Ray Davies made an appearance at the Hay Festival on Tuesday, May 26.

During the interview, Davies discussed his forthcoming induction into the American Songwriters’ Hall of Fame on June 12 and his ongoing relationship with the US.

According to The Telegraph Davies told the Hay Festival audience that the honour was “a big deal because it means that America has finally accepted the Kinks”.

Following a string of bust-ups, The Kinks were banned from performing in the United States for nearly five years before being allowed back into the country in 1969. “We were dangerous and America felt threatened,” Davies said. “America felt safe until all the Brit bands like us and the Beatles and the Rolling Stones came along in the Sixties. But we helped change America, too. When we returned after the end of our ban the culture had been liberalised. Bands such as the Doors, Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention had grabbed back their culture.”

It took a lot of hard work by Ray Davies and his brother Dave to gain popularity, in arduous tours that Davies said were planned like a “military exercise”. The motivation was “vengeance” he added.

The American ban turned out to have a positive impact on the band’s musical output. Davies, who will be 70 next month, believes that it allowed him to focus on creating his own English songs of identity.

However, Davies said that America has still had a profound influence on his life. His new book, Americana: The Kinks, the Road and the Perfect Riff speaks of the excitement he felt as a teenager in ’50s Britain, when it was America’s rock, jazz, blues, country, Cajun and Dixieland music that “liberated” him and “gave me an identity”.

Asked whether the American influence had been the same for Keith Richards, Davies replied: “I can’t speak for Keith Richards . . . somebody should.”

Fans in the audience asked whether there would be a reunion. “Ah, we were always tempestuous,” he said, recalling the time that drummer Mick Avory “tried to kill my brother on stage in Cardiff”. The altercation ended with Dave unconscious and hospital treatment for a wound requiring 16 stitches. Ray Davies said a reunion would require new music, adding: “In any case, my brother still has an issue with the drummer. If they resolve their issues, I might be there.”

A musical about The Kinks, Sunny Afternoon, opened this month to rave reviews. The show details The Kinks invasion of America as well as their ban at the height of their career, told with music and lyrics by Ray Davies.

Brian May has confirmed that Queen will release an album before the end of 2014 which will feature unreleased vocals by Freddie Mercury.

May said the album is likely to be titled Queen Forever and that Mercury’s vocals date back to the 1980s. He explained that he and Roger Taylor recently recorded instrumental tracks for the songs, based on original “scraps” of unreleased music.

In an interview recorded in September 2013 with iHeart Radio, May revealed that an album in the style of the 1995 Queen album Made In Heaven, pieced together after Mercury’s death in 1991, could be in the pipeline.

The album may include a previously unheard duet with Michael Jackson, recorded in 1983, which Taylor revealed in March existed in the Queen vaults. Since Mercury’s death in 1991, Queen have released one album of recordings, 1995’s Made In Heaven.

Mercury and Jackson worked together 30 years ago in California but failed to release anything substantial as they could not secure time to record further tracks.

“We had to start from scratch,” May told BBC Radio Wales this week. “Knowing how it would have happened if we’d finished the songs, I can sit there and make it happen with modern technology. It’s quite emotional. It’s the big, big Queen ballads and the big, big epic sound.”

The new issue of Uncut went on sale last Friday, with a cover story on Paul Weller and features on Bob Dylan in the 80s, Dolly Parton , Black Sabbath, Allen Toussaint, Harry Dean Stanton, Sharon Van Etten and The Shadows – a joyously eclectic mix by any standards.

This month’s free CD, meanwhile, features tracks from new albums by Dave Alvin And Phil Alvin, The Felice Brothers, Strand Of Oaks, Wovenhand, Sam Brookes, The Antlers, Amen Dunes, Vikesh Kapoor, Lee Fields & The Expressions, Cara Dillon, Broken Records, Ethan Johns, The Rails, Sturgill Simpson and Sharon van Etten.

Here’s taster for the CD.

STRAND OF OAKS

Goshen ’97

WOVENHAND

Good Shepherd

THE ANTLERS

Palace

AMEN DUNES

Splits Are Parted,/strong>

Bruce Springsteen has posted a video on his YouTube channel paying tribute to servicemen who died during the Vietnam War.

The video is a performance of High Hopes’ track “The Wall” recorded April 19, 2014 at Charlotte, North Carolina.

Describing the song as “a short prayer for my country”, he explained it was inspired by Walter and Roy Chichon, from local New Jersey group called the Motifs.

Ray Chichon gave Springsteen guitar tuition. Both the Chichon brothers lost their lives in Vietnam. Springsteen also payed tribute to Bart Haynes – the drummer of his first band, the Castiles – who also died during the conflict.

A Pennsylvania federal judge has ordered sanctions against the attorney preparing to sue Led Zeppelin for “Stairway to Heaven,” claiming that the lawyer behaved “in a flagrantly unprofessional and offensive manner” over the course of a different case.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Francis Malofiy recently attracted the judge’s consternation while bringing a lawsuit against Usher and 19 other defendants for copyright infringement.

Malofy represented a songwriter named Dan Marino, who claimed that he had created the basic melody, chord progressions and tempo for the Usher song “Bad Girl” while working with his former songwriting partners William Guice and Dante Barton, who were also named in the suit. According to Judge Paul Diamond’s sanctions memorandum, Malofiy misled Guice into believing that he was only a witness in the suit rather than a defendant, and persuaded Guice to sign an affidavit admitting to elements of the Plaintiff’s complaint without representation from a lawyer.

“Malofiy’s discussions with Guice are the paradigm of bad faith and intentional misconduct,” Judge Diamond wrote, and later concluded, “Defendants have shown clearly and convincingly that Attorney Francis Malofiy has acted disgracefully: lying to an unsophisticated, impoverished, unrepresented Defendant, thus convincing that Defendant to expose himself (probably baselessly) to substantial liability.”

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the judge said that Malofiy made “sexist, abusive” remarks during the case, including telling the other lawyer, “Don’t be a girl about this.” He also reportedly declared that, “Usher has $130 million … I’m going to take every penny of it,” and told someone else involved in the case, “You’re like a little kid with your little mouth.” As to the copyright infringement lawsuit, the judge did not find that Usher or his fellow defendants acted improperly.

In a press release, Malofiy objected to the judge’s conclusions and stated that he was “upfront and honest with Mr. Guice”.

He has claimed that Led Zeppelin stole the intro for their 1971 song “Stairway to Heaven” from Spirit’s 1968 track “Taurus”. Malofiy said that he will file a copyright infringement lawsuit and seek an injunction to block the release of the Led Zeppelin IV reissue, according to Bloomberg Businessweek.

The Rolling Stones resumed their #14ONFIRE tour in Olso, Norway on Monday night.

The band played to a sold-out crowd of 23,000 at Oslo’s Telenor Arena, with a show that lasted over two hours, Reuters reports. The next show will take place in Lisbon on May 29.

Keith Richards took centre-stage in Oslo to bring back the rarely played “Can’t Be Seen” from the 1989 album Steel Wheels. The song was last heard at a gig 15 years ago in 1999.

“Let’s Spend The Night Together” was performed for the first time since 2007 as a fan request. Fans can vote for songs to be played on the tour at rollingstones.com.

Mick Taylor is still guest performer on the tour, joining the band for “Midnight Rambler” and “Satisfaction”. The set was generally consistent with previous Stones shows from the 50th anniversary tour.

The Rolling Stones played:

‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’

‘It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll (But I Like It)’

‘All Down The Line’

‘Tumbling Dice’

‘Worried About You’

‘Doom and Gloom’

‘Let’s Spend The Night Together’

‘Emotional Rescue’

‘Honky Tonk Women’

‘You Got The Silver’

‘Can’t Be Seen’

‘Midnight Rambler’

‘Miss You’

‘Gimme Shelter’

‘Start Me Up’

‘Sympathy For The Devil’

‘Brown Sugar’

‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’

‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’

A rare early Velvet Underground record made in 1966 and sold at auction in 2006 for $25,200 will be going back up for auction this July.

The so-called Scepter Studios acetate contains several songs that would eventually be released on the group’s landmark debut, The Velvet Underground & Nico, the following year, including alternate takes and mixes for “I’m Waiting for the Man”, “Venus in Furs” and “Heroin”. It is one of only two known surviving copies, with drummer Mo Tucker possessing the other copy.

The seller, a New York man who wishes to remain anonymous, told Rolling Stone that he initially bought the record both as a piece of musical history and financial investment.

“I watched the auction first just because it was so rare, I was curious to see how high the sale would go,” he said. “I bought it for $25,200, which, in my mind, was extremely undervalued for what the record was. I’m a big Velvet Underground fan, but to be honest, I’ve never been a big fan of this album. But the significance of the record for music is unmistakable. It’s obviously a piece of musical history, but I wouldn’t have purchased it then if I didn’t see its potential as a financial investment.”

In April 1966, engineer Norman Dolph recorded the test pressing in secret and after hours in exchange for a painting by the group’s then-manager Andy Warhol. Warhol wanted to record and cut the acetate before the band signed to a record label to minimize label intrusion.

In 2002, record collector Warren Hill saw the acetate at a street sale in New York City and bought it for 75 cents, putting the record up for auction on eBay in 2006. Though the record initially sold for $155,401, it was determined that the winning bidder was fraudulent. Hill re-auctioned the vinyl record with more stringent buying requirements in place, selling the acetate to its current owner.

The New York seller told Rolling Stone that once he bought the record, he immediately placed it in a safe and chose not to listen to it. “It wasn’t worth it to me to even handle the record, let alone drag a needle across it,” he said. “This is not a conventional record that can be played thousands and thousands of times. It’s an acetate; it’s the equivalent of a CD you’d burn 10 years ago.”

In 2012, the acetate was officially released as the fourth disc of the album’s “45th Anniversary Super Deluxe Edition” box set and a limited edition of 5,000 copies of the acetate were sold as part of Record Store Day that same year.

Shuga Records, a Chicago record store specializing in rare and one-of-a-kind records, is assisting in the logistics of the sale, and told Rolling Stone that the acetate finds the band at its most individualistic. “This record represents a different take on the music industry, in which the labels were kept out of the mix to avoid artistic compromise, and the completed recording was pitched as-is,” a spokesperson for the store said. “This is the Velvets as the Velvets and Andy Warhol saw them, unencumbered by label A&Rs worrying about how this lyric might affect album sales, or the music being hard to digest.”

Shuga Records has set up a website detailing more information about the sale, including the creation of a hand-crafted wooden LP featuring a replica label from the acetate. The seller would not disclose how much he is expecting the record to sell for, but says that 10 percent of the sale’s proceeds will go to an animal rights charity.

Nick Cave and Roger Waters are amongst those who have penned music for Marianne Faithfull‘s new album.

Give My Love To London will be released this September, featuring lyrics by Faithfull and music from a host of guest artists, including Pat Leonard, Tom McRae and Steve Earle. Faithfull will be backed by guest musicians Warren Ellis and Jim Sclavunos, from the Bad Seeds, as well as Portishead’s Adrian Utley on guitar, keyboards from Ed Harcourt, and a string quartet. The album has been produced by Rob Ellis and Dimitri Tikovoi, and mixed by Flood. Marianne Faithfull begins a year long world tour this autumn.

Yesterday (May 22) Nick Cave and Warren Ellis accepted the Album Award at the 59th Ivor Novello Awards in London for Push The Sky Away, beating Arctic Monkeys’ AM. The prize was presented by Chrissie Hynde of The Pretenders.

“This is the one to get,” said Cave. “We don’t really go to many of these awards evenings but we come to this one.” He then thanked Ellis, with whom he co-wrote the album, saying, “He taught me how to dispense with three chords and get it down to one.”

David Bowie’s long-term producer Tony Visconti and Mick “Woody” Woodmansey – the only surviving member of The Spider’s From Mars – will perform Bowie’s third album The Man Who Sold The World, from 1970, in full. They will be joined by an ensemble of ten musicians including Spandau Ballet saxophone player Steve Norman and Heaven 17’s Glenn Gregory, The Guardian reports. The event will take place at The Garage on September 17.

“The Man Who Sold the World was the first album Mick Ronson and I played on, our first even in a proper London studio, yet it never got played live,” Woodmansey told The Guardian. “It was the forerunner of what we could do sound-wise, and we just let rip. We spent three weeks recording [it] because we were creating the songs as we went.”

“This was the album that showed Bowie trying out things and finding his direction. The Man Who Sold The World was his first step into rock’n’roll. It got critical acclaim, but we never toured it, and in the live shows the album tracks never got touched on. So the idea of being able to go out and finally play some of those great tracks live was just so exciting.”

Visconti added that the album is key in Bowie’s career: “The Man Who Sold The World became the blueprint for the rest of David’s career. Virtually everything he’s done since, you can trace back to something on that album.”

Bowie has reportedly given his blessing to the project.

Graham Nash has spoken about Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young‘s long-awaited live 1974 box set.

In a new interview on Rolling Stone, Nash said, “This is the most difficult project I’ve ever done in my recording life. That’s largely because of other people’s agendas and trying to please four people at the same time. It only took us a year to actually do the physical work, but it took three or four years to get that work together.”

After an earlier report on Uncut, Rolling Stone confirms that the CSNY 1974 box set will be released in America on July 8, 2014. It will be released on July 7, 2014 in the UK and Europe.

It will be released as a 3 CD/DVD set, a Pure Audio Blu-Ray (192kHz/24-bit), a limited edition box set and also a 16-track single CD.

The 3 CD/DVD set, the Blu-Ray and the box set will also contain a 188-page booklet of previously unseen tour photography. The box set is limited to 1,000 copies and features a coffee table-sized book, a bonus DVD and six 180-gram 12” vinyl records.

Copies can be pre-ordered from the CSNY website from next week [Monday May 28].

The complete track listing for CSNY 1974 is:

3CD/ Bonus DVD or Pure Audio Blu-Ray / Bonus DVD

Disc One – First Set

1. “Love The One You’re With”

2. “Wooden Ships”

3. “Immigration Man”

4. “Helpless”

5. “Carry Me”

6. “Johnny’s Garden”

7. “Traces”

8. “Grave Concern”

9. “On The Beach”

10. “Black Queen”

11. “Almost Cut My Hair”

Disc Two – Second Set

1. “Change Partners”

2. “The Lee Shore”

3. “Only Love Can Break Your Heart”

4. “Our House”

5. “Fieldworker”

6. “Guinevere”

7. “Time After Time”

8. “Prison Song”

9. “Long May You Run”

10. “Goodbye Dick”

11. “Mellow My Mind”

12. “Old Man”

13. “Word Game”

14. “Myth Of Sisyphus”

15. “Blackbird”

16. “Love Art Blues”

17. “Hawaiian Sunrise”

18. “Teach Your Children”

19. “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes”

Disc Three – Third Set

1. “Déjà Vu”

2. “My Angel”

3. “Pre-Road Downs”

4. “Don’t Be Denied”

5. “Revolution Blues”

6. “Military Madness”

7. “Long Time Gone”

8. “Pushed It Over The End”

9. “Chicago”

10.”Ohio”

Bonus DVD

1. “Only Love Can Break Your Heart”

2. “Almost Cut My Hair”

3. “Grave Concern”

4. “Old Man”

5. “Johnny’s Garden”

6. “Our House”

7. “Déjà Vu”

8. “Pushed It Over The End”

Single CD Track Listing

1. “Love The One You’re With”

2. “Wooden Ships”

3. “Immigration Man”

4. “Helpless”

5. “Johnny’s Garden”

6. “The Lee Shore”

7. “Change Partners”

8. “Only Love Can Break Your Heart”

9. “Our House”

10. “Guinevere”

11. “Old Man”

12. “Teach Your Children”

13. “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes”

14. “Long Time Gone”

15. “Chicago”

16. “Ohio”

Devo are preparing to go on their first tour without rhythm guitarist Bob Casale, where they will perform songs that haven’t been performed live since 1977.

Bassist Jerry Casale told Rolling Stone: “At the end of our last tour we started talking about abandoning everything and doing a tour that was purely artistic. We thought it would be cool to revisit the old basement recordings. The thought was, ‘What if we play songs we haven’t played in 35 years for a crowd that never heard them except on old basement recordings?'”

The new tour was in the early planning stages when Bob Casale, Jerry’s brother, died suddenly of heart failure in February. “It was a horrific shock and an explosion in the Devo universe,” Casale told Rolling Stone.

“For a month or so, nobody talked about anything. But then we realized we can still do it and make it a memorial to Bob and raise money for his family. He died without a will and life insurance. Devo hadn’t been playing many gigs when he died, so his finances were pretty depleted. We’ve also raised money for his family through an online donation drive.”

The tour kicks off on June 18 in Baltimore and runs through to July 2 in Austin. The band have said that they have no idea how crowds will react to the shows without the inclusion of more familiar songs like “Whip It” and “Girl U Want”.

“It might create the early Devo experience of people yelling at us and walking out,” said Casale. “It will really jolt us back into the past.”

For the shows, the group will not wear their trademark red energy domes or yellow jumpsuits.

“We’re going to shock people with our outfits,” Casale said. “We may just dress in street clothes and possibly, as happened in real life; a friend will interrupt us with yellow jumpsuits. That’s what happened in real life. I bought them through an industrial catalog. One night we were rehearsing and a friend rang the doorbell and brought them down to the basement. We tried them on in front of each other, so we might try them on onstage.”

Pixies frontman Black Francis has announced plans to co-present a film event at the British Library.

He will be attending an evening of film and literature with Josh Frank and Steven Appleby – the co-creators of his SelfMadeHero illustrated book The Good Inn, a novel about art, conflict and the pioneers of early cinema – on June 7.

The event will include a screening of Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí‘s Un Chien Andalou, and Georges Méliès’s iconic 1902 film A Trip To The Moon. This will be followed by an onstage discussion with Francis, Frank and Appleby.

After the event there will be a book signing by all three of the artists. Appleby’s artwork for The Good Inn will also be on display at the British Library in London on the night.

Based on a yet-to-be-written soundtrack to a movie that doesn’t yet exist, The Good Inn weaves together two historical events – the explosion on the battleship Iéna at the French port of Toulon and the making of La Bonne Auberge, the earliest known pornographic film from France.

Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney of The Black Keys have said they “feel embarrassed” for Jack White following an incident last year in which e-mails he allegedly sent criticising the duo were revealed.

In 2013, an email leaked to TMZ which was allegedly sent by White to his ex-wife Karen Elson appeared to show White branding Dan Auerbach a “copy” and an “asshole”.

Elson divorced White in 2011 but she took out a restraining order against her ex-husband on July 22 amid allegations of “harassment” and “bullying” behaviour. One of the emails allegedly found White complaining that Elson has enrolled their two children, seven-year-old Scarlett and six-year-old Henry, into the same school as Auerbach’s daughter, five-year-old Sadie.

In a new interview with Rolling Stone, drummer Patrick Carney said White “sounds like an asshole” but added: “I actually feel embarassed for him…I don’t hold grudges, man. I really don’t. We’ve all said fucked-up shit in private, and divorce is hard.”

“I really think personal things are personal things,” Carney continued. “Like, TMZ? Honestly, they should be fucking ashamed of themselves, that they make a living dragging poor souls that have nothing, that aren’t famous, into this world. Everybody should be scrutinised? I don’t believe that. I think that if you come off with a strong platform or moral agenda, then, yeah, maybe you should be scrutinised if there’s a conflict there. Like, if you’re a TV evangelist who’s doing something awful. But you’re a fucking rock musician, you’re a fucking actor, you’re a fucking model or whatever. It’s your job, you know what I mean? No one’s doing anything illegal, it’s just that people are living lives that get complicated.”

The Black Keys released their latest album, Turn Blue, earlier this month. Jack White releases his second solo album in June.

Paul McCartney has cancelled a further tour date in South Korea on doctors’ orders.

Rolling Stone reports that McCartney’s date at the Jamsil Sports Complex Main Stadium on May 28 will now no longer go ahead.

The latest cancellation follows the scrapping all of McCartney’s scheduled dates in Japan earlier this week after he contracted a virus.

McCartney postponed two dates in Tokyo over the weekend, explaining that he had come down with a virus and was told by doctors not to perform on the evening of May 17. A message on his website confirms the cancelled tour with doctors ordering him to have a “complete rest” and that he “hates to let people down”.

McCartney’s next scheduled gigs are a 19-date US tour beginning in June.