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Watch first trailer for new Hendrix biopic, Jimi: All Is By My Side

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Watch first trailer for new Hendrix biopic, Jimi: All Is By My Side

The first trailer for Jimi: All Is By My Side, the Jimi Hendrix film starring Outkast's Andre 3000, has been revealed. Click below to watch it. Scripted and directed by 12 Years A Slave screenwriter John Ridley, Jimi: All Is By My Side tells the story of Jimi Hendrix's life throughout 1966 and 1967, a period in which he moved to London, formed the Experience and played a career-making set at California's Monterey Pop Festival, which is where the film ends. The film will not feature any songs recorded or composed by Hendrix himself, as the late guitarist's estate declined permission. Instead, the film will see Andre 3000 perform songs by The Beatles and Muddy Waters that Hendrix himself covered in the '60s. The biopic premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2013. The supporting cast includes Hayley Atwell, Imogen Poots, Burn Gorman and The White Queen's Ashley Charles, who plays a young Keith Richards. A UK release date will be confirmed soon. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-KPOxqMazI

The first trailer for Jimi: All Is By My Side, the Jimi Hendrix film starring Outkast’s Andre 3000, has been revealed. Click below to watch it.

Scripted and directed by 12 Years A Slave screenwriter John Ridley, Jimi: All Is By My Side tells the story of Jimi Hendrix’s life throughout 1966 and 1967, a period in which he moved to London, formed the Experience and played a career-making set at California’s Monterey Pop Festival, which is where the film ends.

The film will not feature any songs recorded or composed by Hendrix himself, as the late guitarist’s estate declined permission. Instead, the film will see Andre 3000 perform songs by The Beatles and Muddy Waters that Hendrix himself covered in the ’60s.

The biopic premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2013. The supporting cast includes Hayley Atwell, Imogen Poots, Burn Gorman and The White Queen’s Ashley Charles, who plays a young Keith Richards. A UK release date will be confirmed soon.

Reviewed! Jack White live at the Hammersmith Apollo, July 3, 2014

John Mulvey
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Reviewed! Jack White live at the Hammersmith Apollo, July 3, 2014

What strange music Jack White makes these days. At the end of this hot, compelling, tempestuous show, he stands triumphantly on a monitor, guitar held high above head like the hammer of Thor, every inch the conquering stadium rocker. The guitar, though, is a battered acoustic one, and the music White has hurtled through for the past two hours is far from straightforwardly anthemic, subject as it is to weird currents, radical combinations, an overarching vision that is at once baroque and agitated. How on earth did that garage rock guy, the one with the sister, get here? Jack White’s secret – one of his secrets, God knows he must have enough of them – may be something to do with a volatile psychological mix of ambition in its most grandiose and ruthless form, and a desire to subvert expectations that can swing perilously close to self-sabotage. During a lengthy encore, he and his five-piece band deconstruct the elegant powerpop of “Steady, As She Goes” and rebuild it with a heavy new menace. The fluent melodiousness of the Raconteurs’ original currently seems to have little use for White, who breaks the song down into a fragmented, staccato prowl, knocking it off balance time and again as he and his bandmates take short and often jarring solos. Most everything here is tense, indignant – even “Love Interruption”, sung with fiddler Lillie Mae Rische, has a rowdy intensity – predicated on a short fuse. It fits neatly with the persona that White is projecting in recent interviews; the lone superstar, wounded and self-righteous, embracing a role akin to that of anti-hero. Swigging champagne from the bottle, spinning semi-intelligible yarns about Mariah Carey, turning most of his songs into bigger, more fraught and priapic creations, White’s love of puzzles and tricks is now sometimes tantalisingly close to antagonism. A divisive rock god of unstable morals, toying with the expectations of his fans and the fabric of his music. The thing is, most of White’s provocations come off. Dubious new genres are minted at speed, so that “Just One Drink” and “Alone In My Home”, two of the more straightforward tracks on “Lazaretto”, are amped up into a kind of preposterous pomp honky-tonk, with drummer Daru Jones throwing funk breaks into the latter for good measure. Among a notably kinetic band, Jones is a focal point front stage left, too restless to stay on his stool for long, and occasionally behaving like a man who would be happiest with an entire kit of cowbells. “Lazaretto” itself, meanwhile, very much resembles a rap-rock hybrid made by someone who loves rock, and rap, but has never actually heard any rap-rock before, and consequently comes to it with an innocent delight in the cleverness of his invention. It’s a stunt White’s clearly enamoured with, and so the likes of “Missing Pieces”, the Dead Weather’s “Blue Blood Blues” and even the Raconteurs’ “Top Yourself”, monstrously strung out in this incarnation, find the outraged cadences of White’s vocal melodies pushed even closer to the rhythms of hip-hop. The show opens with a climax – the curtain pulled aside to reveal White, theatrically buffeted by the force of his guitar playing, and his bandmates in the midst of a cacophonous ending, and it’s this spirit of excess and bombast which dominates, even on vintage White Stripes nuggets like “Astro”. As that song ends, and the brutal lurch of “Dead Leaves And The Dirty Ground” begins, White’s guitar riff is doubled, tripled, even quadrupled by his bandmates on steel (Fats Kaplin), fiddle (Rische) and organ (Ikey Owens, playing with the same demented fusion of Booker T and Jon Lord that he brought to early Mars Volta shows). Time and again, the bullishness of White’s playing is underpinned with more spectral elements - Rische and Kaplin switch between mandolins, fiddles, steel and theremin – so that even the most straightahead big rock songs like “You Don't Know What Love Is” are given a brittle subtext. It’s another way in which White creates a destabilising undercurrent, a sense of the unpredictable that is sustained in spite of the meticulously arranged and drilled nature of the band. Perhaps the waywardness is necessarily anchored in stability: the two bands, one male and one female, that White dragged around the world to support “Blunderbuss”, have been scrapped. For this year’s manoeuvres, the male lineup has been retained and augmented by Rische from the distaff troupe. The switch means White has one less schtick (he wouldn’t tell the bands which one was performing until the day of the show) in his armoury, but it also endows him with a band who’ve grown tour-hardened and flexible, who can draw on a richer and wider repertoire and cut loose when the need arises. That need, it transpires, arises quite often. If the early “Blunderbuss” shows found an uncharacteristically cautious, understated White at work, tonight’s performance has some of the chaos and flux of the wilder nights of The White Stripes. The wired vibes recall a night at the Alexandra Palace in 2006, when much impatient and brilliant song-mangling climaxed with a denunciation of some perceived misquotes in that week’s NME. Here, songs collapse into one another, others (“Hello Operator”) are handed over to the audience to sing, and tunes are brusquely cut and shut into one another: a gothic, windswept back and forth between Hank Williams’ “Ramblin’ Man” and the White Stripes’ “Cannon” is especially deranged. There is even a brief, apocalyptic version of The Dead Kennedys’ “Holiday In Cambodia”, prefacing a long “Ball And Biscuit” which logically showcases how White, unlike at those early “Blunderbuss” shows, has clearly reconciled himself to the explosive joys of the guitar solo. Amidst all the carnage, though, other possibilities present themselves. The splutter and thrust might predominate, but it’s significant that the best songs on “Blunderbuss” and “Lazaretto” are the grand romantic dramas, the ones with cascading pianos and red-raw passions. In the maelstrom, “Would You Fight for My Love?” is a swirling highlight: still charged (Daru Jones drives it an unstintingly hard pace), but with a space and grace that this powerful, exciting, ornately messy show sometimes lacks. As Rische provides backing wails, White appears consumed by his work, orchestrating his bandmates through the swells and currents of his tremendous song. The mood is desperate, imploring, but the lyrics tell a different story. “I know that you want more,” he sings, “But would you fight for my love?” And the message is clear: if we want Jack White as our hero, he will entertain, but not pander. We have to accept all his flaws, whims, caprices and manias as a critical, sometimes uncomfortable, part of the contract. Follow me on Twitter: www.twitter.com/JohnRMulvey SETLIST 1. Sixteen Saltines 2. Astro 3. Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground 4. High Ball Stepper 5. Lazaretto 6. Hotel Yorba 7. Temporary Ground 8. Ramblin' Man/Cannon 9. Icky Thump 10. Missing Pieces 11. Three Women 12. Love Interruption 13. Blunderbuss 14. Top Yourself 15. I'm Slowly Turning Into You 16. Holiday in Cambodia 17. Ball and Biscuit Encore: 18. Just One Drink 19. Alone in My Home 20. Hello Operator 21. You Don't Know What Love Is (You Just Do As You're Told) 22. Broken Boy Soldier 23. Blue Blood Blues 24. Would You Fight for My Love? 25. Steady, As She Goes 26. Seven Nation Army And here are some links to other things I’ve written about Jack White in the past: A long interview around the release of Blunderbuss A live review from 2012 A piece about Blunderbuss The White Stripes, Under Great White Northern Lights The White Stripes, Hyde Park, July 2007 The Raconteurs, Hammersmith Apollo, May 2008 The White Stripes, Icky Thump The Raconteurs, Consolers Of The Lonely

What strange music Jack White makes these days. At the end of this hot, compelling, tempestuous show, he stands triumphantly on a monitor, guitar held high above head like the hammer of Thor, every inch the conquering stadium rocker.

The guitar, though, is a battered acoustic one, and the music White has hurtled through for the past two hours is far from straightforwardly anthemic, subject as it is to weird currents, radical combinations, an overarching vision that is at once baroque and agitated. How on earth did that garage rock guy, the one with the sister, get here?

Jack White’s secret – one of his secrets, God knows he must have enough of them – may be something to do with a volatile psychological mix of ambition in its most grandiose and ruthless form, and a desire to subvert expectations that can swing perilously close to self-sabotage. During a lengthy encore, he and his five-piece band deconstruct the elegant powerpop of “Steady, As She Goes” and rebuild it with a heavy new menace. The fluent melodiousness of the Raconteurs’ original currently seems to have little use for White, who breaks the song down into a fragmented, staccato prowl, knocking it off balance time and again as he and his bandmates take short and often jarring solos.

Most everything here is tense, indignant – even “Love Interruption”, sung with fiddler Lillie Mae Rische, has a rowdy intensity – predicated on a short fuse. It fits neatly with the persona that White is projecting in recent interviews; the lone superstar, wounded and self-righteous, embracing a role akin to that of anti-hero. Swigging champagne from the bottle, spinning semi-intelligible yarns about Mariah Carey, turning most of his songs into bigger, more fraught and priapic creations, White’s love of puzzles and tricks is now sometimes tantalisingly close to antagonism. A divisive rock god of unstable morals, toying with the expectations of his fans and the fabric of his music.

The thing is, most of White’s provocations come off. Dubious new genres are minted at speed, so that “Just One Drink” and “Alone In My Home”, two of the more straightforward tracks on “Lazaretto”, are amped up into a kind of preposterous pomp honky-tonk, with drummer Daru Jones throwing funk breaks into the latter for good measure. Among a notably kinetic band, Jones is a focal point front stage left, too restless to stay on his stool for long, and occasionally behaving like a man who would be happiest with an entire kit of cowbells.

“Lazaretto” itself, meanwhile, very much resembles a rap-rock hybrid made by someone who loves rock, and rap, but has never actually heard any rap-rock before, and consequently comes to it with an innocent delight in the cleverness of his invention. It’s a stunt White’s clearly enamoured with, and so the likes of “Missing Pieces”, the Dead Weather’s “Blue Blood Blues” and even the Raconteurs’ “Top Yourself”, monstrously strung out in this incarnation, find the outraged cadences of White’s vocal melodies pushed even closer to the rhythms of hip-hop.

The show opens with a climax – the curtain pulled aside to reveal White, theatrically buffeted by the force of his guitar playing, and his bandmates in the midst of a cacophonous ending, and it’s this spirit of excess and bombast which dominates, even on vintage White Stripes nuggets like “Astro”. As that song ends, and the brutal lurch of “Dead Leaves And The Dirty Ground” begins, White’s guitar riff is doubled, tripled, even quadrupled by his bandmates on steel (Fats Kaplin), fiddle (Rische) and organ (Ikey Owens, playing with the same demented fusion of Booker T and Jon Lord that he brought to early Mars Volta shows). Time and again, the bullishness of White’s playing is underpinned with more spectral elements – Rische and Kaplin switch between mandolins, fiddles, steel and theremin – so that even the most straightahead big rock songs like “You Don’t Know What Love Is” are given a brittle subtext.

It’s another way in which White creates a destabilising undercurrent, a sense of the unpredictable that is sustained in spite of the meticulously arranged and drilled nature of the band. Perhaps the waywardness is necessarily anchored in stability: the two bands, one male and one female, that White dragged around the world to support “Blunderbuss”, have been scrapped. For this year’s manoeuvres, the male lineup has been retained and augmented by Rische from the distaff troupe. The switch means White has one less schtick (he wouldn’t tell the bands which one was performing until the day of the show) in his armoury, but it also endows him with a band who’ve grown tour-hardened and flexible, who can draw on a richer and wider repertoire and cut loose when the need arises.

That need, it transpires, arises quite often. If the early “Blunderbuss” shows found an uncharacteristically cautious, understated White at work, tonight’s performance has some of the chaos and flux of the wilder nights of The White Stripes. The wired vibes recall a night at the Alexandra Palace in 2006, when much impatient and brilliant song-mangling climaxed with a denunciation of some perceived misquotes in that week’s NME.

Here, songs collapse into one another, others (“Hello Operator”) are handed over to the audience to sing, and tunes are brusquely cut and shut into one another: a gothic, windswept back and forth between Hank Williams’ “Ramblin’ Man” and the White Stripes’ “Cannon” is especially deranged. There is even a brief, apocalyptic version of The Dead Kennedys’ “Holiday In Cambodia”, prefacing a long “Ball And Biscuit” which logically showcases how White, unlike at those early “Blunderbuss” shows, has clearly reconciled himself to the explosive joys of the guitar solo.

Amidst all the carnage, though, other possibilities present themselves. The splutter and thrust might predominate, but it’s significant that the best songs on “Blunderbuss” and “Lazaretto” are the grand romantic dramas, the ones with cascading pianos and red-raw passions. In the maelstrom, “Would You Fight for My Love?” is a swirling highlight: still charged (Daru Jones drives it an unstintingly hard pace), but with a space and grace that this powerful, exciting, ornately messy show sometimes lacks. As Rische provides backing wails, White appears consumed by his work, orchestrating his bandmates through the swells and currents of his tremendous song. The mood is desperate, imploring, but the lyrics tell a different story. “I know that you want more,” he sings, “But would you fight for my love?” And the message is clear: if we want Jack White as our hero, he will entertain, but not pander. We have to accept all his flaws, whims, caprices and manias as a critical, sometimes uncomfortable, part of the contract.

Follow me on Twitter: www.twitter.com/JohnRMulvey

SETLIST

1. Sixteen Saltines

2. Astro

3. Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground

4. High Ball Stepper

5. Lazaretto

6. Hotel Yorba

7. Temporary Ground

8. Ramblin’ Man/Cannon

9. Icky Thump

10. Missing Pieces

11. Three Women

12. Love Interruption

13. Blunderbuss

14. Top Yourself

15. I’m Slowly Turning Into You

16. Holiday in Cambodia

17. Ball and Biscuit

Encore:

18. Just One Drink

19. Alone in My Home

20. Hello Operator

21. You Don’t Know What Love Is (You Just Do As You’re Told)

22. Broken Boy Soldier

23. Blue Blood Blues

24. Would You Fight for My Love?

25. Steady, As She Goes

26. Seven Nation Army

And here are some links to other things I’ve written about Jack White in the past:

A long interview around the release of Blunderbuss

A live review from 2012

A piece about Blunderbuss

The White Stripes, Under Great White Northern Lights

The White Stripes, Hyde Park, July 2007

The Raconteurs, Hammersmith Apollo, May 2008

The White Stripes, Icky Thump

The Raconteurs, Consolers Of The Lonely

The National – Mistaken For Strangers

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The National – Mistaken For Strangers

Matt Berninger's awkward little brother creates a strange and moving documentary... The new film about The National doesn’t quite know what it is. Neither quite a documentary or rock biopic, it’s a strangely subjective picture that works itself out as it goes along. Fittingly, it starts on an uncertain note. “Do you have any kind of organisation or plan for this film?” singer Matt Berninger asks his younger brother, Tom. Set up in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, Matt has erected a deckchair and parasol in less time than it takes Tom to think of the first question in his shambolic interview. Cut to a montage of clippings – 10-page New York Times stories, Billboard chart positions – and newsreel footage that outline just how accomplished The National are these days. Meanwhile, Tom – nine years younger than Matt, a head shorter, a bit heavier – lives with their parents in Cincinnati, Ohio, and sits in the basement listening to metal and making b-movie-style horror films. His directorial intentions can loosely be interpreted as wanting to outdo Peter Jackson’s Braindead for use of fake blood. Feeling guilty about having left for college when Tom was a kid, and aware of his static home life, Matt offers his brother a job as a roadie on the tour for 2010’s High Violet. As the only member of The National without a brother in the band, it’s a bonding exercise, though not a particularly successful one. Living with his parents has left Tom with a lax attitude towards responsibility: he misses bus call, forgets to sort out Werner Herzog’s backstage pass, and leaves a milky cereal mess on the floor of his brother’s hotel bathroom. In response, Matt runs the emotional gamut from empathetically frustrated to quite terrifyingly livid. Not that Tom’s particularly bothered at first; to him the job is a meal ticket to make an all-access movie about his brother’s band. His predilection for bludgeoning metal and horror underpins his technique as a documentarian, sneaking money shots (the band asleep in their tour bus beds, drummer Bryan Devendorf naked in the shower) and asking blunt, odd questions that outline the lack of understanding between them. “Where do you see The National in, like, 50 years?” Tom asks Scott, stunned to learn that they don’t plan on being octogenarian rock stars. “So, how famous do you think you are?” he asks his squirming brother. Part of the film concerns the unfair immunity of fame and the resentment it brews among those who don’t benefit from it, even when they love those who do. The band enjoy many layers of protection, while Tom cries into his camera after eventually getting fired and realising that his life is in “freefall”. From its second act, the film turns into a portrait of his and Matt’s relationship, addressing what hope any of us have against our worst self-defeating impulses. (To see The National try and fight theirs, investigate their first documentary, Vincent Moon’s A Skin, A Night (2008), an incredibly miserable and hard-to-love film about the very fractious sessions behind 2007’s Boxer.) It’s heartbreaking to see Tom’s happy-go-lucky, endearingly arrogant persona crumble into self-doubt as he realises how pitiful he’s become, almost as if he were a character in one of his brother’s songs. (There’s some footage of The National recording sixth album Trouble Will Find Me, notably “I Should Live In Salt”, which concerns the brothers’ relationship.) He returns home to Cincinnati to interview their parents about the fundamental differences between the siblings. “Having Matt as my older brother kind of sucks, because he’s a rock star and I am not,” says Tom. “And it’s always been that way.” We see photos of a gangly teenage Matt playing quarterback, but also learn about the brothers’ shared depressive tendencies from inside their artist mum’s studio, where she has a wall covered in very un-brothers-Berninger inspirational quotes. As Tom comes up with a plan for the film, it becomes a kind of metatextual documentary about making a documentary. It’s an odd concept, but it works thanks to the enjoyably strange array of threads being tugged at here. What starts as a one-man Decline Of Western Civilisation Part II comes to evoke a significantly more redemptive American Movie. Tom embraces sentimentality, but his natural comic timing and propensity to fail keeps schmaltz at bay. The National’s public persona is misleadingly serious, but they’re willing to appear in unflattering lights here, and relegate themselves to supporting players in the story of a guy who it’s easy to love even if you’re not a fan of the band. As different as Matt and Tom Berninger are, they both saved themselves in the same way: turning embarrassment and pain into enduring art rich with humanity and empathy. EXTRAS: Performance footage, interviews and offcuts. 8/10 Laura Snapes

Matt Berninger’s awkward little brother creates a strange and moving documentary…

The new film about The National doesn’t quite know what it is. Neither quite a documentary or rock biopic, it’s a strangely subjective picture that works itself out as it goes along. Fittingly, it starts on an uncertain note. “Do you have any kind of organisation or plan for this film?” singer Matt Berninger asks his younger brother, Tom. Set up in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, Matt has erected a deckchair and parasol in less time than it takes Tom to think of the first question in his shambolic interview.

Cut to a montage of clippings – 10-page New York Times stories, Billboard chart positions – and newsreel footage that outline just how accomplished The National are these days. Meanwhile, Tom – nine years younger than Matt, a head shorter, a bit heavier – lives with their parents in Cincinnati, Ohio, and sits in the basement listening to metal and making b-movie-style horror films. His directorial intentions can loosely be interpreted as wanting to outdo Peter Jackson’s Braindead for use of fake blood.

Feeling guilty about having left for college when Tom was a kid, and aware of his static home life, Matt offers his brother a job as a roadie on the tour for 2010’s High Violet. As the only member of The National without a brother in the band, it’s a bonding exercise, though not a particularly successful one. Living with his parents has left Tom with a lax attitude towards responsibility: he misses bus call, forgets to sort out Werner Herzog’s backstage pass, and leaves a milky cereal mess on the floor of his brother’s hotel bathroom. In response, Matt runs the emotional gamut from empathetically frustrated to quite terrifyingly livid.

Not that Tom’s particularly bothered at first; to him the job is a meal ticket to make an all-access movie about his brother’s band. His predilection for bludgeoning metal and horror underpins his technique as a documentarian, sneaking money shots (the band asleep in their tour bus beds, drummer Bryan Devendorf naked in the shower) and asking blunt, odd questions that outline the lack of understanding between them. “Where do you see The National in, like, 50 years?” Tom asks Scott, stunned to learn that they don’t plan on being octogenarian rock stars. “So, how famous do you think you are?” he asks his squirming brother.

Part of the film concerns the unfair immunity of fame and the resentment it brews among those who don’t benefit from it, even when they love those who do. The band enjoy many layers of protection, while Tom cries into his camera after eventually getting fired and realising that his life is in “freefall”. From its second act, the film turns into a portrait of his and Matt’s relationship, addressing what hope any of us have against our worst self-defeating impulses. (To see The National try and fight theirs, investigate their first documentary, Vincent Moon’s A Skin, A Night (2008), an incredibly miserable and hard-to-love film about the very fractious sessions behind 2007’s Boxer.)

It’s heartbreaking to see Tom’s happy-go-lucky, endearingly arrogant persona crumble into self-doubt as he realises how pitiful he’s become, almost as if he were a character in one of his brother’s songs. (There’s some footage of The National recording sixth album Trouble Will Find Me, notably “I Should Live In Salt”, which concerns the brothers’ relationship.) He returns home to Cincinnati to interview their parents about the fundamental differences between the siblings. “Having Matt as my older brother kind of sucks, because he’s a rock star and I am not,” says Tom. “And it’s always been that way.” We see photos of a gangly teenage Matt playing quarterback, but also learn about the brothers’ shared depressive tendencies from inside their artist mum’s studio, where she has a wall covered in very un-brothers-Berninger inspirational quotes.

As Tom comes up with a plan for the film, it becomes a kind of metatextual documentary about making a documentary. It’s an odd concept, but it works thanks to the enjoyably strange array of threads being tugged at here. What starts as a one-man Decline Of Western Civilisation Part II comes to evoke a significantly more redemptive American Movie. Tom embraces sentimentality, but his natural comic timing and propensity to fail keeps schmaltz at bay. The National’s public persona is misleadingly serious, but they’re willing to appear in unflattering lights here, and relegate themselves to supporting players in the story of a guy who it’s easy to love even if you’re not a fan of the band. As different as Matt and Tom Berninger are, they both saved themselves in the same way: turning embarrassment and pain into enduring art rich with humanity and empathy.

EXTRAS: Performance footage, interviews and offcuts. 8/10

Laura Snapes

Annik Honoré, the inspiration for “Love Will Tear Us Apart”, dies aged 56

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Annik Honoré, the inspiration for “Love Will Tear Us Apart”, dies aged 56
Annik Honoré, the Belgian music promoter and journalist, has died aged 56, according to reports. Honoré was best known for her relationship with Ian Curtis, who she met in London in 1979. Born on October 12, 1957, in Belgium, Honoré moved to London in 1979, where she became a secretary at the B...

Annik Honoré, the Belgian music promoter and journalist, has died aged 56, according to reports.

Honoré was best known for her relationship with Ian Curtis, who she met in London in 1979.

Born on October 12, 1957, in Belgium, Honoré moved to London in 1979, where she became a secretary at the Belgian Embassy.

Later that year, Honoré and journalist Michel Duval began promoting shows at Plan K in Brussels. Joy Division performed on the club’s opening night on October 16.

In 1980, Honoré and Duval founded Factory Records imprint Factory Benelux, as well as the independent Belgian music label Les Disques du Crépuscule.

Les Disques du Crépuscule released records by Michael Nyman, Josef K, Cabaret Voltaire, Gavin Bryars, The Pale Fountains, and the cassette, From Brussels With Love, which included contributions from John Foxx, Thomas Dolby, Bill Nelson, Brian Eno and Durutti Column.

Honoré left the music business in the 1980s and worked for the EU in Brussels.

Speaking about her relationship with Ian Curtis in a 2010 Honoré said, “It was a completely pure and platonic relationship, very childish, very chaste… I did not have a sexual relationship with Ian, he was on medication, which rendered it a non-physical relationship. I am so fed up that people question my word or his: people can say whatever they want, but I am the only person to have his letters… One of his letters says that the relationship with his wife Deborah had already finished prior to us meeting each other.”

Honoré died in July 3, after a serious illness.

Ringo Starr on A Hard Day’s Night: “It was mad, but it was incredible”

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Ringo Starr on A Hard Day’s Night: “It was mad, but it was incredible”
Ringo Starr has discussed A Hard Day's Night movie on its 50th anniversary and ahead of its re-release in cinemas and on DVD. "I mean, we were in a movie, man. We were making a movie!" remembers Starr in a new interview with Billboard. "Four guys from Liverpool making a movie - it was so great. I l...

Ringo Starr has discussed A Hard Day’s Night movie on its 50th anniversary and ahead of its re-release in cinemas and on DVD.

“I mean, we were in a movie, man. We were making a movie!” remembers Starr in a new interview with Billboard. “Four guys from Liverpool making a movie – it was so great. I loved it…”.

He continues, saying the whole experience of making a film was “mad”. Starr said: “It was a really exciting thing to do. We were making records and, wow, the records were taking off and then we’re playing to bigger and bigger audiences and that’s taking off, and now we’re doing a movie. It was mad… but it was incredible.”

The 1964 film had been fully restored and will be in cinemas and available to download on July 4. A limited edition DVD and Blu-ray release will follow on July 21.

Directed by Richard Lester and written by Alun Owen, the film also starred Anna Quayle, Bob Godfrey, Robin Ray, Lionel Blair and Patti Boyd.

Six unheard Nick Drake recordings up for auction

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Six unheard Nick Drake recordings up for auction

Six previously unheard Nick Drake recordings are to go up for auction. The tapes have been described as being in "pristine" condition and were recorded in 1968, before the 1969 release of the folk singer's debut album Five Leaves Left. The recordings are currently owned by his friend, the singer Beverley Martyn, who was married to the late John Martyn. Speaking about the tapes to The Independent, she said the recordings are "full of fun". She commented: "He was young, he sounds full of fun, he sounds light and his guitar playing is absolutely excellent. It really shows that he didn't need to have this whole layer cake of strings." Martyn has said that she is selling the tapes because of failing health. "Someone else should be able to enjoy it," she said. The recordings are being sold by London based auction house Ted Owen and Company on July 31, and are expected to make at least £250,000. The tapes feature versions of his songs "Fruit Tree", "Saturday Sun" and "Cello Song". Earlier this year an unheard Nick Drake song was posted online, almost 40 years after the cult songwriter’s death. "Restless Jane" is a collaboration with Beverley Martyn. The track was written and recorded in Martyn's home in Hastings in early 1974, making it one of the final songs Drake wrote before dying of an overdose of antidepressants in November that year, aged 26. The track featured on Martyn's album The Turtle And The Phoenix, which was released in April.

Six previously unheard Nick Drake recordings are to go up for auction.

The tapes have been described as being in “pristine” condition and were recorded in 1968, before the 1969 release of the folk singer’s debut album Five Leaves Left. The recordings are currently owned by his friend, the singer Beverley Martyn, who was married to the late John Martyn. Speaking about the tapes to The Independent, she said the recordings are “full of fun”.

She commented: “He was young, he sounds full of fun, he sounds light and his guitar playing is absolutely excellent. It really shows that he didn’t need to have this whole layer cake of strings.”

Martyn has said that she is selling the tapes because of failing health. “Someone else should be able to enjoy it,” she said. The recordings are being sold by London based auction house Ted Owen and Company on July 31, and are expected to make at least £250,000. The tapes feature versions of his songs “Fruit Tree”, “Saturday Sun” and “Cello Song”.

Earlier this year an unheard Nick Drake song was posted online, almost 40 years after the cult songwriter’s death. “Restless Jane” is a collaboration with Beverley Martyn. The track was written and recorded in Martyn’s home in Hastings in early 1974, making it one of the final songs Drake wrote before dying of an overdose of antidepressants in November that year, aged 26. The track featured on Martyn’s album The Turtle And The Phoenix, which was released in April.

The 25th Uncut Playlist Of 2014

John Mulvey
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The 25th Uncut Playlist Of 2014

One of those weeks when the office playlist is taken to a whole new level at the very last moment, thanks to the arrival this morning of the new Steve Gunn album. A couple of previously redacted records can now be revealed, too, as the new efforts by Ryan Adams and Goat… Follow me on Twitter: www.twitter.com/JohnRMulvey 1 Syl Johnson – Diamond In The Rough (Fat Possum) 2 Z Aka Bernard Szajner - Visions of Dune (InFine) 3 Blonde Redhead – Barragán (Kobalt) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NS8FLOMgSlk 4 Various Artists – Night Walker: The Jack Nitzsche Story Volume 3 (Ace) 5 The Juan Maclean – In A Dream (DFA) 6 Robbie Basho – Zarthus (Vanguard) 7 Various Artists – More Lost Soul Gems From Sounds Of Memphis (Kent) 8 [REDACTED] 9 Jack White – Lazaretto (Third Man/XL) 10 Goat – Commune (Rocket) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjquKdvIX6U 11 The Number Ones – The Number Ones (Static Shock) 12 Ryan Adams – Ryan Adams (Pax-Am/Columbia) 13 Lonnie Holley – Keeping A Record Of It (Dust To Digital) 14 Matthew Young – Recurring Dreams (Drag City) 15 A Winged Victory For The Sullen – Atomos (Erased Tapes) 16 Vashti Bunyan – Heartleap (FatCat) 17 Dan'l Boone - S/T (Drag City) 18 Kasai Allstars – Beware The Fetish (Crammed Discs) 19 Hiss Golden Messenger – Lateness Of Dancers (Merge) 20 Steve Gunn – Way Out Weather (Paradise Of Bachelors)

One of those weeks when the office playlist is taken to a whole new level at the very last moment, thanks to the arrival this morning of the new Steve Gunn album. A couple of previously redacted records can now be revealed, too, as the new efforts by Ryan Adams and Goat…

Follow me on Twitter: www.twitter.com/JohnRMulvey

1 Syl Johnson – Diamond In The Rough (Fat Possum)

2 Z Aka Bernard Szajner – Visions of Dune (InFine)

3 Blonde Redhead – Barragán (Kobalt)

4 Various Artists – Night Walker: The Jack Nitzsche Story Volume 3 (Ace)

5 The Juan Maclean – In A Dream (DFA)

6 Robbie Basho – Zarthus (Vanguard)

7 Various Artists – More Lost Soul Gems From Sounds Of Memphis (Kent)

8 [REDACTED]

9 Jack White – Lazaretto (Third Man/XL)

10 Goat – Commune (Rocket)

11 The Number Ones – The Number Ones (Static Shock)

12 Ryan Adams – Ryan Adams (Pax-Am/Columbia)

13 Lonnie Holley – Keeping A Record Of It (Dust To Digital)

14 Matthew Young – Recurring Dreams (Drag City)

15 A Winged Victory For The Sullen – Atomos (Erased Tapes)

16 Vashti Bunyan – Heartleap (FatCat)

17 Dan’l Boone – S/T (Drag City)

18 Kasai Allstars – Beware The Fetish (Crammed Discs)

19 Hiss Golden Messenger – Lateness Of Dancers (Merge)

20 Steve Gunn – Way Out Weather (Paradise Of Bachelors)

The Kinks announce 50th anniversary reissue campaign

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The Kinks announce 50th anniversary reissue campaign

To mark their 50th anniversary, The Kinks have announced details of an extensive re-release programme covering their classic 1964-1970 catalogue. The first album in the series will be 1970’s Lola Versus Powerman And The Moneygoround, Part One, which will be reissued on August 18. This 2-CD reissue expanded edition comes with Mono and Stereo mixes as well as unreleased material and alternative versions, all re-mastered from original tapes by Kinks archivist Andrew Sandoval. The booklet contains rare and unreleased images from the era plus new extensive liner notes. Disc 2 features the 1971 soundtrack album Percy which is also packed with fantastic bonus content. Lola Versus Powerman And The Moneygoround, Part One will be followed by more titles later in the year. The reissue campaign is being masterminded by BMG, who acquired The Kinks catalogue when it bought Sanctuary Records in 2013. BMG has partnered with Sony Music for the release programme. The tracklisting is: DISC ONE Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround Part One 1. The Contenders (2.42) 2. Strangers (3.18) 3. Denmark Street (1.59) 4. Get Back in Line (3.04) 5. Lola (4.01) 6. Top of the Pops (3.39) 7. The Moneygoround (1.43) 8. This Time Tomorrow (3.21) 9. A Long Way from Home (2.26) 10. Rats (2.38) 11. Apeman (3.51) 12. Powerman (4.16) 13. Got to Be Free (2.59) BONUS TRACKS 14. Anytime (3.32) 15. The Contenders (Instrumental Demo) (3.00) 16. The Good Life (3.16) 17. Lola (Alternate Version) (5.16) 18. This Time Tomorrow (Instrumental) (3.17) 19. Apeman (Alternate Stereo Version) (3.40) 20. Got to Be Free (Alternate Version) (2.02) Tracks 1-13 originally released in 1970 Tracks 14-20 previously unreleased DISC TWO PERCY 1. God’s Children (3.17) 2. Lola (Instrumental) (4.42) 3. The Way Love Used to Be (2.12) 4. Completely (3.39) 5. Running Round Town (1.03) 6. Moments (2.56) 7. Animals in the Zoo (2.19) 8. Just Friends (2.35) 9. Whip Lady (1.18) 10. Dreams (3.42) 11. Helga (1.53) 12. Willesden Green (2.25) 13. God’s Children (End) (0.28) BONUS TRACKS 14. Dreams (Remix) (3.21) 15. Lola (Mono Single) (4.06) 16. Apeman (Mono Single) (3.52) 17. Rats (Mono Single) (2.40) 18. Powerman (Mono) (4.25) 19. The Moneygoround (Mono Alternate Version) (1.39) 20. Apeman (Alternate Mono Version) (3.40) 21. God’s Children (Mono Film Mix) (3.16) 22. The Way Love Used to Be (Mono Film Mix) (2.04) 23. God’s Children (End) (Mono Film Mix) (0.49) Tracks 1-13 originally released in 1971 / Tracks 15, 16, 17 originally released in 1970 Track 22 originally released in 1998 / Tracks 14, 18-21, 23 previously unreleased All recordings re-mastered 2014

To mark their 50th anniversary, The Kinks have announced details of an extensive re-release programme covering their classic 1964-1970 catalogue.

The first album in the series will be 1970’s Lola Versus Powerman And The Moneygoround, Part One, which will be reissued on August 18.

This 2-CD reissue expanded edition comes with Mono and Stereo mixes as well as unreleased material and alternative versions, all re-mastered from original tapes by Kinks archivist Andrew Sandoval. The booklet contains rare and unreleased images from the era plus new extensive liner notes. Disc 2 features the 1971 soundtrack album Percy which is also packed with fantastic bonus content.

Lola Versus Powerman And The Moneygoround, Part One will be followed by more titles later in the year. The reissue campaign is being masterminded by BMG, who acquired The Kinks catalogue when it bought Sanctuary Records in 2013. BMG has partnered with Sony Music for the release programme.

The tracklisting is:

DISC ONE

Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround Part One

1. The Contenders (2.42)

2. Strangers (3.18)

3. Denmark Street (1.59)

4. Get Back in Line (3.04)

5. Lola (4.01)

6. Top of the Pops (3.39)

7. The Moneygoround (1.43)

8. This Time Tomorrow (3.21)

9. A Long Way from Home (2.26)

10. Rats (2.38)

11. Apeman (3.51)

12. Powerman (4.16)

13. Got to Be Free (2.59)

BONUS TRACKS

14. Anytime (3.32)

15. The Contenders (Instrumental Demo) (3.00)

16. The Good Life (3.16)

17. Lola (Alternate Version) (5.16)

18. This Time Tomorrow (Instrumental) (3.17)

19. Apeman (Alternate Stereo Version) (3.40)

20. Got to Be Free (Alternate Version) (2.02)

Tracks 1-13 originally released in 1970

Tracks 14-20 previously unreleased

DISC TWO

PERCY

1. God’s Children (3.17)

2. Lola (Instrumental) (4.42)

3. The Way Love Used to Be (2.12)

4. Completely (3.39)

5. Running Round Town (1.03)

6. Moments (2.56)

7. Animals in the Zoo (2.19)

8. Just Friends (2.35)

9. Whip Lady (1.18)

10. Dreams (3.42)

11. Helga (1.53)

12. Willesden Green (2.25)

13. God’s Children (End) (0.28)

BONUS TRACKS

14. Dreams (Remix) (3.21)

15. Lola (Mono Single) (4.06)

16. Apeman (Mono Single) (3.52)

17. Rats (Mono Single) (2.40)

18. Powerman (Mono) (4.25)

19. The Moneygoround (Mono Alternate Version) (1.39)

20. Apeman (Alternate Mono Version) (3.40)

21. God’s Children (Mono Film Mix) (3.16)

22. The Way Love Used to Be (Mono Film Mix) (2.04)

23. God’s Children (End) (Mono Film Mix) (0.49)

Tracks 1-13 originally released in 1971 / Tracks 15, 16, 17 originally released in 1970

Track 22 originally released in 1998 / Tracks 14, 18-21, 23 previously unreleased

All recordings re-mastered 2014

Rough Trade announce plans to open more record shops

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Rough Trade announce plans to open more record shops
Rough Trade are to open a record shop in Nottingham, with more stores to follow. The record label already has shops in Shoreditch and Ladbroke Grove in London - Rough Trade East and Rough Trade West - as well as in Brooklyn, New York, but they will be branching out to Nottingham's Creative Quarter ...

Rough Trade are to open a record shop in Nottingham, with more stores to follow.

The record label already has shops in Shoreditch and Ladbroke Grove in London – Rough Trade East and Rough Trade West – as well as in Brooklyn, New York, but they will be branching out to Nottingham’s Creative Quarter this autumn, setting up what they say will be “our finest store, yet.”

The label tweeted news of the shop saying: “We’re finally opening a new store in the UK, the first of many…”

The first Rough Trade shop opened in Ladbroke Grove in 1976 and two years later gave rise to Rough Trade Records. Rough Trade previously had stores in Covent Garden, London, Paris, Tokyo and San Francisco.

The Shoreditch branch opened in 2007. It boasts a coffee shop and also regularly hosts in-store gigs. The Brooklyn branch opened last year in Williamsburg, and is the biggest music store in New York City. “We’re going to give it our best to make the city proud,” said Rough Trade of the new Nottingham shop.

Tony Allen announces new album, shares “Go Back” featuring Damon Albarn

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Tony Allen announces new album, shares “Go Back” featuring Damon Albarn
Tony Allen has revealed details of his new album, Film Of Life. He has shared a track from the album, "Go Back", which features Damon Albarn on guest vocals. You can listen to the song below. Film Of Life is Allen's fifth solo album. Allen, who played with Albarn in The Good, The Bad, & The Q...

Tony Allen has revealed details of his new album, Film Of Life.

He has shared a track from the album, “Go Back“, which features Damon Albarn on guest vocals.

You can listen to the song below.

Film Of Life is Allen’s fifth solo album. Allen, who played with Albarn in The Good, The Bad, & The Queen, made his name as the drummer for Fela Kuti’s band Africa 70. He also worked alongside Albarn in the 2012 project, Rocketjuice and The Moon.

Film Of Life is set for release in October. You can watch a trailer for the album below.

Scott Walker and Sunn O))) to collaborate on new project, Scott O)))

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Scott Walker and Sunn O))) to collaborate on new project, Scott O)))
Scott Walker and Sunn O))) are set to collaborate on a Scott O))) project. Details of the project are scant, but a source at 4AD, the label which is releasing the collaboration told The Quietus: "They're working together and there is a record coming later in the year." A website, scott-o.com has ...

Scott Walker and Sunn O))) are set to collaborate on a Scott O))) project.

Details of the project are scant, but a source at 4AD, the label which is releasing the collaboration told The Quietus: “They’re working together and there is a record coming later in the year.”

A website, scott-o.com has been set up, but currently just consists of a holding page.

Walker, who is 71, signed to 4AD in 2004 and released The Drift in 2006 and his most recent album, Bish Bosh, in 2012.

Drone metal band Sunn O))) formed in Washington in 1998. They released their debut album ØØ Void in 2000 and their sixth album, the acclaimed Monoliths & Dimensions, in 2009. They have previously collaborated with experimental metal band Boris and released an album with Norwegian collective Ulver, called Terrestrials earlier this year.

Manic Street Preachers: “There’s just so much hate within this band. Why are we still like this?”

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Manic Street Preachers: “There’s just so much hate within this band. Why are we still like this?”
The Manics release their 12th album, Futurology, on Monday (July 7) – here, we head back to the November 2011 issue of Uncut (Take 174) to hear James Dean Bradfield, Nicky Wire and Sean Moore talk us through their history, and introduce us to their next stage, “the third and final great leap for...

The Manics release their 12th album, Futurology, on Monday (July 7) – here, we head back to the November 2011 issue of Uncut (Take 174) to hear James Dean Bradfield, Nicky Wire and Sean Moore talk us through their history, and introduce us to their next stage, “the third and final great leap forward…” Words: David Quantick

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“We came here on Silver Jubilee Day, 1977,” says Nicky Wire as a people carrier full of Manic Street Preachers heads towards the coast outside Cardiff. “My family didn’t want to go to a fucking street party so we went to the beach.”

James Dean Bradfield turns to his cousin, Sean Moore. “What was that costume you wore on the day?”

“Cossack,” says Sean.

“Which was nothing compared to the one you had on your birthday,” says Wire.

“They dressed me up in an SS officer’s uniform,” says Sean. “I was eight.”

Welcome, once more, to the weird and hilarious world of the Manic Street Preachers. I love the Manics, not least for the reason that they are quite possibly the funniest people I have ever met. Partly because they’re witty and articulate, but mostly because there’s something glorious about the spectacle of frothing, helpless, impotent rage. And the Manics are still angry as hell, boiling with scattergun fury. An innocent conversion in the car about favourite musicians suddenly takes a turn for the foaming when Brian Eno crops up.

“Oh, you’ve done it now,” says Sean as James turns in his seat, eyes red like stolen rubies and shouts, “Brian Eno? BRIAN FUCKING ENO!?!?! I saw him once, walking through London with a scarf over his shoulder carrying a baguette,” he spits. “He’s the kind of person who thinks doing that is great.”

_____________________

Manic Street Preachers HQ is Manicsesque the way the Batcave is Batmanesque. Downstairs, a studio with the original mixing desk from Rockfield Studios, posters – Aguirre: The Wrath Of God, a 2004 wallchart of the EU – and a small statue of Aneurin Bevan. Upstairs, two walls of Manics icon posters (James tests me on some and I fail) and a nice telly. On the couches are singles – the Television Personalities’ brilliant “A Sense of Belonging”, some stuff by left-wing sabotage band McCarthy and the artwork for early Manics 7” “Suicide Alley”. Nicky poses with a very broken Richey Edwards guitar – “I think it’s still got his blood on it” – and then settles on a sofa to discuss the business of the day. Ostensibly, we are here to talk about their epic new singles compilation set, National Treasures. Being the Manics, they’re also here to talk about their new album, provisionally entitled ‘70 Songs Of Hatred And Failure’. And, even more being the Manics, they’re also here to talk about going away for three years and coming back as a different group. But let’s start with the hits album.

“We talked about doing it when the tenth album, Postcards From A Young Man, came out [in 2010],” says Nicky. “We let ourselves down with the last compilation, [2002’s] Forever Delayed, ’cos we cherry-picked and there were only 19 of our hits on it. There’s 38 on this and when we do this gig at Christmas we’ll play all 38 of them. Three hours – with an interval where you can have an ice cream.”

“And that,” he says with a firm sigh, “will be it. We won’t be doing any more shows or putting out a record for two or three years.”

The Ziggy fans in the front row scream. Mick Ronson looks confused. What will you do in that time?

“Fucking sit in here and try and reclaim some kind of happiness…” Nicky claims. “No, we want the next album to be the third and final great leap forward of the band. I dunno what the next phase is gonna be, but to make people love you it’s got to be really special… My wall in my bedroom is Sandinista!, Bitches Brew, The White Album… the idea of doing something long, full of depth – and perhaps we have to sacrifice some of the writing quality for the sound.”

More on this story as it unfolds. National Treasures will feature almost every Manic Street Preachers single, including a new cover of “This Is The Day” by The The. “Which,” Nicky claims, “is just an absolutely gorgeous, melancholic song which we’ve just Manicfied… Manicfied? Manicsified?” Sadly, it omits both their marvellous cover of Rihanna’s “Umbrella” and their great download-only festive single, “Ghosts Of Christmas”, which contains the fantastic line, “Hot Wheels on the dinner table/Too much sherry, Mum unstable”.

So let’s begin our voyage around the Manic Street Preachers with 1991’s “Motown Junk”, their first “fully fledged, rock’n’roll opening salvo”, as Nicky calls it. “I do think it’s one of our best singles by a million miles. We’ve played it at every fucking gig for the last 22 years probably…”

Wire’s memories of the time are “just absolute naïve bliss. Travelling, sleeping in bunk beds, on tour in little B’n’Bs in Stoke, being on Heavenly, meeting Philip and Martin [Hall, both brothers later Manics managers]. There’s no downside to it. And actually, just thinking, ‘Fuck me, we’re gonna blow everything away.’”

I saw the band before I met them, as they walked down Charing Cross Road being photographed for the NME by Martyn Goodacre. With their leopardskin jackets, big hair and make-up, they looked, basically, like a bunch of women.

“We just did,” agrees Nicky. “I remember going with Philip to watch Swansea-Fulham with eyeliner on and getting the most bizarre looks, but feeling really empowered by it.”

The Manics are great because there are layers to them. There were no bands who liked Guns N’ Roses who weren’t bad metal. No bands who liked The Clash who weren’t crappy punk bands. And no band who could read, with the late example of The Smiths, who were any good. And the Manic Street Preachers, ludicrous and daft as they were, meant it.

“We generally did mean it. We still do,” nods Nicky apologetically, “It can be a really destructive thing. There’s just so much fucking hate within this band that sometimes we just flop down at the end of the day and think, ‘Why are we still like this?’”

It made life great for NME journalists. For me, it was suddenly a case of “My band’s smarter than your band.” We would all sit around just doing impressions of Richey James Edwards and Nicky Wire’s laconic pronouncements. Two favourites: “I mean, who’ve we got now? Loz. From Kingmaker,” and, slightly surreally, “The Queen Is Dead!? The Queen’s not dead.”

Nicky laughs. “There’s a gigantic fab’lous sense of humour to us. The idea that we were extremely po-faced and serious just didn’t bear out. Richey was a fucking hilarious character. He was Johnny Borrell and Pete Doherty before they existed.”

He was also charming, more Syd Barrett than Sid Vicious. You always felt you were in the presence of somebody delightful.

“There was a deep-rooted politeness in those situations,” Nicky claims. “And he always had a plan. He would never go into an interview without doing a bit of revision. He did think of ‘We hate Slowdive more than Hitler’ the night before an interview… which is a pretty dangerous fucking thing to say! And the night before we did our first NME cover shoot, I went out and got love bites. Richey couldn’t get off with anyone so he got his compass out and carved HIV into his chest.”

Nicky Wire grins evilly. “For you lot, it must have been such joy after having to do an interview with Ride.”

_____________________

The second landmark Manics single for Wire is the epic, gorgeous “Motorcycle Emptiness”, released in 1992. Produced by Wham! producer Steve Brown, this six-minute song was Bowie’s “Heroes” reimagined by Bruce Springsteen (with its roots, oddly, in the June Brides song “Josef’s Gone”). It was written by James when he was 17, and was initially too hard for the band to play live.

“I think ‘Motorcycle…’ was our first recognised song. Every country we’ve been to knows that song,” Wire says now. “I wish we could have done an album of ‘Motown Junk’s, but we put ourselves under so much pressure to be big sooner than we thought.”

There has been no other band who’ve gone from White Riot to Use Your Illusion in the space of a year, but that’s what the Manics did, from “Motown Junk” to the sprawling, stadium art rock of Generation Terrorists.

“And this is why we had a massive argument about wanting to be McCarthy, and being Marxist indie kids at the same time. It was a lot to try and shoehorn in, which is why it didn’t quite work with GT, much as I love it.”

Next on the singles list – as Nicky skips, as the Manics often do, the second, rockier album Gold Against The Soul – is “Faster”, first single from 1994’s career-changing and career-defining The Holy Bible, where Richey Edwards addressed his increasing mental illness and anorexia and James Dean Bradfield his love of late-’70s post punk.

“‘Faster’ is still probably our most original and powerful piece of music,” Nicky says as James comes over. He nods at Nicky. “We started to record in a palatial studio with a snooker room and a tennis court. But – and this was his idea – ‘We gotta get away, it’s gotta be boot camp, it’s gotta be nasty, like Michael-Caine-in-Mona Lisa naasty!’ And it was a touch of Method, recording it in the red light area in Wales.”

With its lyrical concerns and sheer relentless bleakness, The Holy Bible is seen as “Richey’s album”. How much was that true?

“That’s a good question,” says James. “The genesis of the record was Nicky’s idea, and the motivation. I really wanted to do a lot of my John McGeochisms, from Magazine, I was getting fed up with trying to ape Slash because it was obvious the world only wanted one Slash and they didn’t want a five feet two bloke from Wales doing it…”

“And the drumming is extraordinary on there,” says Nicky. “You listen to ‘White America’, it’s fucking unbelievable. I think Sean was tired of trying to be a stadium drummer… and his little frame was going ‘Fuck, can’t I just pretend to be a post-punk drummer?’”

“Undoubtedly Richey’s personal maelstrom was fed into the lyrics. A song like ‘Yes’, the noble notion of artistic bravery, perhaps forcing himself to go to places in his lyrics…” says James. “Singing Richey’s lyrics was like a set of sarcastic commandments. It just felt like sin to sing them.”

It was a horrific time for the band, with a member and a friend who was both physically and mentally ill. He could also be, as ever, lovely to be with. My last two memories of Richey are watching him stare at me in fascination one night when I had become horribly drunk, as though I were a television programme made of alcohol, and then meeting him at an early Oasis concert where he enthused about how great they were. And in many ways, this was, paradoxically, a great time for the band.

“I remember feeling incredibly superior at that point,” says Nicky. “When we’d turn up at festivals and we’d see all these fuckwits in their Fred Perry shirts and two-tone jackets, the Britpop fucking look, and we were dressed like Apocalypse Now… At Glastonbury, there was just pure enmity from us to them and them to us. I felt powerful. I was fucking spitting in the camera – ‘Build a bypass over this shithole! Wi-ire! Wi-ire! Wi-ire! Wi-ire!’”

Richey’s subsequent disappearance on February 1, 1995 (he was declared legally dead on November 23, 2008) stopped the band hard for six months. And then, says Nicky. “James phoned me up and said I think I’ve got this REM, Enno Morricone classic…”

There is no greater comeback single than 1996’s “A Design For Life”. The definitive Nicky Wire lyric, which James distilled from two of Nicky’s poems, it’s an epic Spector waltz that’s part terrace anthem and part demand for the empowerment of the working classes. From its opening line – “Libraries gave us power” – to Sean Moore’s crashing drum exit, “A Design For Life” marked the beginning of the Manics’ second wind.

“As soon as we had mixed the record there was a kind of confidence in us,” says Nicky now. “I had become so hateful towards Britpop and the pathetic nature of the patronisation of the working classes, usurping working class culture and turning it into fucking greyhound races and everything being common for common’s sake. There was a lot of constructive anger in the words, as opposed to nihilistic anger. It was just one of those few records you have where every aspect is perfect.”

“Constructive anger” led to something never seen before – the first positive Manics record.

“That first line is pretty startling. It’s a hard one to sing.” He demonstrates. “‘Lib’ries…Libraries!’”

“It is very strange how you go from ‘Faster’ to ‘…Design’,” James says to him.

“How you actually taught yourself to write less. Every line in that song does matter…”

Nicky hesitates. “Let’s face it, there was a freedom to making music that we had been constricted by…”

“Yeah!” James interrupts.

“ …which had been lifted,” finishes Nicky.

Which was?

“Just the volume of Richey’s words,” says Nicky. “It was pretty hard, when they’re that good, to get rid of ’em. When James had been presented with these amazing tracts of lyrics, it was hard for James to say, ‘Can you just go away and write four lines and a verse instead?!’ But to have Richey around on the Brit Awards and stuff, on the scale of popularity we had then, to see what he would said, that would have been fucking brilliant.”

Another landmark single? Nicky: “I’d have to say ‘If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next’ [1998] because it was a gigantic No 1. A fucking complex song about the Spanish Civil War with a massive title – the longest title in pop history to get to No 1 until recently – and some lines in there which you would never hear in a No 1 record. And I think it must be the only pro-war song to be No 1.”

This was the golden age of the Manic Street Preachers, when their linen-clad forms (James: “Manics at C&A!”) were on every TV show and their increasingly airbrushed sound worked in odd complement to their newly bleached passion. It was a direction which led, inevitably, into a well-produced trough. Has there ever been a less-aptly named album than 2004’s Lifeblood?

“In a strange way, the next landmark moment is [Lifeblood single] ‘The Love Of Richard Nixon’,” continues Nicky. “Because we just realised what we couldn’t be. That was us thinking we could say anything, that the things we talk about amongst ourselves, that we could turn it into a song and have a Top 10 hit with it. And that showed us we couldn’t.”

“To try and write a humanising song of admiration about the most hated President in US history,” adds Nicky, nodding towards Sean Moore, who’s sitting nearby, “Sean still loves the song.”

“Because it’s twisted,” says Sean with relish. “It’s a hated person in a chintzy pop song.”

“Chintzy?!” James splutters. “That was supposed to be our fucking Shriekback influence, that was!”

“I can remember being in James’ flat in Cardiff, hearing Jo Wylie play it on Radio 1,” Nicky groans. “And I knew as soon I heard it… what the fuck have we done?”

“The most perverse moment,” says Sean, with relish, “was that at midweek it was No 1.”

“Whenever you get told by your A & R man to sound like U2 and Depeche Mode…” says Nicky, “You’re fucked if you try and follow that.”

Really? The Manic Street Preachers, punk rock scourges of the charts, listened to an A&R man?

“There was a little subconscious seepage,” James admits. Sean is more forthright. “They said listen to ‘Enjoy The Silence’. Possibly we’d have been better off with fucking silence.”

_____________________

And then came the band’s third wind. Via Sweden.

Nicky: “‘Your Love Alone Is Not Enough’ [2007] is the next landmark because it’s everything throughout our career we wanted to be, really. Having Nina [Persson, from The Cardigans, who shared the lead vocal with James] in the band gives that sense of symmetry. There’s no way she replaced Richey, but having someone so glamorous and talented… and we are genuinely obsessed with the Cardigans. And that was No 1 all week on the midweeks and we only got overtaken by Beyoncé and Christina Aguilera together! On a Shakira song!”

Nicky likes his hits, you can tell. “With that song,” he says, “you’d be getting feedback straight away, saying it’s No 5 in Hong Kong and things like that, and it made you realise that as creatures commercial success has fucking been important. I couldn’t survive on critical acclaim alone.”

The next album – 2009’s Journal For Plague Lovers – was a sort of Holy Bible II, with lyrics taken from Richey’s old notebooks. Produced by Steve Albini (Nicky: “Richey had always wanted Albini”), it wasn’t raided for singles at all, so our next Manics landmark is the title track of their most recent album, Postcards From A Young Man.

“There’s a real deep resonance to ‘Postcards From A Young Man’,” says old man Wire. “It’s definitely one of my favourite titles, and it did seem to sum up the autumnal fade and the beauty of remembering stuff in a positive way. There’s some kind of glorious failure in that song.”

‘Postcards…’ is also an intensely crowded song, riff after tune after hook.

“That’s our obsession with trying to fit everything into three-and-a-half minute songs,” says Sean. “We take a pride in that.”

And there we have it. Until next time. What will the Manics of the future be like?

“I want there to be a different singer in the band,” says James. Nicky looks at him. “I’m glad you said that,” he sulks. “Because I said that at the weekend and everyone’s been having a fucking go at me!”

“I like the idea of Nina and you trying to write lyrics together,” James continues. “You having a lyric partner again would be interesting. But we do need a new angle and we need a new voice in the band. That’s where I am with it.”

“I agree,” says Nicky. “Preferably one that looks slightly more attractive than you.” He corrects himself. “Well, all of us really.”

Perhaps you could do a Sugababes and replace members one by one.

“That would be fucking brilliant!” roars Nicky. He is serious again. “Shirley Bassey, Ian McCulloch, Traci Lords… we’ve always enjoyed having a different voice. But if there is going to be a final phase of the Manics then – ”

James interrupts. “ – we’ve at least got to try and get four albums out of it!”

Time to go. The next time we see the Manics, who knows what they’ll be up to. I don’t know what your truth is, but here’s mine: 20 years on, my band is still smarter than your band.

The Punk Singer: A Film About Kathleen Hanna

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The Punk Singer: A Film About Kathleen Hanna

Heart and teeth bared in a vivid portrait of the riot grrrl spearhead... “I’m your worst nightmare come to life – I’m a girl who won’t shut up.” So barks a furiously intense young Kathleen Hanna in footage of an early spoken-word performance, at the start of Sini Anderson’s biopic. As singer with the iconoclastic Bikini Kill, Hanna became not only a rallying figure for the riot grrrl movement – part of the youthful “third wave” of US feminism that was committed to activism and zine culture and aligned with the DIY punk/hardcore scenes – but also a bona fide pop star. If she shouldered the former responsibility comfortably, the charismatic Hanna was less at ease with her cult status. She was eventually pushed to declare a media blackout in 1994, frustrated by articles that focused unfailingly on her and her band mates’ physical appearance, her own troubled home life and her work as a stripper while studying at Olympia’s Evergreen State College. Shaped as much by Gloria Steinem and Jenny Holzer as The Runaways, X-Ray Spex and Fugazi (whose Ian MacKaye produced their first self-titled EP) – and an acknowledged influence on Kurt Cobain, who briefly dated drummer Tobi Vail – Bikini Kill burned with an incendiary brightness for eight years, before breaking up in 1997. After writing, recording and producing a solo album of lo-fi electronic pop as Julie Ruin in 1999 and then fronting New York-based, politico-synth-pop trio Le Tigre, Hanna suddenly stopped performing in 2005. She’d been dogged by mysteriously persistent sickness on tour and eventually quit, simply declaring that she had nothing left to say. One of the film’s most poignant scenes is of Hanna – not only the articulate and seemingly unstoppable shaper of her own destiny, but also a galvanising voice for countless tyrannised young women – explaining why she bowed out. “I didn’t want to stop; I was told by my body to stop,” she says, tearfully. After years of not knowing what was wrong with her, she was finally diagnosed with late-stage Lyme disease in 2010. Hanna’s since returned to recording and performing with her new band The Julie Ruin, which features former Bikini Kill band mate Kathi Wilcox. As a biography twinned with the narrative of riot grrrl’s development, Anderson’s documentary follows a logical timeline, but it cuts energetically back and forth between the past and the present via extensive (excellent) archival clips and interviews with Hanna, numerous other key players in the movement and like-minded musicians such as Joan Jett and Kim Gordon, as well as Hanna’s husband, Adam Horowitz. Its tone is rousing and celebratory, but The Punk Singer is no dutiful hagiography. What it is, is the tale of the “Rebel Girl” from Maryland who taught herself to speak like a Valley Girl, the singer with SLUT daubed on her torso who famously directed “all girls to the front!” at hitherto female-unfriendly punk-rock shows. It’s also an exhilarating reminder of where unshakeable commitment, a shared vision and daring to “be who you will” might take you. Sharon O’Connell EXTRAS: Eight segments including Kathleen’s tour stories, Kathleen gardening and Strip For Art. 7/10

Heart and teeth bared in a vivid portrait of the riot grrrl spearhead…

“I’m your worst nightmare come to life – I’m a girl who won’t shut up.” So barks a furiously intense young Kathleen Hanna in footage of an early spoken-word performance, at the start of Sini Anderson’s biopic. As singer with the iconoclastic Bikini Kill, Hanna became not only a rallying figure for the riot grrrl movement – part of the youthful “third wave” of US feminism that was committed to activism and zine culture and aligned with the DIY punk/hardcore scenes – but also a bona fide pop star. If she shouldered the former responsibility comfortably, the charismatic Hanna was less at ease with her cult status. She was eventually pushed to declare a media blackout in 1994, frustrated by articles that focused unfailingly on her and her band mates’ physical appearance, her own troubled home life and her work as a stripper while studying at Olympia’s Evergreen State College.

Shaped as much by Gloria Steinem and Jenny Holzer as The Runaways, X-Ray Spex and Fugazi (whose Ian MacKaye produced their first self-titled EP) – and an acknowledged influence on Kurt Cobain, who briefly dated drummer Tobi Vail – Bikini Kill burned with an incendiary brightness for eight years, before breaking up in 1997. After writing, recording and producing a solo album of lo-fi electronic pop as Julie Ruin in 1999 and then fronting New York-based, politico-synth-pop trio Le Tigre, Hanna suddenly stopped performing in 2005. She’d been dogged by mysteriously persistent sickness on tour and eventually quit, simply declaring that she had nothing left to say. One of the film’s most poignant scenes is of Hanna – not only the articulate and seemingly unstoppable shaper of her own destiny, but also a galvanising voice for countless tyrannised young women – explaining why she bowed out. “I didn’t want to stop; I was told by my body to stop,” she says, tearfully. After years of not knowing what was wrong with her, she was finally diagnosed with late-stage Lyme disease in 2010. Hanna’s since returned to recording and performing with her new band The Julie Ruin, which features former Bikini Kill band mate Kathi Wilcox.

As a biography twinned with the narrative of riot grrrl’s development, Anderson’s documentary follows a logical timeline, but it cuts energetically back and forth between the past and the present via extensive (excellent) archival clips and interviews with Hanna, numerous other key players in the movement and like-minded musicians such as Joan Jett and Kim Gordon, as well as Hanna’s husband, Adam Horowitz. Its tone is rousing and celebratory, but The Punk Singer is no dutiful hagiography. What it is, is the tale of the “Rebel Girl” from Maryland who taught herself to speak like a Valley Girl, the singer with SLUT daubed on her torso who famously directed “all girls to the front!” at hitherto female-unfriendly punk-rock shows. It’s also an exhilarating reminder of where unshakeable commitment, a shared vision and daring to “be who you will” might take you.

Sharon O’Connell

EXTRAS: Eight segments including Kathleen’s tour stories, Kathleen gardening and Strip For Art. 7/10

Shellac announce first new album for seven years

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Shellac announce first new album for seven years
Shellac have announced their first new album in seven years, Dude Incredible. The LP is the band's first since 2007's Excellent Italian Greyhound and will be released on September 16. According to a press release: "There is no comma in Dude Incredible; like Sir Duke or King Friday, for example." T...

Shellac have announced their first new album in seven years, Dude Incredible.

The LP is the band’s first since 2007’s Excellent Italian Greyhound and will be released on September 16. According to a press release: “There is no comma in Dude Incredible; like Sir Duke or King Friday, for example.”

The statement also says that the band do not plan to tour around the album, and will instead continue to play live shows whenever they see fit. “The band will continue to play shows or tour at the same sporadic and relaxed pace as always,” it says. “There is no correlation between shows and record releases.”

Steve Albini has been keeping busy with production work recently, working with bands including Cloud Nothings and Screaming Females at his Electrical Audio studio in Chicago, which is where Dude Incredible was recorded.

Dude Incredible tracklisting:

‘Dude Incredible’

‘Compliant’

‘You Came in Me’

‘Riding Bikes’

‘All the Surveyors’

‘The People’s Microphone’

‘Gary’

‘Mayor/Surveyor’

‘Surveyor’

“Somewhere between pure euphoria and terrible insecurity”: An interview with The The’s Matt Johnson

Michael Bonner
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“Somewhere between pure euphoria and terrible insecurity”: An interview with The The’s Matt Johnson

In this month's Uncut, I reviewed the deluxe edition of The The's Soul Mining, which has been reissued as a box set with additional material. I was fortunate enough to speak to Matt Johnson for a Q&A to run with the review. In the end, we ended up talking for about an hour, so I thought I'd post the full transcript of my interview here. I hope you enjoy it. I'll endeavour to post the review itself in the next week or so; better still, you can find it in the issue on sale now... (apologies for the shameless plug...) __________ Can we pick up the story with the release of the previous album, Burning Blue Soul. It’s quite an intense record. Where was your head when that came out? I was very busy at the time. Although Burning Blue Soul went out under my own name, I also had The The going as a parallel thing, although there were only two people. I later went back to Burning Blue Soul and retitled it as a The The album. At that point, I was playing everything and writing everything. It had become a band in name only and Keith Laws, my partner, left shortly after. I had so much energy. Keith Laws and I had worked in a studio since I was 15, and I released a single [“Controversial Subject” on 4AD] before I was 18 and then a single for Some Bizarre [“Cold Spell Ahead”]… so I was dealing with lots of companies at the time. Rough Trade a lot, Cherry Red, 4AD. I was anxious to get on with things. What were your circumstances? I was on the dole, I had a tiny bedsit and no money. Burning Blue Soul was done for £1,800. I was so hard up for money in those days I even recorded over the multi tracks. I would beg, steal or borrow time at the studio I used to work for [De Wolfe]. I was working on a follow-up album called Pornography Of Despair. It was more commercial – more accessible is a better word – though I wouldn’t use that title these days, I suppose. The record was a step forward. I was very influenced around the time of Burning Blue Soul by things like music concrète and playing with tapes – this was before samplers were invented and so we’d use tape loops. I’d learned how to do tape manipulation at DeWolfe – there were some good guys there. There was a wonderful book by a guy called Terence Dwyer called Composing With Tape Recorders and that became a bit of a bible for me. I’d saved up and bought a little reel to reel tape recorder and so I had little razor blades to make the tape loops and so I used to create all this stuff – unusual percussion loops and a lot of third world instruments. That fed in to Burning Blue Soul along with the few foot pedals I was able to afford – I think I only had a distortion pedal, a tremolo pedal and an echo pedal, and maybe a wah-wah. It was a very limited tonal palate. I was very inspired by John Lennon and people like Tim Buckley. So I wanted to express myself more at the standard soul format more than necessarily doing stuff that was too experimental. The Pornography Of Despair was heading in that direction. Around about that time, I’d done that record – I hadn’t properly mixed it, I think I’d done rough mixes – Some Bizarre achieved a huge amount of success with Soft Cell. The label boss, Stevo, had a lot of clout with the major labels and so he got loads record companies interested in The The. I was a part of Polygram in those days and London Records paid for me to go to New York to work with Mike Thorne who had produced Soft Cell’s “Tainted Love”. He’d also produced a couple of Wire albums. I knew the guys from Wire. They’d produced my first single and a couple of the tracks on Burning Blue Soul, so there was that interesting connection. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BTZRW27DIg What happened when you got to New York? “We started Soul Mining over there. But Stevo actually got London Records to pay for me to fly to New York to work with Mike – all the studio time, the whole cost – without signing anything. It was done on a handshake. As soon as we got back, we jumped out of the handshake deal with London and Stevo started touting round other labels. CBS became interested. In those days, CBS were like the equivalent of Manchester United, I suppose. They were a very, very glamorous record company. They had the likes of Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Johnny Cash, so… that was very appealing. I really liked the people who worked at CBS, they were really friendly, they seemed to like me. “But then I went back to New York to work with Mike Thorne again and the trip disintegrated into absolute chaos. There were all sorts of drugs involved… it was a bit mad. It was not fair on Mike; he was trying to put the session together. I was completely out of my head, I was only 21 or something, walking around and bumping into things. I didn’t know where I was. “We did manage to get some things done. Then Stevo and I headed off to Detroit of all places. ‘Where’s the most dangerous place in America, where can we go that’s even more dangerous than the Bronx and Alphabet City? I know, let’s go to Detroit!’ “CBS were quite alarmed. They’d heard ‘Uncertain Smile’ but at that point I don’t think at that point they’d even heard Burning Blue Soul. I don’t know what they thought, but suddenly they heard the stories, hotel rooms being trashed, and they were a bit horrified. Then Stevo fell out with Mike Thorne over something or other, I’m not sure what. We decided that I would be co-producer, and from then on I always was producer or co-producer for myself. We got in Paul Hardyman, who was absolutely brilliant. He’d worked with Mike a lot with The Wire. “The first thing we did together was remix ‘Perfect’. I was happy with the sounds that we got. There was a lot of beef to it, and clarity. Then we decided to proceed to remake the album. We hunted for studios and we found The Garden Studio, which had only recently opened. It was owned by John Foxx. I ended up buying it. I closed it about a year ago. The last album that was done there was Goldfrapp’s last album – I wanted to end on a high – and then I shut it down. When I first got in there I absolutely fell in love with it. It was a basement studio. John Foxx had created it with a chap called Andy Monroe, who went on to become a very famous studio designer. They really got the old Feng Shui, everything felt good down there. I ended up using it for many albums over the years. So that’s primarily where we recorded, but we did do some bits and pieces up at Advision and Sarm East. How old are the songs on Soul Mining? “I was just a teenager when I wrote some of the songs. It’s a very young album. ‘Uncertain Smile’ grew out of ‘Cold Spell Ahead’, so I probably wrote that when I was 18. ‘Perfect’ was probably written when I was 19, but that didn’t make the final cut of the album. I would have been 18 or 19 when I wrote ‘Sinking Feeling’. The more recent songs were ‘Twilight Hour’, ‘Soul Mining’, ‘Waiting For Tomorrow’ and ‘Giant’. And ‘This Is The Day’… I was 20 when I wrote that.” What themes did you want to explore on the record? “I think in those days I wasn’t really thinking… when you’re doing your early album you just write. You have songs that you’ll possibly be working on for years. Later on, once you’ve established yourself and released numerous albums then you can approach a project and place certain parameters over the general subject matter. In the early days it’s all very instinctual, just how you feel. I grew up listening to John Lennon and The Beatles. Lennon used to say ‘Tell the truth and make it rhyme.’ You can’t get simpler advice than that. That’s what I always wanted to do, be truthful. ‘This is how I feel at this moment in time.’ Rather than worrying about intellectualising it.” There’s a line in the sleeve notes where you talk about wanting to “accurately capture the thoughts and feelings that seem to be bursting out of my head and heart”. I wondered whether you could identify specifically what those thoughts and feelings were? “At that time, I was quite shy, unlike these days. There was a lot of unrequited love, I suppose. Although I had fallen in love around Soul Mining. So the earlier songs were unrequited, but the next songs I experienced more satisfaction in my personal life.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phWv7l8Lm_A Which songs dealt with unrequited love? “‘Uncertain Smile’ would be one. ‘Twilight Hour’ would be the initial stages of the relationship. The insecurities. That awful, terrible rollercoaster ride where the walls are initially dissolving in the relationship and you’re somewhere between pure euphoria and then this terrible insecurity that keeps you awake at night. I don’t miss those big feelings today, to be honest. When you feel that you’ve had several layers of skin removed and you’re ultra sensitive to everything, to something somebody may say, and you misunderstand the situation… there’s a lot of misunderstanding! ‘Waiting For Tomorrow’ is more about cognitive dissonance. About this world that’s constructed for us by the media. I’m able to switch off and not be affected by the propaganda but in those days it was very confusing. You’re experiencing one thing in your life and then the institutions and news services that you think you should trust are are showing you something completely different. So there’s the internal conflict and confusion. “‘Blind’, for me that song is not necessarily about what the lyrics say. I wanted something very cinematic and atmospheric and dreamlike, and scenic really, and uplifting. Although I’d got myself a sort of reputation in certain quarters for songs that were moody or depressing, but people found it uplifting. ‘This Is The Day’, ‘Smile’ and ‘Giant’, they’re also supposed to be uplifting, but thoughtful. A poignant reflection. I’ve never been a depressed person, in spite of what was written about me. I’ve suffered more from sensitivity. I feel moved by injustices and the unfairness I see around me, and I don’t see how anyone can feel completely happy when their fellow beings are suffering. “It’s hard going back. I don’t have copies of my own records to be honest, I don’t listen to them, and I hadn’t heard this album for years. I think I’ve got copies down at my dad’s. It’s an odd thing; I just had to move on really. But the first time I heard it when we went back to master it, it was great. I kept my head clear, I wanted to approach it a fresh. I was a bit worried that I might cringe, but I was really happy. I was this 20-year-old kid when I wrote this. It’s a difficult age, isn’t it, your teens and your early twenties? It’s quite an intense and confusing period, where you’re trying to establish a self-identity. And your relationship with other people… there’s a lot of mention of unrequited passions. The energy that would have gone into relationships went into music.” Who did you consider your peers at the time? “like a lot of those guys like the Bunnymen and the Teardrops. There was this amazing series of gigs in the old YMCA, around about that time. I guess it was ’81. There was such a great line-up. You had The Fall, Throbbing Gristle, Echo and the Bunnymen, Teardrop Explosion, and Joy Division. It was incredible; all those bands were brought together. “I was a big fan of the post-punk underground. Cabaret Voltaire, Wire, This Heat – who we became friendly with. They used to let us go to the studio. Wire and This Heat took us under their wing a bit really, which was fantastic. They would let us watch them rehearse. This Heat, as musicians, were incredible. They were great players and they were very, very cool guys. They were quite hippy-ish. They’d sit around drinking pints of real ale. I loved all those gigs all the time. I used to sell my first album there. Those were my roots, and they were my peers.” You’ve got an impressive list of guests on Soul Mining: Jim Thirlwell, Thomas Leer and Zeke Manyika. How did those guys become involved? “I’ve known Jim [Thirlwell] since we were teenagers. He is possibly my closest friend in the music business. He came from Melbourne and he lives in Brooklyn now, but then he was living in London. The first gig The The played was at the Africa Centre in May ’79 and he was in the front row of the audience. I didn’t know him at this time, but I recognised him from all the underground gigs I used to go to. He was quite a striking looking chap anyway but at the time he had this green, bouffant hairstyle. Keith [Laws] and I didn’t know who he was so we used to call him Chickenhead. On stage, we used to say to each other, ‘Chickenhead’s here again today.’ He came to all our gigs. I was at a Cherry Red Christmas party, I think I’d just signed to their publishing company, and the owner Iain McNay said to me, ‘Matt, you’ve got to meet Jim Thirwell, you and he are gonna to along so well.’ So he took me round the corner and said, ‘Here’s Jim,’ and I thought to myself, ‘It’s Chickenhead!’ We became very close. I loved his Foetus recordings, and I wanted to get him involved [in Soul Mining]. First thing I did with him was a residency at the old Marquee Club, I formed a supergroup, and Jim was involved in that. “Thomas Leer was a big influence on me I invited him to join the supergroup, too. He’s a fantastic guy, Scotsman, with a very dry sense of humour. Zeke was drumming with Orange Juice at the times. He became a drinking buddy, we quickly formed a very close friendship. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xR2ImlS3v3c Can you tell us how Jools Holland came to play his piano solo on "Uncertain Smile"? “I think my A&R lady Annie Roseberry, might have suggested Jools. The Garden had this beautiful little Yamaha C3 Baby Grand, and the decision was, ‘We have this fantastic long outro for ‘Uncertain Smile’. We need to put this piano on something. Who do we know who can play it?’ Jools showed up, cool as a cucumber despite the sweltering heat, dressed in leathers, and he was absolutely charming. He was a lovely man, and very unassuming and friendly. He sat down and it was astonishing, I think he had one run-through, said ‘Let’s go for it’ and just laid the whole thing down. There was just one drop-in we did towards the end, and we were just amazed. He told me years later he gets asked about that more than anything he’s ever done, which probably gets on his nerves now, it’s astonishing. What about David Johanson, who played on “Perfect” from the New York sessions? “This was when we were in New York. Mike Thorne knew him. I’d said I’d like some harmonica on “Perfect”, and did Mike know any good players. He said, ‘Let’s ask David Johansen.’ He was doing his Buster Poindexter –project. I was slightly apprehensive. I didn’t know what he was going to be like. But he was wonderful, very funny guy. Warm, quick-witted, pleasant to spend time with. It was a really enjoyable session. “There were a lot of well-known session players, a chap called Wix, he played the accordion – I think that was first-take as well – he was brilliant. He ended up joining Paul McCartney’s band. Of course, Zeke played drums as well as doing some vocals. It was one of those things where we didn’t have a set band at the time. I wanted to avoid that bass, drum, two guitars set-up.” How did you feel about the finished album at the time? “I was thrilled. We mixed it at Martin Rushent’s studio, Genetic Sound. Paul was a pleasure to work with. He was extremely professional, kept copious notes, very old school the way he approached things. Burning Blue Soul was a fantastic experience, and Ivo was brilliant, but of course because we’d just have the odd day here and there – it was such a tiny recording budget –I didn’t have the luxury of taking time over the sounds and working slowly and effectively. So I was really thrilled to have this expensive-sounding album. It would have been 30 or 40 times what Burning Blue Soul was. I think the most expensive album I made was Mind Bomb which was hundreds of thousands. It was crazy. Yeah, hundreds of thousands.” Are you a perfectionist? “I used to be, but I’m not anymore. I’ve been doing quite a lot of film scores and you just can’t do. There are a lot of tight deadlines. I used to literally drive drummers to tears. I would come home from the studio and all through the night I’d have my headphones on, listening, and my poor girlfriend would be trying to sleep and I’d be taking notes. Let’s talk about the Soul Mining box set. There were extra tracks on the original cassette version of the album. Why aren’t they included here? “They belonged to The Pornography Of Despair. When I signed to CBS they said, ‘What material have you got beyond Soul Mining?’ I said ‘Well, there’s this…’ They replied, ‘OK, can you re-record it to make it more commercial.’ So The Pornography Of Despair would be my first album for CBS. Then I was tempted to re-record the tracks but, they weren’t strong enough to be the next album. But they’d lost a lot of the grit, the urgency, of the original Pornography Of Despair album, so they ended up as B-sides. “I know a lot of people liked those tracks, but for putting this release together I wanted to go the purest route. This is just about Soul Mining’ not with bits of The Pornography Of Despair tacked on. I am going to release The Pornography Of Despair. At the moment I’m going through my archives. I’ve just taken delivery of the dehydration unit… there’s a science to all this stuff. So the room’s being set up at the moment and tapes are being delivered but a lot of them are unmarked. I’m digitising the tapes as I go through them.” Where do you think Soul Mining fits into the broader body of your work? “It’s one of the crucial foundation projects really. People often talk about that ‘quartet’ of albums I did for CBS. The hard thing for me is that I get people complaining that I haven’t bought a new album out, and then when I do they complain that it doesn’t sound like the last one. I try to make each album very unique, so they all really just sound like themselves.” What are your future plans? “I’ve just finished the score for Hyena, which opened the Edinburgh Festival. I’ve just had a premiere at Hot Docs in Toronto. Their sleeves are being done and they’ll be released at some point over the next six months to a year. I’ve got a small book publishing company. I published my first book of 2012. That was my dad’s memoirs. My parents ran east London’s most popular music house in the ‘60s, and my uncle Kenny was one of London’s top promoters, he promoted people like John Lee Hooker, The Kinks, Jerry Lee Lewis, Gene Vincent. There’s a documentary being made about that. There’s a lot going on. “I’m working on this Swedish project which has got funding from the Swedish arts council, which is a media project which involves music, poetry, light installations and a documentary film. That’s quite a big project and that’ll be released as two separate CDs.” And you recently had a carnivorous plant named after you at the Chelsea Flower show… “Yeah! I’d never been there before and this chap - a lovely, lovely guy - had grown up with my music and wanted to know, would I mind having a little triffid named after me. I was quite honoured. It did take a little nip out of me when I touched it… They eat flies, small insects and small mammals and he won his 16th gold medal, he just contacted me yesterday, it was great. So lots of exciting things.” THE THE'S SOUL MINING 30TH ANNIVERSARY DELUXE EDITION IS AVAILABLE NOW FROM SONY MUSIC

In this month’s Uncut, I reviewed the deluxe edition of The The’s Soul Mining, which has been reissued as a box set with additional material. I was fortunate enough to speak to Matt Johnson for a Q&A to run with the review. In the end, we ended up talking for about an hour, so I thought I’d post the full transcript of my interview here. I hope you enjoy it. I’ll endeavour to post the review itself in the next week or so; better still, you can find it in the issue on sale now… (apologies for the shameless plug…)

__________

Can we pick up the story with the release of the previous album, Burning Blue Soul. It’s quite an intense record. Where was your head when that came out?

I was very busy at the time. Although Burning Blue Soul went out under my own name, I also had The The going as a parallel thing, although there were only two people. I later went back to Burning Blue Soul and retitled it as a The The album. At that point, I was playing everything and writing everything. It had become a band in name only and Keith Laws, my partner, left shortly after. I had so much energy. Keith Laws and I had worked in a studio since I was 15, and I released a single [“Controversial Subject” on 4AD] before I was 18 and then a single for Some Bizarre [“Cold Spell Ahead”]… so I was dealing with lots of companies at the time. Rough Trade a lot, Cherry Red, 4AD. I was anxious to get on with things.

What were your circumstances?

I was on the dole, I had a tiny bedsit and no money. Burning Blue Soul was done for £1,800. I was so hard up for money in those days I even recorded over the multi tracks. I would beg, steal or borrow time at the studio I used to work for [De Wolfe]. I was working on a follow-up album called Pornography Of Despair. It was more commercial – more accessible is a better word – though I wouldn’t use that title these days, I suppose. The record was a step forward. I was very influenced around the time of Burning Blue Soul by things like music concrète and playing with tapes – this was before samplers were invented and so we’d use tape loops. I’d learned how to do tape manipulation at DeWolfe – there were some good guys there.

There was a wonderful book by a guy called Terence Dwyer called Composing With Tape Recorders and that became a bit of a bible for me. I’d saved up and bought a little reel to reel tape recorder and so I had little razor blades to make the tape loops and so I used to create all this stuff – unusual percussion loops and a lot of third world instruments. That fed in to Burning Blue Soul along with the few foot pedals I was able to afford – I think I only had a distortion pedal, a tremolo pedal and an echo pedal, and maybe a wah-wah. It was a very limited tonal palate.

I was very inspired by John Lennon and people like Tim Buckley. So I wanted to express myself more at the standard soul format more than necessarily doing stuff that was too experimental. The Pornography Of Despair was heading in that direction.

Around about that time, I’d done that record – I hadn’t properly mixed it, I think I’d done rough mixes – Some Bizarre achieved a huge amount of success with Soft Cell. The label boss, Stevo, had a lot of clout with the major labels and so he got loads record companies interested in The The. I was a part of Polygram in those days and London Records paid for me to go to New York to work with Mike Thorne who had produced Soft Cell’s “Tainted Love”. He’d also produced a couple of Wire albums. I knew the guys from Wire. They’d produced my first single and a couple of the tracks on Burning Blue Soul, so there was that interesting connection.

What happened when you got to New York?

“We started Soul Mining over there. But Stevo actually got London Records to pay for me to fly to New York to work with Mike – all the studio time, the whole cost – without signing anything. It was done on a handshake. As soon as we got back, we jumped out of the handshake deal with London and Stevo started touting round other labels. CBS became interested. In those days, CBS were like the equivalent of Manchester United, I suppose. They were a very, very glamorous record company. They had the likes of Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Johnny Cash, so… that was very appealing. I really liked the people who worked at CBS, they were really friendly, they seemed to like me.

“But then I went back to New York to work with Mike Thorne again and the trip disintegrated into absolute chaos. There were all sorts of drugs involved… it was a bit mad. It was not fair on Mike; he was trying to put the session together. I was completely out of my head, I was only 21 or something, walking around and bumping into things. I didn’t know where I was.

“We did manage to get some things done. Then Stevo and I headed off to Detroit of all places. ‘Where’s the most dangerous place in America, where can we go that’s even more dangerous than the Bronx and Alphabet City? I know, let’s go to Detroit!’

“CBS were quite alarmed. They’d heard ‘Uncertain Smile’ but at that point I don’t think at that point they’d even heard Burning Blue Soul. I don’t know what they thought, but suddenly they heard the stories, hotel rooms being trashed, and they were a bit horrified. Then Stevo fell out with Mike Thorne over something or other, I’m not sure what. We decided that I would be co-producer, and from then on I always was producer or co-producer for myself. We got in Paul Hardyman, who was absolutely brilliant. He’d worked with Mike a lot with The Wire.

“The first thing we did together was remix ‘Perfect’. I was happy with the sounds that we got. There was a lot of beef to it, and clarity. Then we decided to proceed to remake the album. We hunted for studios and we found The Garden Studio, which had only recently opened. It was owned by John Foxx. I ended up buying it. I closed it about a year ago. The last album that was done there was Goldfrapp’s last album – I wanted to end on a high – and then I shut it down. When I first got in there I absolutely fell in love with it. It was a basement studio. John Foxx had created it with a chap called Andy Monroe, who went on to become a very famous studio designer. They really got the old Feng Shui, everything felt good down there. I ended up using it for many albums over the years. So that’s primarily where we recorded, but we did do some bits and pieces up at Advision and Sarm East.

How old are the songs on Soul Mining?

“I was just a teenager when I wrote some of the songs. It’s a very young album. ‘Uncertain Smile’ grew out of ‘Cold Spell Ahead’, so I probably wrote that when I was 18. ‘Perfect’ was probably written when I was 19, but that didn’t make the final cut of the album. I would have been 18 or 19 when I wrote ‘Sinking Feeling’. The more recent songs were ‘Twilight Hour’, ‘Soul Mining’, ‘Waiting For Tomorrow’ and ‘Giant’. And ‘This Is The Day’… I was 20 when I wrote that.”

What themes did you want to explore on the record?

“I think in those days I wasn’t really thinking… when you’re doing your early album you just write. You have songs that you’ll possibly be working on for years. Later on, once you’ve established yourself and released numerous albums then you can approach a project and place certain parameters over the general subject matter. In the early days it’s all very instinctual, just how you feel. I grew up listening to John Lennon and The Beatles. Lennon used to say ‘Tell the truth and make it rhyme.’ You can’t get simpler advice than that. That’s what I always wanted to do, be truthful. ‘This is how I feel at this moment in time.’ Rather than worrying about intellectualising it.”

There’s a line in the sleeve notes where you talk about wanting to “accurately capture the thoughts and feelings that seem to be bursting out of my head and heart”. I wondered whether you could identify specifically what those thoughts and feelings were?

“At that time, I was quite shy, unlike these days. There was a lot of unrequited love, I suppose. Although I had fallen in love around Soul Mining. So the earlier songs were unrequited, but the next songs I experienced more satisfaction in my personal life.”

Which songs dealt with unrequited love?

“‘Uncertain Smile’ would be one. ‘Twilight Hour’ would be the initial stages of the relationship. The insecurities. That awful, terrible rollercoaster ride where the walls are initially dissolving in the relationship and you’re somewhere between pure euphoria and then this terrible insecurity that keeps you awake at night. I don’t miss those big feelings today, to be honest. When you feel that you’ve had several layers of skin removed and you’re ultra sensitive to everything, to something somebody may say, and you misunderstand the situation… there’s a lot of misunderstanding! ‘Waiting For Tomorrow’ is more about cognitive dissonance. About this world that’s constructed for us by the media. I’m able to switch off and not be affected by the propaganda but in those days it was very confusing. You’re experiencing one thing in your life and then the institutions and news services that you think you should trust are are showing you something completely different. So there’s the internal conflict and confusion.

“‘Blind’, for me that song is not necessarily about what the lyrics say. I wanted something very cinematic and atmospheric and dreamlike, and scenic really, and uplifting. Although I’d got myself a sort of reputation in certain quarters for songs that were moody or depressing, but people found it uplifting. ‘This Is The Day’, ‘Smile’ and ‘Giant’, they’re also supposed to be uplifting, but thoughtful. A poignant reflection. I’ve never been a depressed person, in spite of what was written about me. I’ve suffered more from sensitivity. I feel moved by injustices and the unfairness I see around me, and I don’t see how anyone can feel completely happy when their fellow beings are suffering.

“It’s hard going back. I don’t have copies of my own records to be honest, I don’t listen to them, and I hadn’t heard this album for years. I think I’ve got copies down at my dad’s. It’s an odd thing; I just had to move on really. But the first time I heard it when we went back to master it, it was great. I kept my head clear, I wanted to approach it a fresh. I was a bit worried that I might cringe, but I was really happy. I was this 20-year-old kid when I wrote this. It’s a difficult age, isn’t it, your teens and your early twenties? It’s quite an intense and confusing period, where you’re trying to establish a self-identity. And your relationship with other people… there’s a lot of mention of unrequited passions. The energy that would have gone into relationships went into music.”

Who did you consider your peers at the time?

“like a lot of those guys like the Bunnymen and the Teardrops. There was this amazing series of gigs in the old YMCA, around about that time. I guess it was ’81. There was such a great line-up. You had The Fall, Throbbing Gristle, Echo and the Bunnymen, Teardrop Explosion, and Joy Division. It was incredible; all those bands were brought together.

“I was a big fan of the post-punk underground. Cabaret Voltaire, Wire, This Heat – who we became friendly with. They used to let us go to the studio. Wire and This Heat took us under their wing a bit really, which was fantastic. They would let us watch them rehearse. This Heat, as musicians, were incredible. They were great players and they were very, very cool guys. They were quite hippy-ish. They’d sit around drinking pints of real ale. I loved all those gigs all the time. I used to sell my first album there. Those were my roots, and they were my peers.”

You’ve got an impressive list of guests on Soul Mining: Jim Thirlwell, Thomas Leer and Zeke Manyika. How did those guys become involved?

“I’ve known Jim [Thirlwell] since we were teenagers. He is possibly my closest friend in the music business. He came from Melbourne and he lives in Brooklyn now, but then he was living in London. The first gig The The played was at the Africa Centre in May ’79 and he was in the front row of the audience. I didn’t know him at this time, but I recognised him from all the underground gigs I used to go to. He was quite a striking looking chap anyway but at the time he had this green, bouffant hairstyle. Keith [Laws] and I didn’t know who he was so we used to call him Chickenhead. On stage, we used to say to each other, ‘Chickenhead’s here again today.’ He came to all our gigs. I was at a Cherry Red Christmas party, I think I’d just signed to their publishing company, and the owner Iain McNay said to me, ‘Matt, you’ve got to meet Jim Thirwell, you and he are gonna to along so well.’ So he took me round the corner and said, ‘Here’s Jim,’ and I thought to myself, ‘It’s Chickenhead!’ We became very close. I loved his Foetus recordings, and I wanted to get him involved [in Soul Mining]. First thing I did with him was a residency at the old Marquee Club, I formed a supergroup, and Jim was involved in that.

“Thomas Leer was a big influence on me I invited him to join the supergroup, too. He’s a fantastic guy, Scotsman, with a very dry sense of humour. Zeke was drumming with Orange Juice at the times. He became a drinking buddy, we quickly formed a very close friendship.

Can you tell us how Jools Holland came to play his piano solo on “Uncertain Smile”?

“I think my A&R lady Annie Roseberry, might have suggested Jools. The Garden had this beautiful little Yamaha C3 Baby Grand, and the decision was, ‘We have this fantastic long outro for ‘Uncertain Smile’. We need to put this piano on something. Who do we know who can play it?’ Jools showed up, cool as a cucumber despite the sweltering heat, dressed in leathers, and he was absolutely charming. He was a lovely man, and very unassuming and friendly. He sat down and it was astonishing, I think he had one run-through, said ‘Let’s go for it’ and just laid the whole thing down. There was just one drop-in we did towards the end, and we were just amazed. He told me years later he gets asked about that more than anything he’s ever done, which probably gets on his nerves now, it’s astonishing.

What about David Johanson, who played on “Perfect” from the New York sessions?

“This was when we were in New York. Mike Thorne knew him. I’d said I’d like some harmonica on “Perfect”, and did Mike know any good players. He said, ‘Let’s ask David Johansen.’ He was doing his Buster Poindexter –project. I was slightly apprehensive. I didn’t know what he was going to be like. But he was wonderful, very funny guy. Warm, quick-witted, pleasant to spend time with. It was a really enjoyable session.

“There were a lot of well-known session players, a chap called Wix, he played the accordion – I think that was first-take as well – he was brilliant. He ended up joining Paul McCartney’s band. Of course, Zeke played drums as well as doing some vocals. It was one of those things where we didn’t have a set band at the time. I wanted to avoid that bass, drum, two guitars set-up.”

How did you feel about the finished album at the time?

“I was thrilled. We mixed it at Martin Rushent’s studio, Genetic Sound. Paul was a pleasure to work with. He was extremely professional, kept copious notes, very old school the way he approached things. Burning Blue Soul was a fantastic experience, and Ivo was brilliant, but of course because we’d just have the odd day here and there – it was such a tiny recording budget –I didn’t have the luxury of taking time over the sounds and working slowly and effectively. So I was really thrilled to have this expensive-sounding album. It would have been 30 or 40 times what Burning Blue Soul was. I think the most expensive album I made was Mind Bomb which was hundreds of thousands. It was crazy. Yeah, hundreds of thousands.”

Are you a perfectionist?

“I used to be, but I’m not anymore. I’ve been doing quite a lot of film scores and you just can’t do. There are a lot of tight deadlines. I used to literally drive drummers to tears. I would come home from the studio and all through the night I’d have my headphones on, listening, and my poor girlfriend would be trying to sleep and I’d be taking notes.

Let’s talk about the Soul Mining box set. There were extra tracks on the original cassette version of the album. Why aren’t they included here?

“They belonged to The Pornography Of Despair. When I signed to CBS they said, ‘What material have you got beyond Soul Mining?’ I said ‘Well, there’s this…’ They replied, ‘OK, can you re-record it to make it more commercial.’ So The Pornography Of Despair would be my first album for CBS. Then I was tempted to re-record the tracks but, they weren’t strong enough to be the next album. But they’d lost a lot of the grit, the urgency, of the original Pornography Of Despair album, so they ended up as B-sides.

“I know a lot of people liked those tracks, but for putting this release together I wanted to go the purest route. This is just about Soul Mining’ not with bits of The Pornography Of Despair tacked on. I am going to release The Pornography Of Despair. At the moment I’m going through my archives. I’ve just taken delivery of the dehydration unit… there’s a science to all this stuff. So the room’s being set up at the moment and tapes are being delivered but a lot of them are unmarked. I’m digitising the tapes as I go through them.”

Where do you think Soul Mining fits into the broader body of your work?

“It’s one of the crucial foundation projects really. People often talk about that ‘quartet’ of albums I did for CBS. The hard thing for me is that I get people complaining that I haven’t bought a new album out, and then when I do they complain that it doesn’t sound like the last one. I try to make each album very unique, so they all really just sound like themselves.”

What are your future plans?

“I’ve just finished the score for Hyena, which opened the Edinburgh Festival. I’ve just had a premiere at Hot Docs in Toronto. Their sleeves are being done and they’ll be released at some point over the next six months to a year. I’ve got a small book publishing company. I published my first book of 2012. That was my dad’s memoirs. My parents ran east London’s most popular music house in the ‘60s, and my uncle Kenny was one of London’s top promoters, he promoted people like John Lee Hooker, The Kinks, Jerry Lee Lewis, Gene Vincent. There’s a documentary being made about that. There’s a lot going on.

“I’m working on this Swedish project which has got funding from the Swedish arts council, which is a media project which involves music, poetry, light installations and a documentary film. That’s quite a big project and that’ll be released as two separate CDs.”

And you recently had a carnivorous plant named after you at the Chelsea Flower show…

“Yeah! I’d never been there before and this chap – a lovely, lovely guy – had grown up with my music and wanted to know, would I mind having a little triffid named after me. I was quite honoured. It did take a little nip out of me when I touched it… They eat flies, small insects and small mammals and he won his 16th gold medal, he just contacted me yesterday, it was great. So lots of exciting things.”

THE THE’S SOUL MINING 30TH ANNIVERSARY DELUXE EDITION IS AVAILABLE NOW FROM SONY MUSIC

149 rare Bob Dylan acetates discovered

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149 rare Bob Dylan acetates discovered

149 Bob Dylan acetates have been discovered in boxes in a Greenwich Village apartment. The recordings consists of in-progress versions of songs made as he was recording his 1969 LP Nashville Skyline and his two 1970 albums, Self Portrait and New Morning. The records previously belonged to the woman who owned the Greenwich Village building where Dylan had rented a room to use as a studio. The discovery was made by record collector, Jeff Gold, reports Rolling Stone. Writing on his website, RecordMecca, Gold says the records, which range in size from 10-inch to 12-inch, were in excellent condition after being stored in boxes marked "Old Records" for over 40 years. The man who sold Gold the acetates had noticed the address of Columbia Records and a Dylan song title and realized they might be valuable. The sleeves contain notes written by Dylan and producer Bob Johnson, indicating which takes were good, as well as some Dylan doodles. Johnson confirmed his and Dylan's handwriting to Gold. Writing on RecordMecca, Gold reports, "We discovered many of the acetates were unreleased versions of songs, in some cases with different overdubs, sometimes without any overdubs, many with different mixes, different edits and in a few cases completely unreleased and unknown versions. There are outtakes too, including electric versions of Johnny Cash’s 'Ring Of Fire' and 'Folsom Prison Blues' recorded during the Self Portrait sessions, and a gospel tinged version of 'Tomorrow Is Such A Long Time' recorded during the New Morning sessions." Currently, there are four of the acetates available on RecordMecca. Among the recordings are a different mix of "Winterlude" (current price: $1,750), an unreleased version of "It Hurts Me, Too" ($2,500), an unreleased sequence of side 2 of Self Portrait ($2,500) and the most expensive item currently up for sale: an acetate containing a different sequence of Nashville Skyline, which is going for $7,000.

149 Bob Dylan acetates have been discovered in boxes in a Greenwich Village apartment.

The recordings consists of in-progress versions of songs made as he was recording his 1969 LP Nashville Skyline and his two 1970 albums, Self Portrait and New Morning.

The records previously belonged to the woman who owned the Greenwich Village building where Dylan had rented a room to use as a studio.

The discovery was made by record collector, Jeff Gold, reports Rolling Stone. Writing on his website, RecordMecca, Gold says the records, which range in size from 10-inch to 12-inch, were in excellent condition after being stored in boxes marked “Old Records” for over 40 years.

The man who sold Gold the acetates had noticed the address of Columbia Records and a Dylan song title and realized they might be valuable. The sleeves contain notes written by Dylan and producer Bob Johnson, indicating which takes were good, as well as some Dylan doodles. Johnson confirmed his and Dylan’s handwriting to Gold.

Writing on RecordMecca, Gold reports, “We discovered many of the acetates were unreleased versions of songs, in some cases with different overdubs, sometimes without any overdubs, many with different mixes, different edits and in a few cases completely unreleased and unknown versions. There are outtakes too, including electric versions of Johnny Cash’s ‘Ring Of Fire’ and ‘Folsom Prison Blues’ recorded during the Self Portrait sessions, and a gospel tinged version of ‘Tomorrow Is Such A Long Time’ recorded during the New Morning sessions.”

Currently, there are four of the acetates available on RecordMecca. Among the recordings are a different mix of “Winterlude” (current price: $1,750), an unreleased version of “It Hurts Me, Too” ($2,500), an unreleased sequence of side 2 of Self Portrait ($2,500) and the most expensive item currently up for sale: an acetate containing a different sequence of Nashville Skyline, which is going for $7,000.

Watch Beck cover Prince’s “1999”

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Watch Beck cover Prince’s “1999”
Beck has covered Prince's classic song "1999" during a live performance. Beck played a portion of the track during his show at last month's Montreal International Jazz Fest, reports Consequence Of Sound . Click below to watch fan-shot footage of the rendition, which follows the singer's cover of A...

Beck has covered Prince‘s classic song “1999” during a live performance.

Beck played a portion of the track during his show at last month’s Montreal International Jazz Fest, reports Consequence Of Sound . Click below to watch fan-shot footage of the rendition, which follows the singer’s cover of Arcade Fire’s “Rebellion (Lies)” at Coachella Festival in April.

Beck will play a number of UK and Ireland festival shows this summer, including Electric Picnic, Bestival and Festival No 6.

Hear Nile Rodgers new song, “Do What You Want To Do”

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Hear Nile Rodgers new song, “Do What You Want To Do”
Nile Rodgers has unveiled a new song, entitled "Do What You Want To Do". The song was recorded last summer in Ibiza and, reports Rolling Stone, was auctioned off by Rodgers to raise money for his We Are Family Foundation. Cr2 Records won the auction and are releasing it to celebrate their 10th anni...

Nile Rodgers has unveiled a new song, entitled “Do What You Want To Do“.

The song was recorded last summer in Ibiza and, reports Rolling Stone, was auctioned off by Rodgers to raise money for his We Are Family Foundation. Cr2 Records won the auction and are releasing it to celebrate their 10th anniversary. Click below to listen to the track, which will be officially released on August 10.

Meanwhile, Nile Rodgers recently announced that Chic are working on a new track, featuring “almost everyone” he has ever worked with. The guitarist and producer has worked with the likes of Daft Punk, Pharrell Williams, Disclosure and Avicii in recent years, with David Bowie, Madonna and Duran Duran also collaborating with him in the past.

Tweeting about the potential for the track, Rodgers wrote: “I’m just finishing up a new song for Chic that’s going to feature almost everybody that’s ever sung with me. I can’t wait to do that session.”

The news comes after Nile Rodgers said late in 2013 that “if I wound up getting a Number One Chic record next year I may consider that the greatest day of my life, in a life that has had a lot of great days”. Chic have never managed to hit the Number One spot in the UK, although 1978 single “Le Freak” and 1979’s “Good Times” both topped the US Billboard Singles Chart.

Bon Iver reveals new song “Heavenly Father”

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Bon Iver reveals new song “Heavenly Father”
Bon Iver has revealed new song "Heavenly Father", taken from the soundtrack to Zach Braff film Wish I Was Here. "Heavenly Father" is the first new material from Justin Vernon since his self-titled 2011 album. It will appear on Braff's Garden State follow-up alongside songs by The Shins plus Cat Pow...

Bon Iver has revealed new song “Heavenly Father”, taken from the soundtrack to Zach Braff film Wish I Was Here.

“Heavenly Father” is the first new material from Justin Vernon since his self-titled 2011 album. It will appear on Braff’s Garden State follow-up alongside songs by The Shins plus Cat Power & Coldplay, who have collaborated on the title track, “Wish I Was Here”.

Click here to listen to the song now.

The Wish I Was Here OST tracklisting is:

The Shins: ‘So Now What’

Gary Jules: ‘Broke Window’

Radical Face: ‘The Mute’

Hozier: ‘Cherry Wine’ (Live)’

Bon Iver: ‘Holocene’

Badly Drawn Boy: ‘The Shining’

Jump Little Children: ‘Mexico’

Cat Power & Coldplay: ‘Wish I Was Here’

Allie Moss: ‘Wait It Out’

Paul Simon: ‘The Obvious Child’

Japanese Wallpaper: ‘Breathe In’ (feat. Wafia)

Bon Iver: ‘Heavenly Father’

Aaron Embry: ‘Raven’s Song’

The Weepies: ‘Mend’

The Head & The Heart: ‘No One To Let You Down’

Wish I Was Here follows Braff’s character Aidan Bloom, a struggling actor who reluctantly agrees to home-school his sick father’s two young children. The film also features Kate Hudson, Josh Gad, Jim Parsons, Homeland’s Mandy Patinkin and Braff’s former Scrubs co-star Donald Faison as well as Ashley Greene.

Ryan Adams reveals new album details

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Ryan Adams reveals new album details
Ryan Adams has confirmed details of his new album. The self-titled record will be released on September 8 on Pax-Am / Columbia Records. Produced by Adams himself at his own Pax Am Studios in Los Angeles, the eponymous new record is his first full length album since 2011’s Ashes & Fire. N...

Ryan Adams has confirmed details of his new album.

The self-titled record will be released on September 8 on Pax-Am / Columbia Records.

Produced by Adams himself at his own Pax Am Studios in Los Angeles, the eponymous new record is his first full length album since 2011’s Ashes & Fire.

Now available for pre-order, Ryan Adams is preceded by the debut instalment of the Pax Am 7” vinyl single series, “Gimme Something Good.”

Digital pre-orders of Ryan Adams at iTunes and Amazon will immediately receive an instant grat download of “Gimme Something Good”.

The album’s track listing is as follows:

Gimme Something Good

Kim

Trouble

Am I Safe

My Wrecking Ball

Stay With Me

Shadows

Feels Like Fire

I Just Might

Tired Of Giving Up

Let Go

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