Audience

Elton John is the latest big name guest confirmed to appear on the new Queens Of The Stone Age album.

Kraftwerk opened their eight-night residency at Tate Modern on Wednesday by playing in full their fourth album, Autobahn. Kraftwerk played a two-hour set that also included most of their best loved numbers. Those lucky enough to secure tickets for Kraftwerk’s first night in the London art museum’s imposing Turbine Hall were each given a cushion, a crib sheet on the band and a pair of 3D spectacles. However, virtually the whole audience stood to appreciate Kraftwerk’s impressive visuals, displayed on a massive screen behind.

Morrissey has postponed more shows in the US due to illness. The singer said that he wanted to restart his tour in Las Vegas on February 9, however, this show has now been pulled, as has his February 10 date in Phoenix. Rescheduled dates are expected to be announced in the coming days. Morrissey recently spoke out following his recent health troubles, which saw him hospitalised at William Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Michigan.

We head to Los Angeles in the new issue of Uncut (dated March 2013), out now, to meet Richard Thompson and discuss his extraordinary new album, Fairport Convention and recording in Nashville with Buddy Miller. Here, in this piece from Uncut’s May 2006 issue (Take 108), Thompson talks us through the making of some of his finest albums, including Liege & Lief, I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight and Rumor And Sigh. “It was the best way to lose our audience overnight…” Words: Nigel Williamson __________________

In this month's Audience With Sinéad O'Connor, she's asked about her traumatic appearance at the all-star bash at New York's Madison Square Garden, put on by Columbia Records to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Dylan's debut album for the label.

Tom Waits is staring back at me from the cover of the new Uncut, which goes on sale this Thursday, January 31. It’s a picture of the young Tom that I’m looking at, long before he ended up with a face that now makes you think a tractor tyre must recently have run over it, a corrugated look he shares with his friend, Keith Richards. He is in fact startlingly young in the picture, even though it would seem he hasn’t shaved for a week and for just as long has been sleeping in the clothes he’s wearing.

Sinéad O’Connor tackles your questions in the new issue of Uncut, out on Thursday (January 31).

Bob Geldof has reformed his band The Boomtown Rats, and announced a performance at this year's Isle Of Wight festival. The Boomtown Rats split in 1986 after releasing six albums including 1979's The Fine Art Of Surfacing, which included the 1979 UK Number One hit "I Don't Like Mondays". They also topped the UK singles chart with 'Rat Trap' a year earlier.

The Mars Volta have split, after singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala posted a letter to fans appearing to accuse fellow bandmember Omar Rodriguez-Lopez of not being committed enough.

Reading a little about the whole Beyoncé lipsynching controversy the other day, I was tangentially reminded of an interview I did with Jim O’Rourke in, I think, 1999 (bear with me…).