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David Bowie and John Cale lead tributes to Lou Reed

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David Bowie and John Cale lead tributes to Lou Reed
David Bowie is among many artists who have paid tribute to Lou Reed, who died yesterday [October 27] aged 71. A post on Bowie's website read: "R.I.P. LOU REED "It is with great sadness that we report the death of Lou Reed who died today aged 71. (March 2, 1942 – October 27, 2013) David Bowie ...

David Bowie is among many artists who have paid tribute to Lou Reed, who died yesterday [October 27] aged 71.

A post on Bowie’s website read:

“R.I.P. LOU REED

“It is with great sadness that we report the death of Lou Reed who died today aged 71. (March 2, 1942 – October 27, 2013)

David Bowie said of his old friend: ‘He was a master.'”

Meanwhile, John Cale took to Twitter to offer these words on Reed: “The world has lost a fine songwriter and poet…I’ve lost my ‘school-yard buddy’ – john cale”

He then wrote a fuller tribute, saying: “The news I feared the most, pales in comparison to the lump in my throat and the hollow in my stomach. Two kids have a chance meeting and 47 years later we fight and love the same way — losing either one is incomprehensible. No replacement value, no digital or virtual fill…broken now, for all time. Unlike so many with similar stories — we have the best of our fury laid out on vinyl, for the world to catch a glimpse. The laughs we shared just a few weeks ago, will forever remind me of all that was good between us.”

Elsewhere, artists including The Who, Pixies and The Black Keys have paid their respects to Reed via Twitter.

The Who: “R.I.P. Lou Reed. Walk on the peaceful side.”

Pixies: “R.I.P. LOU REED….A LEGEND”

The Black Keys’ Patrick Carney: “R.I.P. Lou Reed.”

Lee Renaldo: “RIP Lou Reed. Irreplaceable.”

Jim James: “RIP Lou Reed.

you made the world a better place.

we are forever grateful.”

Flea: “I love Lou reed so much. Always”

At their show at the Baltimore Arena, Pearl Jam dedicated “Man Of The Hour” to Reed, with Eddie Vedder saying “He was a game changer and a life changer.” The band also played “Waiting For The Man” in Reed’s honour.

Other Twitter tributes came from Salman Rushdie, Stephen Fry and film maker Judd Apatow.

Salman Rushdie: “My friend Lou Reed came to the end of his song. So very sad.But hey, Lou, you’ll always take a walk on the wild side. Always a perfect day.”

Judd Apatow: “I met Lou Reed and told him he gave me tinnitus at a concert in 1989 that never went away and it was worth it. Dirty Blvd. Love to Lou.”

Stephen Fry: “Oh it’s such an imperfect day.”

You can read Morrissey‘s statement on Reed’s death here.

You can read Patti Smith and David Byrne’s tributes here.

You can hear Neil Young, Elvis Costello and Jim James cover a Lou Reed song here.

You can read a 2002 interview with Reed from the Uncut archives here.

Lou Reed dies aged 71

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Lou Reed dies aged 71
Lou Reed has died, aged 71. Reed died at his home on Long Island of an ailment that stemmed from his recent liver transplant. The New York Times reports that Dr. Charles Miller, the surgeon who performed the transplant on Reed at the Cleveland Clinic in April this year, revealed that Reed was back...

Lou Reed has died, aged 71.

Reed died at his home on Long Island of an ailment that stemmed from his recent liver transplant.

The New York Times reports that Dr. Charles Miller, the surgeon who performed the transplant on Reed at the Cleveland Clinic in April this year, revealed that Reed was back in Ohio last week for further treatment.

It was determined that Reed’s end-stage liver disease could no longer be treated, and he decided to return to the home he shared with his wife, Laurie Anderson. “We all agreed that we did everything we could,” Dr. Miller said.

In June, Anderson revealed news of the life-saving liver transplant but suggested that he might not “ever totally recover” from the surgery.

Reed later posted a message on Facebook, where he described himself as a “triumph of modern medicine” and announced that he is looking forward to playing live again.

Reed returned to the stage on June 20, after canceling a string of live dates “due to unavoidable complications”. He appeared at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. “The other day I was 19,” he told the crowd. “I could fall down and get back up. Now if I fall down you are talking about nine months of physical therapy. Make sure you take your vitamins.”

On Sunday, June 30, Reed was admitted to Long Island’s Southampton Hospital suffering from severe dehydration. He was released the following day.

Reed had recently been in London to promote a book of photography by Mick Rock. He had also been working with John Cale on an anniversary special edition of The Velvet Underground‘s White Light/White Heat album, which is due for release in December.

You can read tributes to Reed from David Bowie and John Cale here.

You can read Morrissey‘s statement on Reed’s death here.

You can read Patti Smith and David Byrne’s tributes here.

You can hear Neil Young, Elvis Costello and Jim James cover a Lou Reed song here.

You can read a 2002 interview with Reed from the Uncut archives here.

The Flaming Lips announce split – then say Twitter was hacked

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The Flaming Lips announce split – then say Twitter was hacked
The Flaming Lips shocked fans last night (October 24) by announcing that they were to split. The Oklahoma-based band apparently changed their minds 18 minutes later. The news came via two tweets from the band's official Twitter account, which have both since been deleted. The first, as Rolling S...

The Flaming Lips shocked fans last night (October 24) by announcing that they were to split.

The Oklahoma-based band apparently changed their minds 18 minutes later.

The news came via two tweets from the band’s official Twitter account, which have both since been deleted. The first, as Rolling Stone reports, said: “We have sad news. We’ve broken up…”.

As fans and media reacted to the shock news, a second Tweet appeared reading: “lol just joking guys.” A spokesperson for the band confirmed that the first announcement was “not true”.

A further tweet, which remains on the page, says “That last announcement was a bit premature,” accompanied by a picture marking the band’s 30 year anniversary this year. Amid the confusion, singer Wayne Coyne tweeted from his personal account: “The Flaming Lips twitter has been hijacked!!!!”

Flaming Lips recently recorded a four-track EP with Tame Impala, with each band covering two of the other’s tracks. The EP is a special release marking shows the bands are joint headlining in October and November in Boston, Philadelphia, New York and Columbia.

Flaming Lips meanwhile, are working on an “extended play 6 song thang..” to go with a track they’ve written for the upcoming film adaptation of military science fiction novel Ender’s Game, Coyne recently revealed.

The Who announce they will quit touring after 50th anniversary gig in 2015

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The Who announce they will quit touring after 50th anniversary gig in 2015
The Who have announced that they will quit touring after a final series of live shows in 2015 to mark their 50th anniversary. Guitarist Pete Townshend told the Evening Standard at the screening for their documentary Sensation, which tells the story of the band's rock opera Tommy, that they will u...

The Who have announced that they will quit touring after a final series of live shows in 2015 to mark their 50th anniversary.

Guitarist Pete Townshend told the Evening Standard at the screening for their documentary Sensation, which tells the story of the band’s rock opera Tommy, that they will use the tour to visit places they have rarely played in their five decade history.

“For the 50th anniversary we’ll tour the world. It’ll be the last big one for us. There are still plenty of places we’ve not played. It would be good to go to eastern Europe and places that haven’t heard us play all the old hits,” Townshend said.

This summer, The Who played their 1973 double album ‘Quadrophenia’ in full alongside their classic hits at a string of arena dates around the UK and Ireland, after a big US tour.

Released in 1973, ‘Quadrophenia’ was The Who’s sixth studio album and second “rock opera” after 1969’s ‘Tommy’. ‘Quadrophenia’ was later made into a 1979 film starring Phil Daniels, Toyah Willcox and Sting.

A special-edition boxset of Tommy is out on November 11.

Graham Parker: “I cried when Amy Winehouse died, the same as when Otis Redding died”

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Graham Parker: “I cried when Amy Winehouse died, the same as when Otis Redding died”
Graham Parker reveals his admiration for Amy Winehouse in the new issue of Uncut (dated November 2013), out now. Explaining that the singer’s 2006 album Back To Black made the biggest impression on him since hearing The Wailer’s Catch A Fire in the ’70s, Parker says he cried when Winehouse di...

Graham Parker reveals his admiration for Amy Winehouse in the new issue of Uncut (dated November 2013), out now.

Explaining that the singer’s 2006 album Back To Black made the biggest impression on him since hearing The Wailer’s Catch A Fire in the ’70s, Parker says he cried when Winehouse died.

“It’s not that often an artist that great comes along,” he explains. “I cried when she died, the same as when Otis died.

“It was a great loss; I’d love to have seen where she’d gone with it.”

Parker charts his life in music in the piece, talking about monumental records such as The Rolling Stones’ debut album, Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks and Otis Redding’s Otis Blue.

The November 2013 issue of Uncut is out now.

Volcano Choir – Repave

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Volcano Choir – Repave

Justin Vernon and his able mates set sail, under a strong wind, on what could prove to be an epic musical odyssey... Though he may indeed be “winding it down” (as he put it a year ago) in terms of Bon Iver, Justin Vernon’s sonic and spiritual adventures are ongoing under another nameplate. The tellingly titled Repave, the second collaboration between Vernon and Collections Of Colonies Of Bees, doesn’t appear to be merely another diversion in Vernon’s ever-unfolding narrative, which, since the release of 2011’s Bon Iver, has encompassed key roles on album projects with Megafaun, Kathleen Edwards, Colin Stetson and Shouting Matches, as well as guest appearances with Kanye West and POS. No, this record has all the earmarks of Vernon’s next big thing. Unlike Volcano Choir's test run, 2009’s Unmap, the new follow-up is a proper album – and a bona fide rock album at that. “I felt like I was in a rock band almost for the first time”, Vernon says in Dan Hunting’s mini-documentary on the making of the LP. COCOC, comprising Volcano Choir’s other members – drummer/percussionist Jon Mueller, guitarists Chris Rosenau and Dan Spack, keyboard player Tom Wincek and bassist Matthew Skemp – is, of course, hardly a standard rock band, with an extensive discog of envelope-pushing experimental music. This project is a different exercise for both parties – the result of a back-and-forth between instrumental pieces made by Rosenau, Wincek and other bandmembers, which Vernon then manipulated (as he’s shown, he’s a masterful manipulator), with Mueller’s percussion and Vernon’s vocals as the final ingredients. The first sound we hear is an oversized liturgical organ, out of which float those familiar stacked falsetto harmonies, but here, on “Tideways”, the groove throbbing beneath the airborne voices is wilder and more aggressive than we’ve come to expect from Vernon, more four-square than previous COCOC efforts. On the following “Acetate”, he introduces his lower register amid tribal drums, Gregorian chanting and twinkling piano notes in
a syncopated yet regal arrangement, with a twist of Motown in the climax. He stays with his natural voice, an earthy baritone, in the intro to “Comrade”, then slides upward, as the track churns along in symphonic splendour. At mid-song, the arrangement enlarges into all-out majesty as Vernon conjoins his low end and falsetto into an eerie hybrid, which in turn gives way to the rumble of an Auto-Tune-created humanoid, as the surrounding sounds wither away. “Byegone”, the first single, is lush from the get-go, a lilting plucked acoustic setting the mood before it’s surrounded by the massed ensemble, the whole of it sounding like a pastoral Windham Hill piece enlarged to arena-rock scale. Vernon nestles into the plush aural tapestry with the most natural-sounding vocal he’s ever recorded; doubled in the classic Lennon style, it’s grand and intimate at once. On “Alaskans”, we enter calm waters after the preceding series of crashing waves, but there’s something unsettling here, too, as Vernon’s vocal morphs from a sort of Gordon Lightfoot-like burnished folksiness to an ominous, all but demonic growl. 
The groove comes to the fore on the playfully titled “Dancepack”, but it’s implied before Mueller begins to pound it out. Vernon’s vocal is playful, theatrical, Bruce-like, as he powers into the incantatory refrain, “Take note, there’s still a hole in your heart”, while an electric guitar flirts with dissonance, forming lemon-tangy chords. “Keel” begins in suspended animation, with Vernon’s falsetto gliding over an implied expanse of woodland, as muted instrumental sounds weave a beckoning still life below him. The sustained sonic foreplay is released with “Almanac”, a titanic, shape-shifting universe of thunder-crack percussion and soulful vocal signifying that opens into a celestial chorale of burbling, over-lapping voices. There’s a revelatory moment in mid-song, as Vernon sings “ALL NIGHT/It’s on, RIGHT/SO FRESH that it sizzles”, as if marveling at the open-ended beauty they’re creating as it’s happening, 
and imagining where these art/soul brothers can take it from here. There’s little doubt at this point that Vernon’s overarching ambition is matched by his limitless inventiveness, and now, that of his co-conspirators. On this monumental outing, as he’s noted, he’s fronting a real rock band. My guess: there’s no turning back now. Bud Scoppa Q+A Justin Vernon, Chris Rosenau Is your commitment to Volcano Choir as deep as Repave suggests? Rosenau: Right now, we’re in the moment. We’re trying to figure out how to play this stuff live and make it gigantic. At some point, someone’s gonna get a bug up their ass and write another Volcano Choir song. There won’t be a timeline, but it’s too much fun not to play with these guys. Vernon: I’m getting a Volcano Choir tattoo next week! No, it’s been central to me. It’s been a way to take all of the confusion of the other things I’ve been doing on my own. It’s been shaping more than anything I’ve done; emotionally and [in terms of] reflection and reacting. I don’t think I’ve ever sung like this before. It was challenging, but it revealed itself to me, and it was because of these guys. It’s here to stay. Where did the band name come from? Rosenau: Vernon had been sending me choral stuff under the name Fall Creek Boys Choir, and that “choir” thing stuck with me. And even on Unmap, there were moments that were a portent of how huge this could be musically. John came up with Volcano Choir, and it instantly resonated. Vernon: It also has a lot to do with marijuana!  INTERVIEW: BUD SCOPPA

Justin Vernon and his able mates set sail, under a strong wind, on what could prove to be an epic musical odyssey…

Though he may indeed be “winding it down” (as he put it a year ago) in terms of Bon Iver, Justin Vernon’s sonic and spiritual adventures are ongoing under another nameplate. The tellingly titled Repave, the second collaboration between Vernon and Collections Of Colonies Of Bees, doesn’t appear to be merely another diversion in Vernon’s ever-unfolding narrative, which, since the release of 2011’s Bon Iver, has encompassed key roles on album projects with Megafaun, Kathleen Edwards, Colin Stetson and Shouting Matches, as well as guest appearances with Kanye West and POS.

No, this record has all the earmarks of Vernon’s next big thing. Unlike Volcano Choir‘s test run, 2009’s Unmap, the new follow-up is a proper album – and a bona fide rock album at that. “I felt like I was in a rock band almost for the first time”, Vernon says in Dan Hunting’s mini-documentary on the making of the LP. COCOC, comprising Volcano Choir’s other members – drummer/percussionist Jon Mueller, guitarists Chris Rosenau and Dan Spack, keyboard player Tom Wincek and bassist Matthew Skemp – is, of course, hardly a standard rock band, with an extensive discog of envelope-pushing experimental music. This project is a different exercise for both parties – the result of a back-and-forth between instrumental pieces made by Rosenau, Wincek and other bandmembers, which Vernon then manipulated (as he’s shown, he’s a masterful manipulator), with Mueller’s percussion and Vernon’s vocals as the final ingredients.

The first sound we hear is an oversized liturgical organ, out of which float those familiar stacked falsetto harmonies, but here, on “Tideways”, the groove throbbing beneath the airborne voices is wilder and more aggressive than we’ve come to expect from Vernon, more four-square than previous COCOC efforts. On the following “Acetate”, he introduces his lower register amid tribal drums, Gregorian chanting and twinkling piano notes in
a syncopated yet regal arrangement, with a twist of Motown in the climax. He stays with his natural voice, an earthy baritone, in the intro to “Comrade”, then slides upward, as the track churns along in symphonic splendour. At mid-song, the arrangement enlarges into all-out majesty as Vernon conjoins his low end and falsetto into an eerie hybrid, which in turn gives way to the rumble of an Auto-Tune-created humanoid, as the surrounding sounds wither away.

“Byegone”, the first single, is lush from the get-go, a lilting plucked acoustic setting the mood before it’s surrounded by the massed ensemble, the whole of it sounding like a pastoral Windham Hill piece enlarged to arena-rock scale. Vernon nestles into the plush aural tapestry with the most natural-sounding vocal he’s ever recorded; doubled in the classic Lennon style, it’s grand and intimate at once. On “Alaskans”, we enter calm waters after the preceding series of crashing waves, but there’s something unsettling here, too, as Vernon’s vocal morphs from a sort of Gordon Lightfoot-like burnished folksiness to an ominous, all but demonic growl. 
The groove comes to the fore on the playfully titled “Dancepack”, but it’s implied before Mueller begins to pound it out. Vernon’s vocal is playful, theatrical, Bruce-like, as he powers into the incantatory refrain, “Take note, there’s still a hole in your heart”, while an electric guitar flirts with dissonance, forming lemon-tangy chords.

“Keel” begins in suspended animation, with Vernon’s falsetto gliding over an implied expanse of woodland, as muted instrumental sounds weave a beckoning still life below him. The sustained sonic foreplay is released with “Almanac”, a titanic, shape-shifting universe of thunder-crack percussion and soulful vocal signifying that opens into a celestial chorale of burbling, over-lapping voices. There’s a revelatory moment in mid-song, as Vernon sings “ALL NIGHT/It’s on, RIGHT/SO FRESH that it sizzles”, as if marveling at the open-ended beauty they’re creating as it’s happening, 
and imagining where these art/soul brothers can take it from here. There’s little doubt at this point that Vernon’s overarching ambition is matched by his limitless inventiveness, and now, that of his co-conspirators. On this monumental outing, as he’s noted, he’s fronting a real rock band. My guess: there’s no turning back now.

Bud Scoppa

Q+A

Justin Vernon, Chris Rosenau

Is your commitment to Volcano Choir as deep as Repave suggests?

Rosenau: Right now, we’re in the moment. We’re trying to figure out how to play this stuff live and make it gigantic. At some point, someone’s gonna get a bug up their ass and write another Volcano Choir song. There won’t be a timeline, but it’s too much fun not to play with these guys.

Vernon: I’m getting a Volcano Choir tattoo next week! No, it’s been central to me. It’s been a way to take all of the confusion of the other things I’ve been doing on my own. It’s been shaping more than anything I’ve done; emotionally and [in terms of] reflection and reacting. I don’t think I’ve ever sung like this before. It was challenging, but it revealed itself to me, and it was because of these guys. It’s here to stay.

Where did the band name come from?

Rosenau: Vernon had been sending me choral stuff under the name Fall Creek Boys Choir, and that “choir” thing stuck with me. And even on Unmap, there were moments that were a portent of how huge this could be musically. John came up with Volcano Choir, and it instantly resonated.

Vernon: It also has a lot to do with marijuana! 

INTERVIEW: BUD SCOPPA

Listen to Arcade Fire’s Reflektor album

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Listen to Arcade Fire’s Reflektor album
Arcade Fire are streaming their new album, Reflektor. Click below to hear the record in its entirety. An official YouTube stream became available today, set to footage from the 1959 film Black Orpheus. "It's one of my favorite films of all time," Win Butler recently told Rolling Stone. The album ...

Arcade Fire are streaming their new album, Reflektor.

Click below to hear the record in its entirety.

An official YouTube stream became available today, set to footage from the 1959 film Black Orpheus. “It’s one of my favorite films of all time,” Win Butler recently told Rolling Stone.

The album is released this coming Monday [October 28].

The tracklist for Reflektor is:

“Reflektor”

“We Exist”

“Flashbulb Eyes”

“Here Comes the Night Time”

“Normal Person”

“You Already Know”

“Joan of Arc”

“Here Comes the Night Time II”

“Awful Sound (Oh Eurydice)”

“It’s Never Over (Oh Orpheus)”

“Porno”

“Afterlife”

“Supersymmetry”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBjqUEMlHTY

We want your questions for Kevin Shields

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We want your questions for Kevin Shields
Kevin Shields is set to answer your questions in Uncut as part of our regular Audience With… feature. So is there anything you’ve always wanted to ask the legendary leader of My Bloody Valentine? How many pedals does he own? Would he ever consider making an acoustic record? Just when can we ...

Kevin Shields is set to answer your questions in Uncut as part of our regular Audience With… feature.

So is there anything you’ve always wanted to ask the legendary leader of My Bloody Valentine?

How many pedals does he own?

Would he ever consider making an acoustic record?

Just when can we expect another new album?

Send up your questions by 5pm GMT, Monday, October 28 to uncutaudiencewith@ipcmedia.com.

The best questions, and Kevin’s answers, will be published in a future edition of Uncut magazine. Please include your name and location with your question.

Bob Dylan, Pink Floyd, Rolling Stones rarities for Record Store Day’s Black Friday

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Bob Dylan, Pink Floyd, Rolling Stones rarities for Record Store Day’s Black Friday
Bob Dylan, Pink Floyd and the Rolling Stones are among the acts releasing exclusive titles for this year's Black Friday event held by the organisers of Record Store Day. Black Friday takes place on November 29, 2013. There will be around 100 releases, ranging from classic albums reissued on vinyl, ...

Bob Dylan, Pink Floyd and the Rolling Stones are among the acts releasing exclusive titles for this year’s Black Friday event held by the organisers of Record Store Day.

Black Friday takes place on November 29, 2013. There will be around 100 releases, ranging from classic albums reissued on vinyl, rarities and exclusives.

The full list of titles released can be found here.

Here are some of the highlights:

Bob Dylan, Side Tracks

A limited-edition triple-LP set contains tracks that will appear for the first time on the two-CD set Bob Dylan Complete Album Collection Vol. One. The album compiles non-album singles, soundtrack songs and other recordings that never made it onto a studio album.

Zabriskie Point Soundtrack

Long out of print, this soundtrack to Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1970 film features music by Pink Floyd, the Grateful Dead. Reissued here as a two-album set, it also includes four tracks by Pink Floyd and Jerry Garcia that did not make it on the original edition.

Rolling Stones, Got Live If You Want It

The third and final Rolling Stones 7″ EP release from ABKCO exclusively for indie record stores. The Rolling Stones EP was released for Black Friday 2012, Five By Five was released for Record Store Day 2013.) This is the first release in the original 7″ format since June 1965 and it includes tracks not found on the US album of the same name. Recorded on the Rolling Stones’ 5th British Tour at dates in London, Liverpool and Manchester in early March 1965.

The Doors, Curated by Record Store Day

This album was compiled from tracks suggested by record store owners and the individual tracks were selected by Bruce Botnick and includes rare mono mixes and live tracks. This Doors’ album is completely unique and was made especially by the band for record stores only. Two variations of the artwork each feature a hand written track list by one of the surviving band members, John Densmore or Robby Krieger.

Nirvana, In Utero 2013 mix

With the approval of Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic, original album producer Steve Albini remixed and remastered the album at Abbey Road Studios this year, and that mix is being issued on clear vinyl, at 45 RPM, cut to copper plates for this special indie record store exclusive, for Record Store Day’s Black Friday event.

Unfortunately, Black Friday is restricted to American and Canadian record shops only.

Van Morrison – Moondance Deluxe Edition

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Van Morrison – Moondance Deluxe Edition

How much of a good thing is too much..? “It’s too late to stop now,” sang Van Morrison on Moondance in 1970, and he was right: here we are again in its aura, drawn back like wanderers to the light of an inn. Recorded when he and his wife Janet (pregnant with their daughter, Shana) lived in the mountains near Woodstock, Moondance was the third LP in a solo career that stretches to this day. Morrison had already made his first masterpiece, Astral Weeks, and was assiduously cultivating his five-decade grudge against those he deemed the enemies of his music. It was far too late to stop. Astral Weeks and Moondance are profoundly different works, apparently unconnected by theme or progression. If you didn’t know, you might suppose Moondance was created first, since Astral Weeks is the more Joycean, the one with bigger ideas, while the 10 songs on Moondance have conventional structures and fall into recognisable genres (soul, country, jazz). But as this 60-track, 4CD/1 Blu-Ray boxset reveals, Morrison was aiming for something quite ambitious on Moondance: a combination of understated music and consummate ‘feel’, which would be locked down and given modest embellishment (flute, harpsichord), leaving the framework just flexible enough to allow the musicians to produce little moments of magic. Moondance transports and elevates. Atmospherically fluid (it starts with pouring rain but the sun soon shines), it turns a boyhood swim into a transcendental episode (“And It Stoned Me”), finds impossible romance in the life of a gypsy (“Caravan”) and uses its own vocabulary (“fantabulous”, “magnificently”) to raise a homespun insight or a pleasant evening to the stature of an epiphany. Even the unwelcome businessmen shaking hands and talking in numbers (“Glad Tidings”) can’t spoil the wild beauty of Morrison’s landscapes. Moondance has always been huge in his body of work. Years of demand for remasters of Moondance and Astral Weeks were answered in 2008 with Japanese CDs that can still be found on Amazon. The lure of this Deluxe Edition is not so much sound quality (you may feel the remastering is too intense and bass-y) but access to the Moondance vaults. So, for example, the second disc (‘The Sessions’) has eight takes of “Caravan” – three of which break down almost immediately – and the third disc (‘More Sessions’) has eight takes of “Into The Mystic” and seven of “Brand New Day”. Far from being fragments or sketches, most of these are complete performances with vocals. The problem is that Morrison worked painstakingly with acoustic guitar, bass and drums for six or seven takes at a time, making only minor adjustments as he went. Don’t expect stunning new arrangements every time. “Into The Mystic”, as it happens, is an elegant piece that can withstand being heard a number of times in a row. The heart leaps each time it begins, and some takes are so fine that it’s not easy to hear the faults that Morrison detected in them. Whatever he was after, it was obviously something subtle. Finally, piano, horns and electric guitar are added on Take 17, by which time the song is almost home. But seven takes in the company of “Brand New Day” are not nearly as thrilling. Its arrangement is dependent on a piano and gospel vocal trio and it sounds barren without them. By Take 4, a five-minute instrumental, facetiousness set in and I started lustily singing “A Whiter Shade Of Pale” over the chords. “Glad Tidings” is more interesting because they can’t decide on a tempo and the song vacillates between a lively, “Brown Eyed Girl”-style canter and a more ballad-like tempo that’s all wrong for the lyrics’ optimistic message. By Take 7 they’re getting into minute specifics (“Van – one hair slower”, suggests someone over the intercom) but are no closer to finding the solution. The fourth disc (‘Sessions, Alternates & Mixes’) puts “Come Running” and “Moondance” under the microscope (six and two takes, respectively), with a few takes where one of the musicians sings a prominent high harmony on “Come Running”. It could be seen as a foretaste of the interplay that Morrison would later adopt with Brian Kennedy, but the idea was scrapped for the LP version. Some songs from the Moondance sessions didn’t make it onto the album. “I’ve Been Working” was given a total rethink and held over for the follow-up, His Band And The Street Choir. On the takes here, it’s a funky vamp like The Bar-Kays with Morrison improvising lyrics about Jesse James and Lord Tennyson. But 11 mins (Take 1) and 10 mins (Take 5) are a long time to sit through a jam that’s clearly not suitable for Moondance. “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down And Out” doesn’t get far either. In the hesitant run-through we hear, only Van and the pianist sound confident of the song’s changes. The much-bootlegged “I Shall Sing”, meanwhile, is a catchy tune with a buoyant calypso flavour in the horn part. We quickly become very familiar with this horn part, because “I Shall Sing” extends to 13 maddening takes. The song falters; they start again. Van stops it; it resumes. There’s a mistake; the mistake is corrected. Precisely 15 minutes elapse before our stoicism cracks and we turn into John Cleese shouting at the bouzouki players in the Cheese Shop sketch. No wonder it was left off the album. Morrison must have been sick of hearing it. Perennially disgruntled that Warner Bros, and not he, owns the masters of Moondance, Morrison has condemned the Deluxe Edition as “unauthorised” and akin to the theft of his music. It might have been better to leave it alone. Yes, it’s fascinating at times to be a witness to the meticulous construction of great music, but the contents of this boxset feel a mite desperate, rather than generous, and the flabbiness of its 11-minute jams is entirely inappropriate for an album that famously doesn’t contain an ounce of fat. The 2CD Expanded Edition, featuring 11 tracks from the Deluxe, would be a less expensive option for the non-obsessive Moondance fan. David Cavanagh

How much of a good thing is too much..?

“It’s too late to stop now,” sang Van Morrison on Moondance in 1970, and he was right: here we are again in its aura, drawn back like wanderers to the light of an inn. Recorded when he and his wife Janet (pregnant with their daughter, Shana) lived in the mountains near Woodstock, Moondance was the third LP in a solo career that stretches to this day. Morrison had already made his first masterpiece, Astral Weeks, and was assiduously cultivating his five-decade grudge against those he deemed the enemies of his music. It was far too late to stop.

Astral Weeks and Moondance are profoundly different works, apparently unconnected by theme or progression. If you didn’t know, you might suppose Moondance was created first, since Astral Weeks is the more Joycean, the one with bigger ideas, while the 10 songs on Moondance have conventional structures and fall into recognisable genres (soul, country, jazz). But as this 60-track, 4CD/1 Blu-Ray boxset reveals, Morrison was aiming for something quite ambitious on Moondance: a combination of understated music and consummate ‘feel’, which would be locked down and given modest embellishment (flute, harpsichord), leaving the framework just flexible enough to allow the musicians to produce little moments of magic.

Moondance transports and elevates. Atmospherically fluid (it starts with pouring rain but the sun soon shines), it turns a boyhood swim into a transcendental episode (“And It Stoned Me”), finds impossible romance in the life of a gypsy (“Caravan”) and uses its own vocabulary (“fantabulous”, “magnificently”) to raise a homespun insight or a pleasant evening to the stature of an epiphany. Even the unwelcome businessmen shaking hands and talking in numbers (“Glad Tidings”) can’t spoil the wild beauty of Morrison’s landscapes. Moondance has always been huge in his body of work.

Years of demand for remasters of Moondance and Astral Weeks were answered in 2008 with Japanese CDs that can still be found on Amazon. The lure of this Deluxe Edition is not so much sound quality (you may feel the remastering is too intense and bass-y) but access to the Moondance vaults. So, for example, the second disc (‘The Sessions’) has eight takes of “Caravan” – three of which break down almost immediately – and the third disc (‘More Sessions’) has eight takes of “Into The Mystic” and seven of “Brand New Day”. Far from being fragments or sketches, most of these are complete performances with vocals. The problem is that Morrison worked painstakingly with acoustic guitar, bass and drums for six or seven takes at a time, making only minor adjustments as he went. Don’t expect stunning new arrangements every time.

“Into The Mystic”, as it happens, is an elegant piece that can withstand being heard a number of times in a row. The heart leaps each time it begins, and some takes are so fine that it’s not easy to hear the faults that Morrison detected in them. Whatever he was after, it was obviously something subtle. Finally, piano, horns and electric guitar are added on Take 17, by which time the song is almost home. But seven takes in the company of “Brand New Day” are not nearly as thrilling. Its arrangement is dependent on a piano and gospel vocal trio and it sounds barren without them. By Take 4, a five-minute instrumental, facetiousness set in and I started lustily singing “A Whiter Shade Of Pale” over the chords. “Glad Tidings” is more interesting because they can’t decide on a tempo and the song vacillates between a lively, “Brown Eyed Girl”-style canter and a more ballad-like tempo that’s all wrong for the lyrics’ optimistic message. By Take 7 they’re getting into minute specifics (“Van – one hair slower”, suggests someone over the intercom) but are no closer to finding the solution. The fourth disc (‘Sessions, Alternates & Mixes’) puts “Come Running” and “Moondance” under the microscope (six and two takes, respectively), with a few takes where one of the musicians sings a prominent high harmony on “Come Running”. It could be seen as a foretaste of the interplay that Morrison would later adopt with Brian Kennedy, but the idea was scrapped for the LP version.

Some songs from the Moondance sessions didn’t make it onto the album. “I’ve Been Working” was given a total rethink and held over for the follow-up, His Band And The Street Choir. On the takes here, it’s a funky vamp like The Bar-Kays with Morrison improvising lyrics about Jesse James and Lord Tennyson. But 11 mins (Take 1) and 10 mins (Take 5) are a long time to sit through a jam that’s clearly not suitable for Moondance. “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down And Out” doesn’t get far either. In the hesitant run-through we hear, only Van and the pianist sound confident of the song’s changes. The much-bootlegged “I Shall Sing”, meanwhile, is a catchy tune with a buoyant calypso flavour in the horn part. We quickly become very familiar with this horn part, because “I Shall Sing” extends to 13 maddening takes. The song falters; they start again. Van stops it; it resumes. There’s a mistake; the mistake is corrected. Precisely 15 minutes elapse before our stoicism cracks and we turn into John Cleese shouting at the bouzouki players in the Cheese Shop sketch. No wonder it was left off the album. Morrison must have been sick of hearing it.

Perennially disgruntled that Warner Bros, and not he, owns the masters of Moondance, Morrison has condemned the Deluxe Edition as “unauthorised” and akin to the theft of his music. It might have been better to leave it alone. Yes, it’s fascinating at times to be a witness to the meticulous construction of great music, but the contents of this boxset feel a mite desperate, rather than generous, and the flabbiness of its 11-minute jams is entirely inappropriate for an album that famously doesn’t contain an ounce of fat. The 2CD Expanded Edition, featuring 11 tracks from the Deluxe, would be a less expensive option for the non-obsessive Moondance fan.

David Cavanagh

The 39th Uncut Playlist Of 2013

John Mulvey
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The 39th Uncut Playlist Of 2013

After raving about the new Alasdair Roberts and White Fence albums on the past few lists, I’m pleased to have some tracks from them this week, along with really excellent new arrivals from Kevin Morby and Ryley Walker. Morby plays in Woods, and you can hear Cate Le Bon with him on the track below (White Fence’s Tim Presley also figures on the album). Walker, meanwhile, is an associate of Daniel Bachman who’s had a few strong Tim Buckley comparisons thrown at him in the last day or so. Not inaccurately, it turns out; if I’d been told “The West Wind” was one of those great lost records from 1971, I’d have totally fallen for it. Couple more things to flag up, that I don’t have links to share as yet: the Steve Gunn & Mike Gangloff jam recalls the most elevated and accessible bits of Pelt and is tremendous, and Duane Pitre’s pristine live rendering of one of my favourite 2012 albums is almost the equal of the original. Incoming in the next few days, too, should be the follow-up to one of my most played albums of the last decade: the new album by Suarasama, a devotional folk group from Sumatra who I can never recommend enough. Right at the bottom of the list, I’ve included the title track of their last album, and would really encourage you to give it a go before playing anything else here. Yesterday I posted my top 50 albums of all time. If I were compiling a chart of my favourite songs, “Fajar Di Atas Awan” would be very close to the top. Let me know what you think… Follow me on Twitter: www.twitter.com/JohnRMulvey 1 Lobi Traore – Bamako Nights: Live At Bar Bozo 1995 (Glitterbeat) 2 Steve Gunn & Mike Gangloff - Melodies For A Savage Fix (Important) 3 Duane Pitre – Feel Free: Live At Cafe OTO (Important) 4 Kevin Morby – Harlem River (Woodsist) 5 Trampolene –Under The Strobe Light (Mi7) 6 Royal Trux – Veterans Of Disorder (Domino) 7 Alasdair Roberts & Robin Robertson – Hrta Songs (Stone Tape) 8 North Mississippi All Stars – World Boogie Is Coming (Songs Of The South) 9 Jon Hopkins – How I Live Now: Motion Picture Soundtrack (Just Music) 10 The Necks – Open (Northern Spy) 11 Peter Walker – Has Anybody Seen Our Freedoms? (Delmore) 12 Cian Nugent – September 7, 2013 Hopscotch Music Festival (www.nyctaper.com) 13 Damien Jurado – Brothers And Sisters Of The Eternal Son (Secretly Canadian) 14 Shellac – Dude, Incredible (Live 2009) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IopeQ-4PpGo 15 Boards Of Canada – Tomorrow’s Harvest (Warp) 16 Dawn Of Midi – Dysnomia (Thirsty Ear) 17 Ryley Walker – The West Wind (Tompkins Square) 18 White Fence – Live In San Francisco (Castleface) 19 Trouble Books – Love At Dusk (MIE Music) 20 Al Green – I’m Still In Love With You (Hi/Fat Possum) 21 Al Green – Let’s Stay Together (Hi/Fat Possum) 22 Suarasama - Fajar Di Atas Awan (Drag City)

After raving about the new Alasdair Roberts and White Fence albums on the past few lists, I’m pleased to have some tracks from them this week, along with really excellent new arrivals from Kevin Morby and Ryley Walker.

Morby plays in Woods, and you can hear Cate Le Bon with him on the track below (White Fence’s Tim Presley also figures on the album). Walker, meanwhile, is an associate of Daniel Bachman who’s had a few strong Tim Buckley comparisons thrown at him in the last day or so. Not inaccurately, it turns out; if I’d been told “The West Wind” was one of those great lost records from 1971, I’d have totally fallen for it.

Couple more things to flag up, that I don’t have links to share as yet: the Steve Gunn & Mike Gangloff jam recalls the most elevated and accessible bits of Pelt and is tremendous, and Duane Pitre’s pristine live rendering of one of my favourite 2012 albums is almost the equal of the original. Incoming in the next few days, too, should be the follow-up to one of my most played albums of the last decade: the new album by Suarasama, a devotional folk group from Sumatra who I can never recommend enough.

Right at the bottom of the list, I’ve included the title track of their last album, and would really encourage you to give it a go before playing anything else here. Yesterday I posted my top 50 albums of all time. If I were compiling a chart of my favourite songs, “Fajar Di Atas Awan” would be very close to the top. Let me know what you think…

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

1 Lobi Traore – Bamako Nights: Live At Bar Bozo 1995 (Glitterbeat)

2 Steve Gunn & Mike Gangloff – Melodies For A Savage Fix (Important)

3 Duane Pitre – Feel Free: Live At Cafe OTO (Important)

4 Kevin Morby – Harlem River (Woodsist)

5 Trampolene –Under The Strobe Light (Mi7)

6 Royal Trux – Veterans Of Disorder (Domino)

7 Alasdair Roberts & Robin Robertson – Hrta Songs (Stone Tape)

8 North Mississippi All Stars – World Boogie Is Coming (Songs Of The South)

9 Jon Hopkins – How I Live Now: Motion Picture Soundtrack (Just Music)

10 The Necks – Open (Northern Spy)

11 Peter Walker – Has Anybody Seen Our Freedoms? (Delmore)

12 Cian Nugent – September 7, 2013 Hopscotch Music Festival (www.nyctaper.com)

13 Damien Jurado – Brothers And Sisters Of The Eternal Son (Secretly Canadian)

14 Shellac – Dude, Incredible (Live 2009)

15 Boards Of Canada – Tomorrow’s Harvest (Warp)

16 Dawn Of Midi – Dysnomia (Thirsty Ear)

17 Ryley Walker – The West Wind (Tompkins Square)

18 White Fence – Live In San Francisco (Castleface)

19 Trouble Books – Love At Dusk (MIE Music)

20 Al Green – I’m Still In Love With You (Hi/Fat Possum)

21 Al Green – Let’s Stay Together (Hi/Fat Possum)

22 Suarasama – Fajar Di Atas Awan (Drag City)

Watch new Arctic Monkeys video: “One For The Road”

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Watch new Arctic Monkeys video: “One For The Road”
Arctic Monkeys ride tractors in the black and white video for new single 'One For The Road' The song, which features on the band's latest album 'AM', is accompanied by a new video shot by Focus Creeps, who also made the videos for 'R U Mine?' and 'Why'd You Only Call Me When You're High?' The vide...

Arctic Monkeys ride tractors in the black and white video for new single ‘One For The Road’

The song, which features on the band’s latest album ‘AM’, is accompanied by a new video shot by Focus Creeps, who also made the videos for ‘R U Mine?’ and ‘Why’d You Only Call Me When You’re High?’

The video starts with guitarist Jamie Cook riding a tractor slowly through an empty field before joining his bandmates for a performance of the song, surrounded by models and fireworks exploding in the background.

“One For The Road” will be released on December 9 and comes with new B-Side ‘You’re So Dark’.

Roger Taylor confirms Brian May is finishing ‘great’ Michael Jackson/Freddie Mercury duets

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Roger Taylor confirms Brian May is finishing ‘great’ Michael Jackson/Freddie Mercury duets

Queen drummer Roger Taylor has confirmed Brian May is finishing work on a number of tracks Freddie Mercury and Michael Jackson duetted on. Earlier this year it was reported that around three tracks Mercury and Jackson recorded in 1983 will be made available to fans. Speaking in July, Brian May said there will be, "something for folks to hear" in two months time. However, though the songs have not yet emerged, Taylor has said in a new interview that the songs are being worked on at the moment, primarily by Brian May. "Brian especially has been active working on old tracks. A couple of tracks that Freddie did with Michael Jackson," he said. Adding: "They've been hanging around for years and years and Michael's estate haven't really been able to make their mind up about what to do with them. So we suggested we finish them and see. They're pretty good - one of them is great." 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. Roger Taylor recently let slip the band want actor Ben Whishaw to take on the role vacated by Sacha Baron Cohen in the forthcoming Freddie Mercury biopic. Sacha Baron Cohen had been set to star as Mercury since the film was announced in September 2010 but this summer he pulled out of the project, reportedly because he and Queen, who have script and director approval, were unable to agree on the type of movie they wanted to make.

Queen drummer Roger Taylor has confirmed Brian May is finishing work on a number of tracks Freddie Mercury and Michael Jackson duetted on.

Earlier this year it was reported that around three tracks Mercury and Jackson recorded in 1983 will be made available to fans. Speaking in July, Brian May said there will be, “something for folks to hear” in two months time.

However, though the songs have not yet emerged, Taylor has said in a new interview that the songs are being worked on at the moment, primarily by Brian May. “Brian especially has been active working on old tracks. A couple of tracks that Freddie did with Michael Jackson,” he said. Adding: “They’ve been hanging around for years and years and Michael’s estate haven’t really been able to make their mind up about what to do with them. So we suggested we finish them and see. They’re pretty good – one of them is great.”

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.

Roger Taylor recently let slip the band want actor Ben Whishaw to take on the role vacated by Sacha Baron Cohen in the forthcoming Freddie Mercury biopic. Sacha Baron Cohen had been set to star as Mercury since the film was announced in September 2010 but this summer he pulled out of the project, reportedly because he and Queen, who have script and director approval, were unable to agree on the type of movie they wanted to make.

Mark Lanegan announces track listing for 2-disc anthology

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Mark Lanegan announces track listing for 2-disc anthology
Mark Lanegan has confirmed details of Has God Seen My Shadow? An Anthology 1989-2011. Collecting Lanegan’s solo material for Sub Pop, Beggars and more, plus 12 unreleased tracks, the anthology will be released by Light In The Attic on January 14, 2014 on two formats: a double-CD edition with a ga...

Mark Lanegan has confirmed details of Has God Seen My Shadow? An Anthology 1989-2011.

Collecting Lanegan’s solo material for Sub Pop, Beggars and more, plus 12 unreleased tracks, the anthology will be released by Light In The Attic on January 14, 2014 on two formats: a double-CD edition with a gatefold, tip-on jacket and a 44-page booklet comprising hand-written lyrics and rare archive photos, and a triple-LP box set, each LP in single pocket jackets within a heavy, tip-on slip case, with a 20-page book.

The tracklisting for Has God Seen My Shadow? An Anthology 1989-2011 is:

Disc 1:

Bombed

One Hundred Days

Come To Me

Mirrored

Pill Hill Serenade

One Way Street

Kimiko’s Dream House

Low

Resurrection Song

Shiloh Town

Creeping Coastline Of Lights

Lexington Slow Down

Last One In The World

Wheels

Mockingbirds

Wild Flowers

Sunrise

Carnival

Pendulum

The River Rise

Disc 2 (all previously unreleased):

Dream Lullabye

Leaving New River Blues

Sympathy

To Valencia Courthouse

A Song While Waiting

Blues For D (Vocal Version)

No Contestar

Big White Cloud

Following The Rain

Grey Goes Black

Halcyon Daze

Blues Run The Game (Live)

Morrissey’s autobiography outsells new Bridget Jones book in first week of sale

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Morrissey’s autobiography outsells new Bridget Jones book in first week of sale
Morrissey's autobiography has beaten the new Bridget Jones novel to top the best sellers chart in its first week of sale. The Penguin published Autobiography sold just under 35,000 copies according to sales figures in trade magazine The Bookseller. Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones novel Mad About ...

Morrissey‘s autobiography has beaten the new Bridget Jones novel to top the best sellers chart in its first week of sale.

The Penguin published Autobiography sold just under 35,000 copies according to sales figures in trade magazine The Bookseller.

Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones novel Mad About The Boy sold 32,000 copies.

The autobiography is also on course to be a Christmas bestseller, according to high-street retailer Waterstones. Speaking to Associated Press, Jon Howells, spokesman for the Waterstones book store chain, said he expects the book to sell well in the run-up to the festive season. “In Britain, he is one of our icons,” Howells said. “His is the great untold story from the ’80s generation of music heroes.” Autobiography is also Number One on the Amazon best-sellers list at the time of writing.

You can read the Uncut review of Autobiography here.

Dr Feelgood guitarist Gypie Mayo dies aged 62

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Dr Feelgood guitarist Gypie Mayo dies aged 62

Dr Feelgood and Yardbirds guitarist Gypie Mayo has died aged 62. He replaced Wilko Johnson in Dr Feelgood from 1977 to 1981, before going on to work with Yardbirds from 1996 to 2004. Johnson announced the news on his Facebook page today, writing "Very sad to hear Gypie Mayo passed away this morning..RIP Gypie". Gypie, born John Phillip Cawthra, worked at a printing shop for three years, before joining blues band White Mule in 1969. After the band split he played in various groups before replacing joining Dr Feelgood. He played with the group for four years and appears on six albums, including Be Seeing You, Private Practice, and As It Happens. He also co-wrote Dr Feelgood’s only UK top 10 single "Milk And Alcohol", and played on four of the five other Dr Feelgood singles to have appeared in the UK Singles Chart. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4IjrjMbmC4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7-3haPOlds

Dr Feelgood and Yardbirds guitarist Gypie Mayo has died aged 62.

He replaced Wilko Johnson in Dr Feelgood from 1977 to 1981, before going on to work with Yardbirds from 1996 to 2004.

Johnson announced the news on his Facebook page today, writing “Very sad to hear Gypie Mayo passed away this morning..RIP Gypie”.

Gypie, born John Phillip Cawthra, worked at a printing shop for three years, before joining blues band White Mule in 1969.

After the band split he played in various groups before replacing joining Dr Feelgood. He played with the group for four years and appears on six albums, including Be Seeing You, Private Practice, and As It Happens.

He also co-wrote Dr Feelgood’s only UK top 10 single “Milk And Alcohol“, and played on four of the five other Dr Feelgood singles to have appeared in the UK Singles Chart.

My Top 50 Albums Of All Time (Now including a Top 131, sort of)

John Mulvey
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My Top 50 Albums Of All Time (Now including a Top 131, sort of)

As you may have seen, this week’s NME features the 2013 edition of their 500 Greatest Albums Of All Time. For this one, they also accepted votes from a bunch of the mag’s alumni, including me, so I thought it’d be an easy, albeit self-indulgent, blog to reproduce my Top 50 albums here. As I’ve said before, I find these lists a lot harder to compile as I get older and, I hope, become a bit less didactic in the way I think about the music I like and the music I dislike. This is what my Top 50 looked like in early September, anyhow: rather canonical, a little nostalgic, no doubt fatally undermined by the absence of records I will soon be mortified to have forgotten, but generally resembling one of those Rock Snob pisstakes from ten or so years back. I do remember, though, poring over an NME Greatest Albums list that was published in the mid-‘80s, and discovering a horde of extraordinary albums – like “What’s Goin’ On”, for a start – that broadened my perspective way beyond the world of Aztec Camera and Echo & The Bunnymen that I probably lived in at the time. It was a critical tool that allowed me to see the bigger picture, and whenever I see people treating all magazine lists with the same blanket disdain, thinking about it reassures me; at their best, they can have a profound effect. Be interested, as ever, to hear your thoughts: about the NME list as much as mine, of course. Follow me on Twitter: www.twitter.com/JohnRMulvey 1. The Beach Boys – Pet Sounds 2. Neil Young – Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere 3. Television – Marquee Moon 4. Fairport Convention – Liege And Lief 5. Terry Riley – A Rainbow In Curved Air 6. My Bloody Valentine – Loveless 7. Gil Evans – The Individualism Of Gil Evans 8. Joni Mitchell – Hejira 9. The Rolling Stones – Exile On Main Street 10. Dexys Midnight Runners – Don’t Stand Me Down 11. The Go Betweens – Spring Hill Fair 12. Neil Young – On The Beach 13. Marvin Gaye – What’s Goin’ On 14. Steely Dan – Countdown To Ecstasy 15. Linda Perhacs – Parallelograms 16. Led Zeppelin – 4 17. Neu! – Neu! 75 18. Bob Dylan – Highway 61 Revisited 19. REM – Murmur 20. The Smiths – The Queen Is Dead 21. Van Morrison – Astral Weeks 22. Sonic Youth – Daydream Nation 23. The Grateful Dead – Europe 72 24. Brightblack Morning Light – Motion To Rejoin 25. Love – Forever Changes 26. Elliott Smith – Either/Or 27. Gram Parsons – Grievous Angel 28. Robert Wyatt – Rock Bottom 29. The Rolling Stones – Sticky Fingers 30. Alice Coltrane – Journey In Satchidananda 31. The Stooges – Funhouse 32. GZA – Liquid Swords 33. Gillian Welch – Time The Revelator 34. Red House Painters – Red House Painters 35. Funkadelic – Maggot Brain 36. Robbie Basho – Venus In Cancer 37. The Waterboys – Fisherman’s Blues 38. Big Star – Third/Sister Lovers 39. Tim Buckley – Happy Sad 40. The Band – The Band 41. Leonard Cohen – The Songs Of Leonard Cohen 42. MC5 – High Time 43. Slint – Spiderland 44. Prince – Around The World In A Day 45. Kraftwerk – Trans Europe Express 46. Joanna Newsom – Ys 47. White Stripes – White Blood Cells 48. The Fall – This Nation’s Saving Grace 49. Pavement – Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain 50. Boredoms – Vision Create Newsun UPDATE 7/11/13: Responding to all your comments and interest, I've found the 131-strong longlist that I used to come up with my Top 50 (it mostly involved skimming through my iTunes, plus a cursory look at my shelves). A good few records that some of you have mentioned are in this lot, plus hopefully a few less well-known things that deserve a wider audience. Let me know what you think, anyhow (they're not in any order, I should point out): The Beach Boys – Pet Sounds AC/DC – Back In Black The Beach Boys – Surfs Up The Beach Boys – Smile The Beatles - Revolver Aphex Twin – Selected Ambient Works Volume II Alice Coltrane – Journey In Satchidananda Archie Shepp – Attica Blues Gil Evans – The Individualism Of Gil Evans Pharaoh Sanders – Black Unity Smog – Knock Knock Bill Fay – Bill Fay Neu! – Neu! 75 Bjork – Vespertine Led Zeppelin – 2 Led Zeppelin – 4 Led Zeppelin – Houses Of The Holy Boredoms – Vision Create Newsun Brightblack Morning Light – Motion To Rejoin Bruce Springsteen – The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle Caetano Veloso – Caetano Veloso (2) Can – Tago Mago Public Enemy – It Takes A Nation Of Millions GZA – Liquid Swords Robbie Basho – Venus In Cancer Boards Of Canada – Geogaddi Bob Dylan – Highway 61 Revisited Bob Dylan – John Wesley Harding Bob Dylan – Blood On The Tracks Comets On Fire – Avatar Creedence Clearwater Revival – Cosmo’s Factory Lemonheads – It’s A Shame About Ray Rocket From The Crypt – Hot Charity The Byrds – Younger Than Yesterday David Bowie – Heroes David Bowie – Station To Station Dennis Wilson – Pacific Ocean Blue Dexy’s Midnight Runners – Don’t Stand Me Down The Waterboys – Fisherman’s Blues Sonic Youth – Daydream Nation Steely Dan – Countdown To Ecstasy Funkadelic – Maggot Brain Duke Ellington – Far East Suite Patti Smith – Horses Television – Marquee Moon Elliott Smith – Either/Or Os Mutantes – Os Mutantes (1st) Fairport Convention – Liege And Lief Fairport Convention – Unhalfbricking The Fall – This Nation’s Saving Grace Gram Parsons – Grievous Angel Tim Buckley – Blue Afternoon Tim Buckley – Happy Sad Linda Perhacs – Parallelograms Gillian Welch – Time The Revelator Neil Young – Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere Neil Young – Ragged Glory Neil Young – On The Beach The Rolling Stones – Sticky Fingers The Rolling Stones – Exile On Main Street The Grateful Dead – Europe 72 Nick Cave – The Good Son The Stooges – Funhouse MC5 – High Time LCD Soundsystem – Sound Of Silver Jim O’Rourke – Eureka Joanna Newsom – Ys Joni Mitchell – Hejira Joni Mitchell – Court & Spark Red House Painters – Red House Painters Sun Kil Moon – Ghosts Of The Great Highway Julian Cope – Peggy Suicide The Go Betweens – Spring Hill Fair The Go Betweens – Before Hollywood Aztec Camera – High Land Hard Rain Kraftwerk – Trans Europe Express Richard & Linda Thompson – I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight Leonard Cohen – The Songs Of Leonard Cohen Leonard Cohen – I’m Your Man Cluster – Sowiesoso Love – Forever Changes Mike Oldfield – Hergest Ridge My Bloody Valentine – Loveless The Necks – Mosquito/See Through PJ Harvey – Dry The Pop Group – Y Pulp – Different Class Queens Of The Stone Age – Songs For The Deaf REM – Murmur Robert Wyatt – Rock Bottom Roy Harper – Stormcock Royal Trux – Accelerator Sandy Bull – E Pluribus Unum Scritti Politti – Songs To Remember Shirley & Dolly Collins – Death And The Lady Sly & The Family Stone – Fresh Pavement – Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain Terry Riley – A Rainbow In Curved Air Terry Riley – Persian Surgery Dervishes The Velvet Underground – The Velvet Underground Scott Walker – Scott 4 Wilco – A Ghost Is Born Nick Drake – Five Leaves Left The Band – The Band Spiritualized – Lazer Guided Melodies The Monkees – Head Jeff Buckley – Grace Pixies – Surfer Rosa The Feminine Complex – Livin’ Love Ali Farka Toure & Toumani Diabate – By The Light Of The Moon Youssou N’Dour – Immigres Four Tet – Pause Fennesz – Endless Summer Marvin Gaye – What’s Goin’ On Isaac Hayes – Hot Buttered Soul Screaming Trees – Dust Love As Laughter – Destination 2000 Stereolab – Emperor Tomato Ketchup The Smiths – The Queen Is Dead Slint – Spiderland Van Morrison – Astral Weeks Van Morrison – The Common One Van Morrison – Into The Music Husker Du – Candy Apple Grey Big Star – Third/Sister Lovers Prince – Around The World In A Day Van Dyke Parks – Song Cycle Lauryn Hill – The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill D’Angelo – Voodoo Donald Fagen – The Nightfly White Stripes – White Blood Cells

As you may have seen, this week’s NME features the 2013 edition of their 500 Greatest Albums Of All Time. For this one, they also accepted votes from a bunch of the mag’s alumni, including me, so I thought it’d be an easy, albeit self-indulgent, blog to reproduce my Top 50 albums here.

As I’ve said before, I find these lists a lot harder to compile as I get older and, I hope, become a bit less didactic in the way I think about the music I like and the music I dislike. This is what my Top 50 looked like in early September, anyhow: rather canonical, a little nostalgic, no doubt fatally undermined by the absence of records I will soon be mortified to have forgotten, but generally resembling one of those Rock Snob pisstakes from ten or so years back.

I do remember, though, poring over an NME Greatest Albums list that was published in the mid-‘80s, and discovering a horde of extraordinary albums – like “What’s Goin’ On”, for a start – that broadened my perspective way beyond the world of Aztec Camera and Echo & The Bunnymen that I probably lived in at the time. It was a critical tool that allowed me to see the bigger picture, and whenever I see people treating all magazine lists with the same blanket disdain, thinking about it reassures me; at their best, they can have a profound effect.

Be interested, as ever, to hear your thoughts: about the NME list as much as mine, of course.

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

1. The Beach Boys – Pet Sounds

2. Neil Young – Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere

3. Television – Marquee Moon

4. Fairport Convention – Liege And Lief

5. Terry Riley – A Rainbow In Curved Air

6. My Bloody Valentine – Loveless

7. Gil Evans – The Individualism Of Gil Evans

8. Joni Mitchell – Hejira

9. The Rolling Stones – Exile On Main Street

10. Dexys Midnight Runners – Don’t Stand Me Down

11. The Go Betweens – Spring Hill Fair

12. Neil Young – On The Beach

13. Marvin Gaye – What’s Goin’ On

14. Steely Dan – Countdown To Ecstasy

15. Linda Perhacs – Parallelograms

16. Led Zeppelin – 4

17. Neu! – Neu! 75

18. Bob Dylan – Highway 61 Revisited

19. REM – Murmur

20. The Smiths – The Queen Is Dead

21. Van Morrison – Astral Weeks

22. Sonic Youth – Daydream Nation

23. The Grateful Dead – Europe 72

24. Brightblack Morning Light – Motion To Rejoin

25. Love – Forever Changes

26. Elliott Smith – Either/Or

27. Gram Parsons – Grievous Angel

28. Robert Wyatt – Rock Bottom

29. The Rolling Stones – Sticky Fingers

30. Alice Coltrane – Journey In Satchidananda

31. The Stooges – Funhouse

32. GZA – Liquid Swords

33. Gillian Welch – Time The Revelator

34. Red House Painters – Red House Painters

35. Funkadelic – Maggot Brain

36. Robbie Basho – Venus In Cancer

37. The Waterboys – Fisherman’s Blues

38. Big Star – Third/Sister Lovers

39. Tim Buckley – Happy Sad

40. The Band – The Band

41. Leonard Cohen – The Songs Of Leonard Cohen

42. MC5 – High Time

43. Slint – Spiderland

44. Prince – Around The World In A Day

45. Kraftwerk – Trans Europe Express

46. Joanna Newsom – Ys

47. White Stripes – White Blood Cells

48. The Fall – This Nation’s Saving Grace

49. Pavement – Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain

50. Boredoms – Vision Create Newsun

UPDATE 7/11/13: Responding to all your comments and interest, I’ve found the 131-strong longlist that I used to come up with my Top 50 (it mostly involved skimming through my iTunes, plus a cursory look at my shelves). A good few records that some of you have mentioned are in this lot, plus hopefully a few less well-known things that deserve a wider audience.

Let me know what you think, anyhow (they’re not in any order, I should point out):

The Beach Boys – Pet Sounds

AC/DC – Back In Black

The Beach Boys – Surfs Up

The Beach Boys – Smile

The Beatles – Revolver

Aphex Twin – Selected Ambient Works Volume II

Alice Coltrane – Journey In Satchidananda

Archie Shepp – Attica Blues

Gil Evans – The Individualism Of Gil Evans

Pharaoh Sanders – Black Unity

Smog – Knock Knock

Bill Fay – Bill Fay

Neu! – Neu! 75

Bjork – Vespertine

Led Zeppelin – 2

Led Zeppelin – 4

Led Zeppelin – Houses Of The Holy

Boredoms – Vision Create Newsun

Brightblack Morning Light – Motion To Rejoin

Bruce Springsteen – The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle

Caetano Veloso – Caetano Veloso (2)

Can – Tago Mago

Public Enemy – It Takes A Nation Of Millions

GZA – Liquid Swords

Robbie Basho – Venus In Cancer

Boards Of Canada – Geogaddi

Bob Dylan – Highway 61 Revisited

Bob Dylan – John Wesley Harding

Bob Dylan – Blood On The Tracks

Comets On Fire – Avatar

Creedence Clearwater Revival – Cosmo’s Factory

Lemonheads – It’s A Shame About Ray

Rocket From The Crypt – Hot Charity

The Byrds – Younger Than Yesterday

David Bowie – Heroes

David Bowie – Station To Station

Dennis Wilson – Pacific Ocean Blue

Dexy’s Midnight Runners – Don’t Stand Me Down

The Waterboys – Fisherman’s Blues

Sonic Youth – Daydream Nation

Steely Dan – Countdown To Ecstasy

Funkadelic – Maggot Brain

Duke Ellington – Far East Suite

Patti Smith – Horses

Television – Marquee Moon

Elliott Smith – Either/Or

Os Mutantes – Os Mutantes (1st)

Fairport Convention – Liege And Lief

Fairport Convention – Unhalfbricking

The Fall – This Nation’s Saving Grace

Gram Parsons – Grievous Angel

Tim Buckley – Blue Afternoon

Tim Buckley – Happy Sad

Linda Perhacs – Parallelograms

Gillian Welch – Time The Revelator

Neil Young – Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere

Neil Young – Ragged Glory

Neil Young – On The Beach

The Rolling Stones – Sticky Fingers

The Rolling Stones – Exile On Main Street

The Grateful Dead – Europe 72

Nick Cave – The Good Son

The Stooges – Funhouse

MC5 – High Time

LCD Soundsystem – Sound Of Silver

Jim O’Rourke – Eureka

Joanna Newsom – Ys

Joni Mitchell – Hejira

Joni Mitchell – Court & Spark

Red House Painters – Red House Painters

Sun Kil Moon – Ghosts Of The Great Highway

Julian Cope – Peggy Suicide

The Go Betweens – Spring Hill Fair

The Go Betweens – Before Hollywood

Aztec Camera – High Land Hard Rain

Kraftwerk – Trans Europe Express

Richard & Linda Thompson – I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight

Leonard Cohen – The Songs Of Leonard Cohen

Leonard Cohen – I’m Your Man

Cluster – Sowiesoso

Love – Forever Changes

Mike Oldfield – Hergest Ridge

My Bloody Valentine – Loveless

The Necks – Mosquito/See Through

PJ Harvey – Dry

The Pop Group – Y

Pulp – Different Class

Queens Of The Stone Age – Songs For The Deaf

REM – Murmur

Robert Wyatt – Rock Bottom

Roy Harper – Stormcock

Royal Trux – Accelerator

Sandy Bull – E Pluribus Unum

Scritti Politti – Songs To Remember

Shirley & Dolly Collins – Death And The Lady

Sly & The Family Stone – Fresh

Pavement – Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain

Terry Riley – A Rainbow In Curved Air

Terry Riley – Persian Surgery Dervishes

The Velvet Underground – The Velvet Underground

Scott Walker – Scott 4

Wilco – A Ghost Is Born

Nick Drake – Five Leaves Left

The Band – The Band

Spiritualized – Lazer Guided Melodies

The Monkees – Head

Jeff Buckley – Grace

Pixies – Surfer Rosa

The Feminine Complex – Livin’ Love

Ali Farka Toure & Toumani Diabate – By The Light Of The Moon

Youssou N’Dour – Immigres

Four Tet – Pause

Fennesz – Endless Summer

Marvin Gaye – What’s Goin’ On

Isaac Hayes – Hot Buttered Soul

Screaming Trees – Dust

Love As Laughter – Destination 2000

Stereolab – Emperor Tomato Ketchup

The Smiths – The Queen Is Dead

Slint – Spiderland

Van Morrison – Astral Weeks

Van Morrison – The Common One

Van Morrison – Into The Music

Husker Du – Candy Apple Grey

Big Star – Third/Sister Lovers

Prince – Around The World In A Day

Van Dyke Parks – Song Cycle

Lauryn Hill – The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill

D’Angelo – Voodoo

Donald Fagen – The Nightfly

White Stripes – White Blood Cells

The Who: Townshend and Daltrey on Tommy, touring and their 50th anniversary

Michael Bonner
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The Who: Townshend and Daltrey on Tommy, touring and their 50th anniversary

To Hammersmith, and the launch of The Who’s super deluxe edition of Tommy at Riverside Studios. Tonight, Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey are attending a special screening of Sensation – The Story Of The Who’s Tommy, a new documentary about the album due for broadcast this Friday [October 25]. I caught up with Townshend and Daltrey separately, and we managed to cover off some of their memories of Tommy, The Who's early run of singles, and what their plans are for the band's 50th anniversary next year... Townshend arrives first. He is sombrely dressed in dark jacket, trousers, and a check shirt; the only splash of colour is a red spotted handkerchief sprouting from the breast pocket of his jacket. Why is Tommy so important to you? I don’t know if it is the most important thing to me today. It’s a project that’s significant in the Sixties maelstrom of stuff like Dark Side Of The Moon, Sgt Pepper, Pet Sounds, those albums from the Sixties which made a particular mark. So it keeps coming back. This is about Universal trying to make some money at Christmas, isn’t it? What are your memories of making the album? Primarily, good. It was a strange recording session. It was very tricky because we were doing lots of shows around it. It was very sporadic, the recording. Very difficult to get momentum going, so when it was all brought together at the end I was quite surprised how well it hung together. Is there more material in the archive? I don’t think there’s much else to screw out of it. Although it’s interesting, when I’m dead and gone, and people start to go through all the paperwork that I gather, when I was writing my book I found I had a huge amount of really interesting paper. Not just press clips, but letters, documents, bills, but lots and lots of hand written notes, letters from Kit Lambert, letters from Keith, letters from Eric Clapton, all kinds of interesting things from right the way through my life. All of that stuff, when it’s curated, will be extremely interesting. But I just haven’t got the time. Well, I have got the time, I could easily do it. I gathered it for my book, and when it actually came to it, what I actually did in the book is I just went through it. But every time I come back to do something like this, I feel better informed in a sense, becoming more of a curator of the project. It’s The Who's 50th anniversary next year. Do you have any plans to commemorate it? We will probably just tour and it’ll probably be the last big tour that we do. I wasn’t going to do a tour for the anniversary. I won’t say I enjoyed Quadrophenia, but it was a successful tour. It was good for me because Roger did all the creative work. No, seriously, I just showed up and wanged away on the guitar. I enjoyed it. I wasn’t particularly crazy about being up on the stage and on the road. But with respect to the whole thing about, for me, having been through some real shit in the last 15 years personally, one of the things that really means something to me is to have the affection of the public. This is not a rock star thing to say. Most people think rock stars are cunts and they’re right. A quick interview with Noel Gallagher ands you’ll realize he’s a lovable rogue, isn’t he? But I think we do love it. So for me the important thing is that every time I would meet somebody in the street they would say, “So, are you going to tour again?”, and I’d kind of go, “No, not really.” As I said that, I’d realize they’d go “Oh. OK, then.” Whereas if I was to say yes, I’d get all this wave of “Oh, well, I’ll come and see you!” I’d think, ‘Why would you come and see us?” So, anyway, for our 50th anniversary I won’t have much fun. But I think we need to go out, we need to celebrate it. Roger Daltrey arrives ten minutes later. He looks a little like a Seventies' incarnation of Doctor Who enjoying his dotage. His curly hair is thick though greying. He wears blue-tinted round glasses and a long coat which has vertical grey stripes running through it. While Townshend appears thoughtful and intense as he answers questions, Daltrey seems more relaxed and expansive. Why is Tommy an important album to you? It was a transitional period. We were always destined to be more than a hit singles band. There was always something very, very different about The Who, and as a singles band we couldn’t express it properly. Playing Tommy live for the first time to audiences, that was an experience. It went on for about an hour and fifteen minutes, and we didn’t give them time to applaud between songs. It was like shaking up a bottle of Tizer because at the end they all went nuts. It was a bit hard to hang on to reality when it broke. It’s important to me because it’s the first piece of work outside the early singles, up to “My Generation” really, that I could really feel comfortable with the voice. It was that piece of work that made me look inward and express it vocally – much, much more than when I was doing “My Generation”, I was an angry young man, and that’s easy when you’re young, it’s easy to be angry. But then of course Tommy needed so many more emotions and you have to look very deeply inside yourself to bring that out within the words. So Tommy gave me the voice that later got me through those great albums like Who’s Next, Quadrophenia, Live At Leeds. It's The Who's 50th anniversary next year. What are your thoughts about that? We’re trying to ignore this. It’s just another year for us. You’re talking to a band that never thought it would make it to the end of the week. So who knows? We’ve got no plans at all for next year. And I really mean that. I wish we did, because I could do with The Who at the Albert Hall in March. To me, so what? It’s 50 years. It’s lucky Pete and I are still here. As long as we can still do it, it doesn’t matter if it’s 51 years or 53 years. I’d hate to think it’s all over. But if it is, it’s been a great run. I think Pete and I are playing better than ever, we're joined at the hip. There’s no reason to stop, and the music hasn’t dated, so why not? But equally, you can’t be on the road all the time. How’s your album going with Wilko Johnson? I’m going to do some songs with him. We were desperately trying to find new material, but we just want to get something done in the studio as quick as we can. See if there’s any chemistry, see if we can make something a bit different. I don’t know whether it’ll be any good, I don’t know, it’s going to be a joy to play with, I love him as a man, he’s an absolute treasure, an extraordinary character. I’ve always noted his guitar playing, but always thought there was a lot more there to get out of him. So we’ll see. Follow me on Twitter @MichaelBonner. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xX3w69FL2r0 Photo crredit: REX/Richard Young

To Hammersmith, and the launch of The Who’s super deluxe edition of Tommy at Riverside Studios. Tonight, Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey are attending a special screening of Sensation – The Story Of The Who’s Tommy, a new documentary about the album due for broadcast this Friday [October 25].

I caught up with Townshend and Daltrey separately, and we managed to cover off some of their memories of Tommy, The Who’s early run of singles, and what their plans are for the band’s 50th anniversary next year…

Townshend arrives first. He is sombrely dressed in dark jacket, trousers, and a check shirt; the only splash of colour is a red spotted handkerchief sprouting from the breast pocket of his jacket.

Why is Tommy so important to you?

I don’t know if it is the most important thing to me today. It’s a project that’s significant in the Sixties maelstrom of stuff like Dark Side Of The Moon, Sgt Pepper, Pet Sounds, those albums from the Sixties which made a particular mark. So it keeps coming back. This is about Universal trying to make some money at Christmas, isn’t it?

What are your memories of making the album?

Primarily, good. It was a strange recording session. It was very tricky because we were doing lots of shows around it. It was very sporadic, the recording. Very difficult to get momentum going, so when it was all brought together at the end I was quite surprised how well it hung together.

Is there more material in the archive?

I don’t think there’s much else to screw out of it. Although it’s interesting, when I’m dead and gone, and people start to go through all the paperwork that I gather, when I was writing my book I found I had a huge amount of really interesting paper. Not just press clips, but letters, documents, bills, but lots and lots of hand written notes, letters from Kit Lambert, letters from Keith, letters from Eric Clapton, all kinds of interesting things from right the way through my life. All of that stuff, when it’s curated, will be extremely interesting. But I just haven’t got the time. Well, I have got the time, I could easily do it. I gathered it for my book, and when it actually came to it, what I actually did in the book is I just went through it. But every time I come back to do something like this, I feel better informed in a sense, becoming more of a curator of the project.

It’s The Who’s 50th anniversary next year. Do you have any plans to commemorate it?

We will probably just tour and it’ll probably be the last big tour that we do. I wasn’t going to do a tour for the anniversary. I won’t say I enjoyed Quadrophenia, but it was a successful tour. It was good for me because Roger did all the creative work. No, seriously, I just showed up and wanged away on the guitar. I enjoyed it. I wasn’t particularly crazy about being up on the stage and on the road. But with respect to the whole thing about, for me, having been through some real shit in the last 15 years personally, one of the things that really means something to me is to have the affection of the public. This is not a rock star thing to say. Most people think rock stars are cunts and they’re right. A quick interview with Noel Gallagher ands you’ll realize he’s a lovable rogue, isn’t he? But I think we do love it. So for me the important thing is that every time I would meet somebody in the street they would say, “So, are you going to tour again?”, and I’d kind of go, “No, not really.” As I said that, I’d realize they’d go “Oh. OK, then.” Whereas if I was to say yes, I’d get all this wave of “Oh, well, I’ll come and see you!” I’d think, ‘Why would you come and see us?” So, anyway, for our 50th anniversary I won’t have much fun. But I think we need to go out, we need to celebrate it.

Roger Daltrey arrives ten minutes later. He looks a little like a Seventies’ incarnation of Doctor Who enjoying his dotage. His curly hair is thick though greying. He wears blue-tinted round glasses and a long coat which has vertical grey stripes running through it. While Townshend appears thoughtful and intense as he answers questions, Daltrey seems more relaxed and expansive.

Why is Tommy an important album to you?

It was a transitional period. We were always destined to be more than a hit singles band. There was always something very, very different about The Who, and as a singles band we couldn’t express it properly. Playing Tommy live for the first time to audiences, that was an experience. It went on for about an hour and fifteen minutes, and we didn’t give them time to applaud between songs. It was like shaking up a bottle of Tizer because at the end they all went nuts. It was a bit hard to hang on to reality when it broke. It’s important to me because it’s the first piece of work outside the early singles, up to “My Generation” really, that I could really feel comfortable with the voice. It was that piece of work that made me look inward and express it vocally – much, much more than when I was doing “My Generation”, I was an angry young man, and that’s easy when you’re young, it’s easy to be angry. But then of course Tommy needed so many more emotions and you have to look very deeply inside yourself to bring that out within the words. So Tommy gave me the voice that later got me through those great albums like Who’s Next, Quadrophenia, Live At Leeds.

It’s The Who’s 50th anniversary next year. What are your thoughts about that?

We’re trying to ignore this. It’s just another year for us. You’re talking to a band that never thought it would make it to the end of the week. So who knows? We’ve got no plans at all for next year. And I really mean that. I wish we did, because I could do with The Who at the Albert Hall in March. To me, so what? It’s 50 years. It’s lucky Pete and I are still here. As long as we can still do it, it doesn’t matter if it’s 51 years or 53 years. I’d hate to think it’s all over. But if it is, it’s been a great run. I think Pete and I are playing better than ever, we’re joined at the hip. There’s no reason to stop, and the music hasn’t dated, so why not? But equally, you can’t be on the road all the time.

How’s your album going with Wilko Johnson?

I’m going to do some songs with him. We were desperately trying to find new material, but we just want to get something done in the studio as quick as we can. See if there’s any chemistry, see if we can make something a bit different. I don’t know whether it’ll be any good, I don’t know, it’s going to be a joy to play with, I love him as a man, he’s an absolute treasure, an extraordinary character. I’ve always noted his guitar playing, but always thought there was a lot more there to get out of him. So we’ll see.

Follow me on Twitter @MichaelBonner.

Photo crredit: REX/Richard Young

Arctic Monkey kick off UK tour in Newcastle

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Arctic Monkey kick off UK tour in Newcastle
Arctic Monkeys kicked off the first night of their UK tour last night at Newcastle's Metro Radio Arena. Supported by The Strypes, the band played to a sellout crowd, kicking off with the first single from their fifth and most recent studio album, 'AM', 'Do I Wanna Know?', before a set which mixed ...

Arctic Monkeys kicked off the first night of their UK tour last night at Newcastle’s Metro Radio Arena.

Supported by The Strypes, the band played to a sellout crowd, kicking off with the first single from their fifth and most recent studio album, ‘AM’, ‘Do I Wanna Know?’, before a set which mixed new tracks such as ‘Why’d You Only Call Me When You’re High?’ with classic hits from their repertoire including ‘Fluorescent Adolescent’, ‘Mardy Bum’ and ‘Dancing Shoes’.

The band rarely addressed the crowd throughout the 20-song set, although Alex Turner uttered a few choice words – after ‘Teddy Picker’, perhaps in reference to his Elvis-inspired quiff, he commented, “Thank you, thank you very much” before dedicating ‘I Bet That You Look Good On The Dancefloor’ to “all the Geordie lasses”.

Returning for the encore to chants of “Arctic, Arctic, Arctic”, the band reestablished themselves on stage with a slow rendition of ‘Mardy Bum’ and then, fittingly, ‘One For The Road’. “Thanks for having us Newcastle. It’s been a pleasure. You’re a wonderful bunch. Was it good for you?” Turner asked the audience before launching into ‘R U Mine?’ which was the final song of the evening.

Arctic Monkeys played:

‘Do I Wanna Know?’

‘Brianstorm’

‘Dancing Shoes’

‘Don’t Sit Down ‘Cause I’ve Moved Your Chair’

‘Teddy Picker’

‘Crying Lightning’

‘Snap Out Of It’

‘Reckless Serenade’

‘Old Yellow Bricks’

‘Why’d You Only Call Me When You’re High’

‘Arabella’

‘Pretty Visitors’

‘I Bet That You Look Good On The Dancefloor’

‘Cornerstone’

‘Do Me A Favour’

‘Fluorescent Adolescent’

‘Knee Socks’

‘Mardy Bum’

‘One For The Road’

‘R U Mine?’

Arctic Monkeys will continue their tour in Manchester Arena tonight (October 23) before dates at London Earls Court, Liverpool Echo Arena, Cardiff Motorpoint Arena, Birmingham LG Arena and Glasgow Hydro Arena before a homecoming show at Sheffield Motorpoint Arena.

Arctic Monkeys will play:

Newcastle Metro Radio Arena (October 22)

Manchester Arena (23)

London Earls Court (25, 26)

Liverpool Echo Arena (28)

Cardiff Motorpoint Arena (29)

Birmingham LG Arena (31)

Glasgow Hydro Arena (November 1)

Sheffield Motorpoint Arena (2)

Rare Bob Dylan recordings to appear on Michael Bloomfield box set

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Rare Bob Dylan recordings to appear on Michael Bloomfield box set
Michael Bloomfield is the subject of a career-spanning 3CD/1DVD box set anthology due for release in February. Produced and curated by Al Kooper - who played with Mike Bloomfield on Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited sessions in 1965 and the Super Session album in 1968 - From His Head To His Heart To...

Michael Bloomfield is the subject of a career-spanning 3CD/1DVD box set anthology due for release in February.

Produced and curated by Al Kooper – who played with Mike Bloomfield on Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited sessions in 1965 and the Super Session album in 1968 – From His Head To His Heart To His Hands contains a wealth of previously unreleased tracks – including Bloomfield’s first demos for John Hammond Sr.in 1964 and his final public performance, climaxing with a track from the 1980 Bob Dylan concert in San Francisco – alongside essential key recordings, both live and studio.

The anthology collates solo material, work with ensembles including the Paul Butterfield Blues Band and the Electric Flag, tracks with Muddy Waters and Janis Joplin, “Highway 61” band outtakes and more.

The box set, which is released via Legacy Recordings, the catalog division of Sony Music Entertainment, also contains Sweet Blues: A Film about Michael Bloomfield. Directed by Bob Sarles, the documentary combines vintage audio interviews and live performance footage of Bloomfield with newly lensed reflections on the artist from the guitarist’s friends and fellow musicians.

The tracklisting for From His Head To His Heart To His Hands is:

CD1 – ROOTS

1. I’m a Country Boy 2:45*

2. Judge, Judge 2:03*

3. Hammond’s Rag 2:09*

4. I’ve Got You in the Palm of My Hand 2:26

5. I’ve Got My Mojo Workin’ 2:36

6. Like a Rolling Stone (Instrumental) 6:35* – performed by Bob Dylan

7. Tombstone Blues (Alternate Chambers Brothers Version) 5:58* – performed by Bob Dylan

8. Michael Speaks About Paul Butterfield 0:39

9. Born in Chicago 3:05 – performed by The Paul Butterfield Blues Band

10. Blues with a Feeling 4:23 – performed by The Paul Butterfield Blues Band

11. East-West 13:12 – performed by The Paul Butterfield Blues Band

12. Killing Floor 3:51 – performed by The Electric Flag

13. Texas 4:47 – performed by The Electric Flag

14. Susie’s Shuffle (Live Jam) 3:42* – performed by The Electric Flag

15. Just a Little Something (Live) 3:22* – performed by The Electric Flag

16. Easy Rider 0:47 – performed by The Electric Flag

CD2 – JAMS

1. Albert’s Shuffle 6:55

2. Stop 4:17

3. His Holy Modal Majesty 7:17

4. Opening Speech (Live) 1:23

5. 59th Street Bridge Song (Feeling Groovy) (Live) Hybrid Edit 5:39*

6. Don’t Throw Your Love on Me So Strong (Live) 7:49

7. Santana Clause (Live) 4:41*

8. The Weight (Live) 4:08

9. Opening Speech (Live) 1:27

10. One Way Out (Live) 4:17

11. Her Holy Modal Highness (Live) 6:09

12. Fat Grey Cloud (Live) 4:30

13. Mary Ann (Live) 5:19

14. That’s All Right (Live) 3:42

CD3 – LAST LICKS

1. I’m Glad I’m Jewish (Live) 3:15

2. Men’s Room – Spoken Word Segment from McCabe’s (Live) 0:51

3. Don’t You Lie to Me (Live) 3:09

4. Can’t Lose What You Ain’t Never Had (Live) 3:04 – performed by Muddy Waters

5. Gypsy Good Time (Live) 4:29

6. One Good Man 4:02 – performed by Janis Joplin

7. It’s About Time (Live) 5:15

8. Carmelita Skiffle (Live) 2:53

9. Darktown Strutters Ball (Live) 3:56

10. Don’t Think About It Baby 3:31

11. Jockey Blues/Old Folks Boogie (Live) 3:15

12. A-Flat Boogaloo (Live) 3:55

13. Glamour Girl (Live) 8:02*

14. Spoken Intro – Bob Dylan (Live) 2:02*

15. The Groom’s Still Waiting at the Altar (Live) 5:50* – performed by Bob Dylan

16. Hymn Time (Live Excerpt) 1:53

DVD – SWEET BLUES: A FILM ABOUT MIKE BLOOMFIELD

A Ravin’ Film. Directed by Bob Sarles. Produced and Edited by Bob Sarles and Christina Keating. Director of photography: Ted Leyhe. Producers: Ted Leyhe, Larry Milburn & Bruce Schmiechen.

*Previously Unreleased

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