Audience

Thom Yorke has attacked Spotify again, labelling the music streaming service "the last desperate fart of a dying corpse". The comments follow Yorke's decision, alongside producer Nigel Godrich, to remove the Atoms For Peace album they made together from the service while Yorke's solo album 'The Eraser' was also removed. Godrich went on to explain his position criticising the low royalty rates paid to artists – who he said received "f*ck all" from the service.

“We weren’t concerned with reputation then, and I’m not concerned with it now,” writes Ian McLagan in the introduction to our new Ultimate Music Guide. “If you’re thinking seriously about your career, you’re not having any fun, and that transfers to the audience.”

With Arcade Fire’s new album, Reflektor, due for release on October 28, this week’s archive feature looks back to December 2005, when Uncut awards Album Of The Year to Arcade Fire’s debut, Funeral. Adored by everyone from David Bowie and David Byrne to Chris Martin and Bono, Funeral is a spectacular word-of-mouth success, and suggests whole new futures for rock music. Stephen Troussé meets the band on the eve of their Riviera Theatre set in Chicago…

“Life is good,” reflects Mick Fleetwood. We are over two hours into Fleetwood Mac’s third and final show at the O2, and it has fallen to Fleetwood to introduce his fellow bandmates on stage.

It’s a busy week here at Uncut. Last night, John and I went to see Roy Harper play a predictably excellent show at Rough Trade East – you can read all about it on his blog here. Tomorrow, I’m off to see Pixies at the Roundhouse and on Friday, it's Fleetwood Mac at the O2. Oh, and at some point there’s the final episode of Breaking Bad to watch...

I’ve just noticed it’s Jarvis Cocker’s 50th birthday, and used it as an excuse to dig this out: my NME interview with a pre-fame Pulp in June 1992. Had a look for the one I did with them just before the (at the time) last gig a decade later and couldn’t find it, annoyingly…

Everyone knows the mythical image of The Man In Black. But the truth about Johnny Cash was a whole lot more complicated. A “folk hero for the world”, and a humble man who struggled with addiction for his entire life. In this archive feature from Uncut’s February 2009 issue (Take 141), we present a revelatory new portrait of Cash’s life. We talk to many of the people who knew him best – the children, the bandmates, the managers, the peers – and discover the unexpurgated truth about this titan of American music. “He survived,” says his one-time son-in-law, “what Elvis didn’t…” Words: Alastair McKay

It's Hunt vs Lauda...

With Kings Of Leon’s sixth album, Mechanical Bull, set for release on September 23, we thought it would be time to take a trip through the archives into November 2010 (Take 162), when we joined the Followill clan on the road in America – we hear of uncanny robberies, an army of Kings lookalikes, whiskey-fuelled anxieties and a new power struggle within this most volatile of bands. Do they want to be rootsy outlaws or modern rock superstars? Words: Jaan Uhelszki

Jaan Uhelszki, as you may have seen in the current issue of Uncut, recently spent some time with Bill Callahan at his home in Austin. One of Jaan’s great skills is her ability to conduct a forensic sweep of any environment she finds herself in, and on Callahan’s bookshelves, she notes, are “Bass Playing For Dummies… a King Tubby DVD… Learning Spanish by Michael Thomas, ‘The Language Teacher To The Stars’… a Stephen Crane reader.”