It’s recently been announced that a rare live recording of Syd Barrett guesting on guitar with The Last Minute Put Together Boogie Band in Cambridge in July 1972 is to be released – so now seems like a perfect time to revisit the extensive tribute we published in Uncut just after Barrett’s death in July 2006 (Take 112, September 2006). As well as a fantastic piece written by David Cavanagh, we hear from Syd’s friends, collaborators and admirers, including David Bowie, David Gilmour, Mick Rock, Peter Jenner, Damon Albarn, Julian Cope and Kevin Ayers. Shine on…
With Hawkwind and Motörhead both touring the UK this month (November 2013), we take a look at the story of the only Top Three single ever recorded entirely on LSD. Lemmy, Dave Brock, Nik Turner and more tell the tale of “Silver Machine”: drugs, insanity and a “Chuck Berry riff played backwards”… From Uncut's September 2007 issue (Take 124). Interview: Paul Moody__________________
With Kings Of Leon’s sixth album, Mechanical Bull, set for release on September 23, we thought it would be time to take a trip through the archives into November 2010 (Take 162), when we joined the Followill clan on the road in America – we hear of uncanny robberies, an army of Kings lookalikes, whiskey-fuelled anxieties and a new power struggle within this most volatile of bands. Do they want to be rootsy outlaws or modern rock superstars? Words: Jaan Uhelszki
We pay tribute to the late Ray Manzarek in the new issue of Uncut (dated August 2013, and out now) – in this archive piece from Uncut’s September 2011 issue (Take 172), Manzarek, Robby Krieger, John Densmore – the latter pair now reunited in the wake of Manzarek's death – Jac Holzman and more look back on the making of LA Woman, and the final days of Jim Morrison. “The damn thing,” says Ray Manzarek, “just rolls and rolls…” Words: David Cavanagh
In this archive feature from Uncut's May 2003 issue (Take 72), rock's greatest living soap opera tell the story of how they went to hell and back to bring the world some of the most popular, and most perfect, hard-centred easy listening music of all time. However, it nearly cost them their sanity. And their lives… Words: Nigel Williamson_________________
There’s a lot to be said for the charisma of premature death. And the manner of his particular dying – turning blue on a motel floor at the age of 26, his heart fatally faltering, ice cubes being stuffed up his ass in a pathetic attempt to bring him back from the brink after one binge too many – booked Gram parsons an automatic place of honour in a rock’n’roll Valhalla already overcrowded with dead young heroes, Jimi, Janis, Brian Jones, Jim Morrison, Otis Redding, Sam Cooke and more already among its spectral population when Gram died in September, 1973.
Donna Summer, who was best known for a string of hit singles including "I Feel Love" and "Hot Stuff", died today aged 63.
Born in Boston, Massachusetts, she released seventeen studio albums during a career which lasted over 30 years. Reports claim that she had been working on a new LP shortly before she passed away in Florida following a lengthy battle with cancer.
