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 CON T EN T S LONDON ✦ MEMPHIS ✦ WEST KIRBY

FEBRUARY 2024 ISSUE 363

FEATURES
28 BRITTANY HOWARD
Grammy-grabbing in Alabama Shakes,
dream-chasing in her current solo guise,
the barnstorming singer and proud one-
off takes stock in The MOJO Interview.

34 AC/DC Sixty years Young,

the Aussie riff machine forges on.
Sylvie Simmons discovers how their
hardscrabble origins, and an irrepressible
frontman, shaped the band.

42 BUENA VISTA
SOCIAL CLUB Ry Cooder,
Juan de Marcos González and team
remember a mid-’90s act of musical
archaeology that became a phenomenon,
and a revival that endures in 2023.

48 JIM GORDON The shocking

story of the master drummer of the rock
era, his terrifying mental disintegration
and its tragic consequences, from a
startling new book by Joel Selvin.

54 BILLY BRAGG Forty years

of recording and rabble-rousing have
brought wisdom, including the suspicion
that a copy of Aladdin Sane might contain
“the real Billy Bragg”.

60 BILL RYDER-JONES
How The Coral’s guitar prodigy broke
down, and rebuilt himself as a stunning
singer-songwriter and sought-after
producer. Everything resolved? Not quite.

“The guitars were good, COVER STORY

the band was good, it 66 STEVIE WONDER Sixty
was just the singer…” years since Fingertips topped the charts,
Michael Puland/Getty

we celebrate the songs and stories of

the Motown Wunderkind-turned-
ANGUS YOUNG ON THE sensational soul visionary and auteur.
BIRTH OF AC/DC, P34 Plus! The amazing deep cuts that
reward rediscovery.

MOJO 3
Ashtray art: the visual
world of Captain
Beefheart, p22.
THIS MONTH'S CONTRIBUTORS INCLUDE...
Alysse Gafkjen
Alysse is a US portrait photogra-
pher and creative director who
has worked with the likes of Bran-
di Carlile, Jason Isbell, Kacey Mus-
graves, Billy Strings and ZZ Top.
She creates album artwork and
press campaigns, as well as com-
mercial projects for Fender Gui-
tars and Guitar Center. See her
Brittany Howard shoot from p28.
4 MOJO
REGULARS
9 ALL BACK TO MY PLACE
Hugh Cornwell, John Densmore and CMAT
share favourite songs for particular occasions.
109 REAL GONE Vernon Dudley Bowhay-
Nowell, George ‘Funky’ Brown, Pete Garner and
more, hail and farewell.
112 ASK MOJO Who re-recorded their
repertoire, and why?
114 HELLO GOODBYE He wanted to
join The Rezillos, but opted for Glasgow’s most
Packs a big up-and-coming band. Derek Forbes recalls the
punch: Rosie highs and lows of Simple Minds.
Frater-Taylor,
Albums, p89.
WHAT GOES ON!
12 NICK CAVE AND THE BAD
SEEDS There hasn’t been an album since
2019’s Ghosteen. But, begun in January ’23,
something “new and beautiful” is coming. And
will Colin Greenwood be joining?
15 MC5 What, a new LP in 2024 from the Motor
City’s most incendiary group?! How? Wayne
Kramer tells all. Plus! Kamasi Washington
reveals his plans for next year.
16 FACES A huge stash of unreleased Faces
music has to be one of the essential archival
openings of 2024. Other reissues due from
The Waterboys, Macca, Hawkwind and more!
20 ALBERT LEE He played guitar with
Heads Hands & Feet, The Crickets, Emmylou
Harris, the Everlys and more. At 80, Lee reflects
on his ongoing long, strange trip in music.
22 CAPTAIN BEEFHEART
There’s a new exhibition of Don Van Vliet’s art
coming to London. Read on for a selection, and
collaborator Gary Lucas’s memories of Don.
MOJO FILTER
84 NEW ALBUMS Sleater-Kinney pull
out their Little Rope, plus Bill Ryder-Jones,
Marika Hackman, Gruff Rhys and more.
94 REISSUES Mott The Hoople’s Dude
awakening, plus Dorothy Carter, Yes, The
Seeds, Donovan, Aretha Franklin and more.
106 BOOKS The first biography of Fabs road
manager/personal assistant Mal Evans, plus the
2 Tone story, living with Sid & Nancy and more.
108 SCREEN Compelling docs about The
Birthday Party, King Crimson and Peter Doherty.
MOJO ISSN 1351-0193 (USPS 17424) is published 12 times a year by H Bauer Publishing Ltd, Media House, Peterborough
Business Park, Lynch Wood, Peterborough PE2 6EA United Kingdom. Airfreight and mailing in the USA by agent named
World Container INC 150-15, 183rd St, Jamaica, NY 11413, USA. Periodicals Postage Paid at Brooklyn, NY 11256.
New threads: POSTMASTER: Send address changes to MOJO, Air Business Ltd, c/o World Container INC 150-15, 183rd St, Jamaica, NY
11413, USA. Subscription records are maintained at Bauer Media, Subscriptions, CDS Global, Tower House, Sovereign Park,
Sleater-Kinney,
Alysse Gafkjen, Bartosz Kosowski, Richard McCaffrey/Getty, Getty
Lathkill Street, Market Harborough, Leicester LE16 9EF, United Kingdom. Air Business Ltd is acting as our mailing agent.
Lead Album p84.
Will Hodgkinson Will Birch
A MOJO contributor of two dec- Former drummer and songwriter
ades standing, Will enjoyed talk- with the Kursaal Flyers and The
ing to fellow DIY bodger Billy Records, author of Ian Dury and
Bragg at the one-time Bard of Nick Lowe biographies and cur-
Barking’s Dorset home (see p54). rently working on a new edition of
When he isn’t yowling in pain No Sleep Till Canvey Island – The
during his latest home improve- Great Pub Rock Revolution for
ment, Will is currently writing a future publication, Will recently
book on a highly elusive British enjoyed speaking with axe-wield-
cult star, due out Jan 2025. ing cult hero Albert Lee. See p20.
 CAPTAIN SENSIBLE + DAVE VANIAN + RAT SCABIES + PAUL GRAY
PERFORMING TOGETHER FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE 1989

DECEMBER 2024
PET SHOP BOYS
WED
THU
FRI
4
5
6
NEWCASTLE NX
GL ASGOW BARROWL ANDS
MANCHESTER ACADEMY
THE GREATEST HITS LIVE
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MON
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9
LEEDS O2 ACADEMY
NOTTINGHAM ROCK CITY
JUNE 2024
TUE 10 WOLVERHAMPTON THE HALLS 4 GLASGOW OVO HYDRO
THU 12 BRISTOL BEACON
FRI 13 SOUTHAMPTON O2 GUILDHALL 6 NOTTINGHAM MOTORPOINT ARENA THE TIMES
SAT
MON
14
16
EASTBOURNE WINTER GARDEN
CAMBRIDGE CORN EXCHANGE
8 BIRMINGHAM UTILITA ARENA THE GUARDIAN
DAILY TELEGRAPH
WED 18 LONDON ROUNDHOUSE 9 MANCHESTER CO-OP LIVE METRO
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MAY 7
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GLASGOW OVO HYDRO
MAY 12
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MAY 14
MANCHESTER CO-OP LIVE
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NOTTINGHAM MOTORPOINT ARENA

march 2024
01 manchester o2 apollo sold out 15 wolverhampton the halls
extra date added 16 swansea arena
02 manchester o2 apollo 17 southend cliffs pavilion
03 liverpool m&s bank arena 19 bristol beacon sold out
05 leeds first direct arena 20 oxford new theatre
06 edinburgh usher hall 22 portsmouth guildhall
08 glasgow royal concert hall sold out 23 ipswich regent theatre sold out
09 newcastle o2 city hall sold out 24 london the o2
10 sheffield city hall sold out 26 brighton dome
12 leicester de montfort hall 27 eastbourne winter gardens
13 nottingham royal concert hall sold out
axs.com ticketmaster.co.uk
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AEG PRESENTS IN ASSOCIATION WITH X-RAY aeg presents in association with x-ray
HUEGAGVETYS
N
VOL. 7
ZZ TOP
LITTLE FEAT
CANNED HEAT
R.L. BURNSIDE
STEPHEN MALKMUS
JOHN LEE HOOKER
& MORE
Ben Stas/Noise Floor, Carlos Puma, Philip Morris, Tom Hill/Getty, Courtesy The Grape Organisation, David Raccuglia, Getty (2), Tyler Green, Alamy, J. Winterberg, Laura Merrill, Keith Morris/Getty
1 THE BELLRAYS
HIGHWAY TO HELL
At the start, you’d be forgiven for
thinking this was actually AC/DC.
Soon enough, though, The BellRays
reveal themselves, thanks to singer
Lisa Kekaula sounding as much like
Betty Davis as she does Bon Scott.
The California band have been
cranking out MC5-ish garage rock
for over 30 years: this spectacular
version of the Bon-era swan song
comes from their 2016 Covers EP.
Written by Young, Scott, Young. &©2016
The BellRays. From the EP Covers. Currently
available on all digital services
9 JOHN LEE HOOKER
BOOGIE CHILLEN’
A foundational work of art, as
another Mississippi maestro fetches
up in the car factories of Detroit,
ventures into the clubs of Hastings
Street, and arrives as an electric
blues trailblazer. Boogie Chillen’
was recorded by a Detroit record
shop owner, and released in late
1948. Over the next 12 months,
it became a massive hit, initiating
a career – and sound – that would
reverberate over the next 50 years.
Written by Hooker. Modern Music. First released
1948 (Public Domain)
6 MOJO
GIE
BOOLDREN
I
CH
2 LOBBY LOYDE
ROCK AND ROLL SUNSET
Long before AC/DC even existed,
Lobby Loyde was already a master
of no-bullshit Australian boogie,
playing guitar in key bands like
The Aztecs and Coloured Balls
(later, he would join another
Oz-rock institution, Rose Tattoo).
Rock And Roll Sunset is taken
from Loyde’s 1976 solo debut,
Obsecration, his scything guitar
lines mixing it with pounding
barrelhouse piano.
Written by Lobby Lorde Aztec Music Publishing.
1975. Licensed by Aztec Music Pty. Ltd. ©2008
10 CANNED HEAT
BULLFROG BLUES
John Lee Hooker returned to Boogie
Chillen’ many times, not least with
Canned Heat on their Hooker ’N Heat
album in 1971. That same year, the
LA blues freaks released their Live At
Topanga Corral – in reality a 1969 set
recorded at the Kaleidoscope in LA.
Among the covers, this supercharged
pummelling of a 1928 William
Harris tune: heavy capital made of
authentic cratedigger scholarship.
Written by Alan Wilson/Frank Cook/Henry Vestine
/Robert Hite Jr./Larry Taylor. Published by EMI
Unart Catalog Inc. &©2022 Purple Pyramid
Records. From Heated Blues
3 ZZ TOP
PRECIOUS AND GRACE
To Texas now, and the Tres Hombres.
That 1973 album – ZZ Top’s third and
their commercial breakthrough
– was so marinated in boogie that
its lead single, La Grange, was built
out of John Lee Hooker’s canonical
Boogie Chillen’. Here, though, is
the precision throb of Precious
And Grace (adeptly covered by
Queens Of The Stone Age in 2005).
Written by Billy Gibbons, Dusty Hill, Frank Beard.
Published by Hamstein Music Co. 1973 WEA
International Inc. USWB19903510 Licensed
courtesy of Warner Music UK Ltd.
11 HOWLIN RAIN
ROLL ON THE
RUSTED DAYS
Force 10 heroics here from Ethan
Miller’s Bay Area band, caught live
in overdriven Humble Pie form in
2014, with a tune that first surfaced
on Howlin Rain’s 2006 debut. Miller’s
tireless noisemaking encompasses
Comets On Fire, Heron Oblivion, Feral
Ohms and more, but it’s in Howlin
Rain where the jams crystallise into
a furious punk updating of the
boogie rock tradition.
Written by Ethan Prauss Miller. From Live Rain.
Publishing: Silver Current ascap Copyright: Silver
Current. www.concordmusicpublishing.com
4 STEPHEN MALKMUS
THAT’S WHAT MAMA SAID
Lobby Loyde again, or at least one
of his songs, originally found on the
second Coloured Balls album, 1973’s
Ball Power. Loyde’s music became a
cult among certain US heads in the
1990s and early 2000s, hence this
psychedelicised 2001 live cover
from Stephen Malkmus, bedding
in his new band The Jicks in the
wake of Pavement’s dissolution.
Written by John Barrie Lyde – Fable Music Pty Ltd
(AMCOS) – Freshtracks Music Ltd. &©2001
Domino Recording Co. Ltd. Taken from the
single Jenny & The Ess-Dog
12 LITTLE FEAT
TRIPE FACE BOOGIE
Our live section climaxes with Little
Feat in full flow, captured in August
1977 at the Rainbow Theatre in
London and released the following
year on Waiting For Columbus.
Faster and longer than the original
on Sailin’ Shoes, it’s a showcase
for one of the most syncopated
bands in rock history, and for some
spectacularly incomprehensible
lyrics. Key takeaway: “Boogie
my scruples away!”
Written by Bill Payne, Richie Hayward.
Published by Naked Snake. 1978 WEA
International Inc. USWB19901441. Licensed
courtesy of Warner Music UK Ltd.
W
HERE, EXACTLY, DID THE BOOGIE COME FROM? A BIT OF
research can fish out a few red herrings, starting with the
first song including “boogie” in the title – a 1913 side by
The Premier Quartet, That Syncopated Boogie-Boo, which
turns out to be a novelty Halloween tune with scant connection to
the blues. What is clear, though, is that by 1948 the word – originally
meaning “party” – and the sound had evolved through boogie-
woogie to pure boogie, extended its remit from the piano to the
guitar, and provided the impetus for John Lee Hooker’s solo debut,
Boogie Chillen’. Soon enough, that insistent groove would inspire
wave after wave of blues and rock’n’roll, becoming incrementally
heavier as the years progressed.
Hence this latest volume of our beloved Heavy Nuggets imprint,
compiled to mark the 50th anniversary of boogie rock archetypes
AC/DC and their appearance in MOJO this month. From John Lee
Hooker to the Highway To Hell, via Australian rabble-rousers,
Californian 78 collectors, pub rock and art-glam outliers, and
freak-out fellow travellers, these are the Boogie Children. It’s
party time, and your friends are gonna be there too…

5 FRATERNITY 6 HANS CHEW 7 EARL BRUTUS 8 R.L. BURNSIDE

LIVESTOCK
More Australian gold, this 1971
nugget comes from the debut by
Sydney band Fraternity. The airy
harmonies suggest an Antipodean
CSNY, but note the lead vocalist –
one Bon Scott. Within a couple of
years Scott would pass through The
Mount Lofty Rangers before joining
the nascent AC/DC. His recorder,
prominent on many Fraternity
tracks, would not come with him.
Written by Jurd, Bisset. Sony/ATV Music
Publishing (UK) Ltd. GBBLY2004538. 1971
Denis Whitburn & The Grape Organisation
CARRY ME, BURY ME
(TENNESSEE PART TWO)
A terrific 2010 rarity, courtesy of
piano man Hans Chew, who comes
on like a wild honky-tonk Leon
Russell on this highlight from his
solo debut. Chew’s been a longtime
player of rowdy underground psych
in bands like D Charles Speer & The
Helix and One Eleven Heavy, as
well as on his rootsier solo efforts.
Written by Chew. Published by Papa’s Extra Mile
Music (ASCAP). &©2009 Hans Chew. From
Tennessee & Other Stories… (Three Lobed
Recordings); http://www.threelobed.com/
NAVY HEAD
A certain derivative of boogie
powered British glam rock in the
1970s, and resurfaced in some
weird art-rock bands 20 years later.
Exhibit A: Britpop-era subversives
Earl Brutus, formed from the ashes
of the storied World Of Twist.
Navy Head incorporates Fall-like
rancour and techno trim into a tune
custom-built for village hall bops.
Written by Marche/Sanderson/King/Fry.
Originally recording by Earl Brutus in London
NW10. Mixed by John Pennington and Earl Brutus
for release on Deceptive Records in 1996
GOIN’ DOWN SOUTH
Back to the blues, and this relentless
piledriver from the Hill Country
bluesman’s 1996 LP A Ass Pocket Of
Whiskey, backed by The Jon Spencer
Blues Explosion. Recorded deep in
the Mississippi woods: “We drank a
little moonshine and ate a little food
and then [Burnside] went for it,”
grandson Cedric told MOJO 360.
Written by R.L. Burnside. Published by
Mockingbird Blues Publishing c/o Wixen Music
Publishing. &©1996 Fat Possum Records.
From A Ass Pocket Of Whiskey (Fat Possum
Records); www.fatpossum.com

13 ENDLESS BOOGIE
SMOKING FIGS
IN THE YARD
Named after a 1971 John Lee Hooker
album, New York’s Endless Boogie
have done more than anyone this
century to expand the parameters
of the sound: longer, heavier,
weirder, often locking into a kind
of monster truck blues motorik,
“ROCK’N’
ROLL WAS
WHAT
MADE
PEOPLE
14 BOBBY LEE 15 DUCKS DELUXE
REDS FOR A CANNONS OF THE
BLUE PLANET BOOGIE NIGHT
A high-grade blend of influences
that include JJ Cale’s homespun
Tulsa Sound and the desert rock of
As with all forms of the blues,
boogie has travelled a long way
from its origins and found many
HAPPY.”
AC DC
Tuareg bands like Tinariwen, Reds spiritual homes, not least in the
For A Blue Planet actually comes out pub rock meccas of London. Here,
of Sheffield, circa 2023. It’s the work we find Sean Tyla, ‘Godfather of
of Bobby Lee, a psychedelically- Boogie’ and frontman of Ducks

as on the pumping opener of their
2008 studio debut, Focus Level.
Written by H. Druzd/J. Eklow/P. Major/Mark O.
attuned outlier and grandmaster
record collector, with exceptional
taste in Laurel Canyon-appropriate
threads as well as tunes.
AT 50
Deluxe and Tyla Gang. Cannons
Of The Boogie Night originally
came out as a Tyla Gang B-side
in 1977, before reappearing

Published by Endless Boogie (BMI/administered
by Domino Publishing Company). Produced by
Endless Boogie. &©2008 No Quarter Records.
STARTS
credited to Ducks Deluxe.
Written by Robert Ernest Lee. ©2021 Robert
Ernest Lee. Published by Tompkins Square Written by Tyla. Cherry Red Songs. GBBLY1705872.

PAGE 34
From Focus Level Music Publishing (BMI) Administered 1991 Cherry Red Records Ltd
Worldwide by Raleigh Music Publishing LLC.
 SHIRLEY COLLINS
ARCHANGEL HILL

THE KILLS GEORGIA

GOD GAMES EUPHORIC

JAMES YORKSTON,
NINA PERSSON &
THE SECOND HAND
ORCHESTRA
THE GREAT WHITE
SEA EAGLE
TIRZAH
TRIP9LOVE...??

PROTOMARTYR
FORMAL GROWTH
IN THE DESERT

JOHN CALE
MERCY

CAT POWER
CAT POWER SINGS
DYLAN: THE 1966
ROYAL ALBERT
HALL CONCERT

ANIMAL COLLECTIVE BONNIE PRINCE BILLY STEVE MASON

ISN’T IT NOW? KEEPING SECRETS WILL BROTHERS & SISTERS
DESTROY YOU

LA PRIEST
FASE LUNA

KING CREOSOTE
I DES

JAAKKO EINO KALEVI

CHAOS MAGIC

dominomusic.com
 Hugh Cornwell
EX-STRANGLER, MAN OF TASTE
What music are you currently
grooving to?
I’m checking out old Devo. I’ve
always found them inspiring. Their
version of Satisfaction is refreshingly
different and was shocking.
What, if push comes to shove, is
your all-time favourite album?
It has to be The Soft Machine. I must
have listened to it a few thousand
times and I always find new things
in there, and not a guitar in sight,
surprisingly. All the songs blend
into each other seamlessly. It was
probably recorded in one take.
What was the first record you ever
bought? And where did you buy it?
Here Comes Summer by Jerry Keller,
which I bought in the local record
shop on Junction Road in north
London. It was a chart-topper and I
felt very proud walking out with it.
Which musician, other than your-
self, have you ever wanted to be?
When I was a kid, I wanted to be Cliff
Richard. He was a rocker at the
beginning of time. Our headmaster
called us all into his office one at a
time and asked us what we wanted to
be when we grew up. I said I wanted
to be a singer like Cliff. Big trouble
with my parents later that day!
What do you sing in the shower?
Lots of different things, Singin’ In
The Rain, Right, Said Fred…
What is your favourite Saturday
night record?
I’m drawing a blank here. I’ve nearly
always been doing a show most
Saturday nights, so my mind was full
up with my own stuff. I do remember
getting very excited before [late-’50s
TV pop show] Six-Five Special came
on when I was a kid.
And your Sunday morning record?
It has to be Sunday Morning by the
Velvets. The perfect backdrop to
hang Sunday on.
Hugh Cornwell tours the UK from January
17–27, ’24. Tickets: www.thegigcartel.com

A LL B AC K TO MY PL AC E
THE STARS REVEAL THE SONIC DELIGHTS GUARANTEED TO GET THEM GOING...

John Densmore the years, to make records… good

DRUMMER OF
THE DOORS
What music are you currently
grooving to?
I like music that is not in English. You
can get a sense of another culture,
even if you’re not literally under-
standing the words… you can feel
the culture. Latin music teaches me
about salsa, cumbia and tango. That
music sizzles! African music is more
centred in the earth. You can feel the
dirt, it feels like home.
What, if push comes to shove, is
your all-time favourite album?
[Doors LP] L.A. Woman because we
got back to our roots – the blues.
We only did a few takes of each cut,
knowing that we had learned, over
Sarah Doyle, Courtesy of Bertrand Fevre, Jeff Katz
records. The song L.A. Woman was
a spin-off from jammin’ on a corny
country tune – (Ghost) Riders In
The Sky. Ray [Manzarek] plays an
amazing piano solo.
What was the first record you ever
bought? And where did you buy it?
Kind Of Blue by Miles Davis. Bought
it at Wallichs Music City, Hollywood.
Which musician, other than your-
self, have you ever wanted to be?
Elvin Jones, because his playing
was so fluid. Not the fastest, but
the most musical. His constant
conversation with Coltrane gave
me the courage to have a musical
conversation with Jim [Morrison].
What do you sing in the shower?
Lead guitar lines… not of any specif-
ic player, just my imagination as if I
was Jimi Hendrix. I saw Hendrix at
the Whisky club and it was like
someone had landed from Mars.
What is your favourite Saturday
night record?
(Looking For) The Heart Of Saturday
Night by Tom Waits, because it
always takes me back to a time when
CMAT
ÉIRE’S NEWEST
COUNTRY-POP HOPE
What music are you currently
grooving to?
A lot of Mexican cumbia music. It’s
very, very satisfying because it’s
dance music but it’s all acoustic
instruments. Campeche Show’s El
Santo Del Amor is fabulous, and Los
Askis’ ¡Ay! El Amor is just beautiful. entry-point into a lot of weird stuff.
What, if push comes to shove, is Which musician, other than your-
your all-time favourite album? self, have you ever wanted to be?
Ana Matronic, Kate Bush, Dolly
Heart Food by Judee Sill. I really
relate to her. She wasn’t a pleasant Parton… as a child, I wanted to be
woman, she had some pretty bad Samantha Mumba, desperately. I
religious trauma, and absolutely think she’s gonna come to my show
lived and died for music, and it in LA, I think I’ll collapse if I meet her!
saved her for a while. Thematically What do you sing in the shower?
it’s a really up and down album, very It probably oscillates between the
reflective of real life. I just love her music of Robbie Williams, or Ste-
– I have a massive mural tattoo of phen Sondheim musical numbers.
her on my left arm.
What is your favourite Saturday
What was the first record you ever night record?
bought? And where did you buy it?
If I was pre-drinking, Blue Water
The first Scissor Sisters album by Sally Oldfield. It’s really super-
on cassette, from the HMV in duper fucking groovy and weird
Blanchardstown Shopping Centre. and interesting. You’re gonna love it!

innocence was paramount, and I felt
like everything was possible.
And your Sunday morning record?
A Morning Raga... by Ravi Shankar.
It’s the perfect record for waking up
slowly to and doing yoga. I imagine
that each of the strings on Ravi’s
sitar are one of my leg muscles,
and I stretch them.
John Densmore’s The Doors Unhinged:
Jim Morrison’s Legacy Goes On Trial is
published by Constable.
I would have been seven or eight.
It really took over my life and was an And your Sunday morning record?
Solid Air by John Martyn or Vu de
l’extérieur by Serge Gainsbourg.
“John Martyn I like songwriters who obviously
have a bit of a troubled mind,
and Serge and a troubled life, and are a bit
wild, but they’re clearly trying to
Gainsbourg… serenely work out their problems
songwriters in music. Maybe those two men
fall into that category.
who have a bit CMAT’s Crazymad, For Me is out now on
of a troubled AWAL Recordings Ltd.

mind.”
MOJO 9
CMAT
 H Bauer Publishing
Theories,
rants, etc.
The Lantern
75 Hampstead Road
London NW1 2PL
Tel: 020 7437 9011
Reader queries: mojoreaders@
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General e-mail: mojo@
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Website: mojo4music.com London, NW1 2PL. E-mail to: mojoreaders@bauermedia.co.uk
Editor
John Mulvey
Senior Editor
MUSIC FANS, AS WE KNOW, LIKE TO ARGUE,
Danny Eccleston and one of our favourite beefs has long been over the best run of albums in
Creative Director
Mark Wagstaff
musical history. My stock answer is usually Fairport Convention’s hot streak of
Production Editor What We Did On Our Holidays, Unhalfbricking and Liege & Lief, made more
(Entertainment)
Simon McEwen
remarkable by all three being released in the same calendar year of 1969. If a
Associate Editor friend in the pub, or a random stranger on the internet were to counter with
(Reviews) Stevie Wonder’s 1972-1976, however, it’d be a tough one to dispute; a five-
Jenny Bulley
Associate Editor
album sequence with a kaleidoscopic sonic and lyrical range, and one which
(News) proved radically experimental music could also sell millions and millions
Ian Harrison
Deputy Art Editor
of records.
Del Gentleman Picking another fight, I might actually contend the run didn’t end with Songs
Picture Editor
Matt Turner
In The Key Of Life, but extended to include 1979’s Journey Through ‘The Secret Life
Senior Associate Editor Of Plants’, a tremendously weird double that deserves a lot more love than the
Andrew Male ridicule it’s mostly endured these past four decades. Part of the pleasure of this
Contributing Editors
Phil Alexander, month’s big, beautifully-written Stevie feature is how the MOJO team have not
Keith Cameron,
Sylvie Simmons
just celebrated his spectacular 1970s, but found neglected music and inspira-
Thanks for their help with
tional stories from the whole Wonder career: from his first hit as a 13-year-old,
this issue: Keith Cameron,
Chris Catchpole,
Fingertips Part 2, 60 years ago, to the inexhaustible multi-tasking collaborator
Ian Whent.
This month’s contributors:
who recently manifested on The Rolling Stones’ Sweet Sounds Of Heaven. It’s
John Aizlewood, Martin Aston,
Mike Barnes, Will Birch, Mark Blake,
the tale of a musician who literally changed the world, and it begins with a
Glyn Brown, John Bungey, Keith
Cameron, Chris Catchpole, Stevie
mischievous teenager being banned from the Motown studios…
Chick, Andy Cowan, Grayson Haver
Currin, Bill DeMain, Tom Doyle,
David Fricke, Andy Fyfe, Pat Gilbert,
Will Hodgkinson, David Hutcheon,
Jim Irvin, David Katz, Dorian
Lynskey, Andrew Male, James
McNair, Bob Mehr, Lucy O’Brien,
Mark Paytress, Andrew Perry, Clive
Prior, Jon Savage, Victoria Segal,
Joel Selvin, David Sheppard, Irina JOHN MULVEY, EDITOR
Shtreis, Michael Simmons, Sylvie
Simmons, Laura Snapes, Mat Snow,
Ben Thompson, Kieron Tyler,
Charles Waring, Lois Wilson,
You think youʼre the only We got a plan, and weʼre
Adam White, Jim Wirth. superhero in the world? going to stick to it
This month’s photographers:
Cover: Jeffrey Mayer/Rock
A quick note to say how chuffed I was to see the Gra- Sorry I’m a wee bit late to the party: just finished
Negatives/MediaPunch/Alamy ham Parker article in MOJO 361. Such a piece feels MOJO 360, your 30th anniversary issue, and wanted
(inset Chris Capstick/Shutterstock), long overdue. I’ve been a big fan of GP & The Rumour to tell you how much MOJO has meant to me all these
Richard E. Aaron, Dick Barnatt, Chris
Capstick, Brian Cooke, Fin Costello, since back in the day, but haven’t seen anything about years. I feel like I’m 13 again every time I get a new
Paul Cox, Walter Dhladhla, Rick him (other than occasional album reviews) in the mu- issue in the mail. I have an entire shelf devoted to the
Diamond, Erica Echenberg, James MOJO CDs from each issue, and some of them are
Fortune, Alysse Gafkjen, Bob Gruen, sic press for decades – and hearing him on the radio
Jeff Hochberg, Ann Johansson, these days is equally rare. As your article rightly stated, my all-time favourite albums – like the Action! disc of
Steve Kagan, Chris Lever, Marieke
“Parker somehow bypassed becoming a household music from films. From John Barry to Eraserhead –
Macklon, Kevin Mazur, Frank
Micelotta, Philip Morris, Solomon name” despite, as Nick Lowe reminds us, “Graham how awesome is that? Thank you, my friends – long
N’Jie, Stephen O’Malley, was mentioned in the same breath as Elvis Costello may you run!
Ron Pownall, Michael Putland,
Andreas Rentz, Chris Walter. and Bruce Springsteen.” So quite why he has fallen so Rick Hind, Hamilton, Ontario
far below the radar, leaving him (in his own words) as
“an international man of mystery” is baffling. Thanks
Weʼve explored what youʼve
MOJO SUBSCRIPTION HOTLINE
for doing something to try to rectify that. Your mix- asked us and it seems as
0185 8438884 ture of pieces about bang-up-to-the-minute artists though thereʼs a little hiccup
For subscription or back issue queries contact
CDS Global on Bauer@subscription.co.uk and those that have faded from the limelight is always Having been a regular buyer and then a subscriber
To access from outside the UK
Dial: +44 (0)185 8438884
very welcome. for most of the 30-year existence of MOJO, there
Tim Mee, Isle Of Jura have been countless new bands and artists you have

10 MOJO
introduced me to, and for that I am eternally grateful.
Despite all of this, sadly there’s one review that
always sticks in my mind – your review of Kid A when
it first came out, underwhelming to say the least.
I mention this only because Kid A is an album that
has probably paved the way and opened my ears to
a whole different type of music more than any other
album, and for that I have to thank Radiohead.
When I found that Radiohead did not get a mention
in your 30th anniversary recap of the past 30 years
[MOJO 360], the unmentionable phrase you printed
all those years ago came to mind. To make an error
of judgment when reviewing an album after a handful
of listens is almost understandable. To omit a band
like Radiohead from an edition celebrating 30 years
of music is unforgivable.
Alasdair Dunn, via e-mail
Thereʼs the next mission,
and nothing else
Ron Sexsmith is 60 on January 8 next year. How
about a ‘Sexsmith at 60’ feature to match the similarly
titled run of shows he’s doing in 2024, starting at
Toronto’s Massey Hall? Or at least a long overdue
How To Buy? I first spotted him via your pages
(the front page, specifically) with Elvis Costello
brandishing his first album on the cover of the
January 1996 ‘The Best Thing I’ve Heard All Year’
issue. I’ve been an avid listener to everything he’s
done since. EC described that first album as
“a modest and elegant gem” and he was absolutely
right. You could use the same words to sum up
his career over the 15 albums he’s released since
then. Costello also said, “I’ve been playing it all
year and you could all be listening to it for another
20”: I have.
For me, Ron Sexsmith is the best songwriter
of the last 30 years. Dylan and Paul Simon have
produced some of their greatest work in those
years, and Sexsmith holds his own in that exalted
company, too. I do hope the fine pages of MOJO,
without which this letter could not have been
written, can squeeze in a feature on this most
excellent songsmith.
David Howarth, Lancaster
Letʼs face it, this is not the
worst thing youʼve caught
me doing
Pardon me for being impertinent, but I would like
to know when The Who’s Lifehouse became two
words, to wit “Life” and “House” [MOJO 360]?
Since actual writing on this subject began, it was one
word – Lifehouse. But now Mr Townshend (or shall
I call him “Town” and “Shend”?) has split the baby
and re-christened him/her with two names.
I didn’t think you were allowed to do that sort
of thing. And everyone who bought some version
of the new album and files their records by title
SAVE MONEY ON NEWSSTAND PRICES!
AND GET MORE FROM
BECOME A
SUBSCRIBER AND
GET EXCLUSIVE
REWARDS AND
CONTENT MOJ
SEE PAGE 26 MAKEO
FOR DETAILS... A G S SAVEFF
RE
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! C ICE!
is going to tear their hair out wondering where
to put all copies of the work and keep them all
together. Either way, I’m OK. Just tell me when
and why the name changed.
No One You Know, In A Place You’d Rather Not Be
Youvʼe become part of a
bigger universe
I was shocked to read about David LaFlamme’s
death [MOJO 360]. Man, how high we used to get
listening to It’s A Beautiful Day’s debut album,
my buddies and I up in that attic room in the posh
part of Amsterdam. It stood out for its originality
and all those great songs, not a dud among them.
And, of course, like so many debuts ever since, they
never accomplished anything later. I just started
a playlist with my dear ex-wife, and though she is
exactly as old, or young, as I am, she had never heard
it. I sent her the short item on page 117 and advised
her to listen to the record, which she instantly loved.
Is it a Hidden Treasure, or is it as popular as it
deserves to be? I don’t know, I just keep enjoying
the music from the past, the present and the future,
like you guys do.
Peter Daniel Blom, via e-mail
I cannot help you if
youʼre going to start all
this again
So MOJO 362 just arrived through the letterbox
and I’m treated to yet another bloody cover story
about the bloody Beatles! A barely halfway decent
“new” song thrust upon us and more acres of
lauding and praising the most overrated band in
history who, but for the presence of George Martin,
would have vanished along with so many others.
If you really must keep reeling out this relentless
bloody worship, can you please do it in a
dedicated publication so the rest of us can get
better value from MOJO without having to consign
so much to the bin?
Mark Sanders, Rushden
…Impeccable articles on The Beatles in MOJO 362,
written with empathy and insightfulness by writers –
Tom Doyle and Danny Eccleston – who know
what they are writing about and express it in such
a readable way. The Fab Four are justifiably the
most written-about collection of musicians of all,
I would suspect. The last single Now And Then –
with its cutting-edge technology – and the remixed
Red and Blue albums give us all a reason to
appreciate the cultural phenomenon that bit more.
Enjoyed the hint George wanted The Beatles to
continue to the chap we learn put Red and Blue
together, Allan Steckler. And that there remains
a track on THAT John Lennon tape, Grow Old
With Me.
Mick Donovan, via e-mail
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MOJO 11
WH AT GOE S ON!
THE HOT NEWS AND BIZARRE STORIES FROM PLANET MOJO
 2 02 4 T H E E S SE N T I A L
PR E V IE W A L B UM S
Where Do We
Go Now?
The first Nick Cave And The Bad
Seeds album for five years is coming in
2024. Cue grump, energy and beauty...
I
N 2023 Nick Cave played solo US dates accompa-
nied by Radiohead’s Colin Greenwood, toured the
bookshops of North America with Seán O’Hagan
to sign their acclaimed lockdown meditation Faith,
Hope And Carnage, and revisited the Second World
War songbook for Apple TV+’s upcoming drama of
fashion in Nazi-occupied Paris, The New Look. He
also worked on his eighteenth album with The Bad
Seeds. As he told MOJO earlier this year, “everything
circles back to music.”
Thanks to his regular online confessional/advice
column The Red Hand Files, Cave’s thoughts on the
process have been regularly shared. He began work,
he said, on January 1, 2023, and five days later was
already wrestling with it. “It’s the same with every
record, I feel that familiar feeling of lack, like I’m
a big, dumb blank thing in a suit. I’m grumpy as
fuck… anything that resembles a creative impulse
is burrowed way down in some mossy, froggy hole,
asleep, I hope, not dead. I have to call it forth,
provoke it from its slumber.” He added some lyrics
he’d painfully composed: “The frogs in the gutter are
jumping for God/Amazed of love, amazed of pain.”
Things were looking more promising in May and
June. “The songs are sounding great,” wrote Nick.
“I won’t really know until I get the Bad Seeds into
the studio and we actually make the album. But it is
feeling very good, very positive.”
Will the new songs revisit the ambient analogue
electronics and hymnals evidenced on 2019’s
meditative Ghosteen? Cave’s indicated not, but told
Rolling Stone that it isn’t a rock album either. “There’s
a lot of energy in the new record, but it’s not done as
a rock’n’roll group,” he said. “We’re just looking at
different ways to get to the emotional core of what
I’m trying to write about.”
As regarding the line-up, in March Cave pondered
to The New Yorker that Greenwood, his tourmate from
Radiohead, could make an appearance. “Maybe Colin
will come in and play something. He has a completely
different style from [regular Bad Seeds bassist Martyn
P. Casey]. Marty’s a jaw-dropping powerhouse who
holds everything together. Colin tends to be more fluid
“Everything circles
back to music.”
NICK CAVE
and melodic.” Cave also reiterated the importance of
his creative partnership with Warren Ellis, who has an-
nounced a new album by The Dirty Three with partners
Jim White and Mick Turner.
Cave’s most recent communication regarding
his new album came in November, a month after he
played the piano-and-voice song To Be Found – his
one new piece of music this year – at a show in Chicago.
He was, he announced, mixing the new songs in
“Western New York” (online Cave watchers claimed
this was in Buffalo, backed up with sightings of the
Andreas Rentz/Getty Images
singer dining at a local Denny’s). “As the new and
beautiful songs wash over me,” wrote a seemingly
re-energised Cave. “I feel inspired to say to you that the
privilege of having this most vulnerable of occupations
– of being a singer – is immeasurable.”
Ian Harrison
Lost and found: Nick Cave
talks up his Faith, Hope And
Carnage book with Seán
O’Hagan, Cologne, June 5,
2023, after calling forth his
muse from a “froggy hole”
for the next Bad Seeds LP.
MOJO 13
 2 0 2 4 T H E E S S E N T I A L PR E V I E W A L B UM S

“It was difficult to

make because it was
so personal.”
KAMASI WASHINGTON

Partly written during lockdown in

Back to earth: Kamasi
Washington offers to
light up the dark.
Amsterdam, Washington was relieved to
start recording again with his regular band
of old schoolfriends, when sessions started in
2022. “It’s a very rhythmic record. It’s about
connection, about how rhythm and music
connects to people, how it affects us and how
life can steer us. People in the band wrote
for this one too.” However, he’s tight-lipped
about its special guests. “I think people will be
very excited about it. I’m very excited. We’re
talking legends, let’s put it like that.”
While his band work fast (“Sometimes we
get four songs in one day, sometimes none”),
many tracks morphed during recording.
“To me, a song is similar to a person. We’re
all born with certain things but what we end
up becoming is based off the life we live.
When I write I often think I’ve got a little
doctor in my hands, but find out it’s really
a comedian or an artist or a lawyer. I try to
keep my mind as open as possible in the
studio, I don’t want to close off any
possibilities. If we can figure out what a
song is, we can breathe life into it.”
The last few years have proved reflective
for Washington. “I’ve lost a few mentors and
friends,” he says. “You get to that point in life
where you almost see the horizon of your own
mortality. Your priorities start to switch up a

Jazz sax seer Kamasi bit.” And with a surplus of unused songs, he
suggests the new LP may just be the tip of the
iceberg, release-wise.

Washington reboots “I definitely think it will be a productive few

years for me. I feel a desire to complete things.
My natural impulse is to sit on things. For dec-

for album five ades I had my studio in my dad’s garage. The

song The Rhythm Changes [from 2015’s The
Epic] lived on a Post-It note on my piano. My

S
IX YEARS after winning MOJO’s Album
Of The Year award for his 183-minute
existential epic Heaven And Earth, Kamasi
Washington is back with something com-
pletely different. While it’s relatively svelte at
80 minutes (“a two-course meal,” he jokes),
the as-yet-untitled opus is also the tenor
saxophonist’s most deeply felt too, inspired by
a new arrival in the Washington household.
“I became a father while making this record
and within that I felt the greatest joy, but also
the greatest levels of apprehension,” he says
from his home in Los Angeles. “There’s a lot
of duality. It’s my most grounded record in my
most grounded state, where I’m really seeing
the beauty in the world, the light in the dark-
ness, through a different lens. It was difficult to
make because it was so personal.”
bass player, Miles Mosley, is a really organised
guy. He was like, ‘That’s really great’, and I was
like, Yeah, I’m just missing something with the
bridge. He would see that Post-It note and be
like, ‘It’s giving me so much anxiety that this
song only lives here’. Now all those Post-It
songs are getting charts. Everybody’s being put
in the game a little quicker.”
Andy Cowan

N E W A L B UM S 2 0 2 4 Normandy, THE LIBERTINES’ All Quiet HOLTER releases a new record in

…will THE CURE’s Songs Of A Lost
World finally arrive in 2024? Six
new songs have been
played live, with the titles
of And Nothing Lasts
Forever, Endsong and I
Can Never Say
Russell Hamilton, Getty, Alamy
WELLER album is scheduled for
spring …a new PEARL JAM LP,
produced by Andrew
Watt, is also the subject
of much speculation
…IDLES’ Tangk album
comes out in
On The Eastern Esplanade, their fourth
LP in just 22 years, arrives in March …
with his musical Standing At
The Sky’s Edge starting a
West End run in February,
RICHARD HAWLEY
releases his ninth solo
LP next year. “I’m still
2024. Co-produced by Holter and
Kenny Gilmore, it was recorded in
LA in 2023: she’s described
“re-routing the neural
pathways, pushing out
into the unknown,
playfulness and chaos”
…ELBOW’s tenth LP is

Goodbye relating to February. Co-pro- drawing water from released in March.

waiting, finality and
indecision: Robert
Smith (right) has
indicated that performing
the songs has made him want
to re-record them …a PAUL
duced by Nigel
Godrich, vocalist Joe
Talbot promises, “this is
our album of gratitude and
power. All love songs. All is
love” …recorded in Margate and
the well,” he says. “The Singer Guy Garvey
bucket hasn’t hit the references “gnarly,
bottom yet, not by a seedy grooves that
fucking long chalk. I just pulled some very dark
wrote a song, I’m sure it’s the memories and humour” …
best thing I’ve written, ever” …JULIA ST. VINCENT (left), who sang

14 MOJO
 Heavyweight champion:
Wayne Kramer is ready
for showtime.

Ezrin. “Bob said, ‘These are terrific – you’re

making a new MC5 record!’ I hadn’t thought
of that, but I said, You could be right… we
said, Hell, let’s make this record.”
Recorded in LA, so far only the hard rock-
ing title song and re-recorded Kramer solo
track Edge Of The Switchblade – with Alice In
Chains’ William DuVall on vocals – have been
heard, but of the rest, Kramer says, “I wanted
to kind of pick up where we left off with High
Time. Pushing music forward, carrying a mes-
sage of self-efficacy and empowerment – and
just to have fun. It’s all in the MC5. Creativity is
the solution for the challenges we face.
“I put everybody to work,” he adds. “The re-
cord is a guitar extravaganza – everyone, and
yours truly, all bashin’ away on electric guitars.
That’s my goal – to overload the guitar.”
Individual songs, he promises, will take
in driving (“you can take the boy out of De-
troit…”) and social breakdown, while another
“deals with disingenuousness, you know,

Brother Wayne being a phoney.”

To the negative voices who argue it just
won’t be the same, he says this: “They’re right.

reconvenes the MC5

It’s not the same. We are not living in 1968.
We’re in the era that we’re in, and one has to
address that. In all art, you have to answer

for new LP and tour!

the question: so what? Why should I care? Be-
cause I made the best music I possibly could.
“The MC5 has been the main concourse,
the main roadway, for my creativity for just

“S
OME BANDS need a little time
between records,” says MC5 flame-
keeper Wayne Kramer down the
line from Los Angeles. “I needed a lot of time
between records!”
It seems unreal, but in 2024 truth trumps
fantasy: Heavy Lifting, the first new MC5 LP
since 1971’s High Time, arrives in spring. With
original drummer Dennis ‘Machine Gun’
Thompson on two tracks and Detroit enforcer
Bob Ezrin producing, Kramer will be joined by
Tom Morello, Don Was, Vernon Reid, Slash and
more. But why now?
Kramer cites the pandemic and the vaca-
tion-from-sanity that was the Trump presi-
dency sending him into a dudgeon of depres-
sion: “I know myself well enough to know that
the treatment for my meaninglessness was to
take creative action,” he says. Having begun
writing with Oakland singer and new MC5
frontman Brad Brooks, by mid-2022 15 songs
had manifested: after cutting versions at his
home studio, Kramer played them to old pal
“My goal – to
overload the guitar.”
WAYNE KRAMER
about my entire life,” he goes on. “I hope I’m
true to the spirit of the band. It’s important
from the fans’ perspective, and from my
personal perspective, to honour the legacy
and my partners when I was a young man…
it’s worth celebrating.”
He’s already planning another MC5 studio
set and promises much international touring
with Brooks, bassist Vicki Randle, guitarist
Stevie Salas and drummer Winston Watson Jr.
“We’re gonna go everywhere,” he says. “The
MC5 is a show band, always was. We’re play-
ing with matches – I want to get out there and
burn some stages down!”
Ian Harrison

N E W A L B UM S 2 0 2 4 main reason that ‘post-punk’ was the Dan Carey …HURRAY FOR THE
vehicle for album one was because it RIFF RAFF (below) release The Past Is
Running Up That Hill at Kate Bush’s produced by Bill Ryder-Jones …a was really affordable to do,” says Still in February. Conor Oberst
Chris McKay/Getty, Sam Petts-Davies, Tommy Kha

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
induction in November, is
rumoured to be releasing
an album this year …
THE SMILE (right)
release Wall Of Eyes in
January. Songs include
Teleharmonic,
Bending Hectic and
You Know Me! …
MICHAEL HEAD AND THE
RED ELASTIC BAND’s
Loopholes arrives in 2024. It was
new COURTNEY LOVE album singer James Smith …DEE C. guests …MDOU MOCTAR
is also in the works …new J. LEE’s first LP in 28 years, Just Funeral For Justice arrives in
MASCIS LP What Do We Something, arrives in spring …he hasn’t
Do Now comes in Febru- spring. Fellow ex-Style released an LP since
ary. “I’m thinking more Councillor Mick 1990, but in November
about what I can do Talbot co-writes and Lee Mavers of THE
with just an acoustic plays: songs include LA’s was pictured
guitar, even for the Back In Time, Trojan online in direct-to-disc
leads,” says Mascis … Horse and Everyday Chesterfield studio the
YARD ACT’s second LP, Summer, written by her Groovefarm Analog
Where’s My Utopia?, is daughter Leah Weller Recording Co. A comment
released in March. Expect a …A CERTAIN RATIO are read: “Always a pleasure when
much-expanded sonic range. “The finishing a new album produced by Mr Mavers and co swing by…”

MOJO 15
 2 0 2 4 T H E E S S E N T I A L PR E V I E W R E I S SU E S

“Songs are just

another kind of spell.”
MIKE SCOTT

“About five minutes in,” he says, “suddenly

everything clicks, and I’m in the groove.
My imagination cops onto it and… I’ve
got the song.” Elsewhere, there’s a stomping
version of the album’s title track featuring
a gnarly guitar part by Tom Verlaine and
even an unreleased Bob Dylan-written
instrumental, Meridian West, first played
by The Waterboys when Dylan invited them
to a 1985 session at The Church Studios in
north London.
“He’d heard The Whole Of The Moon and
he liked it,” Scott explains. “Bob wasn’t work-
ing in his usual way, which is he’s got a song,
and everybody tries to guess what the chords
are. He was playing instrumentals that he’d
written with Dave [Stewart] and the idea was
that later he would put lyrics on them. So, we
played there for two or three hours and there
All at sea: The
was one particular lovely instrumental.”
Waterboys’ Mike The next day, while auditioning keyboard
Scott in 1985. players, Scott and the band jammed a slower,
slinkier version of the tune. “Just by good

Mike Scott brings fortune, I’d pressed record on my cassette

machine. And so we contacted Bob’s manage-
ment to see if he would allow us to include it.

a This Is The Sea

They came back and said, ‘Oh, yeah, no prob-
lem. Bob remembers that instrumental… it’s
called Meridian West.’”
Along with the vastly-expanded

mega-box
track list, 1985 will be accompa-
nied by a 220-page book featuring
a new 30,000-word essay by Scott,
alongside reproduced handwritten

F
OLLOWING ON from exhaustive
explorations of Fisherman’s Blues (2013’s
Fisherman’s Box) and Room To Roam (The
Magnificent Seven, 2021), next year will see the
release of 1985, a 95-track box set chrono-
logically tracing the creation of The Water-
boys’ towering third album, This Is The Sea.
The band’s founder and ringleader, Mike
Scott, tells MOJO he takes a lot of pleasure in
Aaron Rapoport/Corbis/Getty, Ron Wolfson/Getty, Lynn Goldsmith/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images
sweeping, passion- lyrics from the pages of his Book Of
ate rock that Scott Shadows, a blank tome – typically
had been striving used to write spells in – bought
to achieve since the from an esoteric book shop in New
inception of The York named Magickal Childe.
Waterboys in 1981. “I thought, Well, it’s ideal for
On 1985, over six writing songs in,” Scott remembers.
discs – beginning with “Songs are just another kind of
a radio session version of Trumpets from ’83, spell. It became a sort of energy container. I

rooting around in the attic of his musical past.
“It’s a good rummage,” he grins. “There’d be
instrumentals I’d completely forgotten about,
jam sessions that I didn’t remember. I still
have all my old cassettes, and they’re in great
condition and I transferred them digitally.”
This Is The Sea was the full realisation of the
and moving through piano demos, work-in-
progress mixes and on to the completed and
remastered LP – Scott’s creative process during
the era is to be fully detailed.
Highlights will include a nine-minute
piano sketch in which we hear Scott, in real
time, conjuring up The Whole Of The Moon.
would only have to open it to enter the flow of
my writing.”
But as to why 1985 is to be released a year
short of the 40th anniversary of This Is The
Sea, there’s a far less mystical reason. “I can’t
be bothered waiting,” Scott laughs.
Tom Doyle

R E I S SU E S 2 0 2 4
…having sold off his catalogue to
Sony in 2021, will BRUCE
SPRINGSTEEN (right)
release a 40th
anniversary edition of
Born In The USA next
year? Considerable
amounts of
unreleased material is
known to exist, as
bootlegs have shown
…originally released in
1971, HAWKWIND’s second LP
X In Search Of Space gets boxed early
next year. Remastered and remixed Volume 3, first promised in 2022 In Sodom are under construction
by Stephen W Tayler, the triple-disc …half-speed vinyl masters of …after the excitement of their
set comes in a 10-inchx10-inch Quadrophenia and The Who By semi-reunion for the Stop Making
deluxe package and will Numbers are coming in Sense movie, it’s hoped that
include unreleased February …speculation is TALKING HEADS’ back
sessions and outtakes … rife that a 40th catalogue will be
out in February, PAUL anniversary edition of remastered and
McCARTNEY & PRINCE’s (right) Purple reissued with rarities,
WINGS’ Band On The Rain will surpass the live shows and Atmos
Run gets a 50th 2017 four-disc edition mixes by Jerry
anniversary edition, next year, with a Dolby Harrison and Eric
featuring previously Atmos mix …SOFT ‘ET’ Thorngren
unreleased ‘Under- CELL indicate that deluxe …releases from cult jazz
dubbed’ mixes and a Dolby editions of their LPs harpist DOROTHY ASHBY
Atmos mix …similarly, hopes Non-Stop Ecstatic Dancing, The are also planned, including
are high for NEIL YOUNG Archives Art Of Falling Apart and This Last Night “unreleased nuggets from her heavy

16 MOJO
 Cheers!: Faces (from left)
Ronnie Lane, Ronnie
Wood, Kenney Jones,
Ian McLagan and Rod
Stewart on top of their
game, having a good
time, in 1971.

Faces vault opens

sessions for an LP after 1973’s farewell Ooh La
La, and a tape showing the evolution of that
album’s title song. “It was when they were
laying it down as a backing track,” says Caiger,

for unheard “before it became what it became – this was

full-on electric guitars. You’re left thinking,
This could have gone a completely different

outtakes galore
direction. Also, you’ve got the banter of the
Faces all together in the studio. You could just
do a spoken-word release, frankly.”
He also challenges the band’s bar-on-

F
OR YEARS NOW, Rod Stewart, Ronnie
Wood and Kenney Jones have all spoken
of reconvening the Faces, the blues,
soul and folk knaves who burned brightly
and boozily from 1969 to 1975. There’s still
no news, but Faces freaks will take ample
comfort from a new reissue campaign
kicking off in ’24.
Appetites were whetted by last month’s
Record Store Day release Had Me A Real Good
Time… With Faces Live In Session At The BBC
1971-1973, which collected primo-sounding
radio rarities. It was put together by Faces spe-
cialist Rob Caiger, who’s worked closely with
the surviving members and the estates of the
late Ian McLagan and Ronnie Lane since 2020
to dig their personal archives for treasure.
While the Faces’ 2004 box Five Guys Walk
Into A Bar… was assembled by McLagan,
Caiger says new deluxe, remastered editions
of the Faces albums will be joint affairs,
Michael Putland/Getty, A P Photo/Alamy, Rob Verhorst/Redferns/Getty
most importantly, extra music. “When I say
there’s a wealth of unreleased material –
there’s a wealth of unreleased material,”
says Caiger. “You can only fit so much on an
LP and singles. There’s rehearsals, outtakes,
unreleased songs, session multitracks, you
name it. It was a joy and a privilege, really. In
2010 I started going through Kenney’s old
flight cases, and Ronnie Wood has the most
incredible, organised archive… you find the
tape, and it’s the only tape. This stuff has
never leaked out and no-one’s heard it, that’s
why it’s exciting.”
Finds that particularly struck him include
“When I say there’s a
wealth of unreleased
material…”
ROB CAIGER
stage/footballs-in-the-audience repute as
being somehow unserious. “They had a very
unjustified reputation of being sloppy,” he
says. “They weren’t. What this series is going
to show is how on top of their game the Faces
were, while having a good time. We’re going
to be correcting a few myths and adding to
the story – when this stuff comes out properly
mastered, I think it’s going to get a new re-
spect for just how good this band were.”
He adds that they’re keeping some
surprises for later, adding, “the BBC material
will be coming, and it’s going to be special
and sound the best it’s ever sounded. In
fact, I think I can guarantee that everything
is going to sound the best it ever has. The
guys are signing off on everything, and it
doesn’t come out unless they say so. They’re
absolutely engaged, enthusiastic and totally
into it. If you’re going to do this, this is the one
time to do it properly.”
Ian Harrison

replete with memorabilia, rare photos and, Check theofficialfaces.com for updates.

R E I S SU E S 2 0 2 4
psychedelic phase of 1969/70”
…two TOUMANI DIABATÉ
collaborative LPs will be
reissued next year: New
Ancient Strings (with
Ballaké Sissoko) and
Kulanjan (with Taj
Mahal) …in summer
expect a remixed
edition of JOHN
LENNON’s (right) Mind
Games (The Ultimate
Collection) “featuring an
incredible six albums’ worth of
material” …next year PAVEMENT
release a limited box set of their
7-inch singles, promising “some
previously hard to find
presses, new artwork and
linernotes” …JACK
BRUCE’s 1969 solo
debut Songs For A Tailor
will be reissued as a
four-disc, 12-inch box
set with the 1971 doc
Rope Ladder To The
Moon on Blu-Ray …
MADONNA is expected to
release “personally curated”
expanded versions of her 1983 debut
and 1984’s Like A Virgin next year
…reissues of the BUTTHOLE
SURFERS’ back catalogue arrive in
spring …CAN continue their
archival series of live LPs
next year …an 18-CD
LAURA NYRO box set is
in the works …a
deluxe box set of
SINÉAD O’CONNOR’s
(right) 1987 debut The
Lion And The Cobra is
scheduled for late 2024.
This could include demos,
BBC sessions and collabora-
tions …after the deluxe edition
reissues of LITTLE FEAT’s first three
albums last year, plans are afoot for
similarly expanded versions of Feats
Don’t Fail Me Now and The Last
Record Album …a 40th
anniversary deluxe box
set of the VIOLENT
FEMMES’ first LP
comes in February,
augmented with
B-sides, ’81 and ’83 live
material and demos
…vinyl reissues of IAN
HUNTER’s You’re Never
Alone With A Schizophrenic and
Short Back N’ Sides arrive in summer…

MOJO 17
 2 02 4 T H E E S S E N T I A L PR E V I E W F I L M S A N D B O O K S

BOOKS 2024
1 HIP-HOP IS HISTORY Questlove
(WHITE RABBIT, JUNE)
The Roots’ creative thinker
(right) reflects on rap at its
half-century, via one song
from each year of its
existence.
2 THE LAST GANG IN
TOWN: SEARCHING
FOR DEXYS Nige Tassell
(NINE EIGHT, JULY)
The author of indie requiem
Whatever Happened To The C86
Kids? tracks down 53 ex-members of Dexys,
and asks, “What was it like?”
3 TRAVELS OVER FEELING: ARTHUR RUSSELL,
A LIFE Richard King
(ANTHOLOGY EDITIONS, APRIL)
The ‘Bubblegum Buddhist’ cello seer, via
interviews and revelatory documents from his
private archives.
4 NEVER UNDERSTAND: THE STORY OF THE
Perchance to dream: John
‘Hoppy’ Hopkins with partner JESUS AND MARY CHAIN Jim and William Reid
Suzy Zeiger (AKA Suzy (WHITE RABBIT, AUGUST)
Creamcheese), on his release The Reid brothers give their side, assisted by Ben
from prison, December 3, 1967; Thompson: “alternate and sometimes conflicting
(above) UFO club poster. accounts” are promised.
5 UNDER A ROCK Chris Stein

On film! The life of (CORSAIR, JUNE)

Blondie guitarist reflects on his still-strong bond
with Debbie Harry, through years of triumph and

psychedelic polymath
tribulation. It promises “blunt sincerity and
humour.”
6 IN ONE EAR: COCTEAU TWINS, IVOR

John ‘Hoppy’ Hopkins

RAYMONDE AND ME Simon Raymonde
(NINE EIGHT, SEPTEMBER)
The Bella Union label boss reflects on his band
and his relationship with his arranger father Ivor.

O
THER NAMES may eclipse his, but
John ‘Hoppy’ Hopkins was an essen-
tial catalyst in London’s high 1960s
and beyond. His forward-thinking initiatives
included co-founding the London Free School
and the UFO club, conceiving and naming
proto-rave The 14 Hour Technicolor Dream,
and co-launching the International Times,
plus later activities democratising filmmaking.
Now new, long-gestating documentary Hoppy
– Underground Head tells his story.
Why is he not more celebrated, wonders
MOJO? “He restlessly moved on and let
others reap the rewards from ideas, move-
ments and organisations he left behind in
his wake,” says filmmaker Malcolm Boyle,
who met Hoppy in the mid-’90s while doing
his one-man Syd Barrett show The Madcap.
“One of the few direct interventions he made
in the film was to specifically rule out my early
working title, Hoppy – King Of The Hippies.
As he said to me, ‘We don’t need any more
Work on a film began in earnest in
2006. As well as ‘Hoppy’, interviewees
include scenesters Nick Mason, Joe Boyd,
Barry Miles, Jeff Dexter and Peter Jenner.
Access to Hoppy’s photographic archive
proved to be “a goldmine,” Boyle adds,
while previously unseen rushes from 1967
West German documentary Die Jungen
Nachtwandler are “dynamite… a lot of
unseen Hoppy, UFO and Pink Floyd
footage. I’m still buzzing at the unseen
Syd Barrett live shots.”
“Hoppy knew how we were doing the
film,” says Boyle, “but had no part in the edit.
I visited him in hospital not long before he
died in 2015 and told him we had started
cutting it and wouldn’t relent until it was
done. He was pleased. It was my last promise
to him, in a sense.”
Ian Harrison
Hoppy – Underground Head will launch at London’s
Tabernacle on May 24, 2024, with oil wheels.
7 TO EASE MY TROUBLED MIND – THE
AUTHORISED HISTORY OF BILLY CHILDISH
Ted Kessler
(WHITE RABBIT, JULY)
The life of the rocking Chatham heel-digger,
with the voices of Billy, Tracey Emin, two wives,
bandmates, his therapist, and more.
8 I MUST BE IN LOVE: MY LIFE WITH NEIL
INNES Yvonne Innes
(NINE EIGHT, OCTOBER)
The official biography of the Bonzo and Rutle,
Python affiliate and more, by his wife Yvonne.
9 THE BLUES BROTHERS: AN EPIC FRIEND-
SHIP, THE RISE OF IMPROV, AND THE MAKING
OF AN AMERICAN FILM CLASSIC Daniel de Visé
(WHITE RABBIT, MARCH)
The personal and creative friendship of the
late John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd, via the soulful
cult movie.
10 NEU! MANCHESTER Andy Votel, John
McCready and Simon Spence
(BACKSTAGE, TBC)
A celebration of late Manchester cult Dan
Dwayre, AKA Black Lodge, and his city’s mid-’90s
electronic revival.
Victor Blackman/Daily Express/Getty Images, Alamy (2), Capital Pictures

Kings, thanks.’” See hoppyfilm.com for updates.

ALSO FIL MING
…coming early in 2024, THEY
CALLED US OUTLAWS – The
Cosmic Cowboys, Honky
Tonk Heroes & Rise Of
Redneck Rock presents
six films examining the
rise of outlaw country.
Emmylou Harris,
Billy F Gibbons and
Steve Earle are
among the interview-
ees, with plenty of original
footage and performances
promised …coming to the screen
and Blu-Ray in February, GETTING IT
BACK: THE STORY OF CYMANDE
(right) tells the story of the black
London funk pioneers. Fans
Jazzie B, Khruangbin and
De La Soul’s Maseo all pay
homage …director
Gary Hustwit’s
long-awaited doc ENO
arrives next year. The
filmmakers were given,
they say, “unlimited
access to Brian Eno’s
(left) vast archive,” while
with the “multi-platform”
production, Hustwit says he aims
“to create a cinematic experience Peace Concert in Kingston. It stars
that’s as innovative as Brian’s approach Kingsley Ben-Adir in the title role
to music and art” …ex-Kraftwerk man and James Norton as Chris
Karl Bartos has written a new Blackwell …another bio-pic,
score for 1920 German film SHOUT IT OUT will
THE CABINET OF DR dramatise the early-’70s
CALIGARI. A physical activities of Kiss, on
release of film and Netflix …Paramount+
music follows live documentary LOLLA:
performances in THE STORY OF
Germany in February LOLLAPALOOZA is
…out at the same time, expected next year:
bio-pic BOB MARLEY: directed by Michael
ONE LOVE covers the John Warren, it will
reggae legend’s rise to fame examine the alt-fest’s history
and his appearance at the 1978 from its 1991 beginnings…

18 MOJO
 PRESENTS

TICKETS AVAILABLE AT
 C U LT H E R O E S Fretting away: guitar
virtuoso Albert Lee
earns his stripes, 1979.

PRINCELY ALBERT
Three Lee
sprees of glee.
Heads Hands
& Feet
Heads Hands & Feet
(CAPITOL, 1971)
A double album

GUITARIST’S GUITARIST
in the USA, it trading licks with Clapton,
features Lee’s
Albert says, “We had a
ALBERT LEE TALKS
six-string prowess
alongside band- slightly different approach,
mates Ray Smith and Tony but I’d like to think we
CLAPTON, EMMYLOU, Colton’s nifty songwriting skills.
Country Boy showcases scorch-
complemented each other.
Eric liked having me around
THE EVERLYS AND MORE! ing guitar, while Delaware
reveals a warm voice indeed.
– although he fired the whole
band twice.”

R
OCKING READERS may have checked
out Born Fighters, the Rockpile ITV
documentary featuring Dave Edmunds,
Graham Parker, Nick Lowe and others, hard
at it in smoky Eden Studios in Chiswick in ’79.
At one memorable moment, guitarist Albert
Lee lends his virtuosity to country rocker
Sweet Little Lisa, leaving Edmunds awestruck.
“Albert Lee is my hero,” says Edmunds.
“It will be a very long time before there is
a guitarist to match Albert’s ability.”
“I’d played on [Sweet Little Lisa co-writer]
Hank DeVito’s demo, then Dave asked me
to play on the Rockpile recording,” explains
Lee today. “I didn’t even have time to take off
my motorcycle jacket. I plugged in and they
loved it!”
Like many musicians of his generation,
south-London-raised Lee fixated on
skiffle. Born to a musical Romani family,
by 16 he was playing guitar behind Dickie
Pride, later joining Chris Farlowe And The
Thunderbirds. Adept at playing blues, it was
country music that provided direction. “James
Burton and Jerry Bryant inspired me, both
“It took moving to
America to prove I
Fin Costello/Getty
Telecaster players. I love that Albert Lee His CV didn’t lessen
sound,” he says. Hiding thereafter. Lee had also
(A&M, 1979)
By 1969 Lee had Lee steps into
befriended Phil Everly, who in
developed his finger-picking the rockabilly- 1972 had asked him to join
style and joined Heads Hands country spotlight the Everly Brothers band,
& Feet. Club-goers dug his at last, and unaware that the duo was
high-speed fretboard work, reprises Country about to implode. Ten years
particularly on Country Boy, Boy at an even faster pace. He later, after some much-need-
also sings his heart out on the
on which he also sang lead. Louvin Bothers’ Are You
ed banging together of the
To promote their 1971 debut Wasting My Time. brothers’ heads, Lee was
album, the group took up there, ready for the Royal
residency at the Troubadour Albert Lee Albert Hall reunion of 1983.
Road Runner He would tour annually with
in Los Angeles. Whilst in (SUGAR HILL, 2006)
California, Lee played A perfect mix of Don and Phil through 2001.
on Jackson Browne’s first instrumental Of all of these, one
album and hung out with dexterity and wonders, what was this
The Crickets. Finding himself vocal allure, this multi-Grammy award
album captures
crossing the Atlantic heavy fretting on Junior Walker’s
winner’s most treasured gig?
frequently, he bowed to the (I’m A) Road Runner and a chilling “The Everly Brothers, two
inevitable and emigrated to vocal duet with daughter great singers, and the concert
the USA in 1974. Alexandra on Richard Thomp- for George Harrison the year
His reputation opened son’s Dimming Of The Day. after he passed away,” he says,
doors, and after a spell with before adding, “not forgetting
Joe Cocker he joined Emmylou Harris & The guesting with Spinal Tap” (Lee appeared as
Hot Band. “I think I added a new dimension himself playing Break Like The Wind on the
even though I was replacing my hero, James 1992 Albert Hall gig released on video as The
Burton,” he says. “They wanted me to play Return Of Spinal Tap).
identical licks but soon gave up and grew to “I’ve been very lucky, never out of work for
long,” concludes Lee, who continues to tour
like my playing. It took moving to America
to prove I was a good player.” and concluded an annual UK outing on the

was a good player.” In 1977 Lee commenced work on his solo

album Hiding, but by the time of its release
ALBERT LEE he’d joined Eric Clapton’s band, where he
remained for four years. On the question of
cusp of his eightieth birthday on December
21. “I fly to London every year,” he says,
“and the audiences keep coming.”
Will Birch

20 MOJO
 “Irish Rock’n’Roll is impossible to shake off ” - MOJO
“A raucous power to traditional Irish music not seen since the heyday of The Pogues.” 8/10 - UNCUT
“Like The Dubliners, The Pogues and Jinx Lennon before them, they elevate the displaced and the
downtrodden, sticking two fingers up to the establishment” - GUARDIAN
“The Mary Wallopers are masterly in their storytelling... the energy of this six-piece band, led by the brothers
Charles and Andrew Hendy and their schoolfriend Seán McKenna, is infectious.” - THE TIMES

THE MARY WALLOPERS 35 YEARS GREATEST HITS TOUR

NOVEMBER 2024 DECEMBER 2024
FRI 08 SHEFFIELD LEADMILL SUN 01 BELFAST LIMELIGHT
SAT 09 NORWICH THE WATERFRONT THU 05 MANCHESTER ALBERT HALL
E X T R A DAT E S AD D E D D UE TO D EM AN D
THU 14 NOTTINGHAM ROCK CITY FRI 06 LEEDS BECKETT STUDENTS’ UNION
MARCH 2024 FRI 15 - MANCHESTER ACADEMY FRI 15 CARDIFF TRAMSHED SAT 07 LIVERPOOL OLYMPIA
THU 21 BRISTOL O2 ACADEMY THU 12 CAMBRIDGE JUNCTION
WED 13 - NOTTINGHAM ROCK CITY SAT 16 - NEWCASTLE NX
FRI 22 OXFORD O2 ACADEMY FRI 13 LONDON O2 FORUM KENTISH TOWN
THU 14 - LEEDS O2 ACADEMY SUN 17 - BRISTOL O2 ACADEMY SAT 14 WOLVERHAMPTON WULFRUN HALL
SAT 23 BEXHILL DE LA WARR PAVILION
DECEMBER 2023 THU 28 NEWCASTLE BOILER SHOP GIGSANDTOURS.COM TICKETMASTER.CO.UK
THU 14 DUNDEE OUTSAMS
SOLDFAT SAT 16 GLASGOW BARROWLAND BALLROOM
SOLD OUT FRI 29 GLASGOW GARAGE SJM CONCERTS AND FRIENDS PRESENTATION BY ARRANGEMENT WITH WME
‘TOMORROW’S HERE TODAY’ GREATEST HITS ALBUM
FRI 15 ABERDEEN LEMON TREE
SOLD OUT SUN 17 EDINBURGH
SOLD OUTTHE LIQUID ROOM SAT 30 DUBLIN ACADEMY OUT 4TH OCTOBER 2024

V E RY S P E C I A L
GUESTS

MAR 15 FIRST DIRECT ARENA LEEDS

MAR 16 AO ARENA MANCHE STER
MAR 21 O2 ARENA LONDON
M A R 2 3 U T I L I TA A R E N A B I R M I N G H A M
MAR 24 MOTORPOINT ARENA NOTTINGHAM
MS OAL DR O2U T6 I N T E R N A T I O N A L C E N T R E B O U R N E M O U T H
M A R 2 7 U T I L I TA A R E N A C A R D I F F
MS OAL DR O2U T9 T H E OVO H Y D R O G L A S G O W
N E W DA T E A D D E D D U E TO P H E N O M E N A L D E M A N D
M A R 3 0 T H E OVO H Y D R O G L A S G O W
G I G S A N D T O U R S .C O M | T I C K E T M A S T E R .C O. U K
A N S J M C O N C E R T S P R E S E N TA T I O N I N A S S O C I A T I O N W I T H 1 3 A R T I S T S
 W H AT G O E S O N !
Run Paint Run Run
Captain Beefheart’s art,
exhibited! Gary Lucas
remembers Don Van Vliet
– the man and his brushwork.
C
APTAIN BEEFHEART’S career in
music ended in 1982, though his last
three LPs showed where he was going
next, with each one featuring his painting on
the cover. It’s this side of his creative life that
new London exhibition Don Van Vliet: Stand-
ing On One Hand will illuminate.
Held at the Michael Werner Gallery in
Mayfair, it runs until February 3, 2024, and
will feature Beefheart art from the ’80s and
’90s. On hand to witness Van Vliet at work in
all his guises was guitarist and collaborator of
note Gary Lucas, who first met Beefheart in
1971 and who worked with him from 1980’s
Doc At The Radar Station to 1982’s Ice Cream
For Crow.
“He couldn’t shut off the volcanic flow of
Erica Echenberg/Getty, Bob Berg/Getty
his ideas,” says Lucas. “Don was constantly
creating, he was always carrying around both a
Sony cassette recorder and a large sketch book
to inscribe his visions with both his voice and
his hand for posterity in the here and now.”
Parallels have been drawn with the scrib-
ble-block abstraction of his art and the from-
the-id discord of his music (favoured painters
included Jackson Pollock, Van Gogh and Franz
22 MOJO
Kline). But whereas Beefheart’s music was, in
Lucas’s words, “obsessively, near-surgically,
worked out to the last detail – every nightmare
choreographed,” his paintings were rendered
quickly and freely, likened by its creator as “an
ass swishing its tail.” Lucas calls it “One man
against the universe.
“I did see Don create a lot of art,” he con-
tinues. “Not just off-the-cuff sketches in his
notebooks, but also larger paintings on canvas.
His painting was precise, with very bold
brushstrokes – he got right down to business
and he didn’t mess about with the work for
too long. He was able to get his visions down
quickly on paper, wood, canvas, linoleum floor
tiles or whatever medium or surface was avail-
able to paint on, using oils, coloured pencils,
pen and ink, watercolours, acrylic paint –
whatever was at hand really… you can include
cigarette ash here.
“He could be capricious also,” he adds.
“I once observed him produce a beautiful
drawing in one of his sketch books using a
“An artist is the
one who kids
himself most
gracefully.”
DON VAN VLIET
Abstract ’heart: Don Van Vliet,
AKA Captain Beefheart, sketch-
ing in a London hotel lobby,
1977; (above) Gary Lucas in New
York, 1993; (right) a selection of
Van Vliet’s art from the Standing
On One Hand exhibition: (clock-
wise from top left) The Drazy
Hoops #2 (1997); Ibex (1986); A
Bride For Wallah (1986); Feather
Times A Feather (1987); Crow
Dance A Panther (1988).
black magic marker… [he] abruptly jerked his
sketchbook back from us, saying ‘Wait, it’s not
finished!’– and then to our horror proceeded
to cross out most of the drawing with violent
strokes of his black marker. He then held up
the effaced drawing and proclaimed: ‘NOW
it’s done!’”
Lucas, who introduced Van Vliet to
players in the art world including gallerist
Michael Werner, was “truly saddened” when
he checked out of music for good. Yet he
acknowledges, “I think he felt that he’d said
all he wanted to say in that medium,” and adds
that painting brought greater financial stability
to the man who once noted, “An artist is the
one who kids himself most gracefully.”
“His visual art impressed me no end,”
Lucas says, “[though] I thought his music was
the primary essence of Van Vliet – a notion
Don scoffed at. ‘Painting goes way farther than
music, man,’ he told me once.”
Ian Harrison
Standing On One Hand runs at the Michael Werner
Gallery, London W1K 7PZ, until February 3. Beefheart
exhibit Rooms To Live – featuring artist Derek Tyman’s
‘Trout Mask House’ – runs at Bury Art Museum until
February 17. In 2024 Gary Lucas releases Here’s The
Ocean with Yass Boudlal, volumes two and three of The
Edge Of Heaven: Gary Lucas Plays Mid-Century Chinese
Pop, a reissue of his recordings with Jeff Buckley, and
more. For info – and Beefheart art – see garylucas.com.
 © Don Van Vliet. Courtesy Michael Werner Gallery, New York and London

MOJO 23
 MOJO R I S I N G

Cold comfort: Kali

Malone – “music feels
like the most grounding, “The threat is real….
stabilising force.”
But the experience is
so rewarding that I’m
willing to take it.”
KALI MALONE

FACT SHEET
● For fans of: Anna
Von Hausswolff,
Tim Hecker, Sarah
Davachi
● In her twenties in
Stockholm, Malone
worked as an organ
tuner, often taking
the train out to
rural villages to fix
tired instruments.
The curates were
surprised to find
a young woman
turning up, but “kind
of whenever I do

KALI MALONE AND THE

anything, people Elektronmusikstudion – a far cry
are surprised,” says
Malone.
from anything in the US. “The

DANGEROUS BUSINESS OF ● The title All

Life Long also
feeling of being trusted as a young
person to have access to state-of-

BEING AN AVANT-GARDE
(unintentionally) the-art studios and seeing that
echoes wedding
vows – Malone and there was a place for experimental

CHURCH ORGANIST Stephen O’Malley work that was supported – I felt like
there was a place for me there.”
married this summer,

I
T’S NO SMALL matter being an experimen-
tal organ composer. You can hardly own
one, but must negotiate with wary custodi-
ans to access churches containing specialised
instruments. Rehearsals are often by night or
paused for mass. Or, say, you’re in Prague and
“there were 30 children sleeping over at the
church screaming and running around,” says
Kali Malone. “There’s no consistency.”
Despite – or perhaps because of – these
challenges, Malone, 29, has cultivated an
uncommonly patient catalogue, breaking
through with 2019’s The Sacrificial Code. Her
music favours unconventional tunings and
mathematical composition processes that
lend her glacial notes a gripping, hypnotic
quality, not to mention a profound medita-
tive cast. It’s been a prolific few years for
the Denver-raised musician – now based
between Stockholm and Paris – with the
discordant, synth-led Living Torch in 2022
followed by 2023’s Does Spring Hide Its Joy,
a long-form collaboration with Sunn O)))’s
Stephen O’Malley and cellist Lucy Railton.
Stephen O'Malley
international organs, a period that
cultivated greater “acceptance, hu-
man connection with my family and
a general sensitivity”, says Malone.
She calls working with a choir for the
first time a vulnerable process that
allowed her to feel “not so judg-
mental”. Malone has had an uneasy
musical relationship with emotion
– a result, she says, of feelings being
taboo in the conservatory system.
In time, she’s become “more guided
by intuition.” Now, she knows her
work is finished when “nothing hurts
any more when you listen to it.” The
choral songs arrange poems that
she memorised from a W.E.B. Du
Bois book when she was 16. “It felt
like time to harvest what they’ve
been growing inside me since I was
a teenager,” she says. Hence the
album title, acknowledging “the timelessness kind of faith. “Music is my companion forever
of life”.
Malone seems to have shot like an arrow
their wedding DJ’d She became a head for obscure
by Caterina Barbieri,
with whom Malone tunings, challenging subjects for
runs the label non-aficionados: we might better
XKatedral. understand them as a strike against
● Thom Yorke is
a fan: in 2019 he generalised cultural standardisa-
interviewed Malone tion. “It’s OK for things to be spe-
cialised and niche,” says Malone.
for a limited ’zine he
made, prompting Equally, she says, there’s no need
some striking
answers about for anyone to understand her
consciousness beingcomplex processes to appreciate
a hallucination, her work. Last May, however, she
humans being “33
per cent daffodil encountered a group who certainly
DNA” and watching missed the point, when far-right
Catholic protestors blocked her
Netflix’s Sabrina The
Teenage Witch to performance in a 17th century
deal with stress.
church at a French festival. Now se-
KEY TRACKS curity is paramount: “The threat is
● Spectacle Of Ritual
● The Sacrificial
real.” But the payoff of “the artwork
Code and the music and the experience
● Living Torch I is so rewarding that I’m willing to
take it.” It’s a matter of a different
and the ultimate compass for every decision,”
she says. “It feels like the most grounding,

This winter comes a new solo album, All Life through her own life: at 17, she met the stabilising force.”
Long, in which brass and secular choral liturgy Swedish composer Ellen Arkbro and made a Laura Snapes
join Malone’s tonal depths. beeline to study in Stockholm, drawn by the Kali Malone’s All Life Long is released by Ideologic
It was made over three years, on various state-funded, synth-laden studio complex Organ on February 9.

24 MOJO
 MOJO PLAYLIST

CHRISSIE HYNDE’S RIGHT-

HAND MAN CRANKS UP A
GARAGE PUNK FRENZY Tune in! For the month’s best
WITH HIS LORDSHIP guitars, grooves and ambient flute.

“T
HIS BAND absolutely has a mis-
sion,” says James Walbourne,
His Lordship’s zealous singer-
guitarist, “and that’s to rip people’s heads off Hill, followed by three folk records in The Rails
with blistering rock’n’roll. It’s something we
haven’t seen for way too long.”
The besuited duo, Walbourne alongside
Danish drummer Kris Sonne, this month drop
a thrilling 30-minute debut
which variously nods towards
’50s rockabilly, chartbound “Chrissie
new wave, surf instrumentals,
post-punk and scorching walked out
millennial garage rock. It’s the
culmination of a quarter-cen-
and struck
tury career for the lanky north a rock pose.
Londoner, whom many may
recognise as the Pretenders’
I quickly
lead guitarist since 2008. lost my
Walbourne first material- inhibitions.”
ised aged barely 18, when UK
country-rocker Peter Bruntnell JAMES WALBOURNE
flew him over to Boston to
record 1999’s Normal For
Bridgewater with members of Son Volt.
Thereafter, the hotshot guitarist acquired his
stripes touring America frequently alongside
both Jay Farrar and The Pernice Brothers.
In 2005, he briefly fronted his own rocky
Royal Gun, but, he says, they “missed the boat these years as a sessioneer, is His Lordship
for the whole White Stripes thing”. Instead, he something he’ll put his back into long-term?
emerged as Britain’s leading young guitar-
slinger for hire, popping up with everyone
from Edwyn Collins and The Pogues through
to Ray Davies and, incredibly, Jerry Lee Lewis.
He landed the Pretenders gig after filling
in last-minute in Palm Springs. “Chrissie
[Hynde] walked out ahead of me and sud-
denly struck a rock pose. I was like, Wow, fuck
– really? Do I have to? I quickly lost my inhibi-
tions. Chrissie’s obviously the one I’ve learnt
most off, though she may not realise all of it.”
At that point, Walbourne seemed set to
Noble pursuit: His
Lordship’s James
Walbourne (left) and Kris
Sonne set out their stall.
become his generation’s Johnny Marr, but he
soon left-turned to launch himself as an ob-
servational singer-songwriter via 2011’s The
alongside his wife Kami, daughter of Richard
and Linda Thompson. But by 2018, he admits,
“I was sick of acoustic guitars”. Having crossed
paths with London-resident Sonne in Hynde’s
solo band, the two hatched
His Lordship as a vehicle to
blast out ’50s rock’n’roll covers
on Sunday afternoons at The
Boogaloo pub in Archway.
“We decided to write some
songs, and that’s when we
realised we didn’t want it to
be a rock’n’roll revival band,
writing about red Cadillacs,
because that’s not interesting
– you know, just write about
where you’re living, take the
Ray Davies approach.” So lead
single Jackie Works For The
NHS is a new wave nugget
about Walbourne’s neighbour. All Cranked
Up, meanwhile, offers a high-velocity 1:50
collision of Johnny Burnette and Slaughter &
The Dogs.
You have to wonder, though: after all
“This is the real me,” replies Walbourne, still
only 43. “I’ve definitely been holding back
over the years. Every time
we play, I leave the stage FACT SHEET
with my clothes com-
pletely drenched and feel
● For fans of: The
Hives, Link Wray, The
Nipple Erectors
fully satisfied. Otherwise, ● Walbourne
what’s the point?” backed Jerry Lee
Andrew Perry Lewis in Memphis
on 2010’s Mean Old
His Lordship is out on Man. “One night I
January 26 via Psychonaut was standing in the
Sounds/PIAS. control room with
Kris Kristofferson,
watching as Jerry
Lee sat on his own
at the piano playing
Peace In The Valley.
It was one of those
1
MICHAEL HEAD & THE RED ELASTIC
BAND CIAO CIAO BAMBINO
The consummate songwriter prefaces his
sequel to MOJO’s album of 2022 with this
nostalgic swinger. Lyrical allusions to Aladdin
Sane; musically, though, he’s still besotted
with Love.
Find it: streaming services
2 JIMMY PAGE RUMBLE
Live at the R&R Hall of Fame, Link Wray’s
menacing instrumental for cosh boys on
public assistance comes alive, again.
Find it: YouTube
3 THE LEMONHEADS
FEAR OF LIVING
Dando’s first new song for aeons
brings jangle, thwack and
angsty foreboding, admitting,
“I could really use a pick-me-up.”
Find it: streaming services
4 THE SMILE WALL OF EYES
The Yorke-Greenwood project as post-
punk diversion seems even wider of the mark
now: this, with its brooding strings, sounds
closer to an A Moon Shaped Pool sequel.
Find it: streaming services
5 ANDRE 3000 “THAT NIGHT IN HAWAII
WHEN I TURNED INTO A PANTHER
AND STARTED MAKING THESE LOW
REGISTER PURRING TONES THAT I
COULDN’T CONTROL… SH?T WAS WILD”
Not just a freaky title repository, Andre 3000’s
ambient flute LP is seriously good, too: start
with this Fourth World homage to Jon Hassell.
Find it: streaming services
6 LEE PERRY FEATURING
GREENTEA PENG
100LBS OF SUMMER
From forthcoming duets set
King Perry, out February, the late
dub magus and neo-soul south Londoner
meet for a fuzzy, upful skank.
Find it: streaming services
7 PULP BACKGROUND NOISE
Live in Mexico in November, a new hang-
dog confessional about being old and not in
love plugs back into the Pulp mainline.
Find it: YouTube

8
moments where you ROSIE FRATER-TAYLOR
think, Right, I don’t
fucking need to do
HEARTBEAT
anything else now!” Languid, finger-picked grooves from a wispy
● His Lordship presence tiptoeing over the heated coals of
decided to approach modern R&B.
the job as an art Find it: streaming services
project: “We’re

9 DJ HARRISON LIL BIRDIE

going to be these
Gilbert and George Butcher Brown’s Devonne
characters, who
wear suits and play Harris brings a lo-fi jazz-funk
rock’n’roll really fast cover of Vince Guaraldi’s
and say nothing.” theme for Woodstock, the bird
from the Peanuts cartoon.
KEY TRACKS Find it: YouTube
John Johnson, Woody Rankin

● All Cranked Up
Buzzkill
10
●
● Jackie Works For JANE WEAVER
The NHS LOVE IN CONSTANT SPECTACLE
Resonant, aluminium electronic rock:
sounds like Eleanor Friedberger fronting
Silver Apples.
Find it: streaming services

MOJO 25
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 THE MOJO INTERVIEW

A Grammy-winning
powerhouse with a Southern
gothic back story, she put
Alabama Shakes on ice to blaze
her own genre-bending trail,
jamming with Macca, Prince
and, um, Thunderbitch. What’s
she learned? “Soul bands party
hardest,” says Brittany Howard.
Interview by BILL DEMAIN • Portrait by ALYSSE GAFKJEN

HE VINTAGE SEEBURG JUKEBOX IN THE By the time Howard was 19, she was a fully-formed musical
lounge of Nashville’s Sound Emporium is stocked polymath, jamming with locals Zac Cockrell (bass), Heath Fogg
with records that have been made at the studio (guitar) and Steve Johnson (drums). Alabama Shakes’ 2012 de-
since producer Jack Clement opened the doors in but Boys & Girls was an earth-moving wonder. Millions sold, Gram-
1969. G5 is We Gotta Get You A Woman by Todd mys, famous fans from Prince to McCartney. Its follow-up, Sound
Rundgren. H1 is The Gambler by Kenny Rogers. & Color, seemed to assure a long, bright future. But when the songs
J9 is Caleb Meyer by Gillian Welch. But the jukebox’s ‘Artist Of The wouldn’t come for a third album, Howard pivoted away to record
Week’ – head shot tucked behind the front panel’s glowing blue her solo debut, Jaime.
glass – is Brittany Howard. Still sensitive to her bandmates, she frames her solo path by say-
“That’s just something they do for whoever’s working in Studio ing, “I want to make sure I do it the right way and be respectful of
A,” Howard tells MOJO, as we settle in for our interview. She’s be- my brothers, because I love them very much. There’s not really any
ing modest. Her relationship with the studio is deep and symbiotic, bad blood between us. What drove me was following the muse.”
stretching back to Alabama Shakes’ second album Sound & Color, In contrast to her dynamo stage persona, Howard is laid-back
through a limited-edition EP, Live At The Sound Emporium, in and polite in conversation, frequent laughs rippling through a voice
2020, and her latest solo release, What Now, a stirring divine-soul with just the hint of a twang. Dressed casual, with curls spilling out
meditation on love in uncertain times. from a ‘Fishing Rodeo’ ball cap (she’s passionate about angling), and
Post-pandemic, Howard has split her time her dachshund pup Wilma snoozing on her lap,
between Nashville and Taos, New Mexico. She WE’RE NOT WORTHY Howard softly holds forth, reminding us at every
calls the South her “happy place – with barbe- turn how single-minded she’s always been. “I’m
cue and a train always nearby”. She also likes Drive-By Trucker a creative person. It’s something I never could
being close to her parents, who live in Athens, Patterson Hood gives deny. And it’s something I can’t squander.”
Alabama, an hour-and-a-half down Route I-65. all his love.
“I was one of the very first What was the first music that really moved you?
Howard was born there in 1988 and started people to fall in love with When I was a little kid, I would sit in this blue chair
singing at the preternatural age of three. At eight, Brittany: Alabama Shakes my grandma had and I’d spin around while my
Alysse Gafkjen, Getty

she lost her older sister Jaime to a rare form of
eye cancer. That tragedy was a defining life mo-
ment – she calls Jaime “my greatest teacher” –
one that’s had a huge bearing on her art.
opened for our band in
2011 before their first LP
came out. Her growth as
an artist since has been
mind-blowing. She’s one of the greatest
live performers of her generation.”
sister played piano. I remember being so moved
by that. I got really lost in it. Then, my grandma
really liked Elvis Presley, so we listened to his
records a lot. Also, The Supremes, and a lot of
doo wop groups. ➢

MOJO 29
 ➣
Didn’t you make your singing debut at
the age of three?
Yeah, my mom and dad both worked, so I’d
stay with my Great Aunt Linda and Uncle Don,
and he had a bluegrass band. They’d rehearse
in his woodworking shop. I’d go out there to
listen, and they passed the microphone to me.
I just sang Hound Dog and Wild Thing ’til
my little throat was sore! Then my Great
Aunt came and got me and I had to go to
bed (laughs).
At three, most kids are just forming their
first four-word phrases.
Oh no, I was talking when I was two! At three,
I could sing. I knew all the songs, and I loved
the attention.
You grew up in Athens, Alabama, where
your family lived in a junkyard. What was
that like?
We had this beautiful property back off the
road, on a hill, like a field with pine trees and a
creek. My dad is a used car salesman, so the
perimeter of it became a junkyard. There were
cars stacked on top of cars, random parts,
radiators, wheels, you name it. On the inside,
it was like a farm. We had geese, ducks,
chickens, turkeys, goats and a pig called
Nugget. It was a super fun way to grow up.
Did small-town Southern attitudes make it
difficult for you, as a child of biracial parents,
who as you’ve said, “didn’t look like the
popular girls”?
Yeah, but I was a happy kid. At least until my
sister got sick. She had retinoblastoma, a cancer
of the eye. She was 13 when she passed, and
there was like a big rain cloud that just came
over our family, and wasn’t removed for a very
long time. My parents dealt with their grief as
best they could, but that kind of left me out.
So I was a lonely kid, for sure. And I feel like
that’s what led me to music, because I created
my own world on my own terms. Nobody told
me how to do it or where I was going. It was
something I could control.
You began teaching yourself guitar at age 11?
There was no money for lessons. My sister had a
guitar that she’d played – a big heavy Les Paul
rip-off. I don’t know where it came from. I
started learning on that, then started learning
keys, bass, and drums. I really wanted a band
and knew that the kids in school were either too
old to be in a band with me, or too established.
So I needed to learn all the instruments so I
could teach kids my age how to play (laughs).
Around that time you saw a local group
perform. Was that a turning point?
At my school, East Limestone High, we had
this old gym with a stage. Some of the kids
organised a concert. Their band was called
Stone Phillips. Heath [Fogg], who was later in
The Shakes, was playing this gold Les Paul, and
it blew my mind. They were doing popular
songs. Kids were dancing and singing along.
I remember I stopped dancing and it’s all just
computing in my brain. I’m like, Oh my God, this
is what I want to do! From the very next day,
that’s all I thought about, and for the following
rest of my life, that’s all I’ve thought about.
You were in a few bands before Alabama
Shakes.
There were so many. One was Kerosene Swim
Team. We didn’t have any songs, but we had
merch, like shirts and cups. Another one was
called Madame Tandoori’s Hammer House,
which was prog rock. There were like eight of us
in that band. By then, I’d gotten into Pink Floyd,
Black Sabbath, Yes, all these foundational
records. And I was already off into composition
and creating my own things. But the constant
in all those early groups was Zac [Cockrell].
That seems like the most important,
enduring relationship in your life…
We just loved music and putting songs together,
loved the way it felt. For both of us, it was like a
place of safety. We were both very serious about
it from an early age, and he’s always been my
musical confidant.
Alabama Shakes came together in 2009.
What were the early stages like?
We were just called The Shakes at first. I lived in
a double-wide trailer with my dad at the time,
and behind the trailer he had a single-wide
trailer. It was empty, with no electricity, so all
of us got together, decorated it, ran extension
cables to it, and that became our little jam
space. Eventually, I moved in with my mother
into this big grey house, and that’s where The
Shakes really began, rehearsing every Tuesday
and Thursday.
How did you end up with that classic
Southern soul sound?
The only thing that we could all agree on
was soul music! Steve [Johnson] was a rock
drummer. So we’re playing soul music that
incorporates more garage-y elements. But
it was totally natural, because we all liked
different kinds of music. That’s how the sound
formed, just trying to find something we could
agree upon.
What do you remember of the famous
first gig, at The Brick Deli & Tavern [in
Decatur, Alabama]?
People had never seen a group like us before.
Zac had a little funny moustache. Steve’s back
there wearing a Boston Celtics jersey. Heath
looks like he’s a clean-cut, fine young man. And
then I walk up, this tall black woman with curly
hair. People are like, “Um, what’s this gonna
sound like?” But we rocked the house for 30
minutes. And I blacked out the whole time,
I was so nervous. When we finished, they
handed us two hundred dollars each. And
I’m like, Oh my God, we get money too?!
You worked many jobs during that period –
making sandwiches at Cracker Barrel,

ALIFE
A LIFE IN PICTURES
PICTURES
True Britt: Howard down the years.

1 Sweet home Alabama:

young Brittany saddles up.
“At three, I could sing. I loved
7 “In my leather jacket and
wig, I was Thunderbitch“:
Howard discovers an alter ego
the attention,” she says. in her 2015 side-project.

2 Soul shakedown party:

Alabama Shakes (from left)
Steve Johnson, Zac Cockrell,
8 The gong show: Alabama
Shakes (from left) Fogg,
Howard, Johnson and Cockrell
Howard, Heath Fogg and Ben collect four Grammys in 2016.

9
Tanner, Sasquatch Festival, “My main focus is always:
Gorge Amphitheatre, George,
Washington, May 27, 2012.
let’s do something that’s 2 3
really challenging”: Brittany
3 Having a ball: Brittany
and father Kywanie
Howard, New York,
shakes things up, 2011.

December 6, 2012.

4 Taking it to the
stage: Howard
on-stage at Bonnaroo
Music & Arts Festival,
Manchester, Tennessee,
June 7, 2012.

5 Having a Fab time:

Courtesy of Brittany Howard, Getty (7)

performing Get
Back with Paul
McCartney, Lollapa-
looza, Grant Park,
Chicago, July 31, 2015.

6 Gimme all your love:

Howard and Patti
Smith, backstage at
Carnegie Hall, NY, 2017. 1

30 MOJO 4
picking up roadkill for the city sanitation
company, delivering mail for the Postal
Service. Did that give you a healthier
perspective when you became a full-time
musician?
Yes. Once we started having success, I never
took it for granted. I’m still like, every time I
take a shower, Woo, hot water! Or when I buy
expensive veterinary cat food, I’m like, Look at
me. But more than that, I feel like being a car
salesman’s daughter shaped my perspective.
Because everybody has an angle. And it’s that
way in the music business. You’re looking at
these people like, What do you want
from me? Heath was a huge part of
all in the space of a year. Had you ever
travelled abroad before?
I hadn’t even travelled in the States. On the
first van tour, our manager gave me a camera
as a gift, and I was taking pictures of
everything. I remember going to Arizona
and I was shocked that it was cold in the
desert at night. I remember driving through
Washington, and I’d never seen mountains
with snow on top. It blew my mind. I’d never
seen a big city. I remember thinking New York
City would be like Ghostbusters 2 or Coming
To America, kind of a dangerous place. So I
We walk into Paisley Park, this big warehouse,
and they’re showing the film Madagascar,
projected on the walls. We’re like, Hmm, OK…
There were some rules. No meat, no cussing,
no video. It was all a little strange. We did a
soundcheck, then his assistant said, “Prince
would like to meet you.” I said, “C’mon, y’all!
Because I’m not going by myself!” There were
15 of us in this little studio. Prince is sitting
there, wearing all linen. We all smoosh ourselves
onto this couch and he was so nice, and really
funny. He said, “I’d like to play Gimme All
Your Love with you tonight.”
So later, we’re on-stage
playing our set, we get to the song,

“My sister was 13

making good decisions in The
Shakes. I always called him Abraham
Lincoln, because he likes to take his
time and think about stuff. Thank
God for him. Because that’s what
when she passed, and
put us on the right path. It all
happened so fast.
and Prince is not showing up.
I’m like, “Did he change his mind?
Are we not doing a good job?”
We keep repeating the bridge.
It’s getting a little awkward. All
there was like a big of a sudden, this guy in a green
crushed-velvet suit, with an Afro,

rain cloud that just

After you’d recorded a few
songs in Oxford, Mississippi,
one of them, You Ain’t Alone,
fell into the hands of the blog
Aquarium Drunkard.
came over our family.”
This guy sent an e-mail, saying, “I’d
love to put the song on my blog.” I thought,
I don’t know what a music blog is, but OK.
The next morning, my whole inbox was totally
full. People from LA, New York, England, people
from the other side of the planet, saying,
“Hey, I heard your song! What do you guys
want to do?” It was like a movie. I’m calling
the guys, going, We gotta talk. It’s blowing
up over here.
Patterson Hood from Drive-By Truckers
introduced you to his management
company, and things really came together.
You made the first album in Nashville,
signed with ATO, had a Top 5 album and
a Grammy nomination, toured the world,
brought a taser with me that first time (laughs).
What did you do with your first big
royalty cheque?
We toured for a year before I spent any money.
I remember calling my accountants and saying,
“Hey, excuse me, do I have any money I could
buy a house with?” “Oh God, yes.” So I bought
this place in Athens. Nothing crazy. Just a house
in the woods, but mine. I remember it being
so meaningful. I could put my pots and pans
where I wanted them.
In 2015, right after the release of Sound &
Color, you jammed on-stage with Prince
at Paisley Park. What was that like?
sunglasses and a green guitar
jumps onto the stage from below.
And the stage is at least six-feet
tall. Vooomp! He’s right there, and
just starts shredding. I’m looking
at him in utter disbelief. The crowd’s
going crazy. And then we were
double soloing, in harmony. We go for about
five minutes, finish, he kisses me on the cheek,
and he leaps into the darkness and I never
saw him again. Literally, he just disappeared,
like a fairy would!
And didn’t he want to collaborate on a song
with you?
He called me, and he had a super-deep voice
(imitating Prince), “Did you have a good time
tonight?” “Yes, it was amazing, thank you so
much, Prince.” “All right, check your e-mail, we
should work together.” So I checked every
e-mail account I had – Gmail, Yahoo, AOL – every
single day, and I never heard from him. And the
next thing I know, he’d passed away. ➢

6 8 MOJO 31
 ➣
Around that time, you played Get Back
with Paul McCartney at Lollapalooza…
Growing up, I thought of The Beatles the same
way I did classical music. And you kind of take it
for granted. Obviously, they’re incredible. But I
didn’t have a Beatles phase. So when I met Paul,
I wasn’t freaking out. He’s such a lovely person,
and so good at disarming people, I feel like I
learned a lot from him in that small amount of
time on how to be a known musician. When we
went on stage, the thing that was in my head
was, Don’t fuck this up, because there’s 80,000
people out there who can play this song. It’s
funny though, when I started to play the solo,
so did his guitarist Rusty. And I’m like, Hey, wait,
I got it, I got it! Oh, OK, I guess it’s a double solo.
Listening to Sound & Color now, it’s
interesting to hear you already moving
away from the Southern soul template,
especially on songs like Dunes. Were you
feeling growing pains?
I’m very proud of our first album. We didn’t
expect it to be so successful, and didn’t expect
for people to immediately start labelling us as a
throwback soul act, because there was so much
more that we had. By the time we got to Sound
& Color, it would’ve been very easy for us to redo
what we did before, and for it probably to be
successful. But I was more interested in doing
something new and exciting.
That said, you’ve admitted that those songs
didn’t come easy, and then didn’t come at all
for what would’ve been the third Shakes
album. What was preventing you from
finding your creative flow?
I can only speak for myself. We were tired
and working so hard. Everybody was starting
families and getting married, and I wasn’t. I was
very focused on what creatively I wanted to do
next. I wanted to go fast. I was doing other types
of music. That’s how I like it. It just felt a bit
stagnant, like it wasn’t coming to us as a group.
As a way to scratch that itch, you collabo-
rated with the guys from Clear Plastic Masks
for the side-project album Thunderbitch…
I love Thunderbitch so much. I’ll still listen to it
and get super-hyped. I was listening to
Television and Ramones and all that late-’70s
New York music. It wasn’t like reinventing the
wheel, but who cares, it was so fun. We’d just
get some beers and start jamming. I would
sketch out these little songs – simple rock’n’roll.
Then we started booking shows, doing photo
shoots and creating characters. In my leather
jacket and wig, I was Thunderbitch. Brittany
Howard was not in that band!
When you finally decided to take a hiatus
from Alabama Shakes, what was that
meeting like?
It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. There
were a lot of emotions. Our lives changed
together. That doesn’t happen often. And it’s
not lost on me. I’m so grateful for everything
I learned from them. I feel like The Shakes
blessed everybody in a different way.
Will you ever reunite?
I don’t want to talk about it like it’s over. This is
where we are for now.
Zac is still with you on your solo albums.
Do you stay in touch with Heath and Steve?
Our relationship has always been kind of periph-
eral. We check in on birthdays and holidays.
And every Father’s Day, I get in touch, because
they’re both great fathers and they love their
kids so much. I want to celebrate that.
Alysse Gafkjen
After that meeting, you took a cross-country
road trip with your partner.
When we first started touring, I said, “I want to
32 MOJO
play a show every night, for ever!” After a few
years, it was like, Um, I think my adrenal glands
are done. My nervous system is shot. I was
young, so I didn’t take care of myself. I was just
out there hitting it with a crazy-ass soul band.
Soul bands party hardest. Not rock’n’roll bands,
soul bands. There’s something wrong with them
(laughs). So I needed to go live. We went on a
trip, stopped at all the national parks, went
fishing, saw beautiful vistas, met beautiful
people. And I slept like a baby every night.
Speaking of fishing, there’s an Instagram
account dedicated to your love of the sport.
I’ve been fishing my whole life. Down in
Alabama, you can go to catfish ponds, pay
five dollars, and whatever you catch, they’ll
clean them for you, then you take them home
and fry them up. So we’d do that as a family.
Now, I have a boat, three kayaks, a canoe,
two inflatable kayaks – I’m basically an
outfitter (laughs). I have more rods and reels
than I have guitars. Fishing just grounds me.
And there’s a connection between fishing
and songwriting. You can prepare all you
want to write a great song. Doesn’t mean it’s
going to happen. But you got to show up,
because how else are you gonna catch it?
GREAT BRITTANY
Howard’s way, in three
albums. By John Mulvey.
HOLD ON, I’M COMIN’
Alabama Shakes
★★★★
Boys & Girls
(ROUGH TRADE/ATO, 2012)
Howard and her bandmates
grew up an hour from Muscle
Shoals, but were mostly
oblivious to the fact the
music they loved was
made just down the road.
Rousing Stax-ish belters aligned to garage
rock clang made for a striking debut – check
the Otis melodrama of You Ain’t Alone –
though perhaps not a formula to be
repeated indefinitely.
BABY I’M A STAR
Alabama Shakes Your first solo album Jaime grew out of you
writing a memoir. Were you actually
★★★★ thinking of doing a book?
Sound & Color
(ROUGH TRADE/ATO, 2015) I just keep living life and more amazing things
The name on the label is still
keep happening, so I’m still writing the memoir.
Alabama Shakes, but the It was too early to tell the story.
band’s second album was You named the LP in honour of your sister.
closer in vibe to solo Howard
than its predecessor; note She taught me how to draw, how to write
breakout hit Don’t Wanna poetry. She showed me all types of art and
music too. As kids, we were listening to The
Fight, a clear antecedent of What Now’s title
track. Futuristically-inclined, Prince-adjacent Presidents Of The United States Of America,
Michael Jackson, Prince and Garbage. She had
funk-rock (with a surprise Ramones-y detour on
super-cool taste.
The Greatest), produced by Dylan and Joni
sideman Blake Mills.
Where did she get it from?
MOVE ON UP! She was a very special creature. I’ve still
never met anyone like her. Whatever she
Brittany Howard wanted to do, she figured out how to do it.
★★★★ She went blind when I was 7, and she learned
Jaime braille, so she could still read. She still made
(COLUMBIA/ATO, 2019) her art. That’s why I say she’s my greatest
A solo album that made good teacher. Nothing stopped her spirit from
on all the promise of Sound & doing whatever she wanted to do. It’s really
Color, with Howard asserting easy to complain about things in life. But
her full psych-soul range: a seeing her do that, it made me really
little Curtis Mayfield here; a determined as a person.
touch of Erykah Badu there;
Seeing the title of the new album, What Now,
even an echo of Jeff Buckley on Short And
Sweet. More flexible, too: the recruitment of I thought, That’s the question we’ve all
jazz drummer Nate Smith freed up Howard to been asking ourselves every day for the
experiment with beats on the likes of 13th past three years.
Century Metal.

“I feel like being a car salesman’s daughter shaped
my perspective. Because everybody has an angle.”
Exactly. What a wild time we’re living in. Instant
access to all information at all times. We’re
absolutely numbed out. It feels like that, every
day – What now? I mean, aliens – that kind of
came and went. Government’s like, “There
might be some aliens.” And we’re like, Meh,
whatever (laughs).
Structurally, it puts me in mind of records
like Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On and
Curtis Mayfield’s Roots, where the songs are
offered up like visions or prayers.
I’m not into evangelising. To each their own
is what I believe. Don’t hurt nobody. What I
experienced as a child and as a family, losing
my sister, we had to find something to hang
onto. It wasn’t organised religion. It was
something intangible that I knew was there.
Something encouraging, positive and hopeful.
So I work very closely with that divine kind of
creation energy. There’s a season for everything.
Sometimes there’s a season for living, and that’s
why I like to wait a few years between projects,
because I don’t want to be talking out of my ass.
I want to know how I feel. To me, that’s art
– when I’m talking about my life and something
I’ve experienced, I hope that someone listening
can connect to it.
The singing on the new record is
remarkable. The layering, the different
characters you take on – it’s like one voice
with many dialects.
Sometimes you need a flute. Sometimes you
need a trombone. They’re just instruments. I
think of vocal harmonies as fabric you wrap
around you. It’s a visceral thing. There’s always
the correct way to do harmonies, a formula, and
it’ll sound really nice if you do it that way. But
what if we did something more strange that
made you feel kind of icky? That’s what I go for.
Before an album release, are you obsessive
about checking how many people have
watched the video or streamed the single?
No, I don’t have enough room for that to take
up space, and never have. Even when someone
was like, “Wow, you won a Grammy,” I’m like,
That’s great, I have to go scoop the litter-box.
Life goes on. I love Grammys, my parents love
Grammys. They have my Grammys. Those
awards are not about me. They’re for my
Baby love: Howard
relaxes at home in
front of her childhood
favourites, Nashville,
October 25, 2023.
ancestors and people in my community who
were never seen or never celebrated.
You’re 35. Do you see yourself recording and
touring until you can’t?
I’ve come to a place in my life where it’s like,
Music is fun. I really enjoy it. I want to keep it
precious. But in the future, I’m going to be
getting into different ways of being creative,
which I can’t really speak on now. I just have
things in the works. My main focus is always:
let’s do something that’s really challenging.
One of your songs comes on the radio. Do
you turn it up or turn it off?
Depends on the song. I don’t want to hear Hold
On [from Boys & Girls] right now (laughs). But I
like the deep cuts. My favourite song I’ve ever
written is probably To Be Still, on this new
record. I just think the sentiment is so sweet.
I love Short And Sweet from the last album. If
I hear one of those, they’re getting turned up.
Any final words?
End war all over the planet. Explore Transcen-
dental Meditation. Let’s heal the world. M
MOJO 33
 Children of the damned:
AC/DC in 1976 (from left)
Bon Scott, Phil Rudd,
Malcolm Young,Angus
Young, Mark Evans.

34 MOJO
 DE ST S C H O O L O F HARD KNOCKOSN,
O WN UNDER’S HAAR E . LOOKING BACKAND
S AGO, FR O M D R E XC EL L EN C
FIFTY YEAR TAVISTIC RIFF-PURVEYORS P IE SIMMONS FINDS A BAND – D,
Chris Capstick/Shutterstock

ROSE AC DC, AH AND EARLY STRUGGLES, SYLV D T H EIR M O N UMENTAL SOUN

THEIR BIRT O ST UC K TO TH EIR GUNS, AN
O A D EF IN ING CATASTROPHE,
A SINGER – WHIMES AND BAD, ON THE ROAD TED: “ROCK’N’ROLL WAS WHAT
THROUGH GOOIN DT U TH THAT MATTER GRAPH BY CHRIS CAPSTICK.
H E O N E TR
KNOW G T DE PEOPLE HAPPY.” PHOTO
MA MOJO 35
 Then there was rock: AC/DC hit
CBGB, New York, August 24, 1977
(from left) Malcolm Young, Bon
Scott, Phil Rudd, Angus Young
and new bassist Cliff Williams.
ATE AUGUST, 1977. IT WAS QUIET ON THE ROOF
of the Hyatt House – or the Riot House, as the infamous
Sunset Boulevard hotel was known to visiting rock bands.
A little chilly too in the early hours of the morning af-
ter a show. On a sunlounger by the rooftop pool Angus
Young nursed a cup of tea and lit a cigarette from the stub
of the last one. A few feet away, his brother Malcolm
swigged from a bottle of beer. AC/DC had
just played their first gig at the Whisky
A Go Go. Ear-splitting, good-time rock,
the small but enthusiastic crowd cheering
as Bon Scott, the wiry, tattooed, topless front man,
scooped tiny Angus onto his shoulders, jumped off-stage, and pa-
raded him through the audience, Angus continuing to play guitar
– despite, as he told me later, an enthusiastic fan leaving teeth marks
on his private parts.
They’d promised me an interview back at the hotel, but Scott
had disappeared. Now, finally, here he was, making an entrance, still
shirtless, a shark’s tooth dangling from his ear, a bottle of bourbon
in one hand, each of his arms wrapped around a woman, and grin-
ning like a Cheshire cat.
It was AC/DC’s first US tour and the first of more than a score of
times I interviewed them over the years. First time I saw them play,
too. What were they like? I’ll let Ozzy Osbourne answer. “There’s
no other band in the world like them. A meat and potatoes band.
No bollocks. No fucking around.” Or Tony Iommi: “Probably the
finest rock band. They’ve stuck to their guns.”
The foundation of their songs was, and has remained, the three
or four-chord, blues-boogie, American roots rock’n’roll they grew
up on. Like the folk singers in the ’60s who treated Harry Smith’s
Anthology Of American Folk Music as Bible and template, Malcolm
and Angus Young revered Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Muddy Wa-
ters and Jerry Lee Lewis. Subsequently they’d unite the tribes of
rock affiliation – punk rock, heavy metal, even alternative – in ad-
miration of their minimalist purity, contained intensity and rarely-
Bob Gruen
dulled cutting edge. Fifty years later – through tragedy and trauma,
the deaths of Bon Scott and, in 2017, Malcolm Young, and in defi-
36 MOJO
ance of the ravages of time – they forge on, October 7’s stalwart
show at Power Trip in Indio, California sparking rumours of a full
tour in 2024.
“We know what we are,” Malcolm told me. “Rock’n’roll. Not
sitting around playing for yourself, climbing up your arse. We in-
tend to stay that way.” And they did.
T EN POUND POMS THEY CALLED THEM, THE BRITS
that left the UK for a new life in the sunny Antipodes at the
end of WWII. In 1945 the Australian government, looking
for workers to man its new post-war industries, launched an ad-
vertising campaign in the UK. For a mere tenner, travel included,
an entire family could leave the bomb sites, ration books and lousy
weather behind. That winter had been the coldest in Glasgow in
10 years. In 1963 the Young family took them up on the offer and
moved to Sydney – housed initially in Nissen huts in a migrant hos-
tel, then in the suburb of Burwood.
It was a big family, seven boys and one girl: Stephen (born 1933),
Alex (1938), Margaret (1935), John (1937), William (1940),
George (1946), Malcolm (1953) and Angus (1955). Only the two
oldest, who’d already left home, stayed behind. All of them were
musicians or music lovers. Four of them would go pro. The first was
Alex, who played saxophone in Hamburg in a band called the Bobby
Patrick Big Six . “He went there in the late ’50s,” Angus would tell
me, “and hung around there during the Beatles time.” Brian Ep-
stein signed Alex and his new band Grapefruit to Apple in 1967,
and Alex changed his name to George Alexander, maybe forgetting
that one of his younger siblings already had that name.
“Stevie was the oldest and he played accordion,” explained Mal-
colm, “but John and Alex were the first to play guitar and it was sort
of passed down to George” – the original George – “then myself,
then Angus. It was like your toys when you’re kids – you get all your
brothers’ and sister’s hand-me-downs. Me and Angus would fiddle
on it and one of them would say, ‘Listen, if you do it this way it will
be easier for you because you’ve only got little hands.’”
Mostly it was 12-bars, three chords, Elvis or Little Richard. “We
never realised that we were learning guitar,” said Malcolm. “The
 High vaultage: (clockwise from above) Bon helps Angus go
aerial, St Albans Town Hall, August 7, 1976; (from left) Brian
Johnson, Angus and Cliff enjoy AC/DC’s return, Indio, CA,
October 7, 2023; Grapefruit with Alex Young (seated, far left)
in the company of (standing, from left) Brian Jones, Donovan,
Ringo Starr, John Lennon, Cilla Black, Paul McCartney,
January 1968; The Easybeats, 1966 (from left) Stevie Wright,
Harry Vanda, George Young, Snowy Fleet, Dick Diamonde.
guitar was always there. And we were always fighting over the use of
it. We thought that everyone was like that.”
Soon after arriving in Sydney, George Young formed a band with
four fellow European immigrants: The Easybeats. They were a suc-
cess from the outset. Their third single, pop classic Friday On My
Mind (1966), penned by George and bandmate Harry Vanda, was
an international hit. On their first UK tour, The Beatles were in
the audience. On their second, the Stones asked them to be their
opening act.
Back in Sydney, hordes of young girls descend-
ed on the family home, hoping for a glimpse of the
group. Recalled Malcolm, “I was just going into pu-
berty and we were getting all these girls, like Beatle-
mania! The Easybeats were Australia’s Beatles. Me
and Angus used to hang out there with them think-
ing, ‘This is the way to go!’ It sort of planted the seed
for us for the future.”
Neither of them told the other kids at Ashfield
Boys High School who their brother was. “This was
a roughneck school,” Malcolm said. “We never felt
comfortable.” There were a lot of fights. “I remem-
ber one day the headmaster called me out of the
class. I thought, Uh-oh, what have I done now?
He said, ‘There’s a journalist here from the
local paper who wishes to speak to you about
your big brother’s band.’ I wouldn’t do the in-
“I DON’T
terview. I said, I don’t know what to say to him, THINK THERE
I’m not in the band.” WOULD BE AN
The Easybeats broke up in 1969. Soon Mal-
colm, aged 17, was playing lead guitar in local AC/DC IF IT
bands. One was Velvet Underground – origi- HADN’T BEEN
nally from Newcastle, New South Wales, who
claimed to have independently found the name FOR BON. BON
the same way Lou Reed did, on the book by Mi- MOULDED THE
chael Leigh. The Aussie Velvet Underground CHARACTER
Getty (4)
covered songs by current rock bands including
Free and The Rolling Stones. AND FLAVOUR
OF AC/DC.”
ANGUS YOUNG
Angus also had a band, Kan-
tuckee, which morphed into Tan-
trum. It was a rock covers band
with a 50-song repertoire – Hen-
drix, Yardbirds, anything that was
loud and rocked and called for
some flashy guitar. Malcolm –
whose advice to Angus while he
was learning to play was to hit the
guitar, not tickle it – always said
his younger brother had learned to play back-to-front.
“I’d do all the flashy bits,” explained Angus, “and Mal
would say, ‘You got to do the basics first.’”
Malcolm was getting tired of Velvet Underground.
They weren’t ambitious enough. “I’d always wanted
to go to England with a band,” he said. “I was actually
paying off my Marshall amp at the time; it took eight
months. After that I went, That’s it for me, guys.”
Soon Malcolm would have his own band, and do
it his way.
I T WAS 1973 AND GEORGE HAD JUST
come back from London, where he’d been
working for three years with Harry Vanda
as a songwriting/production duo. “He told me
the only shit that was good in England was the
Faces and the Stones,” said Malcolm. “The rest
of them were all too hippy-dippy. Rock’n’roll,
he said, was what made people happy. And I
thought, Well, that’s what we grew up on…”
So Malcolm put a rock’n’roll band togeth-
er. He recruited bassist Larry Van Kriedt and
drummer Colin Burgess, and put an ad in the
local paper for a singer. Dave Evans, the Welsh
immigrant who answered it, recalled the re-
quirements were a liking for Chuck Berry, Free
and the Stones. ➢
MOJO 37
Bright sparks: (above) AC/DC’s first
photo shoot (from left) Peter Clack,
Rob Bailey, Angus, Dave Evans,
Malcolm, Sydney, July 7, 1974;
(right) getting tuff in 1975 (from
left) Scott, Young, Rudd, Young.

Bon accords: (far left) The Valentines in 1970, with

(second left) Bon Scott and (third left) Vince
Lovegrove; (middle) Scott with Fraternity’s Bruce
Howe, 1971; (above) Geordie in 1974, with future
AC/DC singer Brian Johnson (second left).

Evans didn’t know Mal- other Velvet Underground – on the Australian

➣
colm but he had heard a
lot about him from Velvet
Underground, whom Evans
had joined after Malcolm left.
But the band, as Malcolm sus-
pected they might, had packed
it in. Evans was invited over to jam
and was immediately given the job. Then
Angus’s band Tantrum broke up. A lightbulb went
off in Malcolm’s head: Angus should join his band.
As Malcolm recalled, Angus didn’t jump at the idea.
“He said, ‘I don’t know. They may not like me.’ I said,
Screw them, let’s see how it goes.” For a while they took
it in turns to play rhythm and lead guitar, but he bowed
to the inevitable. “Angus is the player. He was always the
showman of the two of us when we were kids.”
The AC/DC band name was suggested by Margaret,
their one female sibling, just before their second show.
She was responsible for Angus’s school uniform,
too, which became permanent after experiments
with Zorro, Superman and a gorilla suit.
Evans had some qualms. He thought Mal- “BON HAD
colm the better guitarist. Then there was An-
gus’s appearance – “Like Cousin Itt from the
BEEN IN ALL
Getty (2), Philip Morris/Dalle/Iconicpix, Philip Morris (2)
leg of his Sally Can’t Dance tour.
“That Lou Reed tour was his smacked-
out days,” said Malcolm, “and we didn’t have
much to do with him. He looked very shy and
timid, trying to hide from everyone. First time
I saw him he was in almost a trance-like state
and he saw Angus walking up with his school
uniform on. He took off his sunglasses and
rubbed his eyes and you could read his
mind. Like, ‘Is this really happening?’”
The first time Australian rock journalist
Stuart Coupe saw AC/DC was on that tour,
at the 2,000-seater Festival Theatre in then-
hip Adelaide. He was there to see the head-
liner, but recalled the support band. “As a
singer I thought Dave Evans was pretty im-
pressive,” says Coupe. “With the exception
of Angus, who was wearing the schoolboy
outfit, they were all wearing pink flares. It
sort of had that feel of glam rock about it.”
Evans said it was George Young’s idea that
they should ditch the jeans and T-shirts on-stage
and get an identifiable look to help sell their first

single. Before the tour AC/DC had recorded

Addams Family,” Angus said, “my hair down to
my waist.” Evans’ look was more in keeping with
the glam rock stars of the time. “He thought he
was Gary Glitter,” Angus reckoned.
AC/DC’s official first show was to a packed,
boozy audience at Chequers, a central Sydney
nightclub, on New Year’s Eve, 1973. From there
the band took off fast, playing anywhere and
everywhere, pubs and nightclubs and quite a few
gay clubs, too, thanks to their name. In 1974
they got the job opening for Lou Reed – of the
38 MOJO
THESE BANDS Can I Sit Next To You Girl, a Malcolm and Angus
WHO WANTED original produced by George and Harry Vanda,
TO COVER with George playing bass. Released in July ’74 it
made Number 50 in the Australian charts.
WHATEVER When I talked to Angus 25 years later about
WAS HIP AT AC/DC’s first release he said: “The guitars were
good, the band was good, it was just the singer. If
THE TIME. WE we could have undone anything, that would have
SAID, ‘JUST been it. We did it again later, with Bon.”
Less than a year after joining, Evans was gone
SOUND LIKE and AC/DC had a new singer.
YOU SOUND.’”
ANGUS YOUNG
 Take the high road: (left) Bon Scott on song during his last ever gig in
Australia, an impromptu appearance at the Strata Motor Inn in Sydney’s
Lower North Shore suburb of Cremorne with a one-off AC/DC line-up of
(from left) drummer Ray Arnott, Angus, Malcolm and George Young,
February 5, 1979; (below) AC/DC milk another photo opportunity during
a visit to Radio Luxembourg in London, 1976 (from left) Malcolm, Bon,
Mark Evans, Angus and Radio Luxembourg’s programme director Ken Evans.

The Valentines, where he shared lead vocal duties with the band’s co-
founder Vince Lovegrove. The Valentines were a bit Mod, a little soul.
Several of the songs they covered were written by George Young and
Harry Vanda, but their biggest hit – Top 5 – was their version of Beatle
favourite Arthur Alexander’s Every Day I Have To Cry Some.
They moved to Melbourne, more of a music biz city, and their audi-
ence grew. Then in September 1969 The Valentines were the first Aus-
tralian band to be busted for marijuana.
Each band member was fined and put
on a good behaviour bond. The reputa-
tional damage was tangible. When their
next single came out, a pop ballad called
Juliette featuring Bon on lead vocals, ra-
dio stations refused to play it.

U NDER A CLOUD, THE

Valentines regrouped for a while
as a trio, dropped their identi-
cal outfits and played heavier songs. But
with no money coming in, they called it
a day. Scott joined Fraternity, a hippy band,
and lived with them in a commune in the hills
outside Adelaide. He was its sole lead singer
and its members were older, more experi-
enced musicians. They’d make two albums
– the Doors and Stones-indebted Livestock
in 1971, and 1972’s blues and boogie-fired
Flaming Galah – and in October 1970 they

I N LOOKING FOR BON, A DOCUMENTARY

series for TV currently underway in Australia, there
are clips of Bon Scott swathed in yards of pink chiffon
like a Barbie Stevie Nicks. And with a Michael Eavis-style
chin-curtain beard. And cute and goofy like a forgotten
opened for Jerry Lee Lewis. But instead of
growing their Australian following they de-
cided to move the commune to Finchley,
north London. Bon and his new wife Irene
went with them. It was disastrous. Gigs
member of The Monkees. And the look we’re most famil- were in short supply. They tried changing
iar with: skinny, shirtless, swaggering down the street their name to Fang and playing glam rock.
with a shit-eating grin and a pair of jeans so tight he had Eventually they admitted defeat. What was
to lie down, commando, flat on the bed and have his left of the band went back to Adelaide be-
fiancée/wife/girlfriend-du-jour tug them onto him. fore breaking up. Bon’s marriage broke up
Scott used to say “Music don’t mean shit to me un- too. One of his only happy memories of the
less it’s loud,” but he’d sung and/or played drums in UK was opening for Geordie on a freezing
bands from folk to prog, psych to bubblegum before the night in Torquay and marvelling at the band’s
Young brothers came along. powerhouse singer, Brian Johnson.
He was born Ronald Scott in 1946, the same year Bandless and back doing menial jobs,
as George Young. When he was five his family became things were about to get significantly worse
Ten Pound Poms and left Kirriemuir, Scotland for for Scott, and then, miraculously,
Melbourne, then Fremantle, near Perth, Western much better. A serious motorbike
Australia. His father had drummed in a marching band, crash in the spring of 1974 left him in
so, upholding the family tradition young Ronald was enrolled a coma for three days – with a broken
as a drummer in the Coastal Scottish Pipe Band. collarbone, ribs, and worst of all for a
Since he never lost his accent, his Aussie classmates called singer, jaw.
him Bonnie, as in Bonnie Scotland. Being small for his age and Meanwhile, AC/DC were shy a
scrawny they made it their patriotic duty to beat him up regu- front man. Malcolm Young said they
larly. So Bonnie quickly developed muscles and fighting skills. fired Evans after a Melbourne show in
In March 1963, two years out of school (like Angus and Mal- September ’74. Evans said he resigned
colm he bailed once he’d turned 15) Scott was arrested because he wasn’t getting paid. Either
and charged with offences including stealing 12 gallons way, there were still dates to play and
of petrol, giving the police a false name, and underage sex no singer. AC/DC could be very prac-
Dick Barnatt/Getty, Philip Morris

– the latter charge dropped. The court sent him to Riv- tical, unsentimental even, when it came
erbank Juvenile Detention Centre where he spent nine to keeping the band going – as they would
months. He’d tell a friend that it broke his mother’s heart. prove again in 1980, the next time they lost
In 1964 Scott joined a rock’n’roll band. The Spektors their singer. Within days of Evans’ depar-
played Beatles and Stones covers, winning a big local fol- ture, Bon Scott was unveiling his unique
lowing. Bon, more of a Stones man, was the drummer nasal rasp to an AC/DC audience in Sydney,
but got to sing the odd lead. From there he moved on to announcing, “Anyone who came to see ➢

MOJO 39
BON TEMPS ROULEZ
A dirty dozen classics from Bon-era AC/DC.
HIGH VOLTAGE tempo and glowering tonalities
(Albert single, 1975)
A song with murky origins. Written
and recorded after 1974’s High
Voltage sessions, featuring new
drummer Phil Rudd, or during,
with uncredited sessioneer Tony
Currenti? The slippery boogie’s
glam residue suggests the latter.
Beyond doubt is the arrival of a
signature persona, as Bon (“Wine,
women and song!”) Scott gives
AC/DC the electric kiss of life. KC
T.N.T.
(from T.N.T., 1975)
“Oi! Oi! Oi!” High-tensile minimalism
aligned to terrace chant is a core
AC/DC manoeuvre, and here’s one
of its purest iterations. Malcolm
is all brute economy; Angus’s
withheld solo a feat of self-control.
The climax, when it finally arrives
at 3:12, is spectacularly – and,
given the iron discipline of AC/DC,
uncharacteristically – messy. JM
of WNTTM, as counter-intuitive
as Scott’s lyric about proving his
need for love by tying his baby to a
railroad track. And what, exactly,
is next to the moon? Only Scott
knew, and he’s not saying. DE
UP TO MY NECK IN YOU
(from Powerage, 1978)
Scott, Young, Young, Williams
& Rudd as ineluctable, possibly
telepathic, boogie machine, with
Bon articulating the general vibe of
clenched ecstasy from the moment
he opens his mouth at 29 seconds:
“trouble”, “strife”, “misery” etc
have rarely sounded such positive
experiences. Also noteworthy: Phil
Rudd swings like a bastard. JM
WHOLE LOTTA ROSIE
(from If You Want Blood You’ve Got
It, 1978)
Reminiscent of Muddy Waters’
Mannish Boy played allegro, Whole
➣
Dave Evans with AC/DC ain’t going to see it tonight.”
The Youngs’ first impressions of their future purveyor of lyrics
and lead vocals had been mixed. “The first time I saw Bon Scott was
on some talk show on Australian television, something to do with
some pop bloke nicking one of his songs,” Angus would recall, “and
the interviewer was being totally condescending and all of a sudden
Bon was yelling, ‘Fucking cunt!’ and leapt across the studio, diving
on top of the pop bloke. I thought, Hmm, pretty lively.”
The first time they met in person was at a club date in Adelaide
on a night off from the Lou Reed tour. A few months after Bon’s
accident, his old friend Vince Lovegrove, now a concert promoter,
had already put in a good word for him with AC/DC.
“He was hanging out, going, ‘I’m a drummer, come on, let me
bash the drums for you,’ said Angus, “and we’d go, ‘No, we’ve got
a drummer,’ and he started being our driver and roadie. Then one
night our singer wouldn’t go on and Bon volunteered. We knew he
had a good voice.”
The first thing he asked the band, was, “What do you want me to
sound like?” Explained Angus, “He’d been in all these bands who
wanted to cover whatever was hip at the time. We said, ‘Just sound
like you sound.’ He downed two bottles of bourbon with some coke
and speed and says, ‘Right, I’m ready.’”

IT’S A LONG WAY
TO THE TOP (IF YOU
WANNA ROCK’N’ROLL)
(from High Voltage, Intnl. version,
1976)
Scott insists he’ll never give up
his dream despite being “beat
up” and “broken boned”, and his
world-weary defiance makes this
the ultimate road anthem. He also
coaxed a drone out of the bagpipes,
despite never having played them
before. Sadly, the “getting old…
getting grey” lyric didn’t come to
pass in real life. MB
PROBLEM CHILD
(from Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap,
1976)
This narked fuck-you was no fiction.
Bon Scott spent time in youth
custody and doubtless knew the
song’s titular slur. The Youngs’
ricocheting guitars keep out of his
way, a sense of imminent aggro
building over a tense five-and-
a-half minutes. Lairy and lean,
Problem Child seeks revenge. JMc
LET THERE BE ROCK
(from Let There Be Rock, 1977)
Scott plays a demonic-sounding
schoolmaster on this dubious
musical history lesson. It’s so utterly
relentless (as exemplified by the
bit at 1:55 where Angus halts for a
brief moment before the pile-on
resumes), that towards the end it
sounds like every amp valve in the
classroom is going to explode. MB
RIFF RAFF
(from Powerage, 1978)
Disgruntlement at the band’s
commercial struggle was baked
into Powerage’s mood of latent
threat. On Riff Raff, however, the
Youngs’ steely instincts are pushed
to the brink, as Bon spectates for
almost two awed minutes of feral
guitar mayhem before unleashing
a ‘Mexico’-fuelled manifesto for
oblivion: “Beginning of the end?…
Too late, my friend.” KC
“I
Lotta Rosie recently acquired
a darker, sadder hue when its DON’T THINK THERE WOULD BE AN AC/DC IF IT
voluptuous heroine was confirmed hadn’t been for Bon,” Angus told your writer in one of our
to be Rose-Maree Carroll, a
Tasmanian sex worker who died
early interviews. “You might have got me and Malcolm
of a heroin overdose in 1979 aged doing something but it wouldn’t have been what it was. Bon mould-
22. Scott’s lyrics have ‘different ed the character and flavour of AC/DC. He was one of the dirtiest
times’ written all over them, but fuckers I know. Everything became much more down to earth and
his appreciation is clear. JMc
straight ahead with Bon.”
TOUCH TOO MUCH Scott did worry about the age gap. At 28, he was considerably
(from Highway To Hell, 1979)
older than his bandmates. But there was an upside, says their friend
Touch Too Much demonstrates how
AC/DC singles are often musical
Tana Douglas. “George and Harry could relate to Bon because they
Trojan Horses: filthy hard rock songs knew him from The Valentines. And Bon had success before, so he
with a distracting pop chorus – don’t knew what it took and also how it could affect you.”
listen to that, listen to this. But no Douglas was AC/DC’s roadie – arguably the first female road-
big melody or any amount of studio
gloss can diminish the rhythm ie in rock. When their new manager Michael Browning rented a
section’s ominous stomp and that house for them all to live in on Lansdowne Road in Melbourne,
horrible hooligan chorus. MB
Douglas moved in too.
HIGHWAY TO HELL “I loved living in that house,” she says. “Yeah, people would
(from Highway To Hell, 1979) come over and all that stuff would go on” – the stuff that would
“I’m on my way to the Promised inspire songs like The Jack, AC/DC’s STI singalong. “We’d all sit
Land,” avers Scott. On paper, hell for hours playing album after album after album and everyone had
still wasn’t a bad place to be, but
AC/DC’s ultimate anthem was input, me too. They were all getting to know each other, the whole
actually inspired by touring burn- bonding experience, and working together, whether it was working
out. New producer Mutt Lange on new music or new lyrics.”
polished, but didn’t censor. “It
stuck out like a dog’s balls”, noted
When they weren’t playing shows they were working on their
Malcolm of Angus’s opening riff. JMc debut album at home. “The band didn’t have a permanent rhythm
section at that point,” says Douglas. “George would play bass and
IF YOU WANT BLOOD Malcolm or Bon would play drums. George and Harry were help-
(YOU'VE GOT IT)
(from Highway To Hell, 1979)
ing the band with the developmental and production side.”
“It was about six months,” said Malcolm of the
Lange found a broader,
brighter sound for AC/DC
that ushered in still greater
success. Here, reverb and
the producer’s breathing
tips transform Bon into
SuperBon, and the
hard minimalism that
once defined the band
is adjusted to arena-
size. Not the only
AC/DC track
you wish didn’t
fade out. DE
In sleeveless denim: Mark
Blake, Keith Cameron,
Danny Eccleston, James
McNair, John Mulvey

WHAT’S NEXT
TO THE MOON
(from Powerage, 1978)
AC/DC’s identification with
heavy metal sometimes
obscures what they are: a band
apart. Case in point: the sludge
 Lansdowne Road period, “but that six
months was six years’ worth of stories. We
were all poor” – the manager gave them all
$60 a week, Douglas included – “but you
name it, it happened. People were knock-
ing on our door all the time, people bring-
ing in meals for us, hearing us rehearse.”
Within three weeks of Scott joining,
AC/DC were ready to record. High Volt-
age, the original Australian version released
in 1975, was cut with their live rhythm section Rob Bai-
ley and Peter Clack and produced by George Young and
Harry Vanda, whose label Albert Productions released it.
There was still a tinge of glam rock – some of the songs
were from the Evans era with lyrics tweaked by Scott.
They moved to a house in Melbourne’s red light district,
making more new interesting friends. And even more
when T.N.T., their second album for Albert Produc-
tions, started climbing the charts. Their first with their
new bassist Mark Evans and drummer Phil Rudd, it was
a more honed, blues-and-boogie proposition.
“When they played our record on the radio all of a
sudden we had what The Easybeats had when we were
kids,” said Malcolm. “All the women outside. And in-
side! There’d be a knock on the door at 3am and three
waitresses off of work at one of the clubs, with a couple
of bottles of booze and a bag of dope and everything
that came with it. The cops would come around because
of the noise and they’d end up going, ‘Can I play the
drums?’ and you could smell the dope in the air, but
they knew we were harmless and let us alone.”
T HEY LEFT THEIR NEW HOME TO
fulfil Malcolm’s ambition to make it in London.
“You had to go to England if you wanted to do
anything,” he said. Renting a house in Barnes, they
played their first gig on April 23, 1976 at the Red
Cow in Hammersmith. The first of their two
Fin Costello/Getty (2), Eric Mistler/Dalle/IconicPix, Ron Pownall/Getty
shows had a meagre crowd but the second was
packed with students and apprentice punks.
“Punk arrived about the same time we did,” said
Malcolm. “John Peel was playing our first cou-
ple of records and calling us an ‘Antipodean punk
band’. We ain’t punk, we’re rock’n’roll.”
AC/DC opened, then headlined, at the Mar-
quee, played some European dates then returned
to Melbourne to work on a new album. The sys-
tem was always the same: the Young brothers
would write the music and Bon Scott would drink
a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and write lyrics.
The international version High Voltage, re-
leased on Atlantic in April 1976, contained tracks MALCOLM YOUNG
On the way to the promised land: (from left) Angus takes Bon for a ride; the band enjoy a break during
the recording of Highway To Hell, London, 1979 (from left) Bon, Malcolm, Phil, Angus, Cliff; on-stage
Powerage at the Orpheum Theatre, Boston, October 9, 1978; wild-cat Bon Scott in Paris, 1979.
from their first two Aussie albums. It was followed in Sep-
tember by Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap, but only in Eu-
rope and Australia. Atlantic, unhappy with the album, was
threatening to drop the band. It would go
on to sell more than six million, still rank-
ing among AC/DC’s greatest successes.
1977 brought Let There Be Rock. Then, in
1978, came Powerage, their first with new
bassist Cliff Williams, Mark Evans having
been fired on a tour supporting Black Sab-
bath. It remains the ultimate distillation of
AC/DC before the possibility of a broader
audience altered their songwriting MO –
almost mantric in its obeisance to the riff.
It was also, to Malcolm’s fury, their
last with Vanda/Young. Their US label in-
sisted they make their next album in Florida with Eddie
Kramer, the Hendrix, Traffic and Led Zeppelin engineer
who’d produced recent hit albums for KISS. They did
not get along at all. Their manager called Boomtown
Rats producer Robert John ‘Mutt’ Lange – soon to be
synonymous with mega-selling ’80s hard rock – who
rode in like the cavalry. Once they got to Roundhouse
Studios in London, things went swimmingly. “It was
done in three weeks,” said Malcolm. “Mutt knew that
simplicity was best. I think it’s Mutt’s favourite album.”
Highway To Hell was a phenomenon, its title track –
written by Scott, channelling Angus’s exasperated epi-
thet for life on the road in the US – an instant signature
song. Released in July 1979, it made the UK Top 10 and
US Top 30, going on to sell way over seven million.
Flying high, in January 1980 the band reconvened in
London. Scott was buying a flat, Angus Young was plan-
ning to get married, and they’d started rehearsing new
songs. On February 19 Angus got a phone call from one
of Bon’s ex-girlfriends. Bon was dead. After a night of
heavy drinking with a friend, he didn’t wake up.
Ten days later, Malcolm and Angus flew to Aus-
“BON’S tralia to be with Bon’s parents. As Malcolm re-
DAD SAID, called, “Bon’s dad said, ‘Whatever you do, don’t
stop. You’ve got to find someone else.’”
‘WHATEVER Turning to Brian Johnson, the singer from
YOU DO, Geordie that Bon had liked so much, AC/DC
DON’T STOP. opened another chapter. Despite a hiatus in 2016
when Johnson’s vocal duties – bizarrely, but with
YOU’VE GOT respect for the band’s brand – were performed by
TO FIND Guns N’ Roses’ Axl Rose, it is ongoing. To one de-
gree or another, they are both in debt to Bon Scott.
SOMEONE “He was one of the wildest-looking cats that I’d
ELSE.’” ever seen,” wrote Johnson, recalling the one time
their paths crossed, that night in Torquay. “But,
fuck me, the guy could sing.” M
 MOJO EYEWITNESS

BUENA VISTA
SOCIAL CLUB
RE-OPENS
FOR BUSINESS
42 MOJO
 The last bolero: Buena Vista
Social Club (from left) Eliades
Ochoa, Orlando ‘Cachaíto’ López,
Joachim Cooder, Ibrahim Ferrer,
Juan de Marcos González, Ry
Cooder and Pío Leyva performing
live at the Carré Theatre,
Amsterdam, April 1998; (right)
1997’s Grammy-winning album.

In 1996, in defiance of a US government blockade, Ry Cooder led

a recording party to Havana to bring together Compay Segundo,
Ibrahim Ferrer and other “old-time cats” of Cuban music, who
came together for a last bolero that echoed across the world.
Cut in just six days, and named for a pre-revolutionary members
club, the album was a global hit in ’97 before it was brought
United Archives GmbH/Alamy Stock Photo

to the screen by Wim Wenders in 1999. “We had authenticity,”

recall players and other principals. “We knew that something
incredible was happening.”
Interviews by DAVID HUTCHEON

MOJO 43

“YOU NEED SOMEBODY WHO
IS 90 YEARS OLD, AND GOOD.”
RY COODER
➣
Juan de Marcos González: In the 1960s,
Cuban music had become isolated, though not
our spirit of creativity, but people who were ‘old
fashioned’ fell out of favour. I played rock’n’roll
guitar in the 1960s and 1970s but then we
decided to fight the influence of the music from
outside Cuba that young Cubans were playing.
Ry Cooder: I’d been there in the 1970s, I wanted
Colaimages, Alamy Stock Photo, Sven Creutzmann/Polaris/Eyevine, TCD/Prod.DB/Alamy Stock Photo, Bridgeman Images
to learn through hanging out. Before I’d got there
they had recorded the classic repertoire. There
are a lot of songs, all of them good. And there are
different periods of songs, there’s 19th century,
then there’s the early 20th century son, the
defining Afro-Cuban form, very distinct,
song-driven rather than dance. In the old days,
percussion was a pulse that let the voices come
through. With salsa, percussion became more
dominant. Old son is a poetry culture plus a little
mystery, so the percussion is understated. When
dancing styles changed and rhythms changed
later they left the string-band instrumentation
behind and put the emphasis on horns.
JdMG: In 1972-3, South American music became
popular worldwide. I love it, but it is not ours.
My friends and I formed the group Sierra Maestra
in 1976 to fight against the music we had been
playing before – King Crimson, Jethro Tull.
We have to defend our roots first, then we can
play other people’s music. We were ‘punk’ but
a little bit hippy.
Nick Gold: I was making a record with Juan de
Marcos [Sierra Maestra’s ¡Dundunbanza!] and I
asked him about the music of Arsenio Rodríguez,
one of his favourites. And he told me that a lot of
the musicians from that era, the 1940s and 1950s,
were still alive and playing in Cuba. And he
proposed this record looking back at that era,
but using those musicians. So I suggested we also
44 MOJO
Havana laugh: (clockwise from top
left) Ibrahim Ferrer and Omara
Portuondo get close in the Buena
Vista film; keys maestro Rubén
González, 1998; easy riders: Ry and
Joachim Cooder explore the back
streets of the Cuban capital;
cigar-smoking singer Compay
Segundo in 2001; BVSC-producer Ry:
“who’d have figured a bunch of
ancient Cuban guys singing in Spanish
would come across the way they did?”
record an album of music from Oriente, the
eastern end of Cuba, with African musicians
[Malian guitarist] Djelimady Tounkara and
[Malian ngoni player] Bassekou Kouyate.
RC: Nick sent me a fax asking if I would come and
produce a record. I said, sure. The west African
guys, they like Cuban music too, there’s a whole
post-war period where they were very influ-
enced, but they have a very different feeling for
rhythm. Africans are straightforward: one-two-
three-four, one-two-three-four, kinda like we do.
But with the Cubans there’s a different emphasis.
So I told him, “I don’t know how they’re going to
work together.” Fate smoothed it out for us.
Bassekou Kouyate: I gave my passport to the
French Cultural Centre in Bamako but it came
back too late. I had written three songs for the
project, so had Djelimady, and I felt sick that we
didn’t go. And I was very upset when I heard what
they had done there and how successful it was.
JdMG: I came back to Cuba in March 1996 and
found the musicians. Mostly, they were the
friends of my daddy, who was a musician as well.
So it was people I knew as a kid, Pío Leyva,
Manuel ‘Puntillita’ Licea, Rubén González…
Rubén González: I came to live in Havana when
I was 15, in 1934. Arsenio Rodríguez heard me
playing and asked me to join his band around
1940. He liked the way I played piano and
encouraged me, but he also taught me the best
ways to play son. I played with Enrique Jorrín until
his death in 1987. After that I was never without a
job, most clubs had pianos.
JdMG: Rubén was retired, he couldn’t afford
a piano. Three days a week he would walk five
miles to another musician’s home to practise.
NG: I fell in love with Rubén as soon as I heard
him. I sent Juan de Marcos a message saying:
“Could you find someone called Rubén, who I’m
listening to on this record?” I didn’t know his
surname because I was listening to a big-band
album and the other musicians kept shouting out
“Rubén!” while he was playing. And Marcos
replied: “He is sitting next to me.”
Jerry Boys: The EGREM studio in Havana was
built in the 1950s as a studio for recording big
bands; there was a bit of rebuilding in the 1970s,
but somehow they managed to make it really
good with limited money and little access to
materials. There was an Amek Mozart mixing
console and a 24-track Studer A80 analogue
machine, which suits Cubans – they play loud
and lively – and the machine loses a little top,
which suits us.
NG: The big-band album, A Toda Cuba Le Gusta
by Afro-Cuban All Stars, was done before
Cooder got there, so everybody was warmed
up. I already knew that the Malians couldn’t
come, so I’m wondering, “What we are going to
do with the second week?”
Joachim Cooder: I was 15 or 16, so I wasn’t too
clear on what we were going to do but I was
looking forward to it. Because of the American
blockade, we had to travel through Mexico; we
came back on a plane of sunburnt tourists who
had been in Cancún. We were the only pale
people who’d spent a week in a studio, and I was
like, oh, they’re gonna find us.
RC: Going to Cuba was really highly illegal, so we
weren’t supposed to be there. Going via Mexico
didn’t make any difference because the Mexican
government had to deal with the US State
Department, who demanded they report
anybody who came through there. At a certain
point, we got into – “we” being me – trouble with

the State Department and we had to
stop going. Let’s just put it that way.
NG: Nobody wanted to leave the
studio, we had a lot of little old men
saying: “I’ve got a song.” It was the first
time a lot of them had worked for many
years. We had the rhythm section, and
pockets of musicians all around the
studio working with each other. We
had the laud player Barbarito Torres,
I’d met him on tour in England years
before, and Cachaíto on bass.
Orlando ‘Cachaíto’ López: I have
been playing bass since I was nine and
started professionally with Arcaño Y
Sus Maravillas in 1945, when I was 12.
I’ve played jazz, symphonies, with
chamber orchestras; in the 1980s I
toured with a folkloric group. I’d
recorded with Juan de Marcos, so
AJ Pics/Alamy Stock Photo, Alamy (2), Getty (7), Mike Banks, Christien Jaspars
when he started the Afro-Cuban All
Stars, I was involved. Havana is a big
city but a small place, so I knew all the
other musicians before Buena Vista.
NG: The tape machine broke so we had
a day to practise. Ry had a Dictaphone
and we’d wander round thinking, We’ll
take that, a bit of that. So you had all
these amazing musicians all proposing
their own Desert Island Discs. We had
this cream choice of repertoire from
the people who created it. Then I asked
if we could find Compay Segundo.
JdMG: Compay sold me my first guitar,
when I was 12. It was $40 in 1966!
We were very fortunate to have him
because he had a secret knowledge of
the music. He had been in bad shape,
DRAMATIS
PERSONAE
● Jerry Boys
(recording,
mixing)
● Joachim Cooder
(percussion
● Ry Cooder
(producer/
guitarist)
● Ibrahim Ferrer
(vocals)
● Nick Gold
(executive
producer)
though; he was retired and didn’t have
any money and his home didn’t have
● Rubén González any water. But he would come to my
(piano) mum’s house and knock on the walls,
which meant he wanted a coffee. Then
he got very lucky: he was 89 and he
signed a contract with Warner
Brothers in Spain.
RC: It was a question of, what do we
● Juan de Marcos want to do once we get Compay? At
González (A&R
consultant)
first he was a little uncertain but we
persuaded him. “Come down and see
if you like being with us, I think you’ll
like it.” Then we could focus on the
older styles of music, which are the
most interesting and the least known.
With Compay we had authenticity, the
● Bassekou
ability to be, not ‘more realistic’, but
Kouyate (thwarted
ngoni player) more true to the older form, which was
intriguing to me. The song itself is
interesting but you need somebody
who is 90 years old, and good. And he
was one of the finest ever to record
son, going way back.
● Orlando NG: With Compay, Ry dug a bit more.
‘Cachaíto’ López He sat next to Compay and pushed
(bassist) him further back in time to find out the
earliest songs he could remember. I
think he recognised what a great artist
Compay was and how much encyclo-
paedic knowledge he had of Cuban
music over 100 years.
● Guajiro Mirabal
(trumpet) RC: Compay was able to give us the
original Oriente sound. Nobody else in
there was nearly old enough. He was
antique as far as they were concerned.
He was around when this music
became a coherent national form.
● Omara
He remembered these old-time cats
Portuondo (vocals)
when he was living with his parents, and these
guys would come to the door wanting a cup of
coffee. That’s an unbelievable thing. Everybody’s
gone. I don’t care if it’s blues or bluegrass,
Albanian folk, whatever, you never get that in any
form. But he was there. It was incredible.
RG: In Cuban music, in son montuno, in danzón,
the notes are written but it’s the way you play
them. I concentrate on the feeling and flavour
of the music. If you want to know how I play
something you’ll have to ask me the minute I
played it. It’s not a studied thing, it just comes
spontaneously. You cannot repeat yourself.
RC: The ensemble that was there initially was
built around Rubén. So you’d say: Well, what
would Rubén like to play? I wanted to give them
the chance to play what they liked, and then
build the rest of it around that. We had people
who had different styles, people who ordinarily
might not have played together and certainly
wouldn’t have recorded together because there
were divisions between the styles and ages. So
that was the first interesting thing about Buena
Vista Social Club and one reason that it’s unique.
RG: Before [the Cuban Revolution of] 1959 we
had white, black and mixed orchestras, but
colour always controlled where they could play.
There were bands black people could not play
with, there were places I couldn’t even pass by,
let alone play. The Buena Vista Social Club was a
sociedades de negros in Havana where musicians
like me could meet and play.
JB: My brief, which came from Ry, was that he
wanted to hear what he heard sitting in the room.
I’d been pre-warned that Ry would want to hear
the studio, and I had taken a pair of mikes I like as
room mikes. Normally when making a record, I’ll
start off with the close mikes and get the ➢
MOJO 45
“I TOLD HIM I HAD RETIRED,
THEN HE OFFERED ME $50.”
IBRAHIM FERRER
➣
sound and then mix the ambient mikes in;
on this one we did it the other way around.
Reuters/Rafael Perez/Bridgeman Images, Ulrich Baumgarten/Getty Images, Sven Creutzmann/Polaris/Eyevine, Photo 12/Alamy Stock Photo
NG: On the Afro-Cuban All Stars record it was
about letting them play. On Buena Vista it was
the miking, which was mainly Cooder’s idea.
He has a very good ear for a tune, but he doesn’t
like loud congas. That was absolutely part of the
album’s success.
RC: Jerry had brought along really good
microphones, that’s something the studio didn’t
have. I wanted it to sound rich, as rich as if you can
see the room. It was the way they used to make
studios, long and narrow with a high ceiling.
Which meant that if you place the players at one
end and you put the mikes at the other end, then
the size comes into it, the resonance of the room
itself. This was a good-sounding room.
JB: Cubans don’t do quiet, that’s why there’s not
a lot of live percussion on it. We had this maracas
player, Alberto ‘Virgilio’ Valdés, who was rock
solid but had this wonderful soft sound. And one
of the keys to the record really working was
Cachaíto, the bass player.
JC: Carlos González is just an incredible bongo
player and Virgilio is a steadfast maracas player,
so it just starts going. I only brought two things
on that trip, an udu, the clay pot drum that makes
that boom-boom on Chan Chan, and a Turkish
dumbek with a little tambourine inside. You go
in to a situation with open ears and think: what
can I bring to this?
RC: Once the musicians saw we were taking care
to make them sound as good as we possibly
could, then they appreciated that. It’s comple-
mentary – then they got interested and more
involved. The trumpet was loud, so we had a
46 MOJO
problem there; we had to turn Mirabal around
and make him face the opposite direction.
Manuel ‘Guajiro’ Mirabal: I joined Swing Casino
in 1953, when I was 20, and I have never stopped
working since then. My father was director of the
Municipal Band of Melena del Sur and at home
we always studied music. For years I was playing
trumpet with Conjunto Universal, Orquesta
Cubana De Música Moderna and the Riverside
Orquesta, but when Juan de Marcos called me I
was playing the Tropicana.
NG: Most of the musicians we had were Oriente
musicians. Eliades Ochoa was from Santiago, as
was Compay, so you had the generations, the
absolute cream of Santiago. The only non-Santia-
go among the big stars was Rubén. So it all came
very natural and easy to them. The repertoire just
sort of happened day by day. I’d already put El
Carretero and El Cuarto De Tula on my wishlist,
both relatively modern tunes. Compay and
Eliades offered us Chan Chan right at the
beginning, which we fell in love with.
RC: I just happened to ask: “Does anybody sing
tenor? Do we have a bolero?” We were not
getting there, the boleros were so beautiful.
Some ballads would be a contrast, I didn’t want
everything so hyper-rhythmic and loud. And
everybody scratched their heads. So many had
died. Then the word was sent out and the word
came back: there’s a guy selling lottery tickets
down by the harbour.
NG: Rubén was playing Dos Gardenias and
Puntillita was singing it. And Ry asked: “Can we
find someone with a softer voice?” Barbarito said:
“I know who. Ibrahim Ferrer.”
Ibrahim Ferrer: I began singing in 1941, when I
was 13. I’d wanted to be a doctor but I had been
orphaned when I was 12. We moved to Havana in
1959 and Pacho Alonso asked me to join Los
Bocucos. I was also singing with Orquesta Chepin
Chovin and Benny Moré. I sang with Los Bocucos
until 1994, but I had a family to feed and only the
large orchestras were getting work.
JdMG: I went to Ibrahim Ferrer’s house and tried
to convince him. He said he was retired. I said:
“Well, you are going to make $100 for recording
one song.” “Wait for me, I’m going to be there in
half an hour.” In half an hour he was there, and
that was the real start of Buena Vista.
IF: I said no, but Juan de Marcos said he needed
me. I told him I had retired, then he offered me
$50 and I said OK. I went to the studio to record
one song. In Los Bocucos, the director had never
allowed me to sing boleros, I sang dance music.
I had lost interest in music completely until he
asked me to sing, I just earned money shining
shoes. I preferred that to making music – I didn’t
get paid doing that.
NG: When Ibrahim walked into the studio,
Eliades looked up and started playing
Candela because he knew that they were both
from Santiago.
RC: When Ibrahim Ferrer walked through the
door, I knew immediately. Whoever this guy is,
he’s got something we need. Ibrahim was the last
great bolero singer. And it went from there.
JC: There was something about his eyes.
That, and his whole persona, his whole
demeanour, and how he was with people.
So I felt very connected to him, along with a
billion other people.
 Cuban music revolutionaries: (clockwise
from left) Compay Segundo with
President Fidel Castro, March 1, 2002; on
the hood: Portuondo and Ferrer; Buena
Vista Social Club take a bow at the end of
the film; close to the edit: director Wim
Wenders (centre) shares a playback with
Ry and Joachim; barber-shop trio (from
left) Ferrer, Manuel ‘Puntillita’ Licea and
Felix Valoy, 1998.
Omara Portuondo: I was recording an album in
the studio downstairs. Juan de Marcos came and
asked if I wanted to record, I said sure. I walked
into the studio to find it full of old friends. So I
sang Veinte Años with Compay. My father was a
baseball player in America and after dinner they
would wash the dishes and sing. One of the first
songs I learnt was Veinte Años.
NG: A lot of it was spur of the moment. At the
time a lot of them were putting forward what
they wanted to sing. They didn’t seem to wrack
their brains too much. We had Omara for just a
few hours one evening, so she went and sat next
to Compay and they just started singing.
OP: I’d started singing as an amateur in 1945
when I was a student. In 1951, I joined the
Cuarteto D’Aida. We sang mambo and boleros
and were very popular with white Americans in
New York, Miami and Las Vegas, and in Mexico,
Venezuela and Puerto Rico. In Cuba we had a
residency at the Tropicana, where I met Tony
Bennett and Nat King Cole. In 1967 I became a
soloist and I’ve never stopped working.
NG: We went to three takes on some things but
never any more because Ry didn’t want to kill
the mood. So on a lot of the takes you hear,
the musicians think they are still rehearsing.
JdMG: I’m going to be honest, it’s a great album
TCD/Prod.DB/Alamy Stock Photo
of music, but it’s the music that we’ve been
playing for 100 years. So I was really proud of the
album, proud that we were able to record a good
album of Cuban music from the country. I never
thought that we would become a commercial
success. I didn’t think it was something special.
NG: We knew that something incredible was
happening. Everyone would go home at the end
of the day and play the music and it sounded
amazing. Its quality, the atmosphere of it, you
feel like you’re among the group in the room. But
it was very difficult to be objective because the
atmosphere was amazing and you never know
how much that is influencing you.
RC: Nick asked me: “So what do you think we’ve
got here?” And I said: “Well, I don’t know. I like it,
but I like a lot of things that nobody’s watching.”
There’s no parallel, not books, not cars, not
perfume. Records have a way of, if the people feel
it and go for it, it can happen overnight. Who
would have figured a bunch of ancient Cuban
guys singing in Spanish would come across the
way they did? Once the film was out, oh my god,
it’s a different story.
NG: Ry played Wim Wenders what we had
recorded in Havana, and suddenly Wim was on
board to make a documentary. The concert in
Amsterdam in 1998 was set up specifically for the
film. It was one of only three concerts where we
got the whole band back together. Then he
filmed the recording of Ibrahim’s first LP and we
got the Carnegie Hall concert together. And sales
were going up and up. And the tours were more
and more successful; then the film happened and
everything ticked over more and more.
JdMG: We went on tour the first time in 1997,
when we were not that well known. The albums
were out and we had some good audiences and
we announced the first shows and they sold out in
a couple of hours. We played London’s Hyde Park
and we got more people than Elton John, who
played the day before. We got 30,000!
NG: We caught Rubén at an amazing moment.
He hadn’t played for five
months, so Juan de
Marcos had him
rehearsing at Cachaíto’s
house, where there was
a piano. By the time we
got there he really was
on fire. His capacity to
do that didn’t last a
huge number of years. There was two years,
maybe three, when he really was good. Then he
started to slip just a little bit. But they were
playing the Royal Albert Hall and stadiums in
Germany and Mexico. And there was a wonderful
era when Ibrahim had his big band and was at his
A Buena Vista Social Club musical runs at the Linda Gross Theater in New York until January 7.
peak confidence-wise. But the golden time of it
didn’t last a huge amount of time before they
couldn’t fire on all cylinders.
OCL: The most important thing is not to be
famous but to be loved and respected by the
public. That makes me proud.
RC: It’s important to know that Buena Vista
created jobs for other musicians who were not
part of that record. All of a sudden they were
working. I always like to point that out because
some people look at me and say: “Oh, you’re a
white guy with a round-trip ticket.” I say, “Fuck
you”, because hundreds of musicians are now
working, in case people think that’s trivial in a
country that poor. Ibrahim may be one in a
million, but it made a whole lot of difference.
RG: I’ve never thought about retirement, but I
guess it will come naturally. It is unavoidable. M
Ibrahim Ferrer, Rubén González and Omara
Portuondo interviewed in 1999. Orlando ‘Cachaíto’
López and Guajiro Mirabal interviewed in 2007.
MOJO 47
 Jim Gordon was
among the most PROLOGUE
gifted and admired EN YEARS INTO HIS DRUMMING CAREER, JIM
musicians of his age, Gordon was at the peak of his powers. His scintillat-
ing Latin groove to Rikki Don’t Lose That Number
the King Midas of would soon be propelling Steely Dan into the Bill-
board Top 5 – and it was just one of many recent Jim
grooves. But when Gordon-powered hits. There was Gordon Lightfoot’s
he died in March this Sundown, Maria Muldaur’s Midnight At The Oa-
sis, Carly Simon’s You’re So Vain. And Derek & The
year, he was almost Dominos’ epic Layla, on which Gordon had played
drums and piano and scored a co-writing credit.
solely known as Gordon was the drummer other drummers wished they could be – at
once militarily precise, musically intelligent and wildly imaginative. Raised
the tormented killer in the San Fernando Valley, he’d come of age under the wing of the Wreck-
of his own mother. ing Crew’s Hal Blaine, playing on Pet Sounds, Good Vibrations, River Deep
– Mountain High and Wichita Lineman. In his pomp, he’d exasperate pro-
In this extract ducers by tuning each constituent of his ever-growing kit painstakingly, but
was as impatient with bandmates as he could be inspiring (in 1971, derisively
from a startling new offering to tune Eric Clapton’s guitar, he’d effectively ensured the dissolu-
biography, Joel Selvin tion of the Dominos). Yet the incredible, varied, signature beats he conjured,
in the studio and on the road, for the Everly Brothers, Delaney & Bonnie,
measures his genius Traffic, George Harrison, John Lennon, Harry Nilsson and more, drove the
speakers in hundreds of thousands of hi-fis.
and locates a fateful Meanwhile, he fought to conceal the illness he’d battled since childhood.
Bandmates noted bouts of anger and paranoia, and an appetite for alcohol and
turning point in drugs, including heroin, that was prodigious even in their circle, but there
his story: “Voices were occasional signs that there was more amiss. One
night, on Joe Cocker/Leon Russell’s 1970 Mad Dogs &
in his head that had Englishmen tour, Gordon had assaulted his then-girl-
friend Rita Coolidge. Later that year, in London, he’d
been murmurs were come at another girlfriend, Chris O’Dell, with a kitchen
growing louder…” knife, as if possessed. In mid ’73 he’d savagely beaten
his wife of less than six months, Renée Armand, hurling
Brian Cooke/Getty

bizarre accusations of witchcraft. Somehow, these inci-

PORTRAIT BY dents had gone unreported, their underlying causes un-
confronted. But, as Joel Selvin picks up the story, things
Brian Cooke. were at last beginning to unravel… ➢

48 MOJO
Rhythm king: Jim Gordon
in Traffic, rehearsing at
Fairfield Halls, Croydon,
south London, June 6, 1971;
(left) Joel Selvin’s new book.

I
N MID-1973, WHILE SESSION
offers came thick and fast, insects
were coming out from under the
floorboards in Jim Gordon’s life. He
grew consumed with fear and inse-
curities. Voices in his head that had
been murmurs in the background
were growing louder, moving to the
foreground. He heard them when he
was cold sober. He didn’t understand
where they came from, but he heard
them. At first, they were helpful, advising
him on how to take care of himself and
his house. They would let him know when
he was right and when he was wrong.
He thought it strange, but he heard the
voices all the time. They told him he was
an important person in the universe, that
his birth had been special and that he had
responsibilities to God and country. They
told him he must make sacrifices. It was a
chorus of voices. The leader was an old man
with a flowing white beard. There was a young
blonde woman and a dark Greek. There was
also his brother, his aunt and, mostly, his
mother, Osa. It was his mother who com-
manded him to cut his eating in half.
He ran five miles daily and practised
calisthenics at home, often exercis-
ing to the point of exhaustion. He cut
down his drinking and limited his ciga-
rette smoking. With all his boozing,
Jim had put on a lot of extra weight. He
played tennis now, and every weekend
held down first base at a weekly softball
game with other music industry types
in Woodland Hills. He treated his drug
problem with Lomotil, a prescription
children’s laxative with a touch of mor-
phine recommended to him by Gram
Parsons. Jim was frantic to regain control of his life.
His confidence had taken such a beating that when he heard
about the formation of a would-be supergroup featuring Richie
Furay of Buffalo Springfield, Chris Hillman of The Byrds and Fly-
ing Burrito Brothers, and songwriter J.D. Souther, he politely ap-
Getty (3)
proached Hillman about auditioning for the group. He didn’t need
to try out. The job was his for the asking.
50 MOJO
In the game: (clockwise from left)
Derek & The Dominos (from left)
Gordon, Carl Radle, Bobby
Whitlock, Eric Clapton and his dog
Jeep, 1970; then-girlfriend Rita
Coolidge, 1970; (insets) a selection
of Gordon-powered hits (he also
got a co-write credit for Layla).
The group came together at the suggestion of mogul David
Geffen, who thought he could fashion them into another Cros-
by, Stills & Nash. Jim knew Hillman from Byrds sessions and
Souther from playing on the album by Longbranch Pennywhis-
tle, Souther’s group with Glenn Frey before he started the Ea-
gles. But it wasn’t the quiet, shy, genial Jim who showed up for
the recording sessions at American Recording Company in
Woodland Hills, where Steppenwolf and Three Dog Night
producer Richie Podolor and engineer Bill Cooper super-
vised the group’s album. Instead of the patient, compliant
session player everybody remembered, instead of the man
who had meekly asked to audition, Gordon was quarrel-
some and irritable. When the other band members needed
to do extra takes to get their parts, Gordon would openly
show his frustration with them. He stayed remote, sitting
alone in the corner when the group listened to playbacks,
uncommunicative and cold. The mask was slipping.
He continued to work other sessions. He played
on an album by an up-and-coming songwriter named
Tom Waits. He substituted for the regular drummer Hal
Blaine at John Denver sessions and played on hits includ-
ing Annie’s Song and Thank God I’m A Country Boy. He
did an album with songwriter Mike McGinnis, who was
living with Gordon’s ex-wife Jill and acting as stepfather
to his daughter, Amy. Gordon and McGinnis got along
famously. Jim also supplied the proper drive and thunder
to Mike Post’s theme song for the TV show The Rock-
ford Files, which wound up being a big hit record.
In June 1974, the Souther-Hillman-Furay outfit
set out to tour all summer behind the release of their album.
With Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young selling out football stadiums
across the country that summer, the SHF band was lucky to
draw half a house at smaller theatres where they were booked.
Richie Furay was going through a painful marital split with his
pregnant wife and converting to Christianity. Hillman could be
difficult and arrogant. There was precious little genuine chem-
istry between the three songwriters. The musicians had been
thrown together as a strategy, not any kind of an organic col-
laboration, and the seams were showing right from the start.
Gordon quickly became a problem.
O
N THE ROAD, GORDON TURNED INTO A REGULAR
Jekyll and Hyde, depending on what he was ingesting. No-
body knew at any given time what that might be. If he was
straight – or, at least, only drinking – he could be fine. But if he
wasn’t, all bets were off. He would snort, shoot, drop, or otherwise
consume anything that was brought backstage and given to him.
“The voices
told him
he was an
important
person
in the
universe.
They told
him he
must make
sacrifices.”
Furay was shocked to have an uncontrollable Gordon take off
like a freight train behind him on his song Believe Me, leaning on
a tom tom with one arm and smacking the hell out of the snare
with the other. At a Holiday Inn cocktail lounge, Gordon, seated
by himself, hurled an empty glass across the room. It shattered on
a table in front of Hillman, who brushed off the shards, walked
over to Gordon, and slammed his open palm into Jim’s nose, a
manoeuvre he learned from his martial arts studies.
Early in the tour at Fort Wayne, Indiana, where they
played with the Eagles, the band returned to the hotel
too late for room service. Gordon was furious. Clad
only in a bathrobe, he crept along the walkway over-
looking the parking lot on the second floor of the two-
story hotel, foraging for leftovers on trays left outside
doors. If he didn’t find anything he liked, he tossed the
plate over the railing to the parking lot below.
They were driving in convoy from Pennsylvania to
Ohio on the busy Pennsylvania Turnpike when Gor-
don asked the driver to pull over so he could relieve
himself. When he didn’t return to the car, his fellow
passengers went out looking for him and found Gordon
bent over in a sprinter’s stance, running imaginary races
against trucks that were blasting down the highway.
For the first time, his drinking and drugging affected
his playing. Richie Furay was astonished to find Gordon
dragging time. Or not coming out from backstage
promptly after the acoustic section of the show
but walking on stage with the first full band song
already underway. Furay grew so unhappy with
Gordon that he fired him on-stage one night,
although that didn’t stick. Hillman and Souther
remembered the shy, humble, loving Jim and
wondered who this guy was. It was apparent all
was not right with Gordon. They went out for an-
other round of dates in October and November,
then fired him.
G
ORDON BOUGHT A NEW HOME
in the hills of Sherman Oaks on Valley Vista Boulevard, a
ranch-style, mid-century, three-bedroom house with a
swimming pool on a secluded lot. He purchased the house thinking
it would make a great place to settle down with a romantic part-
ner, but he spent endless nights alone, unable to sleep. He kept a
full schedule of studio sessions – albums, TV shows, commercials,
whatever double-scale work there was – and spent what leisure
time he did have at his new home. He poured money into it. He
installed a new heating and air-conditioning system. He re-did the
He banged the drums:
Gordon on the Mad Dogs
& Englishmen tour with
Joe Cocker (left) and
Leon Russell (right),
1970; (insets) more
records which featured
Gordon’s signature beat.
pool. He closely supervised teams
of painters and house cleaners who
were constantly coming and going.
A San Fernando Valley pest control
company made many visits to fumi-
gate pests, real and imagined.
Gordon also helped design the
tall fence he had erected to shield
himself from the blue-skinned,
spear-wielding neighbours he imag-
ined lived next door. Gordon feared they meant
him harm.
His daughter, Amy, spent weekends with her
grandmother Osa, who controlled Gordon’s ac-
cess to her. Osa was wary of Jim. She was con-
vinced – perhaps not unreasonably – that her
son had returned from his Clapton-Harrison-
Traffic period in England a messed-up
drug addict and not a responsible parent.
She supervised his visits with Amy at her
home and let Gordon pick her up after bal-
let class or gymnastics. Jim was hurt and
nursed resentments. He thought his moth-
er and ex-wife were working to turn Amy
against him. He also thought his mother
had changed since his father died and had
taken a harsh, controlling turn in their re-
lationship, whether or not that was true.
In January 1975, Gordon joined the all-
star line-up assembled to back Joan Baez
at A&M Studios along with keyboardist Joe Sample
and bassist Wilton Felder from The Crusaders and
guitarists Dean Parks and Larry Carlton. Encour-
aged by her road manager and ex-lover Bernie Gelb
and under the production of David Kershenbaum,
Baez was determined to make a commercial LP for
the first time in her career. She girded her loins for
accommodations and compromises, looked around
the room that first night at this collection of double-scale musical
talent, unlike any accompanists she ever had before, and started the
sessions with a new song she had written titled Diamonds & Rust.
It was a song that had originated with a phone call from her old
paramour and protégé Bob Dylan, who read her the lyrics to a new
piece, Lily, Rosemary And The Jack Of Hearts, destined for his next
album, Blood On The Tracks. Baez’s ruminations on their compli-
cated relationship turned out to be the finest song she ever wrote.
Deliberately avoiding overtly political material for the first ➢
MOJO 51

Trouble ahead: (clockwise from above) increasingly
erratic Jim in Souther-Hillman-Furay (from left) Al
Perkins, Gordon, J. D. Souther, Chris Hillman, Richie
Furay, Paul Harris, 1974; Gordon (far left) with Bread’s
David Gates, Jimmy Griffin, Robb Royer, 1969; Joan
Baez in 1975; (insets) Gordon-featuring hit LPs.
time in her life, Baez steered
➣
her way through works by Jackson
Browne, Stevie Wonder, John Prine,
Janis Ian, Bob Dylan. The Hollywood
session players carried her in the palms
of their hands, producing a supple, con-
temporary record that would become the
best-selling of her career. In his linernotes,
executive producer Bernie Gelb cited “the
M.V.P. of the sessions, Big Jim Gordon.”
They called him “Gordo the Magnificent.”
W
HILE HIS MENTAL CONDITION
may have been deteriorating, Gor-
don’s playing didn’t suffer. He cut
LPs with soul singer Minnie Riperton, French
pop star Michel Polnareff, a solo album with
James Griffin of soft-rockers Bread, a Hugo
Montenegro LP of Elton John tunes (with
Montenegro’s teenage son on synthesizer)
alongside guitarist Larry Carlton and bass-
ist James Jamerson. He started working with
The Carpenters, the hit pop duo who usually
used Hal Blaine (if Karen Carpenter herself
wasn’t playing drums).
In April, Gordon joined Dean Parks and
bassist Larry Knechtel backing Bread’s David
Gates on a solo tour of England. On the flight
back across the Atlantic, Knechtel thought
Gordon, sitting behind him, had been kicking
his seat all through the flight, only to learn that Gordon had actually
been repeatedly stabbing the seatback with a pocketknife.
After spending most of June in the studio with Hall & Oates
while the blue-eyed soul duo made their first West Coast album
with Los Angeles session players, Gordon went out on tour in July
Henry Diltz, Getty (2), Courtesy of Joel Selvin (2), Courtesy of Amy Gordon
with Baez in a band that included Carlton, Jamerson, and Nashville
session veteran David Briggs on keyboards. Baez had never toured
with a band this size or calibre before.
Gordon’s condition was iffy. He could be charming and upbeat,
or remote and churlish, even volatile. Checking the band into a ho-
tel, road manager Gelb stepped inside the office while the bus un-
loaded. When he turned back around, Gordon had pushed Kershen-
baum up against a wall, his face glowing crimson, snorting through
his nostrils. Gelb had no idea what Kershenbaum had said to pro-
voke this violent response, but he stepped in between the two men
and the tension broke. Kershenbaum was scared out of his mind.
Gelb introduced an ex-girlfriend to Gordon on the New England
swing, and they spent a few nights together. She travelled on the bus
with the band, but the next morning she was gone. Something hap-
pened, and she left in the middle of the night. Baez herself was not
immune to Gordon’s appeal and came on to him, which flustered Jim.
52 MOJO
“Stacey
Bailey woke
one night,
unable to
breathe,
jim’s hand
wrapped
around
her throat.”
He was too intimidated to follow through on her advances.
Gordon’s relations with women continued to be
fraught. Despite his deep desire to be loved, he could no
longer contain his rage. With paranoia feeding his brain,
his mind was overcrowded with noise. He really couldn’t
connect with people on an emotional basis. The dam was
breaking, and the turmoil of his inner life was spilling over
into his daily existence.
F
OR SOME TIME, HE LIVED AT VALLEY VISTA
with Stacey Bailey, who first met Gordon when
she worked as a secretary for Bread. She found
him attractive, nearly irresistible. He brought her break-
fast in bed and read to her from the Bible. He arranged
for tickets to the Joan Baez concert at Hollywood Bowl
and she sat next to Bob Dylan. He took care of her dog
and her puppies when she went to visit her parents.
Gordon told her the secret of the voices. She was
the first girlfriend to whom he confessed this infor-
mation. He also complained extensively about his
mother wanting to control his life, like all women did,
he said. She never put the two things together and did
not see the real import of what Gordon was telling her.
Consequently, she never saw what was coming.
That relationship came to a sudden end when Bai-
ley woke one night, unable to breathe, with Jim’s hand
wrapped around her throat. She reached the point that
she was about to pass out and Gordon released his grip.
She tried to remain calm and talk to Jim while he repeat-
ed the cycle of choking her and letting go. Finally, he fell
back on the bed laughing, as if it had all been a joke. Bailey sprinted
to the neighbours. Gordon cried. “I just wanted to see if you really
cared for me,” he said, but the relationship was over.
Samantha Marr was tall, thin, beautiful, a young kindergarten
teacher who lived in a house she built in the New England country-
side. She met Gordon in Connecticut on the Baez tour. They had a
promising fling on the road, and Gordon flew her out to Califor-
nia. They went to the beach and Disneyland. They drove up to San
Francisco and checked into the Hyatt Regency, where they started
fighting, yelling at each other, and having a miserable time. Gordon
drove her back to LA and put her on a plane to Massachusetts.
E
VEN AS HIS EFFORTS TO FIND A ROMANTIC
relationship failed, his professional life was shining brightly.
The same fire burning in his brain was also like an engine
driving his creative abilities. He was playing on a level of expertise
he had never reached before. His skills had been honed to a razor’s
edge, but it was more than that; he was capable of practically super-
human feats on the drums.
Tom Petty was a young, unknown rock musician from Florida
whose band Mudcrutch had broken up after one failed single. His
 The beat goes on: Gordon performing
with Delaney & Bonnie, George Harrison playing the wistful piano piece,
and Eric Clapton, 1969; (right) Jim in heard from 3:11, he requested it be
the mid ’60s and (below) in 1973. incorporated. Rita Coolidge – the
likely co-author of the melody –
was uncredited.

Delaney & Bonnie

Only You Know And I Know
(from Country Life, Atco, 1972)
Dig that locomotive snare shuffle
– spine of a typically loose and
sanctified D&B rave-up from their
last LP before divorce and
dissolution. Exemplary of the
Gordon-Whitlock-Radle vibe
that entranced Eric Clapton
and prompted the formation

Golden
of Derek & The Dominos.

John Lennon

Gordon
Power To The People
(single, Apple, 1971)
From late ’69 to early
’71, Gordon was the
10 great tracks go-to drummer
powered by the for London’s rock
producer Denny Cordell, also a producer for Joe Cocker and Leon aristocracy, George
inimitable Jim Gordon. Harrison and John
Russell, wanted to hold some experimental sessions for a prospec- By Danny Eccleston. Lennon included. Recorded on two
tive Petty solo album. Petty brought Mudcrutch guitarist Mike tracks and mixed in stereo by Phil
Campbell with him to the session at Wally Heider Studios where The Everly Brothers Spector, Gordon’s flammy beats add
Cordell had assembled a top-drawer studio band that included Al Love Is Strange exhortative drive. “Like Ringo on
(single, Warner Bros, 1965) steroids,” notes Joel Selvin.
Kooper on organ and Emory Gordy Jr. from Gram Parsons’ Griev- Post-classic Everlys
ous Angel band on bass. These guys had played with Dylan and Elvis. is still Everlys, Nilsson
Gordon was paid triple scale and, with a half-hour overtime, especially with the Jump Into The Fire
earned $400 for the session, while the other four players were hap- clack-clack-clack of (from Nilsson Schmilsson,
Gordon’s trademark RCA Victor, 1971)
py to make $100 apiece. Petty and Campbell were thunderstruck woodblock Hard to pick a Gordon highlight from
to be in session with the drummer from Layla. Dwight Twilley punching time and a hot crew Nilsson’s seventh LP. How about
and Phil Seymour of the Dwight Twilley Band were present to sing including James Burton, Glen Coconut, with its subtle percussive
Campbell and Billy Preston putting quirks? But Jump Into The Fire’s
background vocals. They cut the track to Petty’s Strangered In The mid-’60s welly behind the trademark rollicking cocaine-rock shades it,
Night and went into the control room to listen. fraternal harmonies. stoked manically by Gordon, and
“Do you have a couple of spare tracks?” Gordon asked the engi- epitomised by his unhinged, near-
neer. “Because I could double my drums.” The Beach Boys three-minute tom assault from 3:58.
Petty and Campbell exchanged looks. Double the drums? They God Only Knows
had never heard of such a thing. It sounded impossible. That would
(from Pet Sounds, Capitol, 1966) The Incredible
mean Gordon would have to duplicate every stroke, precisely
Jim Gordon was booked on
percussion, not kit, but his
Bongo Band
Apache
match the volume, the value, the rhythm of every cymbal crash, employment of four plastic (from Bongo Rock, Pride/DJM, 1973)
orange juice bottles, cut with a
paradiddle, kick drum beat. The slightest variation would leave ech- razor blade to tune to different
Sampled lavishly
oes and smears on the track. at the dawn of
notes, captivated Brian Wilson
hip-hop, Gordon’s
Jim Gordon went back to the studio and did it in one take. and added colour to trapsman Hal
terse, funky beat can
Blaine’s stately clip-clop rhythm.
claim to be one of
EPILOGUE Mason Williams the most repeated
in pop history. Possibly not all his

F
ROM 1976 ONWARD, AS JOEL SELVIN’S BOOK GOES Classical Gas own work – another drummer may
(from The Mason Williams Phono- have added overdubs – but we
on to explore, Gordon’s as-yet-undiagnosed psychosis graph Record, Warner Bros, 1968) know Gordon oversaw the final
worsened precipitously. Testament to stages of production, so…
On a session for Hall & Oates’ Bigger Than Both Of Us LP, fellow Gordon’s instincts
musicians watched him conduct angry conversations with invisible for arrangement and
feel for when to play
Hues Corporation
voices. Such voices would insist that Gordon didn’t eat, that people Rock The Boat
little or (in this case) (from Freedom For The Stallion,
were belittling him or intending him harm. His tactics for quieten- lots, Williams’ slight RCA, 1973)
ing them – drinking, drugging, playing music – became less and Spanish guitar ditty is transformed
Hal Blaine claimed to
into a preposterously dramatic
less effective. The voices made him skip sessions, punished diso- novelty hit. When the brass comes
have patented the
disco beat on Johnny
bedience with blinding pain in his head and body, causing fits and in, Jim doubles in volume.
Rivers’ 1966 Number
blackouts. There were multiple short periods of hospitalisation and
sessions with psychiatrists, from whom he successfully concealed Leon Russell 1, Poor Side Of Town,
but it was Gordon’s
the full extent of his torment. Eventually the voices began to coun- Pisces Apple Lady immaculate work on this (dig those
(from Leon Russell, Shelter/ tom offbeats) that became the model,
sel that only the death of his mother, Osa, would bring him peace. A&M, 1970) at least, once radio caught up with its
On June 3, 1983, at 10.50pm, Gordon entered Osa’s North Hol- Russell’s song was written for his popularity in clubs.
lywood home, struck her four times with a claw hammer and stabbed (later, Gordon’s) girlfriend Chris
O’Dell, and the drummer supplies
her three times through the heart with a kitchen knife. Arrested in the New Orleans-style syn…
the early hours of the following morning, he was subsequently tried copation and punc…tuation. Then
and convicted for murder in the second degree. Belatedly diagnosed again, sometimes being a drummer
with schizophrenia, he would spend the next 40 years in a maximum means just smashing the shit out of
your cymbals. Simply full of life.
security psychiatric hospital, parole repeatedly denied.
On March 13, 2023, aged 77, Gordon died an inmate of the Derek & The Dominos
California State Medical Facility in Vacaville, California. M Layla
(from Layla And Other Assorted Love
Extracted from Drums & Demons, The Tragic Story Of Jim Gordon by Joel Songs, Polydor/Atco, 1970)
Selvin. Published by Diversion Books on February 27, price £26.99. Gordon’s drums are the canvas on
which Clapton and Duane Allman
paint their duelling guitars. And
when Clapton heard the drummer
 From Bowie to Bolshie, Motown to the
Miners’ Strike, the Army to Americana and
beyond, for 40 years BILLY BRAGG’s songs
have rooted for the underdog – in matters of
the heart as well as the state. A fixture on the
front line, he’s also a sitting duck for haters.
Luckily, he’s used to the gunfire. “As long as
you know you’re not a fascist, an antisemite or
a misogynist, you can grit your teeth and get
on with it,” he tells WILL HODGKINSON.
PORTRAIT: PAUL COX

A
T BILLY BRAGG’S FARMHOUSE, WHERE A
glass-walled kitchen looks out onto the Dorset Ridgeway
and the kestrels that swoop and glide across the rolling
hills, a storm has brought the rains. “I’ve been putting out
sandbags to stop the water coming in,” says Bragg, a silver-
haired 65-year-old in dressed-down uniform of grey trousers and fleece,
completing an image of a practical fellow, capable of taking on anything.
Then he adds, “By that, I mean my son Jack has been putting out the sand-
bags,” and the image is ruined somewhat. This is someone who admitted,
on 2013 song Handyman Blues, it takes him half an hour to change a fuse.
Bragg may not be a natural-born man of the soil. As The Roaring Forty, an
album and box set charting his 40 years of songwriting proves, however, he
is a master at finding the poetry in the everyday. He’ll always be known as
the pre-eminent protest singer of the Thatcher era, but that’s just the rab-
ble-rousing tip of the iceberg. From the kitchen sink drama of Levi Stubbs’
Tears to the school days romance of The Saturday Boy, Bragg has captured
the romance of the under-represented, the unseen, the less than glamorous.
“I got an English O-Level, grade A,” brags Bragg, as he digs around a
former garage that has been turned into his archive, with everything from
two-inch Ampex tapes to Airfix model catalogues to old tour programmes
stacked neatly in plastic boxes. He pulls out a few sheets of schoolboy
poetry. “I failed everything else, which my parents were terribly disappoint-
ed about, but I thought, If I’m going to be a songwriter you only need the
English language, don’t ya?”
Buried deep in the archive are the records he bought when he was plain
old Stephen Bragg, a shy, awkward and not particularly political working-
class teenager from Barking, where the outer boroughs of London meet
the green fields of Essex. “When I bought Ronnie Lane’s Slim Chance, or Ooh
La La by the Faces, it meant so much more to me than the albums I bought
later when I had money,” he says as he pulls the records out of the boxes. “I
took a copy of Aladdin Sane to the barbers and asked him to give me the same
haircut. What I feel – and I know it sounds stupid – is that my identity might Protest and survive:
Paul Cox

be hidden in those records. That might be the real Billy Bragg… or at least Billy Bragg keeps his
1960 National Reso-
the real Stephen Bragg.” ➢ Phonic guitar close,
Fulham, 1984.

54 MOJO
 Bragg, whether Billy or Stephen,
➣
found his original inspiration in a surpris-
ing source: The Boxer by Simon & Garfun-
kel. “This would have been ’69, ’70, and
there was something about it that gave me
a feeling I had never felt before. We had
the radio on all the time so I knew the pop
songs of the day, but hearing The Boxer,
then Motown, changed it all for me. I had a
reel-to-reel tape machine, on which I man-
aged to get the Simon & Garfunkel albums
and Motown Chartbusters Volumes 3 to 5. I
took them apart, put them back together
again, reworked them, and that was the
basis of my songwriting.”
As the words to 1983’s A New England told
us, back then Bragg didn’t want to change the
world. What they didn’t say is that he was already
harbouring dreams of being a pop star.
“Doesn’t every kid go through that phase? I was
writing wonderfully derivative songs for two years
before picking up a guitar, and the melodies came
easily. It was the words that felt like the craft, the
hard part.”
Yet Bragg displayed a gift for evoking the
variously cold and comforting realities of late-’70s,
early-’80s Britain: the brutality of the miners’ strike on
Between The Wars, promising to leave an extra pint for
his beloved on The Milkman Of Human Kindness.
“It was the balance between the hardcore politics
and the vulnerable love songs that first attracted peo-
ple,” he says. “I got hold of Dylan’s The Times They
Are A-Changin’ and it was so raw and authentic to
me, but at the same time there was Smokey Rob-
inson, Rod Stewart… Those two sides were there
from the start.”
As for Levi Stubbs’ Tears, a fictional tale of a
woman abandoned then beaten up by her lover but
comforted by the sweet sounds of Motown, the ra-
dio DJ and sometime Bragg roadie Andy Kershaw
inspired the future classic, albeit inadvertently.
“I was on a cross-Channel ferry and he was
annoying the fuck out of me,” remembers Bragg,
his voice rising at the memory. “He wouldn’t All you fascists bound to lose: (above) Bragg
stop talking. So I switched off and started think- and Bruce Springsteen rehearse for the
Woody Guthrie Celebration, Cleveland,
ing about Bruce Springsteen’s approach of taking a character September 29, 1996; (top) recording
and walking them through a situation. Once I had the first Brewing Up With at Berry Street Studios,
Clerkenwell, London, 1984; (insets left,
line, ‘With the money from the accident she bought herself a from top) the young Stephen Bragg; Life’s A
mobile home,’ it was: bam. But there is no routine with song- Riot; A New England; Brewing Up With; The
Roaring Forty; The Third World War.
writing. You’re trying to tune into a signal. Sometimes

you lose the signal. Sometimes it is so powerful that you
write the whole thing in 20 minutes.”
There was confessional material too. The Saturday
Boy, with its images of dances in the school canteen
and hopeless crushes on the girl at the desk next to his,
came straight from experience. St Swithin’s Day was
about a love that was meant to last forever, but came
and went over a summer. Bragg came from the Billy Liar
school of literary romance; of standing on a rainy plat-
form, feeling the limitations of your circumstances and
your character as you watch the girl you love slip out of
Courtesy of Billy Bragg (2), Dylan White
B
RAGG’S MUSICAL JOURNEY
really got going in 1977, three
years after he left Northbury
Secondary School, when he formed the punk band Riff
Raff with friends after being inspired by the revolution-
ary fervour of The Clash on the White Riot tour. He
left his job as a bank messenger, talked his friends into
leaving their jobs too, and they moved en masse into a
house in the Northamptonshire village of Oundle to
perfect their craft and take on the world. Even though
Riff Raff got their debut single out on the ultra-credible

your life for ever. punk-era label Chiswick, it wasn’t to be.

“You’re always drawing on your own emotions,
aren’t you? I was trying to tell stories without be-
ing judgmental. I got really into Elvis Costello but I got fed up
with his attitude to relationships, which seemed a bit cynical.
I saw him do I Want You at the Royal Albert Hall and it was so
visceral that I thought: I’m not that person. I wanted people to meet
me halfway.”
“These were my friends, the guys I went to school
with,” says Bragg of Riff Raff ’s collapse. “I was left a bit
bereft, and exhausted, and lost. I went back to live with my mum
and tried to think of ways to not be the guy in the pub who tells eve-
ryone how he once made a record. I had to press the eject button
on the whole band thing and lead a new life.”
Travelling into London each day to paint the ceiling of the

56 MOJO

“If I was playing a
noisy pub in east
London I thought: I’ve
just come out of the
British Army so I’m
not afraid of you lot.”
BILLY BRAGG
studio where his next-door neighbour and fel-
low Riff Raffer Philip ‘Wiggy’ Wiggs was setting
up an audio-visual company, Bragg walked past
an army careers office. Not realising it at the
time, he now wonders if joining the army was an
attempt to measure himself against his father,
who died when Bragg was 18 and had been a
tank driver in World War II.
“On top of that it looked like shit was going
to happen,” says Bragg of a particularly volatile
time in the balance of world power. “Solidarity
in Poland was kicking off, Russian leaders were
Martyn Goodacre/Getty, Greg Allen, Adrian Boot/Urbanimage.tv
dying every other week, Reagan and Thatcher
were winding it up, and I read a book called The
Third World War by John Hackett and thought:
I don’t want to be sitting at home, waiting for
this to go down. So off I went.”
Bragg believed the army would shock all the
dreams of pop stardom out of him. But it had
the opposite effect. “Suddenly the songs started
coming, which left me in a quandary. Am I go-
ing to be a tank driver who writes songs? Or am I going to
remember the singer-songwriter thing, remember the punk thing,
get myself an electric guitar, fix a bayonet to the end of it, charge
forward and see where I end up?”
Bragg in the USSR:
Comrade Billy in Moscow,
1988; (left) serenading an
Anti-Nazi League rally,
London, 1993.
In the event, Bragg chose a less violent version of the second
option. After leaving the army he worked in a record store in East
Ham alongside a musician who had a Portastudio at his mother’s
flat in Poplar. There, he recorded a demo tape and sent it to the
Melody Maker. Writer Adam Sweeting gave it a glowing review, and
the tape found its way to Pink Floyd’s former manager Peter Jenner.
That in turn led, in 1983, to Go! Discs releasing Life’s A Riot With
Spy Vs Spy – ‘Spy Vs Spy’ being the early stage name Bragg adopt-
ed so he sounded like a band and didn’t end up in the folk clubs.
The album was a former punk’s idea of a solo songwriter’s debut,
with overdriven guitar providing the
rhythm and Bragg’s unvarnished
Estuarine bringing the melody. It
was a hit.
“I was on a mission,” says Bragg.
“It was great for my confidence
because if I was playing a noisy pub
in east London I thought: I’ve just
come out of the British Army so
I’m not afraid of you lot. I looked
to Paul Weller, who had a ver y
similar experience to me: suburban,
working-class upbringing, which is
why That’s Entertainment felt like a
snapshot of my childhood. As much
as I loved The Clash, it was The Jam
who showed me the way forward
because Weller was so focused on
what he was doing. He taught me an
important lesson: the only justifica-
tion you need to do what you do is to
have a perspective you don’t feel is
Helping save the youth
of America: Billy signs reflected elsewhere.”
on at Texas Records,
Santa Monica, 1985.
The songs on Life’s A Riot… are
observational rather than political,
personal rather than ideological. “Just because you’re
better than me doesn’t mean I’m lazy,” sang Bragg on To Have And
To Have Not, but he was addressing his own situation as a former
army boy without qualifications, not the inequalities of society ➢
MOJO 57
 at large. What changed his perspective was the miners’ strike of with the buckets and the benefit gigs. Between The Wars evoked
➣
1984-85. From there came Between The Wars, which cemented that sense of solidarity.”
the public image of Bragg that will never go away: the tub-thumper

Y
in the donkey jacket and CND badge, taking down the capitalist OU WONDER IF THERE IS A KIND OF NOSTALGIA
system one song at a time. for the Thatcher years among Bragg’s fanbase – for the
“It was an austere period,” says Bragg of Britain in the early ’80s. simplicity of a time when the left faced a common enemy.
“You had the riots of ’81, the Falklands War, and it was pretty hairy. “I had to stop playing Between The Wars for that reason,” he
On top of that they were cutting back on social services, spend- says. “But a song like There Is Power In A Union continues to be
ing more on nuclear weapons, and there was a recession on. I had relevant because it is no longer about the miners’ strike. I look into
broad humanitarian ideas, I had been to Rock Against Racism in the audience and see people who weren’t born when I wrote it 39
1978 and seen the effect it could have, but it was the miners’ strike years ago, and they have been on a picket line, they have marched
that changed everything because we were involved. We were there with the teachers and the nurses. I’m charging up their activism
by playing these songs, and they’re charging up mine
Spare him the cutter: Bragg, because the sense of solidarity comes from the audience,
with Portastack, entertains
Echo & The Bunnymen fans not the artist.”
outside Bismarck Theatre, In October 2023 Bragg gave a talk to aspiring musi-
Chicago, August 25, 1984.
cians at the BRIT School in Croydon, where he told the
young hopefuls that music cannot change the world – but
it can give you hope that the world can be changed.
“And before people start telling me off for saying
music can’t change the world, ask them if they’ve been
trying for 40 years,” he adds. “If they haven’t, they can
fuck right off! It is the intention that matters. Every now
and then I have to say to young singer-songwriters, you
do know Woody Guthrie’s guitar didn’t really kill fascists,
don’t you?”
Sometimes it is easier to simply play Woody Guthrie
songs, which is what Bragg did on Mermaid Avenue, the
album he made with Wilco in 1998 that was built around
previously unheard Guthrie lyrics.
“Woody’s daughter Nora Guthrie wanted to reboot
her father’s image because she felt he had become a
two-dimensional figure,” says Bragg. “These were songs
that ran contrary to the Dustbowl ballad image: the first
one on the album is Walt Whitman’s Niece, on which
he comes across as the kind of guy who will steal your
girlfriend and drink your beer. Woody Guthrie wanted to go on a
“I Was Robo-Busker!” flying saucer. He wanted to make love to Ingrid Bergman. Mermaid
Avenue was about pulling Woody off the pedestal and presenting him
BILLY BRAGG on breaking as a human being, and it also changed my career. It put me into the
Americana world and I’m cool with that.”
America, one queue at a time… Being an outspoken, left-wing songwriter does of course mean
By the summer of 1984, Bragg’s heard me play them outside.” that various people have had a pop at Bragg over the years. But the
star was on the rise, but he was still Not that the Portastack didn’t rules of engagement have changed so much, you wonder if he gets
unknown outside of the UK. So, bring its own problems. The misty-eyed recalling the days when Norman Tebbit would call the
having secured him a support slot speakers spewed howls of feedback BBC to complain every time he appeared. These days he is more
on Echo & The Bunnymen’s US tour, anywhere near a wall, and the
Bragg’s manager Peter Jenner came weight of the entire contraption likely to find himself in social media battles with, say, JK Rowling:
up with an ingenious idea. Bragg crushed Bragg’s diaphragm, fellow left-wingers who do not share his trans-positive position on
would busk to the queues outside making singing in tune a challenge. identity politics.
venues before the concerts began “But we’re talking shouty 1984
using a contraption made up of Billy Bragg here, not the Smokey
“I’m used to it because I’ve been heckled since I was a teenager,
an amplifier, a microphone, a Robinson Billy Bragg of later and the reasons why people are angry with me change all the time,”
battery and two speakers years,” he chuckles. says Bragg, philosophically. “In the last five years, I’ve been called a
that protruded from “Busking with the fascist because I asked people for proof they had been vaccinated
his shoulders like “It’s Portastack also
metallic antennae, where I taught me a lot or had a Covid test before they came to my gigs. I’ve been called
all of it hooked
learned that if about performance. an antisemite for supporting Jeremy Corbyn. I’ve been called a
to the frame of It’s where I learned traitor for not supporting Jeremy Corbyn enough. I’ve been called
a rucksack: the you want to get that if you want
Portastack. across to people, to get across to a misogynist because I disagree with JK Rowling. None of this has
“I was Robo- you need to look people, you really any reference to what I actually do, so as long as you know you’re not
Busker,” says Bragg, them in the need to make a a fascist, an antisemite or a misogynist, you can grit your teeth and
who despite his connection. You get on with it.”
hoarding tendencies eye.” need to look them in

admits that the
Portastack has now spent
decades in the great lost property
department in the sky. “Very few
people coming to see Echo & The
Bunnymen knew who I was, and on
top of that I was second support
after [New York garage group] The
Fleshtones. Pete’s idea was that the
people in the queue would be the
ones at the front of the stage when
I opened the concert, which meant
they would be familiar with the
songs because they had only just
the eye.”
While Bragg’s busking
efforts were loss leaders, he found
that inside the halls audiences
were more inclined to part with
their change.
“At one concert someone threw
a quarter at me, basically to get
me off-stage,” he remembers. “I
thanked them for their contribution.
Then the rest of the crowd started
throwing coins, but this time not at
me. The Fleshtones collected them
all up in a jar.”
I
T IS WORTH REMEMBERING THAT BRAGG’S POLITICS
were informed by music, by Civil Rights-era soul, and folk sing-
ers like Phil Ochs and Bob Dylan. “I was that weird kid who was
into Bob Dylan when everyone else was into Slade and Alice Coop-
er,” he says, and you can see the problem; carving ‘Bob Dylan’ into
your school desk was never going to cut it at Northbury Secondary.
“I believed the singer-songwriters who said they would change
the world. When The Clash came along and said they would change
the world, I believed them too. When the miners’ strike ended in
 That’s entertainment: (clockwise from
top) Billy Bragg with Paul Weller and
(centre) Greater London Council Leader
Ken Livingstone launching Red Wedge,
Westminster, November 21, 1985; “You’ve
got to challenge your audience” – Bragg,
New York, 2017; the Billy Bragg Band,
June 18, 2021 (from left) Nick Pynn, Jack
Valero, BB, Darren Beckett, Romeo Stodart,
Michele Stodart; (insets) Mermaid Avenue;
The Million Things That Never Happened.
defeat, I thought: What are the lim-
its of music’s ability to cause change?
That’s how we ended up with Red Wedge.”
Never before or since has popular music
so clearly pinned its colours to the politi-
cal mast. Launched in 1985 by Bragg, Paul
Weller and The Communards, Red Wedge
had an overt purpose: to oust the Conserva-
tives in the 1987 election. “I fell back on why
The Clash failed: because they didn’t engage
with mainstream politics. They didn’t deal
with the day-to-day, which is where the real power lies. Was that
thing we did with the miners just a load of posing or are we willing
to get our hands dirty? That was my pitch to Weller. Do we go back
to being in Smash Hits or do we try and do something more?”
Red Wedge also marked a point, long before Tony Blair kept a
Wiggy, Rob Howard/Famous, Jacob Blickenstaff, James Green
Fender Stratocaster by his desk at Number 10, when political lead-
ers were beginning to understand the importance of pop culture.
Neil Kinnock was the first Labour leader to have grown up after
World War II, which Bragg first realised at a party conference in
1984. “In the soundcheck, Kinnock picked up an acoustic guitar
and played Help Me Make It Through The Night. He was a member
of the Gene Vincent fan club. It allowed us to make in-roads, and
OK, Margaret Thatcher wasn’t defeated in 1987, but music now
had a role in getting people to take part in the struggle.”
As the afternoon moves on, and Dorset’s autumn sky turns from
a dull, rainy grey to a dull, rainy black, Billy Bragg returns to the
moments that changed his world: hearing Simon & Garfunkel for
the first time, seeing the size and diversity of the audience at Rock
“I have to say to young
singer-songwriters, ‘You
do know Woody Guthrie’s
guitar didn’t really kill
fascists, don’t you?’”
BILLY BRAGG
Against Racism, watching The Clash and realising he
could do something similar. He also comes back to the
idea that, as long as we’re alive, music can change us if
we allow it. On Mid-Century Modern, a song from his
2021 album The Million Things That Never Happened, he
addressed his own creeping complacency in the line:
‘Positions I took long ago feel comfy as an old armchair.’
“We’re older now. We can feel that music no longer has power.
But it does and I know because I’ve seen it,” Bragg concludes. “Me
and the audience were radical back in the day. Now we’re a bit shy
of getting involved in today’s issues, but think of your 25-year-old
self. A young woman came up to me in Boston and said, ‘You know
[Bragg’s 1991 gay rights anthem] Sexuality? It’s not very radical any
more, is it?’ So I changed the lyrics to, ‘Just because you’re ‘they’
I won’t turn you away.’ And my Twitter feed went mad! If you’re
going to tell your audience to raise their fists in solidarity, you’ve
also got to challenge them every now and then.”
These days, after 40 years as Britain’s premier leftist songwriter,
Bragg seems at ease in dealing with whatever is thrown at him. As
Handyman Blues reminds us, however, dealing with storm damage
is another matter.
“The funny thing is,” says Bragg, “my dad could build anything.
My brother inherited that skill, I didn’t, and as it turns out, song-
writing is the only thing I’ve ever been good at. Good thing I could
make a living from it, innit?” M
MOJO 59
 MOJO PRESENTS

From teenage guitar

prodigy in The Coral, to
master singer-songwriter,
via shifts for Arctic
Monkeys and production
for Michael Head, BILL
RYDER-JONES has packed
a lot into his 40 years. But
there’s a lot more to unpack,
too, beginning with the
childhood tragedy that’s
defined his life and music
ever since. “I’d spent years
screaming into the void,” he
tells DORIAN LYNSKEY.
Photography by MARIEKE MACKLON

HE 2020 LOCKDOWN WAS NO PICNIC FOR ANYBODY, BUT FOR BILL RYDER-JONES
it was “fucking unbearable”. His girlfriend of three months was meant to be stopping over with
him in West Kirby before moving to Los Angeles but they were thrown together indefinitely. His
mental health, already precarious, went downhill fast. Bad habits escalated. The relationship did
not last. “We were both mad,” he says now. “The whole thing was a blur. I was taking so much
Valium just to deal with the news. I’m unquestionably a different person since the pandemic.”
Ryder-Jones’s only lifeline was writing songs with titles such as This Can’t Go On and Noth-
ing To Be Done. From that horrendous period was born Iechyd Da, the most expansive and (surprisingly) hopeful re-
cord of his career. Since leaving psychedelic urchins The Coral in 2008, his tuneful late-night confessions have taken
different forms – a Wirral Bill Callahan on 2013’s A Bad Wind Blows In My Heart, skewed indie-rock frontman on
2015’s West Kirby County Primary, king of pain on 2018’s Yawn – but never one so abundantly beautiful. Three years
in the making, the album has the grand cosmic ache of Mercury Rev’s Deserter’s Songs: big-sky music for introverts.
“Making the record becomes your life,” he says. “It’s a million miles away from when a group is three albums in
and says, ‘We’ve got to get a synth.’ It was like, How the fuck am I going to get through this next two weeks? To write
Marieke Macklon

about myself and make it sound pretty just consumed me. Because I had so much time I just kept going. Like Forrest
Gump.” He gives a rich, rueful laugh. “Keep running.”
To meet Ryder-Jones on home turf, you would never guess that he finds life a struggle. Still boyish and ➢

60 MOJO
Something on his mind:
Bill Ryder-Jones at home
in West Kirby, Wirral, 2023.
 William, it was really something:
The Coral take the Hoylake air,
2002 (from left) Ian Skelly, Paul
Duffy, Lee Southall, James Skelly,
Nick Power, Bill Ryder-Jones.
“THE EARLY CORAL
YEARS WERE MAD, FUN,
LAWLESS. I WAS VERY
FUCKING YOUNG AND
I WAS MAD AS FUCK.”
Bill Ryder-Jones
tousled, the 40-year-old is quick-wit-
➣
ted, charming, an instant hit. His new girl-
friend, up from London for the day, is clear-
ly smitten when we later adjourn to the pub
where he plays quizmaster every Monday
night. In The Coral, his musical home be-
tween the ages of 13 and 25, Ryder-Jones’s
ability to conceal his problems was itself a
problem. Because he was mute in inter-
views and not yet a lyricist, nobody outside
the band knew what he thought. Inside the band, his feelings were
too easily occluded by skunk fumes. Only after he had left, in a state
of psychic crisis, did he learn to stare his troubles in the eye.
“After my breakdown I thought it’s too much pressure pretend-
ing you’re fine,” he says. “I started being honest about myself and
I couldn’t shut up.” He laughs at his own expense. “I’d spent years
screaming into the void – someone pay attention! – but without
actually saying anything, so I thought, Fuck it, I’ll do it.”
R
Howard Barlow/Getty
YDER-JONES’S YAWN STUDIO IS A SHORT WALK
from West Kirby station, but then everywhere is a short
walk in West Kirby, a small coastal town at the tip of the
Wirral peninsula. Take the train from Liverpool, it’s the end of the
62 MOJO
line. He can’t move away as long as his studio
and his mother are here, but he doesn’t par-
ticularly want to. “It’s a stunning place. Qui-
et, calm. Nobody bothers their arse with me.”
Yawn is on the humble side, too, crammed
with amps, guitars, keyboards, pedals and a piano in a
state of preposterous disrepair. A picture of Goodison
Park, Everton’s home ground, takes pride of place on the
wall. This is where Ryder-Jones has been blossoming as
a producer for the past few years: Dear Scott, by Scouse-
rock elder Michael Head and his Red Elastic Band, was
MOJO’s favourite album of 2022. “That’s how I live,”
Ryder-Jones says with a shrug, igniting a CBD roll-up in
the control room. “I don’t make money off my records.”
He does love it, though, helping musicians to manifest
their ideas and communicate better than his old band ever could.
Though often regarded as an outpost of Liverpool, West Kirby is
much closer to Wales. “Where we used to go on holidays,” Ryder-
Jones says. “I remember loving the [road] signs – it felt like Lord Of
The Rings.” After he started using “iechyd da” (“good health”) as a
drinker’s toast, he decided it would make a welcoming album title
but first sought permission from Gruff Rhys, unofficial special en-
voy for Welsh rock. “A lot of Welshmen will think I’m an obnoxious
English prick so I had to have him in my back pocket,” he reasons.
It was on a holiday to Ramsey Island in Wales that Ryder-Jones
experienced the worst thing that has ever happened to him. He
was seven; his brother Daniel was nine. They were playing beside a
cliff with some other kids when Daniel fell off: “A terrible, terrible
 RYDER’S
ON THE
STORM
Four key Bill
Ryder-Jones
albums on the
path to Iechyd Da.
THE CORAL
The Invisible Invasion
(Deltasonic, 2005)
Songwriting
credits alone are
a poor indicator
of Ryder-Jones’s
importance to
The Coral, but
he peaked with three on their
Portishead-produced last
album before his forced
sabbatical, including the
ghostly A Warning To The
Curious and the unbridled
guitar mayhem of Come
Home. A band growing up
yet falling apart.

On the waterfront: (clockwise)

Ryder-Jones in 2013; backstage
BILL RYDER-JONES
with The Coral, Brixton Academy, A Bad Wind Blows
2003; on-stage in Liverpool, 2019;
Bill the producer with satisfied
In My Heart
customer Mick Head, 2023. (Domino, 2013)
After the wholly
instrumental
If…, Ryder-
Jones emerged
as a singer-
songwriter like
someone waking from a long
slumber and getting used to his
own voice. “Sometimes I feel I
don’t exist,” he rasps on
Christina That’s The Saddest
Thing. Like Bill Callahan or
Elliott Smith, he excavates his
troubles via delicate folk rock.

accident that I just happened to witness”. The trau-
ma was so immense that he can remember almost
nothing about the event, or the ensuing years. His
family shut down.
“Everyone was dealing with their grief inde-
pendently,” he recalls, leaning back and speaking
softly to the ceiling. “My mum didn’t want to share
it with anyone. My dad couldn’t. I was in a fugue
state so I don’t remember a great deal about him
anyway. I’m told that I was a miserable little prick
and he was the only person who could make me
laugh, so I’d love to know more.” He wants to try
EMDR, a form of PTSD therapy that can recover
buried memories. “Whether I’m ready to grieve as
Ian Whent, Chris Lever/Shutterstock, Matt Thomas, John Johnson
BILL RYDER-JONES On the studio wall, opposite Goodison Park,
West Kirby hangs a framed photograph of the nascent Coral,
County Primary lined up against a brick wall. They look startlingly
(Domino, 2015) young, and Ryder-Jones was the youngest of the
After junking a lot: just 16 when they signed to Wills’ label Del-
whole album tasonic and 18 when they released their debut al-
with producer
James Ford, bum. “I was just a pothead who played guitar,” he
Ryder-Jones says. “The early Coral years were mad, fun, law-
turned up less.” He was a riveting guitarist, attracting praise
the amps on the post-Coral
release that sounds most like
from Noel Gallagher and Paul Weller. “I don’t
a full-blown rock band, with even think I was the best guitarist in The Coral,”
thick shades of Pavement and he demurs, “but I was very fucking young and I
Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci, his was mad as fuck.”
“favourite group of all time”.
Satellites and Daniel are the Among other things, Ryder-Jones had undi-

an adult over someone I’ve never really known, I’m
not sure. But nobody wants to be walking around
like, Who the fuck am I? What happened in my
childhood? It’s less about having memories and
more about knowing the story of your life.”
Ryder-Jones has learned to acknowledge Daniel
– an eponymous song on West Kirby County Prima-
ry, a snapshot on the cover of Yawn – but for years
that felt impossible. Eating pizza with The Coral
one night, their eccentric manager Alan Wills (who
died in 2014) said Daniel’s name for the first time.
“He threw it out like it was nothing. That name at
home was hushed if it was said at all. It was a mas-
sive moment in my life – a huge amount of relief.”
two soul-baring cornerstones. agnosed ADHD, complex PTSD and stage fright
that caused him to vomit before shows: “That’s
BILL RYDER-JONES why I was so thin.” Looking back, he sees his
Yawn mental health problems as an unexploded bomb
(Domino, 2018)
that everybody was studiously ignoring, himself
“It was me
doubling included. During the recording of The Coral’s
down on being fourth album, The Invisible Invasion, in 2005, pan-
fucking sad,” ic attacks and night terrors precipitated his first
Ryder-Jones
says of his
breakdown and temporary departure. “I think the
noisiest, most desperate album. term was ‘go and get your head sorted.’ That was
Heavily influenced by Red how it was back then.” Lured back too soon, for
House Painters, this beautifully 2007’s Roots & Echoes, Ryder-Jones crashed again,
produced slowcore lament
moves like a black freighter: much harder: agoraphobia, monophobia, disso-
majestic but oppressive. The ciative disorder, total retreat from the world. ➢
following year, he rearranged
the whole thing for piano as
Yawny Yawn. MOJO 63
 “You open up and go in”:
aged him to do likewise in song, start-
Ryder-Jones amid the ing with the croaky, tentative folk-rock
splendour of Yawn of 2013’s A Bad Wind Blows In My Heart.
Studio, West Kirby, 2023.
If it seems extraordinary that Ryder-
Jones was psychologically fit enough to
play guitar on Arctic Monkeys’ 2013
stadium tour, then he’s as surprised as
you are: “Honestly it kills me when I
think back. I don’t know how I did it.
It doesn’t feel like me.” The tour gave
him a glimpse of the road not taken.
“It was mad. Massive shows with people scream-
ing all the time. And at the same time they’re just
northern divvies like The Coral. I really enjoyed
it. But I wouldn’t want to do it for a living. It’s not
real life, that.”
Ryder-Jones’s love of ill-starred Americana
has long been evident, but his new prowess in the
producer’s chair enabled him to tap into two of
his foundational influences, The Beatles and the
Wu-Tang Clan. “There’s so much information
in those records,” he gushes. “I wanted to make
a record that had a lot going on.” In the case of
the soaring, yearning Iechyd Da, “a lot” includes a
children’s choir, a ghostly Gal Costa sample, disco
strings, Easter-egg callbacks to his older songs and
Mick Head reciting a passage from Ulysses.
It’s the first album that Ryder-Jones can lis-
ten to with unalloyed pleasure. With Yawn’s
post-grunge requiem, he says, “The hope had
completely fallen out of it.” This time, the most
daring thing he could try was optimism, of a kind.
“There’s something great about life,” he croons
with dazed wonder on It’s Today Again. “But
there’s something not quite right.” The
house on the front cover and the collage
“WITHOUT DRINK of family photographs on the back are in-
OR DRUGS I HAVE vitations to “a brighter world,” he says.
“The idea is you open up and go in.”
NOT BEEN CALM
R
YDER-JONES TURNED 40
➣
Ryder-Jones still has unresolved is- OR CAREFREE last August and he wasn’t at all
sues with The Coral but allows, “We
were kids. I’m not angry at them for any-
FOR ANY PERIOD happy about it. The milestone

thing that happened to me. We all had to OF TIME.” brought home all the things he would
love to do – learn to drive, have kids –
eat a bit of shit. A spoonful now and then Bill Ryder-Jones but doesn’t feel able to. “You think, Oh,
doesn’t do you any harm.” He still sees have I missed something quite cool here?
the members who live in West Kirby, in- I don’t think about it a lot but when I do
cluding regular pints with drummer Ian Skelly and a monthly coffee I think, Fucking hell… But at least I only look like I’m 37. Sadly my
with frontman James Skelly, who experienced his own breakdown a testicles are a bit like Dorian Gray – they’re picking up the weight.”
few years after Ryder-Jones. “James was always very good at hiding He has a great therapist these days, he forces himself to exercise,
that, as we all were. I’m without question the sanest member of that and he’s delighted that mental health is no longer taboo, but noth-
band.” He chuckles. “But certain members are tougher than I am. ing is easy. “It never goes away,” he says with an exhausted sigh.
I was built a bit more crumbly: a Wensleydale as opposed to their “I’ve just been managing. That’s how I live – just managing from
Red Leicester.” one day to the next. Without drink or drugs I have not been calm
For a while, Ryder-Jones thought he was done with music forev- or carefree for any period of time. I pretty much don’t leave West
er. “I didn’t like it. It wasn’t making me happy.” He opted to study Kirby – certainly not on my own. It’s fucking shit but what are you
the social and economic history of Liverpool at the University of going to do?”
Liverpool (“the most Liverpudlian course!”) but could only manage Does he think it all comes back to that day in Wales in 1991?
three months. Eventually he returned to music because he didn’t “My family definitely has a genetic predisposition to mental ill
know how else to live. “I had no money,” he says flatly. “I left The health but my problems are very specific,” he says carefully. “It’s
Coral with seven grand.” sort of textbook the way I’ve reacted to an event like that.” He
Laurence Bell from Domino Records offered him a deal on the clears his throat. “I can’t picture myself without Daniel’s death.
strength of his stark MySpace demos but Ryder-Jones’s first release, Everything I have… When he died I started wearing his clothes.
If…, was a form of concealment: an instrumental suite for the Roy- I started to play the violin and piano because he did – filling a hole
al Liverpool Philharmonic based on Italo Calvino’s cult novel If On for my mother. That took me on that journey and now I’m here and
A Winter’s Night A Traveller. Due to his dissociative disorder, not I’ve got a studio and it’s great.”
Marieke Macklon

yet medicated, Ryder-Jones can barely remember making it, but the Ryder-Jones looks around the control room and falls silent,
warm reception was a pleasant shock: “I’d never really thought of unsure what to do with the insoluble fact that the worst thing that
myself as particularly talented.” Opening up in interviews encour- ever happened to him is the reason why he is here. M

64 MOJO
 Sense of
Sixty years since Fingertips hit Number 1 and turned his young
career around, STEVIE WONDER is still working on music that
bathes the soul, battles injustice, and blows the minds of his
peers. How he got here is astonishing in itself: the blind
prodigy who escaped Motown’s scrapheap twice to
make some of the most beautiful and ambitious
pop music ever conceived.

Join MOJO as we leaf through

the chapters of his life and work,
his visions and melodies, and
shake your head in Wonder…

Portrait by JEFFREY MAYER.

Jeffrey Mayer/Rock Negatives/MediaPunch/Alamy

Golden years: Stevie Wonder

at the peak of his powers,
Griffith Park, Los Angeles,
September 15, 1972.

MOJO 67
 STEVIE WONDER 1950-1970
The Young And
The Restless
The rise, fall and rise again of ‘Little’ Stevland Judkins, a talent
never contained by Motown’s straitjacket. By DAVID HUTCHEON.
blind (a consequence of his
premature birth) and already a
Give the drummer some:
multi-instrumentalist (bongos,
‘Little’ Steve Wonder, the drums, piano and harmonica).
world at his fingertips. Gordy passed the prodigy over
to producer Clarence Paul,
and between them they came
up with a stage name, Lit-
tle Stevie Wonder. There was
also the matter of a contract,
the standard Motown deal be-
ing unsuitable for a minor.
Royalties would be held in
trust until 1971 (when Won-
der turned 21) and he could
survive on $2.50 pocket money
every week. What could possi-
bly go wrong?
His first releases bombed
but Gordy believed a live re-
cording might get traction, and
sent a mobile unit to Chicago’s
Regal Theater in March 1963.
What it captured was mayhem,
as Wonder’s youth-
ful chutzpah spilled
over on-stage. Gor-
dy tried to tidy it up
for a 45, Fingertips,
Part 1, but when he
S
realised DJs pre-
TEVIE WONDER ferred the tumultu-
was running out of ous Part 2 – Won-
time and friends. der fools around,
Just turned 15 in exits the stage then
the spring of 1965, unexpectedly re-
it was two years – too long in turns, catching out
Motown boss Berry Gordy’s eyes – since the big band behind him – he remixed and
his only significant hit. None of the label’s recut it, promoting the flip and emphasising
premier backroom teams wanted to touch bewildered bassist Joe Swift’s “What key?”
him and there was nothing ready for release. cry. Both the single and its parent album, Re-
With Marvin Gaye, The Supremes, Tempta- corded Live: The 12 Year Old Genius – all 23
tions and Four Tops all raising the ante in the minutes of it – hit the summit of the Bill-
charts, the Hitsville machine was no place
for a lightweight whose forte was youthful
Steve Kagan/Getty Images, Getty (2), Shutterstock
pranks and destructive behaviour. “He was
barred from the studio,” noted Andre Wil-
“STEVIE WAS BARRED
liams, who co-produced his earliest record- FROM THE STUDIO,
ings, “because he’d go in when nobody was
there and mess all the instruments up.”
BECAUSE HE’D GO IN
Four years previously, Stevland Judkins AND MESS ALL THE
(AKA Morris) had charmed Gordy with his
talent. He had come to Motown’s attention
INSTRUMENTS UP.”
after Ronnie White, The Miracles’ baritone, ANDRE
had lined up an audition. Judkins was 11, WILLIAMS
68 MOJO
board chart that spring, and Little Stevie was
on top of the world.
Now, however, after a run of, at best, me-
diocre placings, Berry was prepared to cut
him loose. Alone at the company, songwriter-
producer Sylvia Moy was prepared to take a
chance. “I don’t believe it’s over for him,”
she told Mickey Stevenson, the head of A&R.
“Let me have Stevie.”
The key, she reasoned, might be staring
them in the face; if the choice was between
the strength and stability of old-school Mo-
town, of Clarence Paul, Maxine Powell’s de-
portment classes and the vaudevillian Cholly
Atkins’ choreography, or the chaos of Fin-
gertips, Part 2, perhaps Wonder could thrive
within the latter. She asked him what he had.
Not much, it turned out, although he did
have a sketch that went: “Baby, everything is
alright. Uptight.”
“He didn’t have completed songs,” Moy
explained, “he was into sound.” But in this
case, what a sound. A two-chord marvel,
Uptight (Ever ything’s Alright) grabbed
from its first second, as bassist James Jam-
erson and drummer Benny Benjamin locked
down an archetypal Motown beat under an
endorphine rush of a horn riff – listeners
were bludgeoned by the breathless pride the
singer expressed in his well-heeled girlfriend
from “the right side of the tracks”.
Wonder sounds like he can’t believe his
luck, and aptly so. Uptight was written and
recorded in such haste that Moy was feeding
Wonder lyrics while he sang – there hadn’t
been time to translate them into Braille. This
was how Motown operated at its zenith in
1965: a month later, Holland-Dozier-Hol-
land wrote and The Four Tops recorded It’s
The Same Old Song in the space of 24 hours.
H
OLLAND-DOZIER-HOLLAND
may be the greatest of Motown’s
creative teams, but the quality of the
hits Wonder, Moy and Hank Cosby gener-
ated in 1965-69 stands comparison: Uptight
was followed by Nothing’s Too Good For My
Baby, I Was Made To Love Her, I’m Won-
dering, Shoo-Be-Doo-Be-Doo-Da-Day,
My Cherie Amour and Never Had A Dream
Come True. Yet Wonder’s 1960s output is
regularly unfairly overlooked in favour of his
imperial ’70s. As Moy realised with Finger-
tips, the ideas that would make Wonder a su-
perstar were already in place; during this sec-
ond act they would be given space to develop.
Wonder was growing up in public. Blow-
in’ In The Wind, his debut foray into social
comment, concentrated on the melody’s
campfire singalong simplicity, but soon he
would disguise much harder images in MOR
clothing and sneak them onto AM stations
for suburban audiences to hum, taking A
Place In The Sun into the Top 10 in 1966,
and singing “I’m glad I’m chained to my
dreams” on Never Had A Dream Come True
three years later.
Signed and delivered: Motown’s Rolls-Royce star commendably ragged, this late in the day albums
meets his car equivalent, 1967; (right, from top)
Stevie joins the Motown party, 1964, with Berry and Can I Get A Witness were the label’s secondary
Gordy (at piano), Kim Weston (on mike) Smokey is turned inside out, with consideration, with Won-
Robinson (rear), Iris Gordy (in front of Smokey),
Marvelettes Gladys Horton (hidden by Weston), Wonder, band, horns der’s 1968-69 studio re-
Wanda Young (behind Weston) and Katherine and backing vocalists leases bulked up with cov-
Anderson (next to Iris), and Diana Ross (hidden by
Wonder); Stevie and Syreeta get married, 1970. all seemingly in- ers of Sunny, The Shadow
spired by different Of Your Smile and Hello
If Wonder rarely appears tied to a song- arrangements. Young Lovers – he’d never
writer’s intentions – listeners will often get The following shy from schmaltz – and
the impression they know the melody more year saw Won- released around live sets replete
intimately than he does – by late 1966, he der breaking new with show tunes.
was making this a virtue. Hey Love, the clos- ground with a Full control of his output
ing track on Down To Earth, is the template Hohner clavinet, may have been beyond him, but
for the meandering, unfettered vocal style he the instr ument with time running out on his
brought to subsequent albums, the simplic- most closely as- contract, Wonder still needed
ity of the tune subverted to his undisciplined sociated with his to master one final aspect of
personality. It wasn’t the only one: Don’t 1970s triumphs. the creative side to complete
Wonder Why (an album track from 1970) Introduced in his transition from child star to
would have fit seamlessly on 1980’s Hotter 1964 and target- auteur. Between August 1969
Than July. ed at those hoping to reproduce baroque and April 1970, he moulded another sin-
While Wonder enjoyed dipping into oth- sounds at home, it would instead find favour gle, Signed, Sealed, Delivered I’m Yours, his
er writers’ songbooks – even as his own stock among progressive musicians who wanted first solo, self-produced track, then sent it to
rose on that front – no cabaret crooner could keyboards that mimicked guitar. It adds col- Berry Gordy in Los Angeles. “Man,” Smokey
sing For Once In My Life with the freedom our to For Once In My Life and is the focal Robinson remembered Gordy telling Won-
he brought to it. His reassembling of cover point on Shoo-Be-Doo-Be-Doo-Da-Day, its der, shortly before the song crashed into the
versions peaked on 1967’s I Was Made To distinctive chords propelling both into the Billboard Top 5, “you really pitched a bitch.”
Love Her, his hardest album of the era, with Top 10. Though Wonder was now arguably It was a phrase the label boss would have
ballads nudged aside for upbeat rockers. My ahead of Norman Whitfield’s Temptations the opportunity to repeat frequently in the
Girl, Respect and Baby, Don’t You Do It are in moving Motown into the funk era, even years ahead.

MOJO 69
 STEVIE WONDER 1971-1973

State Of
Independence
How Stevie achieved his er Syreeta Wright. “The ’70s
were rough for Berry,” said
majority, asserted his Marvin Gaye, “because the art-
ists’ time had arrived.”
agency, rode with TONTO, The transition wasn’t en-
and the world was never the tirely smooth for Wonder,
either. In interviews around
same. By VICTORIA SEGAL. the release of Where I’m Com-

I
ing From, he repeatedly bridles
T WAS A HOT SPRING WEEKEND
at the idea of being eternally
in 1971 and in his sweltering New
buttoned into a youthful hit-
York apartment, a naked Malcolm
maker costume too tight across the
Cecil was mending a Mellotron when
chest, too short in the sleeves. “A lot
the doorbell rang. Peering out of the
of people have said to me, ‘You’re
third-floor window, he saw his bassist friend
a soul singer,’ which I really don’t
Ronnie Blanco and another man, striking
particularly like,” he bristled on
for both his outfit – a vivid green jumpsuit
The Old Grey Whistle Test. After
– and the album under his arm. The record
his English tour in January 1972
was Zero Time, the debut from Cecil’s own
with disappointed fans expecting
vivid outfit, synth pioneers TONTO’S
more old-style material, he was
Expanding Head Band. The man was Stevie
unapologetic. “I’ve spent 10 years
Wonder. Cecil put on some clothes and let
pleasing people when sometimes I wasn’t
them in, finding his unexpected guest was
very happy,” he said. “Now I just want to do
immediately keen to start working in a new
what I feel. I’m tired of doing the same old
realm of sound.
things.” Wonder was, as he advised on Where
Wonder had quickly become infatuated
I’m Coming From, taking up a course in happi-
with Zero Time, not initially believing that its
ness: “Remember there’s always a way out.”
galactic ripples and pulses all came from one
Those new horizons are clear from the Soul soldier: (clockwise from
instrument. Yet jazz musician and engineer above) Stevie Wonder on Top
moment Look Around opens Where I’m Com-
Cecil and his collaborator Robert Margouleff Of The Pops, 1971; with David
ing From, its baroque harpsichord stateliness Bowie, 1973; in the studio
– associate of Andy Warhol, friend of Rob- recording Talking Book,
demanding a rethink, a taking stock. Gone is
ert Moog – had used the hulking TONTO, July 22, 1972.
the neat pop calendar of yester-me and yes-
or The Original New Timbral Orchestra, to
ter-you: now, Wonder cosmically informs the
generate Zero Time. A cosmically expanded,
listener “time is only floating in your mind.”
endlessly customised analogue synthesizer, opener, and clearly emphasises – helped by a
The potent Sly Stone bubble of Do Yourself
TONTO’s blinking, beeping futurism was children’s choir – that he is now among the
A Favor is an even clearer call to enlighten-
reflected in Zero Time’s far-out track titles: grown-ups, writing with his (soon to be ex-)
ment, as much note-to-self as instruction to
Jetsex, Cybernaut, Timewhys. Cecil would wife, “little” no more. “Think of me as your
his audience.
always claim their electronic colossus con- soldier,” he sings, “the man whose life is for
Wonder had not abandoned pop – there’s
tained 128 metres of cable left over from the you.” The spiritual, the romantic and the po-
If You Really Love Me’s Laura Nyro extrava-
Apollo space mission. litical – it’s a new phase of Wonder, marching
gances, the chorus-line glitter of Take Up A
It made sense that Wonder should be into battle on all human fronts.
Course In Happiness – but Where I’m Com-
drawn into TONTO’s orbit; in 1971, he was

T
ing From is keen to burst its creative banks. HAT INCLUDED FINANCIALLY.
a man in search of a new launchpad, a differ-
The righteous children-are-the-future pro-
ent trajectory. “Into space we go to change Wonder’s next album, Music Of My
test Sunshine In Their Eyes closes the album.
our ways,” the aspiring cybernaut sang on Mind, was partly made out of contract
“They’re too young/To take a look around,”
Look Around, the track that opened his April while he contemplated his options. With
Wonder sings, circling back to the album’s
1971 album Where I’m Coming From. Won- the help of flamboyant lawyer Johanan Vi-
der signed to Motown when he was 11; when goda, Wonder’s relationship with Motown
he hit 21, his second five-year-contract with was renegotiated across six weeks and a 120-
Berry Gordy’s label would become void. He “I’VE SPENT 10 page contract, resulting in an increased roy-
was straining at the commercial pop limita-
tions Motown placed around him, looking
YEARS PLEASING alty rate and his own publishing, an unprec-
edented degree of in-house autonomy.
towards Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On, lis- PEOPLE WHEN It’s not fanciful to hear the sound of pure
tening to Wendy Carlos. Aware there was a
real threat that Wonder would sever himself
SOMETIMES I WASN’T artistic control on the twists and flips of
Music Of My Mind, released in March 1972.
from Motown as he hit adulthood, the label VERY HAPPY. NOW “Every day I want to fly my kite,” declares
I JUST WANT TO DO
Getty (3)

gave him a grudging distance to produce his Wonder on the relentless funk of Love
thirteenth album with his wife and co-writ- Having You Around, his voice further liber-
WHAT I FEEL.”
70 MOJO
STEVIE WONDER
ated by talkbox device The Bag.
“I wanted to just express… many
things that I felt,” Wonder said,
“the political point of view that I
have, the social point of view that
I have, the passions, emotion and
love that I felt…”
It all came back to control – to making
music that was turn-on-a-dime responsive to
the all-new sounds Wonder heard in his head
and the emotions that filled his heart, to be-
ing able to “bend notes the way that I heard
them being bent.” Margouleff and Cecil, he
understood, could help him cut the number
of commands between brain and record,
could pick and press his musical ideas as fast
as they bloomed.
“A lot of people don’t consider the Moog
an instrument,” Wonder told Penny Valen-
tine in 1972. “But I feel it is… a way to di-
rectly express what comes from your mind.
What you’re actually doing with an oscillator
is taking a sound and shaping it into whatever
form you want.”
Cecil and Margouleff ’s sessions with
Wonder were
prolific, prodi-
gious, requiring all-night stamina and end-
lessly running tape. “Once we got the sound
that we liked, we had to get the track down
quick before the sound changed,” recalled
Cecil in 2019. “We were there to make the
technology disappear and let Stevie create.”
There is a sense of a portal being opened on
Music Of My Mind; the mood-ring flow of
Seems So Long; the grand progressive suite
of Superwoman (Where Were You When I
Needed You), the lupine, loping funk of Keep
On Running. Whatever form you want.
In June and July 1972, Wonder supported
The Rolling Stones on their ‘Stones Touring
Party’ mission across America, opening more
channels, more minds. While the deathless
clavinet riff of Superstition was already a live
hit, its deflection of bad vibes speaking to
post-’60s paranoia, it found its ul-
timate setting on October’s Talking
Book, the album where Wonder’s
first-stage cocoon split and shed
for good. He is at full flow, moving
from the crisp, fresh-linen romance of You
Are The Sunshine Of My Life to the skulk-
ing jealousies of Maybe Your Baby; he then
does it again, the trembling romance of You
And I shaken from sweetness by the insecuri-
ties of Tuesday Heartbreak (its melancholy
deepened by David Sanborn’s saxophone).
Talking Book also features Big Brother, his
best political song to date: “You’ve killed all
our leaders,” he sings with magnificent con-
tempt. “I don’t even have to do nothing to
you/You’ll cause your own country to fall.”
“Here is my music. It is all I have to tell
you how I feel,” said the braille note on Talk-
ing Book’s sleeve. Unhooked from years of
expectation and constraint, Wonder’s mis-
sion to dissolve the distance between the
music of his mind and sounds the listener
can pick up is finally at full flow. The artist’s
time has arrived. Into space he goes.
MOJO 71
 STEVIE WONDER 1973-1978
Genius
Unbound
How Wonder’s Golden Age
began with a brush with death
and peaked with “a gloriously
deconstructed alchemy,”
discovers DAVID FRICKE.
O
N AUGUST 6, 1973, STEVIE
Wonder – one of America’s
biggest and busiest pop stars
that summer – was getting
a rare bit of rest, sleeping in
the front passenger seat of a Mercury sedan
while headed to a concert in Durham, North
Carolina. Three days earlier, the 23-year-old
R&B auteur had released his third album in
13 months, Innervisions, and was on his way
back to the Top 5 on Billboard’s Hot 100
for the third time in six months with the
galloping aspiration of the LP’s first single,
Higher Ground.
Then, on a stretch of Interstate 85, Won-
der’s driver, his cousin John Harris, swerved
to avoid a flat-bed truck ahead – but not
soon enough. The rear of the truck shattered
the Mercury’s windshield and hit Wonder
in the head. Rushed to a hospital, Wonder
was in a coma for almost a week, suffering a
brain contusion. Later, recovering at UCLA
Medical Center in Los Angeles, he told a
journalist he had no memory of the crash.
“The only thing I knew is that I was un-
conscious,” Wonder said, “and that for a few
days I was definitely in a much better spiritu-
al place that made me aware of a lot of things
that concern my life and my future and what
I have to do to reach another higher ground.”
Ironically, the truck’s driver, Charlie
Shepherd, who broke both ankles in the col-
lision, had no idea who was in the emergency
room with him that day. Shepherd, also 23,
had never heard of Stevie Wonder – surely
an impossibility for anyone else within ear’s
reach of a radio or record player.
“Half a year after his tour with the
Richard E Aaron/Getty, James Fortune/Capital Picutres
Stones, he was completing his show of new
strength,” Rolling Stone’s Ben Fong-Torres
reported from a Wonder gig in San Francisco
before the accident, referring to Wonder’s
nightly crossover-with-a-vengeance opening
shows for The Rolling Stones in 1972. “For
the wider, white audiences he now draws,
Wonder mixes together an Afro conscious-
ness [with] a music that is by turns loving
and lusty, that tells how Steve Wonder cher-
ishes freedom, and how he uses it. And the
72 MOJO
music, sure enough, reflects
the man.”
“I love gettin’ into
as much weird shit as
possible,” Wonder
declared in that story.
But, he continued,
“I’d like to get into
doing just acoustic
things, drums, bass,
no electronic[s]” – a
desire already in play
as Wonder made In-
nervisions, combining
its decisive rhythmic
adventures (the complex
skip-and-slide of Too High,
anchored by a downhill-
bebop hook; the chugging-
clavinet grip of Higher
Ground) with a subtle
deceleration of the synth-
driven futurism on Music Of
My Mind and Talking Book.
The cascading rapture
of Golden Lady featured
Wonder on grand piano as
well as Fender Rhodes, plus
Harlem jazz-bar soloing
by organist Clarence Bell.
And Wonder gave “special
thanks” in the credits to
guitarist David T Walker
for his starlit-treble soloing
(“As warm as his birth sign:
Cancer”) in the drum-less ballad, Visions. to your senses (“I’ll be standing on the
Reviewing Innervisions for Rolling Stone, side… When you get off your trip”). But
Lenny Kaye summed up Wonder’s activism the dire lesson in Living For The City – a
as “a hovering mist of subdued faith… a young black man exchanging one repres-
belief in the essential rightness of things” sion (“hard-time Mississippi”) for another
despite so much evidence to the contrary. (an arrest right off the bus at Port Author-
The Latin tinge of Don’t You Worry ’Bout ity) – came with an iconic shout of awe in the
A Thing was loaded assurance: Wonder ghetto-theatre interlude. Greg Phillinganes,
would be there for you – after you come who has played keyboards for Wonder over
four decades, recalls arriving in New York
in early 1975, 18 years old, to audition for
“I’VE COME TO REALISE Wonder’s band Wonderlove and quoting
that line from the song upon landing: “It’s
MY TIME ON EARTH IS my first time there, and I couldn’t resist it
NOT YET DONE… – ‘Wow, New York! Just like I pictured it,
skyscrapers and everything!’”
I ONLY HAVE ONE
IOTA OF THE
L
ESS THAN SIX MONTHS AFTER
the accident, it was as if Wonder
KNOWLEDGE THAT had walked away without a scratch.
I’D LIKE TO HAVE.” By the winter of 1974, he was playing for
celebrity-packed houses at London’s Rain-
STEVIE WONDER

bow Theatre – the glitterati including Paul
and Linda McCartney, Pete Townshend and
David Bowie, who bought 20 tickets for his
entourage – and fulfilling a postponed date
at New York’s Madison Square Garden. At
the Rainbow, Wonder opened the shows
with a new instrumental, Contusion, named
after his brain injury, while at the Garden he
shared his encore with guests Roberta Flack,
ex-Temptation Eddie Kendricks and an
apparently jealous Sly Stone.
“When the band segued into Sly’s trade-
mark Higher,” a Village Voice reviewer
noted, “it looked like Sly wanted to steal a
little of the energy for himself. But Stevie
took him firmly by the hand as he snake-
danced off the stage.” Wonder “was in
control all the way.” That was true as well
when Wonder took over the Grammy Awards
in March, 1974, walking out of the LA
ceremony with five wins, among them Album
Of The Year for Innervisions.
“The doctors say, ‘Don’t go crazy,’” Won-
der admitted during the Rainbow run – ad-
vice he ignored. “I’ve come to realise my
time on Earth is not yet done, and there are
things to do… I only have one iota of the
knowledge that I’d like to have when I leave
this life.” That impatience drove him to fin-
ish two productions for other singers – a sec-
ond solo album by his ex-wife Syreeta Wright
and Minnie Riperton’s pop-soul blockbuster
Perfect Angel, a Top 5 hit thanks to its Number
1 single Lovin’ You – as well as his own next
LP, Fulfillingness’ First Finale, all issued within
weeks of each other in the summer of 1974.
Issued in a weirdly retrospective sleeve
with images of Wonder as the bow-tied wun-
derkind of 1963 and a stairway to heaven of
piano keys lined with gold albums and Gram-
my statuettes, Fulfillingness was even bigger at
the cash register than Innervisions: Wonder’s
first Number 1 pop album. It was also, for
the first time in the ’70s, the sound of Won-
der spinning in place. The hit singles were
definitive party (Boogie On Reggae Woman)
and dynamic protest (You Haven’t Done
Nothin’). But the latter, a clavinet-charged
mocking of then-President Nixon with
vocal sassing by the Jackson 5, was essentially
Higher Ground on a picket line. The rest of
Fulfillingness was the craft of exasperation
Horsing around: Wonder saddles
up during promotional duties for
Songs In The Key Of Life, September
22, 1976; (left) Wonder with Elton
John and Barry White, 1975.
and elegy. The tongue-tied beauty of Too
Shy To Say with James Jamerson on acous-
tic bass, earned the Motown studio legend a
rare sleeve mention. And Wonder, recently
so close to death, would return to They
Won’t Go When I Go, his reflection on the
love and the legacy you leave behind, in 2009
when he performed it at Michael Jackson’s
memorial service.
In late 1974, Wonder hinted to Melody
Maker that he had an entire, second – and
superior – volume of Fulfillingness songs: “I
wish you could hear the other part of that al-
bum. It’s so much better.” But that record
never came out, nor did a live album taped
at the Rainbow. In another interview that
year, Wonder estimated that he had “some
180 songs… that have never seen the light
of day.”
“Easily,” affirms Greg Phillinganes today,
“and that’s conservative.” At his audition,
Wonder tested him with Spring High, a then-
unreleased song, playing it with Phillinganes
“to see if I could keep up.” (Wonder later
gave the tune to pianist Ramsey Lewis.)
“And yes, at times, it was hard to keep ➢
MOJO 73
 STEVIE WONDER 1973-1978
up,” Phillinganes
➣
adds, laughing. “He’s
Stevie Wonder.”
The singer, in turn,
spent two years chasing
that superhuman ideal of
24-7 pop genius, cram-
ming healing lyrical wis-
dom and commercial
infallibility into the sweeping achievement of
Songs In The Key Of Life, 104 minutes of mu-
sic across two LPs and a bonus seven-inch EP,
finally released on September 28, 1976 af-
ter so many delays that Motown distributed
T-shirts swearing “We’re Almost Finished”.
In a 2001 interview, engineer John Fishbach
said the sessions went on “almost every day”,
producing “something like 200 songs.”
W
ONDERLOVE DRUMMER
Raymond Pounds, credited on
three tracks, looked back on
Songs with frustration and marvel. “He’d
create a song,” Pounds said in 2021, “and
I’d say, Hey, Stevie, can I play on this one?
Sometimes he would say yes. Most times,
he’d say, ‘No, I’m going to play on it because
I know exactly what I want.’”
Then there were the many songs, Pounds
said, that Wonder rehearsed and cut with
Wonderlove – only for the band to return to
the studio the following night “and he’d go,
‘Check this out. I wrote this song. It’s going
to replace so-and-so.’”
Nevertheless, Wonder kept his band on
retainer, therefore on call at any hour. “You
could be asleep,” Phillinganes says, “and
get the call at two in the morning: ‘Yeah, he
wants you.’ Then you go there, and you may
Getty (2)
or may not do anything.” Pounds remembers
getting a summons one night and arriving
74 MOJO
too late to play on the
ecstatic, charging Anoth-
er Star because the boss
decided to record the drum
track himself.
Wonder was as impulsive
outside of the studio. In the
fall of 1974, he announced
he would marr y Yolanda
Simmons, a secretar y at his publishing
company. The wedding never happened,
but the couple had a daughter, Aisha, born
in February, 1975 and a featured vocalist on
Songs, making baby noises in the bathtub on
the jubilant Isn’t She Lovely.
Back in 1973, Wonder had mused about
quitting the rat race at Motown and moving
to Africa, but here he was, two years later,
signing a new deal with the label for a $13
million windfall – in time to cancel a planned
October 1975 release as the new album
(originally with the modest working title
Let’s See Life The Way It Is) expanded in
length and grandeur.
“This was not a factory,” Phillinganes
says. The road to Songs was “a gloriously
deconstructed alchemy” that ultimately
veered from single-handed tour de force (the
“YOU COULD BE
ASLEEP AND GET
THE CALL AT TWO IN
THE MORNING: ‘YEAH,
HE WANTS YOU.’”
RAYMOND
POUNDS
Life lessons: (main) Wonder
performs for inmates at Cook
County Jail, Chicago, November
8, 1976; (above) receiving his
Grammy from Bette Midler, 1975.
eerie, choral opener, Love’s In Need Of Love
Today) to cast-of-dozens extravagance (the
two congregations, Christian and Krishna,
singing Pastime Paradise; the classroom hal-
lelujah of the Harlem theatre troupe in the
strutting history lesson Black Man). Wonder
recorded the Mahavishnu Motown of Con-
tusion and a kinetic tribute to the Jazz Age,
Sir Duke, with Wonderlove, while forming
blockbuster ad hoc ensembles with pianist
Herbie Hancock (the frantic majesty of As)
and guitarist George Benson (Another Star).
Guests whose cameos didn’t make
the final cut included Frank Zappa (his
guitar solo on All Day Sucker was replaced
by Back Street Crawler’s Snuffy Walden), Al-
ice Coltrane (Dorothy Ashby played the harp
on If It’s Magic instead) and Carole King
(who sang on a still-unreleased song, In
The Business).
Wonder’s ambition and caprice paid
off in titanic measure: Number 1 for 13
weeks in Billboard; a third, straight Grammy
for Album Of The Year. Songs In The Key Of
Life remains his biggest-selling LP (more
than 10 million copies in the US). It also did
for Wonder what the car accident could not:
slow him down, ending a five-year frenzy
to succeed in unprecedented risk and scale
that Prince soon took up with his own,
eccentric zeal.
“The only thing you can do is be thank-
ful for what you have,” Wonder replied when
asked in 1974 if he bore any psychological
scars from the crash. “You intensify your
appreciation for life… that you do have a
future to look forward to.”
After Songs In The Key Of Life, Wonder
spent the next three years smelling the flow-
ers. And then he made an album with them.
 STEVIE WONDER 1979-1989
Know That
Love Can Win
Wonder’s eccentricity,
and activism, defined an ’80s
that offered more than met
the eye, argues STEVIE CHICK.
I
T’S FEBRUARY 1979, AND IN A
plush California recording studio –
one of six he’ll occupy over the next
three months – Stevie Wonder is be-
ginning work on his boldest project
yet. Months earlier, he’d agreed to pen the
closing-credits theme for an eccentric na-
ture documentary arguing that all plant life is
sentient. But when producer Michael Braun
heard Wonder’s piece, Tree, he junked his
existing score and commissioned Wonder to
compose the entire soundtrack to The Secret
Life Of Plants.
The project provided Wonder a distrac-
tion from the pressure of completing the
long-awaited follow-up to the phenomenal
Songs In The Key Of Life. The non-negotiable
deadlines of scoring a movie imposed some
much-needed discipline upon his elastic
creative process. What’s more, he relished
attempting something he’d never tried
before. “The more I heard people ask, ‘How
can Stevie, being blind, write music for a
film?’ the more of a challenge it became,”
he told Stereo Review in 1980. Wonder
had Braun describe the scenes that required
music, while engineer Gary Olazabal calcu-
lated the length – to the fraction of a second
– the pieces needed to run.
“I let my creativity run free,” Wonder
admitted. His youthful assistant, Gordon
Bahary, remembered Wonder like a mad
professor surrounded by synthesizers, hook-
ing electrodes to house-plants to see what
sounds they made: “On The Secret Life Of
Plants you can hear there were no boundaries
for him any more.”
The instrumental pieces swung be-
tween quasi-ambient excursions (The First
Garden), exotica (Voyage To India; Ai No,
Sono) and symphonic themes conjuring vio-
Michael Ochs Archives/Getty, Rick Diamond/Getty
lent cosmic forces (Earth’s Creation). The
songs were endearingly quirky: Same Old
Story chronicled black agriculturalist George
Washington Carver’s fight against the scien-
tific establishment, Venus’ Flytrap And The
Bug imbued its predator/prey narrative with
erotic frisson. The feverish computer funk of
Race Babbling, meanwhile, anticipated the
electronic dance music of a decade later.
Motown pressed up two million copies,
the embossed double-gatefold sleeves scent-
76 MOJO
ed with floral perfume. But
like Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk,
also released in October
1979, Stevie Wonder’s Jour-
ney Through ‘The Secret Life
Of Plants’ was an experi-
mental opus that baffled
fans craving a follow-up to
his biggest hit. The album
struggled to sell 500,000
copies. An ambitious and
costly accompanying tour, featur-
ing synchronised video screens
and a cast and crew of 60-plus,
was abandoned after six dates.
Like Tusk, it would find its audi-
ence years after its release – Paddy
McAloon called it “majestic” in
MOJO in 1997, while Janelle
Monáe credited it with inspiring
her 11-year-old self to write a mu-
sical about a girl falling in love with a plant.
But Wonder – who still believes it ranks
with his best work – would never attempt so
ambitious a project again.
Instead, he pressed on with Songs In The
Key Of Life’s true follow-up, and in 1980
he emerged with Hotter Than July, which
played safer and righted the ship, sales-wise.
The ballads were strong: All I Do’s keening
funk resurrecting a lost tune he’d originally
penned for the late Tammi Terrell; Lately’s
quiet storm engulfed a dark, affecting lyric
that chronicled the discovery of an illicit af-
MLK Day in interviews, campaigned, or-
fair. Spending seven weeks at Number 1 in the
ganised petition drives and led three protest
US, lead single Master Blaster (Jammin’) was
marches to the Capitol. The last of these, in
Wonder’s reggae-fied tribute to friend Bob
August 1983, commemorated two decades
Marley, prophesying a collaboration scup-
since King’s own March On Washington of
pered by Marley’s death the following year.
August 1963. At the podium, with Scott King
The closing track, meanwhile, indicated
at his side, Wonder called upon the thou-
where Wonder would focus his energies dur-
sands assembled to “walk in the direction
ing this new decade. He’d first performed
of a dream”. Three months later, President
Happy Birthday, his tribute to Martin Luther
Reagan signed the nationwide MLK Day
King Jr, during rehearsals before a benefit for
into law.
Atlanta’s King Center for Nonviolent Social
A
Change in 1979. Wonder told King’s wid-
FTER THIS TRIUMPH, THE
ow, Coretta Scott King, that he’d dreamed
bean-counters at Motown must
of marching on Washington, to demand a
have hoped Wonder’s focus would
national holiday in honour of the fallen civil
return to Hotter Than July’s long-overdue
rights leader. He discussed the proposed
follow-up. The label had released Original
Musiquarium, a stopgap compilation cherry-
picking his ’70s output, in 1982, appending
“IF THE BANNING four new tracks to keep things current. One
OF MY RECORDS of them, the 10-minute Latin/disco/funk
epic Do I Do, featuring a trumpet solo from
MEANT FREEDOM FOR bebop pioneer Dizzy Gillespie, would be his
THE PEOPLE, THEN finest work of the ’80s.
Wonder also took on another soundtrack
MEGA-BAN ME.”
STEVIE WONDER
 Master blaster: (clock-
wise from left) Stevie at
1982’s LA Superfest; jam-
min’ with Bob Marley,
June 9, 1979; with his
Best Song Oscar, 1985;
with Bob Dylan, Grammy
Awards, 1984; with
Coretta Scott King during
the MLK Gala, Atlanta,
1982; heating up
Wembley Arena with
Diana Ross and Marvin
Gaye, September 6, 1980.

side-project, scoring 1984 Gene eage of Fulfillingness’s anti-Nixon

Wilder romcom The Woman In
Red with a handful of duets with
Dionne Warwick, some lukewarm
synth-funk and, most memorably, I Just
Called To Say I Love You. He’d written the
song eight years earlier, on the journey home
from a visit to his mother; it proved a chart
phenomenon, winning an Oscar and a Gold-
en Globe, along with three Grammy nomi-
nations, and remains to this day Motown’s
best-selling single in the UK.
Wonder’s next album proper, In Square
Circle, finally arrived in September 1985,
preceded by Part-Time Lover’s sonic up-
date on Motown’s classic beat, and harbour-
ing the beguiling shuffle of Stranger On The
Shore, the moody I Love You Too Much, the
tender Overjoyed. The album closed with
the forthright protest-funk of It’s Wrong
Getty (2), CBS via Getty
had been arrested
outside the South
African embassy in Washington, singing We
Shall Overcome and describing himself to
The Washington Post as “a conscientious
criminal for world equality and against ra-
cial oppression and apartheid”. A month
later, he accepted his Oscar for I Just Called
To Say I Love You “in the name of Nelson
Mandela”, earning himself a six-month ban
from South African radio. “I was crushed,”
Wonder deadpanned to The Old Grey Whis-
tle Test’s Mark Ellen. “If the banning of my
records meant freedom for the people, then
mega-ban me.”
By Wonder’s post-SITKOL standards,
1987’s Characters arrived hot on In Square
Circle’s heels. And while it became his first
broadside You Haven’t Done
Nothin’. The 12-inch remix sampled speech
from Reagan and Colonel Oliver North,
key players in the recent Iran-Contra Affair,
making its targets explicit.
The track arrived as hip-hop entered
its most politicised phase, channelling the
themes and spirit of Wonder’s imperial ’70s.
“I like rap music a lot,” Wonder told NME’s
Paolo Hewitt in 1989, namechecking Pub-
lic Enemy. But once again his interests in
politics were focused more on direct action
than protest songs. He even floated a pos-
sible run for Mayor of Detroit. “I am seri-
ous!” Wonder told Hewitt. “I want to make
Detroit a better place.” And while he was
vague on exactly how he’d do that (“We have
anti-crack situations where the desire for
drugs could be cured,” he suggested, nebu-

(Apartheid), but it seemed that Wonder’s
activism was now more effectively expressed
through his actions than through his music.
The previous Valentine’s Day – months
before In Square Circle’s release – Wonder
album since Music Of My Mind to miss the US
Top 10, the beautifully jazzy With Each Beat
Of My Heart and Cryin’ Through The Night
were prime Wonder. Best of the bunch, Skel-
etons was seething, paranoid funk in the lin-
lously), he was as confident of his success at
the ballot box as in the charts. When Hewitt
asked how the voters of Detroit would
respond to his candidacy, Wonder grinned
and answered: “Landslide!”

MOJO 77
 STEVIE WONDER NUGGETS
Little Wonders
20 Stevie stunners on the road less travelled,
by MOJO’s Wonderlovers.
Lois
(from Never-Before-Released
Masters From Motown’s Brightest
Stars: The 1960s, 1986)
An early (1963) co-write – named for
the Vandellas’ Lois Reeves – and an
early sign of Wonder breaking away
from Motown’s idea of him as Ray
Charles’s Mini-Me. Soul lovers Mr
and Mrs Wilson of Lincoln dug the
yearning, Sam Cooke-ish
fingerpopper so
much they gave
the title to their
daughter, now
MOJO soul
maven, Lois
Wilson. DE
Music
Talk
(B-side to High
Heel Sneakers
single, 1965)
Stevie vs the Funk Brothers? It’s
almost that as the 15-year-old blasts
his Hohner midway through this
firecracker of a flipside (later to
feature on the Up-Tight LP). Vocally
or instrumentally, he won’t be
intimidated by the Motown studio
band’s pumping brass section or
Benny Benjamin’s thunderous
drums. “It’s the best way of talking
that man has ever had!” AW
Angel Baby (Don’t
You Ever Leave Me)
(from Down To Earth, 1966)
No one does runaway joy quite
like Stevie Wonder – witness this
gorgeous, unjustly overlooked
gem from 1966. Written by Sylvia
Moy and Henry Cosby, Wonder’s
life-affirming original of the song
better known by Darrell Banks is a
triumph of the Hitsville factory line,
capturing the teen narrator in
the flushes of first love and fully
surrendering to it. LW
Hey Love
(from Down To Earth, 1966)
One of Motown’s greatest love
songs was initially hidden away as
an album track, but when issued as
a B-side the following year it was
78 MOJO
flipped by DJs on US black radio
and hit the US R&B Top 10. Wonder’s
adoring vocal on the co-pen with
Clarence Paul put him up there with
Marvin Gaye as one of the label’s
top crooners. LW
Every Time I See
You I Go Wild
(from I Was Made To Love Her, 1967)
Recorded while
Marvin Gaye was
readying his single
You, both tunes
bidding farewell
to any hopes
Motown harboured of convincing
the singers to become new Nat King
Coles. Supper-club smooth it’s
not, and the intensity of the mono
mix – the B-side of ’67 single I’m
Wondering – may be dangerous for
anyone with a heart condition. DH
More Than A Dream
(from Eivets Rednow, 1968)
The two best tracks from the
cryptised Wonder’s easy listening
career-diversion both have his
name on the writing credits. The
mellifluous How Can You Believe
was later sampled on Madvillain’s
Great Day, but More Than A Dream
is where Stevie and his harp, riffing
(surely?) on Ferry Cross The Mersey,
get to mess up the bachelor pad.
Groovy! DE
I Don’t Know Why
(from For Once In My Life, 1968)
Packed with emotion, distortion
and pain, this 167-second
crescendo memorably finds its
cuckolded singer crying, pleading
and crawling “across cold, black
earth”. On 45 in 1969, flipside My
Cherie Amour was the bigger hit,
but this sui generis Motown release
rocks so hard the Rolling Stones’
cover version would have improved
Let It Bleed. DH
Keep On Running
(from Music Of My Mind, 1972)
“Something gonna get you…
something gonna grab you…”
Wonder’s faux-threatening intro,
haunted by spooky synth stabs,
resolves into something less sinister
– it’s only his love that’s after you!
phew! – but still thrilling. The
panting, 137 bpm tempo keeps
the ‘running’ theme going for a full
6:40, by which time you’ll think it’s
you who’s had the workout. DE
You’ve Got It
Bad Girl
(B-side to Superstition single, 1972)
Relegated to
Superstition’s
undercard, this
magical mellow
groove – last track,
side one of Talking
Book – never received the attention
it deserved. Wonder, who wrote
the softly infectious song with
occasional collaborator Yvonne
Wright, played all the music
himself; its layered synth sounds
epitomising the Motown maestro’s
burgeoning auteurdom. CW
Cause We’ve
Ended As Lovers
(from Stevie Wonder Presents:
Syreeta, 1974)
A song-cycle
chronicling the
breakdown of their
marriage, Syreeta’s
second album
centred around this
Stevie-penned slow-burner, which
sifted through fond memories and
brooded over broken dreams, but
also affirmed their friendship would
endure. Indeed, Syreeta remained
Wonder’s trusted friend, confidante
and collaborator, guesting on his
records until her death in 2004. SC
Take A Little Trip
(from Perfect Angel (Deluxe
Edition), 2017)
Under the
pseudonym El Toro
Negro, Wonder
co-produced and
played drums, piano
and harmonica on
Minnie Riperton’s Perfect Angel from
1974. He also wrote Take A Little
Trip, a blurry psych-soul beauty
advocating spiritual awakening. In
2017 this Wonder and Riperton duet
version surfaced, their telepathic
connection taking the song to a
whole new level. LW
Creepin’
(from Fulfillingness’ First Finale,
1974)
Tip-toeing along on a somnambu-
lant groove (notwithstanding some
eccentric snare hits, 0:16-0:18),
this dreamy nocturne separates
Fulfillingness’s uptempo Boogie
On Reggae Woman and You Haven’t
Done Nothin’. Again, the clouds
of dreamy synths and bluesy
harmonica solo are all Wonder’s
own work, although Minnie
Riperton contributes ethereal
background vocals. CW
Sleeping Alone
(from Steppin’, 1975)
Among those tapping the overflow
of Wonder’s mid-’70s tune reservoir
were The Pointer Sisters. Here,
Wonder moonlights on his own
song, supplying grunts, Rhodes,
and (maybe) the subtly strange
drums. In fact, everything in this
muso bran tub is strange – the
Pointer harmonies, the Latin-funk
outbursts, the incongruous blues
outro, and Wonder’s hyperactive
solo from 2:11. DE
Contusion
(from Songs In The Key Of Life, 1976)
Proof of the fecundity of the
21-track SITKOL package, this mostly
instrumental jazz-fusion jugger-
naut sounds like Wonder digging
the music of his friend Jeff Beck and
Return To Forever. An outlier in
Wonder’s canon, the title alluding
to his near-fatal car accident in
1973, it showcases guitarist Michael
Sembello’s fretboard-melting
pyrotechnics. CW
Race Babbling
(from Journey Through ‘The Secret
Life Of Plants’, 1979)
If … Plants is generally a plea to
slow down and embrace the natural
world, Race Babbling – refrain:
“This world is moving much too
fast” – sits as a warning against
accelerating modernism. Yet the
future, surely, couldn’t be that
bad, if soundtracked by Wonder’s
super-streamlined proto-techno,
neck and neck with Moroder and
years ahead of the Detroit curve. JM
As If You Read
My Mind
Redferns/Getty
(from Hotter Than July, 1980)
Wonder’s passion for Latin music
inspired classics including Don’t
You Worry ’Bout A Thing and
 Another Star, and even saw him sit
in with Nuyorican heroes the Fania
All-Stars in 1976. A later example
of his love for Afro-Cuban sounds,
this piano-driven banger’s restless
salsa rhythms and call to “get
happy” are irresistible. SC

Do I Do
(from Stevie Wonder’s Original
Musiquarium, 1982)
10:28 minutes of rapture, and
tantalising evidence of an ’80s
road mostly untravelled, as Wonder
builds on SITKOL’s expansiveness,
absorbs a few tricks from Off The
Wall and Rapper’s Delight, enlists
Dizzy Gillespie for a trumpet solo,
and even has a go at rapping
himself before, one assumes,
the recording engineers collapse
from exhaustion. JM

These Three Words

(from Jungle Fever OST, 1991)
Wonder’s soundscape to Spike
Lee’s movie showed he had his
finger on the ’90s pulse, from
the electro-funk of the title
theme and New Jack Swing
groove of Gotta Have You. Here,
over a tickle of electric keys and a
typically epic harmonic journey,
he delivers a cinematic portrait
of familial love, turning potential
goo into gold. LW

Treat Myself
(from Conversation Peace, 1995)
This joyful gem revisits the escapist
theme Wonder first explored
with the “mind excursions” of Bird
Of Beauty, off Fulfillingness’ First
Finale. This time, he’s using his
imagination as a refuge from a
world riven by poverty, war and
bigotry, choosing instead “all the
pretty places in my head”. SC

Can’t Put It In
The Hands Of Fate
(So What The Fuss/Republic ‘single’,
2020)
Wonder’s activist instincts, never
far from the surface, welled up in
this swinging, swingeing anthem
for the nascent BLM movement.
MCs including Rapsody and Busta
Rhymes weigh in, but none put
it as starkly as Wonder himself:
“You say that you believe that All
Lives Matter/I say I don’t believe
the fuck you do.” DE
Outta sight: Stevie Chick,
Danny Eccleston, David Hutcheon,
Finger-clickin’ John Mulvey, Charles Waring,
good: Stevie Adam White, Lois Wilson
Wonder in 1970.

MOJO 79
 STEVIE WONDER 1990-2023
Always
And Forever
Re-bound to Motown, but –
as usual – on his own clock,
Wonder forged into the
future. Not many albums,
but plenty of action, says
GRAYSON HAVER CURRIN.
I
N 1992, STEVIE WONDER SIGNED
the record deal of – and for – a lifetime.
Three decades earlier, he had
become the pre-teen star of Mo-
town, a deal inked only after Ber-
ry Gordy apologised when an employee
told Wonder’s mother, Lula Mae, that
the kid could spend his days selling pen-
cils for all he cared. Just 14 years later,
amid a run of landmark albums that
culminated in Songs In The Key Of Life,
Wonder renegotiated a contract so strong
he had the right to veto an eventual sale of
Motown. And then, in 1992, they reaffirmed
their bond: as long as there was a Motown,
they would release his records.
Not that there have been very many. Since
the deal – in fact, since his 1989 induction
into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame – he has
issued only two studio LPs and one live set.
Yet Wonder has been busy: as a prolific guest
star, as a dogged touring act, and as a tireless
diplomat for whatever American goodwill
and virtue remain. And sure, if asked, he is
happy to talk about a hidden trove of albums
that are always in the works.
“Bach and Chopin took years to write
their stuff. I’ve had to experience some life
so that there’s more for me to sing about, to
express,” he told Oprah Winfrey in 2004,
during an interview where he revealed the
title of his most recent album, A Time To Love,
a full year before it was finished.
“Motown doesn’t want to hear that —
they’re like, ‘Come on, man’ – and I did
plan to put out an album five years ago,” he
said. “But I’m glad I didn’t, because there’s a
whole ’nother thing going on now.”
W
ONDER WAS CERTAINLY
experiencing some life. For in-
stance, there was the time in
1992, when Wonder, a passenger on Ghana
president Jerry John Rawlings’ 13-seater
plane, took the controls on the descent into
the Ghanaian capital of Accra. A French
television crew even filmed it. “He had
Getty (4)
landed that thing unaided so successfully, he
thought people probably won’t believe that
80 MOJO
he’s truly blind,” Rawlings later
reported. In 1999, at a White
House dinner for Rawlings, Bill Clinton said,
“I hope you wore a seat belt.”
In fact Wonder was so enchanted by Gha-
na that he vowed to move there permanently,
something he’d said about Africa for at least
20 years. He was the co-chair of the Pan-
African Festival of Arts & Culture there in
1994, and he used a govern-
ment palace as a sort of artist
residency to pen 40 songs in
just six weeks. He funnelled
them into Conversation Peace,
his 1995 album that strove to
keep up with those hip-hop
crossover times.
“I was a little bit away from
the phone ringing and just in a
great situation,” he said in an
interview with Blues & Soul.
“I could let the gift of God
work and give me ideas and inspi-
ration to come up with some songs
that I feel good about.”
Even then, Wonder was field-
ing queries about what had taken
him so long, though he had topped
the charts with the soundtrack for
Spike Lee’s Jungle Fever only four
years earlier. At 2004’s
end, he confirmed an
April 2005 release date
for A Time To Love, then
proceeded to miss a series
of deadlines. “The reason
[Motown] haven’t got it,” as well as his first wife
he quipped to Newsweek, and close collaborator,
“is I’m not ready to give it Syreeta Wright. And in
to them.” a controversial election,
Life was moving, and the US – already em-
he wanted his first record broiled in its Middle East
conflicts for nearly four
in a decade to chronicle
years – had just elected George W. Bush to
the motion. He had a grandchild, Miles,
older than his then-youngest son, Kailand, a second term. “So much has happened in
the last year,” Wonder said. “It caused me to
only two. His brother, Larry, had just died,
think differently about how I would organise
the record.”
And A Time To Love did feel like a
“BACH AND CHOPIN reflection of Wonder, the 55-year-old
TOOK YEARS TO WRITE grandfather who knew success and strife
and more than once said he would have
THEIR STUFF. I’VE HAD been Malcolm X had he not been a musi-
TO EXPERIENCE SOME cian. He inveighed against social apathy on
opener If Your Love Cannot Be Moved and
LIFE SO THAT THERE’S enlisted help from gospel great Kirk Franklin
MORE FOR ME TO on Shelter In The Rain. He sounded like he
was having fun, too, adding impromptu yelps
SING ABOUT.” and laughing on tape, the tone as bright as
STEVIE WONDER
 In need of love today: (clockwise from above)
Stevie Wonder with Motown’s Berry Gordy at
the 50th Grammy Awards, 2008; Wonder joins
Aretha Franklin at Radio City Music Hall, New
York, April 9, 2001; with South African President
Nelson Mandela in Pretoria, February 6, 1996;
Wonder with then-Illinois Senator Barack
Obama at the First African Methodist Episcopal
Church, Los Angeles in 2007, commemorating
15 years since the LA riots.

when he was that Motown kid.
“We’ve had all sorts of time to talk about
the war,” Wonder told Winfrey, “but when
will there be a time to love? It’s now.”
albums since A Time To Love, many attesting
to Wonder’s enduring openness as a listener,
the musician who defended hip-hop when
interviewers baited him to badmouth it. He
met Scott, for instance, when the rapper per-
benefit and on tour. Although, since a kidney
transplant in December 2019, he’s had to
take extra care of his immune system. “We
take tests every day when we’re on the road,”
said Nate Watts, Wonder’s bassist since the

I
N THE L AST TWO DECADES,
Wonder has made parts of at least three
albums: When The World Began, Ten Bil-
lion Hearts, and an ecumenical gospel record,
part of a promise made to his late mother.
Lula Mae died in 2006, Wonder’s sister
Renee in 2018. He sat bedside with Aretha
Franklin just before her death, as he pined
for one more chance to sing with her. He
had two more children, bringing the total to
nine, and he repeatedly performed for one
of his most ardent fans, Barack Obama, who
dubbed Wonder his “musical hero”.
These albums have yet to emerge, but
plenty of music with Wonder contribu-
tions has. Snoop Dogg and Bono, Drake and
Barbra Streisand, Eddie Vedder and Travis
Scott: Wonder has appeared on five-dozen
formed at one of his children’s birthday par-
ties. In return, he dropped by the studio and
jammed with a harmonica for hours.
After casual collaborations for 40 years,
Stevie Wonder and Elton John finally re-
leased their first duet, the ecclesiastical Fin-
ish Line, in 2021. It served as a testament
to how much they both still liked working,
a mutual admiration society in real time. “I
really wanted him to sing on it because it,
for me, was like an old-fashioned soul song
and that’s the music I grew up loving,” John
told Billboard. “To be honest, it’s one of the
greatest things I’ve ever recorded.”
And in 2007, after a decade off the road,
Wonder returned to the stage with gusto,
making a habit of marathon sets, even per-
forming Songs In The Key Of Life in full at a
late ’70s, during a 2022 podcast. “Gotta pro-
tect him, baby!”
But in 2023, Wonder seemed to emerge
again, recording on half a dozen albums,
joining The Rolling Stones and Lady Gaga for
Hackney Diamonds’ standout Sweet Sounds
Of Heaven. And he dropped in on Quincy
Jones’ ninetieth birthday concert in July this
year, leading an all-star cast through Happy
Birthday for a righteous Hollywood Bowl en-
core. Perhaps, at long last, he’s experienced
enough of this phase of life to sing some new
songs about it.
Or as he snapped in 2005 at an Entertain-
ment Weekly reporter who only wanted to
talk about what had taken so long for it to
be A Time To Love: “I always say, you’ll get it
when you get it. Leave me alone!” M

MOJO 81
 MOJO F ILT E R
YOUR GUIDE TO THE MONTH'S BEST MUSIC
EDITED BY JENNY BULLEY jenny.bulley@bauermedia.co.uk

CONTENTS
84 ALBUMS
• Dog walkers and hell raisers: Sleater-Kinney
• His dark material: Bill Ryder-Jones
• Gruff Rhys is aiming for “euphoric melancholy”
• A great leap forward for Marika Hackman
• Plus, Black Grape, Danny Brown, Rosie Frater-
Taylor, Willie Nelson, Bernie Marsden, Tapir!,
Conchúr White, Clark and more.

94 REISSUES
• Mott The Hoople: the Dudes abide
• Master of the hammered dulcimer,
Dorothy Carter
• Aretha Franklin: when the Queen Of Soul
ruled over Atlantic
• Plus, Yes, Spiritualized, The American
Analog Set, Roberta Flack, The Seeds,
Plastikman, Hawkwind and more.

104 HOW TO BUY

• Immersive Aussie ensemble The Necks

106 BOOKS
• Mal Evans: the unsung hero of Get Back
gets his own biography
• Plus, 2 Tone, Sid & Nancy, The Incredible
String Band and more.

108 SCREEN
• Celebrating The Birthday Party, King Crimson,
“However glorious Peter Doherty, Nicky Hopkins and more.

The Beatles’ INDEX

long sunset, not Affection Place 87 Future Islands 86 Ross, Hjalte 92
everyone was Akinmusire,
Ambrose 91
Gazelle Twin
Ghost Woman
86
91
Rosselson, Leon
Ryder-Jones, Bill
97
87

saved.”
American Analog Hackman, Marika 88 Seeds, The 98
Set, The 101 Hawkwind 98 Segall, Ty 86
Amor Muere 92 Hiller, Holger 97 Silverio, Massimo 91
Bailey, Derek & Hunter, Nailah 86 Sleater-Kinney 84
MAT SNOW REFLECTS ON Motian, Paul 103 Iverson, Ethan 92 Spiritualized 101
THE TRAGIC FATE OF MAL Black Grape 88 Jackson, Joe 86 Sprints 89
EVANS. BOOKS P106. Blue Orchids 101 Junkboy 92 Strom, Pauline Anna 99
Bovell, Dennis 97 Lancaster, Byard 96 Supersempfft 97
Brainiac 99 Large Plants 92 Taha, Rachid 96
Brown, Danny 88 Lewis, Al 90 Tapir! 88
Carter, Dorothy 96 Mars, Vic 90 Universal Harmonies
Carter, Frank 88 Marsden, Bernie 90 & Frequencies 88
Chemtrails 89 Matsiko, Daudi 91 VA: Blank Generation 99
Clark 92 Moebius 98 VA: J Jazz Vol 4 103
Curator, The 90 Moreira, Airto & VA: Light In The
Daily Flash, The 99 Purim, Flora 96 Attic & Friends 101
Donovan 99 Morton, Mandy And VA: The NID Tapes 98
Drop Nineteens 87 Spriguns 97 VA: We Can Work
Dyer, Arone & Mott The Hoople 94 It Out 97
Stargaze 91 Mutabaruka 90 Ward, Scott 91
Fall, The 103 Nau, Michael 89 Wetton, John 99
Fallen Leaves, The 90 Nelson, Willie 88 White, Conchúr 90
Flack, Roberta 101 Pentangle 99 White, Dylan 87
Forsyth, Chris 101 Pink Floyd 98 Yano, Akiko 101
Franklin, Aretha 100 Plastikman 98 Yes 97
Frater-Taylor, Rosie 89 Pregoblin 87 Zia Mohiuddin
F.U.S.E. 96 Rhys, Gruff 89 Dagar, Ustad 98

MO O 83
MOJJO
 F I LT E R A L B UM S

The magic cord

Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker pull through tragedy with their eleventh album.
By Victoria Segal. Illustration by Bartosz Kosowski.

Sleater-Kinney to impose form on something unbounded. These

songs often suggest it’s a struggle to rally one person
★★★★ into a functioning self, let alone rouse an army of the
righteous. It’s testament to Tucker and Brownstein’s
Little Rope gifts, then, that an album that describes inertia,
LOMA VISTA. CD/DL/LP
paralysis, the blotting out of hope, is their strongest
since No Cities To Love.

I
T’S NEARLY 30 years since Sleater-Kinney formed While their reunion has endured, it’s not been
in Olympia, Washington, taking their utilitarian without turbulence. Released in 2019, The Center
name from a road that ran by their rehearsal space. Won’t Hold was a darkly synthesised attempt to strike
Their own path hasn’t come without its off-ramps out in slick new directions under the steely produc-
and sudden diversions – having ended their first tion guidance of Annie Clark, AKA St. Vincent, but it
decade with 2005’s The Woods, they are now four “If Little precipitated star drummer Janet Weiss’s decision to
albums into a reunion that began with 2015’s quit after 22 vital years. (Little Rope’s drums are
No Cities To Love – but for Corin Tucker and Carrie Rope offers provided by Angie Boylan, touring drummer since
Brownstein, Sleater-Kinney remains their primary consolation, it 2019). After self-producing their course-correcting
drive. “It feels very precious, especially when you last album, 2021’s Path Of Wellness, this time they have
get older, to have something that’s your own world,” mainly comes worked with producer John Congleton, a decision
Tucker tells MOJO. “We’re the engineers, we’re from the fact that seems to have stopped any second-guessing,
the builders and that is a lot of psychic relief in a
world you can feel you have very little impact on. of its existence facilitating a record that echoes – if not replicates –
the urgent thrum of their early music.
We recognise that as a refuge and we retreat – dynamic, That’s as it should be, though – as the middle-aged
there together.”
That space’s protective powers were tested at
defiant, self- tribute to Mark E Smith runs on Needlessly Wild,
“I’m glitched and unwired/I’m totally tired.” This is
the end of 2022, when Brownstein’s mother and aware…” not a record about the engulfing, boundary-dissolving
stepfather were killed in a car accident while on voracity of youth – described by Brownstein in her
holiday in Italy. While the album that would become excellent memoir Hunger Makes Me A Modern Girl
Little Rope was largely written, loss and grief inevitably as being “amoebic” – but the burnt-out circuits of experience, their
shifted the ground beneath the recording. “It changed the sudden startling sparks and shocks. Don’t Feel Right starts with a
temperature of everything we were doing,” says Tucker. joyful rush before the painfully droll lyrics kick in: “I get up/Make
Brownstein has spoken about the band being a place of a list/What I’ll do once I’m fixed/Read more poems/Ditch half my
solace at this harrowing time, about taking comfort in their meds.” It grinds to a halt like somebody suddenly powering down
fundamental sound, finding shelter in her bandmate’s voice. where they stand.
Yet if Little Rope offers consolation, The superb Needlessly Wild sounds like Lene Lovich bouncing off
it mainly comes from the sheer fact of its the walls, a riot of self-loathing and self-cancellation. Dress Yourself,
existence – dynamic, defiant, self-aware – meanwhile, unfolds over a pattering rhythm like a heartbeat on a
rather than easy rock platitudes. While its pillow, issuing itself instructions to get dressed “in clothes you love/
ambiguous, tug-of-war title suggests rescue For a world you hate”. On The Center Won’t Hold’s Love, Brownstein
as much as restraint, a life preserver as much sang, “There’s nothing more frightening and nothing more obscene/
as a noose, it’s a record that rarely offers Than a well-worn body demanding to be seen”. Little Rope carves
explicit hope or cheer. “Hell is just a place space for the well-worn mind, offering sharp perspective on
that we can’t seem to live without,” sings moments when everything seems blunted.
Tucker on first track Hell, a Pandora’s Box The tang of apocalypse hangs over the relationship songs, too.
BACK STORY:
that once opened unleashes full symphonic Say It Like You Mean It is in the tradition of One More Hour (from
FIRED UP metal. It strings a classic Sleater-Kinney 1997’s Dig Me Out), a break-up song with such raw edges it feels they
● Corin Tucker calls Hell, highwire between the personal and political, will never knit back together. Tucker gives Six Mistakes a similar
the first release from the imagery suggesting both individual intensity, voice wire-stripped back to one vibrating filament, Iron
Little Rope, one of the
album’s “anchor tracks”, meltdown and a wider inferno (“Hell is Man guitars thudding like meteors around her. The Sonic Youth pop
its sadness “speaking to desperation/And a young man with a gun”). of Small Finds, meanwhile, seems to be written from a dog-like
a lot of what’s going on Crusader is its hard-bitten comrade-in-arms,
in the United States perspective (“can you gimme a little rope?”), expressing abject
right now.” The black lip curled at those who believe their repres- gratitude for scraps and bones.
and white video, sive, book-burning work is a holy mission, Amid the album’s recurring dogs (or “hounds”), Untidy
directed by Ashley needling them with post-punk attitude and
Connor, features Creature’s nonspecific animal metaphor ends the record on a note of
filmmaker and writer mocking heavenly harmonies. It does, resistance: you might find yourself trapped, but there’s always a way
Miranda July (above), a however, extend a rare moment of collective to think yourself out: “you built a cage but your measurement’s
Sleater-Kinney associate comfort, a hand to the marginalised: “You’re
since 1994 when she saw wrong… I’ll pick the lock.” Little Rope is not an optimistic record,
Brownstein and Tucker’s never alone/We’re with you now/The words, but for all the alienation in its circling riffs and martial beats, its
early bands (Excuse 17 the beat, the sound.” existence stands as a challenge to everything that would take you
and Heavens To Betsy)
play Berkeley,
Such all-out resistance is not Little Rope’s down. Hell is probably round the corner, but here, at least,
California. In 2015, July keynote mood, though. “I’ve been down so Sleater-Kinney burn with a fire that’s all their own.
directed the video for long/I pay rent to the floor,” sings Brownstein
comeback single Bury
on Hunt You Down, fighting to stuff
Our Friends. CORIN SPEAKS! TUCKER ON TRAGEDY AND GRIEF, AND
Getty

THE SIMPLE JOY OF CARING FOR DOGS.

ballooning grief into a disciplined beat, trying

84 MOJO
 Sleater-Kinney’s
Corin Tucker: “we
have a lot of pretty
intense crossroads
that we’re at.”
Future Islands
★★★
People Who Aren’t
There Anymore
4AD. CD/DL/LP
Seventh LP from Baltimore’s
synth-pop lifers.
While Future
Islands might
have struggled
to recapture
the blue-moon
impact they
had when they performed
Seasons (Waiting On You) on
David Letterman’s show in
2014, the intervening years
have done little to dim their
sense of urgent drama.
Feelings are very much
emergencies for frontman
Samuel T Herring, his
“It’s true the dogs distinctive voice – somewhere
between Anohni and A-ha –
the focus of all the push-pull
in Portland have
tensions of these lyrically
heady songs. OMD, New Order
better lives than and The Cure are still among
the forces working on Peach
(“One pushes up/The other
the people.”
pulls me down”); Give Me The
Ghost Back is a torch song
burning dangerously close to
Corin Tucker speaks to Victoria Segal. a kerosene drum. Even when
The Tower hints at the violence
The title Little Rope comes from the song Small Finds (“give and desperation that lies out
me a little rope”). What does it mean to you? in the world, these songs stand
“We wanted a title that had duality to it. There’s the idea of rope as firm, bold and tear-streaked to
a lifeline to pull yourselves out of a terrible situation. A leash that the end. New ground is not
you suddenly can break free of or can just get some slack on. Or broken, but happily, neither
yeah, it can be used to bring about your final moments. I think are they.
that’s in some ways where we are as a people. We have a lot of Victoria Segal
pretty intense crossroads that we’re at.”
Carrie [Brownstein] has said while she was grieving, she
needed you to sing, needed to hear your voice. Did that Ty Segall
feel like a big responsibility? ★★★★
“No, I was happy to do it. It was really hard to watch one of my best Three Bells
friends suffering. You know, singing is what really comes naturally DRAG CITY. CD/DL/LP
to me, so it was not hard for me to do it. It was just that the tragedy West Coast garage-rocker’s
and the grief, it changed the temperature of everything that we best album since 2018’s
were doing. It was a very intense, charged atmosphere. Say It Like Freedom’s Goblin.
You Mean It – when I came into the studio and sang the original
melody, John [Congleton, producer] was like, ‘Yeah, I don’t think
Eponymous
artist since
this is strong enough.’ Of course, I was, like, really mad! I went 2008, Segall
home that day and woke up in the middle of the night and I had has thrilled
this other melody in my head that went to a more intense place. chiefly via
John was like, ‘Yes, OK. Start there.’ It was a more potent melody channelling
that got not just sadness, but also a ferocity of grief and of anger wild, amps-on-11 energies,
that, I think, matched the other songs as well. But Hunt You Down, peaking in the late-2010s with
that song wasn’t finished until the second round of recording, and his crack Freedom Band.
so that song was definitely about Carrie’s grief. And that was the Thereafter he’s diversified
one that I found the most devastating listening to while we were furiously but here, finally, is his
finishing the album.” grown-up rock record. Unlike
Freedom’s Goblin’s stylistic
You and Carrie produced 2021’s Path Of Wellness – why work splurge, this double LP has
with John Congleton on Little Rope? sonic coherence across 65
“We really had wanted to work with John for a long time and we minutes of taut, sinewy but
had aspirations to combine some stronger synth aspects with ever-unpredictable
guitars in a way we thought he would be really good at. He was a compositions, with a subtly
altered sound palette: clipped
really good match for us because he comes from kind of the same
QOTSA-ish beats, sweet
community we do – he was in this band The Paper Chase that was
voicing, minimal distortion,
on Kill Rock Stars and we were on the same label for a while. He thrumming acoustics and
thinks the same as we do about the studio – we like to be ready, razor-FX’d solos scything
not to languish because I think that can kill the fire in a song.” through the heavens. Second
Dogs feature quite strongly in the lyrics. up, seven-minute Void opens
at an uneasy Meat Puppets-y
“We are total rescue dog people. It’s such a cliché about Portland, clip, drifts into nightmarish
but it’s true. The dogs have better lives than the people there. piano-string plink-plonking,
The larger problems are so much thornier and so much more before resolving in a chorus
entrenched and difficult for us to solve, but rescuing an animal embrace – all reflecting central
and taking care of a dog is a very simple joy.” themes of staving off
So what dog do you have? depression to reach higher
ground. The brightening
“I personally have a dog named Champ. He’s such a cutie. presence is wife Denée, who
He’s a very handsome dog. He’s like the Brad Pitt of dogs. But he sings Wire-riffed Move and is
has a terrible habit – he’s terrified of other dogs, but he’s very frequently name-checked.
aggressive. So he’s a total handful. And he’s on, like, 20 milligrams Segall’s hyper-productivity
of Prozac a day. He’s gorgeous.” necessitates jumping in
judiciously, or facing
86 MOJO
bankruptcy. Now, categorically,
is a green-light moment.
Andrew Perry
Nailah Hunter
★★★★
Lovegaze
FAT POSSUM. CD/DL/LP
A head-cleansing debut
of mystical folk and
fantasy pop.
The daughter
of a Belizean
pastor,
LA-based
Hunter has
taken the
sacred music she grew up with
to create her own sonic
incantation for a better world.
Working with voice and Celtic
harp, early EPs released since
2019 were more like raw
thoughtforms, but since
teaming up with London
producer Cicely Goulder
(Christine And The Queens),
Hunter has developed Solar
Fields-style shimmering
electronic beats to
complement her drifting,
spacious vocals. This LP is a
treat, like listening to an oracle
from the depths of a digital
cave. Stand-out tracks include
Finding Mirrors, an eerie
trip-hop song about boxing
with the shadow self, along
with the slow-burning beauty
of Strange Delights, and Into
The Sun, with its Tudor harp
sound and vivid line: “I dream
of beheadings and goose-
feathered bedding” –
an eccentric twist in the
ambient mix.
Lucy O’Brien
Joe Jackson
★★★★
Mr. Joe Jackson
Presents: Max
Champion In
‘What A Racket!’
EARMUSIC. CD/DL/LP
Jackson’s latest champions
a ‘lost’ music hall hero.
Though
Googling him
suggests East
End stage turn
Max Champion
didn’t actually
exist, Joe Jackson’s latest is a
lovely ruse. Comedic and/or
darkly stoical, these
yesteryear-embedded songs
were purportedly penned by a
Nailah Hunter:
like an oracle
from the depths
of a digital cave.
contemporary of real-life music
hallers Vesta Tilley and Gus
Elen, and if we are to believe
Jackson, he is but a conduit
for Champion’s sheet music
recently unearthed in Malta,
England and Belgium.
Arranged with great brio for
strings, brass, woodwind and
piano, Why, Why, Why? and
Dear Old Mum explore the
drudgery of Victorian
working-class life, while Barry
Booth-like waltz The Shades Of
Night hints at the era’s saucier
underbelly. In places, you can
almost hear the gavel of ’70s
UK TV show The Good Old
Days’ garrulous compere
Leonard Sachs, but these songs
have gravitas too, Jackson
sometimes conjuring the spirit
of Tom Waits circa Woyzeck.
James McNair
Gazelle Twin
★★★★
Black Dog
INVADA. CD/DL/LP
Elizabeth Bernholz’s
exercise in tension and
release, inspired by the
supernatural.
The fourth
studio LP by
Elizabeth
Bernholz, AKA
Gazelle Twin,
begins with a
radiating wash of keyboard
similar to that on Bobak, Jons,
Malone’s 1969 psychedelic
nugget Motherlight. Therein,
darkness unfolds gradually
through grim layers of synths
sounding like distant claps
of thunder. Although
thematically echoing her 2014
album Unflesh, Black Dog is
more intense. Drawing from
dreams, ghost stories and
childhood experiences, the
album recounts a visitation
from an unexpected guest.
Gazelle Twin masterfully keeps
us in suspense, incorporating
strongly evocative sonic
components (plonking toy
piano on Fear Keeps Us Alive
and the artist’s family field
recordings on The Long
Room). Around track eight
the tension subsides, yet this
doesn’t affect the overall
consistency. Built on Robert
Schumann’s Ghost Variations
theme, closing track A Door
Opens is a love letter to the
tormented sleeper from an
apparition, before leaving
them to rest ’til next time.
Irina Shtreis
Chris Hornbecker
 F I LT E R A L B UM S
Emotional
rescue
More triumphant songs of defeat
and desperation from Wirral
wonder. By Jim Wirth.
Bill Ryder-Jones
★★★★
Iechyd Da
DOMINO. CD/DL/LP

“I’M THE SAME as I’ve ever

been,” Bill Ryder-Jones croaks
ruefully on his Groundhog Day
address, It’s Today Again. With the producer
and former Coral guitarist’s fifth studio album,
that’s once more a blessing and a curse.
The finest piano-in-the-sandpit songwriter
of his generation, Ryder-Jones’s deft blend of
heart-rending and transcendent has earned him
usual suspects comparisons to Nick Drake and
Elliott Smith in the course of a triumphant run
of LPs: 2013’s baroque monster A Bad Wind
Blows In My Heart, 2015’s grungy West Kirby
County Primary, 2018’s Yawn. However, as with
Cat Power or Ryder-Jones’s boyhood hero,
Euros Childs, the intense beauty rarely comes
without a troubling undertow.
Odessey And Oracle via Band On The Run,
Iechyd Da (“good health” in Welsh) documents
a period of intense anguish (see MOJO’s inter-
view in this issue) with careful understatement
and smart musical references: the Street Hassle
strings on If Tomorrow Starts Without Me, the
Stones piano on Nothing To Be Done, the Gal
Costa sample on I Know That It’s Like This
(Baby). Even so, the hope that Ryder-Jones is
consciously striving for can be hard to find.
Like A Bad Wind Blows In My Heart – the
album Ryder-Jones says he has spent the last 10
years striving to top – Iechyd Da trumpets the
redemptive force of love, but with the grim new
knowledge that windswept and despairing is not
such a sexy look at 40. With Hollywood strings
and Phil Spector reverb, This Can’t Go On
depicts a crisis soundtracked by Echo & The
Bunnymen (“I walked all night to The Killing
Moon,” he sings). It’s a plea for salvation
imbued with a desperate longing for grown-up
normality; “I want some kids,” he adds with
lightly-crushing poignancy.
With samba-scented opener I Know That
It’s Like This (Baby), Ryder-Jones suggests
his personal baggage is more than anyone can
handle, and intrusive thoughts undermine the
elegant Christinha (“there’s a ghost you know
Hi llamas!: Bill
Ryder-Jones
trumpets the
redemptive
force of love.
who pulls at my strings, moves my hands toward
the sharper things”). The liberal deployment of
a children’s choir throughout Iechyd Da lends a
queasy lightness to seriously dark material, and if
the kids lift the mood on We Don’t Need Them,
relief is only ever temporary. Thankfully For
Anthony captures the aftermath of an existential
near-miss; there are tears, friends rally round,
and Ryder-Jones takes momentary solace. “I’m
no good but I know love,” he mutters over an
Ocean Rain-sized finale, but in the gaps between
the words hangs the weariness, the exhaustion.
Iechyd Da is lyrically stark, but Ryder-Jones
saves his most silvery linings for its darkest
clouds, and with closing doodle Nos Da goes
somewhere words can’t reach. Gavin Bryars
strings come to the rescue of a melted piano. The
inescapable conclusion: life is beautiful; life is
sad; life goes on. Same old magnificent same old.

Drop Nineteens
★★★★
Hard Light
WHARF CAT. CD/DL/LP
Veteran shoegazers dare to
dream again.
“We want to join the living,”
sings Greg Ackell on Another
One Another, a line that
quietly explains Hard Light,
the lovely product of Drop
Nineteens’ unexpected
reactivation after 30 years.
Following 1992’s Delaware and
1993’s National Coma, the
Boston band’s third album
rapidly bridges the gap in their
CV, slightly softer around the
edges but still hitting a
bittersweet spot between
classic shoegazing’s drag and
slur (Scapa Flow; The Price Was
High) and unusually striated
dreampop inventions. Their
Marieke Macklon
sky-high by Paula Kelley’s
space-station vocals, have
something of Movietone’s
mysterious movements, while
A Hitch, with its “Dr fucking
Robert” reference, has a
hypnic-jerk unease. If, as Ackell
sings on Another One Another,
it’s their “last dance”, it’s an
impressively elegant and
expressive one.
Victoria Segal
Dylan White
★★★
Unfinished Business
ALL THE CATS RECORDINGS. CD/DL
Music business veteran
revisits the lost songs of
his south London youth.
Dylan White
will be known
to some as the
bullish former
radio plugger
for Oasis and
Weller. Recently retired, a
trawl through an old box of
cassettes brought him back
in contact with songs he’d
recorded in the post-punk
period and beyond, when he
had his own, soon discarded,
dreams of stardom. So far, so
unremarkable, were it not for
the fact these resurrected
reminiscent of Iggy Pop’s
The Idiot, with a touch of TVPs
and Wire thrown in, Dylan
deadpans stories of visiting
East Berlin, facing a prison
sentence, hanging out in
Battersea Park, imagining
a nuclear holocaust – the
prevailing ghostliness, as in
stand-outs Crazy Eyes and
Better Make Tracks, amplified
by the fact his original
co-writers have long
disappeared. Strange,
hypnotic, unexpected.
Pat Gilbert
Affection Place
★★★
Smouldering Fire
AFFECTION PLACE MUSIC. CD/DL/LP
Magazine’s Dave Formula
aids French post-punks’
summoning up of his old
band’s sound.
Affection Place
are from Lyon,
in central
eastern France.
Smouldering
Fire is their first
LP as such – it follows a 2019
eponymous set featuring
previously unissued tracks
from 1980 and 1981. Now, they
re-form for a new set of studio
to A Certain Ratio, The Cramps
and – crucially – Magazine.
For this comeback album,
the latter’s keyboard player
Dave Formula plays on all
10 English-language tracks.
Furthermore, he has
produced Smouldering Fire.
Notwithstanding band
mainman Peter Petersen’s
accent this is, indeed,
extraordinarily Magazine-ish.
There’s the rubbery, upfront
bass guitar perfected by Barry
Adamson and shards of John
McGeoch-like guitar. Formula’s
Mike Garson-esque piano,
organ swells and textural
approach to synth colour it
all. A second Secondhand
Daylight then.
Kieron Tyler
Pregoblin
★★★★
Pregoblin II
STRAP ORIGINALS. CD/DL/LP
Magic, Alex: Fat White
Family co-founder’s
brilliantly off-centre,
singer-songwriter debut.
After co-writing Fat White
Family nuggets like Touch The
Leather, guitarist Alex Sebley
disappeared into political
photography and drug
romance and Sebley’s
concurrent major label-deal
agonies fuel this long-gestated
debut, whose genre-straddling
dexterity and melodic riches
mark it out as a loser classic fit
to rank alongside Beck or
Daniel Johnston. While Roma
ably finesses Todd Rundgren-
loving sunshine pop,
elsewhere, dysfunction reigns:
Big Hitters pictures an
exploited underdog hopelessly
stargazing to slo-mo Lennon-y
piano, while new wave bopper
These Hands AKA Danny Knife
details the pitfalls of fame,
appositely duetted alongside
Strap label boss Peter Doherty.
The raw-nerve eccentricity of
Everybody’s Ill (At The
Moment)’s junky disco and
Nobody Likes Me’s Carole
King-tinged self-deprecations
(“Claire thinks I’m a shit”, etc)
becomes more lovable with
each listen, simply because
the tunes are memorable and
the execution’s forward-facing
and inspired.
Andrew Perry

self-declared curiosity about
their own modern capabilities
leads to plenty of textural
exploration. The title track and
Policeman Getting Lost, sent
musical pensées offer a
curiously haunting and
compelling postcard from
a forgotten past life. Over a
faux naïve punk backdrop
recordings. Back when they
were active over 1979 to 1981,
Affection Place didn’t release
any records but their live
outings included support slots
addiction, only rematerialising
in 2019 alongside clubby
Jessica Winter as Pregoblin,
and scoring a viral hit with
Combustion. The pair’s torrid

MOJO 87

Fresh breath: Marika
Hackman’s Big Sigh is
overflowing with ideas,
tangents and curiosity.
Universal
Harmonies &
Frequencies
★★★★
Tune IN
YEYEH. DL/LP
Free jazz meets futuristic
synthscapes on wild
hook-up between
Hieroglyphic Being and
Jerzy Mączyński.
Edited and reshaped from 26
lengthy studio improvisations,
this meeting of minds
between the wildly prolific
Chicago house outsider and
under-the-radar Polish jazz
saxophonist is cut,
unashamedly, from a cosmic
cloth. Surprises land with
stealth as Hieroglyphic Being
(Jamal Moss) constantly shifts
the sonic landscape,
rhythmically roughshod and
melodically off-kilter efforts
such as Call Of The Wild and
The Fifth Science unwinding
in juddering surges that suits
Mączyński’s bent for breathy
low notes, yearning figures
and spectral soloing. The
13-minute title track’s haywire
space-funk is a highlight, up
there with the galactic peaks
of Moss’s recent avant-garde
Steve Gullick
excursions with JITU
Ahn-Sahm-Bul and Wacław
Zimpel, and an hour in their
company is levitating and
88 MOJO
slightly exhausting. But one
you’ll want to repeat.
Andy Cowan
Willie Nelson
★★★★
Bluegrass
LEGACY RECORDINGS. CD/DL/LP
Willie returns to
country’s roots.
On his 151st album, Willie
Nelson recreates his classic
compositions with the
string-band instrumentation
that preceded modern
country, highlighting
bluegrass’s standard acoustic
line-up of guitar, fiddle, banjo,
mandolin and dobro. (His
trusty harmonica player Mickey
Raphael is here too.) Nelson’s
trademark rough vocal edges
suit the rustic vibes of this
Southern folk music and yet
the ensemble also ventures
into more experimental
newgrass turf in Still Is Still
Moving To Me, dressing it up
with angular rock riffs. Nelson
perennials Yesterday’s Wine,
Bloody Mary Morning and
Home Motel speak to Nelson’s
timeless pen – his ode to
touring On The Road Again
fits the style as if it were a Bill
Monroe standard from the
1940s. At age 90, having tried
everything from Western
Marika Hackman
★★★★
Big Sigh
CHRYSALIS. CD/DL/LP Frank Carter &
Fifth album from Finnish-British The Rattlesnakes
singer-songwriter.
★★★
AFTER THREE albums of originals and Dark Rainbow
one of covers, the great leap forwards that INTERNATIONAL DEATH CULT/AWAL.
CD/DL/LP/MC
seemed imminent in 2015 may finally
have arrived for Marika Hackman. Former Gallows screamer
busts out the piano ballads.
Overflowing with ideas, tangents and
Few could’ve
curiosity, Big Sigh embraces an assort- foreseen
ment of waterfronts. It’s where an Erik Carter’s
Satie-like piano instrumental (The Lonely trajectory since
exiting his
House) can nestle next to both the title gnarly punk
track’s cascading choruses and the vocal combo Gallows in 2011. After
pyrotechnics of The Yellow Mile, and a stab at “stress free” rock in
Pure Love, since 2015 his
where No Caffeine offers practical advice Rattlesnakes have reverted a
when a panic attack looms (“make a herb- little closer to type, with 2021’s
al tea, don’t throw up, remember how to Sticky serving up a pandemic-
busting energy blast, albeit
breathe”). In less focused hands, Big Sigh some way shy of hardcore
would be an almighty, freewheeling mess, velocity. For this fifth
but while Hackman nods Rattlesnakes LP, however, he
and Hertfordshire amigo Dean
to Aimee Mann, her friend Richardson have concocted a
Laura Marling, Hejira-era Joni very different record, “born
Mitchell, and even Radiohead, from self-reflection, memory
and gratitude”. If that doesn’t
the former Bedales pupil’s sound very punk rock, nor are
steely vocals and ear for a the Beatles-y piano chords
big melody amidst the and synth squiggles (Can I Take
You Home?, etc), the slo-mo
intricacy offer a unifying and balladry (Sun Bright Golden
satisfying undertow. Happening), or lyrics like “I
John Aizlewood want you to make love to me”
(Honey). After the initial shock,
the pair’s songwriting smarts
Swing to reggae, Willie’s still cut through persuasively,
searching for new and alongside strong messaging
adventurous permutations. about acknowledging your
needs and vulnerabilities,
Michael Simmons
and, on Man Of The Hour, the
illusory nature of stardom.
Black Grape
Andrew Perry
★★★
Orange Head Tapir!
DGAFF RECORDINGS. CD/DL/LP
★★★
Shaun Ryder and Paul
Danny Brown The Pilgrim, Their God
‘Kermit’ Leveridge’s second
And The King Of My
reunion venture. ★★★★ Decrepit Mountain
Though Ryder’s
rhyme-busting
Quaranta HEAVENLY. CD/DL/LP
role in
WARP. CD/DL/LP
New freak-folk sextet’s
primetime Post-rehab triumph from “fantastical offbeat fable”.
acerbic, anarchic rapper.
Happy There’s
Mondays is A Detroit rapper whose something of
aptly apportioned all the
split-personality style swerves Gorky’s Zygotic
cultural significance, it could
between gritty low-register Mynci about
be argued that the Madchester
wisdom and an amoral Tapir!’s
talisman’s finest record was
high-pitched alter-ego, Danny charming DIY
1995’s It’s Great When You’re
Brown announced in 2023 that folk, these wide-eyed
Straight… Yeah by Black Grape he was newly sober. His first Londoners also tapping psych
– the combo he formed with post-rehab album, Quaranta is and electronic elements as
Ruthless Rap Assassins a game of two halves. It opens their enigmatic tale of a pilgrim
renegade Leveridge (and, with Brown as irrepressible as traversing a mythical landscape
fleetingly, Bez) with a view to ever, the beats juggling unfolds. Originally released as
becoming hip-hop’s answer eastern-themed psych-rock three EPs, each comprising four
to Elvis. Though that debut and pugilistic hip-hop. This songs, their debut is produced
topped the charts at home, phase peaks with Jenn’s by Honeyglaze drummer Yuri
Black Grape acrimoniously Terrific Vacation, a complex Shibuichi, a friend who makes
crumbled even quicker than treatise on gentrification that’s a warming, involving sculpture
its predecessor, until the funny and withering, set to of Tapir!’s rippling acoustic
cleaned-up pairing reconciled jittery drums from Kassa guitar motifs, piano, cornet,
for 2017’s Pop Voodoo. In the Overall. The “low tide” hinted synth and drum machine. With
ongoing absence of new at on side one submerges the Ike Gray’s characterful voice
Mondays music, Shaun popped second half, but delivers some focusing upon talking birds,
up recently in iffy supergroup of Brown’s deepest, most broken arks, storms and
Mantra Of The Cosmos, but affecting work: the downbeat shipwrecks, and guest narrator
Orange Head is a good deal mourn of Down Wit It, the Kyle Field’s fairytale-like segues
livelier, from Dirt’s spooky head-nodding introspection over nature sounds, the vibe
Wu-Tang loop and Button of Shakedown. A moody, is sometimes that of folkloric
Eyes’ hi-tech mambo groove, middle-aged rap masterpiece kids’ TV soundtrack, especially
through to Ryder’s claims on on a par with Billy Woods’ on The Nether (Face To Face).
Pimp Wars that “I’m an artist, Maps, Quaranta closes on Tapir!’s considerable
baby!”, and further brags on Bass Jam, ruminating on the world-building skills impress,
house-y Panda that “we get it healing power of music with a even if seven-minute closer
on like The Rolling Stones”. sleepy, unassuming brilliance Mountain Song seems a little
Salford diamonds, anyone? that’s insightful and profound. directionless.
Andrew Perry Stevie Chick James McNair
 Sweet
99 problems: Gruff Rhys F I LT E R A L B UM S
goes for euphoric
melancholy on his
eighth solo album.

sorrow
Confessional box or jukebox?
The former Super Furry
Animal’s latest is a bit of
both. By James McNair.
Gruff Rhys
★★★★
Sadness Sets Me Free
ROUGH TRADE. CD/DL/LP

THOUGH IT stops well short

of the ardent self-loathing that
fired Radiohead’s Creep, a pronounced
seam of self-criticism runs through Gruff
Rhys’s latest. It’s there in the frank fess-
up which offsets Bad Friend’s spry, buoyant
chamber-pop, and it’s embedded in I Tendered
My Resignation, an inventively-titled break-up
song which builds and builds around piano and
pedal-steel while its protagonist deems himself
“unworthy” of his partner’s love/commitment.
Is the resignee Rhys? Was this one of the “bad
policy decisions” he alludes to in the LP’s ac-
companying notes? What’s clear is that fucking
up – or thinking we have – gets good people
down. What to do, then, but embrace the sweet
sadness ’til it sets you free?
If you’re already striking Rhys’s 25th (or so)
LP from your festive playlist, then don’t. “I’m
going for euphoric melancholy,” he has said,
and as our sonically and geographically omnivo-
rous host taps breezy, uptempo Tropicália (They
Sold My Home To Build A Skyscraper), ’70s
pop-soul (Celestial Candyfloss), and ports a
no-nonsense call for political revolution inside
Cover Up The Cover Up’s pretty Trojan horse,
the transcendence his latest LP’s title hints at
is never far away. Elsewhere, the title track’s
gingham-clad honky-tonking proves something
of a red herring, but country is built for confes-
sion and Rhys digs in again: “Come and set me
free from my vain and selfish ways,” he sings,
like Pembrokeshire’s answer to Conway Twitty.
Sadness Sets Me Free was nailed in just three
days in the 19th century mansion house setting
of La Frette Studios, just outside Paris. Well
drilled from recent touring, Rhys and his core
band – pianist Osian Gwynedd; double bassist
Huw Williams; former Flaming Lips drummer
Kliph Scurlock – were joined by labelmate Kate
Stables of This Is The Kit, who sings backing
vocals, and Rhodri Brooks of Welsh psych-
country act Melin Melyn, a pedal steel player
who can do trippy ambience and Sweetheart Of
The Rodeo-style traditionalism.
With La Frette’s owner Olivier Bloch-Lainé
regaling Rhys and co with tales of his work with
Jean-Claude Vannier and Brigitte Fontaine
during dinner breaks from the sessions,
inspirational batteries got fully charged,
and you can hear it. Rhys’s melodies stay
with you, and his wordplay is as pleasingly
idiosyncratic as ever: “I said ‘I’m a barista’/She
heard ‘barrister’”, begins Celestial Candyfloss.
“These songs feel melancholic, or deal with
shit things,” Rhys notes, but the music is often
uplifting; a stoical and pro-active salve against
troubles local and global. Lovely, too, that Rhys
opted to master Sadness Set Me Free in France
because “he wanted to hear what French elec-
tricity sounds like.” Turns out French electricity
sounds good – very good.

Sprints
★★★★
Letter To Self
CITY SLANG. CD/DL/LP
Fiery, 20-something Dublin
post-punkers dig deep.
Flagged by its creators as “an
exploration of pain, passion
and perseverance”, this debut
from Karla Chubb’s
scorched-earth four-piece was
never going to be an easy ride.
On the heels of swingeing
excoriations of misogyny like
2020’s The Cheek, and the
following year’s Manifesto,
inspired by the successful
Repeal The 8th pro-abortion
campaign in Ireland, Letter
To Self is explicitly inward-
looking, about exorcising
inner demons, converting
“negative energy” into
transcendent noise.
Dynamically produced by Gilla
Band bassist Daniel Fox, much
of the record careers between
agonising tension and
exhilarating release with
quiet-loud brutality. Chubb’s
Idles-like shouty declamations
at Ticking’s outset are echoed
many times here, amid
twisting post-punk, but when
the levee breaks and Sprints
let rip, they’re colossally
exciting, with memorable
choruses like Adore Adore
Adore’s stuttering, unhinged
“They never call me
b-b-b-beautiful, they only call
me insane!” From Ireland’s
proliferating alt-guitar pack,
these intense runners could go
the distance.
Andrew Perry
Chemtrails
★★★★
The Joy Of Sects
PNKSLM RECORDINGS. CD/DL/LP
Third LP from Manchester’s
unique purveyors of
glam-garage-pop.
The cover art
– a cartoon
whale the
colour of an
archbishop’s
purple robes,
wearing a crucifix – is arguably
an attack on religious bigotry,
given Chemtrails’ creative core
is queer vocalists/guitarists/
couple Mia Lust and Laura
Orlova, but the duo’s
worldview is much more
irreverent and gleeful than
agit-prop. Their music follows
suit, fusing Pixies, The B-52’s,
Blondie and riot grrrl models,
all bubblegum hooks,
boomerang-ing guitars and
helium vocals. Beneath the
Day-Glo surface, Chemtrails
rage away. Bang Bang is
inch-perfect bouncy glam
rock but the lyrics hit hard
(“I am an oligarch mogul/
Ballin’ Hollywood gash”); Join
Our Death Cult speaks for all
those exhausted by current
events (“Oil’s burning, bellies
are a-churning, body falls
apart but the wheels keep
turning”) but determined to
chase the blues away with
indie-disco catharsis.
Martin Aston
Michael Nau
★★★★
Accompany
KARMA CHIEF/COLEMINE. CD/DL/LP
Unassuming indie titan’s
fifth solo album.
Probably best
known as the
leader of Page
France and
Cotton Jones,
Maryland’s
Michael Nau (rhymes with
‘wow’), the very acme of cult,
has been ploughing a gentle
but idiosyncratic solo furrow
since 2016’s Mowing. Part folk,
part cosmic country, part
straight singer-songwriter, he
nods to Devendra Banhart as
much as Bon Iver, but he’s no
enemy of tradition, so Sharp
Diamonds twangs like Jim
Reeves’s more reflective
moments. In a world of
front-loaded albums,
Accompany escalates, so the
real gems are tucked in at the
back. If there were a Grammy
for introductions, the
gorgeous piano and shuffling
drums, slow steel guitar and
electro plink heralding Comes
To Pour would be on any
discerning shortlist, while
Long Distance Driver toys with
breaking into Baker Street
before going the full
Lambchop. Nau isn’t especially
original, but he is especially
beguiling. These are songs to
luxuriate in.
John Aizlewood
Rosie Frater-
Taylor
★★★★
Featherweight
COOKING VINYL. CD/DL/LP
Rising London singer-
songwriter soars on her
third album.
Described admiringly by
Jimmy Page as having “such
a connection with the guitar,”
23-year-old Frater-Taylor, who
is that rare thing in rock, a
Royal Academy of Music
graduate, returns with the
follow-up to 2021’s highly
regarded Bloom, which
amassed some three million
streams. Sonically,
Featherweight offers a more
mature progression of the
uniquely personal style she
patented with her 2018 debut,
On My Mind; a gnarly rock
foundation heightened by
nuanced jazz chords and
folk-style finger-picking.
Although there are faint
echoes of Madison
Cunningham’s bittersweet pop
lyricism, P.J. Harvey’s angsty
existentialism and George
Benson’s fretboard virtuosity,
Frater-Taylor’s sound is fresh
and original. The pulsating
Give & Take, a slice of
cliché-free hard rock, and
Hold The Weight are obvious
standouts; so too are Twenties,
with its winsome Judee
Sill-esque vocals, the more
urgent No Scrubs, and the
atmospheric Get In Line. An
astonishingly mature album
from one so young.
Charles Waring

MOJO 89
 F I LT E R A L B UM S
Conchúr White
★★★★
Swirling Violets
BELLA UNION. CD/DL/LP
County Armagh songwriter with
props from Stephin Merritt and
John Grant gets his hooks in on
debut LP.
HARMONICALLY SPEAKING, the
consensus is that the pop songs de nos
jours are getting simpler. Conchúr
Vic Mars
★★★★
The Beacons
CLAY PIPE. DL/LP
London-based,
Herefordshire-raised
electronic sound sculptor
looks wistfully westward.
While the Welsh Tourist Board
might prefer the name Bannau
Brycheiniog, now the official
appellation for what was
Brecon Beacons National Park,
they will surely applaud The
Beacons’ poignant salute to
scenic De Cymru. Its dozen
impressionistic essays proffer
evocations of vertiginous
Carmarthenshire and
Brecknockshire peaks such
as Picws Du, Y Gyrn and Pen
Y Fan and hazy hymns to
enigmatic locales like Llyn
Cwm Llwch lake, fabled to
possess a door to an invisible
island. Delivered by Mars’s
spare analogue Moog, with
occasional embellishment
from viola and drums, this,
the composer’s third album
for the boutique Clay Pipe
imprint, makes good on the
Nathan Magee
pastoral, hauntological
promise of its predecessors.
The Beacons’ woodwind-like
drones and liminal textures
90 MOJO
(pronounced ‘Conor’)
White can certainly eke
pleasurable mileage
from a modest chord
sequence, but his debut has a lyrical
sophistication and thematic weight
that lends the clearly signposted
choruses of neat, starkly-arranged
songs such as Fawn and I Did Good
Today real impact. Exploring mortal-
ity, addiction and compulsion from
the informed background of a mental
health youth worker, White is adept
periodically evolve into
layered, 1970s library
music-indebted melodies –
sublimely so on standout
Memorial Cairn, its immersive
timbres seemingly conjured
directly from Cambrian
mountain mist.
David Sheppard
Bernie Marsden
★★★★
Working Man
CONQUEST. CD/DL/LP
The late Whitesnake
guitarist and all-round good
guy says “and this is me”.
Sessions for
Bernie
Marsden’s
all-originals
adieu finished
close to his
death from bacterial
meningitis, but perhaps
knowing his house was in
order brought him solace.
Though Nashville-based
rocker Jaime Kyle guests here,
Working Man is otherwise
devoid of big-name turns.
Instead, the focus is upon
Marsden’s considerable gifts
and his trusted band of lesser
known lights. Instrumentals
Steelhouse Mountain and The
Pearl aside (the latter evokes
close pal Peter Green), these
drive-time friendly tunes often
pack the transatlantic reach
that helped Marsden/David
Coverdale co-write Here I
Go Again shift shedloads.
Marsden re-records that song
as a tasteful country blues
on this sets’ bonus disc, and
hymns his wife of 40 years Fran
Flower power: Conchúr
White’s debut has a
lyrical sophistication
and thematic weight.
with mood and dynam-
ics, has a falsetto that
recalls that of Angelo De
Augustine, and brings
an unlikely, ’50s rock’n’roll via The
Bay City Rollers sensibility to tragic
romance tale The Women In The
War. “There’s ghosts, there’s other
worlds, there’s a cosmic feeling,” he
has said of the succinct, allusive, easily
digestible Swirling Violets. Probe its
surface for hidden depths.
James McNair
on soulful ballad You Know.
The lasting impression is of a
Mutabaruka
modest, big-hearted talent ★★★★
whose playing/singing Black Attack
retained a youthful spark. SHANACHIE. CD/DL/LP
James McNair
Jamaican dub poet/
musician’s first LP in 14 years.
Allan Hope,
Al Lewis AKA
★★★★ Mutabaruka
Fifteen Years (‘ever
victorious’
ALM. CD/DL/LP
in Rwandan),
Rage and resolution in
Welsh singer-songwriter’s
debuted with the excellent,
Earl ‘Chinna’ Smith-produced
eighth album. Check It! in 1982, just as devout
roots was evolving into
In his
childhood, Al hedonistic dancehall, in the
Lewis’s parents process missing reggae’s
split, his father outernational boat and making
dying when little headway here up against
the singer was London’s stentorian Linton
21; this collection, rich with Kwesi Johnson. Back home,
folk rock passion, is a stairway however, Muta’s stock rose via
to catharsis. In My Daughter’s his radical talk-radio shows, a
Eyes opens on shimmering succession of records for New
synths and piano, and in a Jersey powerhouse Shanachie,
voice reminiscent of Marc and 1995’s crossover hit with
Cohn or an earthy James Luciano, Psalm 24. Now
Taylor, Lewis thinks back: bestowed with JA’s Order of
“The touching of temples was Distinction, the 71-year-old
all we shared…” The track returns to studio action with
builds, hooky and galvanic, a convincingly dread voice
from frustration to redemption somewhere between Prince Far
as he recognises his father in I’s gravel-y gravitas and LKJ’s
his kids. The Farmhouse is a incisive wisdom, over rhythms
totemic roar, breaking into forged in South Norwood’s
Welsh, as Lewis’s siblings are Ariwa by Neil ‘Mad Professor’
priced out of the family home; Fraser. Within deep echo-
Thirty Five, told from the lost chambering, both Garveyite
parent’s viewpoint (“I’m 35, exhortations like Black Man
holding out for a better life”) Black Man, Banana Republic
hurts because we know that and Cutting Edge (“lyrics like
he never got those years. In a a bazooka”!) and Scratching
closing coda, though, pure and Scratch Back’s eulogy for
joyous as peak Waterboys, Lee Perry (“everything start
Lewis finds the man he seeks from Scratch”) pack an
– in himself. authoritative punch.
Glyn Brown Andrew Perry
The Curator
★★★
Living Space
CROMERZONE. CD/DL
One of few albums this year
to feature ‘fuzz bassoon’.
A missing link
between Harry
Nilsson, Robert
Wyatt and
Peter Hammill,
it can never
be said that Norfolk-based
multi-instrumentalist Alistair
Murphy, The Curator, is a man
without ambition. Over the
former custodian of Cromer
Museum’s (no, really) six
albums so far, few subjects or
song lengths have been out of
bounds. Containing just one
multi-parted track split over
two sides, Living Space is a
lament for the lost future that
was heralded by 1969’s moon
landing, which Murphy
watched as a nine-year-old.
Partially taking the form
between him today and ‘Murf’,
his one-time ambitious youth,
the music is often inventive,
melodic, and for the prog-
curious out there,
exceptionally accessible.
Murphy’s fragile, almost pencil
sketch of a voice is imbued
with intense emotion, and
the playing – including
ex-members of Pigbag,
No-Man and Gryphon (Brian
Gulland on that funky fuzz
bassoon), is often exhilarating.
Daryl Easlea
The Fallen
Leaves
★★★★
Simple Songs For
Simple People
PARLIAMENT. CD/DL/LP
Clubland’s finest retro rock
act return with infectious
garage-pop set.
With a sound
rooted in early
Kinks and Who,
addled with
DIY punk, any
Fallen Leaves
release could sit easily in the
reissue section. This, the
group’s fifth and finest album,
opens with Begin Again, its
chord pattern evoking early
Pete Townshend. The
trainspotter vibe continues
throughout. There’s a Velvets
mash-up on Everywhere She
Goes; Otis’s Pain In My Heart
informs Most Of The Time; and
there’s even a ’90s Nirvana
bass line on I’m Feeling Fine
before it takes a wonky Joe
Meek turn. Best of all, there’s
more production air, emphasis
on backing vocals and joyously
singalong choruses, enough to
call this an instant garage-pop
classic. The group purport to
play ‘punk rock for gentlemen’,
but it’s as much Wet Leg as
retro, prone to weird wisdom
(“All men are children”) and
the Fauvist-like playing – more
homespun than taught – of
original Subway Sect guitarist
Rob Symmons.
Mark Paytress
 JA ZZ
B Y A N DY C O WA N
Arone Dyer gathering session playing
royalty Spooner Oldham,
Daudi Matsiko
& Stargaze David Hood and Travis ★★★★
★★★★ Wammack, all who played with The King Of Misery
Pickett, to complete it. The
Arone x Stargaze motivation, to simply keep
REALLY GOOD. DL/LP

TRANSGRESSIVE. DL/LP Pickett’s legacy alive, is Raw confessionals spill

Something “Lou Reed and
Mozart would probably
have enjoyed in the bardo,”
says Dyer.
A spectacularly
deft
collaboration
between
trained,
virtuosic singer
Arone Dyer and Berlin-based
orchestral collective Stargaze,
this audacious LP’s “genre-
agnostic” song cycle is daisy
fresh and wholly accessible.
Packing rich, Ryuichi
Sakamoto-like tonalities
(Carwash), and a prowling cello
motif that conjures Jaws in first
gear (Define), it also sees Dyer
meet Kate Bush at Wuthering
Heights as she rides the
untethered, harmonically
sophisticated arrangement of
Spider Practical. In the best
possible sense, this is a work
that feels as much art project
as anything else, its
resonances multifarious and
the meanings of its juxtaposed
lyrics fluid. Listening to the
tightly entwined, part
a cappella vocals of stark
closer It’s Over, it’s easy to see
why Laurie Anderson is a fan,
while contemporary classical
conceit Reductions – “Is three
o’clock too late for Scrabble?”
wonders Dyer – is special, too.
James McNair
Scott Ward
★★★
I Believe I’ll Run
On: A Tribute To
commendable, and the 11
covers and one original –
Giggy Giggy Googy which is
how Jerry Wexler described
Jimmy Johnson’s guitar sound
on Pickett’s records – are
delivered with a Blues Brothers
enthusiasm, notably 99 And A
Half Won’t Do, elevated by
Steve Cropper’s lead licks.
(Cropper, of course, co-wrote
the 1966 hit with Pickett and
Eddie Floyd).
Lois Wilson
Massimo Silverio
★★★★
Hrudja
OKUM. DL/LP
Haunting debut from a
Carnic-speaking Italian.
It is conceivable that the
21-year-old multi-
instrumentalist/singer from
Cercivento has never heard
Sigur Rós, but you wouldn’t
stake your home on it. It is
also possible, of course, that
there are deep shared roots
between Icelandic culture and
the people of the Carnic Alps,
which join Italy’s north-east
to Austria. Silverio’s voice is a
whispered high tenor singing
out across British-Ugandan
singer-songwriter’s
intimate debut.
Building on
the hushed
intimacy of
previous EPs,
Daudi
Matsiko’s
debut tackles self-deception,
fragile mental health and
his struggles with bipolar
affective disorder. Up-close,
fingerpicked acoustic
confessionals such as Guilt
(“Secretly I’ve not been Ambrose Akinmusire
breathing”) and Falling (“I
don’t want to be alone”) are ★★★★
relayed in a cracked whisper Owl Song
that accents his vulnerability. NONESUCH. CD/DL/LP
While choral vocals enhance Trumpeter’s intimate exploration
the stately Hymn and cello, sax of open space with Bill Frisell and Herlin Riley.
and organelle help carry the
title track’s hurting lines, I The first of three new albums in the next 12 months underlines
Ambrose Akinmusire’s refusal to be pigeonholed. A reaction
Need You To Stop Calling My
Phone is an exercise in brilliant against modern life’s information overload, this sparely wrought
affair has a freshness that reflects the minimal rehearsal time
starkness that builds from one
with guitarist Bill Frisell and drummer Herlin Riley, the
chiming guitar note into a
warm, celestial haze. Matsiko Californian’s languidly purring long notes on Owl Song 1 and
understands space in music, Flux Fuelings drawing listeners in with simple themes and
passages of undeniable beauty. While the trio’s nimble
his lightly shaded, singular
interactions sparkle with empathy on Mr Frisell – as trumpeter
confessionals evoking Nick
Drake, Elliott Smith and Seven and guitarist double-up and diverge – their melodic skills are
most acute on slower numbers like the impressionistic Henya,
Swans-era Sufjan Stevens. It’s
no barrel of laughs, but highly summoning haunting themes that match Akinmusire’s
unmistakable timbre and strong, woody tone. Owl Song
moving all the same.
Andy Cowan resonates with emotional power and has Sunday morning
written all over it.
Ghost Woman ALSO RELEASED
★★★ Abdullah Ibrahim Myele Manzanza
Hindsight Is 50/50
★★★★ ★★★★
FULL TIME HOBBY. CD/DL/LP
No-frills Canadian’s musical
3 Crisis & Opportunity
postcard from the shadows.
GEARBOX. DL/LP (Vol. 4) – Meditations
The
Featuring two sets,
one without a
DEEPMATTER. DL/LP

Wilson Pickett a language – in this case, ominousness crowd, from

BANDCAMP. DL
Piedmont, Alabama
bassist/singer’s tribute
to the R&B legend.
In 2016 Scott
Ward recorded
a session with
Veda Pickett,
Wilson Pickett’s
daughter, at
Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals
(it’s on Soundcloud and is
great). He also started this
project, which was then
abruptly halted when he was
involved in a near-fatal car
crash. Once recovered, he
picked up the reins again,
Felix Mackenzie-Barrow
Carnatic (real) rather than
Hopelandic (made-up) – you
can’t quite get a handle on
even if the sense often seems
apparent. The music is equally
striking, its light and shade
closely intertwined; classical
instruments, distorted and
prepared, so you are often left
guessing at the provenance of
the sound as the performers
create a rounded, believable
world of uncanny and
unsettling emotions. Has
something spooked them, or
are they readying themselves
to do that to you once the
music ends?
David Hutcheon
pervading
Hindsight Is
50/50 is
summed up
by track seven – the flesh-
creepingly titled Wormfeast,
a mordant consideration of
a post-death fate. The
soundtrack is a dark, reverb
guitar-driven, motorik-bedded
garage rock and the
bottom-of-a-well voice of
Canada’s Evan Uschenko, who
is Ghost Woman. Stylistically,
The Flesheaters, early Dream
Syndicate, Eleventh Dream Day
and the first Spacemen 3
album are in the rear-view
mirror. Hindsight… speedily
follows January 2023’s Anne, If.
That, in turn, was released only
seven months after Ghost
Woman’s self-titled debut.
Uschenko has a need to let
it out, and fast. Fittingly,
Hindsight… was completed
over three days in a Brittany
studio with new drummer/
co-songwriter Ille van Dessel.
Where previous albums were
self-recorded, largely
London’s Barbican
Centre late last year,
the South African pianist’s light
touch oscillates between sorrow
and joy on elegant takes on
Ellington, Coltrane and Monk
alongside Cleave Guyton and
Noah Jackson. A standout pair of
hymnal 15-minute piano solos
show Ibrahim smuggling
tumbles of notes into something
seemingly meditative and slow,
the lack of drums only adding to
their gravitas.
Move 78
★★★★
Grains
VILLAGE LIVE. DL/LP
Move 78 have
always been a
different
proposition. A
German jazz quartet
whose efforts are reconfigured
by UK hip-hop producer Aver,
their third album catches them
at their most cinematic. Layers of
texture smudge genre lines amid
the title track’s swaying, stubbly
groove, Neuralgia’s keys-
drenched psychedelia and the
The final instalment
of an ambitious
series finds the New
Zealand-born,
London-based
drummer/composer at his most
contemplative, looking askance
at the digital world. It stands or
falls on the interplay between
Matthew Sheens’ bright piano
and the moody rhythmic
bedrock Manzanza fashions with
bassist Matt Penman, showing a
trio kept on its toes by its
improvisational poise, able to
negotiate time signatures at will.
Cut The Sky
★★★★
Esz Kodesz
AION. DL
Alex Roth is on a
creative roll. The
guitarist behind
the diverse
post-jazz/
rock experimentalism of
MultiTraction Orchestra
continues to work in-between
the lines. While a Sun Ra
spaciousness pervades
11-minute sound collage
Clattering as alto clarinettist
Wacław Zimpel’s striking motifs

self-played and sounded
somewhat desiccated,
this has a live feel and –
Daudi Matsiko: notwithstanding the lack of
he understands cheeriness – a concomitant
sense of dynamism.
musical space.
Kieron Tyler
upfront horn play on D.O.T.S.
from latest recruit Meravi
Goldman. Irreversible
Entanglements’ Aquiles Navarro
and soul-jazz singer Douniah
also guest.
overlap with Hubert Zemler’s
industrial percussion, the title
track and Lullaby For Gajla are
better still, slowly unfurling
delights that take a little a very
long way. AC

MOJO 91
 F I LT E R A L B UM S
Clark
★★★
Cave Dog
THROTTLE. CD/DL/LP
Intimate companion piece
to Clark’s standout Sus Dog
project.
These days,
often to their
chagrin, it’s
essential that
musicians have
an active social
media game. Few can allow
just their music to do the
talking. Chris Clark busied
himself during the
interregnum between
completing 2023’s acclaimed
Sus Dog and its release by
creating short, vertical videos
with alternate versions to help
support it. Delivered in longer
form on Cave Dog, trace
elements of the originals
remain – but these are more
than just remixes. Domes Of
Pearl features vocal snatches
from Sus Dog’s Clutch Pearlers
but slows the tempo to a
loping, grime-like pace, while
Reformed Bully’s fractured
beats and bass line
interjections hit harder than
its near namesake Bully.
Unladder, an elegant piano
vignette accompanied by
percussive pedal thuds,
ushers in a succession of
ambient tracks that meander
serenely, from the music
box-style throb of Pumpkin to
the luxuriant Alyosha Lying,
where Clark fills a warm bath
with muted arpeggios. Cave
Dog sees a content Clark
extinguishing the embers of a
project that fired his
imagination.
Stephen Worthy
Large Plants
★★★
The Thorn
GHOST BOX. CD/DL/LP
Wolf People’s guiding light
Jack Sharp in one-man
proggy folk rock mode.
With
Bedfordshire
psych-rockers
Wolf People on
hiatus since
2020, Jack
Sharp has duly spirited up two
solo LPs from within a rusting
metal barn – the rustic folky’s
version of a garage – since
demolished. This, the second
Jazz hands:
pianist Ethan
Iverson is as
stylistically
slippery as ever.
Keith Major, Natanael Guzmán
of them, is effectively the
first’s over-matter with added
extras, but feels of-a-piece
thanks to its shared place of
genesis, which unquestionably
lends a ferrous edge to the
recurrent bursts of electric
lead wandering, and arcane
vocal self-harmonising. In
places (White Horse; Fire
Alarm), Sabbath-like
proto-metal riffing thrillingly
leads into complex, proggy
changes, à la 2022’s The Carrier.
In others (the newer stuff),
Sharp toys with wobbly synth
lines (Every Single Day) and
haunted balladry (The Death
Of Pliny). Progressively, the
Emily Dickinson-meets-Moby
Grape wonder of Hope It Is A
Feathered Thing unfolds from
tingling folk into propulsive
cross-beats and extra-hot
picking. Given a new hotbed,
Large Plants will surely bloom
further.
Andrew Perry
Ethan Iverson
★★★★
Technically Acceptable
BLUE NOTE. CD/DL/LP
Ex-Bad Plus pianist’s second
Blue Note LP adds a sonata
to his trademark meld of old
and new.
Thirty years
since his debut
School Work,
Ethan Iverson
is as hard to pin
down as a
buttered eel. The Wisconsin
pianist’s latest opens with a
clutch of snappy originals such
as Conundrum (theme for an
imaginary game show) and
The Chicago Style (a
philosophical nod to AACM)
that finds his trio (bassist
Thomas Morgan and drummer
Kush Abadey) nudging 12-bar
blues into fresh waters.
Elsewhere, Iverson’s Bad
Plus-honed gift for inverted
covers shines on a rhapsodic
take on Roberta Flack hit
Killing Me Softly and a
stunning re-reading of
Thelonious Monk’s Round
Midnight centred by Rob
Schwimmer’s operatic
theremin. It closes,
audaciously, with a three-part
15-minute sonata that vamps
between high modernism and
cool minimalism, interweaving
unexpected lyrical harmonies
at every turn.
Andy Cowan
Hjalte Ross
★★★★
Less
WOULDN’T WASTE. DL/LP
Aalborg-based songwriter
balances emotional
turbulence and
introspection.
With its name
and cover
suggesting
minimalism,
Ross’s third LP
is contrarily
rich in textures and means of
expression. Centred on him
playing bowed guitar,
harmonica and singing, Less
features Jonas Kardyb on
drums, Astrid Matthesen
(keyboards) and Mads Lang
(bass). The record’s diverse
emotional spectrum is
delivered with subtlety, from
sparse and impressionistic
opener Lifelessness to
stream-like Dark Blue, led by
mildly distorted guitar evoking
the light-and-shade feel of
John Martyn’s Inside Out. While
Less shares the lulling pace of
Ross’s previous work Waves Of
Haste, the meditative tone
doesn’t lessen its intensity.
Suffused in the Velvets-esque
drone, Bye Bye conjures up
magma swelling under the
surface before its eventual
burst. Ultimately, Less is a
confirmation of Ross as an
auteur whose talent for
conveying complex emotions
is most succinctly described as
“still waters run deep”.
Irina Shtreis
Junkboy
★★★★
Littoral States
WAYSIDE AND WOODLAND
RECORDINGS. DL/LP/MC
Coastal pastoralism and
folk-rock reflection from
empathetic South Coast duo.
Although
named after a
Japanese video
game, Junkboy
mainstays,
siblings Rich
and Mik Hanscomb, actually
seem to prefer the great
outdoors, their mostly
instrumental, acoustic
guitar-propelled oeuvre often
alighting upon the mystery
and healing implicit in rural
landscapes. On Littoral States
the brothers look seawards,
parlaying the grief felt after
the passing of their father into
10 field recording-peppered
essays that seek consolation in,
as they put it, “the National
Trust-approved splendour of
Sussex coastal life”. Typically,
Cormorant At The Mouth Of
The Ouse employs beaming,
Robert Kirby-esque strings,
E X P E R I M E N TA L
B Y J O H N M U LV E Y
Amor Muere
★★★★
A Time To Love,
A Time To Die
SCRAWL. DL/LP
Mexico City left-field supergroup’s
time has come.
Mabe Fratti, a Guatemalan singer and cellist currently working out
of Mexico City, is one of the rising stars of the global avant-garde.
A couple of months ago, she turned up in MOJO’s Jazz column as
half of Titanic alongside pianist/guitarist Hector Tosta. This time,
she’s resurfaced in Amor Muere, four female improvisers who
combine cello, violin, synth and tape manipulation into a kind of
radical reinvention of the string quartet. If the capsule description
suggests stern compositional austerity, this five-track debut is an
often playful, often ethereal, constantly inventive pleasure, where
the angular improvisations come together in micro-detailed
harmony; 19-minute closer Violeta y Malva – think Julia Holter
circa Tragedy – is a study of an intuitive quartet in constant,
intuitive flux. And out of the beautiful sound designs, songs
emerge too: Camille Mandoki’s vocal on Love Dies recalls Kate
Bush’s deeper register on a track like Wild Man.
ALSO RELEASED
Mining Psychic Temple
Featuring Lisa
★★★★
Chimet Bella Donna
THE LEAF LABEL. CD/DL/LP ★★★★
The art of A Universe Regards Itself
converting climate
BIG EGO. DL/LP
data into music
has already been Chris Schlarb’s LA
explored by Daniel project has made
jazz capital out of
Bachman, among others, but this
debut from a collective of Eno and Black
Sabbath tunes
scientists, programmers and
previously, but here they’re
musicians is still compelling.
Chimet takes readings from a plotting their own co-ordinates
alongside synth player Lisa Bella
Solent weather station during
Donna. The result, over two long
Hurricane Ophelia’s visit in
October 2017, and converts them pieces, is an unstable but
into a multi-faceted drone piece, successful blend of composed
augmented by improvisations on and improvised elements: big
piano (from Matthew Bourne), band cosmic jazz; New Age-ish
cello and synth. The calm, texture; freeform psych; and –
broadly, after the storm. on serene ululations – a choir.
François J Bonnet Drazek/Fuscaldo
& Stephen Feat. Drake/Aoki/
O’Malley Jones/Abrams
★★★ ★★★★
Cylene II June 22
DRAG CITY. DL/LP ASTRAL SPIRITS/FEEDING TUBE. DL/LP
Sections of this Chicago duo
second album from Przemyslaw Krys
Sunn O))) bedrock Drazek (guitar,
O’Malley and trumpet) and Brent
Franco-Swiss noise Fuscaldo (vocals,
academic Bonnet (AKA Kassel guitar) who used to operate as
Jaeger) occasionally resemble an Mako Sica, are joined by some
ambient Stockhausen, or Gavin hitters from the local post-rock/

while The Sea Captain and

Chase The Knucker, the latter
namechecking a mythical
Sussex water dragon, highlight
guest Hannah Lewis’s
dew-fresh vocals while
acknowledging their debt to
Sandy Denny-fronted Strawbs.
David Sheppard
Bryars’ The Sinking Of The Titanic
re-imagined by Keiji Haino.
Mostly, though, it goes
satisfyingly deeper into the
meditative tonal states of
O’Malley’s work, purged of its
metal signifiers – like a gong
bath, with guitar.
jazz interface including Natural
Information Society’s Josh
Abrams and percussionist Hamid
Drake. The results occupy a kind
of fourth-world interzone; limber,
free-floating explorations that
accrue, thanks to Fuscaldo’s
chants, devotional heft. JM

92 MOJO
The Grammy winners’
acclaimed new album
‘A natural successor to Alison Krauss.'
Uncut
‘Dazzling. Everything sounds alive,
vital and perfectly in focus.’
Mojo

On tour in January THURSDAY 07 MARCH 2024

with Tommy Emmanuel
O2 FORUM KENTISH TOWN
LONDON
ticketmaster.co.uk - seetickets.com

A Crosstown Concerts presentation

by arrangement with Wasserman Music
 F I LT E R R E I S SU E S

The kids are alright

Beloved punk pioneers’ fifth album (created with a little help from their alien friend)
reworked with bonus tracks and more. By Mark Blake.

Mott The Hoople and Bowie was producing their new record. Bowie
suggested the opening track, a cover of The Velvet
★★★★ Underground’s Sweet Jane, but had to coach Hunter
through the song. Hunter claimed that “not being a
All The Young Dudes: New York gay” put him at a disadvantage, and he
annoyed a visiting Lou Reed by cracking a bad joke.
50th Anniversary Edition But Hunter still inhabited the song, and his
MADFISH. CD/DL/LP
wingman, Mick Ralphs, played it out with a

O
NE DAY IN spring 1974, Mott The Hoople’s gorgeous, measured guitar solo.
frontman Ian Hunter gave Brian May a pep The Moon Upstairs, a Who soundalike from their
talk. Queen were supporting Mott on an previous album, 1971’s Brain Capers, came close,
American tour, and their guitarist was homesick. but Mott were always better on-stage than vinyl.
Hunter listened to May’s tale of woe before explaining “All The Young surrendering All The Young Dudes’ title track addressed this without
their signature mix of bravado and
that if Brian couldn’t cope with sharing hotel rooms
and being away from his girlfriend, then he was in Dudes says vulnerability. It’s one of those great ’70s glam singles
the wrong job. everything best heard blasting out of the overdriven speakers
on fairground dodgems.
“Even then, Ian was the sage old man of
rock’n’roll,” said an admiring Brian. Hunter was 34 at about Mott: Bowie supposedly wrote it as a tribute to some of
the time. It’s a recurring thought while listening to this brilliant, his King’s Road courtiers. Here it became a commu-
50th anniversary (51st, really) edition of All The Young
Dudes. Hunter may have been an elder statesman, but
chaotic, nal hymn for the Morrisseys, the Mick Joneses and all
the other “juvenile delinquent wrecks”; a bit of a kiss-
his music sounded totally now in 1972. Even with the underachieving, off, too, to “The Beatles and the Stones” as if Bowie/
charming period detail of a rotary dialling telephone
sound in One Of The Boys, it hasn’t aged a day since.
and in it Mott were drawing a line under the ’60s.
The bonus cuts include a version with Hunter
One of the reasons can be heard in this box set’s for life.” and Bowie sharing the vocals and another where
bonus tracks (a gathering of demos, single edits and Hunter sings “and Wendy’s stealing clothes from
outtakes). These include Mott, minus Hunter, rattling unlocked cars” instead of “Marks and Sparks”;
through Johnny Kidd And The Pirates’ Please Don’t Touch. At their a panic measure to stop the BBC from banning the single for
core, Mott The Hoople were always a simple, product placement. The Beeb didn’t notice and played the original,
unpretentious rock’n’roll group. Their guitars helping it become a Number 3 hit.
came from Chuck Berry, and that trademark Bowie slips in and out of the rest of the album. He can be heard
hammering piano from Hunter’s hero, trying to halt Momma’s Little Jewel in its tracks (“We’ll stop it now”),
Jerry Lee Lewis. Everything else, even their before Hunter urges the band to carry on. Elsewhere, his saxophone
producer and white knight David Bowie, was punctuates Sucker’s metronomic percussion, some of it played on an
window dressing. anvil hired by Bowie for, presumably, added heavy metal.
Mott’s fifth album was released in Septem- Def Leppard’s Joe Elliott is among the admirers paying tribute in
ber 1972, despite them planning to break up the sleevenotes. You can hear traces of his band’s glammy powerpop
six months earlier. Apparently, this decision in Sucker, One Of The Boys and Jerkin’ Crocus. “Just a lick of ya ice
was taken after four poor-selling albums and cream cone,” drawls Hunter on the latter (presaging Elliott’s request
having to play a converted gas tank in Berne to “pour some sugar on me”), in a very-’70s song about a “nads
BACK STORY: for no discernible fee. puller… with a judo hold on a black man’s balls.” However, four
STAN THE MAN Back home, Island Records persuaded versions of the low-slung, cocksure One Of The Boys is probably
● On July 5, 1972, Bowie them to fulfil some outstanding dates, and more than enough.
failed to show up at Mott The Hoople’s Rock’N’Roll Circus tour Soft Ground remains the LP’s great oddity. Bowie encouraged
Trident Studios and
Hunter went home in a (with, appropriately, sad-clown comic Max soon-to-be ex-keyboard player Verden Allen to half-sing half-talk his
huff. Rather than waste Wall as a warm-up) was a triumph. Enter: song over an organ riff that suggests Deep Purple slipping into a coma.
paid-for time, the rest of David Bowie, who threw his favourite group Bassist Pete ‘Overend’ Watts thought it sounded futuristic. But the
Mott, plus Stan Tippins
(above, right, with Peter a lifeline with his song All The Young Dudes, future turned out to be Ready For Love/After Lights, where Ralphs
Overend Watts), their but only after they’d rejected Suffragette City. and Hunter merged two songs, the first of which Ralphs turned into a
ex-vocalist turned road It speaks volumes that Mott The Hoople’s US radio staple with his next group, Bad Company. Elsewhere, Mott’s
Trinity Mirror/Mirrorpix/Alamy, Courtesy of Morgan Fisher

manager, recorded three

rock’n’roll songs, Shakin’ fan club members included an adolescent featherlight Movin’ On bears little resemblance to Bad Co’s version.
All Over, Please Don’t Morrissey and future Clash guitarist Mick Despite Bowie’s passion and stewardship, Mott The Hoople
Touch and So Sad (To Jones. “Bowie thought of us as the punks of would soon start shedding members. Sea Diver, the album’s closing
Watch Good Love Go Bad),
included on this box set. England,” Hunter tells biographer Campbell eulogy, features a string arrangement by future Mott guitarist, ex-
Tippins was Mott’s secret Devine in this edition’s peerless sleevenotes. Spider From Mars, Mick Ronson. Hunter, who’d quit his factory job
weapon on-stage too,
singing the high harmony
Hunter wasn’t convinced, though, and and stable family life to become a musician way back when, sings it
part on All The Young grumbled that Island’s hipper artists, espe- like a man resigned to his fate. “Ride on my son,” he implores. “Ride
Dudes from behind the cially Traffic, regarded him as a “cut-price until you fail.” Hunter, who’s still making music at 84, saw the future.
stage curtain. Years later,
while working for Simple
Dylan”. This siege mentality helped cast his Before long, the juvenile delinquent wrecks would form groups
Minds, Tippins would still band as perennial outsiders, and made Mott of their own and the likes of Queen would zoom past Mott The
test the stage PA and relatable to their audience in a way that their Hoople and into the world’s stadia. All The Young Dudes says
microphones by belting
out Mott’s old hit. stuffy progressive rock peers weren’t. everything about their heroes, though: brilliant, chaotic, undera-
Suddenly, Mott weren’t splitting up chieving, and in it for life.

94 MOJO
Trunk rocker: Mott The
Hoople’s Ian Hunter gets
packing, August 30, 1973.

Striking performance: (clockwise
from above) Dorothy Carter gets
“free and wild”; Carter in the late
’70s, Cambridge, MA; (metal)
sheet music: Robert Rutman
playing one of his steel cellos.
If I had a hammer
The revered second album
by the New York-born
composer, historian and
master of the hammered
dulcimer. By Andrew Male.
Dorothy Carter
★★★★
Waillee Waillee
PALTO FLATS. CD/DL/LP
IF YOU WERE to stumble across an
original copy of Dorothy Carter’s 1978
LP Waillee Waillee prior to this reissue, you
might assume it to be rare Appalachian
folk. The private-press label (Carter’s
own), rudimentary artwork, and the list of
instruments – hammered dulcimer, psal-
tery, flute, piano – plus the opening track, a
chiming nursery rhyme about animals’ tails
entitled The Squirrel Is A Funny Thing…,
would surely confirm it. However, you –
by which I mean I – would be very wrong.
Born in New York City in 1935, Doro-
thy Carter began studying classical piano
aged six and was educated in London at the
Royal Academy and the Guildhall School
of Music and Drama. If she’d stayed in
London or New York or Paris she’d have
had a very different career, but Carter
became a vagabond. It was whilst staying
in an anarchist monastery in Mexico in the
late ’60s that she met her lifelong partner
and collaborator, the German sound artist
Robert Rutman.
Along with New Age musician and
sculptor Constance Demby, Carter and
Rutman founded the Central
Maine Power Music Com-
pany, a semi-professional
collective who performed on
Rutman’s unique collection
of eight-foot-high “steel cel-
los” (effectively a big sheet of
96 MOJO
metal on a metal frame, played with a cello
bow) accompanied by circular saws, bells,
gongs, flute, sax, koto and electric organ.
It’s that catholic blend you hear on Waillee
Waillee, where the vernacular language of
Appalachia meets the Dream House drones
of the New York avant-garde, the academy-
trained classicist and New Age’s shimmer-
ing inner-space explorations.
Recorded in Cambridge, MA with
Rutman assisting on steel cello and Earth
Opera’s John Nagy on bass, Waillee Waillee
begins in the ancient past, the hammered
medieval patterns of The Squirrel…
leading into a waltzing flute and dulcimer
interpretation of 13th century French
pastourelle Robin M’Aime. However, third
track Along The River is something else
entirely, with Carter playing thin, empyreal
flute over melancholy, multi-timbral zither,
her ephemeral voice singing a disquieting
tale of waterside lovers. Rutman’s steel
cellos are first heard on the foreboding
Summer Rhapsody, their deep hallucina-
tory waves a stark contrast to Carter’s light,
dancing dulcimer. A major influence on
Laraaji, Carter’s playing is bright, complex,
joyous, yet it’s on the immersive, Popol
Vuh-like album closer, Tree Of Life, that the
music is at its most powerful, Carter’s vul-
nerable, ascending soprano blurring with
the sepulchral glow of Rutman’s drones and
her own glistening dulcimer.
In later years, Carter lived in Berlin,
London and New Orleans, befriended
Einstürzende Neubauten, co-founded
all-female early music group Mediæval
Bæbes and became a ship’s attendant on a
Mississippi steam boat. When she died in
2003 her friend Angeliska Po-
lacheck wrote that “Dorothy’s
main credo was to be free and
wild – never accepting any
restriction”. It’s a philosophy
that runs deep through the
heart of Waillee Waillee.
Airto Moreira
& Flora Purim
★★★★
A Celebration: 60 Years
– Sounds, Dreams &
Other Stories
BBE. CD/DL/LP
Brazilian duo’s extraordinary
musical journey saluted.
Master
percussionist
Moreira and his
siren singer
wife Purim are
an unlikely
musical couple. He was a
country boy from an
impoverished family while she
was an urbane, middle-class,
big-city girl with classical music
training. They clashed when
they first collaborated in 1965,
but eventually their mutual
passion for music united them
romantically, sparking six
decades of music-making
where they pioneered a heady,
free-spirited fusion of Brazilian
music and jazz. Every track is a
gem on this beautifully curated
5-LP/3-CD retrospective, which
largely draws from the couple’s
most fertile period in the 1970s,
revealing how the combination
of Moreira’s visceral earthiness
with his wife’s incantatory
vocals created a mesmerising,
otherworldly synergy. Among
the most magical cuts are
Airto’s Musikana, which
spotlights his percussion
genius with its layered
polyrhythms, and From The
Lonely Afternoon, where
Purim’s scatting and vocal
sound effects redefined the art
of jazz singing.
Charles Waring
F.U.S.E.
★★★★
Dimension Intrusion
WARP. LP
Sci-fi soundtracks meet
clubby techno on 30th
anniversary edition of
Richie Hawtin’s debut.
Designed for
“long journeys,
quiet nights
and club
drowsy dawns”,
Warp’s Artificial
Intelligence series was highly
prescient, foreshadowing
illustrious electronic careers for
Aphex Twin, Plaid and Autechre.
Its fifth album spotlighted
Ontario DJ/producer Richie
Hawtin’s F.U.S.E. alias, already
gaining momentum for singles
F.U. and Substance Abuse,
cheaply-made, minimalist,
four-to-the-floor stompers
detailed with acidic bass twists
of a Roland TB-303. Both are
relative outliers amid Dimension
Intrusion’s glut of downtempo
delights: Theychx’s conjoined
two-note figures and ache of
strings, Slac’s deep space
musings (hinting ahead at his
minimal Plastikman creations),
UVA’s melancholic chord
sequence and sci-fi pings and
pulses. All showcase Hawtin’s
great intuition. His gift for
knowing whether to stick, twist
or bend his creations out of
shape is unrivalled, keeping
his debut sounding fresher
than ever.
Andy Cowan
Rachid Taha
★★★★
Cétoului
BLUE WRASSE. CD
The complete studio
recordings, plus remixes
and live highlights.
What’s
revelatory
about this
14-CD set
– released five
years after
Taha’s death – is watching
how the Franco-Algerian
rabble-rouser strived through
the first part of his career to find
his USP, often coming close then
taking a brief wrong turning.
The earliest LPs, recorded with
his group Carte De Séjour, suffer
from ’80s production; but each
of the first three solo LPs
contain a handful of future
classics (Barbès; Voilà Voilà; Non,
Non, Non). However, inspired by
the exile’s lament Ya Rayah, it all
comes good on 1998’s Diwân:
the songs are traditional, the
players are punks with both
eyes on the dancefloor. For the
next decade, he raged against
the forces of darkness with
furious albums and live shows
that thrived on staring into the
abyss. Nobody else ever did
Arabic-folk-punk-disco-house
quite as convincingly.
David Hutcheon
Byard Lancaster
★★★★
It’s Not Up To Us
SUPERIOR VIADUCT. DL/LP
Super-rare debut from
Philly saxophonist/flautist
recorded with a 25-year-old
Sonny Sharrock.
Just prior to
this reissue,
you could pick
up an original
vinyl copy of
Byard
Lancaster’s debut LP for around
£200. Originally pressed on
Atlantic Records’ boutique label,
Vortex, it’s one of the few
late-’60s jazz LPs that
successfully melds the era’s
multiple narratives of fire music,
electric jazz-rock, Pan-African
spiritualism, urban funk and
pop melodicism. Behind its
unassuming cover you are
witness to a magical alliance,
Lancaster’s melodic flute and
sax uniting with Jerome
Hunter’s electric bass, Sonny
Sharrock’s gnarly guitar and Eric
Gravatt’s rock-action drums on
a wild journey from gently-
swinging pastoral folk (the
title track and Last Summer),
through wailing free covers
(Misty; Over The Rainbow) and
into dark skronk jams like John’s
Children, a Coltrane tribute
where Sharrock’s wild
shredding manages to invent
the noise rock guitar sound of
Jack Weiseburg
early-’80s downtown New York.
Joyous and essential.
Andrew Male

Dennis Bovell
★★★★
The 4th Street
Albums Collection
DOCTOR BIRD. CD
1976-78 rebel roots and
dub from Dennis Bovell’s
pseudonymous outfit.
Dennis Bovell
made four
albums as the
4th Street
Orchestra.
To offset UK
prejudice towards homegrown
reggae, he passed them off as
JA imports, and with dread
atmosphere dominating
throughout: 1976’s Ah Who
Seh? Go-Deh!, the same year’s
Leggo! Ah-Fi-We-Dis, 1977’s
Scientific, Higher Ranking Dubb
and 1978’s Yuh Learn! became
huge hits on the UK
soundsystem circuit. Collected
here with bonus choice cuts he
made under the names Dennis
Curtis, Dennis Matumbi and
African Stone, it’s easy to see
why. High points are spread
throughout, including Jah
Chase Dem and Back-Weh-
Babylon, both Bovell originals
and all deep, dubby bass, delay
and heavy vibes. Inspired
versions include his echoey
vocal dub of The Kingstonians’
Singer Man and, most
surprising, a rocksteady
instrumental treatment of Blue
Moon that really shouldn’t
work, but does.
Lois Wilson
Various
★★★
We Can Work It Out:
Covers Of The Beatles
1962-1966
CHERRY RED. CD
Eighty-five cover versions
of 1962-’66 Beatles songs
over 3CDs.
Spanning the
years between
Love Me Do
and Tomorrow
Never Knows,
this 3-CD set is
for completists rather than the
casual fan. CD1 has too much
limp beat and French yeh-yeh
among the genuine artefacts
(Kenny Lynch’s Misery, Duffy
Power’s I Saw Her Standing
There) and hits from Billy J
Kramer and The Fourmost.
Gregory Phillips’ version of
George’s Don’t Bother Me is a
find. CD2 has versions from
The Supremes, The Mamas &
The Papas, The 5th Dimension,
Noel Harrison and Joe Cocker’s
cool I’ll Cry Instead. CD3 enters
more interesting territory with
the Fabs’ psych period. Davy
Graham covers I’m Looking
Through You, while Petula
Clark tackles Rain, rather
bizarrely and quite
successfully. Too many
versions are inferior copies
of the originals, but the
transformations by Junior
Parker (Taxman) and Steve
Phil Franks
Marcus lift the final disc: the
latter turns Tomorrow Never
Knows into a riveting
Yes
★★★★
The Yes Album
(Super Deluxe Edition)
RHINO. CD/DL/LP/BR
Prog-rock royalty’s third album
stripped down and rebuilt.
THERE’S A purity to Yes’s early
work. In 1971, their respective egos
were still in check and their musi-
cal ambition hadn’t yet cost them
11-minute sax/fuzz guitar/
drone work-out. In general,
a good idea, but not a
compelling listen.
Jon Savage
Holger Hiller
★★★★
Ein Bündel Fäulnis
In Der Grube
BUREAU B. CD/DL/LP
Ex-Palais Schaumburg
man’s 1983 solo debut
points to the future of
electronic sound.
Applying
William
Burroughs’
cut-up
technique
to sampling,
Holger Hiller’s first solo album
pushed more envelopes than a
Christmas postman, as he put
a hired Emulator 1 through its
paces. Working to decidedly
European structures, spare,
taut efforts such as Blass
Schlafen Rabe… and
Chemische Und Physikalische
Entdeckungen let him
improvise within Jürgen
Keller’s looping bass lines,
with woofing dogs, starting
engines and dripping taps
part of his inventive collage
science. If the title track’s
industrial sturm und drang is
Hiller at his most menacing,
Jonny (Du Lump) finds him
at his most accessible, an
addictive “Du-du-du-ah-ah”
chorus leading a stomping,
metal-bashing hit beamed in
from another galaxy. Hiller
continued to deconstruct song
formats in its wake, but this is
F I LT E R R E I S SU E S
Affirmative action:
Steven Wilson’s remix of
1971’s The Yes Album
dials up the Yes-ness.
their songwriting. That
year’s The Yes Album
and mono mixes and an
instrumental version of
exemplifies this. It the original LP. Stripped
also broke in their new
recruit, ex-Tomorrow
of vocalist Jon Ander-
son’s choirboy trilling,
guitarist Steve Howe Yes’s folk, classical and
(whose live solo turn The Clap jazz roots are laid bare. The push and
still jars in the studio setting), and pull between bassist Chris Squire,
showcased the evergreen Yours Is drummer Bill Bruford and keyboard-
No Disgrace and Starship Trooper. ist Tony Kaye is compelling; like the
Remixer-to-the-stars Steven Wilson audio equivalent of watching the cogs
dials up the Yes-ness on this four-disc turning inside a vintage timepiece.
set, which includes live tracks, single Mark Blake
his brilliantly thought- harmonies, keening violin in Supersempfft’s conceptual
provoking career high. and the misty swirl of pagan mischief-making.
Andy Cowan ghostliness. Andy Cowan
Andrew Male
Mandy Morton Leon Rosselson
And Spriguns Supersempfft ★★★★
★★★
★★★★ Chronicling The Times
Magic Lady Metaluna PM PRESS. CD/DL/LP
GUERSSEN. LP
BUREAU B. CD/DL/LP
Top Marx: Socialist folkie’s
Late-’70s folk rock gem from Contrary, arty German trio’s personal greatest hits.
1981 LP sets out a techno/
the band formally known “Who are you
tropical-pop template.
as Spriguns Of Tolgus. to tell us that
Post-modern our lives have
If it hadn’t
been for poppers with been wasted
short attention and all that we
Steeleye Span’s
1975 chart hit spans and fought for has
worldly turned into dust,” asks Leon
All Around
influences Rosselson on his pivotal Song
My Hat, it’s
(reggae, calypso, soca), Of The Old Communist, a
unlikely Cambridge folk rock
Supersempfft was archly vehement defence of Old Left
quartet Spriguns Of Tolgus
conceived as an interstellar principles in the face of more
would ever have been signed
cartoon frog by Thuringia cynical times. Now 89, the
to Decca. But signed they
schoolfriends Dieter Kolb, campaigner, children’s author
were, in the final folk rock
Franz Knüttel and Franz and That Was The Week That
boom of the 1970s. Their two
Aumüller. Their second LP Was satirist’s days of playing at
Decca LPs, particularly 1977’s thrums to the pulse of demos may be behind him,
Time Will Pass, are undersung
Knüttel’s self-built drum but this collection of his
works of electric folk rock, machine, traversing bright and favourite pieces continue to
tinged with the sinister and
bubbly space disco on I See shudder with righteous ire.
centred around the gorgeous Stars, bone dry machine-funk Part of a European tradition of
vocal delivery of guitarist/
amid Bubbles + Smoke’s political song, more Jacques
singer Mandy Morton. This arpeggiating synths and Brel than Woody Guthrie, the
follow-up, self-released by squelchy digital reggae on Middlesex pistol’s command
Morton in 1978 following the The Wrong Song. While the of English irony and
demise of the Decca deal, is, title track’s full-on sci-fi prog, wasp-trapped-in-jar voice
if anything, even better. all crashing waves and shine through Postcards From
Dedicated to Sandy Denny, vocodored choruses, Cuba, while a Robert Wyatt-ish
who’d died that same year, and pre-empts Daft Punk by over setting illuminates his most
featuring guest appearances a decade, Supersempfft often celebrated song, The World
from Steeleye Span’s Tim Hart veer towards the wrong side Turned Upside Down.
on dulcimer and Gryphon’s of novelty: Aumüller’s Appearances from Billy Bragg,
Graeme Taylor providing patience-testing falsetto Martin Carthy and his old
rippling traces of psych guitar, on I Can Sing, the steel comrade Roy Bailey soften
it’s a gorgeous, eerie collection band frippery of Butterfly some of Rosselson’s harder
of self-penned folk rock Baccanal. Bursting with a edges, but he stands defiantly
ballads and slow rockers glut of ideas, shades of Devo unreasonable.
suffused in West Coast and The Residents abound Jim Wirth
MOJO 97

The Seeds
★★★★
The Seeds Deluxe
BIG BEAT. CD/LP
Repress of 2012’s excellent deluxe
edition of the garage-punk set text
from 1966, all in mono.
FROM LA, The Seeds wrote the
garage band creed with their 1966
eponymous debut LP. Its 12 songs,
Ustad Zia
Mohiuddin Dagar
★★★★
Vrindavan 1982
BLACK TRUFFLE. DL/LP
Previously unheard 1982
live performance from the
master of Hindustani
stringed instrument,
the rudra veena.
Descendant of the esteemed
Dagar musician family and son
of the court musician for the
Maharana of Udaipur, ZM
Dagar is arguably the finest
ever practitioner of the rudra
veena, a sort of double-
plucked sitar with twin
resonator gourds (supposedly
modelled on the breasts of the
goddess Parvati). Following
the family’s loss of court
patronage in 1947, the rudra
veena came to be considered
as a deeply unfashionable,
boring classical instrument.
However, ZM continued to
play, adapting the instrument
to create a more resonant,
weightier sound. This live
recording is the perfect
example of Dagar’s heavy
modifications. The
performance is divided into
Courtesy of Ace Records
three sections, a slowly
unfolding 40-minute alap, a
more metallic and rhythmic
jod and finally an exquisitely
restrained raga in which Dagar
and pakhawaj drummer
Shrikant Mishra unite in a back
98 MOJO
including the anthemic
Can’t Seem To Make You
Mine, Pushin’ Too Hard
and No Escape, are raw,
compressed bursts of
proto-punk, all fuzz, distortion, weedy
organ and elemental drums, with
free spirit and cult hero Sky Saxon’s
distinctive howl and whine the defin-
ing touch. The bonus cuts here are
thrilling too, from an early version
and forth conversation that
is elusive, dreamlike and
deeply trippy.
Andrew Male
Pink Floyd
★★★★
Atom Heart Mother:
“Hakone Aphrodite”
Japan 1971
PARLOPHONE. BR/CD/LP
The one with the cow on
the cover’s neo-classical
concerto plus a rare live
performance.
The side-long title track of Pink
Floyd’s fifth studio album
nearly broke its co-composer/
arranger Ron Geesin in 1970.
Some of the hired brass
players objected to his
instructions, and fists nearly
flew at Abbey Road. The suite’s
overture always sounded
slightly wonky, then, but part
four, Funky Dung’s Gregorian-
style chanting and David
Gilmour’s bluesy guitar fills are
the aural equivalent of a sign
reading: “This way to The Dark
Side Of The Moon”. Meanwhile,
the old second side includes
keyboard player Richard
Wright’s lovely curio, Summer
’68. This new edition comes
with some replica ephemera
and footage from an
appearance at Japan’s Hakone
Aphrodite Festival (all
wind-blown centre-partings
gets pop ballad. Best of all though is the
16-minute full-length version of Evil
Hoodoo, where Saxon’s free associa-
tion and the group’s unadulterated
soloing hit peak creative intensity.
and furrow browed prog-rock)
plus a press conference and
clips of the youthful Floyds
wafting through airports and
hotel lobbies. In one scene,
a bullet train-bound Roger
Waters winks playfully at the
camera. A charming period
piece, then.
Mark Blake
Hawkwind
★★★★★
Space Ritual
ESOTERIC. CD/LP
The rocknauts’ cosmic opera
masterpiece gets a truly
cosmic makeover.
Space Ritual was once
regarded as the adolescent’s
alternative to fellow cosmic
rockers Pink Floyd’s The Dark
Side Of The Moon. While Floyd
had become futuristic masters
of sonic finesse, Hawkwind,
still vibing on acid, speed and
free festival culture, preferred
sonic attack, comic-book sci-fi
and chaos theory. Now
remastered, remixed and
expanded into a Wagnerian-
sized 11-disc set, the original
concert recordings reveal
the seven-piece band at the
peak of their powers, true
scions of Astronomy
Domine-era Floyd bolstered
by revved-up riffery. That’s
largely down to the band’s
core – guitarist/singer Dave
Brock, bassist Lemmy and
drummer Simon King –
In a field of their own:
The Seeds (from left)
Rick Andridge, Jan
Savage, Daryl Hooper
and Sky Saxon hit
peak creativity in ’66.
of B-side Out Of The
Question that’s more
frantic than that issued,
to Dreaming Of Your
Love, the perfect Nug-
Lois Wilson
which rocket fires the
accompanying electronics
and dystopian visions.
Space rock’s definitive trip
just got bigger and better.
Mark Paytress
Moebius
★★★★
Tonspuren
BUREAU B. LP
Kosmische titan’s 1980s solo
debut evokes his landmark
collaborative mid-’70s
recordings.
Although
Dieter Moebius
(1944-2015)
debuted on
record in
1970, 1983’s
Tonspuren was his first solo
credit. Earlier, he had recorded
with Kluster and then
Cluster. He had been in
Harmonia. At various times,
his musical partners included
Conny Plank, Guru Guru’s Mani
Neumeier, Hans-Joachim
Roedelius, Michael Rother
and Conrad Schnitzler. There
were brushes with Brian Eno.
Given the stylistic scope of
what he had been central to,
those coming to this fresh
will wonder what tack this
kosmische lynchpin’s debut
solo outing would take.
Forbiddingly experimental?
Floatingly ambient? In the
event, Tonspuren’s 10
instrumental pieces meld
the playful, cartoonish
sounds of the 1974 Cluster
album Zuckerzeit and the
bubbling, pulsing aspects
of Harmonia’s Deluxe, from
1975. It must have been
deliberate: in 1983, Dieter
Moebius chose to say that
this, in particular, was what
he was about.
Kieron Tyler
Plastikman
★★★★
Sheet One
NOVAMUTE. LP
Richie Hawtin’s landmark
1993 acid-techno album.
When Richie
Hawtin
released his
first LP as
Plastikman
in 1993 –
arguably the best-known of
the noms de guerre used by the
Canadian techno producer
over the decades – its CD
covers were LSD-style blotter
sheets. It led to apocryphal
stories of owners of Sheet One
being collared by police on
suspicion of possession.
The artwork of these 30th
anniversary remasters is more
prosaic, but musically it’s lost
none of its efficacy. Recorded
in just 48 intense hours, it has
the raw, propulsive energy of
a live jam. Mind-bending acid
workouts like Plasticity, where
Hawtin masterfully tweaks the
dials on his Roland TB-303
sequencer, share billing with
the immersive, minimalistic
techno of Gak and Helikopter.
Many years later, Hawtin
explained that the Plastikman
moniker was chosen as this
was music to be played at
sunrise, as the party was
starting to wind down, and
clubbers were “melting into
the floor”. A techno milestone,
Sheet One is a trip that’s lasted
30 years… and still counting.
Stephen Worthy
Various
★★★★
The NID Tapes:
Electronic Music From
India 1969-1972
THE STATE51 CONSPIRACY. DL/LP
Unearthed works from
India’s first electronic
studio, restored by
Emptyset’s Paul Purgas.
Jinraj Joshipura
is the sole
survivor from
the roll call of
creators who
frequented the
National Institute of Design
(NID) in Ahmedabad, a studio
founded post-independence
with support from NYC
composer David Tudor. He’s
one of five composers who
made playful, joyful use of
its Moog modular system,
creating futuristic sci-fi tones
that fulfil the brief of “creating
music that feels outside
anything”. Elsewhere, SC
Shama supplies oscillating
body music, IS Mathur creates
naturalistic-sounding birdsong,
ex-John Cage student Gita
Sarabhai conjures monolithic
murmurings that echo classical
Indian drones, while Atul Desai
uses electronic textures to
rewire recordings of traditional
instrumentation. All revel in
an acute rhythmic sensibility
absent from western Moog
pioneers like Dick Hyman or
Wendy Carlos.
Andy Cowan

Various
★★★
Blank Generation: A
Story Of US/Canadian
Punk & Its Aftershocks
1975-1981
CHERRY RED. CD
Wide-ranging 5-CD
celebration of American
punk marries the familiar
with more arcane disruptors.
Punk rebooted the
7-inch single. For its
US DIY adopters it
was a powerful
means of raging
against prevailing
rinky-dink disco and lumpen
soft rock, evidenced on this
45-focused, fully adrenalised
six-hour-plus anthology.
Prime-timers Richard Hell,
Patti Smith, Blondie, Television
and Pere Ubu may be the main
attractions, but a less
recognised gang of
avant-garde outsiders supply
Blank Generation’s most
thrilling highs: Count Vertigo’s
wild pulsing organs, Electric
Eels’ clattering noise-fest,
Bush Tetras’ stop-start
swampy grooves, Destroy
All Monsters’ sneering
disaffection and warbling sax.
Add in the all-out assault of
Philadelphia Afropunks Pure
Hell, Cigarettes’ jerking
industrial art-rock (with a side
of Klaus Nomi falsetto) and
skip past its few duds for an
assiduously compiled
rebellious jukebox.
Andy Cowan
Brainiac
★★★★
Smack Bunny Baby
CRAFT. LP
30th anniversary reissue for
debut from ill-fated Dayton,
OH avant-punks.
Though Brainiac had yet to
perfect the Beefheartian
contortions that would define
their subsequent avant-punk
innovations, they were already
a challenging proposition on
their debut album. Though
playing pop-minded,
post-Nirvana punk, frontman
Timmy Taylor fed his bratty
snarl through damaged
vocoders, and married
detuned guitars to thrift-store
Moogs and synths. This lent
his group a deliciously
Devo-esque weirdness, even if
these songs adhere closer to
the traditional forms Taylor
Sydney Randolph Maurer
Donovan F I LT E R R E I S SU E S
★★★★
A Gift From A
Flower To A Garden
THE STATE51 CONSPIRACY. LP
Psych poet laureate’s 1967
album presented in an
autographed, replica handmade
box with illustrated lyric insert.
THIS REISSUE of Donovan’s 1967
double LP in mono is lavish, but
limited to just 500 copies, each one
hand-signed, it’s also pricey at £180.
The album – the first disc address-
ing his generation; the second their
future children – has never had its
proper due though, its stock reduced
as Donovan unjustly became short-
hand for hippy idealism. Yet it’s up
there with the previous year’s Sun-
shine Superman for innovative vision:
his fairy tales, lullabies, and songs
inspired by friends escaping borstal
and American banjo players, along
with his reading of Shakespeare’s
Under The Greenwood Tree, all
capture both the moment and the
bigger picture through kaleidoscopic
jazz-pop-folk. The album also boasts
the truly enchanting Wear Your Love
Like Heaven, one of the great ’60s Garden of delights:
Brit psych singles. Donovan captures both
the moment and the
Lois Wilson bigger picture in 1967.
broken robot tantrum of the partisan fanbase, at whom vaporous deep-space chimes not ignominious fade-out.
Cultural Zero or the distended this is aimed, simply couldn’t that gradually shift from the Jim Wirth
howl and eerie B-movie ask for more. celestial to the infernal.
soundtrack synths of Draag. Mark Blake Andrew Male
Who knows where his
visionary gift might have taken The Daily Flash
him, had a fatal car crash not
Pauline Anna Pentangle ★★★
intervened in 1997. The Legendary
Stevie Chick Strom ★★★ Recordings 1965-1967
★★★★ Reunions, Live and GUERSSEN. LP
Echoes, Spaces, Lines BBC Sessions,
John Wetton RVNG INTL. CD/DL/LP 1982-2011
Full set of 1965-67 recordings
by this Seattle- based psych/
★★★ First three LPs from the CHERRY RED. CD folk group.
An Extraordinary Life ultra-obscure West Coast Chicken-in-a-basket of An intriguing
CHERRY RED. CD/DL electronic composer, plus light: folk-jazzers hit and
unreleased fourth. the revival circuit. worthwhile
Ex-King Crimson/Asia/Roxy
man’s solo works in an When outsider Reflecting on release
musician the folk- shows this
8-CD box.
Pauline Anna jazzers’ first Seattle-based
John Wetton,
who passed
Strom died in
December of
reunions in the group – transplanted to LA
– struggling to find an identity
1980s, double
away in 2017, 2020, aged 74, in the turmoil of the mid ’60s.
bass demon
was a rarity in it was as a rediscovered Sunshine pop (The French Girl:
Danny Thompson shrugged:
progressive electronic composer, just two the fullest sounding thing
“It never really worked out; we
rock circles. months prior to the release of here) vies with novelty (Again
got through a few gigs but it
The vocalist, bassist and her first new music in 30 years. wasn’t anything wonderful.” And Again), rocked-up folk
songwriter seemed like a Blind almost since birth, the This four-CD set may not be songs – both traditional and
frustrated pop star trying to Dylan: their version of Queen
self-taught Strom began the most appetising volume of
nudge his respective groups, making music in the early ’80s Jane Approximately is a good
Cherry Red’s thorough
even the notoriously knotty in her tiny studio apartment in documentation of Pentangle’s one – and, finally, a 13-minute
King Crimson, in a more San Francisco’s Tenderloin live jam on Herbie Hancock’s
career, but these performances
user-friendly direction. Wetton district. Recorded late at night Cantaloupe Island, which with
are certainly no disgrace to the
came closest when fronting using a Prophet 10, a Yamaha its raga guitar is one of the
memory of a band later billed
the platinum-selling Yes/ELP CS-70m and Tascam 4-track, optimistically as “the Folk more listenable efforts in this
offshoot Asia in the early ’80s, and released under the name Beatles” and “Britain’s Grateful vein. Signed to managers
before resuming his solo Trans-Millenia Consort, Strom’s Dead”. Drummer Terry Cox is Greene and Stone, The Daily
career. Listening to him make first three albums (available absent for some of the 1982 Flash lost key member Doug
light work of Bryan Adams’ separately and as part of this live tapes here, and Pentangle Hastings to the Buffalo
Straight From The Heart box set) Trans-Millenia Consort, seemed to be playing more Springfield – as a temporary
evokes a parallel universe Plot Zero and Spectre, blend for love in later incarnations; replacement for Neil Young.
in which Wetton also became kosmische and new age a BBC live take of Bruton Town Changes in personnel, little
a premier-league power textures with a rough-edged from 2008 finds Thompson, record company support and
balladeer, while his delicate radiophonic paganism, Bert Jansch and John the lack of songwriting skills
cover of All Along The suggesting shimmering DIY Renbourn wigging out doomed the group by the end
Watchtower is one of

would so gleefully mess with
on later records. Indeed, the
songs of Smack Bunny Baby
prove he was already a master
of twisted pop-hooks, but the
finest moments here indulge
Taylor’s sinister side, like the
the highpoints on this
meticulously-curated,
deep-dive trawl. Wetton’s
earthy baritone remains a
constant, and while a surfeit
of windblown soft rock
will scare the casual listener,
soundtracks for some occult
sci-fi children’s show. The
previously unreleased LP here,
Oceans Of Tears, is a work of
haunted domestic bliss, field
recordings of pouring water,
summer rain, kitchen cooking
and laughing babies washed in
joyously, while the extended
collection of 2011 recordings
(previously released by
Topic as Finale in 2016)
show Jacqui McShee’s voice
gaining a pleasing oak-
smoked patina with the
passing of time. A long but
of 1967; the diversity of styles
make for a jumpy programme.
Best track: their summer 1966
Yardbirds-style recasting of
traditional Jack Of Diamonds,
feedback, harmonica, whirring
guitars, rave-up and all.
Jon Savage

MOJO 99

F I L E U N D E R ...
Royal flush
Playing a handful of winning
albums by the Queen of Soul.
By Jim Irvin.
A
TLANTIC PARTNER and producer
Jerry Wexler was in the studio break-
ing up a violent quarrel between Percy
Sledge and Wilson Pickett when the phone
rang and a mutual friend told him that Aretha
Franklin was ready to sign to Atlantic. Mindful
that she hadn’t been A&R’d adequately during
her time with Columbia, Wexler let Franklin
select material and work out how she wanted
to sing it for her first Atlantic recording ses-
sion in 1967. They did a handshake deal.
Franklin’s partner/manager Ted White
ABC Photo Archives/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images
dismissed the crack team of Memphis play-
ers Wexler had booked as “fuckin’ honkies”
during a row that halted the first session. But
they’d already caught, in just two hours, I
Never Loved A Man, which became a million-
seller, so a winning formula was established.
Wexler had signed Franklin just as he was
making plans to sell up and retire to Miami,
but eagerness to produce her records, with the
great Arif Mardin and Tom Dowd alongside
him, kept him in deep for a while longer.
Great as she was, Aretha Franklin was
never a platinum-seller, and while each one
contains undeniably great moments, there’s
perhaps no definitive Franklin album. How-
ever, a handsome new box, A Portrait Of The
Queen ★★★★ (BMG), collects five albums
(remastered with bonus tracks across 5-CDs
100 MOJO
and 6-LPs) from
1970-74 that are generally held to be among
her strongest recordings. It was the period
where soul had peaked and the net for suitable like Border Song or The Weight, because the
material was being cast wider.
On 1970’s This Girl’s In Love With You
Franklin covers two songs she’d previously
rejected, Son Of A Preacher Man and Let It Be, co-produced by Franklin and Quincy Jones,
the latter given a churchy reading that amplifies started out as a jazz project, but took a left
its piety. A funky tilt at Eleanor Rigby is a brave turn into epic soul slow-burners like the title
move. Much more successful is outtake You
Keep Me Hanging On. This LP peaks with its
only Franklin composition, the fantastic Call
Me. Ms Franklin is an undervalued writer,
but on Spirit In The Dark her
own works – aside from the
rousing title song – are bluesy
makeweights. However, open-
ing track, Betty Nelson and
Ahmet Ertegun’s Don’t Play
That Song, is one of her most
heavenly performances, and
the band’s grooving like hell.
Even better is the hard-to-
fault Young, Gifted And Black.
Sleek arrangements and high-
grade song selection make this
album shine. Franklin’s own “Soul had
Day Dreaming, Rock Steady peaked and
and First Snow In Kokomo
are all superb, The Delfonics’ the net for
Didn’t I (Blow Your Mind suitable
This Time) and Elton John’s
Border Song appear to fit like material was
being cast
wider.”
Reigning supreme:
Queen of Soul Aretha
Franklin spent 12 years
at Atlantic.
a glove, as does Nina Simone’s title
song. And she finally nails a decent
Beatles cover with a sublime The
Long And Winding Road. This may
be the closest she came to making an
essential LP. Wexler would later say he regret-
ted giving her things from the world of rock
lyrics were often too ambiguous. “R&B has to
tell it like it is,” he noted.
Hey Now Hey (The Other Side Of The Sky),
track and That’s The Way I Feel About Cha. It
features her audacious reading of Somewhere
from West Side Story moving from breath-
taking ballad into jazz instrumental and back
again. Eddie Jefferson’s tour
de force Moody’s Mood is
given a surprising spin, and
this unusual LP closes with
one of her finest self-written
singles, Master Of Eyes.
Let Me In Your Life was
actually her best-seller for
Atlantic with great cuts like
Until You Come Back To Me,
Ain’t Nothing Like The Real
Thing and A Song For You.
After this her sales would start
to slump. Wexler and crew
lasted two more LPs. She’d
go on to cut records with La-
mont Dozier, Curtis Mayfield
and Van McCoy, finally leaving
Atlantic in 1979 after a 12-
year reign.
 Quiet riot: The
American Analog
Set (Andrew Kenny,
far left) – sedate, F I LT E R R E I S SU E S
linear, dreamlike.

Spiritualized
★★★★
Amazing Grace
FAT POSSUM. CD/DL/LP
After 20 years, Jason Pierce’s
salvation army still recruits.
On its 2003
release, it was
the garage
rock side of
Spiritualized’s
fifth album
that largely drew focus –
understandable, given the
self-immolation of This Little
Life Of Mine, She Kissed Me (It
Felt Like A Hit) or Cheapster’s
Maggie’s Farm ruckus. Jason
Pierce’s working practices for
the follow-up to 2001’s stately
Let It Come Down contributed
to the fast, furious impression
– Amazing Grace was recorded
in three weeks, the musicians
only handed the songs on the The existence from 1995 to
2005, was a kind of loping,
homespun technique, its flaws, limits
and ambience, came to shape the
day of recording. Yet this
reissue proves it’s not all fire American countrified kosmische that, much like group’s sensibility; sedate, linear, im-
and spite; Pierce’s gift for the
spiritual lament is as acute Analog Set their adopted hometown of Austin,
blended the sedately rural with the
perfect yet dreamlike. You could call
it slowcore, and draw parallels with
here as it has ever been, Rated
X’s jazz beginnings coalescing ★★★★★ gently weird. The albums assembled Galaxie 500 and Acetone, but listened
here, 1996’s The Fun Of Watching to here with two extra discs of B-sides
into a broken ballad, Oh Baby
awash in tears-on-cymbals New Drifters Fireworks, 1997’s From Our Living and outtakes, it’s the group’s unique-
percussion. Crumpled one NUMERO GROUP. LP
moment, raging the next, it’s a Room To Yours and 1999’s The Golden ness that shines through, this quiet,
record striving for a peace that Five-LP box documenting the early Band, were all recorded on an Otari isolated collective crafting a hushed,
only comes with Hold On’s years of the Texan psychedelicists. MX5050 reel-to-reel in the Fort cool aesthetic that now seems utterly
ambiguous comfort: “death
cannot take what you’ve
THE SOUND made by The American Worth home of guitarist-frontman out of time.
already lost.” Analog Set, during their initial 10-year Andrew Kenny’s grandparents. That Andrew Male
Victoria Segal

Roberta Flack
★★★★
Lost Takes
ARC. LP
First vinyl release for Flack’s
1968 pre-First Take demos.
The year before Roberta Flack
recorded her debut in one
10-hour session, she cut this
audition tape, performing
standards and pop hits for
producer Joel Dorn. With
well-judged backing from
bassist Marshall Hawkins and
drummer Bernard Sweeney,
the protean Flack is already in
full flight, never simply singing
what is expected, but always
locating what the song needs.
These demos showcase all
Flack’s gifts: the power of her
tender restraint (The Song Is
Love), the joyous rush of her
letting loose (Ain’t No
Mountain High Enough), the
way she mines every twist of
longing across nine minutes
of To Sir With Love and
mischievously savours the
noir-ish narrative of Frankie
And Johnny. Confirming Flack
Lizelle Villapando
Franklin, these Lost Takes are
an essential discovery.
Stevie Chick
Chris Forsyth
★★★★
Solar Motel
(Expanded)
ALGORITHM FREE. DL/LP
2013 freak-out epiphany,
now expanded across
two discs.
The
Philadelphia-
based
avant-guitar
hero has been
leaning into
the canon of late, gigging with
a Neil Young tribute band
called Coca Leaves & Pearls
and taking part in a live
reconstruction of Carlos
Santana and John
McLaughlin’s Love Devotion
Surrender album (Forsyth
played Santana). While we wait
for recorded evidence of
another new Forsyth project
– a band called Basic – this
expansion and remaster of a
key solo album from 2013
revisits the point where he
began to channel his
underground experimentation
into fuller rock workouts. As
with most Forsyth records this
past decade, Television’s
fraught, lyrical jams remain a
foundational influence on the
four instrumental parts of
Solar Motel, here
Experience or 2019’s All Time
Present might be better
Forsyth albums to start with,
but if you’ve ever wanted
Marquee Moon to last 42
minutes – and who hasn’t? –
try this.
John Mulvey
Akiko Yano
★★★★
To Ki Me Ki
WEWANTSOUNDS. CD/DL/LP
Offbeat pop collides with
New York funk on cult
singer-songwriter’s
Japan-only third LP.
Akiko Yano
established
herself an
enigmatic
force across
Japanese
music with the breakout
success of her 1976 debut
Japanese Girl. Her third album
in as many years showed her
gift for penning idiosyncratic
but infectious songs was
intact, mischievous offerings
Kodomo Tachi and Katarun
Kararan deconstructing pop
structures to her own ends,
even if Rick Marotta’s Phil
Collins-esque drum fills
sometimes distract. Elsewhere,
Two On The Stage bursts with
joie de vivre as she jazzily
negotiates a slinky Hammond
organ groove over call-and-
response vocals, while
solo-performed Okina Ishi and
future work with Yellow Magic
Orchestra, a collaboration that
spirited her way beyond her
native soil.
Andy Cowan
Blue Orchids
★★★★
The Greatest Hit
(Money Mountain)
TINY GLOBAL. CD/DL/LP
Trip hazard: Fall alumni’s
walk on the wild side.
“We were a
bunch of
drug-addled
working-class
kids from
Manchester,
living in the moment and
having the ride of our young
lives,” says Martin Bramah in
the sleevenote to this reissue
of the Blue Orchids’
aggressively cosmic 1982
debut LP, complete with
fun bonus tracks. Magic
mushroom evangelists,
Bramah and his partner Una
Baines both bailed in the early
years of The Fall, taking the
Bingo Master’s Break-Out
sound to more giddy terrain
with their next project.
“People have read too many
books and seen too much TV,”
barks Bramah on the sparkly
Bad Education, summing up
the Blue Orchids’ autodidact
quest for greater wisdom. The
two-bob Brian Eno of Low
Profile, the Dylan-via-Love
rush and imagine with a shiver
the comedown that followed.
Jim Wirth
Various
★★★★
Light In The
Attic & Friends
LIGHT IN THE ATTIC. LP
Stars pay tribute to LITA.
Some tracks were previously
issued as part of their
limited-edition 7-inch
singles series.
This collection
of covers of the
Light In The
Attic back
catalogue by
contemporary
musician fans begins with
Charles Bradley’s terrific 2012
take on Sixto Rodriguez’s I’ll
Slip Away, the original’s jangly
harmony pop here becoming
full-throated soul scream. It
ends, meanwhile, with Rabbit
Hills, Steve Gunn and Bridget
St John’s gorgeous reading of
their friend Michael Chapman’s
atmospheric folk number; the
intimacy is palpable as deep
emotions flow. Elsewhere,
Iggy Pop And Zig Zags join
the dots between funk and
metal on their sludgy cover
of Betty Davis’s If I’m In Luck
I Might Get Picked Up, and
the great Barbara Lynn comes
out of retirement to turn
The Supreme Jubilees’ We’ll
Understand into stirring

as an artist with the
complexity and bravery of
Nina Simone, the sonorous
richness and shadowy
vulnerability of Aretha
supplemented by two strong
unreleased tracks and a radio
live session capturing the Solar
Motel Band’s percolating
frenzy. 2016’s Rarity Of
Yo Ro Ko Bi are icy, transportive
avant-pop of the higher order.
Throughout Yano’s almost
vaudevillian synth
experiments point to her
Mad As The Mist And Snow
and Bramah’s notes from the
edge, A Year With No Head,
epitomise The Greatest Hit’s
radical hedonism. Feel the
organ blues. The late Mark
Lanegan, Angel Olsen and
Mozart Estate also pay
homage.
Lois Wilson

MOJO 101
 B U R I E D T R E A SU R E Happy chappy: Daevid
Allen in the here and
now, Entermedia
Theatre, New York,
October 17, 1978.

up the thread of their mythology on Now Is

The Happiest Time Of Your Life. His metaphysi-
cal alter ego Zero The Hero gives an update on
recent activities on Why Do We Treat
Ourselves Like We Do?, his concern about
CREDITS
Tracks: Flamenco
Zero/Why Do We
Treat Ourselves Like
We Do?/Tally &
Orlando Meet The
Cockpot Pixie/See
You On The
Moontower/Poet For
Sale/Crocodile
Nonsense Poem/
Only Make Love If
You Want To/I Am/
Deya Goddess
Personnel: Daevid
Allen (guitar, vocals),
Joan Bibiloni
(guitar), Pepe Milan
(guitar), Sam Gopal
(percussion), Victor
Peraino (keyboards),
Vera Violin (violin),
Xavier Riba (violin),
Marianne Oberasche
(harp)
Producer: Daevid
Allen
Released: 1977
Recorded:
Bananamoon
Observatory, Deià,
Spain
Current
availability:
drugged-up cool cats losing their grip on
the bigger picture a thinly-veiled explana-
tion of why Allen went solo.
The Gong mythos’s cast of Pot-Head
Pixies and Octave Doctors remained very
real to Allen, as he told Vibraciones: “The
story of planet Gong is the story of my life.”
He added a new chapter when his young
sons joined him on a flying teapot ride on
the charming Tally & Orlando Meet The
Cockpot Pixie, but Bibiloni was not along
for that particular ride. “I didn’t see any
flying teapots close to the terrace on the
Bananamoon Observatory,” he tells MOJO
with a smile. “Daevid was a character.
His personal image and his behaviour –
he didn’t need to explain anything.”
Invariably bizarrely dressed, Allen
played the absurdist clown when he needed
to – take note of his cosmic Chuck Berry
fandango See You On The Moontower –
but Now Is The Happiest Time Of Your Life
goes to darker places. The moody Poet For
Sale is – as he felt-tipped on his sleevenote
– “my FLIP diatribe against music industry
bosses!” – but other songs are more
nebulous. Circus melodies and minor
chords undermine spiritual seduction Only

Magick Father
Digitally from
Flamedog Records
Make Love If You Want To, while I Am (“a
(the label run by musical illustration of one of my morning
Allen’s son Orlando). meditations”) is no easy New Age fix. While
Allen plays his trademark glissando guitar
Rediscovered this month Australian beat poet and ex-department store – an unearthly sound cribbed from Syd Barrett
from rock’s MIA list, Gong’s window display man Allen quit in 1975, – mournful ambient noises intrude; a mule
defeated by the band’s continued use of drugs brays, birds twitter, sheep bells clank, a cock
arch-trickster gets real. and enthusiasm for the high-gloss fusion of crows, and even a Popol Vuh-shaped harp coda
Weather Report. Gong wigged on without cannot lift the unsettled mood.
Daevid Allen him, but an advance from Virgin allowed Allen Deya Goddess is where it all leads to; Allen
Now Is The Happiest to buy recording equipment to take with him breadcrumb trails its melody throughout the
to the house he and Gong “space whisperer” record. Over a fluttering guitar loop, he recalls
Time Of Your Life Gilli Smyth had bought in Deià, a bohemian his encounter with Diana; a flute intrudes and
AFFINITY, 1977 outpost once home to I, Claudius novelist and then Sam Gopal’s tablas hammer in. Allen

M
EDITATING IN front of an effigy
of the moon goddess Diana in Deià,
Mallorca, Gong auteur Daevid Allen
was confronted with a vision. Having made
his name with a baroque pseudo-mythology
about beings from a faraway planet eager to
bring the New Age to Earth, he was struck by
something more humdrum. “Plaster goddess
told to me, that’s the way it seems to be,” he
sings, minor chords slipping into major ones
on Deya Goddess, the luminous closing track
to his 1977 solo LP. “Love your life and family;
now is the happiest time of your life.”
The delights of Allen’s post-Gong detox
LPs might be a little earthly for those whose
third eye was opened up by the band’s jazzy
cosmic trilogy for Virgin: Flying Teapot,
Angel’s Egg and You. However, Allen’s second
album made with locally-sourced musicians
in Mallorca has an arresting directness he
never matched, its New Age Radio Gnome
truisms subtly undercut by nagging thoughts
Ebet Roberts/Getty
poet Robert Graves.
“[Allen] had this little room in the tower
in his house that he called Bananamoon
Observatory,” recalls guitarist Joan Bibiloni,
who added flamenco flourishes
to Now Is The Happiest Time Of
Your Life. “An 8-track studio,
kind of a home-made thing,
but he was very knowledgeable
and practical.”
Local band Euterpe helped
Allen to piece together 1976’s
Good Morning – including
proto-Balearic banger Wise
Man In Your Heart – and a
similar “no drumkit, no solos”
ethos continued into the tape
loop-heavy follow-up, Allen
explaining to Spanish rock
magazine Vibraciones: “It is
my reaction to the ghost of
jazz-rock, the avoidance of that
calls down the puny humans (“We make
ourselves gods and believe we’re free – but
who’s free?”) before the goddess comes back
with her homespun revelation, and a crowd of
voices come in to chorus the
album title like a rapturous
memento mori.
Allen remained prolific and
defiantly unconventional until
his death in 2015, aged 77 (as
Bibiloni explains fondly: “He
was very eccentric but very
straight in that”). With Now Is
The Happiest Time Of Your Life
he negotiated complicated
emotional terrain before
“It is my honing in clear-headed on
something universal and
reaction to unavoidable. There may
the ghost of indeed be forces beyond our
jazz-rock.” understanding, but we face
the same certainty regardless.

of betrayal and an ‘I am 40’ sense of imminent competition between egos.” DAEVID ALLEN There is here and there is now.
obsolescence. Gong re-materialised for a Conclusion: love and be lovely.
Having founded Gong on the rebound one-off farewell show in Paris The rest is detail.
from a spell in the early Soft Machine, in May 1977, and Allen picked Jim Wirth

102 MOJO
 REISSUES EXTRA

Debussy covers (Nobuo Hara

The Fall
★★★★
The Real New Fall LP
(Formerly Country
On The Click)
CHERRY RED. CD/LP
Debuting its original,
unreleased version, 2003’s
canon jewel expands.
When Mark E Smith presided
over The Fall gruppe’s 23rd LP
Country On The Click, little did
he know he’d soon go off it, or
that the pesky new internet
was going to leak it. As with
other decisions in his sui
generis creative vortex, the
logic of its re-working is
debatable. While the familiar
version is gritty, amped and
narky – see the re-recorded
soccer hooliganism curse
Theme From Sparta FC,
memorably used for the BBC’s
Final Score – the original
comes adorned with more of
Eleni Poulou’s electronics, and
like the glass-darkly technoid
again), McCoy Tyner-worthy
solo piano (Mikio Masuda’s
Mickey’s Samba) and a
deliriously wonky high-art big
band (Toshiyuki Miyama & His
New Herd’s Ougi Denju-shiki)
are only the start of it. A deep
breath might be needed
before the prog samba
blowout at the start of side six, Black Box Lloyd Charmers Cocteau Twins
but you’ll thank yourself for Recorder ★★★★ ★★★★
sticking with it in the morning.
Ben Thompson ★★★★ Reggae Is Tight/ Milk & Kisses
England Made Me Reggae Charm PROPER. LP
CHRYSALIS. DL/LP DOCTOR BIRD. CD Their last, from 1996. Elizabeth
Two 1970 LPs (31 bonus tracks) Fraser and Robin Guthrie had
Derek Bailey Nixey, Haines and Moore’s
brilliant 1998 debut, on 2-LP of instro-reggae chug for skins. split, but Fraser is in fantastic
& Paul Motian plus 10-inch of B-sides. Among Lunacy prevails: Vengeance voice; note Tishbite’s lyrical
its damaged, murderous Home disses Lee Perry, Psychedelic clarity (“This mountain of
★★★★ Counties pop-guignols is Child Reggae is reverb-tastic, and pleasure/I want to get lost in
Duo In Concert Psychology, whose “life is covers of Crimson And Clover it”). Then the band itself split,
FROZEN REEDS. DL/LP unfair” refrain was the talk of and Memphis Underground. lending Milk & Kisses a
The Sheffield free-improv TikTok. Should be banned. IH By the yard, feel the quality! IH poignant afterglow. MA
legend unites with the Bill
Evans drummer for an
unexpected exercise in
quiet beauty.
When you
think of the
late contrarian
guitarist Derek
Bailey, you
doubtless
conjure up intricate plucked
briars of knotty dissonance. If
so, none of that will prepare
you for the sensitive, Greg Lake The Miracle The Pets
collaborative melodicist on ★★★ Workers ★★★
display here. Recorded at
Groningen’s Jazz Marathon
Magical ★★★★ The Pets
festival and New York’s New SPIRIT OF UNICORN. CD
Inside Out MUNSTER. LP

groove of Recovery Kit, arrives
at different spaces because of
it. Alongside these conjoined
albums, bonus tracks from
singles, live/rehearsals
document Interim and a 2004
NY gig show MES in full
quixotic control. Next up were
Fall Heads Roll and Reformation
Post TLC, making TRNFLP the
start of a noughties purple
patch well worth immersing in.
Ian Harrison
Various
★★★★
J Jazz: Deep Modern
Jazz From Japan Vol 4
– The Nippon
Columbia Label
1968-81
BBE. CD/DL/LP
Deliciously varied single
label origin J-Jazz
smorgasbord.
It’s hard to
think of
another
multi-volume
compilation
series in which
the fourth instalment is the
best. But this first of Mike
Peden and Tony Higgins’
revelatory J-Jazz primers to
focus on a single label turns
out to be the most exciting –
and also the most varied – to
date. Fusion funk bombs (Jiru
Inagaki & Soul Media’s The
Ground For Peace), Bamboo
flute soul jazz (Nobuo Hara &
His Sharps & Flats with Hozan
Yamamoto), stellar Herbie
Tim Topple
Music Cafe, during the early
’90s, the two recordings
here (one available as a
complementary digital
download) capture two very
different musicians coming
together to create something
utterly unique. Best known for
his drumming with Bill Evans,
Paul Bley and Keith Jarrett,
Motian’s improvisatory
radicalism was quieter, more
fluid and arguably more
intuitive than Bailey’s.
Together, they are a marriage
of quiet harmony. Ever the
arranger, Motian holds Bailey
within delicate patterns of
near-melodic wonder, able
to shift and change gear in
an instant to move with the
guitarist’s compelling shifts
in tone and mood. A joy and a
revelation.
Andrew Male
COMING
NEXT MONTH...
The Smile, Idles, Hurray For The
Riff Raff , Dan Penn, Bill Fay, The
Waterboys, Minor Threat, Laetitia
Sadier, Anna Calvi, J Mascis,
Robby Krieger, Brittany Howard,
Real Estate, Nadine Shah (below)
and more.
The ‘L’ in ELP’s solo career 1967 garage nugget trailed as
JACKPOT. LP
explored on seven discs. His “one of the most obscure
The Portland five’s 1985 debut
two ’80s solo albums have records released in Venezuela
is prime garage revival gold: 13
aged poorly, but 2017’s Live In in the ’60s”. Beatlesy originals
uptight blasts (Already Gone is
Piacenza celebrates Lake’s prog join Spanish-sung, often
past and contains the most the ace) lock the bratometer in retitled covers: Hello I Love You
bizarre segue in rock history: the red, with sneery vox from with extra-scuzzy organ, or the
Elvis’s Heartbreak Hotel into Gerry Mohr, plus future QOTSA Stones in Spanish, Este Es El
King Crimson’s Epitaph. MB drummer Gene Trauttman. KC Fin. (It is now…) JB
DJ Rashad John St. Field Yancey Boys
★★★★ ★★★★ ★★★
Double Cup Control Sunset Blvd.
PARTISAN. DL/LP GUERSSEN. LP KING UNDERGROUND. DL/LP
The drill-bit percussion of Recorded in London in 1971 For his second trawl through
Rashad’s last stand was a but only released in Spain, this unreleased J Dilla beats,
frenetic ode to his home city is Jackie Leven’s alter-alter ego brother Illa J linked with Frank
Chicago (and precursor of even (his notes for a 1997 CD reissue Nitt. Both rappers sparkle on
faster club music to come). allude to “problems with the the handclap-laced Rock My
Whether sampling Roy Ayers forces of law and order”). World and Fisherman’s
and Stevie Wonder or Top-notch songs, honed in folk boom-bap. Elsewhere, A-list
traversing multiple breakneck clubs and shaped by his travels guests Talib Kweli, Posdnuos
passages, his repetitive and keen use of LSD. A genuine and Common supply
minimalism still stands up. AC ‘lost’ psych-folk gem. JB throwback mettle. AC
RATINGS & FORMATS
Your guide to the month’s best music is now even more definitive with our handy format guide.
CD COMPACT DISC DL DOWNLOAD ST STREAMING LP VINYL
MC CASSETTE DVD DIGITAL VIDEO DISC C IN CINEMAS BR BLU-RAY
★★★★★ ★★★★ ★★★ ★★ ★ ✩

Hancock guest slots (Takashi

Mizuhashi’s Samba De MOJO CLASSIC EXCELLENT GOOD DISAPPOINTING BEST AVOIDED DEPLORABLE
Negrito), Deodato-inspired

MOJO 103

Head and shoulders above:
The Necks (from left)
Tony Buck, Chris Abrahams
and Lloyd Swanton in the
late 1980s.
10The Necks
The Boys
WILD SOUND, 1998
You say: “On a par with the
Kronos Quartet scoring
Requiem For A Dream.”
Michelle @shellinthesky,
via Twitter
The sheer durational heft
of most Necks tracks can be
daunting; their shorter pieces
usually clock in around 20
minutes. For that reason, this
soundtrack to a chilling Austral-
ian thriller might be a decent
place to start, with seven tracks
and a couple of them clocking
in under four minutes. Long-
form intensity is missing, of
course, but the three passes at
the main theme are especially
good illustrations of the trio’s
gift for noir-ish unease, and
of a regular Chris Abrahams
studio trick – stately piano lines
overdubbed with crepuscular
organ. 1990’s Next also features
shorter tracks and is a real
outlier, with limber punk-funk
(the title track) and a Gil Evans
CAST YOUR gravitas to the horn-assisted
VOTES… standout, The World At War.
This month you
chose your Top 10
Necks LPs. Next
month we want
your Merle Haggard
Top 10. Send
selections via

The Necks tion: telepathically astounding and Twitter, Facebook,

Instagram or
surprisingly melodic spontaneous e-mail to mojo@
compositions that run, unbroken, bauermedia.co.uk
with the subject
Piano. Bass. Drums. Infinite possibilities. for While 45 minutes or more.
The Necks’ studio albums
‘How To Buy Merle
Haggard’ and we’ll
By John Mulvey. capture that same sense of freedom print the best
4The Necks

I
N THE upper echelons of MOJO’s Best Albums
Of 2023 list, one record stood out among the likes
of Blur, P.J. Harvey and Paul Simon. Sandwiched
between The Coral and Grian Chatten at Number 13,
Travel, the 18th studio album by Australian trio The
Necks, felt something of a discreet interloper; an instru- set-up. The Necks are phlegmatic about their art – “We
mental record that operated with stealth and imagina-
tion, effortlessly transcending genres, from way outside
of the mainstream. Travel crept up on a listener rather
than imposed itself, much how The Necks have steadily
built a cult following over the past four decades. “We
started the band not only with no ambition, but almost
an anti-ambition,” double bassist Lloyd Swanton told
MOJO in 2020. “We’ve only been going 33 years and
already we’re getting famous!”
What is it, then, that The Necks
actually do? Swanton, pianist Chris “They treat
Abrahams and drummer Tony Buck
make exploratory music that can the audience
incorporate jazz, post-rock, ambience, as equals and
Anne Zahalka, Alamy
comments.
and unhurried evolution – many of Open
them consist of one piece, last- RER MEGACORP/NORTHERN SPY/FISH
OF MILK, 2013
ing around an hour; the perfect band of the CD era –
they’re often more composed and layered, with organs, You say: “It’s very
atmospheric, has a freeness,
synths and guitars augmenting their basic acoustic trio but feels melodic too. It’s
restrained and controlled,
look like three science teachers, walking on-stage,” but over 78 mins never gets
boring. They always have
admitted Abrahams to MOJO – but while eschewing just enough evolution.”
any mystical interpretations, they don’t fully understand Sam Jeffers @wrklsshrd,
via Twitter
how this precarious music works time after time. Their
fans and collaborators are similarly baffled. “There’s Their longest recorded piece
at 68 minutes, and their
something incredible and mysterious about them,” says most meditative. The idea of
Underworld’s Rick Smith, who worked with The Necks ambient jazz feels relatively
on 2019’s Appleshine Continuum. recent, thanks to the success of
Pharoah Sanders and Floating
Meanwhile Warren Ellis, an old Points’ Promises in 2021, but
friend, says, “You can’t not be drawn The Necks were well ahead of
into their world and bravery. They that curve, not least with the
spacious manoeuvres of this
make the most beautiful music, at
turns poetic then violent. They treat
2013 masterpiece. Instruments
come and go in the mix – the
the audience as equals and invite you brittle sound at the start that
resembles a modified harpsi-

classical minimalism and more; that

can seem cerebral and forbidding on
paper, but which infallibly turns out
to be gripping in practice. Live, their
gigs are remarkable feats of improvisa-
invite you on on their journey.” Whether your per-
sonal Necks journey is just beginning,
their journey.” or has stretched over decades, here’s
WARREN ELLIS one route into a rich and endlessly
rewarding catalogue.
chord is, in fact, a single-string
monochord – and there’s a
touch more electronic process-
ing than usual. But it’s the
silences between the sounds
that are just as resonant.

104 MOJO
 H OW T O B U Y

9Homebush,
The Necks
Athenaeum, 8The Necks
Three
NORTHERN SPY/FISH OF MILK, 2020
7The
Body
Necks
RER MEGACORP/NORTHERN SPY/FISH
6The
Hanging Gardens 5Chemist
Necks The Necks

RER MEGACORP/FISH OF MILK, 1999 RER MEGACORP/FISH OF MILK, 2006

Quay & Raab
FISH OF MILK, 2002
You say: “Particularly
wonderful, but that could be
because it cost me a fortune
to locate and import.” Paul
Simpson @MrPaulSimpson1,
via Twitter
The revelation of a Necks live
performance can never be
recommended enough, and
many bootlegs circulate on the
internet: a BBC Radio 3 session
with radical saxophonist Evan
Parker is well worth hunting
down. Of their official live re-
leases, the very approachable
Piano Bass Drums (1998) and
Townsville (2007) are great, but
this 4-CD box is the one: a study
in how the trio guide recurring
tropes into infinite new shapes,
night after night. Start with
Athenaeum, and hear them
travel from lyrical elegance to
somewhere abstracted and
dissonant, with such ease you’ll
barely notice the transitions.
You say: “It arrived in the
first week of lockdown and
was exactly the bristling
surge of energy I needed to
hear at that moment.”
Ian Greaves @GreavesIan,
via Twitter
Since 2017’s Unfold, The Necks’
music has increasingly been
configured for vinyl, tending
towards pieces that fill a single
side of a record. This year’s
double album, Travel, is an
unusual snapshot of the band
improvising in the studio, with
four 20-ish-minute drills that
they used as warm-ups for their
sessions each day. But 2020
three-tracker Three (not
actually available on vinyl,
sadly) is marginally superior,
thanks to loping bass walka-
bout Further – the soundtrack
to an imaginary outback
western – and the runaway
momentum of Bloom, which
manifests the energy of one of
Abrahams’ favourite albums,
Pharoah Sanders’ Black Unity.
OF MILK, 2018
You say: “Love the shifts in
tone. The tense build-up,
then a few moments of
gorgeous ambience before
they go all-out Krautrock.”
Dillon @Freeyourradio,
via Twitter
The rock album, loosely. Or at
least the post-rock album, as
Body applies the slow-build dy-
namics of a band like Godspeed
You! Black Emperor on a typi-
cally epic scale. The first section
occupies familiar territory, the
trio tensely negotiating around
each other, but it’s the explo-
sion at 25 minutes that makes
Body exceptional. Tony Buck
doubles up as the MVP here,
shredding like Glenn Branca
on electric guitar, locking into
a ruthless bouncing Klaus
Dinger-beat on the drum track.
The onslaught relents after a
quarter of an hour, leaving the
band wrung out and searching
for equilibrium for another 15
intoxicated minutes.
You say: “A night drive,
mysterious with a promise
of discoveries just ahead,
piano figures like insects
and animals in peripheral
vision.” Russ Fischer
@russfischer, via Twitter
Like the aforementioned
Bloom on Three, this hour-long
nerve-jangler is The Necks on
fast-forward, the organ squalls
and overdriven ride cymbal
giving it a weird affinity with
early-’70s Isaac Hayes scores.
Speaking to The Quietus in
2018, Tony Buck also acknowl-
edged the influence of early
’70s Miles Davis (1969’s In A
Silent Way is a regular Necks
reference point, but Hanging
Gardens is more akin to 1972’s
On The Corner) and, in Buck’s
own hyper-kinetic beats, the
contemporary productions
of Squarepusher, Photek and
drum’n’bass. For a more recent
intersection with dance music,
try Appleshine Continuum, the
2019 face-off with Underworld.
You say: “Appropriately my
gateway drug – perhaps the
most easily approachable
for the neophyte?” Neil
Munro @N_A_Munro,
via Twitter
The Necks have talked about
how the specific mood of each
of their albums often emerges
as a reaction to what preceded
it; for example the ultra-busy
Hanging Gardens countering
the quieter sections of 1996’s
Silent Night like Black. 2006’s
Chemist is certainly fuller than
the chasmic minimalism of
2004’s See Through, but its three
tracks are also a handy primer
for the band’s turn-of-the-cen-
tury range: a limber spy-theme
à la Hanging Gardens, if not
quite so manic (Fatal); a piece
that swings between bleeping
ambience and motorik jazz
(Buoyant); and best of all, the
gorgeous ringing guitar vistas
of Abillera, a must-listen if
you’ve got hooked on Body.

NOW DIG THIS

3The
Sex
Necks
SPIRAL SCRATCH, 1989
You say: “Initially it’s Sex,
their first. It opened a world
of musical possibilities for a
teen brought up on ’80s
indie music.” Tim Grime
@tim_G6, via Twitter
While The Necks didn’t come
from an orthodox jazz back-
2The Necks
Aether
RER MEGACORP/FISH OF MILK, 2001
You can’t go wrong with any
Necks album, though 1990’s
Next is uncharacteristic in its
testing out of musical possi-
You say: “Aether holds a bilities, of roads subsequent-
special place in my heart as ly not travelled, and 2015’s
an ambient head. The Vertigo is their noisiest and
crescendo and subsequent most avant-garde. Away
dissolution in its back half from The Necks, all three are
feels almost supernatural.” inveterate collaborators with
Colin @errolvonstrauss, other musicians. Tony Buck’s
via Twitter Knoxville (2010), as a third of
rustling experimentalists

ground – Chris Abrahams had
played with The Triffids, The
Laughing Clowns and even
Midnight Oil in the ’80s – their
debut album is perversely the
one closest to jazz orthodoxy,
made after years of woodshed-
ding in a pitch-black rehearsal
room. Tony Buck’s percussive
arsenal has grown progres-
sively more freeform over the
years, augmenting his kit with
innumerable bells and shakers,
but here he straightforwardly
swings for 56 minutes. As a
consequence, Sex roughly re-
sembles a marathon Bill Evans
Trio workout: The Necks’ most
linear, least unpredictable
album, but also one of their
most engrossing.
Alongside Open and See
Through, another still landmark
in the Necks canon. If anything,
Aether leans even deeper into
the pauses between the notes,
but it’s The Necks’ genius
to simultaneously embrace
minimalist calm and a micro-
detailed, constantly changing
instrumental palette: just when
you think nothing’s happen-
ing, you realise everything’s
happening. Over 63 minutes,
it’s the closest they come to sys-
tems music, too: at the 45-min-
ute mark, the organ washes
that Abrahams has deployed
so delicately are overlaid by
rippling piano motifs that give
Aether the air of a Steve Reich or
Philip Glass piece.
1The
Necks Fennesz/Daniell/Buck, is par-
ticularly recommended from
Drive By an imposing personal dis-
RER MEGACORP/FISH OF MILK, 2003 cography, but Necks fans will
mostly be on safest ground
You say: “My entry. And so good that I didn’t bother
exploring anything else for 10 years (and then kicked with Chris Abrahams’ extra-
curricular work. Among
myself).” Ed @3WheeledCoffee, via Twitter
recent releases well worth
As Ed testifies, the eighth Necks studio album is one to obsess over, checking out: 2020 solo set
an utterly consuming musical journey – one hour, 17 seconds – that Appearance, that privileges
lends itself to any number of driving metaphors. Like Sex, the ap- his more ambient instincts;
proach is relatively linear, the rhythm locked down, but it’s the rich- 2023’s Nightjar, sitting in with
ness of the soundworld that’s most striking, as various keyboards a more conventional Austral-
and field recordings ebb in and out of the mix – the romantic piano ian jazz combo, The Vam-
motif that Abrahams introduces at eight minutes remains one of pires; and another one from
the most memorable in their entire repertoire. “In improvised mu- this year, Placelessness, a
sic, there was a tendency for everybody to be soloing at the same piano/guitar/drums trio with
time. We wanted to have no-one soloing, ever,” Tony Buck told this Oren Ambarchi and Robbie
writer in 2020. “It’s not about showing individual skill, or impressing Avenaim that’s thrillingly like
people with virtuosity,” added Abrahams. “It’s a sort of work ethic, a a parallel universe Necks.
group sound.” Here, on Drive By, is that ideology made flesh.

MOJO 105
 Master and ‘servant’:
Mal Evans with his
favourite Fab, Paul
McCartney, London
Airport, June 11, 1967.

WHAT WE’VE
LEARNT
● By 1965 Mal
carried a brown
suede “dope bag”
decorated with an
om sign and
containing packets
of cigarettes he and
Neil Aspinall had
emptied of tobacco
and refilled with
weed.
● Writing Here,
There And
Everywhere in
1966, McCartney
was stuck for a line:
“I’m very
eye-conscious,”
Evans recalled,
“and I came up with
‘Watching her eyes,
and hoping I’m
always there.’ I’m
very proud of that.”
● Other songs he
helped Macca write:

Rise of the guardian

The first biography of The Beatles’ suddenly could have anything they wanted.”
loyal roadie, bodyguard and
factotum. By Mat Snow.
whim (Lennon: “Socks,
Mal!”) than be back home,
as his long-suffering wife
Lily put it, “cleaning
out the rabbit hutch”.
Based upon Mal Evans’ diary and unpub-
lished memoir – almost lost in a publisher’s Yet he doesn’t change.
clear-out along with a trove of photos, notes, Defying the management
Sgt. Pepper’s title
track and Fixing A
Hole, the latter
inspired by a leak in
the ceiling of the
music room of
Paul’s new home
near Abbey Road, 7
Cavendish Avenue.
● Evans’ diary,

receipts and other unique memorabilia – and ordinance to stay out of February 23, 1967:
Living The Beatles expanded with fresh interviews, American camera shot, and inspired “Paul has an
appointment with
Legend: The Mal Fabbologist Kenneth Womack throws to try his hand at confes- a Japanese lady
valuable new light onto the act we’ve known sional poetry, he basks in who wants to
Evans Story for all these years. reflected fame and genius. photograph his
bottom.”
★★★★ At first it’s a humdrum-to-stardom story: In the post-Epstein chaos,
he’s even put in charge of
● March 7, 1967:
Evans and Aspinall
Kenneth Womack happily married if otherwise sexually
Apple Records. denuded Abbey
inexperienced telecoms engineer, new dad Road of its toilet
MUDLARK. £25
and Hollywood western and Elvis fan takes Yet just as he lets down paper – hard,

F
OR ALL THE dark glamour of their
Satanic Majesties, it’s the lovable
Moptops whose story is clouded by
tragedy. Rudderless after The Beatles stopped
touring, their manager Brian Epstein was the
first to go. No less emotionally invested, in
1976 their loyal roadie, bodyguard and
factotum Mal Evans was the second.
Unable to bounce back from
the comedown that followed
the break-up, this “lovely, big, “Seduced
LA, booze
Daily Mirror/Mirrorpix via Getty Images
a second job as lunchtime doorman at the his family, so the Fabs let slippery and deeply
unpopular with
Cavern Club where he meets The Beatles, a few him down, in particular his George Harrison,
years younger. From driver, Mal is promoted favourite Paul, who breaks each sheet stamped
to roadie, whose size and strength make light his promise of a share of ‘Property of EMI’
– to improvise
work humping the amps alongside the more the credit and royalties comb-and-paper
business-focused Neil Aspinall as Beatlemania on two Pepper songs and kazoos for Lovely
explodes. Though paid only £25 a week increasingly “seemed to Rita.
compared to the £4,000 (and rising) each Fab have the attitude of a North
is earning, he’s compensated of England mill owner,” once “turning to me
and saying, ‘You are my servant. You do as you
by with foreign adventure, female
fans (sometimes ickily young) are told.’” Paul’s dismissal of Evans from his

huggable bear of a man”, as
Paul McCartney described
him, engineered his end in a
hail of LAPD bullets. “They
were all damaged,” as Evans’
sister June recalled, by
Beatlemania’s “totally unreal
world… a horrendous,
wonderful, terrible place. They
and such perks as a phone
and coke… chat with Elvis and Burt
Lancaster lending him his
Evans’ death swimming trunks.
aged just 40 Besotted by the “lads”
and lifestyle, he torments
is horribly himself with guilt that he’d
inevitable.” rather minister to the four
princelings’ every need and
side in 1970 is brutal, and though still on the
payroll serving the now solo superstars, the
big man struggles to find a meaningful new
role, his ambitions for his protégés Badfinger
crushed by chicanery. Seduced by LA, booze
and coke but ever more guilt-ridden having all
but abandoned his family, his death aged just
40 is horribly inevitable. However glorious The
Beatles’ long sunset, not everyone was saved.

106 MOJO

Padlocks: Living
With Sid And
Nancy
★★★★
Den Browne
BACKSTAGE. £25
The untold story of
life inside Sid’s secret
London bolthole.
Overdosing at just
21, it’s unlikely
anyone outside
the Sex Pistols
knew the
grown-up Sid
Vicious as
intimately as Den Browne, the
drug dealer Sid and Nancy
Spungeon shared a flat with in
1977. Browne was no lowlife
junkie, but a Cambridge-
educated culture vulture and
friend of Tony Wilson’s. His
evocative memoir of the
claustrophobic goings-on in
his one-room Hampstead
basement finds compelling
drama and revelatory detail in
Sid and Nancy’s endless cycle
of scoring, shooting up,
nodding out and blanking
star-struck visitors. Vicious
emerges as witty, music-mad,
damaged and cynical; Nancy
as unexpectedly caring. That
is, until they both transform
into mercilessly horrible heroin
addicts. Big on the mechanics
of addiction, there’s still
enough violence (Vicious has
an uncontrollable temper),
famous cameos (Kevin Ayers)
and sex to keep drug-averse
readers from suffocating in the
book’s airless narcotic sewer.
Does Browne think Sid dunnit?
Find out…
Pat Gilbert
Gettin’ Kinda
Itchie: The
Groups That
Made The Mamas
& The Papas
★★★★
Richard Campbell
PROVIDENCE PLACE. £27
How the California Dreamers
created a new sound.
1967’s
Creeque
Alley, The
Mamas &
The Papas’
sixth Top 5
US hit in 18
months, chronicled the
group’s backstory in 3:45
breezy minutes. Thanks to
John Phillips’ songwriting and
the quartet’s rich vocal
harmonies, it all sounded so
easy. Not so. For as Campbell
puts it, the group emerged
Watal Asanuma/Shinko Music/Getty Images
from “various trios, quartets,
and ensembles John, Cass
(Elliot), Denny (Doherty) and
Michelle (Phillips) formed and
re-formed between 1959 and
1965”. It was, said Phillips, “an
inbred society… no one made
a move without someone else
knowing about it”. Campbell
has tracked down numerous
associates in his quest to
chronicle a complicated story.
The result is a clear account of
when and where the M & P’s
sound first sprung. Some neat
asides too. Doherty’s Halifax
Three turned down pre-fame
Dylan’s Blowin’ In The Wind;
the FBI feared that Cass’s Big 3
would become a homegrown
Beatles. The book’s big claim,
well argued, is that Cass and
Denny’s Mugwumps were the
original folk rockers.
Mark Paytress
Be Glad For The
Song Has No
Ending
★★★★
Edited by Adrian
Whittaker
STRANGE ATTRACTOR. £32
Crowd-sourced miscellany
examines the ISB on a very
cellular level.
The Incredible
String Band’s
angel-faced
mystic Robin
Williamson felt
the band’s coat
of many colours
creativity represented “a kind
of inspired amateurism…
rather similar to naive art”; his
songwriting foil Mike Heron
said the ur-hippy folk group’s
pioneering voyages into world
music forged “a kind of music
that wasn’t there”. This Wee
Tam to Big Huge hardback
upgrade of the 2003 Be Glad
fanzine anthology mirrors the
haphazard approach (“electric,
eclectic, poetic,” as super-fan
Billy Connolly put it) that made
the Scottish duo peerless from
1967-68, only for a mediocre
Woodstock performance,
Scientology and hubris to
slowly transform them into a
lumpy soft rock group with
theatrical pretensions. Pet
Shop Boy Neil Tennant and
former Archbishop of
Canterbury Rowan Williams
join in as fans dissect their
band’s catalogue and living
arrangements, while
speculating on the murky fate
met by the ISB’s in-house muse
Licorice McKechnie. A
beautiful, rambling mess.
Jim Wirth
Denmark Street:
London’s Street
Of Sound
★★★★
Peter Watts
PARADISE ROAD. £20
Lovingly researched social
history of the capital’s most
enduring musical address.
Topical ballads
were hawked in
the “deepe foul
and dangerous”
area long known
as Denmark Street
as early as the 17th
century. Music, vice, and the
hustle seem to have defined
London’s very own Tin Pan
Alley from the start. The British
music industry was born here
at the dawn of the 20th
century, and while the old
network of publishers and
songwriters that bore A Teddy
Bear’s Picnic or I’ve Got A
Lovely Bunch Of Coconuts
wouldn’t survive the arrival
of The Beatles or the Stones,
both of whom kickstarted
their careers here, Watts’
anecdotally-rich chronological
history traces our Music Row’s
uncanny ability to adapt,
embracing David Bowie,
TV themes, library music,
Hipgnosis, the Sex Pistols,
guitar shops and the
much-missed 12 Bar Club
along the way.
Mark Cooper
Revolutionary
Spirit: A Post-
Punk Exorcism
★★★★
Paul Simpson
JAWBONE PRESS. £16.95
Wonderfully catty, funny
memoir from Teardrop
Explodes co-founder.
A memoir from
this lesser-known
figure on
Liverpool’s
post-punk scene
might seem to be
approaching the
autobiography barrel’s lower
regions. So often, however,
the minor players tell a better
story. Proudly describing
himself as “an ideas man,
not a musician”, Simpson
opens with The Wild Swans –
the under-achieving unit he
fronted after drifting out of
the Teardrops – tasting
implausible late-life
superstardom in the
Philippines, where TWS are
unexpectedly worshipped.
As befits career-long losers,
they arrive in a typhoon, and
there begins a relentlessly
entertaining narrative of
mishap (the band’s one
early-’80s single “accidentally
recorded in mono”, etc) and
poor judgement, the author’s
“Blakean reach exceeding
scally grasp”. Jam-packed
with withering Eric’s wit
(Ian McCulloch “has the
fashion sense of a halibut”),
frequently levelled at himself,
Revolutionary Spirit is right
up there with Julian Cope’s
Head On and Will Sergeant’s
Echoes.
Andrew Perry
Too Much Too
Young: Rude
Boys, Racism
And The
Soundtrack Of
A Generation
★★★★
Daniel Rachel
WHITE RABBIT. £25
The 2 Tone story – it’s all
here in black and white.
Focusing on one
label and the
bands signed to it,
Rachel’s history of
the ska revival is
an essential read
for anyone who
ever moonstomped in tonic
suit, DMs and stingy-brimmed
trilby. What is shocking is how
fast things moved: by 1978,
punk was stale; 2 Tone burst
forth the following summer;
by early 1980, Melody Maker
decried ska as “a temporary
lapse in public taste”. Fasten
your seatbelts, rudies, it’s
a bumpy ride and no one
escapes criticism – in others’
eyes, The Specials were
misogynists ruled by a touchy,
autocratic genius, The Selecter
were too fractious, and The
Bodysnatchers lacked talent.
A stricter editor would have
eliminated the author’s many
dangling clauses, but that’s a
minor quibble given the chaos
he covers. To be young in 1979
was very heaven, the music
unbeatable – but being signed
F I LT E R B O O K S
to 2 Tone then was, it seems,
detrimental to your health and
wellbeing.
David Hutcheon
The Doors
Unhinged:
Jim Morrison’s
Legacy Goes
On Trial
★★★★
John Densmore
CONSTABLE. £22
Expanded version of the
gripping rock’n’roll
courtroom drama.
This book is
essentially about
just two things:
Jim Morrison’s
furious reaction
to his bandmates
wanting to
allow Buick to use The Doors’
Light My Fire for a 1968 TV
commercial; and the usage
of the band’s name. But it’s
also an exploration of
friendship, loyalty, integrity,
’60s idealism vs wealth
accumulation and the
corporatisation of rock.
Exercising The Doors’ historical
requirement of unanimity if,
in Morrison’s words, “things
got weird”, and each band
member’s power of veto,
drummer John Densmore
took out a lawsuit in 2003
to prevent guitarist Robbie
Krieger and keyboardist Ray
Manzarek licensing Doors
music to Cadillac for mega
bucks, and playing live shows
as “The Doors”. This is one
person’s perspective, but
Densmore, who was
counter-sued for $40 million,
avoids self-aggrandisement
and incorporates court
transcriptions to ratchet up
the tension. If you don’t know
the outcome, treat it like a
movie – so no spoilers here.
Mike Barnes
Shooting-up stars:
Sid and Nancy at
their London flat,
August 4, 1978.
F I LT E R S C R E E N
In The Court Of
The Crimson
King: King
Crimson At 50
★★★★
Dir: Toby Amies
MONODUO FILMS. C/S
A peek behind the curtain at
prog’s most singular group.
When Robert
Fripp asked Toby
Amies in 2018 to
make a film about
King Crimson,
Amies wasn’t
particularly a fan,
but accepted as he knew Fripp
and found him interesting.
Filmed largely behind the
scenes, it’s an incisive
observation of a senior band
playing demanding music on
lengthy tours. Amies captures
revealing interviews with
current and former members,
but felt he was “in the way” at
times, noting that “people got
annoyed and antagonistic
towards me”. Fripp requested
Amies re-shoot a second
version with more of him in it,
but clearly stressed by the
situation, he is at times
cantankerous, even hostile,
then becomes overwhelmed
with emotion when
recounting a conversation
with his spiritual mentor J.G.
Bennett. There are moving
scenes featuring drummer Bill
Rieflin, dry and phlegmatic
despite having received a
terminal cancer diagnosis, and
vox pops with Crimson fans
– including a prog rock nun
– offer light relief.
Mike Barnes
Mutiny In Heaven
★★★★
Dir: Ian White
CARGO FILM & RELEASING. C/S
Birthday Party doc rousingly
narrated from interviews
filmed in 2007.
This coherent
audio-visual
retrospective on
Nick Cave’s first
combo must’ve
stalled mid-
production, 16
years ago. Hard to gauge how
today’s Cave would process his
grimy beginnings in the
scratchy Boys Next Door (loads
of great Melbourne footage
here) who, in relocating to
London, mutated into the
inspirationally extremist
Birthday Party (their
malnourished habits clearly
eroded filming budgets). Cave,
interviewed circa Grinderman,
fondly outlines the
waywardness, narcotics and
ructions which fuelled TBP’s
explosive three-year existence.
Cadaverous guitarist Rowland
S Howard, who died in 2009,
spits hilarious venom about UK
post-punk “bilge”, as against
their own “aggression with
intelligence” – to wit: an
electrifying Junkyard in a
German TV studio. Stetson-
wearing bassist Tracy Pew, who
died in 1986, looms largest,
remembered by Cave “stuffing
a cucumber down the front of
his leather trousers, then
turning to reveal a copy of
Plato’s Republic in his back
pocket.” We’re unlikely to see
their transgressive like again.
Andrew Perry
Peter Doherty:
Stranger In My
Own Skin
★★★
Dir: Katia DeVidas
PIECE OF MAGIC ENT. C/S
The tortured Libertine’s
world from the inside
looking out.
Peter Doherty’s
recent emergence
from two decades
of heavy drug use
has so far seen
significant
self-reflection:
first, last year’s memoir A Likely
Lad, and now this 90-minute
film of his life made by his wife
Katia DeVidas. Impressionistic
rather than journalistic, it
reveals almost nothing about,
say, tabloid perennials like
Doherty’s presence at the
death of Mark Blanco or his
romance with supermodel Kate
Moss, or his experiences as a
father. Instead, it tries to convey
his own existential reality: that
of a doe-eyed, suited-and-
booted Peter Pan minstrel, ever
submerged in the mists and
misery of heroin addiction, a
bon mot, notebook or canvas
never far away. There’s enough
unfamiliar footage from every
era of his life to fascinate fans,
and the bursts of colour and
energy whenever he’s with The
Libertines make for exhilarating
interludes. The subject’s
dreamy, poetic self-
interrogations are allowed to
drift into longueurs a little too
often; but then, maybe that’s
an essential component of this
film’s truth…
Pat Gilbert
Release the bats!: the
inspirationally extremist
Birthday Party (from left)
Mick Harvey, Rowland S
Howard, Tracy Pew, Nick
Cave and Phill Calvert.
The Lost
Weekend:
A Love Story
★★★★
Dir: Eve Brandstein,
Richard Kaufman,
Stuart Samuels
KALEIDOSCOPE HOME
ENTERTAINMENT. BR/DVD/S
The ballad of John and May:
new 90-minute doc.
“I don’t want other
people to write my
story,” says May
Pang in the movie
memoir she
narrates. Its focus
is the “lost
weekend” – 18 months actually
– that she spent with John
Lennon when Yoko Ono
ordered their young personal
assistant to sleep with him,
during a marital rough patch,
to keep him away from other
women. “I said no,” says Pang.
“She said, ‘yes you will.’” May
and John fell in love, as the
childlike joy on their faces in
much of the footage of them
seems to attest. Pang’s
personal story, including her
close relationship with Julian
and Cynthia, is fascinating,
backdropped by John’s music
adventures with Paul, Ringo,
Spector, Elton, et al, as well as
the infamous shenanigans with
Nilsson. After Yoko decided it
was time for him to come
home, John and May’s intimacy
continued, she says, ending
only with his death.
Sylvie Simmons
Immediate
Family
★★★★
Dir: Denny Tedesco
MAGNOLIA PICTURES. S
A sequel of sorts to
Tedesco’s 2008 documentary
The Wrecking Crew.
Where the
director’s last ode
to the faceless
musicians behind
the stars focused
on the ’60s LA
session-player
supergroup that included
Tommy Tedesco, his dad, this
celebrates the brilliant
musicians-for-hire who backed
the singer-songwriters of the
’70s, eventually ending up in a
group of their own. Tedesco
takes a similarly affectionate,
feel-good approach to telling
the stories of Russ Kunkel,
Danny Kortchmar, Leland Sklar
and Waddy Wachtel. We see
them on-stage in old footage
and more currently playing
along in a studio with some of
the old records they appeared
on. A starry roster – including
Jackson Browne, David Crosby,
Linda Ronstadt, Carole King,
Keith Richards and Stevie Nicks
– sing their praises. But some
of the warmest moments
come when the self-dubbed
Immediate Family talk shop
and tell tales – like the night
on tour when Linda Ronstadt
insisted she join them at a
strip club.
Sylvie Simmons
The Session Man:
Nicky Hopkins
★★★
Dir: Michael Treen
THE SESSION MAN LIMITED. C/S
Veterans pay tribute to
the king of the keys.
It cannot be easy
making a portrait
of a deceased
backroom hero
who rarely
appeared on
camera, but this
profile lacks little for star
names paying tribute to
“rock’n’roll’s greatest session
man”. Hopkins, who died in
1994 after a life dominated by
illness, played on more than
250 LPs over 30 years, and was
a go-to guy for The Beatles
(including all four solo), The
Who, The Kinks (Dave Davies
speaks; Hopkins had a bitter
falling out with Ray, which is
ignored) and, most fruitfully,
the Stones. Mick, Keith and Bill
remain fans though, oddly,
We Love You doesn’t get a
mention. Sympathy For The
Devil and She’s A Rainbow,
however, are among many
tunes that peers dissect to
showcase his brilliance. The
second half has to work harder
to hold interest – his
employers/the interviewees
being less stellar – but you’ll
want to return to familiar
favourites afterwards to focus
on his playing.
David Hutcheon
The Elephant 6
Recording Co
★★★★
Dir: C.B. Stockfleth
GREENWICH ENTERTAINMENT. C/S
Love, death and acid pop;
a vibrant take on the ’90s
Athens, GA scene.
Using rare footage,
this documentary
on the ’90s
neo-psychedelic
movement
Elephant 6 offers
precious insight
into the scene’s reclusive,
Brian Wilson-esque figure Jeff
Mangum, who withdrew from
public life following his
magnum opus with Neutral
Milk Hotel, In The Aeroplane
Over The Sea. But director C.B.
Stockfleth wisely treats
Mangum as only one facet of
the story, focusing on
contemporaries the Olivia
Tremor Control, Apples In
Stereo and more. He brilliantly
brings to life the anarchic,
egalitarian, rabidly creative
society these musicians built
around themselves in Athens,
Georgia, the college town local
musician Heather McIntosh
Laura Levine/Corbis via Getty Images
describes as “like a beacon for
weirdos”. Stockfleth’s movie is
funny and inspiring, a tale of
love, imagination and
underground acid pop that
becomes powerfully moving
in its final half-hour, as
mortality and tragic twists of
fate complicate the scene’s
essential playfulness.
Stevie Chick

THEY ALSO SERVED
BASSIST PETE GARNER
(below, b.1964), was the
original bass player in The
Stone Roses. A member of
his schoolmates Ian Brown
and John Squire’s punk band
The Patrol, Garner played on
The Stone Roses’ debut
single So Young/Tell
Me in 1985, their
shelved first
album attempt
with producer
Martin
Hannett, and
1987’s 45 Sally
Cinnamon. He
left the band that
year to work in
Manchester’s HMV shop.
Thereafter, he briefly played in
drummer Reni’s post-Roses
project The Rub.
SESSION KEYBOARDIST,
arranger and producer,
PAUL HARRIS (b.1944)
appeared on scores of
recordings in the ’60s, ’70s
and ’80s, his credits including
the soaring piano on Nick
Drake’s One Of These
Things from Bryter Layter
and the title track to ABBA’s
Voulez-Vouz. As arranger, his
credits included The Doors’
Soft Parade and John &
Beverley Martyn’s The Road
To Ruin. Harris was a full-time
member of Stephen Stills’
band Manassas, and when
Chris Hillman left Manassas to
form the Souther-Hillman-
Furay Band, Harris went
with him, playing on both
the group’s self-titled 1974 LP
and 1975’s Trouble In Paradise.
SAXOPHONIST MARS
WILLIAMS (b.1955) played
with Akron new wavers The
Waitresses, who had a minor
1982 US hit with I Know What
Boys Like. He joined The
Psychedelic Furs in 1983,
initially for a month-long tour
of Australia. He left in 1989,
but returned in 2005, playing
his final live shows with the
Matt Squire, David Redfern/Getty, Stanley Bielecki Movie Collection/Getty, Belga Image Archives, Getty
Woodstock was “a free
concert from now on”.
PRODUCER/MUSICIAN
PETER SOLLEY (b.1948)
played keyboards with Chris
Farlowe, Terry Reid and
Arthur Brown, and later
joined Paladin, Fox
(whose mid-’70s UK
hits included Only
You Can and
S-S-S-Single
Bed), Snafu,
Procol
Harum and
Whitesnake.
He also played
sessions for the likes
of Wreckless Eric,
Rachel Sweet and Mickey
Jupp, and arranged the
strings for Smithers-Jones on
The Jam’s 1979 LP Setting
Sons. The following decade he
moved into jingle writing and
then production: his credits
included Peter Frampton,
Oingo Boingo and
Motörhead, plus Australian
groups Jo Jo Zep and The
Falcons, The Sports and
The Black Sorrows.
BELGIAN pop singer
SAMANTHA (below, b.
Christiane Bervoets, 1948)
found domestic success with
the original version of Eviva
España in 1971, which
was later covered
in English as Y Viva
España
by Sylvia.
She enjoyed
further
success at
home into the
early ’70s, and
re-recorded
her most
successful song in
the Belgian New Beat
style in 1989.
METAL DRUMMER STEVE
RILEY (b.1956) played in
a short-lived line-up of
Steppenwolf in Los Angeles
in the late ’70s; after joining
RE AL GONE
group. He also worked in
management.
MINIMALIST, poet,
mathematician and artist
C.C. HENNIX (b.1948)
was daughter to Swedish jazz
composer Margit. After
taking up drums, she worked
in early computer music at
Stockholm’s Elektron-
musikstudion EMS. In New
York in the late ’60s she met La
Monte Young, Pandit Pran
Nath and Henry Flynt, the
latter becoming a lifelong
collaborator. She continued
to follow Young’s precepts,
with 1976’s The Electric
Harpsichord among her most
acclaimed works. She also
played with the Chora(s)san
Time-Court Mirage and
The Deontic Miracle. He sawed and
conquered: Vernon
SINGER CHARLIE Dudley Bowhay-
DOMINICI (b.1951) was Nowell, early Bonzos
frontman in progressive metal driving force.
band Dream Theater. Born
in Brooklyn, he’d earlier
formed ’60s folk duo Billy Vernon Dudley
And Charles with Carly
Simon collaborator Billy Bowhay-Nowell
Mernit, before joining pop Bonzo, Whoopee and Nigel Nice
rockers Frankie And The
Knockouts in 1980. Dominici BORN 1932
joined Dream Theater, then
DOUBLE-BARRELLED by his parents Walter Nowell
called Majesty, in 1986,
and Bessie Bowhay, Vernon Dudley Bowhay-Nowell
replacing original vocalist
Chris Collins, and sang on their was nominatively destined for a career in zany, japing,
debut album 1989’s When art-school parody hot jazz combos, first The Bonzo
Dream And Day Unite, Dog Doo-Dah Band, then Bob Kerr’s Whoopee Band.
but left the band Yet within weeks of Vivian Stanshall relishing every
shortly after. syllable of his moniker in The Intro And The Outro on
the Bonzos’ 1967 debut album Gorilla, bass/banjoist
VIRGINIA-BORN
SINGER, WRITER Bowhay-Nowell was elbowed out. He’d been a vital
early cog, however, not only introducing his lodger
AND ACTRESS
Neil Innes – who’d pen the Bonzos’ only hit, 1968’s
CONNY
VAN DYKE I’m The Urban Spaceman – but ferrying the
(below, b.1945) band about in his calamity-prone Daimler ambulance.
was employed as a VDB-N carried on regardless, playing Nigel Nice in
songwriter for the 1980 movie version of Stanshall’s Sir Henry
Wheelsville Records in At Rawlinson End and, just one of his specialities,
Detroit when she was signed Marlene Dietrich’s Falling In Love Again on the
to Motown in 1960, making saw while wearing a pickelhaube.
her one of the label’s first Mat Snow
white artists. However, her
only release for the label
was 1963’s Smokey George ‘Funky’

band in October. He also Robinson-penned Oh

played with Liquid Soul,
Peter Brötzmann, Billy
Idol, NRG Ensemble, The
Power Station, Fred Frith,
Nikki Sudden and Ministry.
PROMOTER JOHN
MORRIS (b.1939) was
instrumental in staging some
key ’60s live events, from
setting up a free 1967
Jefferson Airplane concert
for 50,000 people in Toronto,
to helping open NY’s Fillmore
East and The Rainbow in
Finsbury Park. Most famously,
he was co-producer of the
1969 Woodstock Music & Arts
Fair. At Woodstock he helped
book acts and plan the festival
site (using boy scout
handbooks and US army field
manuals). He also made
several now-legendary stage
announcements, including
informing the half-a-million,
storm-lashed crowd that
hard rockers Keel, he moved
on to W.A.S.P in 1984 for
three albums, and then L.A.
Guns in 1987. After exiting in
1992 and rejoining in
1994, from 2018
he led his own
line-up of the
Freddy, and she soon
moved onto a successful
screen career. She also
released a self-titled
solo album in 1972.
Jenny Bulley, Chris
Catchpole and Ian Harrison
Conny Van Dyke:
a Motown one-off.
Brown
Kool & The Gang’s
Groove Meister
BORN 1949
NOTED FOR HIS crisp, metronomic
snare beat, percolating hi-hat patterns
and seismic bass drum thuds, Brown
was the percussive heartbeat of Kool
& The Gang for 59 years. Joining the
New Jersey band at their inception
in 1964 when they were known as
The Jazziacs, five years later, Brown’s
syncopated polyrhythms helped the newly christened
Kool & The Gang become frontrunners in the funk
revolution. When they switched from sinewy hardcore
funk to more soulful disco beats in the late ’70s, and
then moved on to mainstream pop in the ’80s, Brown’s
fluid grooves were central to the band’s transition and
crossover success. On later albums, he augmented his
drumming by singing background vocals and playing
keyboards. He also co-wrote two of the much-sampled
group’s biggest hits, 1979’s Ladies Night and Too Hot,
the latter the title of his 2023 memoir.
Charles Waring

MOJO 109
T IM E M AC HIN E

That was Them…: (clockwise

from above, from front)
Van Morrison, Pat McAuley,
Jackie McAuley, Billy
Harrison, Alan Henderson;
second single Baby, Please
Don’t Go; Delta bluesman Big
Joe Williams, 1963; producer
Bert Berns, 1965; (from left)
Morrison, Henderson and
Harrison on-stage, March 19,
1965;1964’s Gloria B-side.

JANUARY 1965
…Them explode onto the charts
JANUARY 28 In the UK Top 10, the
pleasant and hygienic
tunes of Sandie Shaw, Gerry And The
Pacemakers and Sounds Orchestral. Just
below them was the sound of fury,
abandonment and near-mystical intensity.
Belfast’s hardnut rhythm’n’bluesers Them
were at Number 11 with their sizzling Baby,
Please Don’t Go, a cover of a song made
famous by Big Joe Williams in 1935. On the
flipside was Gloria, 19-year-old singer Van
Morrison’s driving, mantric invocation of the
supernatural ineffable. It was inspired by his
cousin Gloria Gordon, who died aged 29 of
cancer, and in time it would become a
rock’n’roll standard, covered by Hendrix, Patti
Smith, The Doors and others. In its 16-year
history, the humble 45 rpm single had rarely
packed such concentrated power.
A few weeks earlier, Them had considered
Baby, Please Don’t Go dead in the water.
Released to middling attention in November,
a December performance on pop TV show
Ready Steady Go! improved its fortunes. Soon
after, as Them guitarist Billy Harrison told
Getty (9), Alamy
sax player and harmonica specialist Morrison
prone to throwing his shoes and maracas
into the audience and jumping into the
drumkit – the group had been together for
mere months before signing to Decca. After
debut single Don’t Start Crying Now failed
to connect, storied NY songwriter/producer
Bert Berns was flown in to produce their next
two chart gambits at Decca’s West
Hampstead studio in October 1964. Berns
earned his money – he was also in town to
work with fellow Decca artists Lulu & The
Luvvers – at a single four-hour session before
Them headed off to play a gig. “Bert Berns
brought Here Comes The Night over with
him,” Morrison told Record Mirror in May ’65.
“We did Baby, Please Don’t Go at the same
session… We always do the type of things
“In the beginning
the thing was
great… it
we like. We don’t think there’s any such
thing as trends. We don’t call ourselves R&B
or anything…”
Some reports say studio drummer Bobby
Graham was brought into the session, as was
Jimmy Page, to beef up Harrison’s riff. In 1977,
Page told Trouser Press, “the Them session, it
was very embarrassing because you noticed
that as each number passed, another
member of the band would be substituted by
a session musician. Talk about daggers! God,
it was awful.”
In truth, it seemed Them were not a stable
entity. The band earned a reputation for
taciturn, non-cooperative press interviews,
while the relationship of Morrison and
Harrison – who was described in
contemporary reports as the bandleader –
was uneasy. “We’re a very strange group,”
Harrison told Disc’s Penny Valentine in April.
“[Van] worries a lot… he’s not bad tempered
or anything, but he gets depressed. You
know he’ll be in a terrible mood, then
immediately he goes on-stage, he’s fine,
and he snaps right back into a bad mood

NME on January 22, “Ready Steady Go! chose
it out of the blue for their signature tune.”
Hailed as Ulster’s long-haired, surly answer
to the Stones – with combustible frontman,
when he comes off, it’s amazing!”
became sick.” The pressure was increasing. Johnny
Rogan’s 2005 biography No Surrender
VAN MORRISON recounts how back at home in Belfast, Van the

110 MOJO
 ALSO ON! TOP TEN
HONG KONG
pop star was now the subject of low-level SINGLES
ribbing, his mother Violet recounting JANUARY 16
how the bin outside the family home on
Hyndford Street had been wittily spray- 1THE BEATLES
I FEEL FINE
painted with the legend, ‘Them’s Ma’s Bin’ PARLOPHONE

(when she took Maxie the sheepdog out

for a walk, he would be hailed as ‘Them’s
2 THE
FABULOUS
ECHOES PLEASE
Ma’s Dog’). LEAVE HER TO ME
Motorcycle emptiness: DIAMOND
As January turned into February, the Twinkle, AKA Lynn
band relocated to the UK capital. There Ripley, mourns the
ELVIS TURNS 30
3SHAMANFRED
MANN
were gigs – at the Rawtenstall Astoria, the loss of Terry.
8 Elvis Presley (above)
celebrates his thirtieth LA LA HMV

Camberley Agincourt and the Bristol Corn birthday at Graceland. Later

in the month, Memphis City 4 DANNY
DIAZ & THE

Twinkle’s
Exchange, among other venues – to play. CHECKMATES
Commissioners call for a
“R&B won’t last for ever,” Harrison mused to “building, roadway, park
WONDERFUL
WORLD DIAMOND
Record Mirror that month. “We’ll be lucky if or other institution” to be

death disc 5 THE

we get a year out of it.” named in his honour. FABULOUS
Here Comes The Night hit UK Number 2 THE FIRST ECHOES THOSE

controversy
HULLABALOO FABULOUS ECHOES
in April. But in July ’65 Harrison quit, (EP) DIAMOND
followed by drummer Pat McAuley and
keyboardist Peter Bardens, just after the
12slotsUSHullabaloo
TV pop show
debuts, with
for The Zombies, The 6 ELVIS PRESLEY
ASK ME RCA VICTOR
JANUARY 21 Terry, debut single
band’s debut LP, The “Angry” Young Them!,
was released. Morrison duly led a new
by Surbiton singer
New Christy Minstrels and,
doing the show’s titular 7 CLAIRE SHAH
HIGH NOON
Twinkle, spends its third week at UK dance, Joey Heatherton. In COLUMBIA
line-up to America, before going solo in
1966. The following December, he reflected
Number 4. The song, recorded with
session aces Jimmy Page and Bobby
the UK, it’s announced that
BBC2’s The Beat Room is 8KNOWS
TONY MYATT
EVERYBODY
DIAMOND
on Them’s demise to the KRLA Beat paper. being replaced by new show
“In the beginning the thing was great… but
it got twisted somewhere along the way
Graham, is a Spector-esque teenage
lament where a girl mourns her
Gadzooks! It’s All Happening.
STONES DOWN
9LITTLE
THE ROLLING
STONES
RED
and everybody involved in it got twisted boyfriend’s end in a motorbike crash (“We UNDER ROOSTER DECCA
as well, including me… It was no longer
people making music and grooving
had a quarrel, I was untrue on the night he
died”). It’s not played by the BBC and
15 The Rolling Stones No. 2
is released and quickly
reaches UK Number 1. From
10 THE BEATLES
EXTRACTS
FROM THE FILM
together. It became a whole conscious Ready Steady Go! because of fears of the 22nd, the Stones and Roy A HARD DAY’S
Orbison tour Oceania together. NIGHT (EP)
business trip. It became sick. There was no glorifying death and suicide. This week’s PARLOPHONE
point in caring about anything ’cos there UK Number 24, The Shangri-Las’ The RIP ALAN FREED
was nothing to care about.”
“I still see the group as being as big as
Leader Of The Pack, is another automotive
death disc: some commentators cite the
20 Influential rock’n’roll
DJ, promoter, film face
and proselytiser Alan Freed
The Rolling Stones or The Who or anybody strictly chart-confined impacts of past dies aged 43, of drink-related
else,” Harrison reflected to MOJO in 2009, macabre toe-tappers like Ricky Valance’s causes in Palm Springs.
“if it had just held together.” Tell Laura I Love Her and Jan & Dean’s PET GOES
Ian Harrison Dead Man’s Curve as reasons not to panic. DOWNTOWN
23 Downtown by Petula
Clark reaches US Number
1. Inevitably, Jimmy Page and
Feelin’ groovy:
(left) The Righteous Bobby Graham played on the
Brothers and Cilla session. Clark will appear at
Black celebrate a hit Italy’s San Remo Festival from Mower the
with the same song. January 28, alongside Timi merrier: Manfred
Yuro, Kiki Dee, Gene Pitney Mann at No. 3.
and Connie Francis.

AD ARCHIVE 1965

RIGHTEOUS BROS VS. CILLA!

JANUARY 28 The Righteous Brothers’
epic of heartbreak
You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’ is at UK
Number 3: the following week it’s Number 1
on both sides of the Atlantic. It was co-written
and produced by Phil Spector and is,
arguably, his Wall Of Sound in excelsis:
Andrew Loog Oldham takes out press ads
praising the song despite having nothing to
do with it. “In England… you are treated with
respect for your creativity,” Spector tells US
magazine Music Business, adding, “I want to
create things that other people want to copy.”
Cilla Black’s inevitably paler version of You’ve Mmm, an icy beef “brothtail”. Intriguingly,
Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’ is at UK 2 this week, drinks such as the Chicken Broth Negroni are
real, so maybe they were onto something…
but rises no higher.

MOJO 111
A S K MOJO
Who re-recorded
their songs?
Let us solve all rock conundrums
and join the dots of music obscuria.
I was listening to Townes Van Zandt’s Rear View
Mirror, an album of re-recordings of some of his
greatest songs. Is this practice widespread, and
why bother?
Carl Scully, via e-mail
MOJO says: Where to begin? Probably that lots of
well-known songs exist in multiple versions. In
keeping with the season, it’s worth remembering
that Nat ‘King’ Cole cut The Christmas Song twice in
1946, again in 1953 and from mono-to-stereo in
1961, and that the version of Bing Crosby’s White
Christmas that yuletiders get misty to is a 1947
re-recording made after the 1942 master was
damaged. More recently, Taylor Swift has
re-created four LPs to circumvent
ownership disputes, a path also taken
by Def Leppard. There are numerous
other motives: the urge to polish up
older songs (see 2012 ELO-cover-
themselves LP Mr Blue Sky or
Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells
2003); re-recordings for budget
labels (consider Del Shannon’s
lacklustre ’80s revisiting of
Runaway for K-Tel, among
many other sometimes
gruesome examples);
changing perspectives (see
Joni Mitchell’s orchestral,
40-a-day 2000 version of Both
Sides Now or James Brown’s 1970
jazz arrangement of Papa’s Got A
Brand New Bag); dissatisfaction with a
released work (see Cheap Trick’s 1997
re-recording-with-Steve-Albini of 1977’s In Color);
conceptual playfulness (get your head round Will
Oldham’s 2004 LP Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy Sings Greatest
Palace Music); ‘unplugged’ acoustic re-imaginings
(Prefab Sprout and The Cure were among the bands
Getty (2), Alamy
to do this), and beyond. Those interested can find
further examples of re-jigging by Kate Bush, Sinatra,
Chuck Berry, David Bowie, Bob Marley, Paul
McCartney, Jerry Lee Lewis, Pink Floyd, Little
112 MOJO
Richard, Johnny Cash, John Fahey,
The Everly Brothers, the Pistols
and more – and can we say the
songs on Roy Orbison’s 1987 set
In Dreams sit very proudly beside the originals?
INSTRUMENTALS-INTO-
VOCALS (REVISITED)
My favourite example of a melody later fitted
with words (Ask MOJO, 358) is the Tommy
Edwards 1958 hit It’s All In The Game. An
American amateur flautist and pianist named
Charles G Dawes wrote the melody in 1911. He
later became US Vice President, serving under
President Calvin Coolidge. Forty years later, Carl
Sigman wrote the words. Dawes remains not only
the only US Vice President to have written a
Number 1, but also the only Nobel Peace Prize
laureate to do so. And It’s All In The Game
enjoys the distinction of being the first song
sung by an African-American to chart at
Number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100.
David English, MA, USA
MOJO says: Fascinating! And what
other Nobel Prize winners have
written hit songs? (We’ll open
the bidding with one B Dylan).
WAS GINGER
THE SCARIEST?
Who was the most fearsome
person in rock? I loved his
playing, but you’d have to
search far and wide to find
someone saying nice things about
Ginger Baker.
Andrew Taylor, via e-mail
MOJO says: We’d hesitate to grant anyone such an
accolade, but the late Pete Brown pointed out that
Baker was intimidated by fellow drummer John
‘Pugwash’ Weathers of Eyes Of Blue, Piblokto!,
Gentle Giant and others. Speaking shortly before
his death last year, Brown told MOJO, “I got the
feeling that Pugwash was the only person that
Ginger was afraid of, ha ha! They used to hang out
together sometimes at the Speakeasy. Pugwash
Version galore!: (clockwise
from top left) Nat ‘King’
Cole cut four versions of
The Christmas Song; Roxy
Music in 1973 – will the
band’s 2022 London O2 gig
be their last?; Game-
changer Tommy Edwards’
1958 hit; ‘scary’ Ginger
Baker horsing about.
was a great musician, and
he had a temper, but he never turned it on me.” He
added that 1972 Bond & Brown song Milk Is Turning
Sour In My Shoes referred to an incident in France
when Pugwash lost his rag and found his footwear
duly filled in the morning. Said Brown, “I think it was
[guitarist] Brian Breeze that did that…”
WHITHER ROXY
I saw Roxy Music at the London 02 on their 2022
tour and remember hearing that they were going
to do more shows. It’s been a year – any news?
David Pratt, via e-mail
MOJO says: We spoke to Roxy sax player Andy
Mackay, who had no updates and said: “It was
a slightly unexpected tour. We hadn’t played
together for quite a long time, but by the 02, we
could really sense each other’s playing – Bryan was
a lot more relaxed, and on great form. In some
ways, I don’t think we’d do better than that. You
never say never, but I wouldn’t be unhappy if that
was the way we rounded it off.” Could it be the End
Of The Line?
GARVEY’S GHOST SEEN!
Re: Why did Genesis/Tull producer John Burns
dub up Burning Spear’s Garvey’s Ghost (Ask
MOJO 359). I have known Dick Cuthell since 1970
when he joined Trifle, the jazz rock band I was
managing. In the early ’70s, alongside his horn
playing, Dick was cutting his teeth as an engineer
at Island Records. He knew John well and worked
alongside him on the first Third World album. It
was through this that they also worked on the
Garvey’s Ghost LP, Dick having known Burning
Spear’s producer, Jack Ruby, from earlier times.
Paul Griffiths, via e-mail
CONTACT MOJO
Have you got a challenging musical question for the MOJO
Brains Trust? E-mail askmojo@bauermedia.co.uk and
we’ll help untangle your trickiest puzzles.
 MOJO C OM PE T I T I O N

ANSWERS ACROSS
1 See photoclue A (6,4)
MOJO 361 6 Ghanaian-British Afro-rockers (7)
11 A hit for the Jackson 5 (5,3,3,7)
Across: 1 Roky
Erickson, 8 Act, 9
12 Beastie Boys song whose video
Don’t Speak, 10
parodied ’70s cop shows (8)
Ocarina, 11 Almost 14 LP where Robert Palmer was backed by
Blue, 13 Neon, 15 Rio, Little Feat (8,4)
16 Grand, 17 Loot, 15 Sir Douglas Quintet’s explosive female
18 Bossy, 19 ATR, (8,5)
20 War, 21 Insiders, 16 Beaumont Hannant samples NIN for a
22 Frumpy, 23 Ego, soupy treat (7)
24 N.I.N, 25 Sin, 27 19 Boomtown Rats’ pest control (3,4)
Dominion, 29 ADF, 21 Smiley Lewis song made into a hit by
31 Micah Lee, 32 Elvis in ’58 (3,5)
Woman, 33 Revolver, 22 Katy ---- (Steely Dan) (4)
35 Sorry, 36 BGO, 39 25 Posthumous Smiths live album (4)
Clowns, 40 Mean, 42 26 ---- Cars (Springsteen) (4)
Descendents, 44 Soo, 27 Hark! Horace Andy and Massive Attack
45 Magnet, 46 Urge,
sing (5)
47 Bus Stop, 48 Hustle,
52 Uphill, 53 Pallas, 54
29 US govt agency blasted by Ice-T, Zappa,
Head, 56 Ix, 58 Dry, 59 Jello Biafra, etc (3)
Miserlou, 60 Sense, 31 Canadian rocker, famous for blowing
61 Man. up a hot water bottle on The Tube (4)
32 The --, AKA John Entwistle (2)

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33 Scott Walker’s instrumental band The
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2, Google Chromecast, HDMI, Optical and
selected at random. For the rules of the quiz, wins a set of MACH 20 56 Pretenders song covered by EBTG (3)
RCA – the A48 can play back your favourite
see www.mojo4music.com in-ear monitors from 57 Paganini Traxx’s ’96 trance banger (3)
music from a huge range of devices. Plus, Westone Audio.
thanks to its HDMI input, Audio Pro have For more info go to: uk.audiopro.com 58 Black metallers Mayhem’s late singer (4)
DOWN
1A 2 1 2 3 4 5 5 6 7 8 9 1 Blues number cut by James Booker,
Professor Longhair, Dr. John, etc (5,7)
11 10 10 2 The Floyd offer a smoke (4,1,5)
3 The Eno LP formerly titled as My
11 Squelchy Life (5,3)
4 “The judge said five to 10 but I say double
that again,” said this Clash song (9)
13 13
5 The MC5’s liberated woman (6,4)
7 Extreme metal superband with
12 13 14 members of Pantera, Pig Destroyer etc. (5)
8 Film featuring FGTH playing Relax (4,6)
18 19 20 20 9 Aptly, Badfinger’s last LP in their lifetime
(3,2,4)
15 26 16 17
10 Stevie Nicks’ song for a simpler life and
the death of a friend (5)
13 Chuck Jackson had the first hit with this
29 30 18 Bacharach/Hilliard song (3,3,3)
17 The Upsetters’ tribute to Franco Nero?
19 20 21 22 23 24 (6,2,6)
18 Big Bang Theory actor John Bowie’s
32 25 33 31 26 pop punks (7)
20 See photoclue B (5,7)
21 “Now you’re a yaga yaga,” sang Errol
27 28 35 29 30 31 38 32
Dunkley (2,4)
23 OMD’s previous name The -- (2)
39 33 40 34 35 36 24 Jazz form with straw boaters/banjos (9)
28 They had us Hangin’ On A String
37 38 41 39 44 46 (Contemplating) in 1985 (5,4)
30 David, Stephen and Graham’s band (3)
40 44 49 41 42
32 Ciara ft. Ludacris, nonplussed in ’05? (2)
34 Song covered by George McCrae,
Jimmy ‘Bo’ Horne and KC & The Sunshine
43 52 44 45
Band (1,3,6)
36 Jason Ringenberg’s hot band? (9)
56 46 51 47 37 World, Bass or Bardo (5)
38 See photoclue C (5)
48 49 42 Earl ‘Fatha’ Hines had one on Monday in
1928 (4)
46 Hugo Largo get on the beat in ’88 (4)
62 54 56 52
47 Brooklyn indie experimenters who’ve
worked with Rhys Chatham and The Bevis
50 51 52 53 69 Frond (6)
50 Strange Animals reunion LP from ’83 (3)
66 54 55 56 51 Charles Aznavour song covered by
Terry Hall’s Vegas (3)
53 Jazz label whose motto is, “the most
Getty (3)

56 57 58
B C beautiful sound next to silence” (3)

MOJO 113
H E L L O G O O D BY E
Miracle workers: Simple Minds
(from left) Derek Forbes, Jim
Kerr, Charlie Burchill, Brian
McGee and Mick MacNeil
backstage at the Marquee,
London, October 13, 1979.
Derek Forbes and
Simple Minds
It began in Glasgow with
stunned audiences, and soon
the gold Daimler pulled up. Then
differences spoiled the alchemy.
HELLO MARCH 1978
I was playing lead guitar in the Subs and Jim
Kerr [Simple Minds frontman] used to come
and see us all the time with Jaine Henderson,
his girlfriend. Our drummer from the Subs, Ali
MacKenzie left, and Brian McGee, the original
Simple Minds drummer, said he’d do a gig at
Strathclyde University with us. Then, when
Tony Donald [original Simple Minds bassist]
left, Jim, Charlie [Burchill, guitar] and the other
guys in the band asked me to join. I wanted to
get back to lead guitar, but I do enjoy playing
bass. I’d had an audition with The Rezillos but
they got this good-looking guy called Simon
Templar instead. Also, my Gibson Les Paul got
stolen. So I thought, I might as well join Simple huge hit from the OST for The Breakfast Club].
Minds, and it was probably
the best decision I made in
my life.
The first rehearsal was at
McGill Primary in Pollok in
Glasgow, in a small gym for
the kids to jump about in. It
was easy for me, and I was
adding my stamp to it.
Charlie couldn’t have been
nicer. Jim was great, really
Sipa/Shutterstock, Fraser Gray/Shutterstock
weird – he used to wear a
priest’s coat and had the
bowl haircut, Blackadder
before Blackadder! – a “The first gig
brilliant frontman. But every they did without
one of us was worth their
salt. Instantly, I thought this
me was Live Aid
is a great move, because – a real kick in
this band’s gonna go far. the you-know-
That was me, focused.
whats.”
DEREK FORBES
114 MOJO
The first gig was at the Mars Bar. They
already had a fanbase and I think we kind of
stunned people. Jim said, “Time to put some
make-up on” – my eyes were like panda’s. We
were all from that glam-rock era, you know.
I had a pair of girls’ wedge sandals and a full
leopard-skin outfit. We were totally different
from any other band about, we had a light
show, backdrops, this Perspex head with a
blue light in it… it was theatrical. We
eventually played every second Sunday,
built it up and built it up and had the record
companies from London coming up. Then
we were recording our first album with John
Leckie at Abbey Road. We got picked up at
the airport in a gold Daimler! We were just
hairy-arsed boys. Your head was spinning,
you know?
GOODBYE MID 1985
We’d done Don’t You (Forget About Me) [a
When we watched the video,
there were close-ups of
everybody but me, and I
stupidly went, “Where’s the
bass player?” They didn’t like
that, especially Jim. They
thought I was drifting away,
like I was distancing myself. I
used to take my girlfriend on
tour, and that was my Yoko
Ono moment. I was getting
publicity for it, which went
down like a lead balloon. Jim
thought I was getting too
big for my boots.
There was a meeting in
the office in Edinburgh.
Charlie and Mick [MacNeil,
keyboards] were there, Jim
was in London on the phone.
I said to the manager [Bruce
Findlay], “Am I sacked?” And he said, “Yeah”. It
usually took him hours to tell you anything.
Charlie and Mick were both crying, they
didn’t want it to happen. Bruce offered to buy
my royalties out. What he offered me was
nowhere near what I earned by keeping
them. My big pal John Giblin took over my
job, and I was out.
We were about to go ballistic in America
and the first gig they did without me was Live
Aid – a real kick in the you-know-whats. It
was like a plane had crashed. Suddenly, after
seven years, there’s nobody there. I was living
on a farm, and I’d bought myself a horse,
so I spent two years learning how to ride.
I also played with Propaganda.
In 1996 I went back [for 11th LP Néapolis].
The gigs were great. The last one was in a
Roman theatre in Lyon [on July 21, 1998]. Then
I read that Simple Minds were playing a
benefit for Kosovo at the SECC in Glasgow [on
May 31, 1999]. The office was saying, “Derek
and Mel [Gaynor, drums] aren’t available for
this one…” Shocking! We hadn’t even been
told [Forbes, Gaynor and a band featuring
footballer Ally McCoist duly appeared on the
bill to fans’ bafflement, playing a comic
version of P. Diddy’s Come With Me with
comedy actor Jonathan Watson].
If it was the original band, I would
definitely do it again. I’m working with Brian
and Mick and as soon as we play, it just
sounds like Simple Minds – what it should be,
and should have kept on being.
As told to Ian Harrison
Derek Forbes’ memoir A Very Simple Mind: On Tour
is published by McNidder & Grace.
Time to forget: SM before
the end (from left)
Gaynor, MacNeil, Kerr,
Forbes and Burchill; (left)
Derek today.
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