Indholdsfortegnelse for October 2019 i UNCUT

AT the risk of sounding needlessly highfalutin, this issue of Uncut contains some discussion about the transformative nature of music. Here’s Justin Vernon, for instance, talking to Stephen Deusner about the new Bon Iver album. “I’ve always been obsessed with music and what it does to people,” he says. “Bob Marley was a huge thing for me – wow, he actually changed the political landscape in Jamaica. I like the idea of the power that prayer has. If music is the religion, then these songs are prayers to simply being people on Earth.” Elsewhere, between anecdotes about Dylan, Scorsese and The Band, Robbie Robertson tells Nick Hasted about the deeply spiritual link between music and the natural world he experienced during childhood, visiting family on the Six Nations Reserve outside…

“I’ve always been obsessed with Halloween and nocturnal animals and subconscious realms” HAVING just flown into London the previous day, Natasha Khan – these days a resident of Highland Park, Los Angeles – is savouring a proper cup of tea. “I do take PG Tips over with me,” she confides, “but the water’s different, so it still doesn’t taste quite right.” In her first 36 hours back in England, Khan has also enjoyed the novel sight of green fields and pub gardens, “but I’ve also noticed the anger, which is quite disconcerting”. She says that one of the reasons she moved to LA was to free herself from the oppressive British news cycle. “Over there, there isn’t that tension in the air, even if it does feel like people are…

Face Stabber feels like another brave leap in another direction. How much does each new Oh Sees album tend to be a reaction to the previous one? All the albums have a common thread from the previous ones – it’s unavoidable. We aren’t really a “concept record” type band, so we usually go in with no preconceived notions - although, when we have done in the past, it never ends up where we expected, so no matter in the end. The first sound on Face Stabber appears to be a squeeze toy. Are you stoked to have potentially discovered a new percussion instrument? And are there any other sounds here that were new to you? My pet Dog Buddy was with us, so it just kinda happened – it’s a…

Ode To Joy DBPM 9/10 ODE TO JOY is not a great title for Google search results, but it certainly succeeds as a statement of no-fucks bravado. Indeed, the follow-up to Star Wars (2015) and Schmilco (2016) is precisely the opposite of the grandiose and anthemic symphony composed almost 200 years ago. Wilco’s Ode To Joy instead gently reframes Beethoven’s celebration of comradeship for a modern audience. Swapping a chorus of literal voices for symbolic ones, it’s a protest record only this sextet could make, one that rings loudest in its simplicity. It favours subtle textures and hushed vocals, and further reveals its wisdom with each listen. If Being There was Wilco’s Born To Run, this is their Nebraska. Tweedy’s lyrics don’t stray far from what we already know of…

1 Lions (feat. Vivian Wang) 2 High Alice 3 Accident (feat. Laura Jean Englert) 4 The Practice Of Love (feat. Laura Jean Englert and Vivian Wang) 5 Ashes To Ashes 6 Thumbsucker (feat. Félicia Atkinson and Laura Jean Englert) 7 Six Red Cannas (feat. Vivian Wang, Félicia Atkinson and Laura Jean Englert) 8 Ordinary (feat. Vivian Wang and Félicia Atkinson) Produced by: Jenny Hval, Lasse Marhaug Recorded at: The Best Studio, Oslo Personnel includes: Jenny Hval (synths, vocals), Vivian Wang, Laura Jean Englert, Félicia Atkinson (vocals), Anja Lauvdal (synth), Espen Reinertsen (saxophone), Lasse Marhaug (electronics)…

Clandestino – Bloody Border BECAUSE 9/10 MANU CHAO was in a bad way when his band Mano Negra broke up in 1994. Intended as a potent Gallic equivalent of The Clash, after four albums in a turbulent seven years the group had fallen apart in the wake of an insane tour by train across war-torn, bandit-strewn Colombia, dodging bombs and playing impromptu free shows along the way. By the time the train returned to Bogotá six gruelling weeks later, the French-Spanish Chao was the only one left standing. Restless and depressed, he promptly disappeared on a three-year lost weekend, pinballing between Europe, Africa and South America. He briefly turned up in London, where a musical flirtation with Leftfield promised much but came to nothing, and there were sightings in Paris…

“THE film is a spiritual adaptation of Testimony,” says Daniel Roher, director of Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson And The Band. “It’s all specifically through Robbie’s lens: this super-ambitious, visionary kid who came from a single mum in a suburb of Toronto. But Robbie wanted to make sure that I understood that Richard Manuel, Levon Helm, Garth Hudson and Rick Danko had voices to contribute to this story.” The Band are represented through archive footage, but there are new interviews with Martin Scorsese, Eric Clapton, Bruce Springsteen and Van Morrison (Bob Dylan declined to take part). Robertson himself returned to Ontario’s Six Nations reservation, finding his cousin still living in the house he remembers visiting as a child. Pilgrimages were made, too, to Big Pink deep in the woods of…

“I’M a little bit out of my mind,” explains Devendra Banhart from his home in Los Angeles. “I got back from Japan yesterday and I’m going to Nepal tomorrow for a month. It’s half a pilgrimage, half shooting a movie. Oh, and a video too!” The singer-songwriter can’t reveal more about his new acting gig, other than that “the subject is something that’s really important” to him, but he’s delighted to discuss his new album, Ma, at length, and take Uncut through the dusty corners of his very fine catalogue; come with us, then, from Paris pavements to Woodstock, and from New York to the place where Richard Brautigan died. “Everyone has their own projects,” Banhart explains of his close circle of long-term collaborators, “so one of the only ways…

VOLCANO CHOIR UNMAP JAGJAGUWAR, 2009 Released just a year  after For Emma, Forever Ago, this lush, melancholy collaboration with the Milwaukee post-rock outfit Collections Of Colonies Of Bees was the first indication that Vernon was more than just Bon Iver. They would follow it up four years later with the equally compelling Repave. 8/10 GAYNGS RELAYTED JAGJAGUWAR, 2010 This indie-rock supergroup was the  brainchild of Poliça’s Ryan Olson and featured more than 20 musicians, including Har Mar Superstar, members of Megafaun, The Rosebuds and, of course, Vernon himself. Their lone album explores ’70s soft rock and ’80s quiet storm – an intriguing palette, even if the effect is similar to spending way too long in a jacuzzi. 6/10 THE SHOUTING MATCHES GROWNASS MAN MIDDLE WEST, 2013 This trio featuring  Vernon,…

Are you experienced? You certainly will be after you’ve read Uncut’s Deluxe Ultimate Music Guide to Jimi Hendrix, resplendent with a foxy new feature on Jimi at Woodstock. For voodoo children everywhere, it’s in shops now…  Following on August 23 is Elton John: A Life In Pictures. Over 100 pages, we bring you Elton’s story in a selection of startling historic photographs, and his own – very lively – words from the archives of NME and Melody Maker, plus a suitably glam cover printed on gold mirror board… Richard Thompson’s 70th birthday blowout at the Albert Hall on September 30 looks like the must-see show of the year. The staggering lineup includes almost every surviving member of the UK folk-rock scene, along with David Gilmour, Bob Mould, Loudon Wainwright III,…

BIG THIEF Two Hands 4AD When you’re hot, you’re hot: just a few months after the sensuous UFOF comes this rawer, punchier set, culminating in an unusually  seething guitar solo on “Not”. IGGY POP “We Are The People” CAROLINE INTERNATIONAL From the sparse and sombre new album, Free, an emotional reading of Lou Reed’s poem, as relevant now as it was in 1971: “We are the insects of someone else’s thought…” RICHARD DAWSON 2020 DOMINO Eccentric, homespun symphonic rock with social-realist narratives about fulfilment centres, flooded pubs and slack near-post marking. Like “Bohemian Rhapsody” scripted by Ken Loach. RONIN ARKESTRA Sonkei ALBERT’S FAVOURITES Lush Japanese cosmic jazz, inspired by an anime series about the search for a samurai who smells of sunflower. Kawaii! LIGHTNING DUST Spectre WESTERN VINYL Black Mountain…

Face Stabber CASTLE FACE 9/10 THE news that John Dwyer has generously delivered a double album as the 22nd full-length studio recording by some configuration of his band Thee (or The or the or nothing at all) Oh Sees may be the least surprising thing about it. Indeed, Face Stabber’s 81-minute girth seems almost modest given the man’s productivity and the sense that he’s long been heading towards something big – so big, in fact, that the Germans have a fancy word for it. Richard Wagner’s concept of the gesamtkunstwerk was that of a work that united all of the arts – music, drama, dance, spectacle – in one awe-inspiring creative totality. Surely, at the rate he’s going, Dwyer will soon produce his own equivalent to The Ring Of The…

!!! Wallop WARP 6/10 Eighth outing for dance-punk crew more pronounceably known as chk chk chk The New York band’s eighth full-length serving of snarky humour and left-field dancefloor fare, Wallop marks 23 years of activity for !!!, a long enough period for their more successful dance-punk kin LCD Soundsystem to form, retire and reunite a few times over. Despite all that time “working in obscurity” (as they quip in “Serbia Drums”), they’ve lost little of the exuberance that distinguished their 2003 masterstroke “Me And Giuliani Down By The Schoolyard”. Alas, genuinely surprising moments are scarcer on much of Wallop, with rudimentary workouts outnumbering the fresher likes of “$50 Million” and its super-charged Chic groove. JASON ANDERSON ANGELINA Last Cigarette WONDERFUL SOUND 7/10 Second album from bluesy Isle Of Wight…

1 Bright Leaves 2 Before Us 3 One And A Half Stars 4 Quiet Amplifier 5 Everyone Hides 6 White Wooden Cross 7 Citizens 8 We Were Lucky 9 Love Is Everywhere (Beware) 10 Hold Me Anyway 11 An Empty Corner Produced by: Jeff Tweedy and Tom Schick Recorded at: The Wilco Loft, Chicago Personnel: Jeff Tweedy (guitar, vox), Nels Cline (guitar), Glenn Kotche (percussion, drums), John Stirratt (bass), Mikael Jorgensen (keyboards), Pat Sansone (guitar, keyboards, percussion), Paul Von Mertens (sax)…

What do your guest vocalists bring to The Practice Of Love? They bring their wonderful textures, timbres, personalities, sensibilities and vocal ghosts. They also gave me the opportunity to compose differently, as some of the songs were composed after I had heard the recordings they did. They did most of it as spoken-word recordings without knowing where the album would end up. What does that ’90s trancetechno sound mean to you personally? Two things: late-night TV and falling asleep while thinking I was very elevated, and the culture of driving aimlessly around in Norwegian small towns. I guess every language has a word for this meandering, aimless activity. We call it to råne , which also means boar in my language. You have hinted at some link between The Practice…

Free LOMA VISTA/CAROLINE INTERNATIONAL 8/10 STOOGE, solo artist, actor, raconteur, collaborator, lecturer, author, artist’s model, radio host, barista… Iggy Pop has enjoyed many guises during his formidable career. Latterly, though, he has taken on a new role – as a semi-retired rock star. While his last studio album, 2016’s Post Pop Depression, gave Pop the highest chart placing of his career, that success took place under the shadow of his longtime champion David Bowie, who died shortly before the album’s release. After the tour to promote the record, Pop now admits he “felt like I wanted to put on shades, turn my back, and walk away”. Fortuitously for us, retirement seems not to have suited him. Never content to rest on his reputation, Pop collaborated with Oneohtrix Point Never on…

1 Pang! 2 Bae Bae Bae 3 Digidigol 4 Ara Deg (Ddaw’r Awen) 5 Eli Haul 6 Niwl O Anwiredd 7 Taranau Mai 8 Ol Bys / Nodau Clust 9Annedd Im Danedd Produced by: Muzi, Gruff Rhys Recorded at: Wings For Jesus & Splice studios, Cardiff; Muzi’s studio, Johannesburg Personnel includes: Gruff Rhys (vocals, guitar, bass), Muzi (beats, programming, vocals), Kliph Scurlock (drums), Gavin Fitzjohn, Rob Smith, Catherine Morgan (brass), Kris Jenkins (percussion, flute), N’Famady Kouyaté (balafon)…

Had you played Afghan music before? Al McSween: We never worked with Afghan musicians, but we did work with musicians from either side of Afghanistan – Iran and India – and there are points that Afghan music has in common with, say, Hindustani or Persian classical music. But equally, there are unique melodies and rhythms. A lot of Afghan music is in 7/4 time, so it’s a real challenge to make it groove! Did Elaha open up a new world of music to you? Al MacSween: Absolutely. We started playing with her at gigs around Europe aimed at Afghan refugees. You realise there is this passionate community all around Europe, starved of their home culture. There are two songs by the Afghan singer Delaram – who was she? Elaha Soroor:…

BB KING Live In Cook County Jail ABC, 1971 An incredible electric blues set, recorded late the previous year. Many go for Live At The Regal, but this one just bests it. King turns things on a dime, his guitar fluid when it needs, stinging and crushing when punctuating these legendary songs. 8/10 HOUND DOG TAYLOR & THE HOUSE ROCKERS Beware Of The Dog! ALLIGATOR, 1976 The overlooked Hound Dog in two sets from 1974, the year before he passed. This collection carves everything down to barest essentials, The House Rockers (here, Brewer Phillips and Ted Harvey) along for a wild ride. 9/10 MUDDY WATERS Muddy ‘Mississippi’ Waters Live BLUE SKY, 1979 Recorded across 1977 and 1978, produced by Johnny Winter (who also joins on guitar for a few songs),…

We couldn’t track Manu down for this Q&A. How hard did you find it to pin him down when you wrote your book? It’s like he sings on “Desaparecido”, one of the most important, autobiographical songs on Clandestino – he is “the disappearing one... hurrying down the lost highway... When they look for me I’m not there/When they find me, I’m elsewhere.” You subtitled the book In Search Of Manu Chao. Do you think you ever truly found him? I spent time with him in an Algerian refugee camp, in Mexico, in an Argentinian mental asylum and elsewhere. But even after writing the book, he remains an enigma. If you want to find him, he’s more likely to be busking in a local bar or playing a squat than any…

“UNFINISHED business?” says Robbie Robertson. “No, I don’t think about… unfinished business.” Robertson is in the process of addressing the weird logistics in his current workload. There is a new solo album, Sinematic – his first since 2011’s How To Become Clairvoyant – as well as a score for The Irishman, the forthcoming gangster film directed by Robertson’s old housemate, Martin Scorsese. But despite such exciting current projects, the past is never too far away. The Band story continues to beguile. First, a new documentary, Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson And The Band – based on Robertson’s 2016 memoir, Testimony – opens the Toronto International Film Festival on September 5. A 50th anniversary boxset of The Band’s second album arrives a few months later, in November. Fortuitously, Robertson is not…

SAN FRANCISCO, 1996 THE telephone is ringing in Patti Smith’s room at the Miyako Hotel. San Francisco’s fabled rock’n’roll hangout since it opened in the late ’60s, the Miyako has always been Patti’s preferred hotel when she visits the city, where she is drawn to its rice-paper-panelled doors, low futons, deep Japanese soaking tubs and koi ponds. Right now, though, Smith is not feeling especially Zen. “Hello, yes?” she says testily as she picks up the phone. “Uh-huh. Talk to him. Don’t bug me about this shit, OK?” She hangs up the phone with a clatter. “Sorry, they want me to pay $100 for cleaning a room, fumigating the smoke out of the room. I don’t even smoke. Oh, man.” It is March 1996, and Patti Smith is in…

“SHE curated Meltdown [in 2005] and it was also Robert Mapplethorpe’s anniversary, and she had written a poem, The Coral Sea, about him, and she said I’d like to do something. She really liked Loveless. You know, Cat Power was also involved. It was me, Patti and Chan [Marshall] together. They came to my studio and we got chatting and Patti was really inspiring. She said, ‘We’ve already won, we’re doing this.’ She showed me the book, explained how she liked to go off on tangents and we really connected. I really believed in her. “I’d stopped using the tremolo arm in 1997. I’d purposely started using envelope filters when I played with Primal Scream [Shields was a touring member of the band between 1996 and 2006 and played on…

DYLAN and Young didn’t appear together at Hyde Park, disappointing many. Two nights later, however, at Nowlan Park, Kilkenny, Neil joined Bob for what the former later described as “a celebratory shared goodbye to our old friend”, a version of the popular Christian hymn “Will The Circle Be Unbroken?” for Elliot Roberts, who at one point managed both musicians. It was one of the songs they did the first time they ever played together, at the 1975 SNACK Benefit at San Francisco’s Kezar Stadium. Dublin-based writer and critic Des Traynor was at the Kilkenny show: “‘Pay In Blood’ had just rocked the place. There was a pause. Then Neil Young just walked on with his acoustic guitar. He went over to Dylan, who was standing at the piano. Dylan said…

Lowe quietly regenerated for a post-punk world TRIPPING relentlessly to nullify the grind of seemingly endless tours with pub-rock journeymen Brinsley Schwarz, bassist Nick Lowe crumbled in the mid-1970s before finally seeking psychological help. “I didn’t speak and I was covered in lice and I had gonorrhoea,” he remembers with a shudder. “I was a horrible hippie case and my mind had really gone. I certainly thought I was never going to be mentally well again, and as a matter of fact, I don’t think I’ll ever recover from it.” Having suffered for his art in his early twenties, it is perhaps no surprise that Lowe never seemed to take his career that seriously thereafter. His ex-manager Jake Riviera reckoned his client was the anti-James Brown – “the least hardworking…

ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD Directed by Quentin Tarantino Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt Opens Aug 14 Cert 18 9/10 PAIN & GLORY Directed by Pedro Almodóvar Starring Antonio Banderas, Penélope Cruz Opens Aug 23 Cert 15 8/10 HAIL SATAN? Directed by Penny Lane Starring Lucien Greaves, Jex Blackmore Opens Aug 23 Cert 15 7/10 MEMORY: THE ORIGINS OF ALIEN Directed by Alexandre O Philippe Starring Tom Skerritt, Veronica Cartwright Opens Aug 30 Cert 15 7/10 THE SOUVENIR Directed by Joanna Hogg Starring Honor Swinton Byrne, Tom Burke Opens Aug 30 8/10…

JOHN & YOKO: ABOVE US ONLY SKY EAGLE VISION 8/10 JOHN LENNON knew exactly what he was doing. He was going to make an album that would establish him as a fully fledged solo act, one to prove that going primal on Plastic Ono Band and becoming a “conceptual artist” like Yoko didn’t mean he’d lost his touch as a mainstream hitmaker. He’d already written the songs. The album would be made at home in Tittenhurst Park, his and Yoko’s Ascot pile, using its recently completed home studio. And it would be filmed, all of it, both the recording sessions and John’n’Yoko’s life together. Among the resultant footage was the shoot for “Imagine”, one of the world’s first and still most famous pop videos, showing John at his white piano…

TONY CONRAD WITH FAUST Outside The Dream Syndicate CAROLINE, 1973 There was some interesting stuff bubbling under before punk kicked in. I’d been listening to Faust when I was at sixth form, so I probably just spotted this in a record shop. I was quite into the whole idea of drones and long, repetitive tracks. I used one side of this, “From The Side Of Man And Womankind”, as an intro for Cabaret Voltaire in the late ’70s, because it was a really good tension builder, it just went on and on. I intercut it with James Brown and some ’60s R&B, and it was perfect for building a tense atmosphere before the show. You can’t beat a good drone! FRIPP & ENO Evening Star ISLAND/EG, 1975 I think I…

THUNDERBITCH Thunderbitch 2015 Just five months after the release of Sound & Color , Howard and some Nashville buddies dropped this raw, surprise release. In Thunderbitch , Howard stripped back the fussier elements of her main gig for garage-rock brazen enough to include a track called, simply, “I Just Wanna Rock’n’Roll”, while her sweary, primal howl made good on her oft-quoted love of Bon Scott. BERMUDA TRIANGLE “Suzanne” 2017 Formed with singer-songwriters Jesse Lafser and Becca Mancari, Bermuda Triangle was a rare acoustic diversion for Howard. “Suzanne”, their one released song with Howard on lead vocals, surfs a gentle bossa nova rhythm and laments The Other Woman. The stripped-down setting was a strange fit, which she admits herself: “My music is really composed, with lots of moving pieces, so that…

1 The Daily Heavy 2 The Experimenter 3 Face Stabber 4 Snickersnee 5 Fu Xi 6 Scutum & Scorpius 7 Gholü 8 Poisoned Stones 9 Psy-Ops Dispatch 10 S.S. Luker’s Mom 11 Heart Worm 12 Together Tomorrow 13 Captain Loosely 14 Henchlock Recorded by: Eric Bauer, Enrique Tena Pendilla, Mario Ramirez and John Dwyer Recorded at: The Sonic Ranch, El Paso, Texas Personnel: John Dwyer (guitar, vocals, electronics, synthesisers, percussion, sax, samples, Mellotron, field recording, moisturiser, effects), Tim Hellman (bass, percussion), Thomas Dolas (organ, synthesizers, Mellotron, percussion), Dan Rincon (drums, percussion), Paul Quattrone (drums), Suerena Brigid Dawson (vocals, proper cuppa), Brad Caulkins (alto and tenor saxophone), Mario Ramirez (percussion), Enrique Padilla Tena (percussion), Eric Bauer (percussion)…

1 Free 2 Loves Missing 3 Sonali 4 James Bond 5 Dirty Sanchez 6 Glow In The Dark 7 Page 8 We Are The People 9 Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night 10 The Dawn Personnel: Iggy Pop (vocals), Noveller (guitarscape), Leron Thomas (trumpet, keys), Aaron Nevezie (guitar, bass), Chris Barry (drums), Kenny Ruby (bass, piano, synthesiser), Tibo Brandalise (drums), Robin Sherman (bass), Thomas Glass (drums), Ari Teitel (guitar), Gregoire Fauque (guitar), Florian Pellissier (keyboards), Faith Vern (additional vocals)…

Was Muzi especially keen to work on a set of Welsh songs? I think he speaks six languages. When he came to Cardiff he loved hearing conversations go from Welsh to English and back again, because it reminded him of his linguistic reality. So he was encouraging more Welsh in the songs, which was great. I liked his remix of “Bae Bae Bae” so much and suggested doing a whole record, and he said, “Is it all in Welsh?” “Yeah.” “Great!” But it wasn’t a heavy ideological conversation or anything. Why is Pang! so compact? I think it makes the album more palatable; people can get to know the songs without realising, and hopefully play it again. You’ve said that Prince influenced the record… Just before we started recording the…

Disc: One  1 Dirty Mother For You - Roosevelt Sykes 2 So Glad You’re Mine - Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup 3 Too Much Alcohol - JB Hutto & His Hawks 4 I Wonder Why - Jimmy “Fast Fingers” Dawkins 5 Help Me (A Tribute To Sonny Boy Williamson) - Junior Wells 6 I’ve Got A Mind To Give Up Living - BB King With Sonny Freeman And The Unusuals 7 John Henry - Mississippi Fred McDowell 8 Everybody Must Suffer/Stone Crazy - Luther Allison And The Blue Nebulae 9 Tu M’as Promis L’Amour (You Promised Me Love) - Clifton Chenier 10 Hard Luck - The Original Howlin’ Wolf And His Orchestra 11 So Many Roads, So Many Trains - Otis Rush Disc: Two  1 Long Distance Call - Muddy Waters…

SAILOR CAPITOL, 1968 The Miller Band’s second release, the last to feature Boz Scaggs, was the perfect amalgam of their leader’s long-held love of traditional blues and more psychedelic hues. The former is represented by a lusty take on Jimmy Reed’s “You’re So Fine”, the latter by the trippy “Song Of Our Ancestors”, while Johnny “Guitar” Watson’s “Gangster Of Love” became a signature tune of sorts. 8/10 THE JOKER CAPITOL, 1973 Eight albums in, and Miller confirms his place at AOR’s top table, courtesy of the breezy and laconic title track. His blues roots continue to show, however, on a live version of Robert Johnson’s “Come On In My Kitchen” and Chuck Calhoun’s “Your Cash Ain’t Nothin’ But Trash”, while the frothy “Sugar Babe” pointedly embraces the pop sensibilities that…

VARIOUS ARTISTS World Spirituality Classics 2: The Time For Peace Is Now LUAKA BOP 9/10 Almighty paeans: compelling collection of underrated soul 45s LIKE JUST about everything else in the lives of African-Americans through those turbulent times, gospel music was in a state of flux in the late 1960s and early 1970s. As Robert F Darden argues in his insightful notes for The Time For Peace Is Now – Luaka Bop’s indispensable set of undeservedly obscure and often supremely funky paeans to the Almighty and righteous pleas for unity and understanding – much of that change was a response to the more secular-minded successes of gospel royalty like the Staples family and Aretha Franklin. Sly And The Family Stone were another act that added an earthier force and fervour to…

“FROM an early age Jeff could carry the tune while I was singing harmony, and that’s not easy for a six-year-old. By the time he was 12, I was singing the main tune and he’d be doing harmony. He had the instrument – you’re born with a certain voice, then you develop it. Songwriting wasn’t his first musical instinct. He had a garage band when he was 15, called Mahre Buckham, which was the first few letters of the names of the guys in the band. He was the lead singer, but he wanted to be a guitar god, he didn’t want to be known for his voice. I think it was an instinctive rejection of being compared to his father, even though he had a perfectly lovely voice and…

“I had gotten a call from Todd Rundgren to go to the Hit Factory in New York. Patti was in the control room. But the real force in the sessions that I was involved in was her husband, Fred “Sonic” Smith, who was producing Dream Of Life , and a real sweetheart. It was Fred who gave direction, and then was the conduit to Patti. As much as it was a Patti Smith record, it was a Fred Smith record, too. They had started a family, and Patti was taking the role of being a mum really seriously. It was, ‘The studio is what I do. But my calling in life is being a parent and a wife.’ I got the impression that she had turned everything over to Fred.…

Shortly after the release of Bon Iver’s debut, Justin Vernon bought a house near Fall Creek, Wisconsin, just outside of Eau Claire, where he built a studio called April Base. Even more than that remote cabin where he made For Emma, Forever Ago, it has become almost legendary among fans and fellow musicians. Vernon recorded all of Bon Iver, Bon Iver and 22, A Million there, in addition to producing sessions for Kathleen Edwards, The Staves and The Blind Boys of Alabama, among other acts. It’s an odd structure, a ’70s split-level house that included a large indoor pool and a veterinary clinic. “It’s truly one of those strange things that makes you wonder, ‘This was in Eau Claire?’” says Brad Cook, who has played countless sessions at April Base…

THERE was a mutual admiration between Prince and Miles Davis throughout the 1980s. “Miles loved the funk sound that Prince made, and there were efforts to get him to come in and record with us,” recalls Randy Hall. “I think Miles and Prince saw a lot of each other in their music,” says Eric Leeds, the horn player and multi-instrumentalist who worked closely with Prince between 1984 and 2003. “When I realised that Prince was reaching out to Miles I made damn well sure I was going to be somewhere when it happened!” During the Rubberband sessions, in late 1985, Miles received a package from Prince, containing an audio tape and a letter that read: “If this tape is of any use to you, please go ahead and play whatever…

December 1962: The Hollies make their live debut at Manchester’s Oasis Club August 1963: Signed to Parlophone, the group land their first big UK hit with “Searchin’”, a cover of the old Coasters tune September 1965: Graham Gouldman’s “Look Through Any Window” is The Hollies’ seventh Top 10 success at home May 1966: They record “Bus Stop” at EMI Studios on Abbey Road. It’s issued as a single a month later July 1966: In the US, “Bus Stop” enters Billboard’s Top 100. By September, following an appearance on ABC-TV’s American Bandstand , it has peaked at No 5…

Robert Plant’s latest gang are the quietest act at this riotous pan-global celebration A DEFIANT carnival of rainbow-coloured multiculturalism, WOMAD has always been a bigger, richer, stranger affair than its caricatured image as a tasteful ethno-fusion picnic for Waitrose hippies. Indeed, in a good year like this, it can feel like the most adventurous and experimental festival of the summer, putting more self-consciously eclectic hipster events to shame. Any definition of “world music” that includes Macy Gray’s deliciously grainy soul-pop torch songs, Anna Calvi’s thunderous widescreen Rothko paintings, Turkish psychonauts Baba Zulu wigging out, and Welsh-Cornish singer Gwenno teaching the crowd cheese-based revolutionary slogans definitely reflects a generosity of spirit that makes for a great festival. One striking development in recent years has been the rise of acts we might…