personal anthem. It’s a song without a chorus, but by the end of it you realise the whole song is the chorus.
MARK PERRY: It was the first proper attempt at punk reggae. I mean they’d done “Police And Thieves” before, which I thought was a bit half-arsed, but musically “White Man…” is just brilliant, that whole stuttery rhythm. Again, its great that they’re creating their own mythology, Strummer writing about being down the Hammersmith Palais at a reggae show. Lyrically it’s self-effacing, it’s humorous, it’s about a dilemma which we were all suffering at the time.
JOHNNY GREEN: A good tune always wins out and a good tune with a good message is always, always gonna win out. It was a kind of crummy recording to do when we made it. The studio was behind The Marquee, so we’d be slinking around in the dark, trying to avoid the crowds queueing up outside, crouching behind cars so as not to get noticed. But out of that came this terrific song. The way Joe turned what was a conversational anecdote into a song that touches everybody is a remarkable testament to the man. I thought it was very nice when they played it at Joe’s funeral, too.
ADAM SWEETING: Most of the Clash’s DNA was encoded in “White Man” – it was drenched in their west London roots. Musically, it was a perfect mix of garage-band racket and ramshackle reggae – the punks-meet-rasta lyrics amounted to a Clash manifesto, and it even has a classic “1-2-3-4” intro from Jonesy. Strummer, as usual, sang as though he’d got a Red Stripe bottle wedged in his oesophagus, but you couldn’t miss those blinding images of the “drug-prowling wolf who looks so sick in the sun”, or the piercingly acute observation that “If Adolf Hitler flew in today, they’d send a limousine anyway”. They had rrrrooots rrrrock rrrrebel to burn.
ALEX COX: We’ve all been in that situation, where we find ourselves the only punk present.
JON LANGFORD: A great-sounding, great-looking punk rock seven-inch I spied in the window of Jumbo Records in Leeds, took home on the bus and played to death at the threshold of aural pain. Around that time, The Mekons were doing gigs with Misty In Roots, The Ruts, local reggae bands and sound systems at the R.A.R. club at Leeds Poly, the West Indian Centre and Roots in Chapeltown, and for a while the whole punky reggae party thing made perfect sense, crystallised in the grooves of this single.
ALAN McGEE: Maybe the greatest song ever written by white men. The greatest lyrics ever. It’s why The Clash were a religion to people from Scotland or any other shithole the government has forgotten about.
SIMON MORAN: If people want to understand why The Clash were such a brilliant band they should listen to “(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais”. From what he said to me, I think it was one of Joe’s favourites, too. It was always a highlight of his solo sets.
JESSE MALIN: Phenomenal. It’s so raw, the guitars are so nasty. And the idea of mixing a reggae feel with a punk thing is just fucking genius. When I saw Joe play it, that was a special moment. But that was what Joe was all about. When I was in D Generation, I had a club in New York called Coney Island High and Bob Gruen, the photographer, brought Joe over and we hung out and talked about Scorsese movies and drank tequila until the sun came up. I watched Joe do that with so many people. He would sit and drink all night and talk to you and give a thousand per cent of himself and tell you every story behind every lyric. The Clash were so real with their fans.
MICKEY BRADLEY: Part of a trio of brilliant singles (along with “Complete Control” and “Clash City Rockers”) released within the space of exactly nine months – a run that only The Sex Pistols could match.
GIDEON COE: Inspired, of course, by Strummer’s trip to the venue now known as Poo Na Na, and it contains some of his finest, most pithy lyrics and clever couplets. It’s also the classic example of the way The Clash used backing vocals to such great effect.
I recently read something by Michael Stipe in which he said seeing the Clash showed him how well a band could use background vocals. R.E.M. do it well and now it makes sense, given their main source of inspiration. Jonesy’s “oh oh oh oh’s” never sounded better. What was the Palais now hosts The School Disco among other things. I’m thinking of going along and writing a pastiche entitled “Old Man at Poo Na Na” but I think I’ll leave it.
ALAN PARKER: From my first listen to this song, right through to this day, it’s still one of the most important slabs of vinyl in the world ever.
BOBBY GILLESPIE: A lot of bands pretend to be anti-authority and anti-capitalism, but they don’t actually do or say anything political. The Clash made a deliberate stance against the system and tracks like “(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais” remind people what a horrible, racist country ’70s Britain was. The Clash were – and still are – one of the genuine outsider bands, and their music was a force for good.
JAY FARRAR: The Plebes played this one, too. The lyrics were great from the observations of “turning rebellion into money” to the Keith Richards-meets-Charles Bukowski vibe of “I’m the all night drug-prowling wolf who looks so sick in the sun”. The song’s also a great primer for checking out Jamaican music. “Dillinger and Leroy Smart/Delroy Wilson, your cool operator”.
ROBERT ELMS: I’d grown up a reggae fan on a north-west London council estate, my mum and dad met at the Hammersmith Palais, I’d been the white boy at loads of reggae gigs and it just felt as if this song was part of me, the bass line of my life.
DON LETTS: This song is particularly poignant to me because I was the one that took Joe to Hammersmith Palais on that night. Like the song says, he was the only white man in the house. He went there expecting to see a roots reggae show, not realising that all the people down the ghetto in Jamaica, what are they trying to do? They’re trying to get out and be glamorous! So when he went there, instead of this roots ghetto rebel show, what he saw was more Las Vegas glamour, which I think threw him. That was his own misunderstanding, I think. As I often say to people, the ghetto isn’t something you get in to, it’s something that you get out of. That whole ghetto chic thing is a misconception for a lot of people, so I think it was an eye-opener for him.
It was a brilliant evening for me, because I was there to see all my reggae heroes like Dillinger, Jah Stitch and Leroy Smart. But Joe was going through a bit of a dilemma about what he was expecting and what he was seeing, which I think was something he came to understand later on, obviously. It was so unexpected for a band to do something like “White Man…” The groove was slower, it had that reggae feel, it was a complete left turn to what everyone thought they would have come out with, which was another great thing about The Clash. But, literally, when I hear this song I get goose pimples, every fucking time.
I’ll tell you one last thing about The Clash, and what made them special. Doing this poll for Uncut made me rethink about the whole thing, especially in light of music today, and it struck me that when we – Joe, Mick, myself, our generation – all got into music, it was really an anti-establishment thing. It seems to me nowadays that people seem to get into music today to be a part of the establishment. That’s the essential difference between a band like The Clash and all the shit that’s going on now. You don’t get bands like The Clash any more. Then again, they were a tough act to follow. Make that damn near impossible!
Dave Clark explains how the Dave Clark Five created their huge hit “Glad All Over” in the new issue of Uncut, dated April 2015 and out now.
Clark and associates recall the mania that greeted them once they hit it big in the US, appearing on The Ed Sullivan Show just after The Beatles, and becom...
Dave Clark explains how the Dave Clark Five created their huge hit “Glad All Over” in the new issue of Uncut, dated April 2015 and out now.
Clark and associates recall the mania that greeted them once they hit it big in the US, appearing on The Ed Sullivan Show just after The Beatles, and becoming the first British Invasion group to tour in America.
“We were selling between 120,000 and 180,000 copies a day [of ‘Glad All Over’] in the UK,” Clark recalls. “The record ended up selling over a million and a half to knock The Beatles off No 1. And the final tally was over 2,500,000.
“We were semi-professional, so the boys were still in offices and I was still doing stunt work. In fact, we were the only band in England where we actually topped the bill on Sunday Night At The London Palladium, and we were all still working. We didn’t even go professional when we had ‘Glad All Over’ at No 1. It was after that.”
Roger Daltrey has spoken out about the current state of music.
In a new interview with London's free newspaper, The Standard, Daltrey said, "There's not enough anger out there in the music," he said. "And theres not a lot of contemplation in the lyrics, it's all very sweet… but that's the iPhone ...
Roger Daltrey has spoken out about the current state of music.
In a new interview with London’s free newspaper, The Standard, Daltrey said, “There’s not enough anger out there in the music,” he said. “And theres not a lot of contemplation in the lyrics, it’s all very sweet… but that’s the iPhone generation.”
He continued to criticise the music industry, saying, “it’s been stolen. Nobody wants to put in any money on nurturing artists – if you don’t have the first hit, ‘Goodbye!’ In our days, people wanted to take chances and we were allowed to. The artists ran the business. Now, business runs the artists. You get accountants and lawyers basically deciding who’s going to make it and who’s not.”
The Who are scheduled to play London’s Hyde Park on June 26 as part of their The Who Hits 50 tour. Daltrey confirmed it will be their last tour of this magnitude. “We will always do shows for charity, when we can, because it’s of enormous value to people and Pete [Townshend] and I love to play. But we won’t do long, schlepping tours. It’s killing us,” he explained.
Meanwhile, The Who are to release a seven-inch boxset of their first seven singles in April.
Björk has released a video for "Lionsong", the latest track to be taken from her new album, Vulnicura.
The video has been directed by Inez Van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin.
Björk
"Björk’s character for 'Lionsong' had to be smooth like a spider waiting in her web and seductive like a Baline...
Björk has released a video for “Lionsong“, the latest track to be taken from her new album, Vulnicura.
“Björk’s character for ‘Lionsong’ had to be smooth like a spider waiting in her web and seductive like a Balinese dancer cast in bronze,” Inez and Vinoodh told Noisey. “She is seen as if under a microscope, baring her heart while luring us inside the bloody galaxy of her own wound.”
Meanwhile, Björk’s exhibition at New York’s Museum of Modern Art opened earlier this week, on March 8. It runs until June 7.
A quick reminder, first, that our new Ultimate Music Guide on Kate Bush has arrived in the shops on this beautiful - in London, at least, -spring morning.
We have just done our inadvertent best to smash that mood of vernal optimism in the office by digging into the infernal drones of Jimmy Page's "...
We have just done our inadvertent best to smash that mood of vernal optimism in the office by digging into the infernal drones of Jimmy Page’s “Lucifer Rising” score, from his new, none-more-black “Soundtracks” collection. Plenty here, though, of sunnier intent, not least Rob St John’s lulling “Surface Tension”, drawn in part from sound recordings of the wonderful River Lea, and the dramatic, kinetic new Holly Herndon album. See what you can find from this selection…
A trailer has been released for The Ecstasy Of Wilko Johnson.
The new documentary, directed by Julien Temple, will premier tomorrow [March 13] at the SXSW festival.
Indiewire reports that the film documents what would've been Wilko Johnson's farewell tour; until he was given the all clear from can...
A trailer has been released for The Ecstasy Of Wilko Johnson.
The new documentary, directed by Julien Temple, will premier tomorrow [March 13] at the SXSW festival.
Indiewirereports that the film documents what would’ve been Wilko Johnson’s farewell tour; until he was given the all clear from cancer.
Wilko Johnson
Temple previously filmed Johnson for his documentary on Dr Feelgood, Oil City Confidential.
Morrissey cancelled a gig on Wednesday [March 10] in Holland due to ill health.
The show was due to take place at the Poppodium 013 venue in Tilburg.
The cancellation was confirmed by the venue, who issued the following statement:
"We regret to inform you that Morrissey is forced to cancel tonigh...
Morrissey cancelled a gig on Wednesday [March 10] in Holland due to ill health.
The show was due to take place at the Poppodium 013 venue in Tilburg.
The cancellation was confirmed by the venue, who issued the following statement:
“We regret to inform you that Morrissey is forced to cancel tonight’s appearance in 013, Tilburg. Our stage crew, as well as Morrissey’s touring party were already setting up stage and all requirements for tonight’s show when we were informed by management that Morrissey is unable to perform tonight due to flu. At the moment we are trying to reschedule the date for later this month and will advise all ticket holders as soon as possible.”
Morrissey had previously postponed the same gig in December 2014.
Meanwhile, Morrissey is scheduled to begin a UK tour this coming Friday, March 13.
Nottingham Capital FM Arena (March 13) Bournemouth International Centre (14) Cardiff Motorpoint Arena (18) Leeds First Direct Arena (20) Glasgow SSE Hydro (21) Birmingham Barclaycard Arena (27)
The first trailer for the forthcoming Kurt Cobain documentary, Montage Of Heck, has been released.
The documentary is released in the UK in April, following its premier at the Sundance Film Festival in January.It will receive an American television premiere on HBO on May 4 after showing at SXSW in ...
The first trailer for the forthcoming Kurt Cobain documentary, Montage OfHeck, has been released.
The documentary is released in the UK in April, following its premier at the Sundance Film Festival in January.It will receive an American television premiere on HBO on May 4 after showing at SXSW in Austin, Texas.
Kurt Cobain in Montage Of Heck
The documentary is directed by Brett Morgen, whose previous credits include The Rolling Stones‘ Crossfire Hurricane, and executive produced by Cobain’s daughter, Frances Bean.
The film’s soundtrack will consist of previously unreleased Cobain songs, including a 12 minute acoustic number.
Sufjan Stevens has released a new track, "Should Have Know Better", from his upcoming album, Carrie & Lowell.
Stevens has already released one track from the album, "No Shade In The Shadow Of The Cross".
Sufjan Stevens
Carrie & Lowell will be released March 30 on Stevens’ own Asthmatic...
Sufjan Stevens has released a new track, “Should Have Know Better“, from his upcoming album, Carrie & Lowell.
I interviewed Phil Manzanera in the current issue of Uncut for our regular An Audience With… feature. Among the questions he answered was one from a reader asking about the time he played with Bob Dylan in October 1991, when Manzanera was Musical Director of the Seville Guitar Legends festival. We...
I interviewed Phil Manzanera in the current issue of Uncut for our regular An Audience With… feature. Among the questions he answered was one from a reader asking about the time he played with Bob Dylan in October 1991, when Manzanera was Musical Director of the Seville Guitar Legends festival. We could only run an edited version of Manzanera’s reply, so I thought it would be fun to run the story here in its full glory…
I got asked, “Would you like to rehearse Bob Dylan for a week?” Because it’s 90 degrees, we were going to be underneath the stage in Seville, in an air conditioned room. I went out and bought all his albums, so I knew all the material. I got Jack Bruce on bass, I got the best drummer in the world, I got backing singers, I got everything you could possibly want. So Bob comes in with the manager. The manager says “Hi Phil, this is Bob…” Because I’m musical director of the whole bloody thing – and the tag is guitar legends – I had to say to him “We want to do ‘All Along The Watchtower‘. But we’re not doing your version we’re doing the Hendrix version.” So I held my breath. I’d read lots of instances of all these people like George Harrison working with Bob Dylan where they expect one thing and he doesn’t do it. So the manager says, “Bob might come on, he might not. If Bob doesn’t come on, then Jack, can you sing his song?” Jack Bruce is a fiery Scotsman and he replies, “Uh, fuck. I’m not bloody fucking singing songs.” So that was the way it progressed.
“All Along The Watchtower” has only got three chords. Dylan would rehearse with us, and he would wait and wait and while we’d play them over and over before he came in singing anything. He really was playing with us. At one point he said, “You know, I think we should all be acoustic…” Thinking about it now, he probably thought I was Mexican or something, because of my name, and he said, “Do you know that Tex Mex song from 1948 called blah blah…” I said “Mmmm, no. Jack do you know that?” Jack shakes his head and says, “No.” Then I asked our drummer, Simon Phillips. “Simon, do you know this song?” It turns out, he doesn’t either. I ask everyone, they all say no, they don’t know it. So I said, “I tell you what, Bob. You start playing it and we’ll just pick it up.” He played it differently every time. Soon, people started making excuses to leave the room. “I got to make a phone call, can I just…” I was left there with Bob. But I thought to myself, ‘You know he’s Bob Dylan he can do what the fuck he likes. I admire him so much, I don’t give a shit.’ I think Phil Ramone was in the truck. He had produced him, and over lunch one day he gave me a piece of advice. “Take whatever you can from him if he turns up.” It’s nothing personal.
I knew he liked Richard Thompson, so I rang up Richard who was playing in Holland or somewhere, and said “Richard, would you like to play with Dylan?” “Yeah sure!” He arrived, so I sent him in before the concert to find out what numbers Bob was going to do. He came out and said, “Right, we’re doing this and this…” So we went on stage. The manager had said, “If Bob does come on, make sure you introduce him.” So we went on stage – “It’s Bob Dylan!” – and of course he doesn’t play any of the numbers we rehearsed. We’re all looking at each other, wondering what key he was playing… But you know, he’s a genius. So who cares…
