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The Prodigy – Invaders Must Die

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The Prodigy – Invaders Must Die

Eighteen years after “Charly”, the Prodigy find their stock at its highest for a decade, thanks in part to influential admirers such as Justice and Pendulum. Unlike last album Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned, which included songs about girls and cars, Liam Howlett keeps things simple on Invaders Must Die, rarely straying from that old-school hardcore template he minted in 1994. Grunged up with jagged riffs and live drums (Dave Grohl appears on “Run With The Wolves”), the chintzy breaks of “Omen” and “Thunder” are primed for the live circuit. Keith Flint and Maxim are similarly one-track-minded, constantly exhorting listeners to strap on their raving gear: “Bring your colours to the floor!”, runs the chorus of “Colours”. Parping closer “Stand Up” aims for the frazzled euphoria of Primal Scream’s “Loaded”, but evokes, more pertinently, a bad-tempered ketamine trip. In the ugliest way possible Invaders Must Die shows that the Prodigy have still got it. PIERS MARTIN For more album reviews, click here for the UNCUT music archive

Eighteen years after “Charly”, the Prodigy find their stock

at its highest for a decade, thanks in part to influential admirers such as Justice and Pendulum. Unlike last album Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned, which included songs about girls and cars, Liam Howlett keeps things simple on Invaders Must Die, rarely straying from that

old-school hardcore template he minted in 1994. Grunged up with jagged riffs and live drums (Dave Grohl appears on “Run With The Wolves”), the chintzy breaks of “Omen” and “Thunder” are primed for the live circuit.

Keith Flint and Maxim are similarly one-track-minded, constantly exhorting listeners to strap on their raving gear: “Bring your colours to the floor!”, runs the chorus of “Colours”. Parping closer “Stand Up” aims for the frazzled euphoria of Primal Scream’s “Loaded”, but evokes, more pertinently, a bad-tempered ketamine trip. In the ugliest way possible Invaders Must Die shows that the Prodigy have still got it.

PIERS MARTIN

For more album reviews, click here for the UNCUT music archive

U2 – No Line On The Horizon

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U2 – No Line On The Horizon

Never has any rock’n’roll band been so polarising an entity, so adored and abhorred, so blessed/cursed with the ability to inspire and capacity to infuriate, as U2. For every one of the millions who’ve been roused, thrilled and moved by them, there’s at least one other, whose life’s experience of popular culture has been partially defined by how very, very much they hate this group. Inevitably, both constituencies will find much to fuel their passions and/or goad their furies in this, U2’s 12th album, an artefact that has next to no hope of being judged wholly on its own merits. Possibly in recognition of the mixed blessing of becoming a genre unto themselves, parts of No Line On The Horizon duly find U2 – not for the first time – essaying some mischievous sabotage of their own reputation. “Stand up to rock stars,” suggests the funky, Zeppelin-ish “Stand Up Comedy”, before describing such creatures as “Napoleons in high heels… Josephine, be careful of small men with big ideas”. “The right to appear ridiculous,” declares Bono on the cute pop shimmer “I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight”, “is something I hold dear.” In fact, U2 exercise this prerogative only sparingly on No Line On The Horizon. Aside from the quoted zingers and the sprightly single, “Get On Your Boots” – Elvis Costello’s “Pump It Up” cutting a rug at U2’s own “Discothèque” – No Line On The Horizon is a serious, even solemn album, reminiscent of a younger band, circa The Unforgettable Fire, seeking to sublimate their anxiety in piety. Pre-release suggestions that No Line On The Horizon would constitute an audacious sonic leap were somewhat over-stated: the recurring, defining motifs of the album are old-school U2. Several tracks (the title cut, “Magnificent”, “Unknown Caller”, “Stand Up Comedy”, “Fez – Being Born”) bear an oh-wo-woah chantalong echoing down the ages from “Pride (In The Name Of Love)”. Edge’s guitar, though no less adventurous in places than it has been on every U2 album since Achtung Baby, is still most often driven by a heavy foot on the delay pedal. A dozen albums in, it’s possible to perceive U2’s catalogue as four distinct – if you will – gospels, each of three chapters: the opening salvo of Boy/War/October, all nerves, good intentions and adolescent bluster; The Unforgettable Fire/The Joshua Tree/Rattle & Hum arc from ambition to triumph to hubris; the bleak irony and exuberant experimentation of Achtung Baby/Zooropa/Pop; the reconciliation of what they’d learned with who they always were embodied in 2000’s All That You Can’t Leave Behind and 2004’s How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb. Unprecedented five-year delay notwithstanding, No Line On The Horizon feels more than anything a companion piece to this latter pair. While some unusual ideas and influences percolate through the album, they never prevent U2 from sounding like U2. More than half the tracks launch from false starts – glimmers and wobbles of keyboard and effects briefly announcing themselves before being overwhelmed by the group doing what we’ve become accustomed to them doing (“Fez – Being Born” starts with what sounds like a radio dial flicking between stations, as if attempting to tune U2 in). It is doubtless no reflection on the way the sessions ran, but it’s difficult to shift the image of producers Brian Eno, Daniel Lanois and Steve Lillywhite noodling boffinishly at synthesisers and sequencers only to be blasted out of the recording studio by an impatient rock’n’roll band yelping “1-2-3-4!” Much of No Line On The Horizon bustles with such urgency. The title track crashes in like a wave over the bows, washes of keyboards retreating to reveal a growling guitar riff retreaded from “The Fly”, and one of U2’s most memorably anthemic choruses. “Magnificent” is a thrilling rush, an older, wiser, but no less devil-driven update of “I Will Follow”, Bono hoarse at the limits of his range. “Unknown Caller” is the most dramatic bait-and-switch on a record riddled with them – a gentle Edge guitar figure and birdsong an unlikely foundation for the gradual erection of a terrifically unabashed stadium epic. “Moment Of Surrender” evokes the gloomier reaches of Achtung Baby, a distinctly Pink Floyd-ish backdrop eventually acknowledged by an unmistakably Gilmour-ish guitar solo. Lyrically, this is U2’s least transparent work for some time. A weariness of being spokesband for every damn thing may be gleaned from “Get On Your Boots”, where Bono announces, “I don’t want to talk about wars between nations/Not right now”. Though the album’s retreat/venture (it’s never quite clear which) into opacity will come as a relief to many – U2 themselves likely among them – it seems a shame in light of two beautifully wrought narratives toward the close of the album. “White As Snow” tries to see Afghanistan from inside the helmet of a foreign soldier (the lines “The road refuses strangers/The land the seed we sow,” could have come from an early draft of Kipling’s “The White Man’s Burden”). It is both the most modest and most affecting track on the record, and one of the best things Bono has ever sung. The closing cut, “Cedars Of Lebanon”, is a war correspondent’s nightmare that maintains this essentially optimistic group’s counter-intuitive tradition of ending their albums with rueful comedowns (think “Mothers Of The Disappeared”, “Love Is Blindness”, “Wake Up Dead Man”). It gets more difficult with every release to hear a U2 album as anything but a U2 album – everyone reading this will have history with the band, whether they like it or not. More than anything else that U2 have done, though, No Line On The Horizon requires and rewards checking in without baggage. It’s U2’s least immediate album – but there’s something about it that suggests it may be one of their most enduring. ANDREW MUELLER For more album reviews, click here for the UNCUT music archive

Never has any rock’n’roll band been so polarising an entity, so adored and abhorred, so blessed/cursed with the ability to inspire and capacity to infuriate, as U2. For every one of the millions who’ve been roused, thrilled and moved by them, there’s at least one other, whose life’s experience of popular culture has been partially defined by how very, very much they hate this group.

Inevitably, both constituencies will find much to fuel their passions and/or goad their furies in this, U2’s 12th album, an artefact that has next to no hope of being judged wholly on its own merits. Possibly in recognition of the mixed blessing of becoming a genre unto themselves, parts of No Line On The Horizon duly find U2 – not for the first time – essaying some mischievous sabotage of their own reputation.

“Stand up to rock stars,” suggests the funky, Zeppelin-ish “Stand Up Comedy”, before describing such creatures as “Napoleons in high heels… Josephine, be careful of small men with big ideas”. “The right to appear ridiculous,” declares Bono on the cute pop shimmer “I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight”, “is something I hold dear.”

In fact, U2 exercise this prerogative only sparingly on No Line On The Horizon. Aside from the quoted zingers and the sprightly single, “Get On

Your Boots” – Elvis Costello’s “Pump It Up” cutting a rug at U2’s own “Discothèque” – No Line On The Horizon is a serious, even solemn album, reminiscent of a younger band, circa The Unforgettable Fire, seeking to sublimate their anxiety in piety. Pre-release suggestions that No Line On The Horizon would constitute an audacious sonic leap were somewhat over-stated: the recurring, defining motifs of the album are old-school U2. Several tracks (the title cut, “Magnificent”, “Unknown Caller”, “Stand Up Comedy”, “Fez – Being Born”) bear an oh-wo-woah chantalong echoing down the ages from “Pride (In The Name Of Love)”. Edge’s guitar, though no less adventurous in places than it has been on every U2 album since Achtung Baby, is still most often driven by a heavy foot on the delay pedal.

A dozen albums in, it’s possible to perceive U2’s catalogue as four distinct – if you will – gospels, each of three chapters: the opening salvo of Boy/War/October, all nerves, good intentions and adolescent bluster; The Unforgettable Fire/The Joshua Tree/Rattle & Hum arc from ambition to triumph to hubris; the bleak irony and exuberant experimentation of Achtung Baby/Zooropa/Pop; the reconciliation of what they’d learned with who they always were embodied in 2000’s All That

You Can’t Leave Behind and 2004’s

How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb. Unprecedented five-year delay notwithstanding, No Line On The Horizon feels more than anything a companion piece to this latter pair. While some unusual ideas and influences percolate through the album, they never prevent U2 from sounding like U2. More than half the tracks launch from false starts – glimmers and wobbles of keyboard and effects briefly announcing themselves before being overwhelmed by the group doing what we’ve become accustomed to them doing (“Fez – Being Born” starts with what sounds like a radio dial flicking between stations, as if attempting to tune U2 in). It is doubtless no reflection

on the way the sessions ran, but it’s difficult to shift the image of producers Brian Eno, Daniel Lanois and Steve Lillywhite noodling boffinishly at synthesisers and sequencers only to be blasted out of the recording studio by an impatient rock’n’roll band yelping “1-2-3-4!”

Much of No Line On The Horizon bustles with such urgency. The title track crashes in like a wave over the bows, washes of keyboards retreating to reveal a growling guitar riff retreaded from “The Fly”, and one of U2’s most memorably anthemic choruses. “Magnificent” is a thrilling rush, an older, wiser, but no less devil-driven update of “I Will Follow”, Bono hoarse at the limits of his range. “Unknown Caller” is the most dramatic bait-and-switch on a record riddled with them – a gentle Edge guitar figure and birdsong an unlikely foundation for the gradual erection of a terrifically unabashed stadium epic. “Moment Of Surrender” evokes the gloomier reaches of Achtung Baby, a distinctly Pink Floyd-ish backdrop eventually acknowledged by an unmistakably Gilmour-ish guitar solo.

Lyrically, this is U2’s least transparent work for some time.

A weariness of being spokesband for every damn thing may be gleaned from “Get On Your Boots”, where Bono announces, “I don’t want to talk about wars between nations/Not right now”.

Though the album’s retreat/venture (it’s never quite clear which) into opacity will come as a relief to many – U2 themselves likely among them – it seems a shame in light of two beautifully wrought narratives toward the close of the album. “White As Snow” tries to see Afghanistan from inside the helmet of a foreign soldier (the lines “The road refuses strangers/The land the seed we sow,” could have come from an early draft of Kipling’s “The White Man’s Burden”). It is both the most modest and most affecting track on the record, and one of the best things Bono has ever sung. The closing cut, “Cedars Of Lebanon”, is a war correspondent’s nightmare that maintains this essentially optimistic group’s counter-intuitive tradition of ending their albums with rueful comedowns (think “Mothers Of The Disappeared”, “Love Is Blindness”, “Wake Up Dead Man”).

It gets more difficult with every release to hear a U2 album as anything but a U2 album – everyone reading this will have history with the band, whether they like it or not. More than anything else that U2 have done, though, No Line On The Horizon requires and rewards checking in without baggage. It’s U2’s least immediate album – but there’s something about it that suggests it may be one of their most enduring.

ANDREW MUELLER

For more album reviews, click here for the UNCUT music archive

Isaac Hayes – Black Moses

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Isaac Hayes – Black Moses

At the 1972 Academy Awards it wasn’t quite business as usual in Tinseltown. The Godfather, a movie by a little known New Yorker, dominated proceedings and duly won Best Picture. Then there was Isaac Hayes – the first black musician to win an Oscar for best song, performing “Theme From Shaft” for the tuxedo’d throng in trademark style – shaven head, shades and bare torso draped in chains. “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head” it wasn’t. Instead, Hayes’ sizzling slice of ghetto life confirmed that at 29, amid a mob of talents that included Marvin Gaye, James Brown and Sly Stone, Ike had become the most successful black man in showbusiness. In the same month that Hayes collected his Oscar for “…Shaft”, whose edgy wah-wah guitars had already topped the single and album charts, he released Black Moses, the most lavish example yet of his extravagant style. A sprawling double album, it came lodged in a cover that unfolded into a giant cross framing the one-time Memphis meat-packer as an Old Testament prophet, clad in Biblical robe and, uh, wraparound shades. Hayes, a devoted Christian, initially fought the ‘Moses’ tag bestowed on him by an excited minder – “I was kicking and screaming all the way” – but he came to see it as another example of black pride. Ike was already a muscular icon of black sexuality – at a time when most of black America was sporting shoulder-wide Afros, he had made bald beautiful: “Bald is as black as you can get,” he asserted. …Moses used much the same formula that had gilded Hayes’ three previous LPs, Hot Buttered Soul (1969), The Isaac Hayes Movement (1970) and …To Be Continued (1971), spreading Ike’s creamy crooning over lush orchestrations that built at an almost funereal pace, the proceedings interspersed with spoken ‘raps’ in Ike’s rumbling baritone. Its oily bedroom balladry would soon become a cliché in the hands of Barry White and Teddy Pendergrass, but Hayes brought real musical smarts with him. As house writer and producer for Stax records he had, alongside partner David Porter, presided over landmark hits by Sam and Dave, Otis Redding and Eddie Floyd. That his own records took an opposite turn to Stax’s normal zest reflects Hayes’ limitations as a vocalist, but also his teen idolatry of black sophisticates like Nat Cole and Sam Cooke. As previously, on …Moses Hayes mixed up the material he put through his orchestral mincer – ‘vanilla’ hits like The Carpenters’ “Closer To You” alongside black pop like the Jacksons’ “Never Can Say Goodbye” and lesser-known soul pieces like Curtis Mayfield’s “Man’s Temptation”. This time, though, his choice, was not mere calculation, but a reflection of his emotional circumstance as he faced the break-up of his marriage. At one point – perhaps on “Nothing Takes The Place Of You”, a 1967 hit for Toussaint McCall, he even summoned his secretary into the studio to focus on as he sang, tears streaming. If the climbing arpeggios of “Nobody” recall Otis Redding’s “These Arms Of Mine”, Ike’s delivery suggests the velvet baritone of Brook Benton, like Cole a jazz-tinged balladeer rather than a ’60s “Soul Man”. There’s surprisingly little grunt and grind here – Ike belonged to an older tradition. What he brought to the ’70s party, apart from sheer chutzpah – the gold Cadillac, chains, and 40-piece orchestra – was sonic nous, the ability to play an entire studio and to integrate technical innovations like fuzztone and wah-wah guitars. Despite its Grammy-laden status, much of …Moses sounds windy and saccharine today. The nine minutes of “Close To You” are several minutes too long. The raps, always delivered tongue-in-cheek, often turn merely hammy (“Before I met you I wasn’t living, just existing”), and the female back-ups are plain silly on Kristofferson’s “For The Good Times”. Still, Ike put down a marker. It’s hard to imagine Philly Soul – think “Me and Mrs Jones” – would have arrived without his lead, or to conceive Jazzy B inventing Soul II Soul without a template like “Good Love”. Hip hop’s scavengers, needless to say, have endlessly plundered his back catalogue for riffs and samples. Black Moses would prove to be Ike’s apex – unless you count “Chocolate Salty Balls”, which of course you don’t. This is a monument to a preposterous, regal age of soul. Bend the knee. NEIL SPENCER For more album reviews, click here for the UNCUT music archive

At the 1972 Academy Awards it wasn’t quite business as usual in Tinseltown. The Godfather, a movie by a little known New Yorker, dominated proceedings and duly won Best Picture. Then there was Isaac Hayes – the first black musician to win an Oscar for best song, performing “Theme From Shaft” for the tuxedo’d throng in trademark style – shaven head, shades and bare torso draped in chains. “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head” it wasn’t. Instead, Hayes’ sizzling slice of ghetto life confirmed that at 29, amid a mob of talents that included Marvin Gaye, James Brown and Sly Stone, Ike had become the most successful black man in showbusiness.

In the same month that Hayes collected his Oscar for “…Shaft”, whose edgy wah-wah guitars had already topped the single and album charts, he released Black Moses, the most lavish example yet of his extravagant style. A sprawling double album, it came lodged in a cover that unfolded into a giant cross framing the one-time Memphis meat-packer as an Old Testament prophet, clad in Biblical robe and, uh, wraparound shades.

Hayes, a devoted Christian, initially fought the ‘Moses’ tag bestowed on him by an excited minder – “I was kicking and screaming all the way” – but he came to see it as another example of black pride. Ike was already a muscular icon of black sexuality – at a time when most of black America was sporting shoulder-wide Afros, he had made bald beautiful: “Bald is as black as you can get,” he asserted.

…Moses used much the same formula that had gilded Hayes’ three previous LPs, Hot Buttered Soul (1969), The Isaac Hayes Movement (1970) and …To Be Continued (1971), spreading Ike’s creamy crooning over lush orchestrations that built at an almost funereal pace, the proceedings interspersed with spoken ‘raps’ in Ike’s rumbling baritone. Its oily bedroom balladry would soon become a cliché in the hands of Barry White and Teddy Pendergrass, but Hayes brought real musical smarts with him. As house writer and producer for Stax records he had, alongside partner David Porter, presided over landmark hits by Sam and Dave, Otis Redding and Eddie Floyd. That his own records took an opposite turn to Stax’s normal zest reflects Hayes’ limitations as a vocalist, but also his teen idolatry of black sophisticates like Nat Cole and Sam Cooke.

As previously, on …Moses Hayes mixed up the material he put through his orchestral mincer – ‘vanilla’ hits like The Carpenters’ “Closer To You” alongside black pop like the Jacksons’ “Never Can Say Goodbye” and lesser-known soul pieces like Curtis Mayfield’s “Man’s Temptation”. This time, though, his choice, was not mere calculation, but a reflection of his emotional circumstance as he faced the break-up of his marriage. At one point – perhaps on “Nothing Takes The Place Of You”, a 1967 hit for Toussaint McCall, he even summoned his secretary into the studio to focus on as he sang, tears streaming.

If the climbing arpeggios of “Nobody” recall Otis Redding’s “These Arms Of Mine”, Ike’s delivery suggests the velvet baritone of Brook Benton, like Cole a jazz-tinged balladeer rather than a ’60s “Soul Man”. There’s surprisingly little grunt and grind here – Ike belonged to an older tradition. What he brought to the ’70s party, apart from sheer chutzpah – the gold Cadillac, chains, and 40-piece orchestra – was sonic nous, the ability to play an entire studio and to integrate technical innovations like fuzztone and wah-wah guitars.

Despite its Grammy-laden status, much of …Moses sounds windy and saccharine today. The nine minutes of “Close To You” are several minutes too long. The raps, always delivered tongue-in-cheek, often turn merely hammy (“Before I met you I wasn’t living, just existing”), and the female back-ups are plain silly on Kristofferson’s “For The Good Times”.

Still, Ike put down a marker. It’s hard to imagine Philly Soul – think “Me and Mrs Jones” – would have arrived without his lead, or to conceive Jazzy B inventing Soul II Soul without a template like “Good Love”.

Hip hop’s scavengers, needless to say, have endlessly plundered his back catalogue for riffs and samples. Black Moses would prove to be Ike’s apex – unless you count “Chocolate Salty Balls”, which of course you don’t.

This is a monument to a preposterous, regal age of soul. Bend the knee.

NEIL SPENCER

For more album reviews, click here for the UNCUT music archive

Part 6: Buffalo Springfield Founder Richie Furay

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Part 6: Buffalo Springfield Founder Richie Furay

In last March issue Uncut , we brought you the inside story on Neil Young’s long-awaited Archives project. We spoke to his friends, colleagues and conspirators and, over the next few weeks on www.uncut.co.uk, we’ll be printing the complete transcripts of these interviews. Previous installments are available by using the links in the side panel on the right. RICHIE FURAY Guitarist, vocalist and co-founder of the Buffalo Springfield. Formed Poco with Jim Messina after Springfield’s split in 1968 *** UNCUT: What was your very first impression of Neil? What do you remember of him calling in on you in New York in 1965? FURAY: I didn’t have a clue as to who Neil Young was when he showed up at the apartment on Thompson Street, other than he was a friend of Stephen [Stills]’s and his band The Company. He was a high-energy guy, friendly and someone I saw as being very talented. It’s funny that when he played his songs for me, I never once thought “this guy has a strange voice”. I just liked his songs and the way he sang them. Apparently, you loved "Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing". Can you explain what you liked about it and also what you remember of Neil teaching it to you? The lyrics to “Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing” were a bit quirky, but it was folk music so that was OK. And the melody was good. But what intrigued me the most was the changing time signature of the song. It was unique and just, well, different. I heard something original in it and that drew me to it. I had an old Revere tape recorder with me and had him sing it for me and that’s how I really learned it. After you'd bumped into Neil and Bruce [Palmer] at a Sunset Strip traffic jam, you invited them back to listen to an arrangement of "Nowadays..." that you and Stills had done. What was Neil's reaction? And how did the rest of the day go? What an historic moment, we were all pretty amazed. It was nothing short of fate and destiny. Neil and Bruce were leaving LA and we didn’t even know they were in town. We did take them back to Barry Friedman’s house and played him the song. I don’t remember exactly what his reaction was but it must have impressed him enough to stick around and start the band. Knowing Neil and how he operates, if he didn’t see some potential and an opportunity, he’d had left. I suppose we sat around and talked about putting the band together and things like that. That was pretty much what was on our mind at that time. Can you explain the unique chemistry of Buffalo Springfield? Again, the Buffalo Springfield was a group of destiny, a vehicle to launch the careers of some significant musicians. I don’t remember the group as being something we had to work at, to make it work. When we’d go over a song, each writer pretty much led the way and then everyone would contribute from their own observation. Stephen and I had worked out most of the vocal arrangements for his songs. For whatever reason I had the task of singing a few of Neil’s songs early on. As we’d go over them, each member would make suggestions to instrumental parts and vocal harmony. It was really fun in those days listening to a song develop. When you have a group you have to let each other experiment and, believe me, you knew right away when something didn’t fit. What do you remember about their early residency at the Whisky A Go Go? It was at The Whisky where we began to see and hear the potential we had as a band. No one was doing what we did vocally or instrumentally. It was during this time we began to sense we had something special to offer. People started coming out of the woodwork to hear us. Word of mouth was spreading and certainly we saw our dreams start to unfold before our eyes. Was there a particular chemistry between Neil and Stephen? There was nothing more or less than mutual respect for each other. Everyone’s looking for a story or some dirt to dig up to give intrigue to a situation, especially when it seems to explode in your face. These were two very talented guys and no matter what band your talking about there will be differences of opinion during the creative process. Do you remember cutting an early version of "Mr Soul" in the Atlantic studio in New York? I know we did some studio work during that time but I can’t really remember much about it. Can you describe how Neil was in the studio at that point? Was he very protective about his own compositions? In an interview with Teenset magazine in early 1968, you described your bandmates like this: "Stephen's bold, Neil's sly and Bruce is silent but deadly", adding that "Neil is tricky about getting things done the way he wants them done"… What else can I say? I’m not sure I know anymore about what I said other than what was written. Do you remember recording the songs "Sell Out" and "Slowly Burning"? No! When the end of Buffalo Springfield came, was it inevitable? You were obviously pulling towards country-rock, but was Neil more interested in symphonic pop? The break up of Buffalo Springfield was inevitable. After the first few months we were together, it was a struggle making forward progress. There was somewhere around nine different people in and out of the group in the two years we were together. My feelings were that as long as Stephen was pressin’ on, I’d be there with him. Make no mistake about it, the Buffalo Springfield was Steve’s band. He was the heart and soul of the group. We all had our roles and contributed our gift and talent to the whole, but it was his band. When he decided to move on then, I was ready, along with Jimmy Messina, to go on to the next project. Can you explain your reaction when Neil suddenly announced he wanted to quit and disappeared on the eve of the Tonight Show appearance? My reaction was one of disappointment. In those days, being on TV was a big deal. It was a national platform that never came to be. So of course I was disappointed, but I didn’t think of it as betrayal. Whatever was going on in Neil’s heart and mind at that time: who knows? Could he have gone about it any differently? Certainly, life is about choices. Do I have a theory as to the real reason he wanted to quit? Not really, unless there was someone in his inner circle that told him he didn’t need the rest of the band to be a success. From my perspective, as it turned out, he did need Crosby Stills and Nash to really connect. Stephen claimed that "On The Way Home" was addressed to Neil. What are your thoughts on that? And, as many people have assumed, do you see that song as the story of the Springfield itself? You’d have to ask Stephen what he meant about that comment. Maybe it does sum up his thoughts and feelings about everything that was going on. It’s a shame sometimes that along the journey you just can’t enjoy the ride. There’s a great story about your wedding and Neil, where you begged him not to show up in his fringed jacket. So he showed up in a Confederate uniform instead… Oh boy, Neil! What a great guy: unique and unpredictable. You gotta love him. Neil really was unpredictable. He caught us off guard, but to think he was gonna come dressed conventionally for the wedding, now that I look back on it, was out of the question. Neil was his own guy in all respects and if he needed to be a focal point, even at our wedding, he was gonna do what was necessary! Of course, he didn’t tell me, or anyone that I know of, what he was up to. He’s a big one on the ‘shock’ approach. I don’t remember saying anything to him or him to me afterwards but I’m sure there was a lot of conversation among the folks who came to the wedding. In many respects it was just Neil’s sense of humour. And he can be a funny guy. What did you see as Neil's unique qualities when you were working with him? He may have had an idea about how he wanted a song to go but I don’t remember him being overly possessive in getting what he wanted. He had it pretty much worked out in his head and we all adapted to his basic arrangement and approach. As we would work on a song he was patient as we worked through the process. I don’t remember any tension during the process. INTERVIEW BY ROB HUGHES

In last March issue Uncut , we brought you the inside story on Neil Young’s long-awaited Archives project. We spoke to his friends, colleagues and conspirators and, over the next few weeks on www.uncut.co.uk, we’ll be printing the complete transcripts of these interviews.

Previous installments are available by using the links in the side panel on the right.

RICHIE FURAY

Guitarist, vocalist and co-founder of the Buffalo Springfield. Formed Poco with Jim Messina after Springfield’s split in 1968

***

UNCUT: What was your very first impression of Neil? What do you remember of him calling in on you in New York in 1965?

FURAY: I didn’t have a clue as to who Neil Young was when he showed up at the apartment on Thompson Street, other than he was a friend of Stephen [Stills]’s and his band The Company. He was a high-energy guy, friendly and someone I saw as being very talented. It’s funny that when he played his songs for me, I never once thought “this guy has a strange voice”. I just liked his songs and the way he sang them.

Apparently, you loved “Nowadays Clancy Can’t Even Sing”. Can you explain what you liked about it and also what you remember of Neil teaching it to you?

The lyrics to “Nowadays Clancy Can’t Even Sing” were a bit quirky, but it was folk music so that was OK. And the melody was good. But what intrigued me the most was the changing time signature of the song. It was unique and just, well, different. I heard something original in it and that drew me to it. I had an old Revere tape recorder with me and had him sing it for me and that’s how I really learned it.

After you’d bumped into Neil and Bruce [Palmer] at a Sunset Strip traffic jam, you invited them back to listen to an arrangement of “Nowadays…” that you and Stills had done. What was Neil’s reaction? And how did the rest of the day go?

What an historic moment, we were all pretty amazed. It was nothing short of fate and destiny. Neil and Bruce were leaving LA and we didn’t even know they were in town. We did take them back to Barry Friedman’s house and played him the song. I don’t remember exactly what his reaction was but it must have impressed him enough to stick around and start the band. Knowing Neil and how he operates, if he didn’t see some potential and an opportunity, he’d had left. I suppose we sat around and talked about putting the band together and things like that. That was pretty much what was on our mind at that time.

Can you explain the unique chemistry of Buffalo Springfield?

Again, the Buffalo Springfield was a group of destiny, a vehicle to launch the careers of some significant musicians. I don’t remember the group as being something we had to work at, to make it work. When we’d go over a song, each writer pretty much led the way and then everyone would contribute from their own observation. Stephen and I had worked out most of the vocal arrangements for his songs. For whatever reason I had the task of singing a few of Neil’s songs early on. As we’d go over them, each member would make suggestions to instrumental parts and vocal harmony. It was really fun in those days listening to a song develop. When you have a group you have to let each other experiment and, believe me, you knew right away when something didn’t fit.

What do you remember about their early residency at the Whisky A Go Go?

It was at The Whisky where we began to see and hear the potential we had as a band. No one was doing what we did vocally or instrumentally. It was during this time we began to sense we had something special to offer. People started coming out of the woodwork to hear us. Word of mouth was spreading and certainly we saw our dreams start to unfold before our eyes.

Was there a particular chemistry between Neil and Stephen?

There was nothing more or less than mutual respect for each other. Everyone’s looking for a story or some dirt to dig up to give intrigue to a situation, especially when it seems to explode in your face. These were two very talented guys and no matter what band your talking about there will be differences of opinion during the creative process.

Do you remember cutting an early version of “Mr Soul” in the Atlantic studio in New York?

I know we did some studio work during that time but I can’t really remember much about it.

Can you describe how Neil was in the studio at that point? Was he very protective about his own compositions? In an interview with Teenset magazine in early 1968, you described your bandmates like this: “Stephen’s bold, Neil’s sly and Bruce is silent but deadly”, adding that “Neil is tricky about getting things done the way he wants them done”…

What else can I say? I’m not sure I know anymore about what I said other than what was written.

Do you remember recording the songs “Sell Out” and “Slowly Burning”?

No!

When the end of Buffalo Springfield came, was it inevitable? You were obviously pulling towards country-rock, but was Neil more interested in symphonic pop?

The break up of Buffalo Springfield was inevitable. After the first few months we were together, it was a struggle making forward progress. There was somewhere around nine different people in and out of the group in the two years we were together. My feelings were that as long as Stephen was pressin’ on, I’d be there with him. Make no mistake about it, the Buffalo Springfield was Steve’s band. He was the heart and soul of the group. We all had our roles and contributed our gift and talent to the whole, but it was his band. When he decided to move on then, I was ready, along with Jimmy Messina, to go on to the next project.

Can you explain your reaction when Neil suddenly announced he wanted to quit and disappeared on the eve of the Tonight Show appearance?

My reaction was one of disappointment. In those days, being on TV was a big deal. It was a national platform that never came to be. So of course I was disappointed, but I didn’t think of it as betrayal. Whatever was going on in Neil’s heart and mind at that time: who knows? Could he have gone about it any differently? Certainly, life is about choices. Do I have a theory as to the real reason he wanted to quit? Not really, unless there was someone in his inner circle that told him he didn’t need the rest of the band to be a success. From my perspective, as it turned out, he did need Crosby Stills and Nash to really connect.

Stephen claimed that “On The Way Home” was addressed to Neil. What are your thoughts on that? And, as many people have assumed, do you see that song as the story of the Springfield itself?

You’d have to ask Stephen what he meant about that comment. Maybe it does sum up his thoughts and feelings about everything that was going on. It’s a shame sometimes that along the journey you just can’t enjoy the ride.

There’s a great story about your wedding and Neil, where you begged him not to show up in his fringed jacket. So he showed up in a Confederate uniform instead…

Oh boy, Neil! What a great guy: unique and unpredictable. You gotta love him. Neil really was unpredictable. He caught us off guard, but to think he was gonna come dressed conventionally for the wedding, now that I look back on it, was out of the question. Neil was his own guy in all respects and if he needed to be a focal point, even at our wedding, he was gonna do what was necessary! Of course, he didn’t tell me, or anyone that I know of, what he was up to. He’s a big one on the ‘shock’ approach. I don’t remember saying anything to him or him to me afterwards but I’m sure there was a lot of conversation among the folks who came to the wedding. In many respects it was just Neil’s sense of humour. And he can be a funny guy.

What did you see as Neil’s unique qualities when you were working with him?

He may have had an idea about how he wanted a song to go but I don’t remember him being overly possessive in getting what he wanted. He had it pretty much worked out in his head and we all adapted to his basic arrangement and approach. As we would work on a song he was patient as we worked through the process. I don’t remember any tension during the process.

INTERVIEW BY ROB HUGHES

Jarvis Cocker To Play Live Dates In UK

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Jarvis Cocker To Play Live Dates In UK
Jarvis Cocker has announced four new UK live dates to take place this June, coinciding with the release of his second solo album. The follow-up to 2006's 'Jarvis' is set for release in ther late spring through Rough Trade records. Jarvis Cocker will play: Blackpool Empress Ballroom (June 10) Gl...

Jarvis Cocker has announced four new UK live dates to take place this June, coinciding with the release of his second solo album.

The follow-up to 2006’s ‘Jarvis’ is set for release in ther late spring through Rough Trade records.

Jarvis Cocker will play:

Blackpool Empress Ballroom (June 10)

Glasgow ABC (12)

Brighton Dome (16)

London Troxy (17)

For more music and film news click here

Pic credit: Jarvis Cocker

White Denim To Headline Club Uncut Stage At The Great Escape

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White Denim To Headline Club Uncut Stage At The Great Escape

After some months of plotting, we’re pleased to announce today the first bands that have been confirmed for the Club Uncut stage at Brighton’s Great Escape Festival in May. We’ve teamed up with our great mates at the Full Time Hobby label for the Saturday bill (May 16), which will be headlined by Austin, Texas’ mighty White Denim, old friends of Uncut who headlined one of last year’s finest Club Uncut shows in London. Second on the bill will be another Full Time Hobby band, new-school shoegazers School Of Seven Bells, with support coming from two excellent new London-based acts, Three Trapped Tigers and Banjo Or Freakout. We’ll be announcing the bills for the Club Uncut stage on Thursday and Friday (May 14 and 15) very soon. Our venue this year is the Pavilion Theatre. Tickets for the whole three-day festival are available now for £39.50. Visit the festival site - www.escapegreat.com - for full details.

After some months of plotting, we’re pleased to announce today the first bands that have been confirmed for the Club Uncut stage at Brighton’s Great Escape Festival in May.

We’ve teamed up with our great mates at the Full Time Hobby label for the Saturday bill (May 16), which will be headlined by Austin, Texas’ mighty White Denim, old friends of Uncut who headlined one of last year’s finest Club Uncut shows in London.

Second on the bill will be another Full Time Hobby band, new-school shoegazers School Of Seven Bells, with support coming from two excellent new London-based acts, Three Trapped Tigers and Banjo Or Freakout.

We’ll be announcing the bills for the Club Uncut stage on Thursday and Friday (May 14 and 15) very soon. Our venue this year is the Pavilion Theatre. Tickets for the whole three-day festival are available now for £39.50. Visit the festival site – www.escapegreat.com – for full details.

New York Dolls Reveal Todd Rundgren Produced LP Details

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New York Dolls Reveal Todd Rundgren Produced LP Details

The New York Dolls have revealed their forthcoming new album's tracklisting. Entitled 'Cause I Sez So', the 12 track album is the first the band have recorded with Todd Rudgren since he made their 1973 self-titled debut. Founder member David Johansen has said: "It was amazing working with Todd again, and I think we were able to evoke the special sound of our first album and drag it by the hair into the present." The band are expected to announce a world tour once the album is released on May 4. The full 'Cause I Sez So' track listing is: 1. ’Cause I Sez So 2. Muddy Bones 3. Better Than 4. Lonely So Long 5. My World 6. Ridiculous 7. Temptation To Exist 8. Making Rain 9. Drowning 10. Nobody Got No Bizness 11.Trash 12. Exorcism Of Despair For more music and film news click here

The New York Dolls have revealed their forthcoming new album’s tracklisting.

Entitled ‘Cause I Sez So’, the 12 track album is the first the band have recorded with Todd Rudgren since he made their 1973 self-titled debut.

Founder member David Johansen has said: “It was amazing working with Todd again, and I think we were able to evoke the special sound of our first album and drag it by the hair into the present.”

The band are expected to announce a world tour once the album is released on May 4.

The full ‘Cause I Sez So’ track listing is:

1. ’Cause I Sez So

2. Muddy Bones

3. Better Than

4. Lonely So Long

5. My World

6. Ridiculous

7. Temptation To Exist

8. Making Rain

9. Drowning

10. Nobody Got No Bizness

11.Trash

12. Exorcism Of Despair

For more music and film news click here

Eels Ready First New Album In Four Years

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Eels Ready First New Album In Four Years
Eels have confirmed that a brand new album 'Hombre Lobo' will be released on June 2. The follow-up to 2005's double album 'Blinking Lights and Other Revelations' features 12 new songs recorded in Los Angeles. Last year, frontman Mark Everett put out two collections, a Best Of – ‘Essential Eels...

Eels have confirmed that a brand new album ‘Hombre Lobo’ will be released on June 2.

The follow-up to 2005’s double album ‘Blinking Lights and Other Revelations’ features 12 new songs recorded in Los Angeles.

Last year, frontman Mark Everett put out two collections, a Best Of – ‘Essential Eels’ and a B-Sides & Rarities album – ‘Useless Trinkets’ alongside his book ‘Things The Grandchildren Should Know.’

More information from the Eels website here: www.eelstheband.com

For more music and film news click here

Wilco, Bon Iver and British Sea Power For Green Man

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Wilco, Bon Iver and British Sea Power For Green Man
Wilco, Bon Iver, British Sea Power and Wooden Shjips are amongst the first artists announced for this Summer's Green Man Festival. Taking place over the weekend of August 21-23 in the Brecon Beacons, the five stage festival will also see over 100 acts play a mixture of folk, americana and psychedel...

Wilco, Bon Iver, British Sea Power and Wooden Shjips are amongst the first artists announced for this Summer’s Green Man Festival.

Taking place over the weekend of August 21-23 in the Brecon Beacons, the five stage festival will also see over 100 acts play a mixture of folk, americana and psychedelia, artists will be revealed over the coming months.

To buy tickets, on sale March 3, and for more info, see the Green Man festival website here: www.thegreenmanfestival.co.uk.

For more music and film news click here

The Killers and Oasis To Headline V Festival

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The Killers and Oasis To Headline V Festival
The Killers and Oasis have been revealed as this year's V Festival headliners. Both bands are returning headliners, The Killers last appeared in 2007 and Oasis last topped the bill in 2005. They will be joined on the festival bill by The Specials, Elbow, Keane, Snow Patrol and Pete Doherty. The e...

The Killers and Oasis have been revealed as this year’s V Festival headliners.

Both bands are returning headliners, The Killers last appeared in 2007 and Oasis last topped the bill in 2005.

They will be joined on the festival bill by The Specials, Elbow, Keane, Snow Patrol and Pete Doherty.

The event, now in it’s 14th year, takes place at two sites; Chelmsford Hylands Park and Weston Park in Staffordshire on August 22 and 23.

For more music and film news click here

Pic credit: PA PHOTOS

Oasis Banned By Chinese Government Due To Noel’s Tibet Links

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Oasis Banned By Chinese Government Due To Noel’s Tibet Links
Oasis have been forced to cancel two forthcoming concerts in China today (March 2) after the Chinese government revoked the band's performance licences. The cancelled gigs were due to take place at Beijing Capital Gym (April 3) and Shangai Grand Stage (April 5), but officials have deemed the band "...

Oasis have been forced to cancel two forthcoming concerts in China today (March 2) after the Chinese government revoked the band’s performance licences.

The cancelled gigs were due to take place at Beijing Capital Gym (April 3) and Shangai Grand Stage (April 5), but officials have deemed the band “unsuitable” after finding out that Noel Gallagher has previously performed at a Free Tibet Benefit Concert in 1997.

Oasis have issued the following statement:

“Oasis were informed Saturday (February 28) by their Chinese promoters, (Emma Entertainment/Ticketmaster China) that representatives from the Chinese government have revoked the performance licenses already issued for the band and ordered their shows in both Beijing and Shanghai to be immediately cancelled. The government have instructed the ticket agencies to stop selling tickets and to reimburse the thousands of fans who have already purchased tickets for these inaugural Oasis shows in the People’s Republic of China.

“The licensing and immigration process for the two shows had been fully and successfully complied with well before the shows went on sale. The Chinese authorities action in cancelling these shows marks a reversal of their decision regarding the band, which has left both Oasis and the promoters bewildered.

“According to the show’s promoters, officials within the Chinese Ministry of Culture only recently discovered that Noel Gallagher appeared at a Free Tibet Benefit Concert on Randall’s Island in New York in 1997, and have now deemed that the band are consequently unsuitable to perform to their fans in the Chinese Republic on 3rd and 5th of April, during its 60th anniversary year.

“Oasis are extremely disappointed that they are now being prevented from undertaking their planned tour of mainland China and hope that the powers that be within China will reconsider their decision and allow the band to perform to their Chinese fans at some stage in the future.

“The rest of the South East Asian leg of the band’s tour, including the Hong Kong show, will go ahead as planned.”

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Neil Young Confirms UK Live Dates

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Neil Young Confirms UK Live Dates
Neil Young has confirmed two live dates in the UK taking place in June. The singer whose new album "Fork In The Road", is released on April 6 will be preceded by a download-only single "Johnny Magic" on March 23. Young will play the Nottingham Trent FM Arena on June 23 and Aberdeen's AECC on June ...

Neil Young has confirmed two live dates in the UK taking place in June.

The singer whose new album “Fork In The Road”, is released on April 6 will be preceded by a download-only single “Johnny Magic” on March 23.

Young will play the Nottingham Trent FM Arena on June 23 and Aberdeen’s AECC on June 24.

More dates are expected to be announced soon, with rumours of a Glastonbury festival appearence strongly rumoured.

Tickets for the Nottingham and Aberdeen shows are on sale now.

The tracklisting for “Fork In The Road” is:

1. When Worlds Collide

2. Fuel Line

3. Just Singing A Song

4. Johnny Magic

5. Cough Up The Bucks

6. Get Behind The Wheel

7. Off The Road

8. Hit The Road

9. Light A Candle

10. Fork In the Road

For more music and film news click here

Pic credit: PA PHOTOS

Neil Young: New Album And Tour Details

John Mulvey
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We're having some grief, yet again, posting news stories to www.uncut.co.uk, so I thought I should share this fairly auspicious news here: the details of Neil Young's new album, "Fork In The Road", and the first dates of what smells suspiciously like a full UK tour, possibly constructed around a certain major summer festival. "Fork In The Road" is released on April 6, and I'll try and write something more detailed about its various car/recession garage jams in the next few days. The first single is "Johnny Magic", available March 23, download only. The tracklisting for "Fork In The Road" is: 1. When Worlds Collide 2. Fuel Line 3. Just Singing A Song 4. Johnny Magic 5. Cough Up The Bucks 6. Get Behind The Wheel 7. Off The Road 8. Hit The Road 9. Light A Candle 10. Fork In the Road Two dates announced thus far, with more promised. They are: June 23 - Nottingham Trent FM Arena June 24 - Aberdeen AECC Tickets are on sale now and are also available from www.livenation.co.uk. Nottingham tickets are priced at £50 for standing and £50/£45 for seating, Aberdeen tickets cost £55 for seating and £50 for standing.

We’re having some grief, yet again, posting news stories to www.uncut.co.uk, so I thought I should share this fairly auspicious news here: the details of Neil Young‘s new album, “Fork In The Road”, and the first dates of what smells suspiciously like a full UK tour, possibly constructed around a certain major summer festival.

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Wooden Shjips: “Dos”

John Mulvey
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Nearly a year ago now, I posted a blog about Wooden Shjips live, when they played with Howlin Rain and The Meat Puppets in London. They were superb, and I’m pleased to say that their psychedelic dancehall schtick has been totally realised on “Dos”, their upcoming third album, which has burning itself onto my synapses these past ten days or so. Like I said last time, the San Francisco quartet are heavily, heavily indebted to The Spacemen Three (especially circa “The Perfect Prescription”, maybe), The Doors, The Velvets, motorik and Suicide. But on the five high and expansive tracks of “DoS”, there’s a bounce and weird programmatic funk to their endless grooves - "minimalist psych bop" they call it, justifiably. The format is fairly straightforward: the rhythm section lock into some rudimentary shimmy, and stick to it doggedly, precisely, for something around ten minutes. There are shades of creaking, swirling organ, low-mixed, reverbed vocals and then great stretches of fuzzed guitar solo from Erik ‘Ripley’ Johnson. Much as I despise the term, it’s not rocket science, but my God, when it’s carried out with such pulsating vigour as on “Dos”, there’s not much to argue about. Wooden Shjips understand something critical that has largely been overlooked since the heyday of the Family Dog or whatever – namely that psychedelic freakouts can be danceable, too. There’s a sensational track here on “DoS”, "Down By The Sea", which soon evolves/degenerates into a languid firestorm of soloing from Ripley, but which maintains that ruthless, undulating groove. It’s that sense that one way of running a psychedelic band (not one that The Grateful Dead signed up to, admittedly) is to ensure the rhythm section are completely nailed down, providing a firm base for the explorations of the guitarist. For the most part here, the sound is thick and heavy, so it’s often hard to make out details: is Riley really quoting from The Band’s “The Weight” somewhere in the depths of "Motorbike"? By "Fallin'", though, the sound is cleaner and more stripped down, with the organ to the fore and the distortion turned off. Here, there’s a distinct echo of La Dusseldorf, with a crude and relentless Dingerbeat and the bobbling organ line stretching out towards the event horizon. Frankly, and I say this again and again I know, they could just keep going forever.

Nearly a year ago now, I posted a blog about Wooden Shjips live, when they played with Howlin Rain and The Meat Puppets in London. They were superb, and I’m pleased to say that their psychedelic dancehall schtick has been totally realised on “Dos”, their upcoming third album, which has burning itself onto my synapses these past ten days or so.

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Part 5: High School Friend Comrie Smith

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Part 5: High School Friend Comrie Smith

In last March issue Uncut , we brought you the inside story on Neil Young’s long-awaited Archives project. We spoke to his friends, colleagues and conspirators and, over the next few weeks on www.uncut.co.uk, we’ll be printing the complete transcripts of these interviews. Previous installments are available by using the links in the side panel on the right. Part 5: COMRIE SMITH Young’s high school buddy in early, short-lived ‘bands’. Also played with Toronto folk-rockers, 3’s A Crowd UNCUT: Tell me about you and Neil before he moved away in 1960. Was he already into music? SMITH: I remember when we were kids I’d meet Neil everyday on the corner to walk to school together and he’d have his white bucks on and his transistor radio just blaring out. He’d say, “Hey Comrie, listen to this one!” He loved the Fendermen with “Good Morning Captain”. I had a Go Bo Diddley album which had the greatest funky guitar song that we used to listen to a lot. He liked Gene Vincent and Link Wray. I had those albums and we’d listen to them all the time. We used to buy records from this little elderly lady at Robinson Radio. Once they were off the hit parade she’d sell them for 39¢. So you could get an Everly Brothers 45 and there’d always be an interesting song on the B-side and we’d listen to those. Neil and I both loved Roy Orbison. We would listen to “Only The Lonely” and “Candy Man” in my living room. We had both started playing earlier with Neil on his baritone ukulele and me with my acoustic guitar. We had thought we would form a group together when we were in junior high but then, of course, he left. I knew Rassy, too, before she and Scott split up. She was a great mom for us in that teenage time. She was very supportive of our musical interests and I understand she did the same for Neil in Winnipeg. Did you remain in touch with Neil after he moved to Winnipeg? Only once [laugh]. It was after Grade 9. Neither of us were terrific students. He sent me this long, scrawly letter – he still writes in that style – about Winnipeg and how cold it was in the winter, stuff like that. And that was about it. We never saw each other until he came back to Toronto in 1965. When he came out he ended up at a friend’s, Richard Mundell’s house in North Toronto. I had an old car, a 41 Plymouth at the time. Neil phoned me one night in the middle of the summer from a party and said, “Bet you thought I didn’t know much about cars. Well, I sure know a lot about them now.” And he told me all about his hearse breaking down. He said, “There’s a party going on here, why don’t you come over and bring your guitar?” So I went over with my guitar and we played. After that he hung out a lot with me at my place with my girlfriend. Neil had left Winnipeg for Fort William (Thunder Bay) with his band The Squires in the spring of 1965 before heading further east to Toronto in late June of that year. The band folded soon after with Neil pursuing a folksinging career. Was this about the time you met up again? Sort of. He still had his Gretsch electric guitar. We had been friends before Neil moved to Winnipeg in 1960 so when he came back we kind of picked up where we’d left off. I was playing in a band that was folding as well so it was just the two of us really. Neil had this idea at the time that the coolest thing in the world would be to have two Martin guitars with d’Armand pickups on them. My girlfriend at that time ended up giving me a d’Armand pickup. But on those tracks Neil’s still playing his electric Gretsch guitar unplugged and I’m on a little Hofner guitar unplugged. Neil hadn’t traded in his Gretsch for a Gibson 12-string acoustic yet. I had been playing for 2 or 3 years in and around Toronto with my own band and various bands basically playing rock ‘n’ roll, not necessarily folk. And I was really into writing songs and Neil was, too. So together our ideas just seemed to work well folkie-wise. Tell me how these tracks – “Hello Lonely Woman”, “Casting Me Away From You” and “There Goes My Babe” – came to be recorded. Those three songs were recorded in the attic of my parents’ house in Toronto, 46 Golfdale Road, and it’s just me and Neil on a couple of unplugged guitars. Neil likes things pretty raw and that’s what those tracks were. We were good music friends. It’s just the two of us and a friend who operated the tape machine. The recordings were made around late August or early September of 1965. There were more than those three songs on the tape. I remember a song of Neil’s called “Betty Ann” that had the line “Betty Ann, if you can, won’t you mend my broken heart again.” Marty Onrot who was sort of managing Neil had him make a tape of his songs around then and I think I heard parts of that. But this is a different tape from that same period. It was kind of a routine for us at night. We’d go to this hamburger place up in Willowdale and get a hamburger around 8 or 9 at night. Then he’d come back and I had my girlfriend’s tape recorder and Neil would fool around on it, all these wonderful monologues on it making up stories about his auditions or pretending he was a club owner telling him, “Hey kid, you don’t need drumsticks. You just need pencils ‘cause you’re too loud,” all in his humorous voice. We had a lot of fun with that. I wish I still had those tapes. So we were up in the attic and there were some heavy vibes going on. There was another guy running the recorder. “Hello Lonely Woman” was kind of an R ‘n’ B number and you can hear Neil’s foot tapping on the linoleum. I felt pretty bad about my playing on the tracks, it wasn’t that good. There was a great version of “High Heeled Sneakers” on that tape but I guess it didn’t get used for copyright reasons. There was another one of Neil’s on the tape called “Don’t Tell My Friends” that was an early Neil Young tune. “Hello Lonely Woman” was a Squires-era song Neil later resurrected with The Blue Notes in 1988 and “There Goes My Babe” was one of his first demo recordings with the Buffalo Springfield” in 1966. But “Casting Me Away From You” remains a mystery. “Casting Me Away From You” I would call a folk song with a little bit of rhythm. It’s in G. The lyrics go, “We used to laugh and play games together; we found things to do in stormy weather. But now I find you’re leaving me behind, casting me away from you.” He remembered the melody years later because on his first solo album there’s an instrumental called “The Emperor Of Wyoming” and that’s the same melody as “Casting Me Away From You”. Did you and Neil continue to hang out that autumn? Neil spent quite a bit of time in and around my place but by then we kind of lost him. After we made those tapes a couple of weeks went by and I couldn’t find him. I had the chance for us to play a couple of places but I couldn’t track him down to get him to play. He was living for a time with Vicki Taylor who was a folksinger in Yorkville. We lost Neil for a time, we didn’t know where he was, but that’s where I found him again; at Vicki Taylor’s. I would knock on the door and ask for Neil. Donna Warner would answer the door and say, “Neil’s not here right now.” I kind of liked her. [Smith later played with Warner in 3’s A Crowd] So I wasn’t sure if Neil was actually living there. Finally I got in and found that Neil was fairly ill at the time with a bad flu bug and stayed there quite a while. There were all sorts of people coming and going through that apartment, Joni Mitchell being one. I talked with [Squires bass player] Kenny Koblun a lot during the time Neil disappeared in the fall of 1965 and he was getting real depressed. Neil kind of dropped him. Kenny was kind of deep and mysterious at times then, pretty introverted. It was rough for Neil at that time. He didn’t really have a place to stay. He could have stayed at our place but he stayed at a few places. I think that’s when his dad made him hock his Gretsch and get a haircut and a job. He moved in with his dad for a while on Inglewood and that was a very disciplined world that he wasn’t used to. When I did finally see him again he had a new winter coat and short hair and he had a job at the Coles’s bookstore on Yonge and Bloor. I went over to see him at the store. He was a stockboy and he was showing me all these funny books. He was telling me, “You gotta get a job, Comrie. You’ve gotta pay your debts,” because I was kind of in hock over guitars and things. So I think his dad forced him to go straight for awhile. That was the message I got. It was frustrating for him in Toronto. He wasn’t very good as a folksinger then. After he left in the hearse I went to Arc Records in Toronto with this tape Neil and I had made of this acoustic stuff. Bill Gilliland who was the record promoter said, “Get your band together and come in and we’ll make some demos’,” but it never happened because people weren’t that big on Neil’s voice. I thought he was great because he had such a melodious approach, melody and chords. At that time it was just chords and words but Neil always had nice melodies. That came from The Shadows but also Neil really liked Floyd Cramer, that piano player who’s famous for those little triple trills that Neil later played in the Buffalo Springfield. At the time did you know that Neil had left Toronto for California? I heard he was in the Mynah Birds. I didn’t realize that Neil had moved quite as quickly into adapting to the Mynah Birds. He played a Gibson acoustic 12-string stuffed full of newspapers to kill all the feedback and he played beautifully. They sounded great. He came around to my parents’ house to say good bye when he had that 1953 Pontiac hearse and was leaving for California. We went for a ride in it. He didn’t try to convince me to go with him. I kind of knew he was thinking of going but I wasn’t sure. He had taken the band’s Ford Econoline van, which I think was rented, out to Pickering. I wasn’t sure what he was doing exactly. He had me follow him in my car out on the 401. He parked the van, he had unloaded all the Mynah Birds equipment, and said, “Okay, let’s go.” We drove through Broughamtown where he had fond memories as a child before driving back into North Toronto. About a week later, or maybe even less, he showed up at my house with Bruce Palmer and they were leaving that night. So how did the 1965 tape come into Neil’s possession? We had this problem for years of not being able to communicate because my letters weren’t getting through to him and nothing was happening. Then in 1997 I picked up the phone one day and there he was saying, “Remember those tapes we made in the attic, Comrie? Have you still got them?” So I took what I could find to his show in Hamilton, he sent some tickets, and I gave him the tape. The next time I saw him was I guess in 2000 in Toronto at a concert and he said, “The Archives are a go ahead!” Did you know that you are playing on Neil’s highly-anticipated massive box set? I didn’t know these tracks were going to be on the box set. No one called me to tell me. I would have thought that someone would have wanted me to sign a release or something. One of my friends said, “Geez, Comrie, get a lawyer.” But right now I’m just trying to get a car. [laugh] Gosh, I sure hope people like those songs. They have a kind of raw appeal. I love those old songs and those old stories not so much because Neil’s so famous now but because it was so surprising. He always wanted to make it big. He really had a fixed eye on where he needed to go. And he knew that writing his own songs was important. INTERVIEW: JOHN EINARSON

In last March issue Uncut , we brought you the inside story on Neil Young’s long-awaited Archives project. We spoke to his friends, colleagues and conspirators and, over the next few weeks on www.uncut.co.uk, we’ll be printing the complete transcripts of these interviews.

Previous installments are available by using the links in the side panel on the right.

Part 5: COMRIE SMITH

Young’s high school buddy in early, short-lived ‘bands’. Also played with Toronto folk-rockers, 3’s A Crowd

UNCUT: Tell me about you and Neil before he moved away in 1960. Was he already into music?

SMITH: I remember when we were kids I’d meet Neil everyday on the corner to walk to school together and he’d have his white bucks on and his transistor radio just blaring out. He’d say, “Hey Comrie, listen to this one!” He loved the Fendermen with “Good Morning Captain”. I had a Go Bo Diddley album which had the greatest funky guitar song that we used to listen to a lot. He liked Gene Vincent and Link Wray. I had those albums and we’d listen to them all the time. We used to buy records from this little elderly lady at Robinson Radio. Once they were off the hit parade she’d sell them for 39¢. So you could get an Everly Brothers 45 and there’d always be an interesting song on the B-side and we’d listen to those. Neil and I both loved Roy Orbison. We would listen to “Only The Lonely” and “Candy Man” in my living room. We had both started playing earlier with Neil on his baritone ukulele and me with my acoustic guitar. We had thought we would form a group together when we were in junior high but then, of course, he left. I knew Rassy, too, before she and Scott split up. She was a great mom for us in that teenage time. She was very supportive of our musical interests and I understand she did the same for Neil in Winnipeg.

Did you remain in touch with Neil after he moved to Winnipeg?

Only once [laugh]. It was after Grade 9. Neither of us were terrific students. He sent me this long, scrawly letter – he still writes in that style – about Winnipeg and how cold it was in the winter, stuff like that. And that was about it. We never saw each other until he came back to Toronto in 1965. When he came out he ended up at a friend’s, Richard Mundell’s house in North Toronto. I had an old car, a 41 Plymouth at the time. Neil phoned me one night in the middle of the summer from a party and said, “Bet you thought I didn’t know much about cars. Well, I sure know a lot about them now.” And he told me all about his hearse breaking down. He said, “There’s a party going on here, why don’t you come over and bring your guitar?” So I went over with my guitar and we played. After that he hung out a lot with me at my place with my girlfriend.

Neil had left Winnipeg for Fort William (Thunder Bay) with his band The Squires in the spring of 1965 before heading further east to Toronto in late June of that year. The band folded soon after with Neil pursuing a folksinging career. Was this about the time you met up again?

Sort of. He still had his Gretsch electric guitar. We had been friends before Neil moved to Winnipeg in 1960 so when he came back we kind of picked up where we’d left off. I was playing in a band that was folding as well so it was just the two of us really. Neil had this idea at the time that the coolest thing in the world would be to have two Martin guitars with d’Armand pickups on them. My girlfriend at that time ended up giving me a d’Armand pickup. But on those tracks Neil’s still playing his electric Gretsch guitar unplugged and I’m on a little Hofner guitar unplugged. Neil hadn’t traded in his Gretsch for a Gibson 12-string acoustic yet. I had been playing for 2 or 3 years in and around Toronto with my own band and various bands basically playing rock ‘n’ roll, not necessarily folk. And I was really into writing songs and Neil was, too. So together our ideas just seemed to work well folkie-wise.

Tell me how these tracks – “Hello Lonely Woman”, “Casting Me Away From You” and “There Goes My Babe” – came to be recorded.

Those three songs were recorded in the attic of my parents’ house in Toronto, 46 Golfdale Road, and it’s just me and Neil on a couple of unplugged guitars. Neil likes things pretty raw and that’s what those tracks were. We were good music friends. It’s just the two of us and a friend who operated the tape machine. The recordings were made around late August or early September of 1965. There were more than those three songs on the tape. I remember a song of Neil’s called “Betty Ann” that had the line “Betty Ann, if you can, won’t you mend my broken heart again.” Marty Onrot who was sort of managing Neil had him make a tape of his songs around then and I think I heard parts of that. But this is a different tape from that same period. It was kind of a routine for us at night. We’d go to this hamburger place up in Willowdale and get a hamburger around 8 or 9 at night. Then he’d come back and I had my girlfriend’s tape recorder and Neil would fool around on it, all these wonderful monologues on it making up stories about his auditions or pretending he was a club owner telling him, “Hey kid, you don’t need drumsticks. You just need pencils ‘cause you’re too loud,” all in his humorous voice. We had a lot of fun with that. I wish I still had those tapes.

So we were up in the attic and there were some heavy vibes going on. There was another guy running the recorder. “Hello Lonely Woman” was kind of an R ‘n’ B number and you can hear Neil’s foot tapping on the linoleum. I felt pretty bad about my playing on the tracks, it wasn’t that good. There was a great version of “High Heeled Sneakers” on that tape but I guess it didn’t get used for copyright reasons. There was another one of Neil’s on the tape called “Don’t Tell My Friends” that was an early Neil Young tune.

“Hello Lonely Woman” was a Squires-era song Neil later resurrected with The Blue Notes in 1988 and “There Goes My Babe” was one of his first demo recordings with the Buffalo Springfield” in 1966. But “Casting Me Away From You” remains a mystery.

“Casting Me Away From You” I would call a folk song with a little bit of rhythm. It’s in G. The lyrics go, “We used to laugh and play games together; we found things to do in stormy weather. But now I find you’re leaving me behind, casting me away from you.” He remembered the melody years later because on his first solo album there’s an instrumental called “The Emperor Of Wyoming” and that’s the same melody as “Casting Me Away From You”.

Did you and Neil continue to hang out that autumn?

Neil spent quite a bit of time in and around my place but by then we kind of lost him. After we made those tapes a couple of weeks went by and I couldn’t find him. I had the chance for us to play a couple of places but I couldn’t track him down to get him to play. He was living for a time with Vicki Taylor who was a folksinger in Yorkville. We lost Neil for a time, we didn’t know where he was, but that’s where I found him again; at Vicki Taylor’s. I would knock on the door and ask for Neil. Donna Warner would answer the door and say, “Neil’s not here right now.” I kind of liked her. [Smith later played with Warner in 3’s A Crowd] So I wasn’t sure if Neil was actually living there. Finally I got in and found that Neil was fairly ill at the time with a bad flu bug and stayed there quite a while. There were all sorts of people coming and going through that apartment, Joni Mitchell being one.

I talked with [Squires bass player] Kenny Koblun a lot during the time Neil disappeared in the fall of 1965 and he was getting real depressed. Neil kind of dropped him. Kenny was kind of deep and mysterious at times then, pretty introverted.

It was rough for Neil at that time. He didn’t really have a place to stay. He could have stayed at our place but he stayed at a few places. I think that’s when his dad made him hock his Gretsch and get a haircut and a job. He moved in with his dad for a while on Inglewood and that was a very disciplined world that he wasn’t used to. When I did finally see him again he had a new winter coat and short hair and he had a job at the Coles’s bookstore on Yonge and Bloor. I went over to see him at the store. He was a stockboy and he was showing me all these funny books. He was telling me, “You gotta get a job, Comrie. You’ve gotta pay your debts,” because I was kind of in hock over guitars and things. So I think his dad forced him to go straight for awhile. That was the message I got.

It was frustrating for him in Toronto. He wasn’t very good as a folksinger then. After he left in the hearse I went to Arc Records in Toronto with this tape Neil and I had made of this acoustic stuff. Bill Gilliland who was the record promoter said, “Get your band together and come in and we’ll make some demos’,” but it never happened because people weren’t that big on Neil’s voice. I thought he was great because he had such a melodious approach, melody and chords. At that time it was just chords and words but Neil always had nice melodies. That came from The Shadows but also Neil really liked Floyd Cramer, that piano player who’s famous for those little triple trills that Neil later played in the Buffalo Springfield.

At the time did you know that Neil had left Toronto for California?

I heard he was in the Mynah Birds. I didn’t realize that Neil had moved quite as quickly into adapting to the Mynah Birds. He played a Gibson acoustic 12-string stuffed full of newspapers to kill all the feedback and he played beautifully. They sounded great.

He came around to my parents’ house to say good bye when he had that 1953 Pontiac hearse and was leaving for California. We went for a ride in it. He didn’t try to convince me to go with him. I kind of knew he was thinking of going but I wasn’t sure. He had taken the band’s Ford Econoline van, which I think was rented, out to Pickering. I wasn’t sure what he was doing exactly. He had me follow him in my car out on the 401. He parked the van, he had unloaded all the Mynah Birds equipment, and said, “Okay, let’s go.” We drove through Broughamtown where he had fond memories as a child before driving back into North Toronto. About a week later, or maybe even less, he showed up at my house with Bruce Palmer and they were leaving that night.

So how did the 1965 tape come into Neil’s possession?

We had this problem for years of not being able to communicate because my letters weren’t getting through to him and nothing was happening. Then in 1997 I picked up the phone one day and there he was saying, “Remember those tapes we made in the attic, Comrie? Have you still got them?” So I took what I could find to his show in Hamilton, he sent some tickets, and I gave him the tape. The next time I saw him was I guess in 2000 in Toronto at a concert and he said, “The Archives are a go ahead!”

Did you know that you are playing on Neil’s highly-anticipated massive box set?

I didn’t know these tracks were going to be on the box set. No one called me to tell me. I would have thought that someone would have wanted me to sign a release or something. One of my friends said, “Geez, Comrie, get a lawyer.” But right now I’m just trying to get a car. [laugh] Gosh, I sure hope people like those songs. They have a kind of raw appeal. I love those old songs and those old stories not so much because Neil’s so famous now but because it was so surprising. He always wanted to make it big. He really had a fixed eye on where he needed to go. And he knew that writing his own songs was important.

INTERVIEW: JOHN EINARSON

Watchmen

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Watchmen
WATCHMEN Directed by Zack Snyder Starring Billy Crudup, Malin Akerman, Jeffrey Dean Morgan *** SYNOPSIS In an alternate 1985 where superheroes exist, ageing hero The Comedian is killed. His former accomplices come out of retirement to investigate his murder, but it soon becomes apparent that th...

WATCHMEN

Directed by Zack Snyder

Starring Billy Crudup, Malin Akerman, Jeffrey Dean Morgan

***

SYNOPSIS

In an alternate 1985 where superheroes exist, ageing hero The Comedian is killed. His former accomplices come out of retirement to investigate his murder, but it soon becomes apparent that there’s a wider conspiracy at work. When American superhero, Dr. Manhattan – the most powerful man on Earth – is framed for several deaths and escapes to Mars, the Cold War begins to look as if it might go nuclear…

***

When Alan Moore wrote Watchmen in 1986, he was famously shooting for “the Moby Dick of comics” – a dense, allusive summation of the medium. For superhero comics, at least, he succeeded, and, along with Frank Miller’s Batman reboot The Dark Knight Returns, Watchmen helped legitimise comics as an adult artform. In Hollywod, too, we’ve seen superheroes upgraded from cheap TV shows to A-list franchises, attracting such unlikely prestige directors as Tim Burton (Batman and Batman Returns), Ang Lee (Hulk) and Christopher Nolan (The Dark Knight). Frank Miller has also made the jump from comics to movies, co-directing his own Sin City series with Robert Rodriguez, though falling disastrously on his face with the recent adaptation of Will Eisner’s The Spirit, which he wrote and directed.

Moore, on the other hand, has kept his distance from Hollywood. To be frank, the movies have not been kind to him. From Hell, V For Vendetta and, most conspicuously, The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen didn’t serve their source material to the fullest, and Moore’s response was to refuse both credit and payment for all future adaptations of his work.

Quite what he’ll make of Watchmen is anyone’s guess. With its layered, complex plotting and forensic attention to detail, it’s long been considered an unfilmable project, as various directors down the years (including Terry Gilliam and Darren Aronofsky) have discovered. But it’s Zack Snyder, who filmed Frank Miller’s 300, who’s finally had a pop. Which begs the question: after nearly a quarter-century of inspiring and fascinating Hollywood, just how radical, and relevant, does Watchmen seem now?

As with 300, Snyder has treated Moore’s comic as Holy Writ, retaining its 1985 setting, and using the series’ original artist Dave Gibbons as an advisor. Watchmen certainly provides him with a rich Rogues’ Gallery. The first “hero” we meet is Edward Blake, aka The Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan, resembling a dead-eyed Robert Downey Jr). A big, sixtyish man going to seed, he’s attacked by a mystery assailant, easily beaten despite his powers, and tossed through a plate-glass window to his death. In a bravura title sequence as Dylan’s “The Times They Are A’Changin’” plays, the back-story of The Comedian’s superhero tribe is then sketched in – from innocent, robber-grabbing good guys in the ‘40s, to hunted outsiders in the McCarthyite ‘50s, and despised government stooges since the ‘60s. That’s The Comedian skulking behind the Grassy Knoll in Dallas, 1963 ; another super-being, Dr. Manhattan, is waiting on the moon to greet Neil Armstrong. Later, we see them both stalking the jungles of Vietnam, effortlessly turning the enemy to ash. In this super powered twentieth-century, hippie flower children are shot en masse. By 1985, with Dr. Manhattan as his ultimate nuclear deterrent, Nixon is settling in for his fifth term. We might wonder, are superheroes our protectors, or our oppressors? As Dylan sings on “Desolation Row” (quoted by Moore in the comic, and butchered here by My Chemical Romance): “Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew/ Come out and round up everyone that knows more than they do…”

Incineration and assassination aren’t The Comedian’s only crimes. There is also attempted rape, and the murder of a pregnant woman. But, nevertheless, it’s his death that launches the plot of Watchmen. It’s investigated by the vigilante Rorschach (Jackie Earl Haley), who Snyder introduces as the masked equivalent of Travis Bickle, stalking New York (“the streets are extended gutters…the vermin will drown,” he grunts). Snyder indulges his brutality more than Moore. But it says much about the complexity behind each character that Rorschach – for all his sociopathic behaviour – eventually becomes Watchmen’s moral compass.

We might empathise better with the more recognisably human figures of Dan Dreiberg (Patrick Wilson) and Laurie Jaspeczyk (Malin Akerman), retired superheroes drawn back into their old crime-fighting ways as Night Owl and Silk Spectre. But not, it seems, by altruism, but because it turns them on, following another first: superhero impotence. And two far more powerful figures meanwhile lurk in the background: Dr. Manhattan (an unrecognisable Billy Crudup) and Ozymandias (Matthew Goode), who both play shadowy roles in the Cold War.

Snyder has faithfully shoehorned in Moore’s entire plot, even promising Watchmen’s pirate yarn, Tales Of The Black Freighter, as an upcoming DVD Extra. And while he rarely exercises the iron structural control that was a principal asset of the comic, there are grand flourishes. Big pop songs are boldly used – Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Sound Of Silence” at the Comedian’s New York funeral (the Twin Towers kept carefully in shot), Cohen’s “Hallelujah” during a sex scene, and, rather bizarrely, Nena’s “99 Red Balloons”. Snyder also attempts to replicate some of Moore and Gibbons’ obsessive attention to detail. There’s a poster glimsped for Ozymandias’ African food drive in the year of Live Aid, the way Nixon, himself looking like a super-villain, hunkers down in his bunker waiting for the end of the world, and a snatch of 1960s TV classic The Outer Limits, an episode of which partly provided the inspiration for Moore’s finale. The violence comes hard and, as is seemingly a contractual obligation these days, is mostly shot in slow-motion. Moore’s grim conclusion of what a world with superheroes would really be like can be found in one scene, where gangsters set out to “test” Dr Manhattan, and all that’s left after he’s finished with them are their intestines dripping from the ceiling. When the high style drops, though, Watchmen is just men and women in tights, talking. This might have worked in comics, but it can look faintly ridiculous on the big screen.

Watchmen bravely grapples with big ideas more traditionally suited to high-end sci-fi. Alongside M. Night Shyamalan’s Unbreakable (2000), it’s a thoroughgoing attempt to deconstruct a genre Hollywood has happily swallowed whole. You may frequently wonder why Snyder has bothered. But if you want a slavish, often exciting screen translation of Moore and Gibbons’ landmark, here it is.

Nick Hasted

The Class

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The Class
DIRECTED BY Laurent Cantet STARRING Francois Bégaudeau *** From Robin Williams through Michelle Pfeiffer to Richard Griffiths, the movies have lapped up the idea of the inspirational teacher. How many of us, though, ever actually encountered such a mythical beast? And how many teachers today fee...

DIRECTED BY Laurent Cantet

STARRING Francois Bégaudeau

***

From Robin Williams through Michelle Pfeiffer to Richard Griffiths, the movies have lapped up the idea of the inspirational teacher. How many of us, though, ever actually encountered such a mythical beast? And how many teachers today feel like they’re really making a difference?

Based on the experiences of real-life Parisian teacher Begaudeau, Cantet’s remarkable, brilliantly acted movie is a bracing antidote to the tradition. Shot semi-documentary over a year, with scenes worked up through improvisation, the bulk of the movie is confined to a single classroom as Begaudeau, playing himself, seeks to penetrate the wall of bored indifference between him and his wary 14-year-old charges.

The class’ ethnic mix suggests Cantet considering the stew of contemporary French society in microcosm, but the movie will be as recognisable, and relevant, in London or LA. As Begaudeau tries to read, lead, provoke and joust with his class, there come fleeting moments of connection, fascinating, bantering debates, misunderstandings, frustrations, outright failures. But no miracles, no life changing breakthroughs. And yet, by casting aside rose-tinted spectacles and *Blackboard Jungle*-style gritty-delinquency clichés, *The Class* pays so much more respect to teachers, and to pupils. Goodbye Mr Chips, indeed.

DAMIEN LOVE

Part 4: Randy Bachman

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Part 4: Randy Bachman

In last March issue Uncut , we brought you the inside story on Neil Young’s long-awaited Archives project. We spoke to his friends, colleagues and conspirators and, over the next few weeks on www.uncut.co.uk, we’ll be printing the complete transcripts of these interviews. RANDY BACHMAN Winnipeg’s star guitarist in the early Sixties, revered by Young. Founder of The Guess Who and, later, Bachman Turner Overdive *** There wasn’t a formal introduction when I met Neil: just a bunch of teenage guys learning to play guitar and starting bands and dreaming of being like Elvis or The Shadows. I remember meeting him at a gig I was playing in Winnipeg. Someone introduced him and a couple of his friends he was with. One of them was immensely tall for a teenager and that was Ken Koblun. I noticed at that first meeting, and then subsequent meetings, that Neil had a "look" in his dark eyes. A focused determination of getting to a place far from where he was. I've been told I had the same look. When one knows at an early age that their gift, talent and direction is musical, one tends to focus on that and let nothing interfere or impede the forward motion toward the end of that rainbow. And after 50-something years of rockin’ out, you still realise there is no end to that distant rainbow until one’s last sunset. I saw Neil play many times in several different bands. In those days many band members revolved or went in and out of bands. Some guys didn't have the dream and discipline, some chose sports or girlfriends over being in a band, but the ones who were constant figures in the bands were the ones that made it. No obstacle was too big to overcome. We all had the same issues with parents: girlfriends, education, getting a ‘real job’, playing for the love of it. And as there was no money involved, just living the rock and roll life of living to play and playing to live. So I did see Neil play many times but whether they were called The Jades or The Squires I'm not sure. Later on I do remember Neil Young & The Squires when he took more of an upfront stance in the band and it clearly became his focus. I remember both Neil and Ken coming to many gigs. I was playing a Gretsch 6120 through a Kortung tape deck to get an echo delay, through a Fender Concert amp and playing early Shadows. I remember Neil asking me about the songs and where I got them and how I learned them. I was playing “Apache”, “Kon-Tiki”, “Man Of Mystery” and “Mustang”, and our lead singer Chad Allan was singing Cliff Richard songs like “Living Doll”, “Move It”, “Dynamite”, “Pointed Toe Shoes”, “We Say Yeah” and “Summer Holiday”. We were totally different than any other local band because of this British repertoire we played. Our bass player, Jim Kale, had a Fender Concert Amp which had four inputs and would handle a whole band. When we weren't playing gigs, we'd lend the amp to Neil and his band. A set of drums and a Fender Concert Amp was all you needed for a night of instrumental music. We even plugged a mike into one of the inputs and sang through it at the same time. On Saturday, after watching American Bandstand to see the latest dances and rock bands, it was a ritual for most musicians to take the bus to downtown Winnipeg. The main street there was called Portage Avenue and had two large department stores on it about four blocks apart. The stroll from one called Eaton's to the other called Hudsons Bay was lined with music stores, record shops, clothing stores and restaurants. Most of us were playing catalogue guitars like Sear Silvertones and Harmonys and would walk this strip on Portage Avenue every Saturday and look at the real rock guitars in the windows of the stores. We'd literally stand for hours and stare at the blond ‘Chuck Berry’ Gibsons, the ‘Buddy Holly’ Fender Strats and the ‘Duane Eddy’ Gretsches that were in the windows. Once in a while we'd get brave enough to go in and ask to try the guitar out. There is a great book out called Everything I Needed to Learn I Learned in Kindergarten and I believe that everything I ever needed to learn on guitar was in my first two years of hungry learning: Scotty Moore, Hank Marvin, Chet Atkins, Lenny Breau, Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley. That was my training and I believe it was also Neil’s. When we do a solo today, there are always "quotes" from Hank Marvin and Chuck Berry. We both still have an echo repeat on most guitar solos and use the wang bar more than others do. In 1965, The Guess Who were invited to New York City. Our recording of "Shakin’ All Over" had hit Number One in Canada and made Top 20 in Billboard Magazine. We were on Scepter Records, whose sister label was Wand, which had the monster hit “Louie Louie” by The Kingsmen. We played the whole East coast and Midwest with The Kingsmen tour which also had Dion & The Belmonts, Barbara Mason, Sam the Sam and The Turtles on some dates. When we got back to Winnipeg to go back to school in the fall of '65, we were local heroes. I remember Neil asking what it was like "outside of Winnipeg" and I remember the look in his eyes when I told him how great it was to get out of town, to live the rock and roll life and live by playing music. He left shortly after that and ended up in LA after some brief stops in Port Arthur and Toronto. He came back to Winnipeg briefly for a visit and I remember him playing me and Jim Kale an acetate of the first Buffalo Springfield LP. "Out Of My Mind" was the song I heard first. It was the first time I heard his unique vocals. I said, “Who's that singing?” and he proudly said, "It's me!". You don't have to have a great voice to sing, just a distinctive one. But make sure you say the words clearly and tell a story. Then Buffalo Springfield happened big time and they were so cool. Like the Beatles they had several different lead vocalists and writers and their solos sounded very distinct with Stills’ blues riffs and Neil’s Hank Marvin stylings. Then the next time I saw him was at his house in Topanga Canyon where he played solo at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and was in process of joining CS&N. He was holding out to get his name in the group name and not be just a sideman. He held out and got it and they became CSN&Y. I have accomplished a lot for a kid from Winnipeg but whatever I have done pales in comparison to what Neil has accomplished. He passed me by a long time ago and it’s true that I use his songwriting, guitar playing, lifestyle, his work ethic and his relationship with his manager Elliott (who I've also known forever) as a template to follow. I drop in to see Neil several times a year when he’s on tour. I visited with him at two different gigs at his recent Hammersmith Odeon run in March and we always shake hands, hug each other and say: “I'm so glad you're still doing what you do. And we gotta keep on doing it.” I've been very blessed that he has invited me down several times to his ranch and studio to record and hope to do it again in 2009. I don't feel that my songs are cheap copies of Neil's but more of reflection of some of his attitudes in his songs, more soul, more capturing of great moments of performance and less finicking with "perfection". It makes it more fun. He also doesn't worry about being commercial and getting radio airplay. He just keeps going doing what he does and bouncing around from rockin’ the free world to cool country rock stuff and everything in between. Neil's best qualities are: hard work, honesty, generosity, determination, setting goals to complete each dream and then working step by step to get it done. This was evident when we first met and every time I've seen him since over the years. He has the same determined look and heart of gold. He’s a great friend and recently at his 60th surprise birthday party, many of us got a chance to talk on mike about our relationship with him and it was amazing how many of us have been in his circle for 40 or 50 years. I remember hearing Neil play me both “Nowadays Clancy Can’t Even Sing” and “Sugar Mountain” as acetate demos. I also saw him play them live at the Dorothy Chandler Pavillion in Los Angeles in 1971. Neil had got me an appointment After I'd seen his Greendale show a couple of times, I sent an email to him and Peggy and told him about a parallel story happening in my life like the main character and story in Greendale. It was about a pulp and paper mill in Crofton, British Columbia polluting the soil, air and water with their smokestack emissions and killing everything around it. It boiled down to getting the government to put better and stricter zero tolerance laws into place to stop the pollution as the mill was basically complying with the regulations. Out of the blue I got an email from Peggy telling me to come and meet with her and Neil at their Vancouver show. When I did, Neil said, "Let's have a concert to raise money to help the people who are fighting this fight and trying to monitor the emissions from the smokestacks. I can come on this date”. And to my amazement, because of his offer, we put on a concert with Neil, Barenaked Ladies, my son Tal and myself all doing acoustic sets in a hockey rink in Duncan B.C. and raised many hundreds of thousands of dollars for the "Fresh Air" concert fund that is still being worked on and is still a work and fight in progress to this date. I will be forever indebted to Neil and Peggy and their whole crew for their time, talent, compassion and generosity. They do this every fall for a couple of charities and right after our event went on to Farm Aid and The Bridge School event. God Bless them all. I met with Mo Ostin at Warner Bros and Don Schmitzerle at Reprise Records for my new band Brave Belt, which was a country-rock outfit. I had left The Guess Who after the American Woman album and hit single in the summer of '70 and was trying to get back into the rock race. At that time Neil invited me to the Pavilion and I was absolutely amazed. He had sold out several nights in a row and performed solo on guitar and piano. He had the crowd mesmerised. I couldn't believe that this kid from Winnipeg had turned into this artist that had the audience so mesmerised with his music. It seemed so surreal to me. At that concert he did “Nowadays Clancy Can’t Even Sing” and then announced that he had written “Sugar Mountain” about a Joni Mitchell connection and while driving in the canyons the other day, he’d written about ten more verses. He asked the audience "Do you want to hear the new verses?” The answer was a resounding yes. And he sang it for about eight minutes with the audience singing along on every chorus. I know he's been working on this complete works [Archives] for decades now, through all kinds of digital conversions and is still gathering the source material. It will be a fantastic treasure of memories over 50 years of music. INTERVIEW BY ROB HUGHES

In last March issue Uncut , we brought you the inside story on Neil Young’s long-awaited Archives project. We spoke to his friends, colleagues and conspirators and, over the next few weeks on www.uncut.co.uk, we’ll be printing the complete transcripts of these interviews.

RANDY BACHMAN

Winnipeg’s star guitarist in the early Sixties, revered by Young. Founder of The Guess Who and, later, Bachman Turner Overdive

***

There wasn’t a formal introduction when I met Neil: just a bunch of teenage guys learning to play guitar and starting bands and dreaming of being like Elvis or The Shadows. I remember meeting him at a gig I was playing in Winnipeg. Someone introduced him and a couple of his friends he was with. One of them was immensely tall for a teenager and that was Ken Koblun. I noticed at that first meeting, and then subsequent meetings, that Neil had a “look” in his dark eyes. A focused determination of getting to a place far from where he was. I’ve been told I had the same look. When one knows at an early age that their gift, talent and direction is musical, one tends to focus on that and let nothing interfere or impede the forward motion toward the end of that rainbow. And after 50-something years of rockin’ out, you still realise there is no end to that distant rainbow until one’s last sunset.

I saw Neil play many times in several different bands. In those days many band members revolved or went in and out of bands. Some guys didn’t have the dream and discipline, some chose sports or girlfriends over being in a band, but the ones who were constant figures in the bands were the ones that made it. No obstacle was too big to overcome. We all had the same issues with parents: girlfriends, education, getting a ‘real job’, playing for the love of it. And as there was no money involved, just living the rock and roll life of living to play and playing to live. So I did see Neil play many times but whether they were called The Jades or The Squires I’m not sure. Later on I do remember Neil Young & The Squires when he took more of an upfront stance in the band and it clearly became his focus.

I remember both Neil and Ken coming to many gigs. I was playing a Gretsch 6120 through a Kortung tape deck to get an echo delay, through a Fender Concert amp and playing early Shadows. I remember Neil asking me about the songs and where I got them and how I learned them. I was playing “Apache”, “Kon-Tiki”, “Man Of Mystery” and “Mustang”, and our lead singer Chad Allan was singing Cliff Richard songs like “Living Doll”, “Move It”, “Dynamite”, “Pointed Toe Shoes”, “We Say Yeah” and “Summer Holiday”. We were totally different than any other local band because of this British repertoire we played. Our bass player, Jim Kale, had a Fender Concert Amp which had four inputs and would handle a whole band. When we weren’t playing gigs, we’d lend the amp to Neil and his band. A set of drums and a Fender Concert Amp was all you needed for a night of instrumental music. We even plugged a mike into one of the inputs and sang through it at the same time.

On Saturday, after watching American Bandstand to see the latest dances and rock bands, it was a ritual for most musicians to take the bus to downtown Winnipeg. The main street there was called Portage Avenue and had two large department stores on it about four blocks apart. The stroll from one called Eaton’s to the other called Hudsons Bay was lined with music stores, record shops, clothing stores and restaurants. Most of us were playing catalogue guitars like Sear Silvertones and Harmonys and would walk this strip on Portage Avenue every Saturday and look at the real rock guitars in the windows of the stores. We’d literally stand for hours and stare at the blond ‘Chuck Berry’ Gibsons, the ‘Buddy Holly’ Fender Strats and the ‘Duane Eddy’ Gretsches that were in the windows. Once in a while we’d get brave enough to go in and ask to try the guitar out.

There is a great book out called Everything I Needed to Learn I Learned in Kindergarten and I believe that everything I ever needed to learn on guitar was in my first two years of hungry learning: Scotty Moore, Hank Marvin, Chet Atkins, Lenny Breau, Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley. That was my training and I believe it was also Neil’s. When we do a solo today, there are always “quotes” from Hank Marvin and Chuck Berry. We both still have an echo repeat on most guitar solos and use the wang bar more than others do.

In 1965, The Guess Who were invited to New York City. Our recording of “Shakin’ All Over” had hit Number One in Canada and made Top 20 in Billboard Magazine. We were on Scepter Records, whose sister label was Wand, which had the monster hit “Louie Louie” by The Kingsmen. We played the whole East coast and Midwest with The Kingsmen tour which also had Dion & The Belmonts, Barbara Mason, Sam the Sam and The Turtles on some dates. When we got back to Winnipeg to go back to school in the fall of ’65, we were local heroes. I remember Neil asking what it was like “outside of Winnipeg” and I remember the look in his eyes when I told him how great it was to get out of town, to live the rock and roll life and live by playing music. He left shortly after that and ended up in LA after some brief stops in Port Arthur and Toronto. He came back to Winnipeg briefly for a visit and I remember him playing me and Jim Kale an acetate of the first Buffalo Springfield LP. “Out Of My Mind” was the song I heard first. It was the first time I heard his unique vocals. I said, “Who’s that singing?” and he proudly said, “It’s me!”. You don’t have to have a great voice to sing, just a distinctive one. But make sure you say the words clearly and tell a story. Then Buffalo Springfield happened big time and they were so cool. Like the Beatles they had several different lead vocalists and writers and their solos sounded very distinct with Stills’ blues riffs and Neil’s Hank Marvin stylings.

Then the next time I saw him was at his house in Topanga Canyon where he played solo at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and was in process of joining CS&N. He was holding out to get his name in the group name and not be just a sideman. He held out and got it and they became CSN&Y.

I have accomplished a lot for a kid from Winnipeg but whatever I have done pales in comparison to what Neil has accomplished. He passed me by a long time ago and it’s true that I use his songwriting, guitar playing, lifestyle, his work ethic and his relationship with his manager Elliott (who I’ve also known forever) as a template to follow. I drop in to see Neil several times a year when he’s on tour. I visited with him at two different gigs at his recent Hammersmith Odeon run in March and we always shake hands, hug each other and say: “I’m so glad you’re still doing what you do. And we gotta keep on doing it.” I’ve been very blessed that he has invited me down several times to his ranch and studio to record and hope to do it again in 2009.

I don’t feel that my songs are cheap copies of Neil’s but more of reflection of some of his attitudes in his songs, more soul, more capturing of great moments of performance and less finicking with “perfection”. It makes it more fun. He also doesn’t worry about being commercial and getting radio airplay. He just keeps going doing what he does and bouncing around from rockin’ the free world to cool country rock stuff and everything in between.

Neil’s best qualities are: hard work, honesty, generosity, determination, setting goals to complete each dream and then working step by step to get it done. This was evident when we first met and every time I’ve seen him since over the years. He has the same determined look and heart of gold. He’s a great friend and recently at his 60th surprise birthday party, many of us got a chance to talk on mike about our relationship with him and it was amazing how many of us have been in his circle for 40 or 50 years.

I remember hearing Neil play me both “Nowadays Clancy Can’t Even Sing” and “Sugar Mountain” as acetate demos. I also saw him play them live at the Dorothy Chandler Pavillion in Los Angeles in 1971. Neil had got me an appointment After I’d seen his Greendale show a couple of times, I sent an email to him and Peggy and told him about a parallel story happening in my life like the main character and story in Greendale. It was about a pulp and paper mill in Crofton, British Columbia polluting the soil, air and water with their smokestack emissions and killing everything around it. It boiled down to getting the government to put better and stricter zero tolerance laws into place to stop the pollution as the mill was basically complying with the regulations. Out of the blue I got an email from Peggy telling me to come and meet with her and Neil at their Vancouver show.

When I did, Neil said, “Let’s have a concert to raise money to help the people who are fighting this fight and trying to monitor the emissions from the smokestacks. I can come on this date”. And to my amazement, because of his offer, we put on a concert with Neil, Barenaked Ladies, my son Tal and myself all doing acoustic sets in a hockey rink in Duncan B.C. and raised many hundreds of thousands of dollars for the “Fresh Air” concert fund that is still being worked on and is still a work and fight in progress to this date. I will be forever indebted to Neil and Peggy and their whole crew for their time, talent, compassion and generosity. They do this every fall for a couple of charities and right after our event went on to Farm Aid and The Bridge School event. God Bless them all.

I met with Mo Ostin at Warner Bros and Don Schmitzerle at Reprise Records for my new band Brave Belt, which was a country-rock outfit. I had left The Guess Who after the American Woman album and hit single in the summer of ’70 and was trying to get back into the rock race. At that time Neil invited me to the Pavilion and I was absolutely amazed. He had sold out several nights in a row and performed solo on guitar and piano. He had the crowd mesmerised. I couldn’t believe that this kid from Winnipeg had turned into this artist that had the audience so mesmerised with his music. It seemed so surreal to me. At that concert he did “Nowadays Clancy Can’t Even Sing” and then announced that he had written “Sugar Mountain” about a Joni Mitchell connection and while driving in the canyons the other day, he’d written about ten more verses. He asked the audience “Do you want to hear the new verses?” The answer was a resounding yes. And he sang it for about eight minutes with the audience singing along on every chorus.

I know he’s been working on this complete works [Archives] for decades now, through all kinds of digital conversions and is still gathering the source material. It will be a fantastic treasure of memories over 50 years of music.

INTERVIEW BY ROB HUGHES

Kraftwerk and Fleet Foxes For Bestival

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Kraftwerk and Fleet Foxes For Bestival
Kraftwerk and Uncut Music Award winners Fleet Foxes are two of the bands who have been confirmed for this year's Bestival taking place in September. Also announced are Massive Attack, MGMT, Seasick Steve, Michael Nyman, Future Sound of London and Bat For Lashes for the three day event which takes p...

Kraftwerk and Uncut Music Award winners Fleet Foxes are two of the bands who have been confirmed for this year’s Bestival taking place in September.

Also announced are Massive Attack, MGMT, Seasick Steve, Michael Nyman, Future Sound of London and Bat For Lashes for the three day event which takes place from September 11 to 13.

For more music and film news click here

Blur To Headline Glastonbury

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0
Blur To Headline Glastonbury
Damon Albarn has confirmed that Blur will headline the Glastonbury festival this year. Albarn who performed "This Is a Low" with Graham Coxon at the Shockwaves NME Awards on Wednesday night (February 25), confirmed the reunited band's festival appearance after their first live appearance in nine ye...

Damon Albarn has confirmed that Blur will headline the Glastonbury festival this year.

Albarn who performed “This Is a Low” with Graham Coxon at the Shockwaves NME Awards on Wednesday night (February 25), confirmed the reunited band’s festival appearance after their first live appearance in nine years.

Talking to the Daily Mirror at the Awards aftershow at Dex, the singer said: “Yeah, we’re doing Glasto this year. We were asked last year, but we turned them down.”

The singer also hinted that Blur will play more gigs before the Summer shows including Hyde Park, Manchester and T In The Park, saying: “We need a few more warm-up gigs to get back into it, ready for the big one. Glastonbury’s great.”

For more music and film news click here

Pic credit: PA Photos

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