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Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds unveil new track ‘Animal X’ – listen

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Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds have unveiled a brand new track titled "Animal X" – scroll down to listen to it. The song, which was recorded as part of the sessions for their most recent album Push The Sky Away was a special release for this year's Record Store Day. Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds re...

Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds have unveiled a brand new track titled “Animal X” – scroll down to listen to it.

The song, which was recorded as part of the sessions for their most recent album Push The Sky Away was a special release for this year’s Record Store Day.

Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds recently announced plans for an autumn tour of the UK. The band will play five shows as part of a larger European tour, starting at London Hammersmith Apollo on October 26 and playing the same venue on the following day. They will then visit Manchester Apollo (October 30), Glasgow Barrowland (October 31) and Edinburgh Usher Hall (November 1).The band are also confirmed for Open’er festival in Poland and La Route Du Rock festival in France.

Richie Havens dies aged 72

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Richie Havens has died aged 72 from a heart attack. The singer's talent agency, Roots Agency, confirmed that Havens died at home in Jersey City, New Jersey. Having spent four decades performing live and releasing music, Havens announced last month that he would no longer be touring due to health is...

Richie Havens has died aged 72 from a heart attack.

The singer’s talent agency, Roots Agency, confirmed that Havens died at home in Jersey City, New Jersey. Having spent four decades performing live and releasing music, Havens announced last month that he would no longer be touring due to health issues.

“Beyond his music, those who have met Havens will remember his gentle and compassionate nature, his light humour and his powerful presence,” a family statement said. His agent Tim Drake added that Havens had been “gifted with one of the most recognisable voices in popular music.” Adding: “His fiery, poignant, soulful singing style has remained unique and ageless.”

Among those paying tribute, Stephen Stills said “Richie Havens was one of the nicest most generous and pure individuals I have ever met. When I was a young sprite in Greenwich Village, we used to have breakfast together at the diner on 6th Avenue next to The Waverly Theatre. He was very wise in the ways of our calling. He always caught fire every time he played. 50 years after hearing Handsome Johnny for the first time and being blown away by Richie’s magic, he sang that same song the last time I saw him, and it had exactly the same fire and passion and effect on me as when I first heard that unique Richie Havens ‘thing’ – that can never be replicated.”

Havens was born in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. He came to prominence in the New York folk scene in the 1960s. Writing in Chronicles Volume 1, Bob Dylan remembered, “One singer I crossed paths with a lot, Richie Havens, always had a nice-looking girl with him who passed the hat and I noticed that he always did well.”

Havens released over 25 albums, including 1966’s Mixed Bag and 1968’s Richard P. Havens, 1983. He was the opening act at Woodstock, later telling Rolling Stone that “My fondest memory was realizing that I was seeing something I never thought I’d ever see in my lifetime – an assemblage of such numbers of people who had the same spirit and consciousness.”

Aside from his own material, Havens also recording successful versions of Bob Dylan’s “Just Like A Woman” and several Beatles songs, including “With A Little Help From My Friends” and “Here Comes The Sun” – the latter gave him a Top 20 hit in America.

In 1993, he performed at US President Bill Clinton’s inauguration. In 2000, he published his autobiography, They Can’t Hide Us Anymore, and he released his final album, Nobody Left to Crown, in 2008.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fA51wyl-9IE

June 2013

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Looking through this month's review section, one of the albums we've written about caught my eye and took me back to somewhat lively events in February, 1979. Roxy Music are due to play the first date of their reunion tour somewhere in Europe. Melody Maker want me to cover it, wherever it is. I get...

Looking through this month’s review section, one of the albums we’ve written about caught my eye and took me back to somewhat lively events in February, 1979. Roxy Music are due to play the first date of their reunion tour somewhere in Europe. Melody Maker want me to cover it, wherever it is.

I get a tip the tour will open in Stockholm, where Roxy have been rehearsing in great secret. I call their legendary “media consultant”, the permanently harassed Simon Puxley. He denies the tour will open in Stockholm. The first date, he tells me, will actually be in . . . er . . . Berlin. I don’t believe him and that weekend fly out to Sweden, where I find them in the bar of the Grand, a handsome old hotel overlooking the harbour. Puxley whitens at my appearance before gaining his composure and sternly telling me that under no circumstances will he give me a ticket for that night’s concert. I tell him I already have one and leave him ashen-faced. It’s a great show, as I tell Bryan Ferry later. We’re having dinner at somewhere plush and I’m sitting opposite Ferry, next to Antony Price, who designs Ferry’s tour togs. I tell him I loved Bryan’s new suit. “He does look lovely in sharkskin,” Antony swoons.

Not long after this, we all fetch up in some cavernous nightclub, the disco booming quite deafeningly. Ferry and I are having a drink when a striking blonde, wearing something in a startling electric blue that looks like it’s been sprayed on and hasn’t yet dried, bounds over to our table. Ferry introduces us, but the music’s so loud I don’t catch her name. She now appears to be trying to get Ferry to dance, an invitation he politely declines and slips away to another table. She turns her attention to me now and with a yank of my arm that nearly pulls my shoulder out of its socket hauls me onto the dance floor, where around us many couples are cavorting beneath the strobes, something suddenly intoxicating in their carnal gyrations. At which point, of course, I should have realised I was drunk and left it at that. But no, I recklessly decide to give it a go, although I am no hoofer and have no relevant past experience of dance-related escapades with women who look like they’ve taken a bath in body dye and come out of the house naked and still wet. Whatever, the next thing I know we’re in the midst of a bopping throng and my companion is giving it her veritable all, every part of her body in some kind of fantastic motion. Rather less nimbly, I hop from foot to foot, like someone trying to shake a ferret from his trousers. The music’s louder than ever and I’m quite overwhelmed by my partner’s increasingly astonishing whirls, pirouettes and general dance floor gymnastics. She’s a blur of exciting motion, abandoned gesticulation and much energetic arse-wiggling. She grinds her groin against me with an exaggerated pneumatic pumping action that makes me blush to recall and then disappears into the crowd, everything shaking.

I quickly scarper back to the table where I’d been drinking with Ferry, but he’s already at the door, the rest of Roxy piling into waiting limos. In the back of one of the cars, Ferry notices my by-now quite dishevelled state and asks where I’d got to. I tell him I’ve been dancing, information that causes him to raise a cultured eyebrow. “With who?” he asks. The voluptuous blonde he’d introduced me to whose name I didn’t catch, I tell him, the one who looked like her out of Abba, Agnetha, the blonde one. He knows who I mean and sighs, a little theatrically. “Allan,” he says finally, “that was Agnetha out of Abba.” We drive back to the hotel in silence, Ferry’s eyebrow raised all the way. The record by the way that reminded me of this is Agnetha’s first album since 2004 and it’s reviewed in this month’s Reviews pages. Enjoy the issue.

ISSUE ON SALE FROM THURSDAY APRIL 25

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Jeff Buckley, the new Uncut, and his first UK interview…

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The new issue of Uncut arrives in UK shops on Thursday, though perhaps a few subscribers, with a prevailing wind, might have already received their copies. Lots of interesting stuff in there, including new interviews with The National, Laura Marling, Deborah Harry and Todd Rundgren; The Eagles, The Waterboys, Deep Purple, Mark Mulcahy, Kurt Vile; reviews of Fleetwood Mac, Vampire Weekend, REM, Van Dyke Parks and Jandek; respects paid to Jason Molina, Andy Johns and Phil Ramone; and a brief exchange with the now notorious Michelle Shocked. The cover story, meanwhile, focuses on Jeff Buckley, as the 20th anniversary of “Live At Sin-é” approaches and the new “Greetings From Tim Buckley” biopic appears in the UK on pay-per-view. David Cavanagh’s dug deep into the creation of that EP and “Grace”, talked with many of the people closest to Buckley, and come up with a revelatory piece, I think. After chatting with David about his feature, I went into the NME archives and fished out Buckley’s first meeting with the UK press. Originally, my interview appeared in early 1994 as a 400-word New Artist piece, before Buckley had played in the UK, though the version below is the full version that I ran in NME in May 1998. Totally forgot about the Pop Will Eat Itself reference… # Jeff Buckley was first interviewed by NME in February 1994, just before his first EP, “Live at Sin-E”, was released in Britain. It was a bitterly cold, blustery day, but it didn’t stop Buckley striding down the main street of Hoboken, New Jersey (where he was to play a remarkable solo gig later that night), bawling an operatic version of Beck’s ‘Loser’ at bemused passers-by. Over the course of an evening, that seemed typically eccentric behaviour. He was ridiculous and funny and charming and blessed with the presence of a superstar, even though back then he was virtually unknown beyond music business insiders and the regulars at a string of New York folk venues. That didn’t last long. At this early stage, Buckley had rarely been interviewed and it was hard to judge whether he was either ineffably pretentious or a very seductive wind-up merchant. Listening to the tape again, with a clutch of late (and often less candid) features to one side, I think he meant most of what he said. Some of what follows is weirdly profound, way outside the usual parameters of rock interviews. Some, on the other hand, especially when you take into account the long pauses between words, is the sounds of a man at the start of his career trying desperately hard to portray himself as deep. “I just think too much sometimes,” he mentions towards the end. And it’s impossible to argue with him. Then, of course, there’s always the awful prescience that always seems to reveal itself when you go picking through the words of the dead. Buckley talks about taking unnecessary risks in life, about his eagerness to record more new songs long before “Grace” is released (which touring would deny him the opportunity to do for years) and, most unnerving of all, talking about drowning in music. Only a fool would find warning signs in old metaphors. But no-one, almost certainly, would deny their poignancy. Where do you come from? “I’m your basic average white boy, basically (laughs). Southern California, was born in Martin Luther King hospital in LA in ’66. Lived every place in Southern California.” How come you moved around so much? “Mmm… things happened. With marriages and relationships and jobs and stuff we had to do. One time we got evicted – all kinds of cool travails. But I finally left when I was 17. I let my mom move on and then I finished high school and went to LA. I lived there for about six years and by the end of that I was completely depressed and then I moved to New York.” When did you start making music? “When I was a kid. I started writing when I was 13. I got my first electric guitar when I was 13, but I’d always been singing. I had my first little acoustic when I was six. But I started being in bands when I was 13. Crappy rock bands, avant-garde things where we’d like ‘wanna go against the norm, man’. A lot of crazy shit, Musically it sounded like, I dunno, Captain Beefheart and David Bowie. One of the guys was way into Genesis, like the old Genesis. Remember we were kids, man. We were just fucking around. But by the time I was 14 or 15 I finally landed back in Anaheim, which is where Disneyland is: that place is such a wellspring of hatred for me. Because of its straightness, and because of the conservatism and debilitating that is to any artistic soul – just anybody that’s different. Every time I came to a new school I was always the new kid and I could stare out over the classroom and know exactly who wanted to kick my ass and who was gonna be my friend, like where the misfits were.” Do you still see yourself as a misfit? “I dunno… I feel out of step. Musically. Just out of step, not even behind or ahead. Just sort of like… I dunno, sometimes I feel like I’m still… just not… in sync. I don’t know how to explain it. I just am.” You feel that’s in your personality and your music? “Sure. I mean there’s no separation. Maybe it’s because I just have a different experience of life than most people. I don’t see people, I don’t see men and women at all. When I see them I see… their mothers and fathers. I see how old they are inside. Like when I look at the President, or anybody in record company, or a store owner, I may see a little boy behind the counter with the face of an old man. And that’s who I talk to. And it’s strange: it’s like seeing ghosts everywhere. I don’t really go on what people say so much, I go on their voice. I go on their energy at the time. I go on how close their arms are folded into their chest. And sometimes when I talk, I just don’t make sense. Sometimes it gets me into trouble.” Why? “Sometimes I don’t make myself understood all that well. I don’t do well when I communicate sometimes, but I’m trying to communicate directly.” You seem to very intensely weigh up every word you say. “(Sighs) That’s ‘cos I don’t wanna go off too much.” You rant sometimes? “Yeah, I do.” What about? “Anything.” What makes you angry? “Oh… myself, usually. Or when somebody’s not really being fair to themselves. Or when somebody’s terribly self-critical – and this is very rare – that they’re very cold to other people. Someone who very wilfully wants to destroy something in other people, especially their dreams. That makes me very angry.” Has that happened to you a lot? “Sure. Going through the American school system.” What about now? There must be a lot of pressure on you now, a lot of people excited at what you’re doing? “No, there’s no pressure really from Columbia. They’ve actually clammed up about it. It’s miraculous (laughs). I have an incredible amount of pressure on myself.” What do you see when you look in the mirror? “Um… A little geeky kid. An old man. Both. Sometimes I can see a sexually obsessed woman.” Does that ever come out? “Oh yeah, sure. When I sing. But usually I feel too old inside.” You think there’s a kind of schizophrenia, then, that fires the way you sing? “I think that all people are many people. I think all people have many, many, many different souls inside and they just shift from one to the other.” Are you a very sexually obsessive person? “I just see sex in everything, ‘cos it’s everywhere. It’s not even the act so much, it’s the energy that surrounds everything and the way people work. And singing is… music is very reflective of sex.” Is it like that old cliché that being onstage is better than sex? “No. Sex is better than that. Sex is great. I appreciate it like I appreciate my skin and my teeth and my dreams. It’s a part of me. But I see it so much it’s like that religious feeling when people say that they see God everywhere and in everything. It’s just a tremendously great human gift. It’s the energy that powers everything that everybody does. I’m not talking about penetration. The Greeks were very, very smart in that way: that there were aspects of human life like sex, joy, envy and greed and they had a direct relationship with them as if they were people so they made gods and goddesses out of them. It’s sorta like that.” So in what way does it inform your music? “Well… I enjoy being ecstatic. I like visiting all the emotions directly. Every emotion has a sound. My human identity forms my music.” You say you feel musically out of step. What inspires you to make that music? “Oh, it comes directly from my dreams.” But what about the way it sounds? “What about it? What makes it that way? Yeah. Prosaically, what are your influences? “…People. That I meet. Sometimes I’ll have an indefinable feeling about them that translates into a sound in my head. Or the music of my childhood, or the music of the times when I really needed it. And I really need it now. There’s the holy trinity of Beatles, Hendrix and Zeppelin, but they have an incredible range. Anything with soul. I fall in love with all kinds of music and still have disgusting amount of hero worship.” Who for? “Erm, Billie Holiday… (a baby crying across the room distracts him) BAY-BEE! DON’T WORRY! Erm… Judy Garland, Edith Piaf, Bob Dylan, the Pistols, PiL, Duke Ellington; that’s one of the rare cases where amazing, incredible. Crazy music comes out of joy. The Velvets, the Pixies – I miss them. It pisses me off the Kurt Cobain’ll write a good song and it’ll just get fucking run into the ground by MTV. Oh… if you wanna talk about older stuff, I adore Patti Smith. And I carry Allen Ginsberg with me everywhere. Sun Ra. Oh God, we could go on for hours. Critically acclaimed, being on TV doesn’t mean shit. I’d like for people just to turn away from those things and go out by themselves and really get surrounded by the music, loving it or hating it. ‘Cos it really doesn’t matter unless you taste it. unless you taste it you don’t know it, not even from your CD player.” Off tape you said you were a freak magnet. Why? “It’s my fault really because I welcome it. Apart from the music, my identity – my soul – welcomes extraordinary, extracurricular experience: possibly dangerous, possibly stupid; I’ve done a couple of those. Like getting stranded in Chicago in the ghetto, having a great time for four or five hours then getting picked up by the cops and the adventures that ensued therein. Things that would totally make my friends worry about me all the time. And they do. Like talking to people you’re not supposed to. The fringes are where life is happening. There’s the conventional world, and then there’s the eccentric world way out on the fringes and that’s usually what speaks to me most.” Do you survive on taking risks? “Everybody does.” You think all those people in Anaheim do? “Sure. They’re risking their lives by being so completely closed. They’re taking the ultimate risk. They’ll die so young, they’ll be old so fast. David Lynch has nothing on this place. Going to high school with the Disneyland Nazi Youth. I just never, ever seek to inhabit that sort of space again. But New York is full of beautiful, strange people. Like Quentin Crisp. Allen Ginsberg. Not even really famous people.” Are you ambitious? “Sure.” Do you want to be a star? “That’s secondary. No, I wanna find these things that I smell way in the distance. I wanna dig to them, I wanna swim down to them, I wanna drown in them. I don’t know what they are. It’s a kind of music – it’s a kind of place, actually.” Do you think you take things too seriously? “I don’t know what that means.” Don’t you? “No. What, like just music?” Just everything. “I think… I have… a strong sense of wonder for things, and a strong sense of cynicism at the same time. No, I don’t think I’m too serious. You’ve got to be cynical to draw boundaries between you and the things that will waste your time. And you have to be cynical to make sure you do what’s right sometimes.” One question which I have to ask: about your father… “Right. What do you wanna know?” Well, there are definite similarities in the music. “There are? Like what?” Like your voice. Like there’s something audacious about your music. It takes risks. It has a dynamic which is very much of its own. Do you see that? “Well, yeah, I was born with the same parts. But it’s not really our voice. Like, I don’t just have his voice – his father had that voice. I didn’t even know him at all, really, I met him for a week. I was seven, eight, something like that. Quite close to the end, then. “Yeah, that’s right. Two months. He left before I was born, so I didn’t really know him, and he never wrote or called or anything.” Was he very awkward with you when you met him? “Don’t remember… No, no, he sat me on his knee but we really didn’t talk. It was backstage somewhere. And then he bought me a toy and we had dinner together, him and his chosen family. He remarried and adopted a son and he was very much in love. They were his own people. But I don’t really go to him for information, I don’t go to him for inspiration. I’ve got my own loves. But maybe, yeah, I’ve got the same parts right here. I don’t think I make the same choices, though.” What about? “About music. I mean, punk didn’t happen to him. Bad Brains happened to me. And I think I use… I dunno… Maybe we were born best friends and we never got to be that, sorta had something in common… My mom and my stepfather had everything to do with my musical opinions my mum sang, played the piano and cello, and my stepfather was a car mechanic and bought records and turned me on to all kinds of amazing stuff.” Did you ever listen to your father’s records? Were they in the house? “No. I think mom had them somewhere, but I listened mostly as a kid to Joni Mitchell and Crosby, Stills & Nash and Stevie Wonder and Sly. Anything that was on the radio… Does my breath smell bad, ‘cos I had like houmous with onions in it? Horrible. It’s Bad Breath Yank from California… What else do you wanna know?” I think your music’s going to mean a lot to a lot of people. How are you geared up for adulation? How well can you deal with the fact that people are going to be using your records for very intense experiences? “Well… If they do, that’s great. But there are two kinds of beauty: there’s people that are born with a melodious soul, those that make music; and then there’s those who can appreciate it. And neither one is more important. One can’t happen without the other. The musician makes the music with the audience if he or she is doing the right thing.” Do you need adulation? “No. I quite like it, but I don’t need it. It’s an exchange. It’s all feeding. And sometimes people just aren’t ready for it, or they couldn’t care less, or they actually don’t like me and I can feel that too. At least it’s real. That’s the way it’s been all my life. I can see people and they hate me. For no reason. Something about me makes them not like me. But music especially, because it gets into the bloodstream immediately. There’s something very primal about it. You can’t close your ears. Maybe your heart is closed to it, like maybe you don’t like Pop Will Eat Itself and it irritates you every time it comes on, so you’re not open to it. But other people will fucking suck their toes if they have the chance. I don’t even know what the look like, or what they sound like. They just came into my head. Music works quickly.” You say you struggle for words sometimes. Do you feel it easier to communicate your feelings by wordless singing? “Words are limited, actually. It’s a heightened way, but then sometimes if I say into the microphone as part of the music, ‘I know that you’re afraid to love me’ at the right time, it’s a balance between both. Music is for all the broken homes that’ve ever existed, ‘cos for once it’s the perfect marriage between a male and a female, the language is very structured and very male and the voice is wide open and chaotic and very female. I mean, the energies. It’s like blood is this flowing thing and it needs the structure of the vein to take it to the right places. And without it there’s internal bleeding and death. And that’s why it’s so powerful. And that’s what I see. But it’s basically just songs about my life and little things.” Do you use it in any cathartic way? “Sure. It has helped me, but I don’t… Last night it cured a headache. I had a huge headache in my shoulders and by the end of ‘Grace’ it was gone. It’s like storytelling, all songs and stories take you through this journey, this path, through your psyche, like a dream. And it can take you anywhere. So sometimes it even heals.” It’s that powerful? “Sometimes. It can solve problems, and sometimes it can change your heart. It doesn’t even inspire you to make music, it just inspires something in your ordinary life which is unavoidable. Without that, I’d have nothing. And right now I have very little ordinary life, ‘cos I’m on the road.” What do you miss? “I don’t know, I don’t know that I’m missing anything. I just think too much sometimes. Sometimes I’m even happy because I’m so engaged in the thinking. But that’s the great thing about performing, and why it is also sexual, because in that moment – or in that evening – I’m completely in the present for once in my life. Nothing that came before or anything that may come after: only what matters is now. And that’s what human beings crave.” Is there anything else you want to do? “We’ll see. I may get screwed up and then I’ll have to take up sculpting. I’d be at the beginning again and be a child again and grow up. As long as it has a life. I’m not so important as a name or a body or a face or a person, it’s really it.” And when’s the album (“Grace”) coming out? “About June (It was eventually released in August). That’ll come out, and then I wanna come out with something immediately, ‘cos I’m sick of hearing this album.” Follow me on Twitter: www.twitter.com/JohnRMulvey

The new issue of Uncut arrives in UK shops on Thursday, though perhaps a few subscribers, with a prevailing wind, might have already received their copies. Lots of interesting stuff in there, including new interviews with The National, Laura Marling, Deborah Harry and Todd Rundgren; The Eagles, The Waterboys, Deep Purple, Mark Mulcahy, Kurt Vile; reviews of Fleetwood Mac, Vampire Weekend, REM, Van Dyke Parks and Jandek; respects paid to Jason Molina, Andy Johns and Phil Ramone; and a brief exchange with the now notorious Michelle Shocked.

The cover story, meanwhile, focuses on Jeff Buckley, as the 20th anniversary of “Live At Sin-é” approaches and the new “Greetings From Tim Buckley” biopic appears in the UK on pay-per-view. David Cavanagh’s dug deep into the creation of that EP and “Grace”, talked with many of the people closest to Buckley, and come up with a revelatory piece, I think.

After chatting with David about his feature, I went into the NME archives and fished out Buckley’s first meeting with the UK press. Originally, my interview appeared in early 1994 as a 400-word New Artist piece, before Buckley had played in the UK, though the version below is the full version that I ran in NME in May 1998. Totally forgot about the Pop Will Eat Itself reference…

#

Jeff Buckley was first interviewed by NME in February 1994, just before his first EP, “Live at Sin-E”, was released in Britain. It was a bitterly cold, blustery day, but it didn’t stop Buckley striding down the main street of Hoboken, New Jersey (where he was to play a remarkable solo gig later that night), bawling an operatic version of Beck’s ‘Loser’ at bemused passers-by.

Over the course of an evening, that seemed typically eccentric behaviour. He was ridiculous and funny and charming and blessed with the presence of a superstar, even though back then he was virtually unknown beyond music business insiders and the regulars at a string of New York folk venues. That didn’t last long.

At this early stage, Buckley had rarely been interviewed and it was hard to judge whether he was either ineffably pretentious or a very seductive wind-up merchant. Listening to the tape again, with a clutch of late (and often less candid) features to one side, I think he meant most of what he said. Some of what follows is weirdly profound, way outside the usual parameters of rock interviews. Some, on the other hand, especially when you take into account the long pauses between words, is the sounds of a man at the start of his career trying desperately hard to portray himself as deep. “I just think too much sometimes,” he mentions towards the end. And it’s impossible to argue with him.

Then, of course, there’s always the awful prescience that always seems to reveal itself when you go picking through the words of the dead. Buckley talks about taking unnecessary risks in life, about his eagerness to record more new songs long before “Grace” is released (which touring would deny him the opportunity to do for years) and, most unnerving of all, talking about drowning in music. Only a fool would find warning signs in old metaphors. But no-one, almost certainly, would deny their poignancy.

Where do you come from?

“I’m your basic average white boy, basically (laughs). Southern California, was born in Martin Luther King hospital in LA in ’66. Lived every place in Southern California.”

How come you moved around so much?

“Mmm… things happened. With marriages and relationships and jobs and stuff we had to do. One time we got evicted – all kinds of cool travails. But I finally left when I was 17. I let my mom move on and then I finished high school and went to LA. I lived there for about six years and by the end of that I was completely depressed and then I moved to New York.”

When did you start making music?

“When I was a kid. I started writing when I was 13. I got my first electric guitar when I was 13, but I’d always been singing. I had my first little acoustic when I was six. But I started being in bands when I was 13. Crappy rock bands, avant-garde things where we’d like ‘wanna go against the norm, man’. A lot of crazy shit, Musically it sounded like, I dunno, Captain Beefheart and David Bowie. One of the guys was way into Genesis, like the old Genesis. Remember we were kids, man. We were just fucking around. But by the time I was 14 or 15 I finally landed back in Anaheim, which is where Disneyland is: that place is such a wellspring of hatred for me. Because of its straightness, and because of the conservatism and debilitating that is to any artistic soul – just anybody that’s different. Every time I came to a new school I was always the new kid and I could stare out over the classroom and know exactly who wanted to kick my ass and who was gonna be my friend, like where the misfits were.”

Do you still see yourself as a misfit?

“I dunno… I feel out of step. Musically. Just out of step, not even behind or ahead. Just sort of like… I dunno, sometimes I feel like I’m still… just not… in sync. I don’t know how to explain it. I just am.”

You feel that’s in your personality and your music?

“Sure. I mean there’s no separation. Maybe it’s because I just have a different experience of life than most people. I don’t see people, I don’t see men and women at all. When I see them I see… their mothers and fathers. I see how old they are inside. Like when I look at the President, or anybody in record company, or a store owner, I may see a little boy behind the counter with the face of an old man. And that’s who I talk to. And it’s strange: it’s like seeing ghosts everywhere. I don’t really go on what people say so much, I go on their voice. I go on their energy at the time. I go on how close their arms are folded into their chest. And sometimes when I talk, I just don’t make sense. Sometimes it gets me into trouble.”

Why?

“Sometimes I don’t make myself understood all that well. I don’t do well when I communicate sometimes, but I’m trying to communicate directly.”

You seem to very intensely weigh up every word you say.

“(Sighs) That’s ‘cos I don’t wanna go off too much.”

You rant sometimes?

“Yeah, I do.”

What about?

“Anything.”

What makes you angry?

“Oh… myself, usually. Or when somebody’s not really being fair to themselves. Or when somebody’s terribly self-critical – and this is very rare – that they’re very cold to other people. Someone who very wilfully wants to destroy something in other people, especially their dreams. That makes me very angry.”

Has that happened to you a lot?

“Sure. Going through the American school system.”

What about now? There must be a lot of pressure on you now, a lot of people excited at what you’re doing?

“No, there’s no pressure really from Columbia. They’ve actually clammed up about it. It’s miraculous (laughs). I have an incredible amount of pressure on myself.”

What do you see when you look in the mirror?

“Um… A little geeky kid. An old man. Both. Sometimes I can see a sexually obsessed woman.”

Does that ever come out?

“Oh yeah, sure. When I sing. But usually I feel too old inside.”

You think there’s a kind of schizophrenia, then, that fires the way you sing?

“I think that all people are many people. I think all people have many, many, many different souls inside and they just shift from one to the other.”

Are you a very sexually obsessive person?

“I just see sex in everything, ‘cos it’s everywhere. It’s not even the act so much, it’s the energy that surrounds everything and the way people work. And singing is… music is very reflective of sex.”

Is it like that old cliché that being onstage is better than sex?

“No. Sex is better than that. Sex is great. I appreciate it like I appreciate my skin and my teeth and my dreams. It’s a part of me. But I see it so much it’s like that religious feeling when people say that they see God everywhere and in everything. It’s just a tremendously great human gift. It’s the energy that powers everything that everybody does. I’m not talking about penetration. The Greeks were very, very smart in that way: that there were aspects of human life like sex, joy, envy and greed and they had a direct relationship with them as if they were people so they made gods and goddesses out of them. It’s sorta like that.”

So in what way does it inform your music?

“Well… I enjoy being ecstatic. I like visiting all the emotions directly. Every emotion has a sound. My human identity forms my music.”

You say you feel musically out of step. What inspires you to make that music?

“Oh, it comes directly from my dreams.”

But what about the way it sounds?

“What about it? What makes it that way?

Yeah. Prosaically, what are your influences?

“…People. That I meet. Sometimes I’ll have an indefinable feeling about them that translates into a sound in my head. Or the music of my childhood, or the music of the times when I really needed it. And I really need it now. There’s the holy trinity of Beatles, Hendrix and Zeppelin, but they have an incredible range. Anything with soul. I fall in love with all kinds of music and still have disgusting amount of hero worship.”

Who for?

“Erm, Billie Holiday… (a baby crying across the room distracts him) BAY-BEE! DON’T WORRY! Erm… Judy Garland, Edith Piaf, Bob Dylan, the Pistols, PiL, Duke Ellington; that’s one of the rare cases where amazing, incredible. Crazy music comes out of joy. The Velvets, the Pixies – I miss them. It pisses me off the Kurt Cobain’ll write a good song and it’ll just get fucking run into the ground by MTV. Oh… if you wanna talk about older stuff, I adore Patti Smith. And I carry Allen Ginsberg with me everywhere. Sun Ra. Oh God, we could go on for hours. Critically acclaimed, being on TV doesn’t mean shit. I’d like for people just to turn away from those things and go out by themselves and really get surrounded by the music, loving it or hating it. ‘Cos it really doesn’t matter unless you taste it. unless you taste it you don’t know it, not even from your CD player.”

Off tape you said you were a freak magnet. Why?

“It’s my fault really because I welcome it. Apart from the music, my identity – my soul – welcomes extraordinary, extracurricular experience: possibly dangerous, possibly stupid; I’ve done a couple of those. Like getting stranded in Chicago in the ghetto, having a great time for four or five hours then getting picked up by the cops and the adventures that ensued therein. Things that would totally make my friends worry about me all the time. And they do. Like talking to people you’re not supposed to. The fringes are where life is happening. There’s the conventional world, and then there’s the eccentric world way out on the fringes and that’s usually what speaks to me most.”

Do you survive on taking risks?

“Everybody does.”

You think all those people in Anaheim do?

“Sure. They’re risking their lives by being so completely closed. They’re taking the ultimate risk. They’ll die so young, they’ll be old so fast. David Lynch has nothing on this place. Going to high school with the Disneyland Nazi Youth. I just never, ever seek to inhabit that sort of space again. But New York is full of beautiful, strange people. Like Quentin Crisp. Allen Ginsberg. Not even really famous people.”

Are you ambitious?

“Sure.”

Do you want to be a star?

“That’s secondary. No, I wanna find these things that I smell way in the distance. I wanna dig to them, I wanna swim down to them, I wanna drown in them. I don’t know what they are. It’s a kind of music – it’s a kind of place, actually.”

Do you think you take things too seriously?

“I don’t know what that means.”

Don’t you?

“No. What, like just music?”

Just everything.

“I think… I have… a strong sense of wonder for things, and a strong sense of cynicism at the same time. No, I don’t think I’m too serious. You’ve got to be cynical to draw boundaries between you and the things that will waste your time. And you have to be cynical to make sure you do what’s right sometimes.”

One question which I have to ask: about your father…

“Right. What do you wanna know?”

Well, there are definite similarities in the music.

“There are? Like what?”

Like your voice. Like there’s something audacious about your music. It takes risks. It has a dynamic which is very much of its own. Do you see that?

“Well, yeah, I was born with the same parts. But it’s not really our voice. Like, I don’t just have his voice – his father had that voice. I didn’t even know him at all, really, I met him for a week. I was seven, eight, something like that.

Quite close to the end, then.

“Yeah, that’s right. Two months. He left before I was born, so I didn’t really know him, and he never wrote or called or anything.”

Was he very awkward with you when you met him?

“Don’t remember… No, no, he sat me on his knee but we really didn’t talk. It was backstage somewhere. And then he bought me a toy and we had dinner together, him and his chosen family. He remarried and adopted a son and he was very much in love. They were his own people. But I don’t really go to him for information, I don’t go to him for inspiration. I’ve got my own loves. But maybe, yeah, I’ve got the same parts right here. I don’t think I make the same choices, though.”

What about?

“About music. I mean, punk didn’t happen to him. Bad Brains happened to me. And I think I use… I dunno… Maybe we were born best friends and we never got to be that, sorta had something in common… My mom and my stepfather had everything to do with my musical opinions my mum sang, played the piano and cello, and my stepfather was a car mechanic and bought records and turned me on to all kinds of amazing stuff.”

Did you ever listen to your father’s records? Were they in the house?

“No. I think mom had them somewhere, but I listened mostly as a kid to Joni Mitchell and Crosby, Stills & Nash and Stevie Wonder and Sly. Anything that was on the radio… Does my breath smell bad, ‘cos I had like houmous with onions in it? Horrible. It’s Bad Breath Yank from California… What else do you wanna know?”

I think your music’s going to mean a lot to a lot of people. How are you geared up for adulation? How well can you deal with the fact that people are going to be using your records for very intense experiences?

“Well… If they do, that’s great. But there are two kinds of beauty: there’s people that are born with a melodious soul, those that make music; and then there’s those who can appreciate it. And neither one is more important. One can’t happen without the other. The musician makes the music with the audience if he or she is doing the right thing.”

Do you need adulation?

“No. I quite like it, but I don’t need it. It’s an exchange. It’s all feeding. And sometimes people just aren’t ready for it, or they couldn’t care less, or they actually don’t like me and I can feel that too. At least it’s real. That’s the way it’s been all my life. I can see people and they hate me. For no reason. Something about me makes them not like me. But music especially, because it gets into the bloodstream immediately. There’s something very primal about it. You can’t close your ears. Maybe your heart is closed to it, like maybe you don’t like Pop Will Eat Itself and it irritates you every time it comes on, so you’re not open to it. But other people will fucking suck their toes if they have the chance. I don’t even know what the look like, or what they sound like. They just came into my head. Music works quickly.”

You say you struggle for words sometimes. Do you feel it easier to communicate your feelings by wordless singing?

“Words are limited, actually. It’s a heightened way, but then sometimes if I say into the microphone as part of the music, ‘I know that you’re afraid to love me’ at the right time, it’s a balance between both. Music is for all the broken homes that’ve ever existed, ‘cos for once it’s the perfect marriage between a male and a female, the language is very structured and very male and the voice is wide open and chaotic and very female. I mean, the energies. It’s like blood is this flowing thing and it needs the structure of the vein to take it to the right places. And without it there’s internal bleeding and death. And that’s why it’s so powerful. And that’s what I see. But it’s basically just songs about my life and little things.”

Do you use it in any cathartic way?

“Sure. It has helped me, but I don’t… Last night it cured a headache. I had a huge headache in my shoulders and by the end of ‘Grace’ it was gone. It’s like storytelling, all songs and stories take you through this journey, this path, through your psyche, like a dream. And it can take you anywhere. So sometimes it even heals.”

It’s that powerful?

“Sometimes. It can solve problems, and sometimes it can change your heart. It doesn’t even inspire you to make music, it just inspires something in your ordinary life which is unavoidable. Without that, I’d have nothing. And right now I have very little ordinary life, ‘cos I’m on the road.”

What do you miss?

“I don’t know, I don’t know that I’m missing anything. I just think too much sometimes. Sometimes I’m even happy because I’m so engaged in the thinking. But that’s the great thing about performing, and why it is also sexual, because in that moment – or in that evening – I’m completely in the present for once in my life. Nothing that came before or anything that may come after: only what matters is now. And that’s what human beings crave.”

Is there anything else you want to do?

“We’ll see. I may get screwed up and then I’ll have to take up sculpting. I’d be at the beginning again and be a child again and grow up. As long as it has a life. I’m not so important as a name or a body or a face or a person, it’s really it.”

And when’s the album (“Grace”) coming out?

“About June (It was eventually released in August). That’ll come out, and then I wanna come out with something immediately, ‘cos I’m sick of hearing this album.”

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

Deborah Harry: “Blondie were at the bottom rung of the CBGBs ladder…”

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Deborah Harry reveals she believes Blondie were looked down on at legendary New York punk club CBGB. Denying that her and Patti Smith disliked each other, in the new issue of Uncut the singer says: “I don’t think she’d waste her time hating me. Thing is, I always think Blondie were at the b...

Deborah Harry reveals she believes Blondie were looked down on at legendary New York punk club CBGB.

Denying that her and Patti Smith disliked each other, in the new issue of Uncut the singer says: “I don’t think she’d waste her time hating me. Thing is, I always think Blondie were at the bottom rung of the whole CBGBs ladder.

“She came at her craft from a literary, intellectual point of view, whereas I – although I have read some books, you know! – but I think I came strictly from a more underground pop-culture thing.”

The singer answers your questions in the new issue, tackling topics including Chris Stein’s occult interests, The Muppets, Robert Fripp’s guitar playing and the early hip-hop shows she used to hang out at.

Uncut’s June 2013 issue is out now.

Jeff Buckley and Jimmy Page “cried when they met”

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Jeff Buckley and Jimmy Page cried when they met each other, a close friend of the late singer-songwriter reveals in the latest issue of Uncut. Former Fishbone member Chris Dowd explains that the pair were so in awe of each other that their first meeting was unsurprisingly emotional. “Jeff told...

Jeff Buckley and Jimmy Page cried when they met each other, a close friend of the late singer-songwriter reveals in the latest issue of Uncut.

Former Fishbone member Chris Dowd explains that the pair were so in awe of each other that their first meeting was unsurprisingly emotional.

“Jeff told me they cried,” says Dowd. “They actually cried when they met each other. Jimmy heard himself in Jeff, and Jeff was meeting his idol. Jimmy Page was the godfather of Jeff’s music. A lot of people thought Tim was the influence on Jeff, but it was really Zeppelin.

“He could play all the parts on all the songs. John Paul Jones’ basslines. Page’s guitar parts. The synthesiser intro on ‘In The Light’ – he could play it on guitar and it would sound just like it. And then he would get on the fucking drums and exactly mimic John Bonham.”

To coincide with the 20th anniversary of Buckley’s first EP, “Live At Sin-é”, the story of the guitarist’s early days in New York is told by his close friends, bandmates and industry associates.

The new issue of Uncut (dated June 2013) is out on Thursday (April 25).

The National: “Trouble Will Find Me is like The Band and Air in the same room”

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The National have revealed that parts of their new album sound like “The Band and Air in the same room”. Speaking in the new issue of Uncut (out on April 25), guitarist Aaron Dessner says: “On ‘Pink Rabbits’, part of the drum track sounds like it could be Levon Helm, but we layered in e...

The National have revealed that parts of their new album sound like “The Band and Air in the same room”.

Speaking in the new issue of Uncut (out on April 25), guitarist Aaron Dessner says: “On ‘Pink Rabbits’, part of the drum track sounds like it could be Levon Helm, but we layered in electronic snares, to give it a certain austerity, like The Band and Air in the same room.

“We were trying to create an aesthetic that would sound new to us: where in the past we might have used orchestrations, strings and winds, here we were using synthetic textures and bass pedals, in order to give it a little more pop sensibility.”

The group’s frontman Matt Berninger also explains the meaning behind many of the songs on the new album, Trouble Will Find Me, joking that the record is a set of “fun songs about death”.

The new issue of Uncut (dated June 2013) is out on Thursday (April 25).

Iggy And The Stooges – Ready To Die

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Ig coaxes James Williamson out for a victory lap... When Iggy And The Stooges announced their arrival with Raw Power, the singer was in no mood to equivocate. Over the course of a brisk 34 minutes, Pop, the streetwalking cheetah with a heart full of napalm, considered alienation, disease, damnation, sex and death. In Iggy’s formulation, these things existed in the same emetic moment. As a statement of violent disaffection, it doesn’t get any purer, not least because Iggy’s words were illuminated by James Williamson’s thrashing guitar. Williamson was self-taught and savage, though it’s notable that he wrote on an acoustic guitar, and the metallic riffs concealed melodic subtleties. Forty years on, with the warped glam of Raw Power established as a foundation stone of punk, metal, and all their revolting tributaries, what’s left? There is the matter of personnel: Ron Asheton died in 2009, ending the revival of The Stooges (the slightly different lineup which backed Iggy on the group’s first two LPs). Iggy’s career, meanwhile, is in limbo. His solo records are barely released, but they suggest his tastes have broadened beyond nihilistic ejaculation. Williamson, returning to rock after retiring from Silicon Valley, must surely bring a different energy to the party, even if he is supported on bass by Mike Watt (ex-Minutemen, a youthful 55), and original drummer Scott Asheton. The opener, “Burn”, suggests that the vigour of Williamson’s playing hasn’t diminished. It’s a metallic rocker, with a sombre Iggy intoning about temptation and draughty windows. He may say, “I’m not on trial, Berlin-style.” He does say, “I got a lesson to learn, because there’s no God in this crowd.” The tune is fierce, but truthfully, the exact nature of Iggy’s fire isn’t clear. It’s followed by the self-explanatory “Sex And Money”, a thin tune with a sleazy sax – closer to New Values than Raw Power – and a lyric about lust which appears to contain the line “nipples come and nipples go”. Then “Job”, a brooding thrash, in which Iggy opens negotiations with the line “I’m just a guy with a rockstar attitude”, before retreating into a grumble about having a badly paid job. These reflections, though, are nothing, compared to “DD’s”, which celebrates the glories of large bosoms (“doesn’t matter if you’re real or fake”). Base desires have always been Iggy’s currency, but it’s hard to imagine his heart is in these words. You could argue they’re Grinderman-style exercises in form – emotional blurts, without the need for further edification. Iggy has made a career out of dislocation and disgust, but it’s usually expressed with more poetry than is evident on “Dirty Deal”, which rails about bad contracts and how “the system’s rigged to favour crooks”; or “Gun”, a conventional rocker expressing broad disgust with everything and everyone. The title track is a neuralgic paean to depression, with Iggy positioning himself as “a hanging judge of the world I’m in”. It’s no “Search And Destroy”, but it does contain a note of mature self-deprecation. Of course, Ready To Die was never going to match Raw Power. When you’re 65, rekindling youth’s righteous fury can sound like grouchiness or – worse – play-acting. But there are worthwhile moments, mostly when Williamson leaves space for Pop to express his vulnerability. The melancholy “Unfriendly World” has Iggy crooning over wiry guitar, and because he’s not playing his cartoonish self he wrests emotional weight from a bitter lyric hung around the line “fame and fortune make me sick, and I can’t get out”. The album closes with “Beat That Guy”, a gentler piece about familiar Iggy concerns – being alone, mostly – which sounds like The Dictators playing Sonny & Cher. Finally, there is “The Departed”, a lovely, end-of-the-party reflection with Iggy singing about nightlife being a death trip. “I can’t feel, nothing real/My lights are all burned out”, he croons over steel guitar and military drums. He sounds as if he is singing through gritted false teeth. He sounds exhausted. He sounds sincere. Alastair McKay Q+A Iggy Pop What does James Williamson add? He’s an angry and destabilising guitarist. It’s a tradition that goes back to Link Wray, and probably further. Maybe Charlie Christian. Has his guitar playing evolved over the years? He tried some evolving in the mid-’70s with Kill City and he played a very nice piece of music on my album New Values – the guitar track to “Don’t Look Down”. Then he did other things with his life. But is age necessarily an evolution? If we successfully age and then don’t die, then I’d say he’s definitely evolved, ’cos he’s still alive and he can play a guitar! How have you evolved? There’s half baritone songs on this record, and it’s a warmer register for me at this point in my life. I still like barking like a little dog sometimes. I don’t puke as much as I used to. The puking, screaming and incarceration tend to go together. Hopefully when you want a little bit of that back in your life you can do it theatrically, or carefully in a controlled setting! Based on “DD’s” – are you a breast man? Yes! But not to the exclusion of the other parts. If you haven’t got them, I’ll go to another area. We can work out something! INTERVIEW: ALASTAIR McKAY Special offer! For one week only, subscribe to Uncut from only £15.35 and save up to 50%! Don’t miss out on this great offer as it won’t be around for long. Please note, the 50% discount is available to UK Direct Debit subscribers only.

Ig coaxes James Williamson out for a victory lap…

When Iggy And The Stooges announced their arrival with Raw Power, the singer was in no mood to equivocate. Over the course of a brisk 34 minutes, Pop, the streetwalking cheetah with a heart full of napalm, considered alienation, disease, damnation, sex and death. In Iggy’s formulation, these things existed in the same emetic moment.

As a statement of violent disaffection, it doesn’t get any purer, not least because Iggy’s words were illuminated by James Williamson’s thrashing guitar. Williamson was self-taught and savage, though it’s notable that he wrote on an acoustic guitar, and the metallic riffs concealed melodic subtleties.

Forty years on, with the warped glam of Raw Power established as a foundation stone of punk, metal, and all their revolting tributaries, what’s left? There is the matter of personnel: Ron Asheton died in 2009, ending the revival of The Stooges (the slightly different lineup which backed Iggy on the group’s first two LPs). Iggy’s career, meanwhile, is in limbo. His solo records are barely released, but they suggest his tastes have broadened beyond nihilistic ejaculation. Williamson, returning to rock after retiring from Silicon Valley, must surely bring a different energy to the party, even if he is supported on bass by Mike Watt (ex-Minutemen, a youthful 55), and original drummer Scott Asheton.

The opener, “Burn”, suggests that the vigour of Williamson’s playing hasn’t diminished. It’s a metallic rocker, with a sombre Iggy intoning about temptation and draughty windows. He may say, “I’m not on trial, Berlin-style.” He does say, “I got a lesson to learn, because there’s no God in this crowd.” The tune is fierce, but truthfully, the exact nature of Iggy’s fire isn’t clear. It’s followed by the self-explanatory “Sex And Money”, a thin tune with a sleazy sax – closer to New Values than Raw Power – and a lyric about lust which appears to contain the line “nipples come and nipples go”. Then “Job”, a brooding thrash, in which Iggy opens negotiations with the line “I’m just a guy with a rockstar attitude”, before retreating into a grumble about having a badly paid job. These reflections, though, are nothing, compared to “DD’s”, which celebrates the glories of large bosoms (“doesn’t matter if you’re real or fake”).

Base desires have always been Iggy’s currency, but it’s hard to imagine his heart is in these words. You could argue they’re Grinderman-style exercises in form – emotional blurts, without the need for further edification. Iggy has made a career out of dislocation and disgust, but it’s usually expressed with more poetry than is evident on “Dirty Deal”, which rails about bad contracts and how “the system’s rigged to favour crooks”; or “Gun”, a conventional rocker expressing broad disgust with everything and everyone. The title track is a neuralgic paean to depression, with Iggy positioning himself as “a hanging judge of the world I’m in”. It’s no “Search And Destroy”, but it does contain a note of mature self-deprecation.

Of course, Ready To Die was never going to match Raw Power. When you’re 65, rekindling youth’s righteous fury can sound like grouchiness or – worse – play-acting. But there are worthwhile moments, mostly when Williamson leaves space for Pop to express his vulnerability. The melancholy “Unfriendly World” has Iggy crooning over wiry guitar, and because he’s not playing his cartoonish self he wrests emotional weight from a bitter lyric hung around the line “fame and fortune make me sick, and I can’t get out”.

The album closes with “Beat That Guy”, a gentler piece about familiar Iggy concerns – being alone, mostly – which sounds like The Dictators playing Sonny & Cher. Finally, there is “The Departed”, a lovely, end-of-the-party reflection with Iggy singing about nightlife being a death trip. “I can’t feel, nothing real/My lights are all burned out”, he croons over steel guitar and military drums.

He sounds as if he is singing through gritted false teeth. He sounds exhausted. He sounds sincere.

Alastair McKay

Q+A

Iggy Pop

What does James Williamson add?

He’s an angry and destabilising guitarist. It’s a tradition that goes back to Link Wray, and probably further. Maybe Charlie Christian.

Has his guitar playing evolved over the years?

He tried some evolving in the mid-’70s with Kill City and he played a very nice piece of music on my album New Values – the guitar track to “Don’t Look Down”. Then he did other things with his life. But is age necessarily an evolution? If we successfully age and then don’t die, then I’d say he’s definitely evolved, ’cos he’s still alive and he can play a guitar!

How have you evolved?

There’s half baritone songs on this record, and it’s a warmer register for me at this point in my life. I still like barking like a little dog sometimes. I don’t puke as much as I used to. The puking, screaming and incarceration tend to go together. Hopefully when you want a little bit of that back in your life you can do it theatrically, or carefully in a controlled setting!

Based on “DD’s” – are you a breast man?

Yes! But not to the exclusion of the other parts. If you haven’t got them, I’ll go to another area. We can work out something!

INTERVIEW: ALASTAIR McKAY

Special offer!

For one week only, subscribe to Uncut from only £15.35 and save up to 50%! Don’t miss out on this great offer as it won’t be around for long. Please note, the 50% discount is available to UK Direct Debit subscribers only.

George Clinton and Sly Stone collaborate on new single

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George Clinton and Sly Stone have collaborated on a new single, "The Naz". The track, which tells the story of Jesus Christ, is available as a digital download here. Credited to Funkadelic Featuring Sly Stone, "The Naz" is Stone's first material with Clinton to be officially released since Stone a...

George Clinton and Sly Stone have collaborated on a new single, “The Naz”.

The track, which tells the story of Jesus Christ, is available as a digital download here.

Credited to Funkadelic Featuring Sly Stone, “The Naz” is Stone’s first material with Clinton to be officially released since Stone appeared on Funkadelic’s 1981 album, The Electric Spanking Of War Babies.

The new single, released by digital distributor INgrooves Fontana, is the first release on Clinton’s label, The C Kunspyruhzy, and the first new Funkadelic material in 22 years.

Last year, Clinton was granted an honorary doctorate from Berklee College of Music. He recently donated the legendary P-Funk stage prop, The Mothership, to the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture. Clinton is presently working on new material with Boston duo, Soul Clap.

George Clinton and The P-Funk All Stars will play the UK in July.

Photo credit: Nitin Vadukul

Special offer!

For one week only, subscribe to Uncut from only £15.35 and save up to 50%! Don’t miss out on this great offer as it won’t be around for long. Please note, the 50% discount is available to UK Direct Debit subscribers only.

Eagles: “Our plan was to be world-famous and rich… no Christmas cards”

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The Eagles have revealed that their business-like plan for world domination included “no Christmas cards”. In the new issue of Uncut, out on Thursday (April 25), founding guitarist Bernie Leadon explains that the group wanted to keep their relationships simple. “When we got together we defined our business plan: we wanted to be successful, world-famous, acclaimed and rich,” says Leadon. “One of the first things Frey said was, ‘OK, let’s keep this simple. No Christmas cards.’ Did we go on holiday and call each other? No.” In the new issue, the band, JD Souther and Jackson Browne unravel the making of the group’s pivotal second album, Desperado, a “cowboy record” recorded in west London. The new issue of Uncut (dated June 2013) is out on Thursday (April 25).

The Eagles have revealed that their business-like plan for world domination included “no Christmas cards”.

In the new issue of Uncut, out on Thursday (April 25), founding guitarist Bernie Leadon explains that the group wanted to keep their relationships simple.

“When we got together we defined our business plan: we wanted to be successful, world-famous, acclaimed and rich,” says Leadon.

“One of the first things Frey said was, ‘OK, let’s keep this simple. No Christmas cards.’ Did we go on holiday and call each other? No.”

In the new issue, the band, JD Souther and Jackson Browne unravel the making of the group’s pivotal second album, Desperado, a “cowboy record” recorded in west London.

The new issue of Uncut (dated June 2013) is out on Thursday (April 25).

Bob Dylan, Wilco and My Morning Jacket for joint North American tour

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Bob Dylan is to team up with Wilco and My Morning Jacket for a run of 26 dates in North America. The tour - which will be called the Americanarama Festival of Music - will also feature additional artists the Richard Thompson Electric Trio and Ryan Bingham at select venues. The dates begin on June ...

Bob Dylan is to team up with Wilco and My Morning Jacket for a run of 26 dates in North America.

The tour – which will be called the Americanarama Festival of Music – will also feature additional artists the Richard Thompson Electric Trio and Ryan Bingham at select venues.

The dates begin on June 26 in West Palm Beach, Florida taking in Nashville, Chicago and Denver before coming to a close in Mountain View, California on August 4.

Pre-sale tickets will be available starting Wednesday morning, April 24.

June 26, West Palm Beach, Florida – Cruzan Amphitheatre

June 27, Tampa, Florida – Live Nation Amphitheatre

June 29, Atlanta, Georgia – Aaron’s Amphitheatre at Lakewood

June 30, Nashville, Tennessee – The Lawn at Riverfront Park

July 2, Memphis, Tennessee – AutoZone Park

July 5, Noblesville, Indiana – Klipsch Music Center

July 6, Cincinnati, Ohio – Riverbend Music Center

July 7, Columbus, Ohio – Nationwide Arena

July 10, St. Paul, Minnesota – Midway Stadium

July 11, Peoria, Illinois – Chiefs Stadium

July 12, Chicago, Illinois – Toyota Park

July 14, Clarkston, Michigan – DTE Energy Music Theatre

July 15, Toronto, Ontario – Molson Canadian Amphitheatre

July 18, Darien Center, New York – Darien Lake Performing Arts Center

July 19, Bridgeport, Connecticut – The Ballpark at Harbor Yard

July 20, Mansfield, Massachusetts – Comcast Center

July 21, Saratoga Springs, New York – Saratoga Performing Arts Center

July 23, Columbia, Maryland – Merriweather Post Pavilion

July 24, Virginia Beach, Virginia – Farm Bureau Live at Virginia Beach

July 26, Hoboken, New Jersey – Pier A Park

July 27, Wantagh, New York – Nikon at Jones Beach Theater

July 28, Camden, New Jersey – SusquehannaBank Center

July 31, Denver, Colorado – Fiddler’s Green Amphitheatre

August 1, Salt Lake City, Utah – USANA Amphitheatre

August 3, Irvine, California – Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre

August 4, Mountain View, California – Shoreline Amphitheatre

Special offer!

For one week only, subscribe to Uncut from only £15.35 and save up to 50%! Don’t miss out on this great offer as it won’t be around for long. Please note, the 50% discount is available to UK Direct Debit subscribers only.

Watch Paul Weller and The Strypes Record Store Day performance

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Paul Weller teamed up with Irish newcomers The Strypes for a one-off performance at London's Rough Trade East last night (April 20th) as part of the shop's Record Store Day celebrations. Headlining the shop's day of in-store gigs, which also saw performances from the likes of Frank Turner, King Mid...

Paul Weller teamed up with Irish newcomers The Strypes for a one-off performance at London’s Rough Trade East last night (April 20th) as part of the shop’s Record Store Day celebrations.

Headlining the shop’s day of in-store gigs, which also saw performances from the likes of Frank Turner, King Midas Sound and a separate set from The Strypes themselves, Weller enlisted guitarist Josh McClorey and bass player Pete O’Hanlon as well as Miles Kane’s drummer Jay Sharrock to join him for a thirty minute set.

Entry was by wristband only and saw fans queuing from 4am this morning to gain access to the completely sold-out event.

Kicking off with The Jam staple “In The City” – which you can watch below – the band then stormed through a number of Weller’s solo cuts including Record Store Day release ‘Flame-Out!’, ‘Fast Car/ Slow Traffic’ and ‘Kling I Klang’.

Weller then introduced the other two members of The Strypes, singer Ross Farrelly and drummer Evan Welsh, joking that they were “on loan for one day only” for a rousing run through of “Woodcutters’ Son”.

The band then continued with a cover of The Beatles‘ “Slow Down”, Weller staple “From The Floorboards Up” and recent album title track “Wake Up The Nation” before exiting to huge applause and then re-entering for an impromptu encore of “Route 66” with Farrelly taking lead vocals.

The Strypes will play the Uncut stage at this year’s Great Escape festival.

Paul Weller played:

‘In The City’

Fast Car/ Slow Traffic’

‘Flame-Out!’

‘Kling I Klang’

‘Woodcutters’ Son’

‘Slow Down’

‘From The Floorboard Up’

‘Porcelain Gods’

‘Wake Up The Nation’

‘Route 66’

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“David Bowie has another album in the pipeline,” says Noel Gallagher

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David Bowie has "another album in the pipeline", according to Noel Gallagher. Gallagher made the revelation during an interview with Absolute Radio for Bowie Part 3 – Let’s Dance To The Next Day (1980-2013), which was broadcast last night (April 21). He said: "According to people I've spoken t...

David Bowie has “another album in the pipeline”, according to Noel Gallagher.

Gallagher made the revelation during an interview with Absolute Radio for Bowie Part 3 – Let’s Dance To The Next Day (1980-2013), which was broadcast last night (April 21).

He said: “According to people I’ve spoken to, there’s another album in the pipeline. There was, like, 29 songs or something.”

However, Gallagher could not say when the new album would be released and admitted that it could be another 10 years before the record sees the light of day. “I don’t know what’s next for Bowie. He could disappear for another 10 years or there could be another album,” he said. “He might do the greatest tour of all time or he might never gig again. Who knows?”

Praising Bowie, he added: “I’ve got to say I was properly staggered about how good (the album) actually was. I don’t believe for a second that he’s thrown those songs together in two years. It sounds like a record that has been in the making for 10 years. And if it is, I admire him even more. I genuinely put Bowie up there with some of the greatest there has ever been, with Elvis, John Lennon…he’s in that league.”

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John Cusack to play Brian Wilson in new biopic?

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John Cusack is set to portray The Beach Boys' Brian Wilson in a new biopic. The actor is in talks to take the lead in Love And War, playing Wilson in later life. There Will Be Blood actor Paul Dano has already signed up to portray him as a young man, according to The Wrap. The movie is being direc...

John Cusack is set to portray The Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson in a new biopic.

The actor is in talks to take the lead in Love And War, playing Wilson in later life. There Will Be Blood actor Paul Dano has already signed up to portray him as a young man, according to The Wrap.

The movie is being directed by Bill Pohlad, from a screenplay by Oscar-nominated writer Oren Moverman. An unconventional look at Wilson’s life, the script apparently “renimagines seminal moments… from his artistic genius to his profound struggles and the love that keeps him alive.”

The film has the blessing of Wilson himself. On hearing news of Dano’s casting, he told Rolling Stone: “I am thrilled that Paul Dano has signed on top play me during one of my most creative explosions and most fulfilling musical times in my career. I still can’t believe how cool it is that my life will be portrayed on the big screen… it just makes me feel so humble. I can’t wait to see it with a full tub of buttered popcorn.”

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Rare Frank Zappa TV show set for official DVD release

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Frank Zappa's 1974 TV special, A Token Of His Extreme, is to be released officially for the first time on June 3 via Eagle Rock. The show, which was recorded on August 27, 1974 at KCET in Hollywood, featured Zappa alongside George Duke (keyboards, finger cymbals, tambourine, vocals), Napoleon Murph...

Frank Zappa‘s 1974 TV special, A Token Of His Extreme, is to be released officially for the first time on June 3 via Eagle Rock.

The show, which was recorded on August 27, 1974 at KCET in Hollywood, featured Zappa alongside George Duke (keyboards, finger cymbals, tambourine, vocals), Napoleon Murphy Brock (sax, vocals), Ruth Underwood (percussion), Tom Fowler (bass) and Chester Thompson (drums).

Speaking on the Mike Douglas Show in 1976, Zappa said, “This was put together with my own money and my own time and it’s been offered to television networks and to syndication and it has been steadfastly rejected by the American television industry. It has been shown in primetime in France and Switzerland, with marvelous results. It’s probably one of the finest pieces of video work that any human being has ever done. I did it myself. And the animation that you’re gonna see in this was done by a guy named Bruce Bickford, and I hope he is watching the show, because it’s probably the first time that a lot of people in America got a chance to see it.”

The track listing for A Token of His Extreme includes: “The Dog Breath Variations”/”Uncle Meat”, “Montana”, “Florentine Pogen”, “Stink-Foot”, “Pygmy Twylyte”, “Room Service, “Inca Roads”, “Oh No”, “Son Of Orange County”, “More Trouble Every Day”, “A Token Of My Extreme”.

The show has never been officially released on video or DVD before.

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Daft Punk officially release “Get Lucky” on iTunes

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A full-length version of Daft Punk's "Get Lucky" can now be downloaded on iTunes. A one-minute-long version of the track, featuring Pharrell on vocals and Chic's Nile Rodgers on guitar, debuted on a commercial screened at last weekend's Coachella festival, and then during the latest episode of US TV show Saturday Night Live, broadcast on April 13. Since then, numerous songs have been posted purporting to be the full version of the track, taken from Daft Punk's hotly anticipated new album Random Access Memories. However, the official version of the single was finally uploaded at 00:01am this morning (April 19). Pharrell Williams recently revealed that he "met the robots at a Madonna party and they were just like, 'We're doing something'. I said, 'Whatever you guys need, I'll do it. I'll play tambourine.' It feels like the only click track they have is the human heartbeat, and that makes it really interesting because these are robots." When asked what the ideal scenario for listening to 'Random Access Memories' is, he replied: "In a car, pulled up to the beach with my girl. Just let it play. This music is beyond 3D, it's 4D. You don't need MDMA to enjoy this music." Williams is one of a number of collaborators Daft Punk have pulled in for Random Access Memories, which is released on May 20. Giorgio Moroder, Todd Edwards, Panda Bear and Chilly Gonzales are set to appear on the LP. Special offer! For one week only, subscribe to Uncut from only £15.35 and save up to 50%! Don’t miss out on this great offer as it won’t be around for long. Please note, the 50% discount is available to UK Direct Debit subscribers only.

A full-length version of Daft Punk‘s “Get Lucky” can now be downloaded on iTunes.

A one-minute-long version of the track, featuring Pharrell on vocals and Chic’s Nile Rodgers on guitar, debuted on a commercial screened at last weekend’s Coachella festival, and then during the latest episode of US TV show Saturday Night Live, broadcast on April 13.

Since then, numerous songs have been posted purporting to be the full version of the track, taken from Daft Punk’s hotly anticipated new album Random Access Memories. However, the official version of the single was finally uploaded at 00:01am this morning (April 19).

Pharrell Williams recently revealed that he “met the robots at a Madonna party and they were just like, ‘We’re doing something’. I said, ‘Whatever you guys need, I’ll do it. I’ll play tambourine.’ It feels like the only click track they have is the human heartbeat, and that makes it really interesting because these are robots.” When asked what the ideal scenario for listening to ‘Random Access Memories’ is, he replied: “In a car, pulled up to the beach with my girl. Just let it play. This music is beyond 3D, it’s 4D. You don’t need MDMA to enjoy this music.”

Williams is one of a number of collaborators Daft Punk have pulled in for Random Access Memories, which is released on May 20. Giorgio Moroder, Todd Edwards, Panda Bear and Chilly Gonzales are set to appear on the LP.

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Hear new Black Sabbath song “God Is Dead?”

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Black Sabbath have revealed their new single "God Is Dead?". Scroll down to hear the song now. The 8:51 minute long song is taken from Black Sabbath's much-anticipated new album 13 due for release on June 11. 13 is the first album Osbourne, Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler have recorded together sin...

Black Sabbath have revealed their new single “God Is Dead?”. Scroll down to hear the song now.

The 8:51 minute long song is taken from Black Sabbath’s much-anticipated new album 13 due for release on June 11.

13 is the first album Osbourne, Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler have recorded together since 1978’s Never Say Die!. The album will be available in a number of different formats, including the Standard CD album release, a deluxe double CD album (which includes a second disc of bonus material), 12-inch heavyweight vinyl (180g) in a gatefold sleeve plus a super-deluxe box set containing a Black Sabbath – The Reunion documentary. Three extra tracks set to appear on the deluxe edition of 13 have also just been announced. Scroll down to see the full album tracklisting now.

In advance of the new album, Black Sabbath will tour Australia, New Zealand and play a show at Ozzfest in Japan.

The full 13 tracklist is:

‘End of the Beginning’

‘God is Dead?’

‘Loner’

‘Zeitgeist’

‘Age of Reason’

‘Live Forever’

‘Damaged Soul’

‘Dear Father’

Bonus deluxe edition tracks:

‘Methademic’

‘Peace of Mind’

‘Pariah’

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The Look Of Love

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A collaboration between filmmaker Michael Winterbottom and star Steve Coogan, where a lad from the north west of England makes good in unconventional circumstances, accompanied by a bunch of like-minded, but broadly eccentric characters. This is the story of Soho porn entrepreneur Paul Raymond, but it could just as easily describe the trajectory of Tony Wilson, the subject of Winterbottom and Coogan’s first collaboration, 24 Hour Party People – or even Coogan’s own back story, which stretches back to his working class origins in Liverpool. Winterbottom’s film – originally called The King Of Soho – covers the period from the late 1940s to 1992, and broadly follows Raymond’s colourful rise from mind-reading act on Clacton pier to one of the richest men in Britain, with an estimated fortune of £650 million made from real estate and ‘adult publishing’. As per previous Winterbottom/Coogan collaborations, the vibe here is loose and episodic. The fourth wall is broken (“My name is Paul Raymond, welcome to my world of erotica,” Coogan addresses the audience at the film’s start) while Winterbottom plays around with film stock and editing techniques to move the story along. Matt Greenhalgh’s screenplay streamlines Raymond’s story – it skates over assorted lawsuits and extortion attempts – and instead draws out thematic threads from his life, in particular his relationship with women. On one hand, Raymond is a man who made a significant part of his fortune exploiting women, while on the other he adored strong, independent women. Chief among these are his first wife Jean (Anna Friel), glamour model girlfriend Fiona Richmond (Tamsin Egerton) and his free-spirited daughter Debbie (Imogen Poots). Raymond’s wider entourage include Chris Addison – sporting a curly black wig and matching beard – and James Lance as his Men Only editor and lawyer, respectively. Winterbottom brilliantly handles the pace of the gang’s shaky ascent as they attempt to “rewrite the cultural history of the nation”, building up the cocaine use, orgies and lifestyle extravagances with the same forceful persuasion Scorsese brought to GoodFellas. Soon, Raymond is living in the prestigious Arlington House block by the Ritz, in a penthouse apartment with a retractable ceiling. “Ringo helped me design it,” he says proudly, in a rare Partridge-esque moment. “I’m very good friends with The Beatles. Apart from Yoko.” But behind the unconventional, freewheeling exterior, Coogan depicts Raymond as a determined, ruthless businessman. “Normal life is for normal people,” he says at one point, but despite the great wealth he accumulates, the film’s opening and closing images – of the solitary, broken Raymond watching footage of his beloved Debbie on a videotape – ask us to consider whether it’s all worth it. Michael Bonner Special offer! For one week only, subscribe to Uncut from only £15.35 and save up to 50%! Don’t miss out on this great offer as it won’t be around for long. Please note, the 50% discount is available to UK Direct Debit subscribers only.

A collaboration between filmmaker Michael Winterbottom and star Steve Coogan, where a lad from the north west of England makes good in unconventional circumstances, accompanied by a bunch of like-minded, but broadly eccentric characters. This is the story of Soho porn entrepreneur Paul Raymond, but it could just as easily describe the trajectory of Tony Wilson, the subject of Winterbottom and Coogan’s first collaboration, 24 Hour Party People – or even Coogan’s own back story, which stretches back to his working class origins in Liverpool.

Winterbottom’s film – originally called The King Of Soho – covers the period from the late 1940s to 1992, and broadly follows Raymond’s colourful rise from mind-reading act on Clacton pier to one of the richest men in Britain, with an estimated fortune of £650 million made from real estate and ‘adult publishing’. As per previous Winterbottom/Coogan collaborations, the vibe here is loose and episodic. The fourth wall is broken (“My name is Paul Raymond, welcome to my world of erotica,” Coogan addresses the audience at the film’s start) while Winterbottom plays around with film stock and editing techniques to move the story along. Matt Greenhalgh’s screenplay streamlines Raymond’s story – it skates over assorted lawsuits and extortion attempts – and instead draws out thematic threads from his life, in particular his relationship with women.

On one hand, Raymond is a man who made a significant part of his fortune exploiting women, while on the other he adored strong, independent women. Chief among these are his first wife Jean (Anna Friel), glamour model girlfriend Fiona Richmond (Tamsin Egerton) and his free-spirited daughter Debbie (Imogen Poots). Raymond’s wider entourage include Chris Addison – sporting a curly black wig and matching beard – and James Lance as his Men Only editor and lawyer, respectively.

Winterbottom brilliantly handles the pace of the gang’s shaky ascent as they attempt to “rewrite the cultural history of the nation”, building up the cocaine use, orgies and lifestyle extravagances with the same forceful persuasion Scorsese brought to GoodFellas. Soon, Raymond is living in the prestigious Arlington House block by the Ritz, in a penthouse apartment with a retractable ceiling. “Ringo helped me design it,” he says proudly, in a rare Partridge-esque moment. “I’m very good friends with The Beatles. Apart from Yoko.” But behind the unconventional, freewheeling exterior, Coogan depicts Raymond as a determined, ruthless businessman. “Normal life is for normal people,” he says at one point, but despite the great wealth he accumulates, the film’s opening and closing images – of the solitary, broken Raymond watching footage of his beloved Debbie on a videotape – ask us to consider whether it’s all worth it.

Michael Bonner

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Storm Thorgerson dies aged 69

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Storm Thorgerson has died, aged 69. His family released a statement earlier today (April 18) saying he died peacefully earlier in the day, surrounded by family and friends. It read: "He had been ill for some time with cancer though he had made a remarkable recovery from his stroke in 2003. He is ...

Storm Thorgerson has died, aged 69.

His family released a statement earlier today (April 18) saying he died peacefully earlier in the day, surrounded by family and friends. It read:

“He had been ill for some time with cancer though he had made a remarkable recovery from his stroke in 2003. He is survived by his mother Vanji, his son Bill, his wife Barbie Antonis and her two children Adam and Georgia.”

A childhood friend of the founding members of Pink Floyd, Thorgerson designed a host of album sleeves for the band, including The Dark Side Of The Moon.

He also created artwork for albums by Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, and more recently Muse and Biffy Clyro.

David Gilmour said in a statement via BBC News:

“We first met in our early teens. We would gather at Sheep’s Green, a spot by the river in Cambridge and Storm would always be there holding forth, making the most noise, bursting with ideas and enthusiasm. Nothing has ever really changed.”

He added: “He has been a constant force in my life, both at work and in private, a shoulder to cry on and a great friend. I will miss him.”

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Dexys, Duke Of York’s Theatre, London, April 16, 2013

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As you come up the escalator at Leicester Square underground station, you might notice the posters lining the walls advertising Mamma Mia!, Viva Forever! and We Will Rock You. You could be forgiven for wondering what place Dexys have in the heart of West End theatreland, especially here among these big karaoke musicals. But it’s worth remembering that Kevin Rowland has always seemed to relish his band's underdog status – finding something heroic, I guess, in the ongoing struggle against more orthodox forms of music. Indeed, his first appearance on Top Of The Pops – February 7, 1980 – found Dexys Midnight Runners sharing a bill with AC/DC and Buggles, while Legs & Co danced to “The Beat Goes On” by Whispers. 33 years on, Rowland continues to remind us that he’s on the outside looking in. He and his band are here for a nine-night residency at London’s Duke of York’s theatre on St Martin's Lane, sandwiched between David Hare’s play The Judas Kiss and Peter Nichols’ Passion Play, starring Zoë Wanamaker. How on earth did they get in? Did the caretaker forget to lock the doors properly? Of course, Kevin Rowland has always been one of our most challenging and idiosyncratic musicians. Following the 27 year gap between Don’t Stand Me Down and last year’s One Day I’m Going To Soar (and 13 years since his last solo album, My Beauty), Rowland chose a predictably unconventional route back into the public consciousness. Before One Day I’m Going To Soar was released last June, Rowland and the latest incarnation of Dexys played their as yet-unreleased new album in full and in sequence. Of course, the practise of playing albums in their entirety like this is traditionally reserved for a band revisiting a classic album, not launching a new one. But such is the high-stakes drama of the Dexys narrative – and the sheer confidence in the album’s songs – that it arguably felt like there was no other logical way to do it. The programme for these run of dates at the Duke of York’s is essentially the same as last year’s shows: One Day I’m Going To Soar followed by a selection of old favourites. But this setting in the 120 year-old venue seems particularly apt for Rowland and his nine co-conspirators, who give full rein to the more theatrical aspects of a Dexys show. If One Day I’m Going To Soar was the latest chapter in Rowland’s ongoing spiritual autobiography, then these narrative-driven confessionals are splendidly – and stylishly – played out. Rowland leads the sartorial charge with, by my reckoning, three costume changes, while his accomplices opt for a kind of 1940s American casual look. The show opens with a piano motif played in darkness before a spot catches Rowland for “Now”, and the first of many, brilliantly acerbic moments of self-examination: “Oh I know that I've been crazy and that cannot be denied, but inside of me there's always been a secret urge to fly”. The story –boy meets girl, they fall in love, he can’t commit, sad face, the end – is played out in song, and also a series of dialogues between Rowland and Pete Williams, who acts as his foil in the early part of the show, and later, Madeleine Hyland, as the object of Rowland’s lustful attentions. First glimpsed reclining on a chaise lounge above the band, Hyland is a relatively conventional vocal presence compared to Rowland’s rich, swooning soul voice. In essence, she’s a pencil-sketch, a narrative device to get Rowland to the moment of realisation that he is “incape, incape, incapable of love”. All the same, Hyland and Rowland get into a terrific scrap on “I’m Always Going To Love You”, with Hyland, first wooed and now abandoned, snarling at Rowland: “Kevin, don't talk to me ... You saw me as a challenge”. Despite being absent for great chunks of the set, Williams fares well. His banter with Rowland – however well-rehearsed (and in some cases, stretching back to the early Eighties) – is loose and good humoured. Trombonist Big Jim Paterson, Rowland’s longest serving collaborator, elicits some of the biggest cheers of the night. Rowland himself is terrific. He has a Brando-esque emotional intensity, whether during the stripped down soliloquizing on “Me” or snapping into moments of sudden violence. The big songs – especially the encore – find him turning up the soul power, but I kind of prefer the softer croon he uses for the more introspective songs, in particular a show-stopping “It’s OK John Joe”. “We couldn’t leave it like that, could we?” says Pete Williams, ushering in a final act of Dexys classics, including a powerful take on “The Waltz”, a mischievous reworking of “Geno”, a jubilant “I Love You (Listen To This)” and a version of “Until I Believe In My Soul” that simply won’t stop. The finale, “This Is What She’s Like”, repurposes the show as rousing soul revue, Rowland at one point leaning over the side of a box, shouting over and over again, "This is our stuff - this, this, this is our stuff." The stuff of brilliance itself. Dexys played: Now (into) Lost (into) Me She Got A Wiggle You (into) Thinking Of You I'm Always Going To Love You Incapable Of Love Nowhere Is Home Free It's OK John Joe Free Reprise The Waltz Geno (into) Listen To This Until I Believe In my Soul/Light Turns Green I Couldn’t Help It If I Tried This Is What She's Like Photo credit: Dean Chalkley Follow me on Twitter @MichaelBonner Special offer! For one week only, subscribe to Uncut from only £15.35 and save up to 50%! Don’t miss out on this great offer as it won’t be around for long. Please note, the 50% discount is available to UK Direct Debit subscribers only.

As you come up the escalator at Leicester Square underground station, you might notice the posters lining the walls advertising Mamma Mia!, Viva Forever! and We Will Rock You. You could be forgiven for wondering what place Dexys have in the heart of West End theatreland, especially here among these big karaoke musicals.

But it’s worth remembering that Kevin Rowland has always seemed to relish his band’s underdog status – finding something heroic, I guess, in the ongoing struggle against more orthodox forms of music.

Indeed, his first appearance on Top Of The Pops – February 7, 1980 – found Dexys Midnight Runners sharing a bill with AC/DC and Buggles, while Legs & Co danced to “The Beat Goes On” by Whispers. 33 years on, Rowland continues to remind us that he’s on the outside looking in. He and his band are here for a nine-night residency at London’s Duke of York’s theatre on St Martin’s Lane, sandwiched between David Hare’s play The Judas Kiss and Peter Nichols’ Passion Play, starring Zoë Wanamaker. How on earth did they get in? Did the caretaker forget to lock the doors properly?

Of course, Kevin Rowland has always been one of our most challenging and idiosyncratic musicians. Following the 27 year gap between Don’t Stand Me Down and last year’s One Day I’m Going To Soar (and 13 years since his last solo album, My Beauty), Rowland chose a predictably unconventional route back into the public consciousness. Before One Day I’m Going To Soar was released last June, Rowland and the latest incarnation of Dexys played their as yet-unreleased new album in full and in sequence. Of course, the practise of playing albums in their entirety like this is traditionally reserved for a band revisiting a classic album, not launching a new one. But such is the high-stakes drama of the Dexys narrative – and the sheer confidence in the album’s songs – that it arguably felt like there was no other logical way to do it.

The programme for these run of dates at the Duke of York’s is essentially the same as last year’s shows: One Day I’m Going To Soar followed by a selection of old favourites. But this setting in the 120 year-old venue seems particularly apt for Rowland and his nine co-conspirators, who give full rein to the more theatrical aspects of a Dexys show. If One Day I’m Going To Soar was the latest chapter in Rowland’s ongoing spiritual autobiography, then these narrative-driven confessionals are splendidly – and stylishly – played out. Rowland leads the sartorial charge with, by my reckoning, three costume changes, while his accomplices opt for a kind of 1940s American casual look. The show opens with a piano motif played in darkness before a spot catches Rowland for “Now”, and the first of many, brilliantly acerbic moments of self-examination: “Oh I know that I’ve been crazy and that cannot be denied, but inside of me there’s always been a secret urge to fly”.

The story –boy meets girl, they fall in love, he can’t commit, sad face, the end – is played out in song, and also a series of dialogues between Rowland and Pete Williams, who acts as his foil in the early part of the show, and later, Madeleine Hyland, as the object of Rowland’s lustful attentions. First glimpsed reclining on a chaise lounge above the band, Hyland is a relatively conventional vocal presence compared to Rowland’s rich, swooning soul voice. In essence, she’s a pencil-sketch, a narrative device to get Rowland to the moment of realisation that he is “incape, incape, incapable of love”. All the same, Hyland and Rowland get into a terrific scrap on “I’m Always Going To Love You”, with Hyland, first wooed and now abandoned, snarling at Rowland: “Kevin, don’t talk to me … You saw me as a challenge”.

Despite being absent for great chunks of the set, Williams fares well. His banter with Rowland – however well-rehearsed (and in some cases, stretching back to the early Eighties) – is loose and good humoured. Trombonist Big Jim Paterson, Rowland’s longest serving collaborator, elicits some of the biggest cheers of the night. Rowland himself is terrific. He has a Brando-esque emotional intensity, whether during the stripped down soliloquizing on “Me” or snapping into moments of sudden violence. The big songs – especially the encore – find him turning up the soul power, but I kind of prefer the softer croon he uses for the more introspective songs, in particular a show-stopping “It’s OK John Joe”.

“We couldn’t leave it like that, could we?” says Pete Williams, ushering in a final act of Dexys classics, including a powerful take on “The Waltz”, a mischievous reworking of “Geno”, a jubilant “I Love You (Listen To This)” and a version of “Until I Believe In My Soul” that simply won’t stop. The finale, “This Is What She’s Like”, repurposes the show as rousing soul revue, Rowland at one point leaning over the side of a box, shouting over and over again, “This is our stuff – this, this, this is our stuff.” The stuff of brilliance itself.

Dexys played:

Now (into)

Lost (into)

Me

She Got A Wiggle

You (into)

Thinking Of You

I’m Always Going To Love You

Incapable Of Love

Nowhere Is Home

Free

It’s OK John Joe

Free Reprise

The Waltz

Geno (into)

Listen To This

Until I Believe In my Soul/Light Turns Green

I Couldn’t Help It If I Tried

This Is What She’s Like

Photo credit: Dean Chalkley

Follow me on Twitter @MichaelBonner

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