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Watch Morrissey take tea with Victoria Wood

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Watch Morrissey take tea with Victoria Wood
Morrissey has appeared on Victoria Wood's Nice Cup Of Tea. The programme, which follows the comedienne as she explores the British fascination with tea, was broadcast last night on BBC One. The interview with Morrissey took place last year in New York. The pair share a pot of Ceylon tea from Morri...

Morrissey has appeared on Victoria Wood’s Nice Cup Of Tea.

The programme, which follows the comedienne as she explores the British fascination with tea, was broadcast last night on BBC One.

The interview with Morrissey took place last year in New York. The pair share a pot of Ceylon tea from Morrissey’s favourite teapot – bought in Rome. “I’m a tea-aholic,” admits Morrissey. “As soon as I wake up, I must have tea.”

Scroll down to watch the clip.

Also featured in the programme are Doctor Who actor Matt Smith and Graham Norton.

You can watch the programme in full until April 18 on the BBC iPlayer.

Picture credit: BBC/Keo Filoms/Andy Boag

Iggy Pop – Album By Album

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Iggy Pop – Album By Album
Iggy & The Stooges’ new album, Ready To Die, is reviewed in the new issue of Uncut, dated May 2013, and out now. In this archive feature from Uncut’s Take 146 issue (July 2006), Iggy talks us through the highlights of his 40-year career – including skiing trips with David Bowie and a cameo...

Iggy & The Stooges’ new album, Ready To Die, is reviewed in the new issue of Uncut, dated May 2013, and out now. In this archive feature from Uncut’s Take 146 issue (July 2006), Iggy talks us through the highlights of his 40-year career – including skiing trips with David Bowie and a cameo from Princess Margaret… Interview: Jaan Uhelszki

____________________

THE STOOGES – THE STOOGES

(Elektra, 1969)

The band overcome sartorial concerns to unleash a raw classic on an unsuspecting world…

Iggy Pop: “When we were about to go into the studio, we were all really concerned with how much money the record company would give us for clothes. Especially Ron [Asheton, guitar] and Dave [Alexander, bass]. They were so excited they were going to go to New York where there was a shop called Ball Sergeant that had all the mod gear. They were going to mod out. Me, I was buying my clothes at a shop for pimps on Times Square. I had a little different look that I was going for. But what was really important other than that was our rehearsals. Stooges rehearsals never lasted too much more than 20 minutes. During them, I was writing, putting together the riffs and pieces of music so they would add up to songs, finishing words madly before we went to New York [to record the album]. We had four songs ready and we thought that was going to be our album. This was ‘1969’, ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog’, ‘No Fun’ and ‘Anne’. Each of the songs was meant to have a 7 to 15 minute instrumental after the conclusion of the song format. The good news was the song parts were good and the improv was good up to about a minute. The bad news was that after that, we hadn’t put the homework into making an improv stand up as a listening experience.

“I remember listening to playbacks and just thinking, ‘Well, maybe if I smoke another joint, ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog’, will sound more exciting on the sixth minute.’ But I knew what was up. So did [label boss] Jac Holzman. He came in and said, ‘Look, boys, you don’t have enough songs here.’ We said, ‘Oh, don’t worry about it, we’ve got more.’ I remember just knocking up some quick songs in the Chelsea Hotel. ‘Little Doll’ I wrote it in my head, just watching a groupie, a New York slick chick walking around across the hotel lobby. Ron came up with the riffs for ‘Not Right’ and ‘Real Cool Time’ and we were back in a studio the next day.

“What do I remember most about [producer] John Cale? I do remember he spotted that the guys didn’t play as well if I wasn’t dancing around. They just don’t. My guess is that there’s something about it that they find profoundly embarrassing and for that reason it’s titillating and it removes barriers somehow. They’re not the kind of guys that would ever do something like that, and the more I dance, the more their heads go down and stare at their toes, and the better they played. But it was exhausting. Fucking exhausting.”

THE STOOGES – FUN HOUSE

(Elektra, 1970)

…in which Iggy perfects the correct time to drop LSD during the recording process.

“What I wanted for the group was more aggression for the music, and a more complex content. On this album the lyrics are getting a little wilder and the music is getting slightly pushier. Steve MacKay’s sax had a lot to do with it, but it was also that now everybody could play a little better. We’d been playing longer. Also, I was taking more LSD than I had when we recorded the first one and I think that had something to do with it, too – taking acid and singing. The way I would do it was, I would just make sure I didn’t take the acid too early. You’d have to take it just before you were going to work and then start working just before you felt it coming on. It would delay the disorientation and usually just give a certain sort of edge to everything. Put everything into a more spatial context.

“Of everything on that album, the one that really stood out to me was ‘1970’. That’s the one of which I’m most proud, as I put that together and handed it to the group. I like the way it’s written and I love the way it’s played, and I like the way it progresses from this kind of a rock blues, and then it goes into the sax so beautifully played, and the groove changes. It gets pretty fierce at the end and I like that, too. You know, Jack White, ever the smartass, once asked me, ‘So, did you ever record “1971”?’”

THE STOOGES – RAW POWER

(Columbia, 1973)

With his band in disarray, Iggy and new collaborator James Williamson head to London. Ron and Scott Asheton, though, are not far behind…

“We were all one step away from becoming junkies, and the ones that weren’t junkies were out of touch with reality. I was living in London and the idea was that we’d form a band and make an album. I got a corporate goodbye present, or sabbatical present, from Elektra – a nice Nikon camera – and I hocked it for a couple hundred bucks and used the money to buy a ticket to Florida. I was going to hook up with Steve Blue [Steve Paul of Blue Sky], who was handling the Winter brothers. He was even less interested in The Stooges than the English people. So I went up to New York on the rest of the ticket and through Danny Fields I hooked up with MainMan management, who were our best shot. At least they’d respect art. And they did. They put us up. We had a place to rehearse, a good studio, but we didn’t really relate to English musicians or producers and we resolved to do it ourselves, with Scott and Ron. They weren’t thrilled about that, but they respected us and left us alone.

“The band had a nice house to live in and when I couldn’t come up with the lyrics and live with them at the same time, they put me in Blakes Hotel. I was staying in the basement. I’d stick my head out of the door and there would be Lord Snowdon and Princess Margaret. ‘Oh, I say, it’s Iggy Pop.’ My personal favourite here is ‘Shake Appeal’ as that was the only three minutes of my life when I was ever going to approximate Little Richard. But ‘Search And Destroy’ is the masterpiece. And I knew it when we did it, so I felt a sense of relief that my immortalisation, basically, was secured.”

IGGY POP – THE IDIOT

(RCA, 1977)

Written and recorded with David Bowie while he was beginning his Berlin trilogy. Iggy appears content to let the Dame call the shots.

“No, I never felt competitive with David at all. He was, and is, much more successful in worldly terms than I’ll ever be and he’s a very, very sharp banana. It was just I thought he had a set of complementary skills and I thought he had access to a lot of knowledge that he could offer me, and then see what happened. I think I functioned as an outlet for his overflow. Because there are things he did with me that he couldn’t do as David Bowie, because it would have slowed him down or might have been a wrong move. And then he was also able to use me to practise. He did the same thing on Blah Blah Blah that he did with Lust For Life, and here on The Idiot. He made an Iggy album first, but watched the engineers there in the studio, learned how they worked, thought about it, had a chance to get to know the desk, and have daydreams about his own record while he worked on mine. So, on a practical level that made a lot of sense for him. And it’s not unusual that people, when they’re very talented, who get into the kind of key period he was in then, have too many ideas they don’t necessarily exactly want to do themselves, but that might lead them to other places, you know? But I never felt any competition, there was no point. He was always gonna win.”

IGGY POP – LUST FOR LIFE

(RCA, 1977)

Iggy’s second collaboration with Bowie, recorded in Berlin. Written, it seems, on a ukulele.

“The big thing about Lust For Life was we’d been on tour with a rock band. We’d been playing [1977 album] The Idiot, as well as Stooges songs onstage. So we had a band all set, and they wanted to rock. Bowie was tired of spending time on my projects and I think he wanted to get it over with really quickly, so: ‘Let’s just rock and get this guy out of my hair.’ The whole thing was written sitting on our backs in his apartment with his kid’s ukulele. He nicked a call signal off a US Armed Forces broadcast and did the changes. ‘Call this “Lust For Life”,’ he said. ‘Now come up with a song.’ I did it.

“We booked one day in the studio to write and he sat at the piano and he’d name famous rock songs and say, ‘OK, we’re now gonna rewrite “_____”.’ Then he’d play some music and I’d record it. It was total cynicism. ‘We’re now gonna rewrite this one.’ Then he’d knock out something and I’d record it. ‘Sixteen’ I did on my own, it was the sort of thing

I used to write for The Stooges.

“‘Turn Blue’ was left from some experimental work I had done with Bowie in the mid-’70s when we were both out of our minds on coke in LA. So, we had a structure and we went in and recorded it with a very resourceful German engineer who looked like the devil. It was done in a relatively small room in eight days and all during that time my diet was cocaine, German grosse bier, sausages and bratwurst. Appropriate. We had the meat on the brat. ‘The Passenger’ was derived from the Antonioni film, the Morrison poem, and a lick that I was doodling in the studio. It was never supposed to be a song. They used to let me go walkies with the group for an hour in the Neuropsychiatric Institute in Westwood and I saw Antonioni’s The Passenger was playing at the Westwood Theater and it made a big impression on me.”

IGGY POP – BLAH BLAH BLAH

(A&M, 1986)

A synthed-up and sober Iggy hooks up with Bowie and ex-Sex Pistol Steve Jones. Gets his first UK Top 10 along the way with “Real Wild Child”.

“Somebody gave me some money by mistake, and before they found out I called up Steve Jones, who was just out of rehab, and said, ‘I’m going to come to California and rent a big house. Let’s make some music.’ But I had to leave LA, because the person who gave me the money found out, and because I didn’t think I’d survive long if I adopted a full-on LA rockist approach. I was sober. I was married. Steve would say, ‘Ditch your wife and we’ll go out and get some and go drinking.’ He was sober, too, but he was still into the full boots and saddle thing. I hesitated, and went back to New York where I had a little apartment I was renting with my loot from ‘China Girl’. I ran into Bowie. He was all excited and wanted to play me his new demo for this elaborate song. I said, ‘I’ll listen, but let me play you mine.’ I could tell he thought it wasn’t going to be any fucking good, but he put it on and ‘Cry For Love’ came on pretty much as you hear it on the record. He got real quiet and he said, ‘Listen, I can do production on that.’ That made sense for me, and I went to Switzerland twice – on what were basically ski trips – to do some writing for it. I skied because Bowie skied. It was a pain in the ass, but I learned. People constantly expected I was going to break my back and die.”

IGGY POP – SKULL RING

(Virgin, 2003)

Iggy reunites with Scott and Ron Asheton for four tracks. Peaches, Green Day and Sum 41 all bear witness.

“Just to clear things up, I didn’t buy my skull ring after I made the album. It’s a little teeny skull ring that I got from [tattooist] Jonathan Shaw back in the ’90s. And it wasn’t the inspiration for that album, either. I was singing about a sort of death chic. It was meant to be a commentary on power chic, death chic, lust chic. That was the idea.

“As for all the songs, I didn’t want to disappoint anybody. I wanted to do again more of what I’d done with The Stooges. I didn’t want to disappoint [backing band] The Trolls, so I put all the Trolls stuff on it that I possibly could. And I liked a lot of it, too, almost all of it, quite a bit, you know, or I wouldn’t have put it on.

“And then I wanted to do a couple with Green Day, and the next thing you know there was a lot of songs. But Peaches was the cool one. I wasn’t intimidated by her, but I was definitely on my toes because I’d heard her records. We did the tracks without meeting physically and then I met her later. I had her over to my house. She would say stuff like, ‘Oh, well, last night I was trying to fuck one of The Strokes but he wouldn’t go for it.’ Chicks aren’t generally going to talk to you like that.”

THE STOOGES – THE WEIRDNESS

(Virgin, 2007)

It took 34 years for a bona fide follow-up to Raw Power, and as Iggy taunts in the lead off track: “You can’t tell me this isn’t suave.” It’s that, and more.

“We all had a freakout when we realised [bassist] Mike Watt was posting Twitters. He was Twittering about the sessions. We’re all old school. You know, none of us go online, so we flipped out. We came down on him hard. To us, it was like the world’s waiting for our secret project. I had given him a CD that said ‘Secret Plan’. It was kind of meant to be a joke. It was the demos, just so he could learn the songs. He showed the plan to somebody at Pitchfork, who wrote a commentary.

“‘Trollin’’ was supposed to be the middle part of Skull Ring. I thought it broke the energy so I didn’t want to put it on that record. But Scott Asheton insisted. He said, ‘I want it on the record and I want it first so we can show people, look, this is what’s going on.’ So I said, ‘OK, Scott.’ ‘ATM’ was just about how I just find myself using them a lot once

I got any money. Always seemed to be a reason why I had to go get cash, pull it out. I’m fascinated with that invention; it’s relatively recent in terms of my lifespan. The line ‘My dick is turning into a tree’ is very hippy. We have tree huggers, y’know? I was particularly proud of that line. The people that don’t like it? That’s OK, it’s not for everybody.”

IGGY POP – PRÉLIMINAIRES

(Virgin, 2009)

Iggy does French jazz. Or, at least, his approximation of it. Assuming he’d been born black. In New Orleans. In the 1920s.

“I heard about this writer Michel Houellebecq who’s supposed to be a bad boy. So since I specialise in working with juvenile delinquents, or now with mature delinquents, I thought I’d better check him out. I ended up in a creaky old French hotel on a dirty beach in Normandy spending four days reading his novel. I’d read it all day, then have dinner over the bar with Sir Ron Asheton. Four days of that would make anybody crazy. Me, I found it reassuring someone was as negative as I am! About a year later I had three Euro geeks in my backyard. Every 10 or 15 years I’ll meet some sort of a Euro nerd who is bright and wise enough to give me carte blanche on something, then leave me alone. First there was Bowie, then there was [director] Alex Cox, and here were these guys. They wanted to make a movie about this guy who truly qualifies as an eccentric and they wanted me to do the music. Houellebecq had managed to talk a bundle of money out of a film company to let him make a movie out of his book, which was for sure going to be a financial disaster. That was fucking hilarious, so I said yes. I was sitting listening to a Louis Armstrong LP that day, thinking about how much I’d liked to have been around New Orleans in the ’20s. And of course I’d have wanted to be black, talented, and not poor. So I wanted to write songs like I was that guy.”

Hear new National track, “Don’t Swallow The Cap”

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Hear new National track, “Don’t Swallow The Cap”
The National have released a new track, "Don't Swallow The Cap". The song is taken from the band's forthcoming album, Trouble In Mind, which is released on May 20 in the UK. "Don't Swallow The Cap" is the second preview of Trouble In Mind, following "Demons", which the band debuted last week. The...

The National have released a new track, “Don’t Swallow The Cap”.

The song is taken from the band’s forthcoming album, Trouble In Mind, which is released on May 20 in the UK.

“Don’t Swallow The Cap” is the second preview of Trouble In Mind, following “Demons”, which the band debuted last week.

The band recently announced UK and European tour dates, including a show at London’s Alexandra Palace on November 13.

Nile Rodgers on Daft Punk: “They make you up your game”

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Nile Rodgers on Daft Punk: “They make you up your game”
Nile Rodgers has spoken about working on Daft Punk's new album Random Access Memories. Speaking to Vice as part of their Creators Project series, Rodgers says that "Ninety percent if not higher of all recordings that I've ever made in my life have been the result of a very impromptu initial meeting...

Nile Rodgers has spoken about working on Daft Punk’s new album Random Access Memories.

Speaking to Vice as part of their Creators Project series, Rodgers says that “Ninety percent if not higher of all recordings that I’ve ever made in my life have been the result of a very impromptu initial meeting that feels so natural and so organic that you have to take it to the next level. They make you up your game, even if your game is pretty good.”

He adds: “I feel like I’m working with people who grew up with me and feel it the same way we felt the vibe when we were creating this stuff. It’s like they went back to go forward.”

Rodgers is one of a number of collaborators Daft Punk have worked with on Random Access Memories, which is released on May 20. The duo have also worked with Giorgio Moroder, Todd Edwards, Panda Bear and Chilly Gonzales are all believed to have recorded with the French duo in the studio. Scroll down to watch Nile Rogers speak about working with Daft Punk.

Speaking about working with Daft Punk, Todd Edwards said: “Describing the new songs as “future classics,” Edwards goes on to say: “They reversed gears and went back to a time that no one’s really focused on. They’re fulfilling their vision on all levels.”

Jeff Buckley musical set for Broadway?

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Jeff Buckley musical set for Broadway?

A musical production based on Jeff Buckley is set to open this autumn at The Old Globe in San Diego. The Last Goodbye - named after one of Buckley's most popular songs – has been conceived and adapted by Michael Kimmel and retells the story of Romeo And Juliet using songs by the late singer. Billboard reports that the musical will likely end up on Broadway in New York, given the high profile producers attached to the project - Hal Luftig ['Kinky Boots'] and Ruth and Steve Hendel ['Fela!']. The show debuted in 2010, but the San Diego production marks its first commercial run. It will be staged from September 20 until November 3. The musical has been workshopping over the past two years, with director Alex Timbers at the helm. The production will use Buckley songs such as "Lover, You Should Have Come Over" and "Eternal Life". Buckley's mother Mary Guibert said of the production: "I cannot imagine a better launching pad for this project than the Old Globe. Michael Kimmel's concept, which combines Jeff's music and the Bard's words, lifts the story to another level entirely." Recently, a new trailer was released for the forthcoming film, Greetings From Tim Buckley.

A musical production based on Jeff Buckley is set to open this autumn at The Old Globe in San Diego.

The Last Goodbye – named after one of Buckley’s most popular songs – has been conceived and adapted by Michael Kimmel and retells the story of Romeo And Juliet using songs by the late singer.

Billboard reports that the musical will likely end up on Broadway in New York, given the high profile producers attached to the project – Hal Luftig [‘Kinky Boots’] and Ruth and Steve Hendel [‘Fela!’].

The show debuted in 2010, but the San Diego production marks its first commercial run. It will be staged from September 20 until November 3. The musical has been workshopping over the past two years, with director Alex Timbers at the helm.

The production will use Buckley songs such as “Lover, You Should Have Come Over” and “Eternal Life”.

Buckley’s mother Mary Guibert said of the production: “I cannot imagine a better launching pad for this project than the Old Globe. Michael Kimmel’s concept, which combines Jeff’s music and the Bard’s words, lifts the story to another level entirely.”

Recently, a new trailer was released for the forthcoming film, Greetings From Tim Buckley.

Gregg Allman biopic in the works

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Gregg Allman biopic in the works

Writer-director Randall Miller and screenwriter Jody Savin have acquired the rights to My Cross To Bear, Gregg Allman's best-selling memoir, which was published last May (2012). Allman and his manager Michael Lehman will serve as executive producers on the film adaptation. The biopic will focus on Allman's '70s heyday as well as his recent efforts to clean up his lifestyle. Director Randall Miller told The Hollywood Reporter: "We knew it was a great story but didn't know how great it was until we read the book. That journey and coming out the other side is not the normal falling-into-hell story that rock 'n' roll often is." The film will feature a mix of original songs and Allman covers performed by the cast, though the makers have yet to start searching for their lead actor. Meanwhile, Miller and Savin's eagerly-anticipated CBGB movie is currently in post-production. It stars Alan Rickman as the club's founder Hilly Kristal and features Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins as Iggy Pop.

Writer-director Randall Miller and screenwriter Jody Savin have acquired the rights to My Cross To Bear, Gregg Allman‘s best-selling memoir, which was published last May (2012). Allman and his manager Michael Lehman will serve as executive producers on the film adaptation.

The biopic will focus on Allman’s ’70s heyday as well as his recent efforts to clean up his lifestyle. Director Randall Miller told The Hollywood Reporter: “We knew it was a great story but didn’t know how great it was until we read the book. That journey and coming out the other side is not the normal falling-into-hell story that rock ‘n’ roll often is.”

The film will feature a mix of original songs and Allman covers performed by the cast, though the makers have yet to start searching for their lead actor.

Meanwhile, Miller and Savin’s eagerly-anticipated CBGB movie is currently in post-production. It stars Alan Rickman as the club’s founder Hilly Kristal and features Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins as Iggy Pop.

The Graham Bond Organisation – Wade In The Water: Classics, Origins & Oddities

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The Graham Bond Organisation – Wade In The Water: Classics, Origins & Oddities

A wizard, a true star... Graham Bond is usually remembered for his magical interests and his untimely death, an apparent suicide in 1974. The band he founded, the formidable Graham Bond Organisation - whose output between 1963 and 1967 is celebrated here - is better known for Bond’s more illustrious sidemen, notably Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce. A year after the pair left to form Cream in summer 1966, replacement drummer Jon Hiseman and trusty tenor saxman Dick Heckstall Smith also quit, joining rival bandleader John Mayall before themselves founding Colosseum. Yet it’s the GBO’s electrifying recordings that should be remembered, a thrilling, unique brand of British R&B, driven by Bond’s supercharged Hammond organ. In 1961 Bond was well established as an alto sax player (with Don Rendell), before he switched allegiance from Charlie Parker to Ray Charles. Briefly joining Alexis Korner, Bond poached Bruce and Baker from Blues Incorporated to create the first GBO in 1963, adding budding guitarist John McLaughlin. McLaughlin’s rapid departure and Heckstall Smith’s arrival established the definitive GBO line up adopting a daring jazz rock approach that was truly liberating. Bond’s intense, wholehearted playing influenced Brian Auger, Zoot Money, Jon Lord and Keith Emerson, among many. Bond was an innovator, playing the Hammond through a Leslie Cabinet (pre-Mike Ratledge/Soft Machine) and pioneering the mellotron on record, road-testing the cumbersome instrument long before it became a fashionable prog accessory. An intimidating, unruly looking bunch, the GBO had no obvious frontman or focal guitarist. Commercial success eluded them, to the point of bafflingly covering Debbie Reynolds’ ‘Tammy’, but The GBO did record the two exceptional albums The Sound of ‘65 and There’s A Bond Between Us. These underpin this collection, elevated by such delights as Duffy Power’s rousing Parlophone singles (with the GBO) and unheard sessions with Jamaican guitarist Ernest Ranglin. There’s little from the final trio with Dick Heckstall Smith and Hiseman but that’s a contractual quibble (interested parties should check out Solid Bond). Deserted again by musicians he had nurtured, suffering depression and battling drug abuse, Bond uprooted to America for a couple of years, returning to oversee various ungainly bands (Holy Magick, Incantation, Magus) that drew on a preoccupation with white magic. Bond re-united with Ginger Baker in the unwieldy Airforce, worked with Pete Brown (who provides this box-set’s affectionate notes) and recorded two albums that clumsily tried to marry chants and incantations with free jazz. At his best, though, powering the original GBO, Bond was a true catalyst for future ideas, still sounding dazzlingly fresh and modern today. Mick Houghton

A wizard, a true star…

Graham Bond is usually remembered for his magical interests and his untimely death, an apparent suicide in 1974. The band he founded, the formidable Graham Bond Organisation – whose output between 1963 and 1967 is celebrated here – is better known for Bond’s more illustrious sidemen, notably Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce. A year after the pair left to form Cream in summer 1966, replacement drummer Jon Hiseman and trusty tenor saxman Dick Heckstall Smith also quit, joining rival bandleader John Mayall before themselves founding Colosseum.

Yet it’s the GBO’s electrifying recordings that should be remembered, a thrilling, unique brand of British R&B, driven by Bond’s supercharged Hammond organ. In 1961 Bond was well established as an alto sax player (with Don Rendell), before he switched allegiance from Charlie Parker to Ray Charles. Briefly joining Alexis Korner, Bond poached Bruce and Baker from Blues Incorporated to create the first GBO in 1963, adding budding guitarist John McLaughlin. McLaughlin’s rapid departure and Heckstall Smith’s arrival established the definitive GBO line up adopting a daring jazz rock approach that was truly liberating.

Bond’s intense, wholehearted playing influenced Brian Auger, Zoot Money, Jon Lord and Keith Emerson, among many. Bond was an innovator, playing the Hammond through a Leslie Cabinet (pre-Mike Ratledge/Soft Machine) and pioneering the mellotron on record, road-testing the cumbersome instrument long before it became a fashionable prog accessory. An intimidating, unruly looking bunch, the GBO had no obvious frontman or focal guitarist. Commercial success eluded them, to the point of bafflingly covering Debbie Reynolds’ ‘Tammy’, but The GBO did record the two exceptional albums The Sound of ‘65 and There’s A Bond Between Us.

These underpin this collection, elevated by such delights as Duffy Power’s rousing Parlophone singles (with the GBO) and unheard sessions with Jamaican guitarist Ernest Ranglin. There’s little from the final trio with Dick Heckstall Smith and Hiseman but that’s a contractual quibble (interested parties should check out Solid Bond). Deserted again by musicians he had nurtured, suffering depression and battling drug abuse, Bond uprooted to America for a couple of years, returning to oversee various ungainly bands (Holy Magick, Incantation, Magus) that drew on a preoccupation with white magic.

Bond re-united with Ginger Baker in the unwieldy Airforce, worked with Pete Brown (who provides this box-set’s affectionate notes) and recorded two albums that clumsily tried to marry chants and incantations with free jazz. At his best, though, powering the original GBO, Bond was a true catalyst for future ideas, still sounding dazzlingly fresh and modern today.

Mick Houghton

Black Sabbath to debut new single on episode of CSI

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Black Sabbath to debut new single on episode of CSI
Black Sabbath have announced that they will premiere their new single "End Of The Beginning" on the season finale of TV show CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. The track will be played on the May 15 episode of the series. According to a statement, the band will perform the song when actors Ted Danson ...

Black Sabbath have announced that they will premiere their new single “End Of The Beginning” on the season finale of TV show CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.

The track will be played on the May 15 episode of the series. According to a statement, the band will perform the song when actors Ted Danson and Marc Vann go to a Black Sabbath gig to “investigate a trail of murders with horrifying similarities to the sins in Dante’s Inferno.”

CSI’s executive producer Don McGill said: “When we first heard that Black Sabbath was interested in premiering a song on CSI from their first studio album in 35 years, we were all really excited.” He added: “So many of us are longtime fans. And seeing as the album is titled ’13’ and this is the finale of CSI’s Season 13, it seemed like the perfect match. We couldn’t be more thrilled.”

“End Of The Beginning” is the first track from 13, which will be released on June 10.

13 is the first album Osbourne, Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler have recorded together since 1978’s Never Say Die!. The album was recorded primarily in Los Angeles with producer Rick Rubin and it features Rage Against The Machine’s Brad Wilk, who replaces original drummer Bill Ward.

Earlier this week, Sabbath announced a UK arena tour for December 2013. The band will kick off the tour at London’s O2 Arena on December 12, before calling in at Belfast, Sheffield, Glasgow and Manchester before a homecoming show at Birmingham’s LG Arena on December 20.

Black Sabbath will play:

London O2 Arena (December 10)

Belfast Odyssey Arena (December 12)

Sheffield Arena (December 14)

Glasgow Hydro (December 16)

Manchester Arena (December 18)

Birmingham LG Arena (December 20)

Tickets for Black Sabbath’s UK arena tour go onsale on Friday (April 12) at 9am.

Former Eagles guitarist Bernie Leadon to rejoin band for forthcoming tour

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Former Eagles guitarist Bernie Leadon to rejoin band for forthcoming tour

Guitarist Bernie Leadon is reportedly to rejoin The Eagles for their upcoming History Of The Eagles tour. Rolling Stone reports comments made by current Eagles guitarist Joe Walsh in Billboard. "Bernie's brilliant," says Walsh. "I never really got a chance to play with him, but we've been in contact. We see him from time to time, and I'm really glad he's coming because it's going to take the show up a notch, and I'm really looking forward to playing with him, finally." Walsh went on to suggest that Leadon [second left in the above picture] will perform material from his time in the band. "There'll be part of the show that doesn't involve me," he said. "But I may come out and play some James Gang stuff as part of the show, just to show what I was doing when 'Witchy Woman' came out. We don't have that down yet." If true, it seems likely Leadon's role in the shows will be similar to that of Mick Taylor, who joined The Rolling Stones during last year's live dates to perform "Midnight Rambler", and will play with them again this year as a a special guest. Bernie Leadon was a founding member of The Eagles, playing with the band from 1971 - 1975. He appears will all Eagles past and present, in the forthcoming documentary, The History Of The Eagles, which will receive its UK premier at Sundance London on April 25 and 27.

Guitarist Bernie Leadon is reportedly to rejoin The Eagles for their upcoming History Of The Eagles tour.

Rolling Stone reports comments made by current Eagles guitarist Joe Walsh in Billboard. “Bernie’s brilliant,” says Walsh. “I never really got a chance to play with him, but we’ve been in contact. We see him from time to time, and I’m really glad he’s coming because it’s going to take the show up a notch, and I’m really looking forward to playing with him, finally.”

Walsh went on to suggest that Leadon [second left in the above picture] will perform material from his time in the band. “There’ll be part of the show that doesn’t involve me,” he said. “But I may come out and play some James Gang stuff as part of the show, just to show what I was doing when ‘Witchy Woman’ came out. We don’t have that down yet.”

If true, it seems likely Leadon’s role in the shows will be similar to that of Mick Taylor, who joined The Rolling Stones during last year’s live dates to perform “Midnight Rambler”, and will play with them again this year as a a special guest.

Bernie Leadon was a founding member of The Eagles, playing with the band from 1971 – 1975. He appears will all Eagles past and present, in the forthcoming documentary, The History Of The Eagles, which will receive its UK premier at Sundance London on April 25 and 27.

The 15th Uncut Playlist Of 2013

John Mulvey
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The 15th Uncut Playlist Of 2013
A momentous week, one way or another, though I can’t help wishing the resonant and thought-through fury of “Tramp The Dirt Down” was heading into the Top Ten instead of “Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead”. At times in the past few days, it was a little harder than usual to concentrate on the ...

A momentous week, one way or another, though I can’t help wishing the resonant and thought-through fury of “Tramp The Dirt Down” was heading into the Top Ten instead of “Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead”.

At times in the past few days, it was a little harder than usual to concentrate on the business of new records. Nevertheless, some really good things here, I think: special mentions to Justin Vernon’s Shouting Matches (my favourite thing he’s been involved with, by a long way, since the first Bon Iver album; follow the link to hear it all); the beautiful new Date Palms set; and, predictably, Mark Kozelek’s new project. The last thing on “Perils From The Sea” is called “Somehow The Wonder Of Life Prevails”, and its content feels in some ways like the culmination of the themes Kozelek has been assiduously working through for the past two decades. For those of us who’ve followed him all that time, it’s a pretty emotional experience: usual rash promises, but I’ll try and write about it properly next week, once this issue is out of the way.

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

1 Gregor Schwellenbach – Gregor Schwellenbach Spielt 20 Jahre Kompakt (Kompakt)

2 Goat – Stonegoat/Dreambuilding (Rocket)

3 Mark Kozelek & Jimmy Lavalle – Perils From The Sea (Caldo Verde)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsRjfEMz47k

4 Frugal Puritan – Frugal Puritan (Folk Police)

5 Elvis Costello – Tramp The Dirt Down (Warner Bros)

6 The Shouting Matches – Grownass Man (Middle West)

7 Date Palms – The Dusted Sessions (Thrill Jockey)

8 Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – Push The Sky Away (Bad Seed Ltd)

9 Waxahatchee – Brother Bryan (Wichita)

10 Charlemagne Palestine/Z’ev – Rubhitbangklanghear (Sub Rosa)

11 The Master Musicians Of Bukkake – White Mountain Return (Important)s

12 Fleetwood Mac – Sad Angel

13 Various Artists – The Liminal Mix 25 – The Choir of Love and the Dancing Feet by High Wolf (theliminal.co.uk)

25 The Choir of Love and the Dancing Feet by HIGH WOLF by Theliminal on Mixcloud

14 Queens Of The Stone Age – My God Is The Sun (Matador)

15 Grim Tower – Anarchic Breezes (Outer Battery)

16 Daniel Menche – Marriage Of Metals (Editions Mego)

17 Thee Oh Sees – Floating Coffin (Castleface)

18 Moon Duo – – Trails (White Rainbow Remix) (Souterrain Transmissions)

19 Chris Abrahams – Memory Night (Room40)

20 Holden – The Inheritors (Border Community)

21 The Handsome Family – Wilderness (Loose)

22 Cool Ghouls – Cool Ghouls (Empty Cellar)

23 Stellar Om Source – Joy One Mile (RVNG INTL)

24 Various Artists – Inspirational Anthems Volume 6: Origins Of American Primitive Guitar (Tompkins Square)

25 Various Artists – Road Songs: Car Tune Classics 1942-1962 (Fremeaux)

Suede announce October 2013 UK and Irish tour dates

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Suede announce October 2013 UK and Irish tour dates
Suede have announced details of an October 2013 UK and Ireland tour. Following two massive shows last month, the band have added five new dates for later on this year, calling in at Leeds, Glasgow, Dublin, Manchester and Birmingham. They will play tracks from their sixth album Bloodsports, which w...

Suede have announced details of an October 2013 UK and Ireland tour.

Following two massive shows last month, the band have added five new dates for later on this year, calling in at Leeds, Glasgow, Dublin, Manchester and Birmingham. They will play tracks from their sixth album Bloodsports, which was released on March 18.

The LP was the band’s first in over 10 years and entered the Official UK Albums Chart at Number 10, giving them their first Top 10 hit since 1999’s ‘Head Music’. Singer Brett Anderson hinted recently that its success could see band continue to record music together.

Initially talking about former guitarist Bernard Butler, he said: “I’ve learned before, to my eternal regret, that if a creative relationship works you’re a fool to throw it away.” He then added: “So now Suede’s relationships work again, I’d like to think we could make another great record to follow this great record and start a new chapter for the band.”

Suede will play:

Leeds O2 Academy (October 26)

Glasgow Barrowlands (27)

Dublin Olympia (27)

Manchester Academy 1 (30)

Birmingham Academy 1 (31)

Kate Bush awarded CBE by the Queen

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Kate Bush awarded CBE by the Queen
Kate Bush received a CBE for services to music from the Queen today (April 10) at a ceremony at Windsor Castle. The singer made a rare public appearance to accept the accolade. Although she declined to speak to journalists gathered at the castle for the ceremony, she did issue the following statem...

Kate Bush received a CBE for services to music from the Queen today (April 10) at a ceremony at Windsor Castle.

The singer made a rare public appearance to accept the accolade. Although she declined to speak to journalists gathered at the castle for the ceremony, she did issue the following statement, the BBC reports.

“I feel incredibly thrilled to receive this honour which I share with my family, friends and fellow musicians and everybody who has been such an important part of it all. Now I’ve got something special to put on top of the Christmas tree.”

Kate Bush has released 10 studio albums over a 40-year career. Her last two albums – ’50 Words For Snow’ and ‘Director’s Cut’ (featuring reworkings of old songs) – were released in 2011.

Crime And The City Solution – American Twilight

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Crime And The City Solution – American Twilight

First new material in 20 years from celebrated post-punk doomsayers... Perhaps the most enduring document of Crime & The City Solution is to be found in Wim Wenders’ 1987 film Wings Of Desire. A sombre fantasy in which angels watch over the traumatised inhabitants of West Berlin, it climaxes with a scene in which the group – fronted by snakish vocalist Simon Bonney, his sideman the exceptional guitarist Rowland S Howard – perform their “Six Bells Chime” with a holy intensity. Formed in Sydney in 1976, Crime emerged from the same post-punk flux that also spawned The Birthday Party. But never did they seem as at home as they did in Berlin, their apocalyptic punk-blues an eerily perfect fit for this city of decadence and division. The third, Berlin-based incarnation of Crime And The City Solution disintegrated in 1991, a year after fourth album Paradise Discotheque. Bonney moved to Los Angeles, released two solo albums that indicated a growing interest in blues and country, and then… nothing. Nothing until 2011, when a new line-up of Crime & The City Solution sprung from the ashes. Now operating out of Detroit, this incarnation brings together old hands such as violinist Bronwyn Adams with new, if familiar faces: the likes of drummer Jim White, also of The Dirty Three, and David Eugene Edwards, formerly of 16 Horsepower. What is initially startling about American Twilight is how easily they whip up some of the old fire and brimstone. There is hurricane-force rock’n’roll (“Goddess”), apocalyptic Mariachi (“My Love Takes Me There”), Dionysian funk-rock (“Riven Man”). The gothic gospel of “Domina” is a reminder of Bonney’s exceptional, abject lyricism. “Billowing sails… incision of your nails… wheals on the skin…” he spouts, a preacher atop a decaying pulpit. As the title suggests, this is a very American record. Perhaps as Berlin felt in the mid-‘80s, Detroit feels now: a city of division, albeit one whose wounds have been inflicted by capitalism, not war. American Twilight is seldom better than its title track, searing swamp-punk that recalls Grinderman in its sense of diabolic abandon. Elegy for a civilisation in decay, live it’s accompanied by a slideshow of modern Detroit, buildings fallen into dereliction. Not a band tied to any one place, then. But expert at locating something holy in the rubble. Louis Pattison

First new material in 20 years from celebrated post-punk doomsayers…

Perhaps the most enduring document of Crime & The City Solution is to be found in Wim Wenders’ 1987 film Wings Of Desire. A sombre fantasy in which angels watch over the traumatised inhabitants of West Berlin, it climaxes with a scene in which the group – fronted by snakish vocalist Simon Bonney, his sideman the exceptional guitarist Rowland S Howard – perform their “Six Bells Chime” with a holy intensity. Formed in Sydney in 1976, Crime emerged from the same post-punk flux that also spawned The Birthday Party. But never did they seem as at home as they did in Berlin, their apocalyptic punk-blues an eerily perfect fit for this city of decadence and division.

The third, Berlin-based incarnation of Crime And The City Solution disintegrated in 1991, a year after fourth album Paradise Discotheque. Bonney moved to Los Angeles, released two solo albums that indicated a growing interest in blues and country, and then… nothing. Nothing until 2011, when a new line-up of Crime & The City Solution sprung from the ashes. Now operating out of Detroit, this incarnation brings together old hands such as violinist Bronwyn Adams with new, if familiar faces: the likes of drummer Jim White, also of The Dirty Three, and David Eugene Edwards, formerly of 16 Horsepower.

What is initially startling about American Twilight is how easily they whip up some of the old fire and brimstone. There is hurricane-force rock’n’roll (“Goddess”), apocalyptic Mariachi (“My Love Takes Me There”), Dionysian funk-rock (“Riven Man”). The gothic gospel of “Domina” is a reminder of Bonney’s exceptional, abject lyricism. “Billowing sails… incision of your nails… wheals on the skin…” he spouts, a preacher atop a decaying pulpit.

As the title suggests, this is a very American record. Perhaps as Berlin felt in the mid-‘80s, Detroit feels now: a city of division, albeit one whose wounds have been inflicted by capitalism, not war. American Twilight is seldom better than its title track, searing swamp-punk that recalls Grinderman in its sense of diabolic abandon. Elegy for a civilisation in decay, live it’s accompanied by a slideshow of modern Detroit, buildings fallen into dereliction. Not a band tied to any one place, then. But expert at locating something holy in the rubble.

Louis Pattison

Paul McCartney to reissue Wings Over America live album and concert film Rockshow

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Paul McCartney to reissue Wings Over America live album and concert film Rockshow
Paul McCartney has announced that he will be reissuing Paul McCartney & Wings’ 1976 live album Wings Over America. McCartney will also release the live concert film Rockshow on DVD for the first time, which documented the band's Wings Over the World 1976 US tour – watch some footage of it b...

Paul McCartney has announced that he will be reissuing Paul McCartney & Wings’ 1976 live album Wings Over America.

McCartney will also release the live concert film Rockshow on DVD for the first time, which documented the band’s Wings Over the World 1976 US tour – watch some footage of it below.

The newly-remastered Wings Over America LP, will be released on a range of formats, and will include stacks of bonus material including a recording of the band live at San Francisco’s Cow Palace, and a 75-minute television special of ‘Wings Over the World’ as well as a series of never-before-seen photos and artwork from the tour. It will be released on May 27.

Meanwhile a full-length version of Rockshow, a live concert film of the tour which was shot at the Kingdome in Seattle and features tracks by Wings, as well as some of The Beatles and McCartney solo material, will be released for the first time on DVD. A shortened version of the film originally premiered in 1980 in New York. The film will also get a theatrical release for one night only on May 15 at 500 cinemas worldwide, with McCartney himself introducing the film at London’s BAFTA venue on the night.

Morrissey: ‘Margaret Thatcher did not give a shit about people’

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Morrissey: ‘Margaret Thatcher did not give a shit about people’
Morrissey has released an official statement regarding the death of former British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. The singer released his comments to fansite True To You yesterday (April 9) following Thatcher's death yesterday at the age of 87. In the strongly worded statement, Morrissey wrote...

Morrissey has released an official statement regarding the death of former British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher.

The singer released his comments to fansite True To You yesterday (April 9) following Thatcher’s death yesterday at the age of 87.

In the strongly worded statement, Morrissey wrote:

Thatcher was not a strong or formidable leader. She simply did not give a shit about people, and this coarseness has been neatly transformed into bravery by the British press who are attempting to rewrite history in order to protect patriotism.

He added: “In truth, of course, no British politician has ever been more despised by the British people than Margaret Thatcher.”

Morrissey also commented that anyone protesting at Thatcher’s funeral next week is “certain to be tear-gassed out of sight by the police”.

Morrissey’s full statement reads:

“The difficulty with giving a comment on Margaret Thatcher’s death to the British tabloids is that, no matter how calmly and measuredly you speak, the comment must be reported as an “outburst” or an “explosive attack” if your view is not pro-establishment. If you reference “the Malvinas”, it will be switched to “the Falklands“, and your “Thatcher” will be softened to a “Maggie.” This is generally how things are structured in a non-democratic society.

“Thatcher’s name must be protected not because of all the wrong that she had done, but because the people around her allowed her to do it, and therefore any criticism of Thatcher throws a dangerously absurd light on the entire machinery of British politics. Thatcher was not a strong or formidable leader. She simply did not give a shit about people, and this coarseness has been neatly transformed into bravery by the British press who are attempting to rewrite history in order to protect patriotism.

“As a result, any opposing view is stifled or ridiculed, whereas we must all endure the obligatory praise for Thatcher from David Cameron without any suggestion from the BBC that his praise just might be an outburst of pro-Thatcher extremism from someone whose praise might possibly protect his own current interests. The fact that Thatcher ignited the British public into street riots, violent demonstrations and a social disorder previously unseen in British history is completely ignored by David Cameron in 2013.

“In truth, of course, no British politician has ever been more despised by the British people than Margaret Thatcher. Thatcher’s funeral on Wednesday will be heavily policed for fear that the British taxpayer will want to finally express their view of Thatcher. They are certain to be tear-gassed out of sight by the police.

“United Kingdom? Syria? China? What’s the difference?”

Morrissey

9 April 2013

Thee Oh Sees: “Floating Coffin”

John Mulvey
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Thee Oh Sees: “Floating Coffin”
John Dwyer has the sort of discography so deep and complicated that one suspects even he must have trouble keeping up with himself. As a consequence, it might be a mistake to try and divine paths and trends in career which his encompassed Coachwhips, Pink and Brown, Landed, Yikes, Burmese, The Hospi...

John Dwyer has the sort of discography so deep and complicated that one suspects even he must have trouble keeping up with himself. As a consequence, it might be a mistake to try and divine paths and trends in career which his encompassed Coachwhips, Pink and Brown, Landed, Yikes, Burmese, The Hospitals, Zeigenbock Kopf and Sword + Sandals (according to Wikipedia, anyway, if I can emphasise my spotty knowledge any more) as well as Thee Oh Sees.

Still, it’s a music journalist’s dubious lot to do just that, and so – risking crude generalisations etc – it feels that, since 2010’s “Warm Slime”, Dwyer and Thee Oh Sees have mostly been finessing a kind of music that might usefully be described as hypno-garage (I’m 95 per cent sure I’ve read this tag somewhere else; apologies for the plagiarism). Hypno-garage, I think, essentially means that Thee Oh Sees have found a way of mixing, at speed, pre-punk punk with the bug-eyed disciplines of spacerock and Kraut, so that it becomes at once exhilarating and mantric. If, in the past, Dwyer’s music has reflected dilettante-ish enthusiasms, now it seems to have a more ruthless focus (that is, if we disregard 2011’s “Castlemania”, which was poppier, gentler and maybe even fractionally twee, though in truth I haven’t heard it for a while).

“Floating Coffin”, anyway, feels like the culmination of all that, and it’s fantastic. The dominant mode is galloping, double-drummered, overdriven but super-tight ramalam. Sometimes, as on the opening “I Come From The Mountain”, Dwyer affects a clipped rasp that makes him sound a little like the guy from The Trashmen. Mostly, though, his voice is high and gusting, something which seems to blur, meld into that of Brigid Dawson, and give an even greater impression of momentum to these generally brilliant tunes.

The hectic psych-punk of “Strawberries 1+2” might be, ironically, the closest Dwyer has got to the sound of his Bay Area disciples like Ty Segall. But more often, “Floating Coffin” feels an ultra-evolved take on the garage rock aesthetic, one that’s learned plenty from Neu! (check the radically accelerated Dingerbeat of “No Spell”), Can (check the radically accelerated “Mother Sky” bassline on the outstanding “Maze Fancier”) and pre-“Autobahn” Kraftwerk (check the etc etc “Ruckzuck”-style flute solo on “Tunnel Time”) along the way.

A few bands have been in this vicinity before, of course; Th’Faith Healers spring to mind a few times as “Floating Coffin” blasts along. The skilled combination of lurch and thrust is reminiscent, too, of The Fall in their Hanley/Scanlon/Wollstonecraft heyday, not least on the closing “Minotaur”, which adds violin and droll gravitas, and recalls, after a fashion, “Bill Is Dead”.

I’m conscious that these slightly rushed blogs can sometimes become bogged down in checklists of perceived influences; when assessing a record at relative speed, it’s easy to resort to using references as signposts if there isn’t the time to engage with the music more thoughtfully. The point is, bands who are as much fun as Thee Oh Sees work through their influences to end up sounding like the latest entry on a continuum of great music, not a mere derivative of it. And if you’ve never come across them before, I can’t recommend “Floating Coffin” highly enough as a place to start. Try this:

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

Photograph: Kristen Klein

Depeche Mode announce details of November UK tour

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Depeche Mode announce details of November UK tour
Depeche Mode have announced details of a November 2013 UK tour. The band, who released their new album Delta Machine last month, have added five new UK arena dates on their European tour in addition to their previously announced dates at London's O2 Arena on May 28 and 29. Depeche Mode will play...

Depeche Mode have announced details of a November 2013 UK tour.

The band, who released their new album Delta Machine last month, have added five new UK arena dates on their European tour in addition to their previously announced dates at London’s O2 Arena on May 28 and 29.

Depeche Mode will play:

Glasgow Hydro (November 11)

Leeds Arena (13)

Manchester Arena (15)

London O2 Arena (19)

Birmingham LG Arena (January 27)

Depeche Mode tickets go on-sale 9am on Friday (April 12).

Brian Wilson, Al Jardine and David Marks add dates to Summer tour

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Brian Wilson, Al Jardine and David Marks add dates to Summer tour
Brian Wilson has announced further details of shows he will play with Al Jardine and David Marks of The Beach Boys in July. The announcement of the live date comes after the group fell out with fellow members Mike Love and Bruce Johnston in 2012 when the pair revealed plans to continue playing liv...

Brian Wilson has announced further details of shows he will play with Al Jardine and David Marks of The Beach Boys in July.

The announcement of the live date comes after the group fell out with fellow members Mike Love and Bruce Johnston in 2012 when the pair revealed plans to continue playing live under The Beach Boys name, with or without Wilson, Jardine and Marks. The three-piece band announced two dates earlier this year and have added gigs in Atlantic City, Pittsburgh, Interlochen and Los Angeles. A statement on the Brian Wilson website suggests further dates will be added shortly.

Mike Love revealed his plan to continue playing under The Beach Boys name last year following the completion of the band’s hugely successful 50th anniversary tour. In October, Love defended his plans in an open letter published by the LA Times. He wrote: “I did not fire Brian Wilson from the Beach Boys. I cannot fire Brian Wilson from The Beach Boys. I am not his employer. I do not have such authority. And even if I did, I would never fire Brian Wilson from the Beach Boys. I love Brian Wilson.”

Brian Wilson, Al Jardine and David Marks will play:

The Grand, Atlantic, New Jersey (July 20)

Stage AE, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (21)

Kresge Auditorum, Interlochen, Michigan (23)

Fraze Pavilion, Kettering, Ohio (25)

Ravina Festival, Highland Park, Illinois (26)

Greek Theatre, Los Angeles, California (October 20)

Saying the unsayable: Elvis Costello, ‘Tramp The Dirt Down’ and Margaret Thatcher

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Saying the unsayable: Elvis Costello, ‘Tramp The Dirt Down’ and Margaret Thatcher

“To make true political music,” the great American critic Greil Marcus wrote nearly 25 years ago, “you have to say what decent people don’t want to hear; that’s something that people fit for satellite benefit concerts will never understand, and that Elvis Costello understood before anyone heard his name.” Marcus was thinking specifically Elvis Costello’s “Tramp The Dirt Down”, from his 1989 album, Spike. The song, of course, is Costello’s furious indictment of Margaret Thatcher and the many ruinous things her Conservative government had done to Britain and its people, in which Costello venomously wishes the dragon dead and looks forward to dancing on her grave. The song is fuelled by the same righteous wrath that Dylan brought to “Masters Of War” – “I hope that you die and your death’ll come soon” – and on release caused grave offence, outrage in predictable quarters. I first heard the song in March 1985, at a benefit for the National Union Of Miners at the Logan Hall in London, on the night that the union’s bitter year-long strike was finally called off, when it was as far as I knew at the time called “All She Thought Of Was Betrayal”. Yesterday, I was surprised to hear someone playing it in the Uncut office, unaware at the time that – ding dong! – the witch was dead. Nearly 30 years on, the song will reflect the mood of many in the wake of Thatcher’s passing, which they will not mourn as much as celebrate, a lot of people as unforgiving still in their opinion of her as Costello was when he wrote it. Funnily enough, “Tramp The Dirt Down” has not yet been a featured part of the soundtrack to any of the television tributes to her that we have so far endured, and rogue MP George Galloway’s reference to it yesterday on Twitter has caused a noisy storm of protest from incensed Thatcher ultras. “Tramp the Dirt Down” was also very curiously absent from a round-up of songs about Thatcher compiled online by The Guardian, which perhaps was uncomfortable with a song that spoke so eloquently ill of the dead. I have no idea how Costello would have received the news of Thatcher’s death yesterday, although I suspect little mourning was involved. But during an epic interview in Dublin not long after it appeared on Spike, I asked him about the song and the recent controversies it had provoked. What does “Tramp the Dirt Down” achieve, what will it change? “Nothing I can think of,” he said. “I honestly don’t think it will change anything. Like I said to one guy who asked a similar question, songs like that, they’re like tiny marker buoys. You know, ‘This is where the ship went down.’ The song’s not a party political broadcast, there’s no manifesto. It just says, ‘I’ll only be happy when this woman’s dead.’ “And some people no doubt might find that extreme. But it’s meant to be. I make no apology for that song. It’s an honest emotional response to events, and writing it was like casting out demons or something. And the song itself is the result of a form of madness, because when you get to that point of thinking these thoughts, actually wishing somebody dead, it really does become a form of madness. It’s a psychopathic thought. And it’s fucking disturbing to find it in your own head. But it would be cowardly not to express it. Because once it’s there, if you don’t get it out, it’s only going to come back and haunt you some more. “I also think you have to remember that it’s not only her that the song is aimed at. It’s what she represents. The way she’s changed the way people value things. It’s like some kind of mass hypnosis she’s achieved. People are afraid to speak out. You know, one thing I thought I’d be asked when people heard it was whether I was saying it might’ve been a good thing if she’d died in the Brighton bombings. I don’t think so. It would have made things 10 times worse, because then she would have been a martyr. We would have had a dead queen. So really, in a profound sense, the song is hopeless. It’s a hopeless argument. Because I think it’s a hopeless situation. So, no, it’s not in a large, historical sense, going to change anything. “But I think it does have maybe an individual effect. There’s always a chance it’ll sneak through somehow. Like, I sang it at a folk festival in the Shetlands, at one place that was very brightly lit and I could see the audience quite clearly. And all the way through, there was one guy nodding away, applauding every line obviously getting into it. And on the other side, there was another guy being physically restrained from getting up on the stage and hitting me. He just fused, he really went. You could see it in his face. And I thought, ‘Well, I’ve really got a winner now.’ To the extent, you know, that it had succeeded in being at least provocative.” Is that all you can ask of a song these days? “I’ve never really known what you’re supposed to expect from song,” he said. “And I think there’s a danger in the very talking about it, it makes it seem like you’ve achieved more than you have.” Especially, perhaps, when the song itself seems not much more than an attention-seeking novelty, like Morrissey’s “Margaret On The Guillotine”. “I don’t know much about Morrissey,” Costello replied. “Apart from the fact he sometimes brings out records with the greatest titles in the world that somewhere along the line he then neglects to write songs for. But I haven’t heard that particular song, so I can’t really comment on it. But generally, I think the best that can be achieved by songs like ‘Tramp The Dirt Down’ is something like ‘Free Nelson Mandela’ achieved. The record didn’t get Mandela released, but it did increase the membership of the anti-apartheid movement, because Jerry Dammers very intelligently printed their address on the sleeve. And the record introduced Mandela to a lot of people who maybe otherwise would never have heard of him. And there’s a point where political art only works on that level – the communication of basic information. “On a more immediate level,” Costello went on,” you can, I suppose, hope to annoy people, like that guy in the Shetlands. I mean, The Sun ran a piece a couple of weeks ago saying I’d been banned by the BBC because I said, ‘I’m fucking sick of this’ on the Late Show. I haven’t seen the programme, but I remember swearing. I was asked something and I remember saying, ‘I’m 35 years old. I’m not a boy anymore. Don’t patronise me.’ It’s like that Grateful Dead song, ‘Ship Of Fools’ – ‘It makes me wild/With 30 years on my head/To have you call me child.’ You do sometimes feel particularly with the nanny aspect of this government that they’re treating everybody like little fucking children. “So The Sun runs this thing saying I swore on a live television show. And it was obviously pre-recorded because I was in America when it was shown. But a spokesman is supposed to have said, ‘Well, it jolly well caused a stink around here at the BBC.’ And they even quoted me. ‘Costello said last night, “I stand by every word.”’ Well, they must be fucking telepathic at the fucking Sun, because no one spoke to me about it. “But that’s an accolade, to get that sort of thing written about you in The Sun. It means you’re still getting up somebody’s fucking nose,” he said, laughing. “These days, that’s an achievement in itself.” Finally, here's a fantastic clip of Costello performing "Tramp the Dirt Down" on the BBC's Late Show special on Spike from February 1989, which at the very least is a reminder of a time when many of us were inclined to cheer at the very mention of Costello's name. Have a good week. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-BZIWSI5UQ

“To make true political music,” the great American critic Greil Marcus wrote nearly 25 years ago, “you have to say what decent people don’t want to hear; that’s something that people fit for satellite benefit concerts will never understand, and that Elvis Costello understood before anyone heard his name.”

Marcus was thinking specifically Elvis Costello’s “Tramp The Dirt Down”, from his 1989 album, Spike. The song, of course, is Costello’s furious indictment of Margaret Thatcher and the many ruinous things her Conservative government had done to Britain and its people, in which Costello venomously wishes the dragon dead and looks forward to dancing on her grave. The song is fuelled by the same righteous wrath that Dylan brought to “Masters Of War” – “I hope that you die and your death’ll come soon” – and on release caused grave offence, outrage in predictable quarters.

I first heard the song in March 1985, at a benefit for the National Union Of Miners at the Logan Hall in London, on the night that the union’s bitter year-long strike was finally called off, when it was as far as I knew at the time called “All She Thought Of Was Betrayal”. Yesterday, I was surprised to hear someone playing it in the Uncut office, unaware at the time that – ding dong! – the witch was dead.

Nearly 30 years on, the song will reflect the mood of many in the wake of Thatcher’s passing, which they will not mourn as much as celebrate, a lot of people as unforgiving still in their opinion of her as Costello was when he wrote it. Funnily enough, “Tramp The Dirt Down” has not yet been a featured part of the soundtrack to any of the television tributes to her that we have so far endured, and rogue MP George Galloway’s reference to it yesterday on Twitter has caused a noisy storm of protest from incensed Thatcher ultras. “Tramp the Dirt Down” was also very curiously absent from a round-up of songs about Thatcher compiled online by The Guardian, which perhaps was uncomfortable with a song that spoke so eloquently ill of the dead.

I have no idea how Costello would have received the news of Thatcher’s death yesterday, although I suspect little mourning was involved. But during an epic interview in Dublin not long after it appeared on Spike, I asked him about the song and the recent controversies it had provoked.

What does “Tramp the Dirt Down” achieve, what will it change?

“Nothing I can think of,” he said. “I honestly don’t think it will change anything. Like I said to one guy who asked a similar question, songs like that, they’re like tiny marker buoys. You know, ‘This is where the ship went down.’ The song’s not a party political broadcast, there’s no manifesto. It just says, ‘I’ll only be happy when this woman’s dead.’

“And some people no doubt might find that extreme. But it’s meant to be. I make no apology for that song. It’s an honest emotional response to events, and writing it was like casting out demons or something. And the song itself is the result of a form of madness, because when you get to that point of thinking these thoughts, actually wishing somebody dead, it really does become a form of madness. It’s a psychopathic thought. And it’s fucking disturbing to find it in your own head. But it would be cowardly not to express it. Because once it’s there, if you don’t get it out, it’s only going to come back and haunt you some more.

“I also think you have to remember that it’s not only her that the song is aimed at. It’s what she represents. The way she’s changed the way people value things. It’s like some kind of mass hypnosis she’s achieved. People are afraid to speak out. You know, one thing I thought I’d be asked when people heard it was whether I was saying it might’ve been a good thing if she’d died in the Brighton bombings. I don’t think so. It would have made things 10 times worse, because then she would have been a martyr. We would have had a dead queen. So really, in a profound sense, the song is hopeless. It’s a hopeless argument. Because I think it’s a hopeless situation. So, no, it’s not in a large, historical sense, going to change anything.

“But I think it does have maybe an individual effect. There’s always a chance it’ll sneak through somehow. Like, I sang it at a folk festival in the Shetlands, at one place that was very brightly lit and I could see the audience quite clearly. And all the way through, there was one guy nodding away, applauding every line obviously getting into it. And on the other side, there was another guy being physically restrained from getting up on the stage and hitting me. He just fused, he really went. You could see it in his face. And I thought, ‘Well, I’ve really got a winner now.’ To the extent, you know, that it had succeeded in being at least provocative.”

Is that all you can ask of a song these days?

“I’ve never really known what you’re supposed to expect from song,” he said. “And I think there’s a danger in the very talking about it, it makes it seem like you’ve achieved more than you have.”

Especially, perhaps, when the song itself seems not much more than an attention-seeking novelty, like Morrissey’s “Margaret On The Guillotine”.

“I don’t know much about Morrissey,” Costello replied. “Apart from the fact he sometimes brings out records with the greatest titles in the world that somewhere along the line he then neglects to write songs for. But I haven’t heard that particular song, so I can’t really comment on it. But generally, I think the best that can be achieved by songs like ‘Tramp The Dirt Down’ is something like ‘Free Nelson Mandela’ achieved. The record didn’t get Mandela released, but it did increase the membership of the anti-apartheid movement, because Jerry Dammers very intelligently printed their address on the sleeve. And the record introduced Mandela to a lot of people who maybe otherwise would never have heard of him. And there’s a point where political art only works on that level – the communication of basic information.

“On a more immediate level,” Costello went on,” you can, I suppose, hope to annoy people, like that guy in the Shetlands. I mean, The Sun ran a piece a couple of weeks ago saying I’d been banned by the BBC because I said, ‘I’m fucking sick of this’ on the Late Show. I haven’t seen the programme, but I remember swearing. I was asked something and I remember saying, ‘I’m 35 years old. I’m not a boy anymore. Don’t patronise me.’ It’s like that Grateful Dead song, ‘Ship Of Fools’ – ‘It makes me wild/With 30 years on my head/To have you call me child.’ You do sometimes feel particularly with the nanny aspect of this government that they’re treating everybody like little fucking children.

“So The Sun runs this thing saying I swore on a live television show. And it was obviously pre-recorded because I was in America when it was shown. But a spokesman is supposed to have said, ‘Well, it jolly well caused a stink around here at the BBC.’ And they even quoted me. ‘Costello said last night, “I stand by every word.”’ Well, they must be fucking telepathic at the fucking Sun, because no one spoke to me about it.

“But that’s an accolade, to get that sort of thing written about you in The Sun. It means you’re still getting up somebody’s fucking nose,” he said, laughing. “These days, that’s an achievement in itself.”

Finally, here’s a fantastic clip of Costello performing “Tramp the Dirt Down” on the BBC’s Late Show special on Spike from February 1989, which at the very least is a reminder of a time when many of us were inclined to cheer at the very mention of Costello’s name.

Have a good week.

First Look – Beware Of Mr Baker

Michael Bonner
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First Look – Beware Of Mr Baker

Hopefully, you'll have seen the new edition of Uncut by now. Among many, many good things in this month's issue, there's Nick Hasted's interview with Ginger Baker. Nick travelled to Baker's home on the outskirts of Canterbury, ostensibly to speak to Baker about a new documentary about the drummer's life. As Nick discovered, Baker himself proved to be quite a character; a fact reinforced by the film's director, Jay Bulger, who had his nose broken by the drummer while filming Beware Of Mr Baker. If you've not already seen the trailer, it's pasted below. Apart from the glowing testimonials to Baker's genius by Stewart Copeland, Lars Ulrich and other superstar drummers, there's some less salutary comments that hint at the more colourful aspects of Baker's tale. "He was fairly consistently horrible to people, and to himself," says Cream collaborator Pete Brown. As Baker says, "If they've got a problem with me, come and see me and punch me on the nose. I ain't going to sue you, i'm going to hit you back." As you'd expect, the footage of Baker playing with Fela Kuti, in Cream and Blind Faith is extraordinary. Anyway, I'll be reviewing the film in the next issue of Uncut. Meanwhile, here's the trailer for you... Follow me on Twitter @MichaelBonner http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqrigN8jxj8

Hopefully, you’ll have seen the new edition of Uncut by now. Among many, many good things in this month’s issue, there’s Nick Hasted’s interview with Ginger Baker.

Nick travelled to Baker’s home on the outskirts of Canterbury, ostensibly to speak to Baker about a new documentary about the drummer’s life. As Nick discovered, Baker himself proved to be quite a character; a fact reinforced by the film’s director, Jay Bulger, who had his nose broken by the drummer while filming Beware Of Mr Baker.

If you’ve not already seen the trailer, it’s pasted below. Apart from the glowing testimonials to Baker’s genius by Stewart Copeland, Lars Ulrich and other superstar drummers, there’s some less salutary comments that hint at the more colourful aspects of Baker’s tale. “He was fairly consistently horrible to people, and to himself,” says Cream collaborator Pete Brown. As Baker says, “If they’ve got a problem with me, come and see me and punch me on the nose. I ain’t going to sue you, i’m going to hit you back.”

As you’d expect, the footage of Baker playing with Fela Kuti, in Cream and Blind Faith is extraordinary. Anyway, I’ll be reviewing the film in the next issue of Uncut. Meanwhile, here’s the trailer for you…

Follow me on Twitter @MichaelBonner

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