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First Look – The Rolling Stones’ Crossfire Hurricane

Michael Bonner
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First Look – The Rolling Stones’ Crossfire Hurricane

For those who are disappointed not to have scored a ticket to see the Rolling Stones in 2012, then there is some slight consolation. Thanks to Brett Morgen’s superb new film, it is now possible to see the Rolling Stones live in 1963, 1972 and all points up to and including the band’s 1981 American tour. Most of Crossfire Hurricane consists of live footage; the evolution of the Stones is illustrated via concert hall, free festival or sports stadia, with their marvellous adventures narrated off-screen by the six surviving members of the band. It’s possible Morgen – and, presumably, the film’s producer, Mick Jagger – would like us to believe that live is very much where it’s at for the Stones. Of the 20 officially released titles in the Rolling Stones filmography, 16 of them are concert films. (Equally, I wonder how much footage exists of the band in the studio and how much of it would make for dynamic cinema viewing.) Crossfire Hurricane covers the period from 1962 – 1981. It is not an academic film. This is not a forensic study of the Stones’ writing and recording habits – you may be surprised to discover that no Stones album titles are mentioned in the film, and only three songs are specifically identified by name (“Tell Me”, “No Expectations” and “Midnight Rambler”). It’s a persuasive, if familiar narrative: from screaming teenage girls on their first UK tour, through the Redlands bust, Brian Jones’ death and the band's Exile-era imperial phase, up to the arrival of Ron Wood when, as Jagger puts it, things got “more colourful, less dangerous.” Apart from live footage, the band’s story unfolds in news reports, Super-8, TV interviews and archive material from existing documentaries like Charlie Is My Darling, One Plus One and Cocksucker Blues. There is lovely black and white film of the band in a hotel room, Mick and Keith in the process of writing "Tell Me", Charlie sitting next to Keith on a sofa, Andrew Loog Oldham tapping out a rhythm on a bedside table in the background. The live material, though, is amazing. The early footage, of the band being forced off tiny stages by hysterical teenagers, gives way to bigger crowds on their 1964 American tour and a greater sense of danger – water canons, truncheons, police on horseback. Running in parallel to this, we get the band’s formative TV appearances, often hilariously funny and unguarded, the band not exactly deferential to their hosts. It’s all a bit of a lark. In one of the most revealing off-camera interviews with Morgen, Jagger talks about changing “character” every six months or so. He’s specifically addressing the development of the “Sympathy” character, but with this in mind it’s interesting to watch him on clip from a 1960s UK TV arts programme, wearing a cravat and speaking his best Dartford Grammar School posh, inhabiting another character as he relishes the access he’s attained to the gentrified end of the TV schedules. The 1960s ended badly for the Stones, with the Redlands bust, Brian’s death and Altamont: well-covered ground, of course, but still powerful. Redlands starts with a moment of bucolic, psychedelic whimsy – Mick and Keith on acid, walking through the Sussex countryside, drinking fresh cow’s milk (revelation: “I still don’t like milk,” says Mick), and ends up as a pivotal moment for the band, where things stop being fun and lengthy jail sentences becomes a very real threat for both men, the end of the Stones a distinct possibility. To Keith, Redlands was “a badge of honour… the cops turned me into an outlaw.” The moment when the acting of roles became a serious business. Brian’s death is cut to some tremendous studio footage of the choir recording the introduction to “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” and Mick, Keith and Charlie blank-faced in the studio with Jimmy Miller. The darkness and chaos of Altamont is genuinely nasty, and it’s easy to forget until you watch film of the event just how close the band were to the crowd: Meredith Hunter’s murder happened only a few feet from the stage. The reportage-style shots of the crowd – presumably from the Maysles’ Gimme Shelter – look like outtakes from a George Romero zombie movie. The black and white sequences Robert Frank filmed at Nellcôte are beautiful. Keith Richards starts to look like Keith Richards: it’s a thing, but he looks his best when he’s at his most strung out, lost in heroin and “Dracula time”. Without getting into high falutin’ ideas here, early in the film Jagger says of the Rolling Stones “it’s about not growing up”: in 1971, it’s easy enough to conclude that after the events of the last four years, anything the band can do to delay growing up is an essential component of getting through the day, especially heroin. As the Stones tours of the early Seventies – “an ill-disciplined, hedonistic binge,” according to Jagger – reshape our ideas of what a rock and roll tour can achieve, one of Keith’s earlier quotes comes to mind: “We were a little less showbusiness, the showbusiness side wasn’t interesting to us.” Now, here’s Jagger inviting Dick Cavett backstage to Madison Square Garden. What are those pills I saw earlier on a tray, asks Cavett. “Vitamins,” says Jagger. “Vitamins and salt.” The Toronto bust in 1977 proves another critical point in Morgen’s narrative. Ironically, the point where the band decide to grow up coincides roughly with the arrival of arrested adolescent Ron Wood as Mick Taylor’s replacement. Jagger’s comedy hats come into their own roughly around the same period. What do we learn about the Rolling Stones from Crossfire Hurricane, then? There’s very few revelations here – Jagger's dislike of milk, notwithstanding. All the same, this feels like the most comprehensive and satisfying film I’ve seen about the Stones. The off-screen interviews do their job – Jagger carries it, easily the most personable. For so long it seems like Jagger has been the less-preferred Stone: it’s always been about Keith, who continues to embody the piratical spirit of the band, while Jagger has been reductively painted as a micromanaging whip-cracker. But this will remind you of Jagger at his best. He is the one who makes the most sense of this colourful, chaotic narrative. And going back to the abundance of live material here, you can’t help but notice how he's grown into the role of frontman as the size of the venues increases. “You can’t be young forever," he says poignantly at the close of Crossfire Hurricane, 38 years old as the film ends. Crossfire Hurricane opens in cinemas today. It will be shown on BBC Two in November, with a DVD and Blu-Ray release in early 2013

For those who are disappointed not to have scored a ticket to see the Rolling Stones in 2012, then there is some slight consolation.

Thanks to Brett Morgen’s superb new film, it is now possible to see the Rolling Stones live in 1963, 1972 and all points up to and including the band’s 1981 American tour. Most of Crossfire Hurricane consists of live footage; the evolution of the Stones is illustrated via concert hall, free festival or sports stadia, with their marvellous adventures narrated off-screen by the six surviving members of the band. It’s possible Morgen – and, presumably, the film’s producer, Mick Jagger – would like us to believe that live is very much where it’s at for the Stones. Of the 20 officially released titles in the Rolling Stones filmography, 16 of them are concert films. (Equally, I wonder how much footage exists of the band in the studio and how much of it would make for dynamic cinema viewing.)

Crossfire Hurricane covers the period from 1962 – 1981. It is not an academic film. This is not a forensic study of the Stones’ writing and recording habits – you may be surprised to discover that no Stones album titles are mentioned in the film, and only three songs are specifically identified by name (“Tell Me”, “No Expectations” and “Midnight Rambler”). It’s a persuasive, if familiar narrative: from screaming teenage girls on their first UK tour, through the Redlands bust, Brian Jones’ death and the band’s Exile-era imperial phase, up to the arrival of Ron Wood when, as Jagger puts it, things got “more colourful, less dangerous.” Apart from live footage, the band’s story unfolds in news reports, Super-8, TV interviews and archive material from existing documentaries like Charlie Is My Darling, One Plus One and Cocksucker Blues. There is lovely black and white film of the band in a hotel room, Mick and Keith in the process of writing “Tell Me”, Charlie sitting next to Keith on a sofa, Andrew Loog Oldham tapping out a rhythm on a bedside table in the background. The live material, though, is amazing. The early footage, of the band being forced off tiny stages by hysterical teenagers, gives way to bigger crowds on their 1964 American tour and a greater sense of danger – water canons, truncheons, police on horseback. Running in parallel to this, we get the band’s formative TV appearances, often hilariously funny and unguarded, the band not exactly deferential to their hosts. It’s all a bit of a lark. In one of the most revealing off-camera interviews with Morgen, Jagger talks about changing “character” every six months or so. He’s specifically addressing the development of the “Sympathy” character, but with this in mind it’s interesting to watch him on clip from a 1960s UK TV arts programme, wearing a cravat and speaking his best Dartford Grammar School posh, inhabiting another character as he relishes the access he’s attained to the gentrified end of the TV schedules.

The 1960s ended badly for the Stones, with the Redlands bust, Brian’s death and Altamont: well-covered ground, of course, but still powerful. Redlands starts with a moment of bucolic, psychedelic whimsy – Mick and Keith on acid, walking through the Sussex countryside, drinking fresh cow’s milk (revelation: “I still don’t like milk,” says Mick), and ends up as a pivotal moment for the band, where things stop being fun and lengthy jail sentences becomes a very real threat for both men, the end of the Stones a distinct possibility. To Keith, Redlands was “a badge of honour… the cops turned me into an outlaw.” The moment when the acting of roles became a serious business. Brian’s death is cut to some tremendous studio footage of the choir recording the introduction to “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” and Mick, Keith and Charlie blank-faced in the studio with Jimmy Miller. The darkness and chaos of Altamont is genuinely nasty, and it’s easy to forget until you watch film of the event just how close the band were to the crowd: Meredith Hunter’s murder happened only a few feet from the stage. The reportage-style shots of the crowd – presumably from the Maysles’ Gimme Shelter – look like outtakes from a George Romero zombie movie.

The black and white sequences Robert Frank filmed at Nellcôte are beautiful. Keith Richards starts to look like Keith Richards: it’s a thing, but he looks his best when he’s at his most strung out, lost in heroin and “Dracula time”. Without getting into high falutin’ ideas here, early in the film Jagger says of the Rolling Stones “it’s about not growing up”: in 1971, it’s easy enough to conclude that after the events of the last four years, anything the band can do to delay growing up is an essential component of getting through the day, especially heroin. As the Stones tours of the early Seventies – “an ill-disciplined, hedonistic binge,” according to Jagger – reshape our ideas of what a rock and roll tour can achieve, one of Keith’s earlier quotes comes to mind: “We were a little less showbusiness, the showbusiness side wasn’t interesting to us.” Now, here’s Jagger inviting Dick Cavett backstage to Madison Square Garden. What are those pills I saw earlier on a tray, asks Cavett. “Vitamins,” says Jagger. “Vitamins and salt.” The Toronto bust in 1977 proves another critical point in Morgen’s narrative. Ironically, the point where the band decide to grow up coincides roughly with the arrival of arrested adolescent Ron Wood as Mick Taylor’s replacement. Jagger’s comedy hats come into their own roughly around the same period.

What do we learn about the Rolling Stones from Crossfire Hurricane, then? There’s very few revelations here – Jagger’s dislike of milk, notwithstanding. All the same, this feels like the most comprehensive and satisfying film I’ve seen about the Stones. The off-screen interviews do their job – Jagger carries it, easily the most personable. For so long it seems like Jagger has been the less-preferred Stone: it’s always been about Keith, who continues to embody the piratical spirit of the band, while Jagger has been reductively painted as a micromanaging whip-cracker. But this will remind you of Jagger at his best. He is the one who makes the most sense of this colourful, chaotic narrative. And going back to the abundance of live material here, you can’t help but notice how he’s grown into the role of frontman as the size of the venues increases. “You can’t be young forever,” he says poignantly at the close of Crossfire Hurricane, 38 years old as the film ends.

Crossfire Hurricane opens in cinemas today. It will be shown on BBC Two in November, with a DVD and Blu-Ray release in early 2013

Neil Young & Crazy Horse reference Dylan, the Dead in new video for “Twisted Road”

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Neil Young & Crazy Horse reference Dylan, the Dead in new video for “Twisted Road”

Neil Young & Crazy Horse have released a video for "Twisted Road", taken from their forthcoming album, Psychedelic Pill. The promo clip contains images of Bob Dylan, the Grateful Dead and Roy Orbison, as well as footage of Young and Crazy Horse travelling along the highway by tour bus. This is the third video from Psychedelic Pill, following on from “Walk Like A Giant” and “Ramada Inn". http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCbEOT4PTDc Pic credit: Steve Snowdon/Getty Images

Neil Young & Crazy Horse have released a video for “Twisted Road”, taken from their forthcoming album, Psychedelic Pill.

The promo clip contains images of Bob Dylan, the Grateful Dead and Roy Orbison, as well as footage of Young and Crazy Horse travelling along the highway by tour bus.

This is the third video from Psychedelic Pill, following on from “Walk Like A Giant” and “Ramada Inn”.

Pic credit: Steve Snowdon/Getty Images

RZA wants to reunite Wu Tang Clan for 20th anniversary of ’36 Chambers’ in 2013

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RZA wants to reunite Wu Tang Clan for 20th anniversary of ’36 Chambers’ in 2013
Wu Tang Clan producer RZA wants to put the band back together to mark the 20th anniversary of their highly-regarded debut album, 'Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)', reports New York Times – and this time he wants the band to be more professional. RZA, who is currently promoting his film The Man W...

Wu Tang Clan producer RZA wants to put the band back together to mark the 20th anniversary of their highly-regarded debut album, ‘Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)’, reports New York Times – and this time he wants the band to be more professional.

RZA, who is currently promoting his film The Man With The Iron Fists, says making the movie showed him the power of “what a focused mind can do”.

RZA says: “We need to, one time, completely, efficiently, properly, professionally represent our brand. One more time. But this time, showing up on time for press and for concerts and studio. Do it one time, perfect. We did good – people love it and I’m proud of what we’ve done. But all that was done – I would always say in my old interviews, “This is organized confusion.” It was kept and contained, but it was a lot of chaos.”

The producer also says that Wu Tang Clan worked best, in his opinion, when the rest of the group allowed RZA to be “a dictator”. “[‘Wu-Tang Forever’ was] the first democratic album. And then after that, it kept getting more and more – “Well, it’s your album, what do you want to do? You want to hire P. Diddy? Whatever you want to do, help yourself. It’s your [thing],” says RZA.

RZA reports that he has been talking to some of the other members about returning to the old way of working, and hopes the band – which includes GZA, Ghostface Killah, Method Man, Raekwon, Inspectah Deck, U-God and Masta Killa – will have another chapter. “There’s enough of us still alive, and I think there’s still enough fans out there. Hip-hop is stronger than ever, as far as worldwide recognition, and our name is synonymous with it,” he says.

‘Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)’ made Wu Tang Clan cult favourites around the world. Such is the interest in the band, there are currently two biopics based on the life of deceased member Ol’ Dirty Bastard in production.

Queens Of The Stone Age’s Josh Homme: ‘Carl Perkins made me want to play guitar’

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Queens Of The Stone Age’s Josh Homme: ‘Carl Perkins made me want to play guitar’
Queens Of The Stone Age frontman Josh Homme has revealed that rockabilly artist Carl Perkins was the artist who made him first want to pick up a guitar. Homme explained that he decided he wanted to be a musician after he saw Perkins play and found out that he had written the song "Blue Suede Shoes"...

Queens Of The Stone Age frontman Josh Homme has revealed that rockabilly artist Carl Perkins was the artist who made him first want to pick up a guitar.

Homme explained that he decided he wanted to be a musician after he saw Perkins play and found out that he had written the song “Blue Suede Shoes” for his idol Elvis Presley. Perkins – who died in 1998 – took part in the ‘Million Dollar Quartet’ recordings at Sun Studio in Memphis alongside Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis and Johnny Cash.

Speaking in a new promo clip for the Dave Grohl directed movie Sound City – about the Sound City Studios recording facility in Los Angeles – Homme said:

“The first record I bought was a Carl Perkins record, because I saw him at The Festival at Sandpoint, Idaho. I loved Elvis and I found out that he wrote ‘Blue Suede Shoes’… so connecting that experience of going to see him play was pretty awesome. That’s when I realised I wanted to play guitar.”

In the clip, which you can watch below, Homme added that his first musical memory was of The Doors, saying: “My first musical memory is probably my dad listening to The Doors. He saw The Doors in DC while on a cross country trip with his brother, and so that memory always stuck out to me… he was able to go and watch them play.”

Sound City Studios was where Nirvana’s Nevermind album was recorded as well as Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, Neil Young’s After The Gold Rush, Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers’ Damn The Torpedoes and Rage Against The Machine’s self-titled debut. The film Sound City will be distributed by Roswell Films, which is part of the Foo Fighters’ Roswell Records label.

A new track from Josh Homme, titled “Nobody To Love”, recently hit the internet. The song, which was co-written by composer and Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds producer Dave Sardy, is featured in the film End Of Watch featuring Jake Gyllenhaal.

Homme is currently working on the new Queens Of The Stone Age album.

More details on Janis Joplin biopic emerge

Tom Pinnock
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0
More details on Janis Joplin biopic emerge

Oscar-nominated filmmaker Lee Daniels is in talks to direct a Janis Joplin biopic starring Amy Adams. Adams became attached to the project, titled Get It While You Can, back in 2010. Before Adams, Renee Zellweger had been lined up to play Joplin. Meanwhile, Twilight's Catherine Hardwicke and The Constant Gardener's Fernando Meirelles were previously attached as directors. The film has a script by Ron Terry, who worked on a 2000 TV biopic of Jimi Hendrix, and his wife Teresa Kounin-Terry. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the film's producers are hoping to begin shooting in early 2013. Lee Daniels is best known for directing Precious, a gritty drama starring Mo'Nique that earned six Oscar nominations in 2010. His latest film, The Paperboy, which stars Nicole Kidman and Zac Efron, was released in the US earlier this month (October 2012). Meanwhile, a rival biopic called Janis is in the works from producer Peter Newman, who has secured exclusive rights to 21 of Joplin's songs. Back in July (2012), Tony Award-winning actress Nina Arianda was cast in the title role.

Oscar-nominated filmmaker Lee Daniels is in talks to direct a Janis Joplin biopic starring Amy Adams.

Adams became attached to the project, titled Get It While You Can, back in 2010. Before Adams, Renee Zellweger had been lined up to play Joplin.

Meanwhile, Twilight’s Catherine Hardwicke and The Constant Gardener’s Fernando Meirelles were previously attached as directors. The film has a script by Ron Terry, who worked on a 2000 TV biopic of Jimi Hendrix, and his wife Teresa Kounin-Terry. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the film’s producers are hoping to begin shooting in early 2013.

Lee Daniels is best known for directing Precious, a gritty drama starring Mo’Nique that earned six Oscar nominations in 2010. His latest film, The Paperboy, which stars Nicole Kidman and Zac Efron, was released in the US earlier this month (October 2012).

Meanwhile, a rival biopic called Janis is in the works from producer Peter Newman, who has secured exclusive rights to 21 of Joplin’s songs. Back in July (2012), Tony Award-winning actress Nina Arianda was cast in the title role.

Beatles manager Brian Epstein to feature in new comic book

Tom Pinnock
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0
Beatles manager Brian Epstein to feature in new comic book

The story of The Beatles' manager Brian Epstein is set to be told in a new comic book. Epstein, who managed The Beatles until his death in 1967, will see his story told in new comic The Fifth Beatle, due for release later this year. The comic will be written by Vivek J Tiwary, who also wrote the Green Day musical American Idiot. Speaking to The Wall Street Journal, Tiwary said that his background as a manager himself helped him identify with 'historical mentor' Epstein: "I could really relate to a lot of the struggles Brian had. Telling his story is a very passionate labour of love for me." Adding: "I wanted to work in artist management, I wanted to manage bands. I thought, 'If I'm going to manage bands, I should study the great artist managers.'" Epstein is often credited with discovering The Beatles and also managed a number of other Liverpool based acts, including Cilla Black and Gerry & The Pacemakers. Artwork for The Fifth Beatle has been provided by Andrew Robinson and Kyle Baker, while Tiwary has also confirmed plans to make the story as a film in the future.

The story of The Beatles‘ manager Brian Epstein is set to be told in a new comic book.

Epstein, who managed The Beatles until his death in 1967, will see his story told in new comic The Fifth Beatle, due for release later this year. The comic will be written by Vivek J Tiwary, who also wrote the Green Day musical American Idiot.

Speaking to The Wall Street Journal, Tiwary said that his background as a manager himself helped him identify with ‘historical mentor’ Epstein: “I could really relate to a lot of the struggles Brian had. Telling his story is a very passionate labour of love for me.”

Adding: “I wanted to work in artist management, I wanted to manage bands. I thought, ‘If I’m going to manage bands, I should study the great artist managers.'”

Epstein is often credited with discovering The Beatles and also managed a number of other Liverpool based acts, including Cilla Black and Gerry & The Pacemakers.

Artwork for The Fifth Beatle has been provided by Andrew Robinson and Kyle Baker, while Tiwary has also confirmed plans to make the story as a film in the future.

Smashing Pumpkins’ Billy Corgan: ‘I almost killed myself three or four times’

Tom Pinnock
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0
Smashing Pumpkins’ Billy Corgan: ‘I almost killed myself three or four times’
Smashing Pumpkins singer Billy Corgan has claimed that he "almost" killed himself several times. In an interview on Last Call With Carson Daly, the frontman admitted that he had considered committing suicide "about three, four, seven times" but faith in God had stopped him from feeling "like a vict...

Smashing Pumpkins singer Billy Corgan has claimed that he “almost” killed himself several times.

In an interview on Last Call With Carson Daly, the frontman admitted that he had considered committing suicide “about three, four, seven times” but faith in God had stopped him from feeling “like a victim”.

He said: “I almost killed myself about three, four, seven times. I literally started planning my death and what I would leave behind, and what I was gonna write. Three or four times in my life.

“What I finally realised, at least on the back end of this, is that God, at least as I understand God, was there all along. Once I was able to process my reality in that way, I no longer felt like a victim.” You can watch his interview in full by scrolling down to the bottom of the page and clicking.

In November of this year, Corgan told NME that he had entertained suicidal thoughts while working on the band’s classic 1993 album ‘Siamese Dream’. “I was suicidal, and I’d been plotting my own death for about two months,” he said. “And if you’ve ever read anything about the warning signs of suicide one of them is you give away all your stuff, and I’d given away all my stuff, I gave away all my records, I started giving away my guitars.

“I was fantasising about my own death, I started thinking what my funeral would be like and what music would be played, I was at that level of insanity.”

Smashing Pumpkins released their latest studio album, ‘Oceania’, in June of this year.

The Rolling Stones post setlist on Twitter

Tom Pinnock
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0
The Rolling Stones post setlist on Twitter
The Rolling Stones have hinted at the possible running order of their London dates in November with a hand-written setlist posted on Twitter. The image, appearing to show a full setlist of Rolling Stones tracks, was posted online shortly before the band announced their two dates at the 02 Arena in ...

The Rolling Stones have hinted at the possible running order of their London dates in November with a hand-written setlist posted on Twitter.

The image, appearing to show a full setlist of Rolling Stones tracks, was posted online shortly before the band announced their two dates at the 02 Arena in November.

Most of the group’s classic hits are featured, including ‘Paint It, Black’ and ‘Honky Tonk Women’, but new songs ‘Doom And Gloom’ and ‘One More Shot’ from forthcoming compilation ‘GRRR!’ are nowhere to be seen.

The sheet of handwritten paper features the following songs:

‘She’s So Cold’

‘You Got Me Rocking’

‘All Down The Line’

‘Respectable’

‘Tumbling Dice’

‘Honky Tonk Women’

‘Beast Of Burden’

‘Wild Horses’

‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’

‘It’s All Over Now’

‘Lady Jane’

‘Route 66’

‘Little Red Rooster’

‘Miss You’

‘Not Fade Away’

‘Start Me Up’

‘Sweet Virginia’

‘Worried About You’

‘Paint It, Black’

‘The Last Time’

‘Ruby Tuesday’

‘Midnight Rambler’

Meanwhile, Mick Jagger has revealed that The Rolling Stones would have considered lasting 50 years a ‘nightmare’ when they first started playing together in 1962.

The band will celebrate their golden anniversary by headlining two shows at London’s 02 Arena in November. Chatting about the landmark year in the band’s history, Jagger told The Evening Standard that he had assumed the group would last two years maximum.

Jagger said: “You think it’s going to last a couple of years. At the time that seemed like a perfectly rational thing to say, why would you think it would go on for any longer? That was about the shelf life of a pop group at that time.”

He added: “Obviously at the beginning you didn’t have any inclination, it’s a nightmare idea really that you’d do anything for 50 years at that age. I think The Rolling Stones are kind of quite irreverent about it in a way. I don’t think we take it very seriously and we joke about it really.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Jagger said the group were rehearsing around 60 songs ahead of the live shows and that they had ‘been in touch’ with former bass player Bill Wyman about having him appear with them at some point in the show.

Ticket prices for the two London dates have been criticised by some fans priced out by the high charges, which range from £90 to £375. Guitarist Keith Richards admitted that he hates charging ‘over the top prices’ for tickets but expects to pocket around £16m from the shows.

The 42nd Uncut Playlist Of 2012

John Mulvey
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0
The 42nd Uncut Playlist Of 2012

A couple of weeks ago, I read an interview with Scott Litt about working on “Tempest”, in which he mentioned how Dylan’s voice now reminded him, positively, of Louis Armstrong. Dylan, Litt suggested, should have a go at “Hello Dolly” sometime (The full piece is stuck behind the paywall at http://www.newyorker.com/, unfortunately). In this role, maybe Dylan could guest with a new outfit called the Bryan Ferry Orchestra; an old-time jazz band corralled by Ferry to play ‘20s-style instrumental versions of his songs. I have no idea what the versions of “Do The Strand”, “Virginia Plain” and “The Bogus Man” are going to sound like on the forthcoming album, but I’m kind of taken with “Don’t Stop The Dance” – a song I never much liked previously – embedded below. See what you think. In other news, still hooked on the Goat record (that’s the sleeve above), and am much grateful to a new care package from Trouble In Mind (The Fuzz - and I quote, “a mysterious supergroup from San Francisco” - are the pick). Also: Olan Mill from Australia, which is a bit like an ambient record by Maurice Jarre; the amazing Angel Haze single (also embedded below); and Adrian Utley from Portishead’s drone/ambient/folk piece which you can download for free from the National Trust website. Worth a visit. Today, I will mostly be making a token effort to play something other than this new Joni Mitchell box, “The Studio Albums 1968-1979”… Follow me on Twitter: www.twitter.com/JohnRMulvey 1 Charlie Boyer & The Voyeurs – I Watch You (Heavenly) 2 The Fuzz – This Time I Got A Reason/Fuzz’s Fourth Dream (Trouble In Mind) 3 Liminanas – Mobylette 1(Trouble In Mind) 4 Olan Mill – Home (Preservation) 5 Toro Y Moi – Anything In Return (Carpark) 6 Lamps – Under The Water Under The Ground (In The Red) 7 Dawn McCarthy & Bonnie "Prince" Billy - Christmas Eve Can Kill You (Domino) 8 Angel Haze – Werkin Girls (http://noisey.vice.com) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szj7efHG-00 9 MMoss – MMoss (Trouble In Mind) 10 Michael Chapman – Pachyderm (Blast First Petite) 11 Matthew E White – Big Inner (Hometapes) 12 Adrian Utley – Sonic Journey (http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/trust/view-page/item992566/) 13 The Bryan Ferry Orchestra – Don’t Stop The Dance (BMG Rights Management) 14 The House Of Love – The House Of Love: Expanded Version (Cherry Red) 15 Deap Vally – Album Sampler (Communion) 16 Joni Mitchell – The Studio Albums 1968-1979 (Rhino) 17 Goat – World Music (Rocket) 18 Allen Toussaint - Happy Times In New Orleans: The Early Sessions 1958-1960 (Soul Jam)

A couple of weeks ago, I read an interview with Scott Litt about working on “Tempest”, in which he mentioned how Dylan’s voice now reminded him, positively, of Louis Armstrong. Dylan, Litt suggested, should have a go at “Hello Dolly” sometime (The full piece is stuck behind the paywall at http://www.newyorker.com/, unfortunately).

In this role, maybe Dylan could guest with a new outfit called the Bryan Ferry Orchestra; an old-time jazz band corralled by Ferry to play ‘20s-style instrumental versions of his songs. I have no idea what the versions of “Do The Strand”, “Virginia Plain” and “The Bogus Man” are going to sound like on the forthcoming album, but I’m kind of taken with “Don’t Stop The Dance” – a song I never much liked previously – embedded below. See what you think.

In other news, still hooked on the Goat record (that’s the sleeve above), and am much grateful to a new care package from Trouble In Mind (The Fuzz – and I quote, “a mysterious supergroup from San Francisco” – are the pick). Also: Olan Mill from Australia, which is a bit like an ambient record by Maurice Jarre; the amazing Angel Haze single (also embedded below); and Adrian Utley from Portishead’s drone/ambient/folk piece which you can download for free from the National Trust website. Worth a visit.

Today, I will mostly be making a token effort to play something other than this new Joni Mitchell box, “The Studio Albums 1968-1979”…

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

1 Charlie Boyer & The Voyeurs – I Watch You (Heavenly)

2 The Fuzz – This Time I Got A Reason/Fuzz’s Fourth Dream (Trouble In Mind)

3 Liminanas – Mobylette 1(Trouble In Mind)

4 Olan Mill – Home (Preservation)

5 Toro Y Moi – Anything In Return (Carpark)

6 Lamps – Under The Water Under The Ground (In The Red)

7 Dawn McCarthy & Bonnie “Prince” Billy – Christmas Eve Can Kill You (Domino)

8 Angel Haze – Werkin Girls (http://noisey.vice.com)

9 MMoss – MMoss (Trouble In Mind)

10 Michael Chapman – Pachyderm (Blast First Petite)

11 Matthew E White – Big Inner (Hometapes)

12 Adrian Utley – Sonic Journey (http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/trust/view-page/item992566/)

13 The Bryan Ferry Orchestra – Don’t Stop The Dance (BMG Rights Management)

14 The House Of Love – The House Of Love: Expanded Version (Cherry Red)

15 Deap Vally – Album Sampler (Communion)

16 Joni Mitchell – The Studio Albums 1968-1979 (Rhino)

17 Goat – World Music (Rocket)

18 Allen Toussaint – Happy Times In New Orleans: The Early Sessions 1958-1960 (Soul Jam)

Squeeze Down Under

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Squeeze Down Under

Did you see that terrific BBC4 Squeeze documentary, Take Me I’m Yours, on Friday night? I was more than a little taken aback by the currently be-whiskered Glenn Tilbrook, but I’m sure there’s a plausible explanation for wanting to look like that and otherwise the programme was a timely reminder of the many great songs he and Chris Difford have written over the years. It also put me in mind of an eventful few days I spent with the band in 1980, when they were rather unhappily touring Australia, where I caught up with them in inhospitable Brisbane before we headed for the sunny beaches of Surfer’s Paradise. Here’s a piece I wrote for my old Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One Before column in Uncut. Australia: February, 1980. They come into view just after midday, two Letz Commodores, heading out of Brisbane, travelling south on Pacific Highway, heading for Surfer’s Paradise on Queensland’s Gold Coast. Ahead of them, the mountains of The Great Divide are massive, peaks lost in static banks of clouds. The Commodores race through rising waves of heat, sweltering ovens on wheels. Road signs direct them to out-of-the-way places with exotic names: Ormeau, Eight Miles Plain, Tamborine. Crossing the Coomera River in the leading car, Chris Difford points at a sign for somewhere called Woolloongabba. “Sounds like a fuckin’ Ramones’ song,” he says, tugging at the dripping T-shirt stuck wetly to his chest. I think this is pretty funny, and laugh accordingly. Everybody else in the car sits there, glum as fuck. Squeeze have been like this since they arrived in Brisbane the day before. They fly in from somewhere they can’t be bothered talking about, surly, tired. A Channel 7 TV news crew meets them at the airport, but the band are hot, irritable and sulky. A local reporter asks Jools Holland if there are any similarities between audiences in America and Australia. “People throw things at us wherever we play,” he says. And the venues, the reporter persists, are they similar? “Well,” says Jools, wearily, as Glenn Tilbrook swats at a fly and Difford rolls his eyes, “they’ve all got stages.” Later that afternoon, Jools, Chris and drummer Gilson Lavis are sitting in the coffee shop of The Crest Hotel, staring through the window at Brisbane. They’ve been in Australia for three weeks, and are missing Blighty like buggery. “The thing about Australia,” Difford reflects mournfully, “is that it’s the other side of the world. And it feels like it.” “I keep waking up, wondering where I am,” says Gilson. “It don’t matter where you are,” says Difford. “If it ain’t home, you’re away. And that’s always bad news.” Tour manager John Ley joins us with a fax from England, confirming Wreckless Eric as support for their forthcoming UK tour. “Wreckless Eric?” asks Jools, somewhat astonished. “What’s wrong with that?” Ley asks. “Nothing, nothing,” Jools says. “It’s just that I thought Wreckless Eric was famous.” “If you feel that strongly about it,” says Difford, drily, “perhaps we could ask him if he’ll let us support him.” That night, Squeeze play a pretty blinding gig at Brisbane’s Festival Hall, after which Glenn Tilbrook and I end up at the bar of some ghastly disco called The Top Of The State, apparently the swishest nightspot in town. We’ve bluffed our way in, and over the strongest drinks available are now regretting it. The place is full of macho Brisbane bruisers. They’re all pissed, with shit-eating grins, perms, gold medallions, and more hair on their chests than a koala bear’s arse. “Pommy bastard punks,” one of them growls at us. “Why dontcha fuck off?” “Because I don’t do requests,” Tilbrook tells him, though not very loudly, and not until he’s well out of earshot. The next day, we drive down the Pacific Highway to Surfer’s Paradise, tourist centre of The Gold Coast, a 40- kilometre stretch of coastline that runs from Southport to Coolangatta, where Squeeze are booked to play two nights at the Jet Club. “Looks like Torremolinos out there,” says Jools. We’re sitting in the Shell Bar on Cavill Avenue, a mutant cross between Blackpool’s Golden Mile, London’s Carnaby Street and Dante’s vision of hell. We’re hiding in here from the sun. It’s 115 degrees outside, where the girls are sashaying by, naked flesh as far as the eye can see. “You’re always complaining,” Difford tells him. “It’s because I’m English,” says Jools, “that’s what we’re famous for.” “I know,” says Difford. “Here we are, sitting under the palm trees, with the sun shining like we’ve never seen it before, there are tits everywhere – and what do we do?” “Complain,” Jools says. “Moan. Whinge. Like we always do.” “It was the same when I used to go to the Isle Of Wight with me mum and dad,” Difford recalls. “We’d get on the beach and everyone used to complain because the stones on the beach were too sharp.” “I love the British on holiday,” Jools says. “Always complaining. Always finding something to moan about. But, I mean, this weather’d be all right if it was in England. I mean, if it was like this, you’d be out with your mates or your girlfriend. You’d get in the motor, drive down to some nice little pub, sit outside all afternoon and get really jolly.” He takes a sip of his drink. “Actually,” he says then, “this place wouldn’t be too bad. . .” “If,” says Difford, reading Holland’s thoughts, “it wasn’t full of fucking Australians.” “Right,” Jools says. “Dead right.” Recklessly, we decide to go for a swim, saunter down to the beach, through crowds of beautiful girls and muscle-bound boys. Difford and I attempt to strike manly poses as we stride into the ocean. Jools has forgotten his swimming shorts, drops his trousers to reveal a pair of Marks & Sparks’ Y-fronts. They’re blue with white piping. “Do you think anyone will notice?” he asks Difford. “Absolutely no chance,” Chris tells him, looking over Jools’ shoulder at the girls on the beach, pointing at us and cackling hysterically. “It’s going to be dreadful when we go back for the British tour,” Difford says. We’re sprawled out on the sand, the sun beating down on us, Jools still in the water, looking for his underpants, which he’s lost in the crashing surf. “Our audience is going to take one look at us and go, ‘Fuck me, look at this lot.’ Cos some of us are going to go back looking a bit, you know, bronzed. And they’ll think, ‘What a lot of flash bastards. They’ve probably been pissing it about in the fuckin’ Bahamas all through the winter while we’ve been freezing back here.” He rolls over. “Couldn’t pass me the suntan lotion, could you?” he asks then. The night after the band’s first gig at the Jet Club, Difford and I are sitting on the balcony of his hotel room. There’s lightning in the mountains, thunder on the wind. We’re talking about a song on the band’s forthcoming Argybargy album called “I Think I’m Go Go”, which articulates a sad disenchantment with pop celebrity. “That’s how I feel at the moment,” Difford says. “This is a lonely business. Everybody thinks it’s such a glamorous lifestyle. But it’s not. Most of the time, you’re hanging around hotel rooms feeling sorry for yourself. If you take it too seriously, and I have a tendency to sometimes, you find yourself walking out on the beach at night ready to say goodbye to the world. That sort of feeling creeps up on you now and again, specially towards the end of long tours. That’s when you start writing songs about suicide. “It all becomes such a chore,” he goes on. “Especially when you’re sitting around doing nothing, which seems to be most of the time. You’re either travelling or you’re sitting around the hotel waiting for the gig. Sitting around hotels and airports, I can’t handle at all. If I’m standing around for too long, I start thinking of ways to escape. I’ve come very close to it on this tour. I feel really locked up here. The other day, we were in Sydney airport. I was looking at the flights going out to America. And I looked over at John Ley’s briefcase with my airline ticket in it. And I looked at my passport and I thought, ‘Go!’ But I couldn’t do it. If I had, the band would have punched me out and the promoter would have sued me. So I stayed.” Lightning flashes in the sky. “But I can’t say I’m enjoying it,” Chris says, quietly. Have a good week. _ Pic: Gerry Lee

Did you see that terrific BBC4 Squeeze documentary, Take Me I’m Yours, on Friday night? I was more than a little taken aback by the currently be-whiskered Glenn Tilbrook, but I’m sure there’s a plausible explanation for wanting to look like that and otherwise the programme was a timely reminder of the many great songs he and Chris Difford have written over the years. It also put me in mind of an eventful few days I spent with the band in 1980, when they were rather unhappily touring Australia, where I caught up with them in inhospitable Brisbane before we headed for the sunny beaches of Surfer’s Paradise. Here’s a piece I wrote for my old Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One Before column in Uncut.

Australia: February, 1980. They come into view just after midday, two Letz Commodores, heading out of Brisbane, travelling south on Pacific Highway, heading for Surfer’s Paradise on Queensland’s Gold Coast.

Ahead of them, the mountains of The Great Divide are massive, peaks lost in static banks of clouds. The Commodores race through rising waves of heat, sweltering ovens on wheels. Road signs direct them to out-of-the-way places with exotic names: Ormeau, Eight Miles Plain, Tamborine. Crossing the Coomera River in the leading car, Chris Difford points at a sign for somewhere called Woolloongabba.

“Sounds like a fuckin’ Ramones’ song,” he says, tugging at the dripping T-shirt stuck wetly to his chest.

I think this is pretty funny, and laugh accordingly. Everybody else in the car sits there, glum as fuck. Squeeze have been like this since they arrived in Brisbane the day before. They fly in from somewhere they can’t be bothered talking about, surly, tired. A Channel 7 TV news crew meets them at the airport, but the band are hot, irritable and sulky. A local reporter asks Jools Holland if there are any similarities between audiences in America and Australia. “People throw things at us wherever we play,” he says. And the venues, the reporter persists, are they similar? “Well,” says Jools, wearily, as Glenn Tilbrook swats at a fly and Difford rolls his eyes, “they’ve all got stages.”

Later that afternoon, Jools, Chris and drummer Gilson Lavis are sitting in the coffee shop of The Crest Hotel, staring through the window at Brisbane. They’ve been in Australia for three weeks, and are missing Blighty like buggery.

“The thing about Australia,” Difford reflects mournfully, “is that it’s the other side of the world. And it feels like it.”

“I keep waking up, wondering where I am,” says Gilson.

“It don’t matter where you are,” says Difford. “If it ain’t home, you’re away. And that’s always bad news.”

Tour manager John Ley joins us with a fax from England, confirming Wreckless Eric as support for their forthcoming UK tour.

“Wreckless Eric?” asks Jools, somewhat astonished.

“What’s wrong with that?” Ley asks.

“Nothing, nothing,” Jools says. “It’s just that I thought Wreckless Eric was famous.”

“If you feel that strongly about it,” says Difford, drily, “perhaps we could ask him if he’ll let us support him.”

That night, Squeeze play a pretty blinding gig at Brisbane’s Festival Hall, after which Glenn Tilbrook

and I end up at the bar of some ghastly disco called The Top Of The State, apparently the swishest nightspot in town. We’ve bluffed our way in, and over the strongest drinks available are now regretting it. The place is full of macho Brisbane bruisers. They’re all pissed, with shit-eating grins, perms, gold medallions, and more hair on their chests than a koala bear’s arse.

“Pommy bastard punks,” one of them growls at us. “Why dontcha fuck off?”

“Because I don’t do requests,” Tilbrook tells him, though not very loudly, and not until he’s well out of earshot.

The next day, we drive down the Pacific Highway

to Surfer’s Paradise, tourist centre of The Gold Coast, a 40- kilometre stretch of coastline that runs from Southport to Coolangatta, where Squeeze are booked to play two nights at the Jet Club.

“Looks like Torremolinos out there,” says Jools. We’re sitting in the Shell Bar on Cavill Avenue, a mutant cross between Blackpool’s Golden Mile, London’s Carnaby Street and Dante’s vision of hell. We’re hiding in here from the sun. It’s 115 degrees outside, where the girls are sashaying by, naked flesh as far as the eye can see.

“You’re always complaining,” Difford tells him.

“It’s because I’m English,” says Jools, “that’s what we’re famous for.”

“I know,” says Difford. “Here we are, sitting under the palm trees, with the sun shining like we’ve never seen it before, there are tits everywhere – and what do we do?”

“Complain,” Jools says. “Moan. Whinge. Like we always do.”

“It was the same when I used to go to the Isle Of Wight with me mum and dad,” Difford recalls. “We’d get on the beach and everyone used to complain because the stones on the beach were too sharp.”

“I love the British on holiday,” Jools says. “Always complaining. Always finding something to moan about. But, I mean, this weather’d be all right if it was in England. I mean, if it was like this, you’d be out with your mates or your girlfriend. You’d get in the motor, drive down to some nice little pub, sit outside all afternoon and get really jolly.”

He takes a sip of his drink.

“Actually,” he says then, “this place wouldn’t be too bad. . .”

“If,” says Difford, reading Holland’s thoughts, “it wasn’t full of fucking Australians.”

“Right,” Jools says. “Dead right.”

Recklessly, we decide to go for a swim, saunter down to the beach, through crowds of beautiful girls and muscle-bound boys. Difford and I attempt to strike manly poses as we stride into the ocean. Jools has forgotten his swimming shorts, drops his trousers to reveal a pair of Marks & Sparks’ Y-fronts. They’re blue with white piping.

“Do you think anyone will notice?” he asks Difford.

“Absolutely no chance,” Chris tells him, looking over Jools’ shoulder at the girls on the beach, pointing at us and cackling hysterically.

“It’s going to be dreadful when we go back for the British tour,” Difford says. We’re sprawled out on the sand, the sun beating down on us, Jools still in the water, looking for his underpants, which he’s lost in the crashing surf. “Our audience is going to take one look at us and go, ‘Fuck me, look at this lot.’ Cos some of us are going to go back looking a bit, you know, bronzed. And they’ll think, ‘What a lot of flash bastards. They’ve probably been pissing it about in the fuckin’ Bahamas all through the winter while we’ve been freezing back here.” He rolls over. “Couldn’t pass me the suntan lotion, could you?” he asks then.

The night after the band’s first gig at the Jet Club, Difford and I are sitting on the balcony of his hotel room. There’s lightning in the mountains, thunder on the wind.

We’re talking about a song on the band’s forthcoming Argybargy album called “I Think I’m Go Go”, which articulates a sad disenchantment with pop celebrity.

“That’s how I feel at the moment,” Difford says. “This is a lonely business. Everybody thinks it’s such a glamorous lifestyle. But it’s not. Most of the time, you’re hanging around hotel rooms feeling sorry for yourself. If you take it too seriously, and I have a tendency to sometimes, you find yourself walking out on the beach at night ready to say goodbye to the world. That sort of feeling creeps up on you now and again, specially towards the end of long tours. That’s when you start writing songs about suicide.

“It all becomes such a chore,” he goes on. “Especially when you’re sitting around doing nothing, which seems to be most of the time. You’re either travelling or you’re sitting around the hotel waiting for the gig. Sitting around hotels and airports, I can’t handle at all. If I’m standing around for too long, I start thinking of ways to escape. I’ve come very close to it on this tour. I feel really locked up here. The other day, we were in Sydney airport. I was looking at the flights going out to America. And I looked over at John Ley’s briefcase with my airline ticket in it. And I looked at my passport and I thought, ‘Go!’ But I couldn’t do it. If I had, the band would have punched me out and the promoter would have sued me. So I stayed.”

Lightning flashes in the sky.

“But I can’t say I’m enjoying it,” Chris says, quietly.

Have a good week.

_

Pic: Gerry Lee

Jimmy Page: ‘It took two years for us to watch reunion gig footage’ – watch

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Jimmy Page: ‘It took two years for us to watch reunion gig footage’ – watch
Jimmy Page says it took two years before he and the rest of Led Zeppelin sat down to watch the footage of their 2007 reunion show, and another three years before it was ready for release. Speaking to NME at the London premiere of Celebration Day, Page said: "It was important that if we were going ...

Jimmy Page says it took two years before he and the rest of Led Zeppelin sat down to watch the footage of their 2007 reunion show, and another three years before it was ready for release.

Speaking to NME at the London premiere of Celebration Day, Page said: “It was important that if we were going to do [a reunion] at all, that we went out there and did it properly. We put a lot of time and effort into it so that it would be what you’re going to see now, which is just one show – that’s all we did, no warm-up gigs, no follow-up. It wasn’t designed to be a film at all. That’s why it’s taken a little while to come out, because we didn’t even look at it for two years after we’d done it, so we could be a bit more objective about it.”

The guitarist also revealed that there were sound problems onstage at the O2 Arena, but that the band were well-rehearsed enough to overcome them. “The first two numbers we couldn’t hear the monitors onstage, so that’s how well attuned we were for it… it just grew all the way through,” he said.

Also on the red carpet were Led Zeppelin singer Robert Plant, who revealed that “For Your Life” was his favourite song of the show, because “we’d never played it together before,” and Kasabian’s Serge Pizzorno, who described Led Zeppelin as “Just an incredible rock’n’roll band.”

The three members of Led Zeppelin evaded questions about when the next reunion might happen. Last week, Robert Plant called a journalist in New York a “schmuck” for asking the same.

Celebration Day, a concert film of the band’s 2007 appearance at London’s 02 Arena, will screen in cinemas from October 17. It will then get a general DVD release on November 19. A deluxe edition will also include footage of the Shepperton rehearsals, as well as BBC news footage.

Keith Richards on live show payday: “£16m sounds about right to us”

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Keith Richards on live show payday: “£16m sounds about right to us”

Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards says he does not want to charge fans high prices to see the band, despite the fact that tickets for the newly announced London shows range from £90 to a deluxe package priced at £950. Appearing on BBC 6Music, Richards addressed rumours that the band will personally pocket £16m from the run of live shows, saying: "I haven't looked at the figures – numbers can get greatly exaggerated. I just wanna do some shows and I don't want to charge over the bloody top. I'm a bit out of the loop with showbiz. £16m sounds about right to us." Richards will join his bandmates for two night's at London's 02 Arena on November 25 and 29 to celebrate their 50th anniversary. They will also be playing two nights at the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey in the US on December 13 and 15. Asked by 6Music's Matt Everitt if there will be more shows beyond the 50th anniversary gigs, Richards said that he "wouldn't be surprised," adding: "Nobody has given us a heads up but this band isn't going to wind up with four shows. Next year looks like it is on." Richards also expressed interest in appearing at Glastonbury – weather permitting: "On a good day if the weather's fine that's an interesting proposition. The band wants to get these four gigs under their belt and then think about next year after that. Anything is possible with this band."

Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards says he does not want to charge fans high prices to see the band, despite the fact that tickets for the newly announced London shows range from £90 to a deluxe package priced at £950.

Appearing on BBC 6Music, Richards addressed rumours that the band will personally pocket £16m from the run of live shows, saying: “I haven’t looked at the figures – numbers can get greatly exaggerated. I just wanna do some shows and I don’t want to charge over the bloody top. I’m a bit out of the loop with showbiz. £16m sounds about right to us.”

Richards will join his bandmates for two night’s at London’s 02 Arena on November 25 and 29 to celebrate their 50th anniversary. They will also be playing two nights at the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey in the US on December 13 and 15.

Asked by 6Music’s Matt Everitt if there will be more shows beyond the 50th anniversary gigs, Richards said that he “wouldn’t be surprised,” adding: “Nobody has given us a heads up but this band isn’t going to wind up with four shows. Next year looks like it is on.”

Richards also expressed interest in appearing at Glastonbury – weather permitting: “On a good day if the weather’s fine that’s an interesting proposition. The band wants to get these four gigs under their belt and then think about next year after that. Anything is possible with this band.”

Patti Smith: ‘Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson could have starred in ‘Just Kids”

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Patti Smith: ‘Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson could have starred in ‘Just Kids”
Patti Smith has said that on-off Hollywood lovers Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattison could have 'easily' played her and the late photographer Robert Mapplethorpe in Just Kids, the film adaptation of her own memoir. Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, Smith said: "I remember the very first time I saw...

Patti Smith has said that on-off Hollywood lovers Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattison could have ‘easily’ played her and the late photographer Robert Mapplethorpe in Just Kids, the film adaptation of her own memoir.

Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, Smith said: “I remember the very first time I saw Kristen Stewart and Rob Pattinson together, when they were younger, and I thought, ‘Those two kids could have easily played us when they were first starting. There’s something in his eyes. And Robert [Mapplethorpe] was also a bit shy, and a bit stoic. Kristen has a very special quality. She’s not conventionally beautiful, but very charismatic.”

Smith is currently adapting her 2010 autobiographical story for the big screen. Of casting the film, she added: “Robert and I were very young. We were 20. We were unknowns, and I think it should be unknowns in the film, and young.”

Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea recently revealed that Patti Smith will appear on his new solo EP. In a series of tweets, he wrote that the proceeds from the self-recorded EP, Helen Burns, will go towards Silverlake Conservatory for Music, the Los Angeles music school he set up in 2001.

Smith meanwhile released her latest LP, Banga, this summer. The album is her 11th and features a cover of Neil Young‘s “After The Gold Rush”.

Fleetwood Mac confirm details of reunion tour, hint at new material in 2013

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Fleetwood Mac confirm details of reunion tour, hint at new material in 2013
Stevie Nicks has confirmed that Fleetwood Mac will embark on a reunion tour from April next year. The band behind iconic 1977 album Rumours put an end to months of speculation by confirming their reunion, with Nicks also revealing the band are in talks about recording new music to coincide with the...

Stevie Nicks has confirmed that Fleetwood Mac will embark on a reunion tour from April next year.

The band behind iconic 1977 album Rumours put an end to months of speculation by confirming their reunion, with Nicks also revealing the band are in talks about recording new music to coincide with the live dates.

Speaking to ABC News Radio, Nicks said: “We go into rehearsals somewhere around the end of February. So… if everything goes to plan, we should probably be out [on the road] by end of April [or] May, I would think.”

Nicks added that the reunited group are working on new music, though nothing is official yet.Well, actually, maybe like two songs, maybe four, who knows? We don’t really know yet ‘cos we’re not in the world of Fleetwood Mac yet. We’re just still in talks about that.

Fleetwood Mac are one of a number of names rumoured to be headlining Glastonbury when the festival returns. Speaking to NME about the rumours, festival organiser Emily Eavis said: “I think Fleetwood Mac would be amazing to get, I’ll be totally honest we haven’t had any conversations with them yet but, you know, it is still early days. We’re just talking to some headliners now. For us it’s about getting the balance of heritage bands, legends and new bands – just keeping that balance.”

Jerry Lee Lewis’ bandmate killed in shootout

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Jerry Lee Lewis’ bandmate killed in shootout

A member of rock'n'roll star Jerry Lee Lewis' band was killed in a shootout on Sunday (October 14) in Memphis. Seventy-year-old bass player BB Cunningham was working as a security guard at an apartment complex when he went to investigate a gunshot noise nearby. Witnesses say they then heard further gunshots and Cunningham, along with an unidentified 16-year-old, was found dead at the scene. Police are currently investigating the incident. Judy Baladez, a resident of the apartment buildings told WMCTV: "I just like kind of stayed down in my bed and laid quiet and still because I didn't know if more shooting was going to continue." She added that the gunshots sounded "very loud, like they were very close by, they didn't sound like they were being shot in the air. They sounded close by like they were being shot at somebody." BB Cunningham was also a former member of Memphis band The Hombres, but, reports Rolling Stone, he moved to Los Angeles in the early 1970s to work at Independent Recorders as a chief engineer, working with the likes of Billy Joel and Elton John. Cunningham joined Lewis' band in 1997 and released his own solo album in 2003, called Hangin' In. Jerry Lee Lewis married for the seventh time earlier this year. In 2010, Lewis announced a book deal with It Books, an imprint of HarperCollins. Alberto Rojas, director of publicity for It Books, said in March of this year that the book deal is still on, and that Lewis' memoir will be released in 2013.

A member of rock’n’roll star Jerry Lee Lewis‘ band was killed in a shootout on Sunday (October 14) in Memphis.

Seventy-year-old bass player BB Cunningham was working as a security guard at an apartment complex when he went to investigate a gunshot noise nearby.

Witnesses say they then heard further gunshots and Cunningham, along with an unidentified 16-year-old, was found dead at the scene.

Police are currently investigating the incident. Judy Baladez, a resident of the apartment buildings told WMCTV:

“I just like kind of stayed down in my bed and laid quiet and still because I didn’t know if more shooting was going to continue.” She added that the gunshots sounded “very loud, like they were very close by, they didn’t sound like they were being shot in the air. They sounded close by like they were being shot at somebody.”

BB Cunningham was also a former member of Memphis band The Hombres, but, reports Rolling Stone, he moved to Los Angeles in the early 1970s to work at Independent Recorders as a chief engineer, working with the likes of Billy Joel and Elton John.

Cunningham joined Lewis’ band in 1997 and released his own solo album in 2003, called Hangin’ In.

Jerry Lee Lewis married for the seventh time earlier this year. In 2010, Lewis announced a book deal with It Books, an imprint of HarperCollins. Alberto Rojas, director of publicity for It Books, said in March of this year that the book deal is still on, and that Lewis’ memoir will be released in 2013.

Bat For Lashes – The Haunted Man

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Bat For Lashes – The Haunted Man

A stripped-down - yet chart friendly - return... When Bat For Lashes’ darkling “What’s A Girl To Do?” showed up in Brett Easton Ellis’s 2010 novel Imperial Bedrooms - his neo-noir high-school reunion sequel to Less Than Zero - it seemed like a significant artistic coup. Short of retconning your way onto a John Hughes soundtrack or a David Lynch commercial, it represents a pinnacle of a certain kind of 21st century pop ambition. Florence Welch, for one, was chartreuse with envy. But it also brought into focus the oddly precarious state of Natasha Khan’s career: was she already a charming period reference - part of the late-noughties UK tulip craze for pop wonkettes, Kate Bush-babies and La Roux? Or a more resonant, ongoing artistic presence? Less Than Zero’s soundtrack, after all, referenced The Little Girls as well as Elvis Costello. In some way it feels counterintuitive to talk of the precarity of an artist whose first two albums were both nominated for the Mercury Prize. But The Haunted Man certainly feels like a make or break release, the moment Khan establishes whether she can outlast the whim of pop fashion. Though the cover - a Ryan McGinley portrait featuring a discreetly naked Khan gallantly giving a fireman’s lift to a similarly naked pal - feels on one level shamelessly calculated to generate daft controversy, it also seems intended as a statement of artistic sincerity: enough of theatrical contrivance (the cover of 2009’s Two Planets looked like a Mighty Boosh dream sequence, while the songs featured a bewildering array of personas) - now this, as Mike Yarwood used to say, is me. “Laura”, the first song to emerge from the album (though not, apparently, a single) gives substance to this intention. Only composed at the label’s insistence, when they felt Khan hadn’t written enough hits, it’s a collaboration with Justin Parker, the co-writer of Lana Del Rey’s “Video Games”, and evidently this year’s go-to guy for swooning, widescreen balladry. From the opening piano twinkles you initially fear an Adelatrous bid for the bland heart of the Radio 2 A-list, but somehow, through the force of her singing and the classic but compelling songcraft, by the time it builds to the chorus - “you’re the train that crashed my heart / you’re the glitter in the dark” - you’re sold. It may be the first Bat For Lashes song to be unashamedly moving. The song’s bold simplicity isn’t entirely representative of the rest of the album, however, which is lush and cinematic, albeit in the classic manner of say David Lean (Ryan’s Daughter was reportedly an influence) rather than Donnie Darko. Opener “Lilies” floats in on plangent waves of Cocteausish guitar before blooming into a sumptuous synthetic chorus (replete with this season’s must-have retro-accessory: the bass sound from Berlin’s “Take My Breath Away”), while “Marilyn” is a similarly lavish Lynchian powerballad. It occasionally feels a little too clinically tasteful, as severely and determinedly classic as Khan’s newly bobbed hair. At times, especially on “Oh Yeah” you might be reminded of crystalline geometries of Annie Lennox’s solo Diva-dom. You miss her earlier wildness, even when it risked gauchness. Some songs feel a little too eager to please, too anxious to build to the obvious - “Horses Of The Sun” rides in with an unsettling, vaguely martial verse, like something from Portishead’s Third (and indeed Adrian Utley plays on the track) but then abruptly cuts to a bombastic chorus that seems to belong to another song entirely. But on the title track Khan comes into her own: stuttering morse code beats give way to the ratatat of musket, fife and drums, heralding the entrance of the male voice choir of some ghostly WW1 division, before erupting into an astonishing symphonic climax. Casting about for reference points you can only think of Kate Bush or Jane Siberry’s more epic moments. But crucially it’s reminiscent of their ambition rather than their stylistic tics. In the past Khan laboured in the long shadows of her obvious influences: on The Haunted Man she’s exorcised some of those ghosts and gone some way to becoming her own woman. STEPHEN TROUSSE Q+A Natasha Khan Do you think The Haunted Man is your strongest album yet? I think it’s certainly the most consistent in terms of vision. I wrote about 30 songs and I think the fact it took two and half years to make really paid off. I really pushed myself - my critical voice is quite strong! Did working with Justin Parker on “Laura” influence the writing of your own songs? “Laura” was actually the very last song that we wrote. The record company kind of pressured me into writing it because they thought there weren’t enough singles. I thought, I feel really good about what I’ve written so far but if I’m going to do a collaborative thing it’s not going to be with just anyone. And I really liked “Video Games’ from quite early on. So I used my time with Justin to get him to teach me about songwriting things like middle eights. How did the male voice choir on the title track come about? “The Haunted Man” was one of the first songs I wrote for the album. It was quite a long piece of music - I was thinking of it as film music or a musical. And I kept hearing male voices. And I went out to Italy to work with Rob Ellis and while were out there he introduced me to a choral master, and we had a fantastic day out in the mountains working out all these crazy harmonic intervals, listening to the Beach Boys and old monks. We actually projected it out of an amp out over a canyon to get that amazing slapback echo, to get that feeling of soldiers coming back from war.

A stripped-down – yet chart friendly – return…

When Bat For Lashes’ darkling “What’s A Girl To Do?” showed up in Brett Easton Ellis’s 2010 novel Imperial Bedrooms – his neo-noir high-school reunion sequel to Less Than Zero – it seemed like a significant artistic coup. Short of retconning your way onto a John Hughes soundtrack or a David Lynch commercial, it represents a pinnacle of a certain kind of 21st century pop ambition. Florence Welch, for one, was chartreuse with envy. But it also brought into focus the oddly precarious state of Natasha Khan’s career: was she already a charming period reference – part of the late-noughties UK tulip craze for pop wonkettes, Kate Bush-babies and La Roux? Or a more resonant, ongoing artistic presence? Less Than Zero’s soundtrack, after all, referenced The Little Girls as well as Elvis Costello.

In some way it feels counterintuitive to talk of the precarity of an artist whose first two albums were both nominated for the Mercury Prize. But The Haunted Man certainly feels like a make or break release, the moment Khan establishes whether she can outlast the whim of pop fashion. Though the cover – a Ryan McGinley portrait featuring a discreetly naked Khan gallantly giving a fireman’s lift to a similarly naked pal – feels on one level shamelessly calculated to generate daft controversy, it also seems intended as a statement of artistic sincerity: enough of theatrical contrivance (the cover of 2009’s Two Planets looked like a Mighty Boosh dream sequence, while the songs featured a bewildering array of personas) – now this, as Mike Yarwood used to say, is me.

“Laura”, the first song to emerge from the album (though not, apparently, a single) gives substance to this intention. Only composed at the label’s insistence, when they felt Khan hadn’t written enough hits, it’s a collaboration with Justin Parker, the co-writer of Lana Del Rey’s “Video Games”, and evidently this year’s go-to guy for swooning, widescreen balladry. From the opening piano twinkles you initially fear an Adelatrous bid for the bland heart of the Radio 2 A-list, but somehow, through the force of her singing and the classic but compelling songcraft, by the time it builds to the chorus – “you’re the train that crashed my heart / you’re the glitter in the dark” – you’re sold. It may be the first Bat For Lashes song to be unashamedly moving.

The song’s bold simplicity isn’t entirely representative of the rest of the album, however, which is lush and cinematic, albeit in the classic manner of say David Lean (Ryan’s Daughter was reportedly an influence) rather than Donnie Darko. Opener “Lilies” floats in on plangent waves of Cocteausish guitar before blooming into a sumptuous synthetic chorus (replete with this season’s must-have retro-accessory: the bass sound from Berlin’s “Take My Breath Away”), while “Marilyn” is a similarly lavish Lynchian powerballad.

It occasionally feels a little too clinically tasteful, as severely and determinedly classic as Khan’s newly bobbed hair. At times, especially on “Oh Yeah” you might be reminded of crystalline geometries of Annie Lennox’s solo Diva-dom. You miss her earlier wildness, even when it risked gauchness. Some songs feel a little too eager to please, too anxious to build to the obvious – “Horses Of The Sun” rides in with an unsettling, vaguely martial verse, like something from Portishead’s Third (and indeed Adrian Utley plays on the track) but then abruptly cuts to a bombastic chorus that seems to belong to another song entirely.

But on the title track Khan comes into her own: stuttering morse code beats give way to the ratatat of musket, fife and drums, heralding the entrance of the male voice choir of some ghostly WW1 division, before erupting into an astonishing symphonic climax. Casting about for reference points you can only think of Kate Bush or Jane Siberry’s more epic moments. But crucially it’s reminiscent of their ambition rather than their stylistic tics. In the past Khan laboured in the long shadows of her obvious influences: on The Haunted Man she’s exorcised some of those ghosts and gone some way to becoming her own woman.

STEPHEN TROUSSE

Q+A

Natasha Khan

Do you think The Haunted Man is your strongest album yet?

I think it’s certainly the most consistent in terms of vision. I wrote about 30 songs and I think the fact it took two and half years to make really paid off. I really pushed myself – my critical voice is quite strong!

Did working with Justin Parker on “Laura” influence the writing of your own songs?

“Laura” was actually the very last song that we wrote. The record company kind of pressured me into writing it because they thought there weren’t enough singles. I thought, I feel really good about what I’ve written so far but if I’m going to do a collaborative thing it’s not going to be with just anyone. And I really liked “Video Games’ from quite early on. So I used my time with Justin to get him to teach me about songwriting things like middle eights.

How did the male voice choir on the title track come about?

“The Haunted Man” was one of the first songs I wrote for the album. It was quite a long piece of music – I was thinking of it as film music or a musical. And I kept hearing male voices. And I went out to Italy to work with Rob Ellis and while were out there he introduced me to a choral master, and we had a fantastic day out in the mountains working out all these crazy harmonic intervals, listening to the Beach Boys and old monks. We actually projected it out of an amp out over a canyon to get that amazing slapback echo, to get that feeling of soldiers coming back from war.

Peter Gabriel – So 25th anniversary box set

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Peter Gabriel – So 25th anniversary box set

The classic '86 solo album, lavishly packaged with extras... A pop star isn’t supposed to have his biggest hit at the age of 36, 16 years after his debut and six albums into his solo career. And, as we’re constantly told, prog rock dinosaurs were supposed to have been slain in the evenements of 1977. Peter Gabriel, of course, seemed magnificently unconcerned by such details. So is the sound of a man who has slowly absorbed each new wave – post-punk, New Pop, synth pop, Afrobeat – and syncretised them into an album that would transform this cult experimentalist into one of the big beasts of global pop. Has it dated? So much 80s music – or, to be specific, pop recorded between those wilderness years of 1983 and 1988 – is rendered almost unlistenable today, due to those hallmarks of high 80s production: gated reverb on the snare, glutinous DX7 pianos, Simmons electric tom-toms, heavily chorused guitars, and so on. From the thunderous Linn drums and fretless bass that open “Red Rain” much on So can certainly be carbon-dated by these tropes, although it’s not always a problem. Sometimes the state-of-the-art production is part of the appeal. The digi-funk bombast of “Big Time” is a defining totem of high-end 80s production, pitched somewhere between Scritti Politti’s “Wood Beez” and Trevor Horn’s “Owner Of A Lonely Heart”. And the funk shuffle of “Sledgehammer” now sounds almost timeless, thanks to it being a much-sampled hip hop fixture. Elsewhere the production interferes, like the bell-like Fairlight sounds that mar “That Voice Again”, or the whistling ambient accompaniment on “Mercy Street” (the orchestral recreation of the latter track on last year’s New Blood is possibly preferable). Laurie Anderson’s co-write “This Is The Picture (Excellent Birds)” is a series of jerky abstractions in search of a song and never really fitted on here; conversely, it’s the oft-overlooked “We Do What We’re Told (Miligram’s 37)” that’s one of the best tracks: an Eno-esque miniature that ends just as it starts getting interesting. This is a lavish package, with extras including a two-hour Live In Athens DVD and a second DVD featuring the excellent hour-long “Classic Albums” documentary on the making of So. But the most interesting disc is the “DNA CD”, tracing the “audio evolution of So”. Each track glues together several different versions of each song, taken from various stages in their development. We start with the rawest demo – usually just Gabriel accompanying himself on a digital piano – and then, with every verse, gradually revert to subsequent, more polished demos of the song until, by the end of the track, we are left with a rough template for the finished version. They are unique glimpses into the recording process, a format that you can expect to be copied on other reissue packages. “Red Rain” and “Sledgehammer” both start with just a spartan, clunky piano riffs, with Gabriel singing gibberish, wordless lyrics. “Big Time” starts as a jangly gospel piano instrumental, then mutates into a guitar-led funk jam, slowly adding garbled synth horns. You can hear a ghostly tenor saxophone wailing in the background of “Mercy Street”, and you can hear how Tony Levin’s syncopated, kora-like fretless bass line, which now sounds so central to “Don’t Give Up”, turns out to have been a last-minute addition to a song which started out as a country Baptist hymn (with Dolly Parton initially earmarked for Kate Bush’s role). The package also includes a 12” single featuring three tracks. There’s an intriguing piano-led gospel version of “Don’t Give Up”, and two previously unheard tracks: “Courage” is a weirdly appealing Talking Heads pastiche that wouldn’t sound out of place on Remain In Light (“I’ve been beating my head against a rubber wall”), while “Sagrada Familia” is another promising unused demo, mixing African high-life guitar, Tony Levin’s rubbery bass and some frenetic Latin percussion with an intriguing lyric about Antonio Gaudi and Sarah Winchester. Both sound utterly untouched by any of the high-80s tropes mentioned earlier – it would be fascinating to hear an entire album like this. John Lewis Q&A DANIEL LANOIS Was So a conscious attempt to make a “pop” record? Not in a cynical way, but Peter definitely wanted to make proper songs. I said to Peter, early in the session, “I know you hate hi hats and cymbals, but you’ve made five fucken’ albums without them, so just get over it! Some of us actually like records that groove, ferchrissakes!” And I think that liberated Peter to explore a funkier, more soulful, more playful, more emotional side to his character. Was it a laborious process? I was living in Peter’s house for a year, in what I call the Bell Tower. We spent nearly six month on preps: not only setting up sounds but also providing Peter with rock solid advice about which way to go and what we might need. And we wrote the songs as a tight trio – just me, guitarist David Rhodes and Peter with his beatbox. We only proceeded with ideas if there was a spark of magic in that format. The bass and drums came much, much later, which is the opposite of how you’d usually work. It sounds like there were dozens of versions of each song recorded... When you work with Peter, there are lots of ideas flying around all the time. You have to become a master librarian just to keep track of the best stuff. He actually did have a library – not a hard-drive, but a physical librarly, a big closet filled with two-inch tapes! – and you’d store stuff there. I was an obsessive notekeeper in those days, so I logged every take and every synth sound, which mean that I was able to get back to any sound that Peter liked. So every one of these songs you can find at least a dozen versions. INTERVIEW: JOHN LEWIS

The classic ’86 solo album, lavishly packaged with extras…

A pop star isn’t supposed to have his biggest hit at the age of 36, 16 years after his debut and six albums into his solo career. And, as we’re constantly told, prog rock dinosaurs were supposed to have been slain in the evenements of 1977. Peter Gabriel, of course, seemed magnificently unconcerned by such details. So is the sound of a man who has slowly absorbed each new wave – post-punk, New Pop, synth pop, Afrobeat – and syncretised them into an album that would transform this cult experimentalist into one of the big beasts of global pop.

Has it dated? So much 80s music – or, to be specific, pop recorded between those wilderness years of 1983 and 1988 – is rendered almost unlistenable today, due to those hallmarks of high 80s production: gated reverb on the snare, glutinous DX7 pianos, Simmons electric tom-toms, heavily chorused guitars, and so on. From the thunderous Linn drums and fretless bass that open “Red Rain” much on So can certainly be carbon-dated by these tropes, although it’s not always a problem.

Sometimes the state-of-the-art production is part of the appeal. The digi-funk bombast of “Big Time” is a defining totem of high-end 80s production, pitched somewhere between Scritti Politti’s “Wood Beez” and Trevor Horn’s “Owner Of A Lonely Heart”. And the funk shuffle of “Sledgehammer” now sounds almost timeless, thanks to it being a much-sampled hip hop fixture. Elsewhere the production interferes, like the bell-like Fairlight sounds that mar “That Voice Again”, or the whistling ambient accompaniment on “Mercy Street” (the orchestral recreation of the latter track on last year’s New Blood is possibly preferable). Laurie Anderson’s co-write “This Is The Picture (Excellent Birds)” is a series of jerky abstractions in search of a song and never really fitted on here; conversely, it’s the oft-overlooked “We Do What We’re Told (Miligram’s 37)” that’s one of the best tracks: an Eno-esque miniature that ends just as it starts getting interesting.

This is a lavish package, with extras including a two-hour Live In Athens DVD and a second DVD featuring the excellent hour-long “Classic Albums” documentary on the making of So. But the most interesting disc is the “DNA CD”, tracing the “audio evolution of So”. Each track glues together several different versions of each song, taken from various stages in their development. We start with the rawest demo – usually just Gabriel accompanying himself on a digital piano – and then, with every verse, gradually revert to subsequent, more polished demos of the song until, by the end of the track, we are left with a rough template for the finished version.

They are unique glimpses into the recording process, a format that you can expect to be copied on other reissue packages. “Red Rain” and “Sledgehammer” both start with just a spartan, clunky piano riffs, with Gabriel singing gibberish, wordless lyrics. “Big Time” starts as a jangly gospel piano instrumental, then mutates into a guitar-led funk jam, slowly adding garbled synth horns. You can hear a ghostly tenor saxophone wailing in the background of “Mercy Street”, and you can hear how Tony Levin’s syncopated, kora-like fretless bass line, which now sounds so central to “Don’t Give Up”, turns out to have been a last-minute addition to a song which started out as a country Baptist hymn (with Dolly Parton initially earmarked for Kate Bush’s role).

The package also includes a 12” single featuring three tracks. There’s an intriguing piano-led gospel version of “Don’t Give Up”, and two previously unheard tracks: “Courage” is a weirdly appealing Talking Heads pastiche that wouldn’t sound out of place on Remain In Light (“I’ve been beating my head against a rubber wall”), while “Sagrada Familia” is another promising unused demo, mixing African high-life guitar, Tony Levin’s rubbery bass and some frenetic Latin percussion with an intriguing lyric about Antonio Gaudi and Sarah Winchester. Both sound utterly untouched by any of the high-80s tropes mentioned earlier – it would be fascinating to hear an entire album like this.

John Lewis

Q&A

DANIEL LANOIS

Was So a conscious attempt to make a “pop” record?

Not in a cynical way, but Peter definitely wanted to make proper songs. I said to Peter, early in the session, “I know you hate hi hats and cymbals, but you’ve made five fucken’ albums without them, so just get over it! Some of us actually like records that groove, ferchrissakes!” And I think that liberated Peter to explore a funkier, more soulful, more playful, more emotional side to his character.

Was it a laborious process?

I was living in Peter’s house for a year, in what I call the Bell Tower. We spent nearly six month on preps: not only setting up sounds but also providing Peter with rock solid advice about which way to go and what we might need. And we wrote the songs as a tight trio – just me, guitarist David Rhodes and Peter with his beatbox. We only proceeded with ideas if there was a spark of magic in that format. The bass and drums came much, much later, which is the opposite of how you’d usually work.

It sounds like there were dozens of versions of each song recorded…

When you work with Peter, there are lots of ideas flying around all the time. You have to become a master librarian just to keep track of the best stuff. He actually did have a library – not a hard-drive, but a physical librarly, a big closet filled with two-inch tapes! – and you’d store stuff there. I was an obsessive notekeeper in those days, so I logged every take and every synth sound, which mean that I was able to get back to any sound that Peter liked. So every one of these songs you can find at least

a dozen versions.

INTERVIEW: JOHN LEWIS

The Rolling Stones announce two London dates in November – ticket details

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The Rolling Stones announce two London dates in November – ticket details
The Rolling Stones have announced two London dates for November – scroll down to watch a video of the announcement. The Stones will play London's O2 Arena on November 25 and 29 to celebrate their 50th anniversary. They will also be playing two New York shows on December 15 and 13. Tickets go on s...

The Rolling Stones have announced two London dates for November – scroll down to watch a video of the announcement.

The Stones will play London’s O2 Arena on November 25 and 29 to celebrate their 50th anniversary. They will also be playing two New York shows on December 15 and 13. Tickets go on sale this Friday, October 19, at 9am.

The band made the announcement via a video posted to their Facebook page.

Teasing the announcement earlier on this morning, they wrote “IS EVERYBODY READY? WE’RE SORRY FOR THE DELAY…IS EVERYBODY READY?” with a picture of the sleeve to their new greatest hits compilation ‘GRRR’ on the band’s flight cases.

The dates have long been rumoured, with frontman Mick Jagger claiming in July that they were planning on sharing a stage together this autumn. Last week (October 8), Keith Richards spilled the beans that the rockers would be playing shows in the UK ad US, but didn’t reveal when the dates would take place.

The band’s long-term sax player Bobby Keys then let slip last week (October 10) that he was gearing up to play shows in November.

The Rolling Stones will release a brand new Greatest Hits compilation in November titled GRRR!. The collection, which is being released to coincide with the band’s 50th anniversary, will feature two brand new songs, “Doom And Gloom” and “One More Shot”, which were recorded in Paris last month. This is the first new material the band have recorded since their 2005 album A Bigger Bang.



The Rolling Stones – Announce Live Shows! on MUZU.TV.

Photo of The Rolling Stones performing live at halftime at the Superbowl XL football game, 2006

Photo credit: PA

J Mascis’ guitar stolen after Dinosaur Jr show

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J Mascis’ guitar stolen after Dinosaur Jr show
J Mascis' guitar was stolen after a Dinosaur Jr gig in Oregon, USA earlier this week (October 11). A statement posted on the singer's Facebook account revealed that his prized instrument – a white Squier Jazzmaster guitar – had been pinched by someone after their show at the city's W.O.W Hall, ...

J Mascis‘ guitar was stolen after a Dinosaur Jr gig in Oregon, USA earlier this week (October 11).

A statement posted on the singer’s Facebook account revealed that his prized instrument – a white Squier Jazzmaster guitar – had been pinched by someone after their show at the city’s W.O.W Hall, and asked people with knowledge of the incident to come forward and help him retrieve it.

Describing the guitar, it said: “Some characteristics that make this guitar unique: re is a dent in the neck, the pickups have no screws as they usually do and the action is currently set high. The guitar was in a soft gig bag. Please contact band@dinosaurjr.com or call 303-998-0001 if you have any information about this guitar.”

Mascis is not the only musician to have been targeted by opportunist punters in recent weeks – in August, Grimes, aka Claire Boucher, was forced to launch an appeal on Twitter after all of her gear was stolen following a show at the HMV Ritz in Manchester.

Earlier this month, Mascis claimed that he had nearly joined Nirvana on two occasions, revealing that he missed out on playing with the iconic grunge group as both guitarist and drummer in the late 80s and early 90s.

Dinosaur Jr released their tenth studio album I Bet On The Sky on September 17. Speaking about the LP, J Mascis told NME: “There’s a couple of songs with more of a groove, a little bit mellower, but there’s some heavier stuff on it too.”

He added: “It’s funky for us, but not that funky. I like the first song ‘Don’t Pretend You Didn’t Know’ the best, that’s one of the funkier numbers, it seemed to come together in a good way.”

Elvis Presley’s Beverly Hills house up for sale

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Elvis Presley’s Beverly Hills house up for sale
Elvis Presley's Beverly Hills house has been put up for sale. The singer's home, which he lived in with his wife Priscella, has been put on the market for a cool $12.9million, according to real estate operator Truila. The listing states that the four bedroom, five bathroom French regency-styled es...

Elvis Presley‘s Beverly Hills house has been put up for sale.

The singer’s home, which he lived in with his wife Priscella, has been put on the market for a cool $12.9million, according to real estate operator Truila.

The listing states that the four bedroom, five bathroom French regency-styled estate sits on a 1.18 acre property and boasts panoramic views of Los Angeles and the Pacific Ocean.

Elvis’ former estate was previously available to rent for a lease of $25,000 a month. The home was built in 1958 and, like the singer’s Graceland home, fans often flock to its gates to sneak a look. The property has changed since Elvis bought it in 1967. The listing says the gated, remodeled home has a new kitchen and laundry room, and the pool and spa have been resurfaced.

This sale comes hot on the heels of the failed auction of the singer’s stained underpants. The pants, which were worn by Presley underneath one of his jumpsuits during a performance in 1977, hadn’t been washed since Elvis took them off, and featured a suspicious yellow stain on the front of the crotch.

The 35th anniversary of the death of Elvis Presley was recently marked by a candlelit vigil at his Graceland home in Memphis. It was attended by an estimated 75,000 fans.

Elvis Presley died on August 16, 1977 at the age of 42 after suffering a heart attack. He is buried in the grounds of Graceland alongside his parents and grandmother. There is also a memorial headstone for his twin, Jesse Garon.

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