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Glastonbury Day 3: Yoko Ono, The Wailers and assorted hippies

Glastonbury Day 1: Blondie, New Build, East India Youth

Janis Joplin postage stamp revealed

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1st July 2014

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A stamp bearing the likeness of Janis Joplin has been released as part of The United States Postal Service's Music Icons series. According to Linns Stamp News via Rolling Stone, the Joplin stamp will enter circulation in August. A brief biographical description on the sheet of 16 stamps says: "Janis Joplin (1943-1970) was a groundbreaking singer whose powerful, bluesy voice propelled her to the pinnacle of rock stardom. An icon of the 1960s, she was known for her uninhibited and soulful performances. Joplin is now recognized as one of the greatest rock singers of all time, as well as a pioneer who paved the way for other women in rock music." The image was pictured in the Quarter 3 issue of the USPS USA Philatelic catalog for stamp collectors. The catalog reported only that the stamp would be issued in August, and did not include information about the city where the stamp will be issued. The Janis Joplin stamp is the fifth in the Postal Service’s Music Icons series, following Jimi Hendrix, Johnny Cash, Ray Charles and Tejano songstress Lydia Mendoza. Pic credit: United States Postal Service

A stamp bearing the likeness of Janis Joplin has been released as part of The United States Postal Service’s Music Icons series.

According to Linns Stamp News via Rolling Stone, the Joplin stamp will enter circulation in August.

A brief biographical description on the sheet of 16 stamps says: “Janis Joplin (1943-1970) was a groundbreaking singer whose powerful, bluesy voice propelled her to the pinnacle of rock stardom. An icon of the 1960s, she was known for her uninhibited and soulful performances. Joplin is now recognized as one of the greatest rock singers of all time, as well as a pioneer who paved the way for other women in rock music.”

The image was pictured in the Quarter 3 issue of the USPS USA Philatelic catalog for stamp collectors. The catalog reported only that the stamp would be issued in August, and did not include information about the city where the stamp will be issued.

The Janis Joplin stamp is the fifth in the Postal Service’s Music Icons series, following Jimi Hendrix, Johnny Cash, Ray Charles and Tejano songstress Lydia Mendoza.

Pic credit: United States Postal Service

Lou Reed leaves $30m fortune

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1st July 2014

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Lou Reed has left a total of $30 million (£17.5m) in his will - including $20.4m (£12m) in royalties earned since his death in October 2013. According to documents lodged with Manhattan Surrogate Court by Reed's manager Robert Gotterer, the singer's estate totals $30m (£17.5m), with two-thirds o...

Lou Reed has left a total of $30 million (£17.5m) in his will – including $20.4m (£12m) in royalties earned since his death in October 2013.

According to documents lodged with Manhattan Surrogate Court by Reed’s manager Robert Gotterer, the singer’s estate totals $30m (£17.5m), with two-thirds of that having been gathered by Gotterer since Reed’s death at the age of 71 last year.

The documents reveal Reed left $15m (£8.8m) to his wife, artist Laurie Anderson, along with two homes in New York worth a total of £5m and his personal property. Reed left his sister Margaret Reed Weiner $500,000 to care for their mother, Toby, but she will receive a further $5m from the money Gotterer collected.

Watch Mick Jagger and Charlie Watts in Monty Python sketch

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1st July 2014

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Watch Mick Jagger and Charlie Watts in Monty Python sketch

Mick Jagger and Charlie Watts have filmed a sketch mocking The Rolling Stones as part of Monty Python's press conference ahead of their live shows. The surviving members of Monty Python start their 10 shows at London's O2 today (July 1). They announced at the press conference in central London that...

Mick Jagger and Charlie Watts have filmed a sketch mocking The Rolling Stones as part of Monty Python’s press conference ahead of their live shows.

The surviving members of Monty Python start their 10 shows at London’s O2 today (July 1). They announced at the press conference in central London that Stephen Hawking and Brian Cox will appear in filmed new sketches as part of the show.

But the comics emphasised that the show would focus on performing favourite old sketches such as “The Lumberjack Song” and “The Dead Parrot Sketch”. Eric Idle said: “It would be a folly to try and write better things than our best at this age. Our motto has been ‘leave them wanting less’.”

In the Stones’ sketch, which can be seen below, Jagger says the Pythons are “a bunch of wrinkly old men trying to relive their youth”, before dictating a Stones setlist to an off-screen assistant, as Watts sits silently behind him throughout.

John Cleese said the show cost £4.5million to produce. “The opening number’s quite energetic so it sets the standard,” added Michael Palin. “I’m quite worn out after the first 10 minutes.” A new Python compilation, Monty Python Sings (Again) was released this week.

Neil Young & Crazy Horse bassist Billy Talbot suffers mild stroke

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30th June 2014

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Neil Young & Crazy Horse bassist Billy Talbot suffers mild stroke

Billy Talbot, bassist with Neil Young & Crazy Horse, has suffered a mild stroke, according to a report on Rolling Stone. The story reports that Talbot will sit out the band's forthcoming European tour dates. "Talbot's doctors expect him to make a full recovery," the group said in a statement. ...

Billy Talbot, bassist with Neil Young & Crazy Horse, has suffered a mild stroke, according to a report on Rolling Stone.

The story reports that Talbot will sit out the band’s forthcoming European tour dates.

“Talbot’s doctors expect him to make a full recovery,” the group said in a statement. “They have advised Talbot to sit this tour out and recover his strength.”

Talbot’s place will be filled by Neil Young’s longtime bassist Rick Rosas.

Mahogany Blue’s Dorene Carter and YaDonna West will also join the tour, filling in for Talbot who also provided backing vocals.

The 70 year-old Talbot – who has not missed a single show with the group since their formation in 1968 – isn’t the first member of Crazy Horse to suffer health problems recently.

Last year, a batch of dates were cancelled because of an ongoing injury to guitarist Frank “Poncho” Sampedro’s hand.

The Europe tour dates for Neil Young and Crazy Horse are:

July 07, Laugardalshöllin, Reykjavík, Iceland

July 10, Live At The Marquee, Cork, Ireland

July 12, Hyde Park, London, England

July 13, Echo Arena, Liverpool, England

July 15, KüçükÇiftlik Park, Istanbul, Turkey

July 17, Yarkon Park, Tel-Aviv, Israel

July 20, Münsterplatz, Ulm, Germany

July 21, Collisioni Festival, Barolo, Italy

July 23, Wiener Stadthalle, Wien, Austria

July 25, Warsteiner Hockeypark, Mönchengladbach, Germany

July 26, Filmnächte am Elbufer, Dresden, Germany

July 28, Zollhafen – Nordmole, Mainz, Germany

July 30, København Forum, København, Denmark

August 1, Bergenhus Festning – Koengen, Bergen, Norway

August 3, Stockholm Music & Arts Festival – Stockholm, Sweden

August 5, Lokerse Feesten, Lokeren, Belgium

August 7, Monte-Carlo Sporting Summer Festival, Monaco, France

August 8, Foire aux Vins de Colmar, Colmar, France

New Jerry Lee Lewis album to feature Neil Young, Keith Richards and Robbie Robertson

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30th June 2014

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New Jerry Lee Lewis album to feature Neil Young, Keith Richards and Robbie Robertson

Jerry Lee Lewis has confirmed details of his new album, Rock & Roll Time on October 28 on Vanguard Records. The album features a star–studded line up of guests including Keith Richards, Robbie Robertson, Ron Wood, Neil Young, Shelby Lynne, Nils Lofgren, Daniel Lanois and more. Lewis says of ...

Jerry Lee Lewis has confirmed details of his new album, Rock & Roll Time on October 28 on Vanguard Records.

The album features a star–studded line up of guests including Keith Richards, Robbie Robertson, Ron Wood, Neil Young, Shelby Lynne, Nils Lofgren, Daniel Lanois and more.

Lewis says of the album, “This is a rock & roll record. That’s just the way it came out.” Rock & Roll Time is Lewis’ third studio album in the past decade, following 2006’s Last Man Standing and 2010’s Mean Old Man.

Lewis will also release Jerry Lee Lewis: His Own Story, a biography co-authored with Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Rick Bragg on the same date.

The tracklisting for Rock & Roll Time is:

Rock & Roll Time (with Doyle Bramhall II and Jon Brion)

Little Queenie (with Keith Richards and Ron Wood)

Stepchild (with Daniel Lanois and Doyle Bramhall II)

Sick And Tired (with Jon Brion)

Bright Lights, Big City (with Neil Young and Ivan Neville)

Folsom Prison Blues (with Robbie Robertson and Nils Lofgren)

Keep Me In Mind (with Jon Brion)

Mississippi Kid (with Derek Trucks and Doyle Bramhall II)

Blues Like Midnight (with Robbie Robertson)

Here Comes That Rainbow Again (with Shelby Lynne)

Promised Land (with Doyle Bramhall II)

The Who announce 50th anniversary tour dates

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30th June 2014

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The Who announce 50th anniversary tour dates

The Who have announced a UK tour to celebrate the band's 50th anniversary. The band's Who Hits 50 tour is being described by Pete Townshend as "Hits, picks, mixes and misses" and will see the band play their hit singles as well as tackling deeper cuts from their catalogue. On the tour announcement...

The Who have announced a UK tour to celebrate the band’s 50th anniversary.

The band’s Who Hits 50 tour is being described by Pete Townshend as “Hits, picks, mixes and misses” and will see the band play their hit singles as well as tackling deeper cuts from their catalogue.

On the tour announcement, Roger Daltrey said, “This is the beginning of the long goodbye.”

Townshend commented, “Trying to stay young. Not wearing socks. Growing a great big Woodcutter’s beard. Might even wear a check shirt on stage and get a tattoo of a Union Jack. Always a fashion victim. But under no illusions. We are what we are, and extremely good at it, but we’re lucky to be alive and still touring. If I had enough hairs to split I would say that for thirteen years since 1964 The Who didn’t really exist, so we are really only thirty-seven”.

The Who Hits 50 tour dates are:

November 30: Glasgow SSE Hyrdo

December 2: Leeds First Direct Arena

December 5: Nottingham Capital FM Arena

December 7: Birmingham NIA

December 9: Newcastle Metro

December 11: Liverpool Echo Arena

December 13: Manchester Phones 4U Arena

December 15: Cardiff Motorpoint

December 17: London The O2

Tickets will be on sale on 9am GMT on July 4 from www.aeglive.co.uk.

Jack White – Lazaretto

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30th June 2014

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Third Man maverick shows little sign of mellowing on wild and witty second solo album... Across Jack White’s prolific recordings over the last 15 years, he’s long demonstrated a keen understanding of the value of an opening salvo. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine the White Stripes’ Elephant blasting off with anything but “Seven Nation Army,” or there being a better summary of (i)Icky Thump(i)’s synthesis of arena-rock crunch and speaker-shredding skronk than its title track. True to form, White opens his second solo album with another strong hand. A cheeky refashioning of Blind Willie McTell’s “Three Women Blues,” “Three Women” will rankle the blues purists just as surely as the White Stripes’ thrash-metal take on Son House’s “Death Letter” at the Grammys a decade ago. Listeners wary of old-school rock-dude chauvinism may be similarly dismayed. “I got three women/ Red, blonde and brunette,” White sings over the raucous vamping of the Buzzards, one of the two bands that supported him on the tour for his 2012 solo debut Blunderbuss and back him on Lazaretto. (The all-female Peacocks get roughly equal time with White getting additional support by friends like Patrick Keeler of The Raconteurs and The Greenhornes.) After repeating the line, White arrives at the potentially cringe-inducing capper: “I took a digital photograph/ To pick which one I like.” On first impression, White’s update reeks of the same sexual braggadocio that defines McTell’s original recording from 1928. (Uncoincidentally, Third Man is in the process of reissuing McTell’s complete works.) He certainly risks further umbrage by mentioning the hair colours of his first two spouses. But any suggestion of machismo is undermined by later verses that paint the narrator as bewitched, bothered and bewildered, all qualities unbefitting of a stud. By the end of the song, scrutinizing that photograph comes to seem less like the imperious act of an alpha male and more like a hapless gesture by a man whose life is too unruly to ever submit to his will or his whims. “Three Women” is hardly the first time that White has presented himself as a man who’s moving as fast as he possibly can yet still feels trapped. It remains a popular motif on Lazaretto, which borrows its name from an archaic term for an island used to quarantine sailors. (A dictionary may be required for several other words in play.) His songwriting’s propensity for hectic and harried characters is further reflected in White’s public image, what with the demands on his time as a solo artist and sometime sideman, a collaborator and producer for musical legends and upstarts alike, a label boss and impresario for Third Man in Nashville and – since his initially amicable but ultimately acrimonious breakup with second wife Karen Elson – a 38-year-old single dad of two. Surely he’d be forgiven for betraying signs of fatigue but there’s little evidence of mellowing even now, a decade-and-a-half after the White Stripes established its forte for ferocity with its self-titled debut and three years after the duo’s dissolution amid White’s ever-proliferating array of other projects. In April, White demonstrated that need for speed with a Record Store Day stunt that was one part Kim Fowley to two parts P.T. Barnum. Billed as the “World’s Fastest Released Record,” a live performance of Lazaretto’s tumultuous title track (plus a cover of Elvis Presley’s “Power of My Love” for the B-side) was recorded for a seven-inch single that was mastered, pressed, packaged and ready for sale at Third Man a little less than four hours later. It’s a testament to White’s talents and multi-tasking abilities that such displays of haste have rarely yielded any waste. Yet even more so than its predecessor, Lazaretto is at its most startling whenever White’s torrents of devilishly clever lyrics and distortion-laden riffage give way to a moment of relative stillness or a hint of inconsolable anguish. That doesn’t happen often, mind you. As “Three Women” indicates, White spends much of the album in gleeful attack mode, reaching a peak of intensity with the “Kashmir”-meets-swamp-funk of “High Ball Stepper” and a new extreme in lyrical dexterity with “That Black Bat Licorice”, surely the only song to ever combine references to the Egyptian god Horus, a popular home-heating method in ancient Rome and a key plot point in the classic Disney movie Dumbo. But it still happens. One factor may be the unusual circumstances of Lazaretto’s creation, White having purportedly begun this batch of songs after discovering a trove of short stories and plays he wrote when he was 19 years old. New characters and scenarios were spun out of lines and elements that he found in his juvenilia, which he claims to have destroyed lest they be used in any other way. Lazaretto was also recorded over a period of a year and a half, an eternity by White’s standards but understandable considering what else was on the man’s plate, such as a divorce battle with Elson and Third Man projects like the enormous Paramount Records box set. Really, it’s a miracle that the album sounds as coherent as it does given the pressures of the period and the many different configurations of personnel. The songs also share an undercurrent of discontent that’s palpable in even the most seemingly gentle examples. A stately country number that rails against the selfishness of the world’s inhabitants, “Entitlement” concludes with its narrator casting a wary eye on all of mankind and deciding that “we don’t deserve a single damn thing.” A similarly weary and dyspeptic view pervades in the closer “Want and Able” (a companion piece to Icky Thump’s “Effect and Cause”) and many others here, which may be surprising to listeners expecting a more cocksure persona to prevail. Yet it would be foolhardy to interpret the desperation evinced in “Would You Fight For My Love?” or the despair described in “Alone In My Home” as slip-ups by a showman whose bravura can’t entirely conceal his feelings of fragility – White’s far too fond of flipping between voices and perspectives for it ever to be safe to believe that any single character or expression in his songs is any more “authentic” than the rest. So while Lazaretto may sometimes appear to be a more nakedly emotional collection of songs than we’ve come to expect from its creator, the contents also rate among his wittiest and his wildest efforts to date. In other words, he’s his same old maddeningly inscrutable and compulsively entertaining self. Jason Anderson Q&A Jack White You recorded the songs for Lazaretto over a year and a half rather than the customary handful of days or weeks. Why the longer gestation period? Things are different when you’re in a band. When you’re in a band and you’re in motion, you’re constantly thinking of the next step and then the next. That was true when I was in The White Stripes, The Raconteurs and The Dead Weather. This is the first time in my life I’ve been making records under my own name and I’m not under so much pressure to make a next move if I don’t feel like it – you have to make yourself make the next move. This is also a very different time period compared to 10 years ago. I just will put things out whenever they make sense, more so than before. When we made Elephant, we had to wait a year for it to come out because White Blood Cells was doing so well still, they didn’t want to over-saturate the market or something funny like that. Is it true that the new songs were inspired by a rediscovered trove of one-act plays and stories you wrote when you were 19? It was just this pile of mediocre writing that I’d done as a teenager. I was about to throw it away but then I thought, ‘What if I pulled characters and lines from these things and put them into new lyrics?’ It was like I was collaborating with my younger self. That was the idea and it really helped inspire me – I definitely get something out of forcing myself into scenarios that I shouldn’t be in! Blind Willie McTell’s “Three Women Blues” was the springboard for Lazaretto’s opener, “Three Women” – why make your own version? A friend of mine had heard “Three Women Blues” at a party and I thought it was an interesting song. I had covered Blind Willie McTell songs in the past and I came up with that first line – “I’ve got three women, red, blonde and brunette” – just as a starting point for myself. I thought, ‘I’m gonna do a completely modern version of this type of song.’ It doesn’t really have much to do with Blind Willie McTell’s song at all beyond the first line. I also think his song is a lesson in how it’s all false to begin with, how you shouldn’t believe these are all real events for the songwriter or the person singing. It’s like when Elvis was singing his songs – he didn’t write the songs so they’re not about him. That’s one thing people really get wrong about all the old blues musicians – that every song they were singing was from the heart and about their own specific problems. I highly doubt that Blind Willie McTell had three girlfriends at the same time – it’s hard to pull off for anyone, especially someone who’s blind! INTERVIEW: JASON ANDERSON

Third Man maverick shows little sign of mellowing on wild and witty second solo album…

Across Jack White’s prolific recordings over the last 15 years, he’s long demonstrated a keen understanding of the value of an opening salvo. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine the White Stripes’ Elephant blasting off with anything but “Seven Nation Army,” or there being a better summary of (i)Icky Thump(i)’s synthesis of arena-rock crunch and speaker-shredding skronk than its title track.

True to form, White opens his second solo album with another strong hand. A cheeky refashioning of Blind Willie McTell’s “Three Women Blues,” “Three Women” will rankle the blues purists just as surely as the White Stripes’ thrash-metal take on Son House’s “Death Letter” at the Grammys a decade ago. Listeners wary of old-school rock-dude chauvinism may be similarly dismayed. “I got three women/ Red, blonde and brunette,” White sings over the raucous vamping of the Buzzards, one of the two bands that supported him on the tour for his 2012 solo debut Blunderbuss and back him on Lazaretto. (The all-female Peacocks get roughly equal time with White getting additional support by friends like Patrick Keeler of The Raconteurs and The Greenhornes.) After repeating the line, White arrives at the potentially cringe-inducing capper: “I took a digital photograph/ To pick which one I like.”

On first impression, White’s update reeks of the same sexual braggadocio that defines McTell’s original recording from 1928. (Uncoincidentally, Third Man is in the process of reissuing McTell’s complete works.) He certainly risks further umbrage by mentioning the hair colours of his first two spouses. But any suggestion of machismo is undermined by later verses that paint the narrator as bewitched, bothered and bewildered, all qualities unbefitting of a stud. By the end of the song, scrutinizing that photograph comes to seem less like the imperious act of an alpha male and more like a hapless gesture by a man whose life is too unruly to ever submit to his will or his whims.

“Three Women” is hardly the first time that White has presented himself as a man who’s moving as fast as he possibly can yet still feels trapped. It remains a popular motif on Lazaretto, which borrows its name from an archaic term for an island used to quarantine sailors. (A dictionary may be required for several other words in play.)

His songwriting’s propensity for hectic and harried characters is further reflected in White’s public image, what with the demands on his time as a solo artist and sometime sideman, a collaborator and producer for musical legends and upstarts alike, a label boss and impresario for Third Man in Nashville and – since his initially amicable but ultimately acrimonious breakup with second wife Karen Elson – a 38-year-old single dad of two. Surely he’d be forgiven for betraying signs of fatigue but there’s little evidence of mellowing even now, a decade-and-a-half after the White Stripes established its forte for ferocity with its self-titled debut and three years after the duo’s dissolution amid White’s ever-proliferating array of other projects.

In April, White demonstrated that need for speed with a Record Store Day stunt that was one part Kim Fowley to two parts P.T. Barnum. Billed as the “World’s Fastest Released Record,” a live performance of Lazaretto’s tumultuous title track (plus a cover of Elvis Presley’s “Power of My Love” for the B-side) was recorded for a seven-inch single that was mastered, pressed, packaged and ready for sale at Third Man a little less than four hours later.

It’s a testament to White’s talents and multi-tasking abilities that such displays of haste have rarely yielded any waste. Yet even more so than its predecessor, Lazaretto is at its most startling whenever White’s torrents of devilishly clever lyrics and distortion-laden riffage give way to a moment of relative stillness or a hint of inconsolable anguish.

That doesn’t happen often, mind you. As “Three Women” indicates, White spends much of the album in gleeful attack mode, reaching a peak of intensity with the “Kashmir”-meets-swamp-funk of “High Ball Stepper” and a new extreme in lyrical dexterity with “That Black Bat Licorice”, surely the only song to ever combine references to the Egyptian god Horus, a popular home-heating method in ancient Rome and a key plot point in the classic Disney movie Dumbo.

But it still happens. One factor may be the unusual circumstances of Lazaretto’s creation, White having purportedly begun this batch of songs after discovering a trove of short stories and plays he wrote when he was 19 years old. New characters and scenarios were spun out of lines and elements that he found in his juvenilia, which he claims to have destroyed lest they be used in any other way.

Lazaretto was also recorded over a period of a year and a half, an eternity by White’s standards but understandable considering what else was on the man’s plate, such as a divorce battle with Elson and Third Man projects like the enormous Paramount Records box set. Really, it’s a miracle that the album sounds as coherent as it does given the pressures of the period and the many different configurations of personnel.

The songs also share an undercurrent of discontent that’s palpable in even the most seemingly gentle examples. A stately country number that rails against the selfishness of the world’s inhabitants, “Entitlement” concludes with its narrator casting a wary eye on all of mankind and deciding that “we don’t deserve a single damn thing.” A similarly weary and dyspeptic view pervades in the closer “Want and Able” (a companion piece to Icky Thump’s “Effect and Cause”) and many others here, which may be surprising to listeners expecting a more cocksure persona to prevail. Yet it would be foolhardy to interpret the desperation evinced in “Would You Fight For My Love?” or the despair described in “Alone In My Home” as slip-ups by a showman whose bravura can’t entirely conceal his feelings of fragility – White’s far too fond of flipping between voices and perspectives for it ever to be safe to believe that any single character or expression in his songs is any more “authentic” than the rest.

So while Lazaretto may sometimes appear to be a more nakedly emotional collection of songs than we’ve come to expect from its creator, the contents also rate among his wittiest and his wildest efforts to date. In other words, he’s his same old maddeningly inscrutable and compulsively entertaining self.

Jason Anderson

Q&A

Jack White

You recorded the songs for Lazaretto over a year and a half rather than the customary handful of days or weeks. Why the longer gestation period?

Things are different when you’re in a band. When you’re in a band and you’re in motion, you’re constantly thinking of the next step and then the next. That was true when I was in The White Stripes, The Raconteurs and The Dead Weather. This is the first time in my life I’ve been making records under my own name and I’m not under so much pressure to make a next move if I don’t feel like it – you have to make yourself make the next move. This is also a very different time period compared to 10 years ago. I just will put things out whenever they make sense, more so than before. When we made Elephant, we had to wait a year for it to come out because White Blood Cells was doing so well still, they didn’t want to over-saturate the market or something funny like that.

Is it true that the new songs were inspired by a rediscovered trove of one-act plays and stories you wrote when you were 19?

It was just this pile of mediocre writing that I’d done as a teenager. I was about to throw it away but then I thought, ‘What if I pulled characters and lines from these things and put them into new lyrics?’ It was like I was collaborating with my younger self. That was the idea and it really helped inspire me – I definitely get something out of forcing myself into scenarios that I shouldn’t be in!

Blind Willie McTell’s “Three Women Blues” was the springboard for Lazaretto’s opener, “Three Women” – why make your own version?

A friend of mine had heard “Three Women Blues” at a party and I thought it was an interesting song. I had covered Blind Willie McTell songs in the past and I came up with that first line – “I’ve got three women, red, blonde and brunette” – just as a starting point for myself. I thought, ‘I’m gonna do a completely modern version of this type of song.’ It doesn’t really have much to do with Blind Willie McTell’s song at all beyond the first line. I also think his song is a lesson in how it’s all false to begin with, how you shouldn’t believe these are all real events for the songwriter or the person singing. It’s like when Elvis was singing his songs – he didn’t write the songs so they’re not about him. That’s one thing people really get wrong about all the old blues musicians – that every song they were singing was from the heart and about their own specific problems. I highly doubt that Blind Willie McTell had three girlfriends at the same time – it’s hard to pull off for anyone, especially someone who’s blind!

INTERVIEW: JASON ANDERSON

Glastonbury 2014: Uncut’s Ultimate Review!

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30th June 2014

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Glastonbury 2014: Uncut’s Ultimate Review!

The stages are being dismantled, the last stragglers are leaving the site and the sheep are nervously making their way back to the fields of Avalon... With Glastonbury over for another 12 months, here are the links to all our reviews from year's festival. Glastonbury Day 1: Blondie, New Build, East India Youth Glastonbury Day 1: Rodrigo Y Gabriela, Band of Skulls and Haim Glastonbury Day 1: Courtney Barnett and Lily Allen Glastonbury Day 1: Elbow Glastonbury Day 1: Arcade Fire Glastonbury Day 2: Midlake Glastonbury Day 2: Kelis and Fat White Family Glastonbury Day 2: Robert Plant and Lana Del Ray Glastonbury Day 2: Jack White Glastonbury Day 2: Pixies and Metallica Glastonbury Day 3: Toumani and Sidiki Glastonbury Day 3: Dolly Parton Glastonbury Day 3: Yoko Ono, The Wailers and assorted hippies Glastonbury Day 3: The Black Keys Glastonbury Day 3: Massive Attack

The stages are being dismantled, the last stragglers are leaving the site and the sheep are nervously making their way back to the fields of Avalon…

With Glastonbury over for another 12 months, here are the links to all our reviews from year’s festival.

Glastonbury Day 1: Rodrigo Y Gabriela, Band of Skulls and Haim

Glastonbury Day 3: Yoko Ono, The Wailers and assorted hippies

Glastonbury Day 1: Blondie, New Build, East India Youth

Ozzy Osbourne: “Knighthood would be great”

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30th June 2014

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Ozzy Osbourne: “Knighthood would be great”

Ozzy Osbourne has revealed that he "can't imagine anything better" than receiving a knighthood. The 65-year-old is at the centre of a petition started by fan Helen Maidiotis, who created the ‘The Knighthood of Ozz' campaign. She argues a knighthood is "well deserved and long overdue" for the Bla...

Ozzy Osbourne has revealed that he “can’t imagine anything better” than receiving a knighthood.

The 65-year-old is at the centre of a petition started by fan Helen Maidiotis, who created the ‘The Knighthood of Ozz’ campaign. She argues a knighthood is “well deserved and long overdue” for the Black Sabbath lead singer.

“I’ve heard about that. Getting knighted? I can’t imagine anything better,” he told Time Out. “And my wife [Sharon] would become a Lady, which would be pretty cool. But I’m not gonna get upset if it doesn’t happen. I never thought I’d get further than Aston [in Birmingham, England, where he was born].”

Osbourne also revealed that he’s shocked his career has managed to last almost half a century, admitting he believed it would only go on for a “couple of years” at best:

“I don’t [look back], but I guess I should a bit more. Because I know when I had my first successful album with Sabbath I thought, ‘Oh this is great, this will last a couple of years. I’ll just get drunk every night and have a few chicks in my room’.”

He continued: “And here I am, 45 years down the road and I’m doing better than ever. I haven’t always been on top of the world – there have been bad times as well – but you don’t just give up at the first sign of choppy waters: you carry on rowing.”

Osbourne admitted during press conference earlier this month (June), that there is a possibility of a new Black Sabbath album, saying that the band “just wanna finish this tour and then we’ll see.”

Jeff Beck cancels tour due “after seeking emergency medical attention”

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30th June 2014

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Jeff Beck cancels tour due “after seeking emergency medical attention”

Jeff Beck has been forced to cancel his European tour in order to receive "emergency medical attention." Beck was scheduled to begin the second leg of his tour in Austria on Thursday (June 27), but the legendary guitarist has been advised by his doctors not to perform for the next six weeks. "It ...

Jeff Beck has been forced to cancel his European tour in order to receive “emergency medical attention.”

Beck was scheduled to begin the second leg of his tour in Austria on Thursday (June 27), but the legendary guitarist has been advised by his doctors not to perform for the next six weeks.

“It is with the greatest regret that Jeff Beck has been forced to cancel the forthcoming European dates of his worldwide tour, set to begin in Austria on 27 June,” reads the statement on Beck’s official website. “Following many months of international touring and after seeking emergency medical attention, Jeff will now undertake a short hospital procedure and his doctors have instructed a complete break from performance for a total of six weeks. Following the treatment, Jeff will fulfil his US tour commitments beginning in Missoula MT on 8 August.”

The statement continued: “He sends his profound apologies to those fans who had bought tickets for the European concerts and very much looks forward to playing for his American audiences after he has completed his treatment.”

The singer will begin his month-long co-headlining US tour with ZZ Top in Missoula, Montana, on August 8, where the band will perform a collaboration at the end of each night’s show.

The Rolling Stones pay tribute to Bobby Womack

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30th June 2014

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The Rolling Stones pay tribute to Bobby Womack

The Rolling Stones have paid tribute to the late soul singer Bobby Womack. The band posted a message on their official website in response to the news that Womack had died on Thursday (June 27), aged 70. The Rolling Stones released a UK No 1 cover of the song "It's All Over Now" in 1964, which w...

The Rolling Stones have paid tribute to the late soul singer Bobby Womack.

The band posted a message on their official website in response to the news that Womack had died on Thursday (June 27), aged 70.

The Rolling Stones released a UK No 1 cover of the song “It’s All Over Now” in 1964, which was originally recorded by Womack’s group, The Valentinos.

“Bobby Womack was a huge influence on us,” said the message. “He was a true pioneer of soul and R&B, whose voice and songwriting touched millions. On stage, his presence was formidable. His talents put him up there with the greats. We will remember him, first and foremost, as a friend.”

Damon Albarn, who coaxed Womack back into the musical spotlight after a long break by asking him to record a track for the third Gorillaz album ‘Plastic Beach’, paid tribute to the singer yesterday (June 28), tweeting “I will see my brother in church.”

Glastonbury Day 3: Massive Attack

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30th June 2014

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The witching hour draws near on Sunday night in Glastonbury. Time for local heroes Massive Attack to bring the noise to the Other Stage before it goes dark for another year. After three days of watching guitar bands offer up their generally conservative take on retro-blues tropes, Massive come as a welcome relief, demonstrating how the colour blue can span a rich multicultural spectrum from gently menacing soul symphonies to dystopian post-punk dubtronica. Once a byword for brooding understatement, Massive in 2014 make a shuddering, scouring, surprisingly rowdy racket. Visually, they remain a clutch of furtive figures lurking in semi-darkness. But their sound has acquired extra muscle just as their stage presentation has grown teeth, notably a billboard-sized screen that blitzes the crowd with scrambled news headlines, political disinformation, anti-war slogans and personal testimonies from Guantanamo Bay inmates. At times it almost feels like watching Wikileaks – The Musical. Tonight’s show is mostly about strong female voices counterpointed by discordant, percussive, weaponised noise. Latterday Massive regular Deborah Miller provides belting vocals on "Safe From Harm" and "Unfinished Sympathy", early 1990s anthems that have become increasingly belligerent over the last two decades. Martina Topley-Bird, best known for her collaborations with former Massive member Tricky, takes on the softer ballads, including a gorgeous "Teardrop" that shimmers with a new, sinewy, Saharan heat-haze feel. Back on Friday morning, Debbie Harry stood on this same stage and christened the festival. “Glastonbury!” she grinned. “Nowhere else like it!” Massive Attack attempt nothing so glibly crowd-pleasing during this noir-ish finale, but their rhythmic rebel-rock rumbles make just as much sense here. Bluesy discontent meets hippie resistance, soulful uplift meets punk protest. Glastonbury provides a temporary place of refuge for all dissident tribes here in the Vale of Avalon. Nowhere else like it. Stephen Dalton Glastonbury Day 1: Blondie, New Build, East India Youth Glastonbury Day 1: Rodrigo Y Gabriela, Band of Skulls and Haim Glastonbury Day 1: Courtney Barnett and Lily Allen Glastonbury Day 1: Elbow Glastonbury Day 1: Arcade Fire Glastonbury Day 2: Midlake Glastonbury Day 2: Kelis and Fat White Family Glastonbury Day 2: Robert Plant and Lana Del Ray Glastonbury Day 2: Jack White Glastonbury Day 2: Pixies and Metallica Glastonbury Day 3: Toumani and Sidiki Glastonbury Day 3: Dolly Parton Glastonbury Day 3: The Black Keys

The witching hour draws near on Sunday night in Glastonbury. Time for local heroes Massive Attack to bring the noise to the Other Stage before it goes dark for another year.

After three days of watching guitar bands offer up their generally conservative take on retro-blues tropes, Massive come as a welcome relief, demonstrating how the colour blue can span a rich multicultural spectrum from gently menacing soul symphonies to dystopian post-punk dubtronica.

Once a byword for brooding understatement, Massive in 2014 make a shuddering, scouring, surprisingly rowdy racket. Visually, they remain a clutch of furtive figures lurking in semi-darkness. But their sound has acquired extra muscle just as their stage presentation has grown teeth, notably a billboard-sized screen that blitzes the crowd with scrambled news headlines, political disinformation, anti-war slogans and personal testimonies from Guantanamo Bay inmates. At times it almost feels like watching Wikileaks – The Musical.

Tonight’s show is mostly about strong female voices counterpointed by discordant, percussive, weaponised noise. Latterday Massive regular Deborah Miller provides belting vocals on “Safe From Harm” and “Unfinished Sympathy”, early 1990s anthems that have become increasingly belligerent over the last two decades. Martina Topley-Bird, best known for her collaborations with former Massive member Tricky, takes on the softer ballads, including a gorgeous “Teardrop” that shimmers with a new, sinewy, Saharan heat-haze feel.

Back on Friday morning, Debbie Harry stood on this same stage and christened the festival. “Glastonbury!” she grinned. “Nowhere else like it!” Massive Attack attempt nothing so glibly crowd-pleasing during this noir-ish finale, but their rhythmic rebel-rock rumbles make just as much sense here. Bluesy discontent meets hippie resistance, soulful uplift meets punk protest. Glastonbury provides a temporary place of refuge for all dissident tribes here in the Vale of Avalon. Nowhere else like it.

Stephen Dalton

Glastonbury Day 1: Rodrigo Y Gabriela, Band of Skulls and Haim

Glastonbury Day 1: Blondie, New Build, East India Youth

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30th June 2014

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Sunday evening, with the finish line in sight, and Glastonbury has still got the blues. The Black Keys are playing the same penultimate Pyramid Stage slot as Jack White filled on Saturday, and it is impossible to avoid drawing parallels between these bitching Nashville neighbours. Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney last played Worthy Farm four years ago as a ragged power duo. Tonight they bring backing musicians, eye-popping psychedelic visuals derived from their "Turn Blue" album artwork, and a truckload of Grammy-winning confidence. But the devil on my shoulder still tells me that Jack White won this battle. Where White’s set was incendiary and melodramatic, Auerbach and Carney stay crisp and contained. Where their nemesis channelled the explosive showmanship of Screaming Jay Hawkins and Little Richard, the Keys focus on the muscular minimalism of their increasingly soulful, riff-heavy sound. Even in their new smoothed-down form, they can still pack serious clout, especially on bad-ass wallops like "Lonely Boy" and a surprisingly jaunty "Fever". But this show exudes a pedestrian kind of professionalism, borrowing heavily from the blues-rock pantheon as if there were no higher honour than playing Later With Jools Holland. There is no danger here, no dark depths, no hinterland of delicious delirium. And definitely none of that wild-haired, sexually incontinent, high-voltage voodoo that certain other performers use to reanimate the corpse of this doddery old retro-rock format. Auerbach and Carney play a solid bunch of songs at Glastonbury, but nothing more. Next time they will need to rise to the challenge that a bigger stage demands. Stephen Dalton Glastonbury Day 1: Blondie, New Build, East India Youth Glastonbury Day 1: Rodrigo Y Gabriela, Band of Skulls and Haim Glastonbury Day 1: Courtney Barnett and Lily Allen Glastonbury Day 1: Elbow Glastonbury Day 1: Arcade Fire Glastonbury Day 2: Midlake Glastonbury Day 2: Kelis and Fat White Family Glastonbury Day 2: Robert Plant and Lana Del Ray Glastonbury Day 2: Jack White Glastonbury Day 2: Pixies and Metallica Glastonbury Day 3: Toumani and Sidiki Glastonbury Day 3: Dolly Parton Glastonbury Day 3: Massive Attack

Sunday evening, with the finish line in sight, and Glastonbury has still got the blues.

The Black Keys are playing the same penultimate Pyramid Stage slot as Jack White filled on Saturday, and it is impossible to avoid drawing parallels between these bitching Nashville neighbours. Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney last played Worthy Farm four years ago as a ragged power duo. Tonight they bring backing musicians, eye-popping psychedelic visuals derived from their “Turn Blue” album artwork, and a truckload of Grammy-winning confidence. But the devil on my shoulder still tells me that Jack White won this battle.

Where White’s set was incendiary and melodramatic, Auerbach and Carney stay crisp and contained. Where their nemesis channelled the explosive showmanship of Screaming Jay Hawkins and Little Richard, the Keys focus on the muscular minimalism of their increasingly soulful, riff-heavy sound. Even in their new smoothed-down form, they can still pack serious clout, especially on bad-ass wallops like “Lonely Boy” and a surprisingly jaunty “Fever”.

But this show exudes a pedestrian kind of professionalism, borrowing heavily from the blues-rock pantheon as if there were no higher honour than playing Later With Jools Holland. There is no danger here, no dark depths, no hinterland of delicious delirium. And definitely none of that wild-haired, sexually incontinent, high-voltage voodoo that certain other performers use to reanimate the corpse of this doddery old retro-rock format. Auerbach and Carney play a solid bunch of songs at Glastonbury, but nothing more. Next time they will need to rise to the challenge that a bigger stage demands.

Stephen Dalton

Glastonbury Day 1: Rodrigo Y Gabriela, Band of Skulls and Haim

Glastonbury Day 1: Blondie, New Build, East India Youth

Glastonbury Day 3: Yoko Ono, The Wailers, assorted hippies

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29th June 2014

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Glastonbury Day 3: Yoko Ono, The Wailers, assorted hippies

With Glastonbury building up to its grand blow-out finale, now is the time to tick off the traditional Sunday evening checklist. Dolly Parton has already triumphed in the crowd-pleasing afternoon slot. Over the next few hours, it's a surefire bet Michael Eavis will declare this festival to be the best ever. Just like he does every year. Later, as Kasabian thunder to the end of their headline set, it is equally certain some disgruntled backstage veteran will grumble that Glastonbury is not the anarcho-hippie utopia it used to be in the 1970s, 1980s or 1990s. The choice of decade generally depends on when the speaker turned 20 and took drugs for the first time. As a Glastonbury veteran of some 25 years, I can safely confirm this is bollocks. As it happens, this weekend marks 20 years since the TV cameras first began turning the festival into a mainstream pop-culture event. For golden-age nostalgists, this truly was the jump-the-shark turning point when a righteous eco-hippie gathering sold its soul to commerce and fashion. An arguable point, but one that seems to contradict Glastonbury's enduring commitment to charity causes and political messages, not to mention its highly unusual resistance to major corporate branding. Of course it has changed over the decades, but it still feels like no other festival anywhere. Another key point that becomes abundantly clear wandering the far-flung fields where TV cameras rarely roam is that all those Glastonbury golden ages are still here, running in parallel to the main event. Here you will find bicycle-powered launderettes, nappy recycling stations, anti-fracking protest camps, crystal-gazing mystics and much more. Behind one cluster of trees, 1980s New Age travellers spill from graffiti-covered buses. Behind another, early 1990s rave survivors get totally spannered to vintage acid trance. Old Glastonburys never die, they just move to their own field. In these faraway meadows you also stumble across the hippie-rock icons of yesteryear. At 81, Yoko Ono must be the oldest performer here, but still one of the most vital as she fights to keep the 1960s avant-garde aesthetic alive. Playing the Park Stage with the Plastic Ono Band, Yoko reads poems and blessings between discordant howls, screeches and drones. It is close to unlistenable at times, but easily the most exhilarating and experimental noise-rock performance of the weekend. Respect is due. Another veteran band soldiering on despite losing a key member three decades ago, The Wailers gather a huge crowd to the West Holts Stage on the festival's eastern fringes. Essentially a tribute act to their younger selves, their jaunty set is mostly composed of Bob Marley classics, easy-listening reggae vibrations slightly marred by excessive pub-rock guitar. But the beaming stoners, the groovy pensioners and the dancing toddlers are all here in force, a tribal gathering of Glastonbury in all its past, present and future incarnations. "Are you ready for some more roots and culture?" Aston "Family Man" Barrett asks the heaving crowd. It's a rhetorical question. My dear chap, we were born ready. Stephen Dalton Glastonbury Day 1: Blondie, New Build, East India Youth Glastonbury Day 1: Rodrigo Y Gabriela, Band of Skulls and Haim Glastonbury Day 1: Courtney Barnett and Lily Allen Glastonbury Day 1: Elbow Glastonbury Day 1: Arcade Fire Glastonbury Day 2: Midlake Glastonbury Day 2: Kelis and Fat White Family Glastonbury Day 2: Robert Plant and Lana Del Ray Glastonbury Day 2: Jack White Glastonbury Day 2: Pixies and Metallica Glastonbury Day 3: Toumani and Sidiki Glastonbury Day 3: Dolly Parton Glastonbury Day 3: The Black Keys Glastonbury Day 3: Massive Attack

With Glastonbury building up to its grand blow-out finale, now is the time to tick off the traditional Sunday evening checklist.

Dolly Parton has already triumphed in the crowd-pleasing afternoon slot. Over the next few hours, it’s a surefire bet Michael Eavis will declare this festival to be the best ever. Just like he does every year. Later, as Kasabian thunder to the end of their headline set, it is equally certain some disgruntled backstage veteran will grumble that Glastonbury is not the anarcho-hippie utopia it used to be in the 1970s, 1980s or 1990s. The choice of decade generally depends on when the speaker turned 20 and took drugs for the first time.

As a Glastonbury veteran of some 25 years, I can safely confirm this is bollocks. As it happens, this weekend marks 20 years since the TV cameras first began turning the festival into a mainstream pop-culture event. For golden-age nostalgists, this truly was the jump-the-shark turning point when a righteous eco-hippie gathering sold its soul to commerce and fashion. An arguable point, but one that seems to contradict Glastonbury’s enduring commitment to charity causes and political messages, not to mention its highly unusual resistance to major corporate branding. Of course it has changed over the decades, but it still feels like no other festival anywhere.

Another key point that becomes abundantly clear wandering the far-flung fields where TV cameras rarely roam is that all those Glastonbury golden ages are still here, running in parallel to the main event. Here you will find bicycle-powered launderettes, nappy recycling stations, anti-fracking protest camps, crystal-gazing mystics and much more. Behind one cluster of trees, 1980s New Age travellers spill from graffiti-covered buses. Behind another, early 1990s rave survivors get totally spannered to vintage acid trance. Old Glastonburys never die, they just move to their own field.

In these faraway meadows you also stumble across the hippie-rock icons of yesteryear. At 81, Yoko Ono must be the oldest performer here, but still one of the most vital as she fights to keep the 1960s avant-garde aesthetic alive. Playing the Park Stage with the Plastic Ono Band, Yoko reads poems and blessings between discordant howls, screeches and drones. It is close to unlistenable at times, but easily the most exhilarating and experimental noise-rock performance of the weekend. Respect is due.

Another veteran band soldiering on despite losing a key member three decades ago, The Wailers gather a huge crowd to the West Holts Stage on the festival’s eastern fringes. Essentially a tribute act to their younger selves, their jaunty set is mostly composed of Bob Marley classics, easy-listening reggae vibrations slightly marred by excessive pub-rock guitar. But the beaming stoners, the groovy pensioners and the dancing toddlers are all here in force, a tribal gathering of Glastonbury in all its past, present and future incarnations.

“Are you ready for some more roots and culture?” Aston “Family Man” Barrett asks the heaving crowd. It’s a rhetorical question. My dear chap, we were born ready.

Stephen Dalton

Glastonbury Day 1: Rodrigo Y Gabriela, Band of Skulls and Haim

Glastonbury Day 1: Blondie, New Build, East India Youth

Glastonbury Day 3: Dolly Parton

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29th June 2014

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Mid afternoon at Glastonbury, and anticipation for the traditional Sunday singalong slot is tangible. It's a tricky balancing act to pull off well: ideally a veteran household name, safe and family-friendly enough for the older-leaning crowd that throng to the festival's last day, but with sufficient kitsch appeal for the students, hipsters and drug casualties. Dolly Parton arrives, and it is instantly clear she was a smart choice. The heaving all-ages crowd in the Pyramid Arena is the biggest of the weekend so far - easily topping Arcade Fire, Jack White or Metallica. Bounding onstage in a silver-sequined glitterstorm of comically exaggerated drag-queen femininity and syrupy Deep South shtick, the Backwoods Barbie looks dazzling in a sculpted, laminated, vaguely computer-generated way. Scientists call it the Uncanny Valley, that slightly creepy effect when something looks not quite human. Never mind the Botox, here’s Dolly. The original Steel Magnolia of platinum country-pop gets us on board early with a foot-stomping "Jolene", the sepia-tinted poverty ballad "Coat of Many Colors" and sanitised saloon-bar raunch like "Two Doors Down". She also bombards us with scripted jokes, folksy family memories and ingratiating local references: "I grew up in the county so all this mud ain't nothin' new to me!" Well, shucks. But behind the tiresome Nashville-meets-Vegas facade there is musical brilliance, savvy commercial instincts and a deep canon of fine songs. A close-harmony section with two male backing singers throws up some genuine gems, notably the wistful waltz-time tearjerker "Old Flames Can't Hold a Candle to You". Switching effortlessly from guitar to banjo to autoharp, Dolly and her band elegantly trace Appalachian country-folk back to its Celtic immigrant roots. The final pancake pile-up of ageless hen-party classics includes "Islands in the Stream" and Dolly's superior original arrangement of "I Will Always Love You", the honky-tonk heartbreaker that Whitney Houston later reworked into a massively melodramatic chart-topper. The crowd roars along to every line, soaking up every last drop of Dolly's gloriously fake flattery. Pure emotional uplift, a real Dollywood Ending. And how is Glastonbury feeling now? Happy happy happy, like a room without a roof. Stephen Dalton Glastonbury Day 1: Blondie, New Build, East India Youth Glastonbury Day 1: Rodrigo Y Gabriela, Band of Skulls and Haim Glastonbury Day 1: Courtney Barnett and Lily Allen Glastonbury Day 1: Elbow Glastonbury Day 1: Arcade Fire Glastonbury Day 2: Midlake Glastonbury Day 2: Kelis and Fat White Family Glastonbury Day 2: Robert Plant and Lana Del Ray Glastonbury Day 2: Jack White Glastonbury Day 2: Pixies and Metallica Glastonbury Day 3: Toumani and Sidiki Glastonbury Day 3: Yoko Ono, The Wailers, assorted hippies Glastonbury Day 3: The Black Keys Glastonbury Day 3: Massive Attack

Mid afternoon at Glastonbury, and anticipation for the traditional Sunday singalong slot is tangible.

It’s a tricky balancing act to pull off well: ideally a veteran household name, safe and family-friendly enough for the older-leaning crowd that throng to the festival’s last day, but with sufficient kitsch appeal for the students, hipsters and drug casualties.

Dolly Parton arrives, and it is instantly clear she was a smart choice. The heaving all-ages crowd in the Pyramid Arena is the biggest of the weekend so far – easily topping Arcade Fire, Jack White or Metallica. Bounding onstage in a silver-sequined glitterstorm of comically exaggerated drag-queen femininity and syrupy Deep South shtick, the Backwoods Barbie looks dazzling in a sculpted, laminated, vaguely computer-generated way. Scientists call it the Uncanny Valley, that slightly creepy effect when something looks not quite human. Never mind the Botox, here’s Dolly.

The original Steel Magnolia of platinum country-pop gets us on board early with a foot-stomping “Jolene”, the sepia-tinted poverty ballad “Coat of Many Colors” and sanitised saloon-bar raunch like “Two Doors Down”. She also bombards us with scripted jokes, folksy family memories and ingratiating local references: “I grew up in the county so all this mud ain’t nothin’ new to me!” Well, shucks.

But behind the tiresome Nashville-meets-Vegas facade there is musical brilliance, savvy commercial instincts and a deep canon of fine songs. A close-harmony section with two male backing singers throws up some genuine gems, notably the wistful waltz-time tearjerker “Old Flames Can’t Hold a Candle to You”. Switching effortlessly from guitar to banjo to autoharp, Dolly and her band elegantly trace Appalachian country-folk back to its Celtic immigrant roots.

The final pancake pile-up of ageless hen-party classics includes “Islands in the Stream” and Dolly’s superior original arrangement of “I Will Always Love You”, the honky-tonk heartbreaker that Whitney Houston later reworked into a massively melodramatic chart-topper. The crowd roars along to every line, soaking up every last drop of Dolly’s gloriously fake flattery. Pure emotional uplift, a real Dollywood Ending. And how is Glastonbury feeling now? Happy happy happy, like a room without a roof.

Stephen Dalton

Glastonbury Day 1: Rodrigo Y Gabriela, Band of Skulls and Haim

Glastonbury Day 3: Yoko Ono, The Wailers, assorted hippies

Glastonbury Day 1: Blondie, New Build, East India Youth

Glastonbury Day 3: Toumani and Sidiki

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29th June 2014

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So it turns out John Lennon was right after all. You really can get a tan from standing in the English rain. Sunday morning at Glastonbury, and your Uncut reporter woke up glowing a livid radioactive orange. I blame Robert Plant, who performed his magickal Sun God alchemy last night, setting Worthy Farm ablaze with a scorching Avalon Sunset. And yes, I promise this will be my weather report on this blog, but it's looking like Glastonbury 2014 will be going out in a blaze of glory. At this rate I will be heading home tomorrow with hay fever, trenchfoot and sunburn. Living the festival dream. With Dolly Parton, Massive Attack and The Wailers on the musical menu, today is shaping up to be a chillaxing comedown from last night's riff-crunching metalfest. The Pyramid Arena already feels like a massive family picnic with deckchairs, blankets and Sunday papers spread out across the sun-baked mud flats. Perched on a raised platform on the main stage, the Malian father-son duo Toumani and Sidiki Diabaté ease us into the afternoon with their intricate kora duets, sinewy sparkles that hang in the air like sleepy fireflies. These ruminative sound paintings draw more on Toumani's rootsy traditionalism than Sidiki's musical alter ego as a West African hip-hop star, but they mostly strike a universal note. The understated highlight here is the mournful "Lampedusa", a quietly devastating requiem for all those desperate African refugees who perish on the hazardous illegal boat crossing to Sicily. Sublime. More updates from Glastonbury's final feast of music coming soon. Stephen Dalton Glastonbury Day 1: Blondie, New Build, East India Youth Glastonbury Day 1: Rodrigo Y Gabriela, Band of Skulls and Haim Glastonbury Day 1: Courtney Barnett and Lily Allen Glastonbury Day 1: Elbow Glastonbury Day 1: Arcade Fire Glastonbury Day 2: Midlake Glastonbury Day 2: Kelis and Fat White Family Glastonbury Day 2: Robert Plant and Lana Del Ray Glastonbury Day 2: Jack White Glastonbury Day 2: Pixies and Metallica Glastonbury Day 3: Dolly Parton Glastonbury Day 3: Yoko Ono, The Wailers, assorted hippies Glastonbury Day 3: The Black Keys Glastonbury Day 3: Massive Attack

So it turns out John Lennon was right after all. You really can get a tan from standing in the English rain.

Sunday morning at Glastonbury, and your Uncut reporter woke up glowing a livid radioactive orange. I blame Robert Plant, who performed his magickal Sun God alchemy last night, setting Worthy Farm ablaze with a scorching Avalon Sunset. And yes, I promise this will be my weather report on this blog, but it’s looking like Glastonbury 2014 will be going out in a blaze of glory. At this rate I will be heading home tomorrow with hay fever, trenchfoot and sunburn. Living the festival dream.

With Dolly Parton, Massive Attack and The Wailers on the musical menu, today is shaping up to be a chillaxing comedown from last night’s riff-crunching metalfest. The Pyramid Arena already feels like a massive family picnic with deckchairs, blankets and Sunday papers spread out across the sun-baked mud flats.

Perched on a raised platform on the main stage, the Malian father-son duo Toumani and Sidiki Diabaté ease us into the afternoon with their intricate kora duets, sinewy sparkles that hang in the air like sleepy fireflies. These ruminative sound paintings draw more on Toumani’s rootsy traditionalism than Sidiki’s musical alter ego as a West African hip-hop star, but they mostly strike a universal note. The understated highlight here is the mournful “Lampedusa”, a quietly devastating requiem for all those desperate African refugees who perish on the hazardous illegal boat crossing to Sicily. Sublime.

More updates from Glastonbury’s final feast of music coming soon.

Stephen Dalton

Glastonbury Day 1: Rodrigo Y Gabriela, Band of Skulls and Haim

Glastonbury Day 3: Yoko Ono, The Wailers, assorted hippies

Glastonbury Day 1: Blondie, New Build, East India Youth

Glastonbury Day 2: Pixies and Metallica

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29th June 2014

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Scowling down from the Other Stage, the Pixies are not looking for our love. Bronzed, bald and bearlike, Black Francis bears a disturbing resemblance to Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour nowadays. The latest in the band’s Spinal Tap-style line of replacement bass guitarists, Paz Lenchantin shows Glastonbury she has the skills, but inevitably lacks Kim Deal’s innate mischief and instantly seductive voice. A handful of prosaic garage-punk bone-shakers from the new comeback album “Indie Cindy” also disappoint. All the same, Pixies have alt-rock artillery to spare. Dystopian bubblegum sci-fi surf-punk classics like “Gouge Away”, “Caribou” and “Wave of Mutilation” retain their forceful, angular, modernist bite. A decade into their reformation, the indie trailblazers who once served as midwives to Nirvana, Radiohead and many others still sound as bracingly alien as ever. Meanwhile, over on the Pyramid Stage, Metallica begin by curtailing their usual Sergio Leone spaghetti western intro with a specially shot mini-film about fox-hunting that climaxes with the grinning thrash overlords machine-gunning the hunters. This is a sledgehammer satirical comment on the mild controversy over Glastonbury booking a heavy-rock headliner, with naysayers particularly incensed by singer James Hetfield’s love of hunting for bloodsport. All these high-minded critics must be vegetarians, we can only assume. In reality, of course, Metallica fit the broad audience demographic of a mainstream mega-festival like Glastonbury just as comfortably as Bruce Springsteen or Beyonce. These elder statesmen are pushing against an open door, but their ingratiating underdog act is revealing at least. Behind their devil-horned bombast, they really want West Country hippies and indie kids to love them. Hetfield even makes a vaguely worded speech about saving the planet and staying true to your moral integrity, which could apply equally to a Greenpeace recruitment drive as to a Scientology convention. Metallica cover all bases. Charm offensive over, Hetfield locks into Nietzschean rock-gladiator mode while Lars Ulrich rockets out of his seat, pinballing all over the drum kit like Keith Moon’s hyperactive Danish cousin. A famously well-oiled touring machine, Metallica crank out their speed-riffing, fist-pumping anthems with pulverising power, all accompanied by IMAX-level visuals. Sure, this is slick shtick with a blockbuster budget, but it works just fine as festival spectacle. Whatever their critics feared, Metallica do not rip off Glastonbury’s head and drink its still-warm blood. Instead, they curl up at our feet and beg us to tickle their warm furry tummies. Once the sonically extreme fringe of the heavy rock underground, thrash metal is mainstream family entertainment nowadays. But there is a reason for that. And the reason is Metallica. Stephen Dalton Glastonbury Day 1: Blondie, New Build, East India Youth Glastonbury Day 1: Rodrigo Y Gabriela, Band of Skulls and Haim Glastonbury Day 1: Courtney Barnett and Lily Allen Glastonbury Day 1: Elbow Glastonbury Day 1: Arcade Fire Glastonbury Day 2: Midlake Glastonbury Day 2: Kelis and Fat White Family Glastonbury Day 2: Robert Plant and Lana Del Ray Glastonbury Day 2: Jack White Glastonbury Day 3: Toumani & Sidiki Glastonbury Day 3: Dolly Parton Glastonbury Day 3: Yoko Ono, The Wailers, assorted hippies Glastonbury Day 3: The Black Keys Glastonbury Day 3: Massive Attack

Scowling down from the Other Stage, the Pixies are not looking for our love.

Bronzed, bald and bearlike, Black Francis bears a disturbing resemblance to Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour nowadays. The latest in the band’s Spinal Tap-style line of replacement bass guitarists, Paz Lenchantin shows Glastonbury she has the skills, but inevitably lacks Kim Deal’s innate mischief and instantly seductive voice. A handful of prosaic garage-punk bone-shakers from the new comeback album “Indie Cindy” also disappoint.

All the same, Pixies have alt-rock artillery to spare. Dystopian bubblegum sci-fi surf-punk classics like “Gouge Away”, “Caribou” and “Wave of Mutilation” retain their forceful, angular, modernist bite. A decade into their reformation, the indie trailblazers who once served as midwives to Nirvana, Radiohead and many others still sound as bracingly alien as ever.

Meanwhile, over on the Pyramid Stage, Metallica begin by curtailing their usual Sergio Leone spaghetti western intro with a specially shot mini-film about fox-hunting that climaxes with the grinning thrash overlords machine-gunning the hunters. This is a sledgehammer satirical comment on the mild controversy over Glastonbury booking a heavy-rock headliner, with naysayers particularly incensed by singer James Hetfield’s love of hunting for bloodsport. All these high-minded critics must be vegetarians, we can only assume.

In reality, of course, Metallica fit the broad audience demographic of a mainstream mega-festival like Glastonbury just as comfortably as Bruce Springsteen or Beyonce. These elder statesmen are pushing against an open door, but their ingratiating underdog act is revealing at least. Behind their devil-horned bombast, they really want West Country hippies and indie kids to love them. Hetfield even makes a vaguely worded speech about saving the planet and staying true to your moral integrity, which could apply equally to a Greenpeace recruitment drive as to a Scientology convention. Metallica cover all bases.

Charm offensive over, Hetfield locks into Nietzschean rock-gladiator mode while Lars Ulrich rockets out of his seat, pinballing all over the drum kit like Keith Moon’s hyperactive Danish cousin. A famously well-oiled touring machine, Metallica crank out their speed-riffing, fist-pumping anthems with pulverising power, all accompanied by IMAX-level visuals. Sure, this is slick shtick with a blockbuster budget, but it works just fine as festival spectacle.

Whatever their critics feared, Metallica do not rip off Glastonbury’s head and drink its still-warm blood. Instead, they curl up at our feet and beg us to tickle their warm furry tummies. Once the sonically extreme fringe of the heavy rock underground, thrash metal is mainstream family entertainment nowadays. But there is a reason for that. And the reason is Metallica.

Stephen Dalton

Glastonbury Day 1: Rodrigo Y Gabriela, Band of Skulls and Haim

Glastonbury Day 3: Toumani & Sidiki

Glastonbury Day 3: Yoko Ono, The Wailers, assorted hippies

Glastonbury Day 1: Blondie, New Build, East India Youth

Glastonbury Day 2: Jack White

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29th June 2014

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Jack White did not come to Glastonbury for the magical healing vibes. Good. Sandwiched between Robert Plant and Metallica on the Pyramid Stage, the shock-headed master of electric blues-punk seems to have something to prove. Is he looking to upstage the competition, shake up the crowd, or just pu...

Jack White did not come to Glastonbury for the magical healing vibes. Good.

Sandwiched between Robert Plant and Metallica on the Pyramid Stage, the shock-headed master of electric blues-punk seems to have something to prove. Is he looking to upstage the competition, shake up the crowd, or just punch somebody? Maybe all three.

I must confess, I was never much of a White Stripes fan – but this convulsive, combustible set is a total blast. Backed by a full-blooded R&B band, White is yelping like a scalded dog, playing licks that scream like dive-bombing Stukas and riffs more ragged than the bloody stumps of severed limbs. But it’s got burlesque raunch and hip-hop swagger too. Sex as a kinetic contact sport. With both band and stage decked out in the blue-and-white colour scheme of White’s new solo album “Lazaretto“, this show is a weapons-grade sensory assault. Punctuated by piercing feedback, bone-breaking crunch and fuse-blowing crackle, it’s the love-hate irreverence that really exhilarates. At times it feels like witnessing a subversive avant-garde noise band demolishing the blues-rock canon from within.

Mashing tracks from “Lazaretto” with a healthy spread of White Stripes tunes and some re-energised blues standards, White even throws in a blast of Metallica’s “Enter Sandman”. It clangs onto the stage like a chainmail gauntlet. Between songs, he tosses out cryptic remarks about Abraham Lincoln and Elvis Presley visiting him in his hotel room, as well as other typically sullen and evasive asides. When he wishes love on the Glastonbury crowd, it sounds vaguely like a threat.

Tonight’s blood-boiling 90-minute blues explosion climaxes with White falling back through the drum kit, blown off his feet by the ungovernable chaos he has unleashed from the molten depths of his own ego. He has probably made as many enemies as friends with this gnarly, ear-splitting show. My guess is that’s exactly what he intended.

Stephen Dalton

Glastonbury Day 1: Rodrigo Y Gabriela, Band of Skulls and Haim

Glastonbury Day 3: Toumani & Sidiki

Glastonbury Day 3: Yoko Ono, The Wailers, assorted hippies

Glastonbury Day 1: Blondie, New Build, East India Youth

Glastonbury Day 2: Lana Del Rey and Robert Plant

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28th June 2014

0

Glastonbury Day 2: Lana Del Rey and Robert Plant

Glastonbury can be a cruel mistress, punishing us with her ever changing moods. This morning brought thunderbolts and lightning, very very frightening. Now the sun is ablaze across the festival, and the pre-Metallica mood is incongruously mellow to the max. "I'm so excited," Lana Del Rey tells the Pyramid Stage arena with the least excited expression since faces were invented. You really have to love her ironic sense of humour, like when she criticised a broadsheet journalist on Twitter recently for being "calculated". She wears an explosion of citrus colours in the blazing afternoon sun, but her voice is pure bruise-coloured twilight, the sultry purr of a film-noir femme fatale confined to Death Row after coolly murdering a string of hapless no-good lovers. I love Del Rey's artful Stepford-wife fakery, all vintage Hollywood glamour and sultry lava-lamp nostalgia, but the limitations of her Instagram-fuzzy torch songs become all too plain in the broad-brush setting of a big festival. Playing more to her guitar-bloated power-ballad side than her more exotic cocktails of West Coast hip-hop and David Lynchian darkness, the tracks from her chart-topping new "Ultraviolence" album mostly sound like Chris Isaak's "Wicked Games" played at half speed. Plenty of woozy erotic langour, not enough love-drunk mystery. Next on the Pyramid Stage is Robert Plant and The Sensational Space Shifters, providing a natural Arthurian figurehead for Glastonbury's mystical hippie heritage. Plant plays much the same Zeppelin-heavy set as his recent Parisian show (reviewed here), sandwiching a teasing turbo-blast of "Whole Lotta Love" between the rasping North African folk reels and desert-blues dervish whirls. The Space Shifters might appear to be Plant's equivalent of the Mescaleros or Wings, but they feel more organically rooted in this Arcadian glade setting than anyone else on the Glastonbury bill. As a smartly chosen warm-up act for Saturday night, they make perfect sense. Young saplings like Jack White and Metallica are mere branches, but Plant is the mighty knotted oak that spawned them. Stephen Dalton Glastonbury Day 1: Blondie, New Build, East India Youth Glastonbury Day 1: Rodrigo Y Gabriela, Band of Skulls and Haim Glastonbury Day 1: Courtney Barnett and Lily Allen Glastonbury Day 1: Elbow Glastonbury Day 1: Arcade Fire Glastonbury Day 2: Midlake Glastonbury Day 2: Kelis and Fat White Family Glastonbury Day 2: Jack White Glastonbury Day 2: Pixies and Metallica Glastonbury Day 3: Toumani & Sidiki Glastonbury Day 3: Dolly Parton Glastonbury Day 3: Yoko Ono, The Wailers, assorted hippies Glastonbury Day 3: The Black Keys Glastonbury Day 3: Massive Attack

Glastonbury can be a cruel mistress, punishing us with her ever changing moods. This morning brought thunderbolts and lightning, very very frightening. Now the sun is ablaze across the festival, and the pre-Metallica mood is incongruously mellow to the max.

“I’m so excited,” Lana Del Rey tells the Pyramid Stage arena with the least excited expression since faces were invented. You really have to love her ironic sense of humour, like when she criticised a broadsheet journalist on Twitter recently for being “calculated”. She wears an explosion of citrus colours in the blazing afternoon sun, but her voice is pure bruise-coloured twilight, the sultry purr of a film-noir femme fatale confined to Death Row after coolly murdering a string of hapless no-good lovers.

I love Del Rey’s artful Stepford-wife fakery, all vintage Hollywood glamour and sultry lava-lamp nostalgia, but the limitations of her Instagram-fuzzy torch songs become all too plain in the broad-brush setting of a big festival. Playing more to her guitar-bloated power-ballad side than her more exotic cocktails of West Coast hip-hop and David Lynchian darkness, the tracks from her chart-topping new “Ultraviolence” album mostly sound like Chris Isaak’s “Wicked Games” played at half speed. Plenty of woozy erotic langour, not enough love-drunk mystery.

Next on the Pyramid Stage is Robert Plant and The Sensational Space Shifters, providing a natural Arthurian figurehead for Glastonbury’s mystical hippie heritage. Plant plays much the same Zeppelin-heavy set as his recent Parisian show (reviewed here), sandwiching a teasing turbo-blast of “Whole Lotta Love” between the rasping North African folk reels and desert-blues dervish whirls.

The Space Shifters might appear to be Plant’s equivalent of the Mescaleros or Wings, but they feel more organically rooted in this Arcadian glade setting than anyone else on the Glastonbury bill. As a smartly chosen warm-up act for Saturday night, they make perfect sense. Young saplings like Jack White and Metallica are mere branches, but Plant is the mighty knotted oak that spawned them.

Stephen Dalton

Glastonbury Day 1: Rodrigo Y Gabriela, Band of Skulls and Haim

Glastonbury Day 3: Toumani & Sidiki