CARGO COLLECTIVE ESSENTIAL LOGIC ESSENTIAL LOGIC BLACK LIPS BERT JANSCH LOGICALLY YOURS LAND OF KALI GOOD BAD NOT EVIL (DELUXE EDITION) BERT AT THE BBC HISS AND SHAKE RECORDS 5LP BOX SET HISS AND SHAKE RECORDS LP / CD FIRE RECORDS 2LP / CD EARTH RECORDINGS 4LP / 8CD 5 x LP boxset from seminal post-punk icon Lora Logic, The first new album in 43 years from Lora Logic, Bending scuzzy boundaries, a coming-of-age garage Extensive collection featuring a feast of BBC sessions includes the classic Rough Trade records ‘Beat Rhythm post-punk icon and original X Ray Spex saxophonist, rock classic, full of hedonistic delinquent anthems. & live broadcasts with liner notes from Colin Harper. co-produced by Youth. Includes the singles “Alien Boys” Deluxe 15 year anniversary edition featuring unearthed Includes collaborations with John Renbourn, Jacqui News (Waddle Ya Play?)’ & ‘Pedigree Charm’, 2 photos & new liner notes from Jared Swilley & King Khan McShee, Johnny Marr, Bernard Butler, Mary Hopkin, retrospective compilations & new studio album ‘Land and “Prayer For Peace”. includes extra LP of B-sides & rarities. Albert Lee, Ralph McTell & more. Of Kali’. THE PRESCRIPTIONS PEARLS BEFORE SWINE DAVID LANCE CALLAHAN EMAHOY TSEGE MARIAM GEBRU TIME APART THE WIZARD OF IS ENGLISH PRIMITIVE II JERUSALEM SINGLE LOCK RECORDS LP / CD EARTH RECORDINGS LP / CD TINY GLOBAL PRODUCTIONS LP / CD MISSISSIPPI LP If you’ve ever daydreamed about hearing “Being Remastered & re-appraised 31-track collection of Alongside his excellent work with The Wolfhounds and Ultra-Rare Archival Recordings By Renowned Ethiopian There”-era Wilco jam with “Bends”-era Radiohead, rarities. First time on vinyl for this collection of Rapp Moonshake comes Callahan’s brilliant second solo Composer Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru. A revelatory originals. It features covers of contemporaries Cohen, album. Eerie dark folk set against an Indian psych new album of piano pieces, unreleased or virtually your wish is granted. background and haunting lyrics. Dylan & Joni Mitchell. Plus an additional 7 track inaccessible until now! download card. “Extremely influential.” Rolling Stone JEMMA FREEMAN BREANNA BARBARA ROBB JOHNSON DJ YODA AND THE COSMIC SOMETHING NOTHIN’ BUT TIME MINIMUM WAGES / BODGER: PROM NITE MIFFED FUZZ CLUB LP / CD MY PART IN HIS DOWNFALL LEWIS RECORDINGS LP / CD TRAPPED ANIMAL LP / CD NYC artist and Tricky collaborator Breanna Barbara IRREGULAR RECORDS 2CD DJ Yoda’s ‘Prom Nite’ features The House Gospel Choir, A heavy, beautiful guitar album for those that love to returns with ‘Nothin’ But Time’. A raw and immersive trip “A timeless album for the times” (****RNR), one of Folk Eva Lazarus, Liam Bailey, Lily James, Jamie Cullum and shred. ‘This album will destroy your mind and wipe all through psychedelic rock and blues, anchored by her Radio UK’s top 10 albums of 2021 – now a double CD, the bad away... Visceral’ Brix Smith on Steve Lamacq’s Homebody Sandman for a mix of Doo-Wop, Hip-Hop powerful vocals and unforgettable songwriting. with songs chronicling the rise and fall of Bodger. and Grooves. roundtable. BLACK OX ORKESTAR THE WINSTON BROTHERS GOAT JULIAN COPE EVERYTHING RETURNS DRIFT OH DEATH ENGLAND EXPECTORATES CONSTELLATION LP / CD COLEMINE RECORDS LP / CD ROCKET RECORDINGS LP / CD HEAD HERITAGE CD Klezmer-adjacent avant-folk from the influential German funk powerhouse’s first-ever full length LP. 11 Goat – the masked psychedelic collective from Sweden England Expectorates, cough splutter! A brand new early-2000s ensemble reunited after a 15-year hiatus. versatile cuts to invite listeners on an all-instrumental return with their first album of new music since 2016. album of 13 new songs from our nation’s favourite trip back to the future of funk. But make no mistake: Wrong-Righter… this is the Archdrude at his most Simmering, melancholic, incisively atmospheric Though audibly steeped in the deep funk tradition, this ‘Oh Death’ sees the band at their fuzziest, funkiest succinct, tripped-out, punky, blasted and beautiful. instrumentals & balladry sung in Yiddish & English. RIYL: best...’do the dance’! retrophile outfit is anything but dusty. Tindersticks, Leonard Cohen, Daniel Kahn. 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CONTENTS LONDON ✦ MEMPHIS ✦ ISLE OF WIGHT JANUARY 2023 ISSUE 350 “No one knew if FEATURES Nina Westervelt Joni would be up to it until that 26 DON WAS The Stones, very moment.” Dylan, Iggy… stories galore from INSIDE THE COMEBACK the mischief-making funkster OF THE CENTURY, P50 from Detroit who became the rock aristocracy’s most trusted collaborator. 33 THE BEST OF 2022 Everything great about the past 12 months in music. Including: the 75 Best New Albums of 2022; the 20 Best Reissues; Wet Leg in New Orleans; Nick Cave talks up the Book Of The Year; Danny Boyle on the trials and triumph of Pistol; Crazy Horse on their inexhaustible boss; Joni Mitchell’s comeback continues; Jeff Tweedy, Brett Anderson, Weyes Blood, Oumou Sangaré and more select “The Best Thing I’ve Heard All Year”. 62 BOB DYLAN In an exclusive chapter from The Philosophy Of Modern Song, Dylan tackles Mose Allison’s Everybody Cryin’ Mercy with blazing insight and firecracker prose. 66 RICK WAKEMAN Stacks of Moogs, double curries, and Kings Henry and Arthur, on ice! Peak prog pageantry recalled by the keyboard wizard and his squires. COVER STORY 70 BLONDIE Art-punk origins, Phil Spector insanity, chart domination – Debbie Harry and co (and their 2022 box set) bring new perspectives on their glory years. “It was like every fantasy of being a pop star,” they tell Tom Doyle. MOJO 3
Deep in the heartland: Margo Price, p14. There’d better be REGULARS mirrorballs: The Flaming Lips, 7 ALL BACK TO MY PLACE Reissues, p101. Rick Buckler, Kurt Vile and Meg Baird have Boss soul: Bruce some sounds to share, urgently. Springsteen, Lead Album, p82. 112 REAL GONE Loretta Lynn, 4 MOJO Noel Duggan, Joyce Sims, Robert Gordon, Anita Kerr and more, we’ll remember you. 120 ASK MOJO So who played songs live but never recorded them in the studio? 122 HELLO GOODBYE They were teenage Stooges fans trying to lift off in Rugby. Then friendship was tested by success and business. Sonic Boom remembers Spacemen 3. WHAT GOES ON! 10 SIR PETER BLAKE As an all-star concert to celebrate the eminent pop artist’s ninetieth birthday approaches, his sleeve- design clients reflect on his genius. And will any surprise Beatles be at the gig? 12 TOM PETTY In 1997, Petty and The Heartbreakers played 20 gigs at San Francisco’s Fillmore. They went crazy, playing deep roots covers and bringing on John Lee Hooker and Roger McGuinn. Now you can hear the results. 14 MARGO PRICE The rising alt- country force has a new LP ready. But how did she get here? And how do Sharon Van Etten, Jonathan Wilson and tripping come into it? 16 JOHNNY MARR As this year’s Fever Dreams Pts 1-4 is one of MOJO’s picks of the year, the guitar legend gets confidential about moving forward, playing with Andy Rourke again, and The Queen Is Dead. 17 PUNK MUSEUMS?! With a new interactive depository for gob’n’anarchy memorabilia about to open in Las Vegas, we ask: did we fight the punk wars for this? MOJO FILTER 82 NEW ALBUMS Bruce Springsteen: you know he’s got soul, plus Billy Strings, Gaye Su Akyol, Richard Dawson and more. 94 REISSUES Bowie’s first masterpiece, Hunky Dory, revisited, plus Cymande, Neil Young, Fela Kuti, The Beach Boys and more. 108 BOOKS Bono’s riveting memoir, plus Happy Mondays vibesmaster Bez’s second autobiography and an explosive biography of Chuck Berry. 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. POSTMAS- TER: 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, Lathkill Street, Market Harborough, Leicester LE16 9EF, United Kingdom. Air Business Ltd is acting as our mailing agent. THIS MONTH'S CONTRIBUTORS INCLUDE... Celie Byrne. William Claxton, Alysse Gafkjen Tom Doyle Bob Dylan Mattia Zoppellaro MOJO staple Tom was very Columbia recording artist Bob excited to interview Blondie Dylan is no slouch at writing Mattia, who shot Wet Leg for for this issue. Not least because songs. This month MOJO is MOJO (see page 36), says of his when Clem Burke spotted Tom’s reminded he is pretty good at experience: “It’s impossible to drum kit in the corner at the writing books, too, as we excerpt get a bad shot in New Orleans. start of their Zoom chat, Tom a chapter from The Philosophy Of I think it has to do with the quali- was able to tell him that he Modern Song, his compendium ty of the light. But the mood of used to batter along to Hanging of ruminations on 66 favourite the people is what gets my pho- On The Telephone back in 1979 tunes. Read his thoughts on tographic mojo working. Their when he was 12. Mose Allison from page 62. vibes are creatively infectious.”
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Meg Baird OLD-TIME TRAVELLER What music are you currently Which musician, other than your- grooving to? self, have you ever wanted to be? I’ve been really enjoying the immer- Anyone who has nice people to sive world of Misha Panfilov’s The load all of their gear. Or Neil Sea Will Outlive Us All. Also, the sound Young, for a glimpse of life at of migrating birds along the coast of Broken Arrow Ranch. Northern California. Autumn is the only safe time to listen to the heart- What do you sing in the shower? breakingly beautiful A Leaf Must Fall from Sunshine Possibilities [1969 LP High notes, freestyle. It’s a good from The Famous Jug Band]. warm-up. What, if push comes to shove, is What is your favourite Saturday your all-time favourite album? night record? I’d highlight any of David Roback’s Pretty Things’ Parachute because work, especially Opal’s Early Record- it sounds so good turned up really, ings, which has meant so much to me really loud on our stereo. Or Visions Of over so much time. A New World by Lonnie Liston Smith. What was the first record you ever And your Sunday morning record? bought? And where did you buy it? I look forward to Charlie [Saufley, It was a 7-inch from the Xanadu Heron Oblivion bandmate] playing soundtrack with Olivia Newton- records on Sunday morning. John’s Magic when I was a small child. Typical selections include Augustus Probably from a Peaches Records & Pablo’s Original Rockers and, in Tapes chain in New Jersey. I must have another direction, Nels Cline & begged my parents for it, and I played Eric Von Essen’s beautiful Elegies. it on a Fisher-Price record-player. Meg Baird’s new LP Furling will be released in January on Drag City. ALL BACK TO MY PLACE THE STARS REVEAL THE SONIC DELIGHTS GUARANTEED TO GET THEM GOING... Kurt Vile Pavement/Medusa Cyclone split Rick Buckler in Woking called Aercos, long 7-inch. I got them both on the same gone now, but flicking through PHILLY’S CONSTANT day from the Philadelphia Record THE JAM’S BEAT the albums and singles in the HITMAKER Exchange. Medusa Cyclone were DEFENDER racks was a favourite Saturday a dark, gothic indie band from afternoon pastime. What music are you currently the ’90s. What music are you currently grooving to? grooving to? Which musician, other than your- Which musician, other than your- self, have you ever wanted to be? I’ve been revisiting a band called self, have you ever wanted to be? I still like to listen to the music that King Kong a lot and their song had such an influence on me when I I never wanted to be a singer or Scooba Dooba Diver, which is just Neil Young, Bob Dylan and Keith was growing up – what my brothers guitarist as I was always drawn to very groovy, very repetitive. He Richards. I consumed them all were listening to, The Beatles, listen to the drummer. I used to [Ethan Buckler] is a legend. He used and elements of them are in my Kinks and The Who, mostly. I also aspire to play as effortlessly as to play in Slint, and his music as DNA, but these days I wish I had like discovering modern classical Ian Paice from Deep Purple – the King Kong is just incredible. Schoolly D’s voice. It’s the greatest music or music written for films. I structure of everything he played voice from Philadelphia, it cuts enjoy a good movie with music writ- was so very well thought out. What, if push comes to shove, is right through. ten especially for a visual impact. your all-time favourite album? What do you sing in the shower? What do you sing in the shower? What, if push comes to shove, is The first Ol’ Dirty Bastard album your all-time favourite album? Sing? What, me, with my voice?! [Return To The 36 Chambers]. His flow Songs from the old days like is insane. He’s like the Nirvana of rap, Neneh Cherry’s Buffalo Stance, Re-discovering an old favourite and What is your favourite Saturday a tragic figure, but so influential. but also newer pop stuff like finding that it’s still engaging always night record? Charli XCX and Carly Rae Jepsen’s surprises me, and at the moment it’s What was the first record you ever Backseat, Caroline Polachek’s Are You Experienced? from The Jimi The Boys Are Back In Town, Thin bought? And where did you buy it? Bunny Is A Rider and Run The Road Hendrix Experience. Next week, Lizzy. Or, I’ve Found The Car, sung by Santigold. Bangers! I really go who knows what? by ‘The Inebriated Choir’. Pavement’s Pacific Trim EP and the for it. What was the first record you ever And your Sunday morning record? Rachael Cassells What is your favourite Saturday bought? And where did you buy it? night record? Chopin’s Raindrop [The Prelude Op. The first record that I didn’t have to 28, No. 15]. Or Shut The Hell Up by The Avalanches’ Saturday Night borrow from my older brothers, and ‘The Sleepy Old Codgers’… Inside Out. It’s just so beautiful paid for with my own money, was sample-based music and they the single Diamonds by Bud Ashton The Jam 1982 by Rick Buckler and Zoë got David Berman from the Silver And His Group. I loved the drum Howe is published by Omnibus on Jews to come out from hiding – intro, I’d listen to that over and over November 17. he reads this beautiful poem and again when I could get the record- the way it fades in and out, it’s player to myself. We had a local, like static on a radio station probably the only real, record store from heaven. “Me, sing in the And your Sunday morning record? shower? With my voice?!” Chastity Belt. Their music gets stuck in my soul, from ear-worms RICK BUCKLER such as Different Now to On The Floor, which is deeper and heavy. Kurt Vile’s (Watch My Moves) is out now on Verve/Virgin Music. MOJO 7
Bauer Media Publishing Theories, The Lantern, rants, etc. 75 Hampstead Road London NW1 2PL MOJO welcomes correspondence for publication. Tel: 020 7437 9011 Write to us at: MOJO, Bauer Media Publishing, The Lantern, 75 Hampstead Road, Reader queries: mojoreaders@ London, NW1 2PL. E-mail to: [email protected] bauermedia.co.uk Subscriber queries: bauer@ IT’S BECOMING SOMETHING OF AN ANNUAL subscription.co.uk tradition to frame the year’s music, and the year of MOJOs, as a respite from the General e-mail: mojo@ anxieties and iniquities of the world right now. But here we are again, surveying the artists and records that kept us more or less sane in 2022, and hoping that our bauermedia.co.uk magazine has provided a similar service for you all. Website: mojo4music.com This MOJO, like all MOJOs, is an unabashed celebration of the culture we Editor love. But if there’s a prevailing theme that emerges from our Review Of 2022, it’s John Mulvey one of artists triumphing against the odds, working their way through various tragedies and adversities, and coming out on the other side: changed, resilient, in Senior Editor many cases making some of the most profound art of long careers. Danny Eccleston Now is also probably a good time to reflect on what we’ve achieved at MOJO in Art Editor the last year. Besides the small matter of monthly magazines, we’ve launched a Mark Wagstaff radically improved app for our digital editions. By the end of 2022, there will be 10 more deluxe volumes in the MOJO Collectors’ Series of specials. We now have Production Editor a fortnightly podcast, The MOJO Record Club. Not forgetting a handsome new Simon McEwen MOJO VIP scheme you might be interested in (details of that are on page 24). Associate Editor Thank you so much, once again, for all your loyalty and support. “We ended (Reviews) up talking more about universal matters,” as the ineffably wise Nick Cave tells us Jenny Bulley this month, “but all of that circles around music, as everything does, really.” Associate Editor JOHN MULVEY, EDITOR (News) I just can’t cope Cartney (who hadn’t even taken LSD at the time), Ian Harrison with freaky stuff who was the TRUE cosmic explorer. It was Lennon (with a little help from Harrison) who truly brought Deputy Art Editor Victoria Segal’s lengthy article in MOJO 348 on the the psychedelia into Revolver, making it the psych-pop Del Gentleman making of The Beatles’ Revolver is a very well-written, art opus that it’s seen as today. His contributions to insightful piece. Nevertheless, one can’t escape the one of the band’s several masterpiece albums should Picture Editor feeling that Ms Segal has a deep bias toward Paul not be reduced to the result of sheer solipsism. Just Matt Turner McCartney, considering how she spends so much because Paul McCartney is still alive and will probably time analysing and praising McCartney’s input into read the article Ms Segal wrote doesn’t mean his role Senior Associate Editor the album while minimising the equally important in the album’s creation should be highlighted and fa- Andrew Male contributions of George Harrison and, more egre- voured, as opposed to the practical sidelining of John giously, John Lennon. While Eleanor Rigby, Got To Lennon, a man to whom many (if not most) Beatles Contributing Editors Get You Into My Life and Good Day Sunshine receive fans was, is now, and forever will be THE Beatle. Phil Alexander, considerable descriptions as to their composition and Keith Cameron, background, you would think by reading the article Arturo L Andrade, Gwangju, South Korea Sylvie Simmons that Tomorrow Never Knows is the only song Lennon provided for Revolver. Have you been Thanks for their help with this hallucinating lately? issue: Keith Cameron, Ms Segal tips her hand into her bias when she writes: “Here was the cosmic explorer [Paul], radiat- Sometimes it seems MOJO writes just for me. Take Chris Catchpole, Ian Whent. ing positivity and possibility, and here, too, was the issue 347: Kate Bush, Neu!, Be-Bop Deluxe. Best solipsist [John], feeling the pull towards all kinds of of all, the Buried Treasure – The Godfathers’ Birth Among this month’s oblivion, whether sleep, birth or death.” A bit glib School Work Death. I remember them coming through contributors: and snarky there, aren’t we? It was Lennon, not Mc- town and my first impression was, “Wow, these guys John Aizlewood, Martin Aston, Mike Barnes, Mark Blake, Glyn Brown, David Buckley, John Bungey, Keith Cameron, Chris Catchpole, Stevie Chick, Andy Cowan, Grayson Haver Currin, Max Décharné, Tom Doyle, David Fricke, Andy Fyfe, Pat Gilbert, David Hutcheon, Jim Irvin, Colin Irwin, David Katz, Ted Kessler, Andrew Male, Bob Mehr, James McNair, Chris Nelson, Lucy O’Brien, Andrew Perry, Clive Prior, Jon Savage, Victoria Segal, David Sheppard, Michael Simmons, Sylvie Simmons, Mat Snow, Jeff Tamarkin, Ben Thompson, Kieron Tyler, Charles Waring, Lois Wilson. Among this month’s photographers: Cover: Brian Aris (insets Danny Clinch, Getty), Jay Blakesberg, Bleddyn Butcher, Jack Good, Bob Gruen, Brian Rae, Mick Rock, Ted Russell, Kevin Scanlon, Gus Stewart, Pat Pope, Brian Ward, Nina Westervelt, Russel Wheelock, Mattia Zoppellaro. 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play all these Boyce & Hart hooks as if they wrote Do we really need to keep fiddling and tinkering with Head of Magazine Media them.” As it turns out, they did. Their tunefulness these recordings? As a music fan of many years stand- Clare Chamberlain belied their caustic lyrics. This album is loaded with ing, I have fallen for this on more occasions than I can gems aside from the great title track. And the next remember. I have in my record collection albums I MD Bauer Media Advertising album, 1989’s More Songs About Love & Hate, was purchased new on vinyl during the 1960s and 1970s, Simon Kilby even better. Glad they’re still at it and hope they which I then bought again when they were transferred cross the pond again. onto CD during the 1980s. I then fell for it again and Head Of Magazine Brands Anu Short purchased them for a third time when they were “re- Brand Director Joel Stephan Al Szopinski, Chicago mastered for CD” and I have bought fourth copies of some which were remastered, yet again, and pressed Sales Operations Co-ordinator Weʼre entering savage new onto 180g vinyl. I have to say that in nearly all cases Talys Andres times, and weʼre going to the first pressings sound by far the best so invariably have to be pure and direct I listen to the originals. Regional Advertising Katie Kendall and strong if weʼre gonna Classified Sales Executive survive them It is suggested by those who remaster these classic Imogen Jackaman records that it is necessary to make them sound better I’ve been a regular gig-goer for over 40 years now, and for modern equipment, but this just does not stand up. Classified Sales Manager Ben Peck in that time I’ve seen some amazing shows, including, I am fortunate enough to have first pressings of all of Inserts Manager Simon Buckenham in recent weeks, Jockstrap, Sorry and Just Mustard. The Beatles LPs and have recently obtained a first press Production Manager Carl Lawrence When I go to see a band I want to watch the band of Please Please Me in its original mono mix. It sounds on-stage. I don’t want to watch through someone’s fabulous, way better than the mono mix remaster I Sales Operations Executive, screen held up in front of me. I understand if someone foolishly bought on CD as part of an expensive box set BMA Finance Helen Mear wants to take a photo, which takes a split second, but some years ago. I would urge younger music fans com- why this constant need to regularly film short clips ing to The Beatles’ LPs for the first time to get hold of CEO of Bauer Publishing UK throughout the gig? I love going to gigs, I love seeing the early versions on vinyl and play them as they were Chris Duncan bands, new and old, I love that sense of anticipation intended to be heard. You won’t be disappointed! before a band comes on-stage, I love that sense of EA to CEO Vicky Meadows euphoria when you know you’ve witnessed something Mike Massey, via e-mail Chief Financial Officer, Bauer really special with a group of like-minded people. Magazine Media UK Lisa Hayden Iʼve got something I was pleased to read about Bob Dylan, who an- I want to play for you EA to CFO Stacey Thomas nounced mobile phones wouldn’t be allowed at his Group MD Women’s Mass & Celebrity, upcoming shows. Some people are probably moaning This past weekend we lost Brooks Arthur, who had that he’s just a grumpy old man (like me) who’s living an interesting career in music starting out as a jazz Premium and Entertainment in the past, or it’s an infringement on their rights, or singer and writer and recording artist before going on Helen Morris something similar. But for me, personally, I think, to own and operate 914 Sound Studio, in New York, good on ya Bob for making a stand. I look forward where Bruce Springsteen would record The Wild, The Publisher, Premium and to the response of your readers over the next few Innocent & The E Street Shuffle, and that little song Born Entertainment Lauren Holleyoake months to find out if I’m just in a very small minority, To Run in late night secret sessions before Brooks got or if others feel the same way. wind of the situation. He also happened to be an uncle PA to Group MD Elisha Thomas of mine through marriage and a great guy. PA to Publisher Tayla Todd Jon Cooper, Cromer Scott Bergman, via e-mail Commercial Marketing Director With pirates, itʼs never Liz Martin just for the money, is it? There is nothing real outside our perception Managing Editor Linda Steventon Argus, the defining Wishbone Ash LP, celebrates its of reality, is there? Editorial Assistant Whitney Jones 50th birthday this year. I just witnessed the band play it MOJO CD and Honours Creative live in Leicester and it still stands up. Worth an article in Come on guys! The Stevie Nicks song For What It’s MOJO, surely? Not just to appraise the LP but to hon- Worth is an entirely different tune to the Stephen Director Dave Henderson our the great Andy Powell, arguably the best rock gui- Stills/Buffalo Springfield song you reference in the Senior Events Producer tarist currently out there who has been a road dog since MOJO Playlist [MOJO 349]. Both are great songs, 1969 and who runs the band like a cottage industry. but not the same song. Marguerite Peck An example of how to make a living in the modern era. Business Analyst Mita Parekh Darryl Still, via e-mail Marketing Manager Susan Litawski Andy Betts, Leicester Direct Marketing Manager Julie Spires Ah, well… There is an original Stevie Nicks song called Direct Marketing Executive I live in a highly excited For What It’s Worth from 2011, but we were referring state of overstimulation to a brand new Nicks cover of the Stills song. Sorry for Raheema Rahim the confusion. Printing: WilliamGibbons Well, another MOJO [348] and another remix/re- master of a classic 1960s album. Revolver is indeed a Long live the new flesh! For subscription or back issue queries, please contact CDS groundbreaking album, but is it really necessary to Global on [email protected] Phone from the UK on keep taking this incredibly important music apart, Wasn’t there room for “I love the smell of napalm 01858 43 8884. 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WHAT GOES ON! THE HOT NEWS AND BIZARRE STORIES FROM PLANET MOJO
Rock goes to collage: (far left) a selection of Sir Peter Blake’s celebrated cover art; (left) cutting up his most famous sleeve, Sgt. Pepper, 1992; (right) with fan and collaborator Paul Weller at the MOJO Honours List awards, 2009. Happy Birthday, Painter Man Sgt. Pepper artist Sir Peter Blake art student experimenting with pop art imagery in is 90! Heavy friends prepare to the late ’50s, to creating an iconic silkscreen work celebrate, talk cover collaboration. titled The Beach Boys in 1964, he was brought in to advise The Who on their look, ahead of work- ing with The Beatles, who he’d first met in ’63, HAVING TURNED 90 in the summer of on their world-famous cover image. this year, illustrious pop artist Peter Blake is to have a concert staged in his honour, “Pop art and popular culture are quite separate on December 2 at London’s Royal Festival Hall, entities,” Blake stressed to The Guardian earlier organised by fan-turned-collaborator, Paul Weller. this year. “I could be a pop artist and not be inter- “I just thought, We’ve got to do a tribute gig ested in popular culture, but as it happens, I am.” Like millions of others, Paul Weller first for him,” Weller tells MOJO. “So, I just called became aware of Peter Blake through Sgt. Pepper. round a few people, to see who was up for it.” Appearing alongside Weller are Madness, He however picks out Blake’s 1962 mixed media Noel Gallagher, Roger Daltrey, Chrissie Hynde collage, The Toy Shop, as his favourite of his and Baxter Dury. Notably, most of the musicians works. “I thought that was incredible,” he says. on the bill have worked with Blake on cover art “Obviously his painting is brilliant, but I really down the years (ranging from Oasis’s 2006 love his collage work.” compilation Stop The Clocks, through to Madness’s Weller remembers his and Blake’s front cover Oui Oui, Si Si, Ja Ja, Da Da in 2012, and The collaboration for 1995’s Stanley Road as being a Who’s WHO in 2019). particular thrill. “If I’m honest, I was a bit like, “He’s where this sort of mad rock’n’roll world Fucking hell, I didn’t realise we could get some- crosses over into the more sensitive art world,” one like Peter Blake to do a sleeve. So, I was a bit says Baxter Dury, whose parents Ian and Betty freaked out because he was such a big name in my were both taught by Blake at the Royal College Of mind. But he didn’t have a big ego, telling us what Art in the mid ’60s. Blake lat- to do, or whatever. He was er produced art for Ian Dury happy to work with us.” LPs, including 1989’s Apples. “He’s where As to whether, on the this mad“I can remember Peter from night at the Royal Festival Hall, there may possibly forever,” Dury adds. “He feels a bit like family. He was just rock’n’roll be some Beatle-shaped very gentle and positive… surprise guests performing world crossesconsidering some of the other in celebration of the artist, Weller is cagey. “We’ve asked more angular and grumpy people around (laughs).” over into Billy Shears,” he offers with Dartford-born Blake a chuckle, referring to the the morealways had a strong connec- supposed doppelganger tion with music, even before sensitive art that replaced McCartney Shutterstock, Getty he created the life-sized in the ‘Paul Is Dead’ collage scene for the cover of world.” conspiracy mythos. Sgt. Pepper with his then-wife “But we’ll have to see.” Tom Doyle Jann Haworth. From being an BAXTER DURY MOJO 11
WHAT GOES ON! Ripping up the script: Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers return to the source, Fillmore Auditorium, San Francisco, January 1997; (right) the band got up and boogied with John Lee Hooker (satin socks out of shot). UNEARTHED! PETTY’S ’97 Withers’ Ain’t No Sunshine; Ralph Stanley’s bluegrass tale Little Maggie; a revival of On TREASURES WITH JOHN The Street by Mudcrutch, Petty’s early band LEE HOOKER AND MORE… with Campbell and Tench – reflect “how The Heartbreakers were when nobody was looking and the one I always wanted every- ON JANUARY 10, 1997, Tom Petty Petty Radio, referring to pianist Benmont body to hear.” and The Heartbreakers took the stage Tench. Petty’s response, as Campbell put Live At The Fillmore 1997 includes Petty in San Francisco’s Fillmore Audito- it: “‘No, we got something that works for and The Heartbreakers’ turn as The Byrds, rium, opening with a pair of hits, I Won’t Back us’ – the whole showbiz shtick.” But at the backing McGuinn on four of that band’s clas- Down and Jammin’ Me, before veering way off Fillmore, “we dropped all of those precon- sics including It Won’t Be Wrong from 1965’s their usual arena-show script into a full even- ceptions. If there were some things we didn’t Turn! Turn! Turn!. “It’s a really intricate vocal ing of deep tracks and bar-band covers. And it quite know, we’d run them over [in sound- piece,” Campbell noted. “I was proud that we was like that for the next four weeks: a historic check] and put them in the show that night.” pulled that one out.” And in their Fillmore fi- There was even writing on the spot. One nale on February 7, Petty’s group backed John residency of 20 nights in that psychedelic in- timacy packed with songs by Bo Diddley, The day, playing guitar in his hotel room, Campbell Lee Hooker for a furious mini-set of blues and Zombies and Ray Charles; Petty rarities and came up with a riff that was part Eric Clapton boogie that appears in full in the box. guest slots by idols such as John Lee Hooker and “kinda Zeppelin… I took “All they said was, ‘Don’t change chords,’” Campbell and The Byrds’ Roger McGuinn. it to soundcheck and Tom said, “It’s how remembered. “You watched Petty wanted to “get away from the land ‘Let’s do it tonight.’” There was his foot. And he had the best socks. He had these great suits of videos and records for awhile,” he told Bay no title so Petty made The Heart- [with] slacks that came down Area journalist Joel Selvin ahead of the run, one up: The Date I Had With breakers not quite to the shoe. You could quoted in the latter’s linernotes in new box That Ugly Old Homecoming were when see the fine satin socks he was set, Live At The Fillmore 1997. “We want to Queen: “That’s how spontane- nobody was wearing. We watched him like get back to what we understand… It’s been a ous it was.” looking.” a hawk.” long, long time since everyone’s been this up about anything – to just play and be a band.” “The Fillmore was a chance BENMONT David Fricke to be who we were,” Tench af- TENCH Live At The Fillmore 1997 is out this “Ben and I were always complaining, firmed to me on Sirius XM. The ‘Change your set!’” Heartbreakers guitarist left turns in the box’s 72 tracks Mike Campbell told me for Sirius XM’s Tom – a deep-blues reading of Bill month on Warner. GIMME FIVE… FORMAT SALUTES Jay Blakesberg, Alamy The Tweeds Cliff Richard The Legendary Joe Cornish Thee Oh Sees Stardust Cowboy I Need That Record Wired For Sound Cautionary Tale About The 8-Track Collection I Hate CD’s Illegal Downloading (AUTOBAHN, 1980) (EMI, 1981) (5SEVEN, 2019) (NORTON, 1992) (DOWNLOAD, 2006) Massachusetts Sir Cliff takes to More a powerpop his roller skates A go-go From ex-BBC practical love team get to salute twanger where DJ tag-team letter to the over-excited at listening to the outsider Adam And format than visiting loads cassettes on artist shouts Joe’s Song poetic of record shops, coveting the your Walkman. See also Clem about hating Wars series, a homage, this 100-edition exotic treasures within and Snide’s Nick Drake Tape, CDs accompanied by what Bowie-sounding analysis of 2008-2018 box of John Dwyer watching hypnotised as the Cassette by Rohan Irie, and sounds like blowing into a snide MP3s and the rock and friends’ albums saw each vinyl spins (“makes my life chrome-dioxide hardliners garden hose. John Peel penury it causes, imagining, one reborn on recycled worth living”). Hear hear, etc. Bow Wow Wow’s Your played it. See also live, “The Killers employed as road 8-track cartridge. “Niche? Looks askance at 8-tracks and Cassette Pet and C-30, C-60, CD-kicking versions of Neil drillers.” See also Carbon/ Yes,” said Dwyer. “Fucking cassettes though. C-90 Go!. Young’s Piece Of Crap. Silicon’s M.P. Free. cool? We think so.” 12 MOJO
SJM Concerts, Metropolis and Regular Music by association with Wasserman Music present PLUS GUEST Sam Shackleton UK TOUR 2022 11 DEC EDINBURGH THE LIQUID ROOM 14 DEC BRISTOL THEKLA 15 DEC LONDON 16 DEC MANCHESTER ELECTRIC BALLROOM 17 DEC GLASGOW BAND ON THE WALL 18 DEC NEWCASTLE THE GARAGE 19 DEC NOTTINGHAM THE CLUNY 2 RESCUE ROOMS TICKETS AVAILABLE FROM GIGSANDTOURS.COM TICKETMASTER.CO.UK MARYWALLOPERS.COM “The Mary Wallopers invokes the raucous ghosts of The Dubliners and The Pogues to startling effect” The Guardian “Irish punk folk rabble-rousers!” MOJO THE NEW SINGLE ‘LOVE WILL GET YOU THERE’ OUT NOW NEW ALBUM ‘CUTS AND BRUISES’ OUT 17 FEBRUARY 2023 FEBRUARY THU 16 LEEDS - O2 ACADEMY TUE 21 CARDIFF - UNIVERSITY GREAT HALL SFORLID1O7UT NEWCASTLE - NX THU 23 NOTTINGHAM - ROCK CITY SSOALTD O1U8T LIVERPOOL - UNI MOUNTFORD HALL FRI 24 BIRMINGHAM - O2 ACADEMY MON 20 NORWICH - UEA SOSLADTOU2T5 BRISTOL - O2 ACADEMY UK TOUR 2023 INHALER.BAND GIGSANDTOURS.COM AN SJM CONCERTS PRESENTATION BY ARRANGEMENT WITH 13 ARTISTS TICKETMASTER.CO.UK SJM CONCERTS PRESENTS £30ALL(TPILCUKSBEOTOSKING&VENUEFEES) Orchestral Tour 2023 UK TOUR 2022 Plus Special Guest BILLY BRAGG NOVEMBER DECEMBER PMSOOonLRdDTaOySU0MT5OUTH Friday 09 GUILDHALL SSSaWOtLuADrdNOaSyUET26A ARENA TBShORuLIrDDsdLOaUIyNT0G1TON SHEFFIELD SPA Tuesday 06 UTILITA SLSuLOnLAdDNayOD2UU7TDNO ARENA VENUE CYMRU Friday 02 NOTTINGHAM ARENA MOTORPOINT SMSaOAtLuNDrdCOaHyUE1T0STER GLASGOW ARENA AO ARENA MBSOLonLAdDCaOyKU2PT8OOL OVO HYDRO OPERA HOUSE Thursday 08 Saturday 17 SSSaOTtLOuDrCdOKaUyTT0O3N GLOBE BIRMINGHAM LONDON RESORTS WORLD THE O2 ARENA MAY 2023 40TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION Saturday 27 Performing with a 22-Piece Orchestra and 8-Piece Choir Composed & Conducted by Joe Duddell WARRINGTON VICTORIA PARK, NEIGHBOURHOOD WEEKENDER Tuesday 25 April Tuesday 02 May Wednesday 10 May BRIGHTON DOME NEWCASTLE O2 CITY HALL MANCHESTER O2 APOLLO Wednesday 26 April Thursday 04 May Friday 12 May CARDIFF ST DAVIDS HALL SHEFFIELD CITY HALL BLACKPOOL OPERA HOUSE Friday 28 April Friday 05 May Saturday 13 May YORK BARBICAN BIRMINGHAM SYMPHONY HALL NOTTINGHAM ROYAL CONCERT HALL Saturday 29 April EDINBURGH USHER HALL Sunday 07 May Monday 15 May LIVERPOOL PHILHARMONIC HALL BATH FORUM Monday 01 May GLASGOW SEC ARMADILLO Tuesday 09 May Wednesday 17 May MANCHESTER O2 APOLLO LONDON ROYAL ALBERT HALL THE NUMBER ONE ALBUM n.k-POP OUT NOW TICKETS ON SALE FRIDAY 18 NOVEMBER AT 9:30AM PAULHEATON.CO.UK GIGSANDTOURS.COM TICKETMASTER.CO.UK wearejames.com | gigsandtours.com | ticketmaster.co.uk AN SJM CONCERTS PRESENTATION IN ASSOCIATION WITH SOLO, PROMM & TILEYARD MUSIC
MOJO WORKING “You can sense that the album is very psychedelic.” MARGO PRICE Magic moments: Margo FACT BOX and worked on the songs that would make Price and husband Jeremy up Strays. “Back in my farm days, you’d go out Ivey working on songs; Title: Strays to the cow pasture and pick them yourself,” (top) Price in 2022: “it’s she recalls of life in the Midwest. “But these just a new direction.” Due: January 2023 were grown by someone with a little more knowledge. I do think that you can sense that ALT-COUNTRY REAL-DEAL Production: Margo the album is very psychedelic…” MARGO PRICE ’SHROOMS Price and Jonathan HER WAY TO LP FOUR Wilson They began work with producer Jonathan Wilson in Nashville before moving to Fivestar Songs: Time Studio in rustic Topanga Canyon in California Machine, Hell In The in summer 2021 for a week’s recording. “We Heartland, Anytime called it the hot vax summer,” says Price. You Call (ft. Lucius), “We’d all had our jab in the arm and me and Lydia, Landfill the band [The Price Tags] all stayed together, we had a pool and a bar in the back, hanging The Buzz: “I’m still out the whole entire time. It was the most fun focusing on just we’ve had in the studio yet.” writing good songs. It’s not like I’ve got a With tasters given by lead tracks Been To bunch of pop writers The Mountain and Change Of Heart, as well to try to relate to as psychedelic influences, the new album’s who I am or taking in West Coast pop, R&B and new wave, anything, it’s very among the pedal steel and acoustic instru- much me. It’s just a ments. Sharon Van Etten, ex-Heartbreaker new direction.” Mike Campbell and Lucius all guest. “Sharon helped me finish this one song [Radio] and Margo Price added all these beautiful, beautiful harmo- nies,” says Price. “And Mike Campbell [who A STRAIGHT-TALKING, dues-paid pres- Her last, 2020’s That’s How Rumors Get guests on Light Me Up] has been a song- ence in Americana, Margo Price has a Started, came out just in time for the lock- writing hero for years. He gave us so many lot on. Her hair-raising memoir Maybe down. “I’d really just gotten my career off the nuggets of wisdom about how to write a We’ll Make It came out in October, shortly ground,” she tells MOJO, “so to not be able to good hook, really how to make the chorus preceded by her podcast Runaway Horses, go out and tour that last record – it hurt.” like, perfect.” where she chewed the fat with the likes of Emmylou Harris, Bob Weir and Bettye LaVette. Instead of getting out on the road, she Thematically, the album has the kind of She’s also been completing her fourth album, and husband/co-writer Jeremy Ivey explored ambition that hallucinogens sometimes pro- entitled Strays. lesser-travelled terrain. Over six days in South mote. “It’s not necessarily a concept album, Carolina in 2020 they took magic mushrooms but it is venturing into concepts about life, death, humanity, destruction, really where we are in the world,” explains Price. “I would say, one of the main things is love. It mirrors my book, where I talked about psychedelic medicine… it’s similar in many regards. “You know, I still feel like an outsider in Nashville,” she concludes, “and even some- times in the Americana scene – like, they’re too country for rock, too rock for country. But we just don’t want to be limited by only making country music. I will make country albums again, but at this point, we really did want to dip our toes into some new territory and just show our growth.” Ian Harrison Getty (3), Alysse Gafkjen ALSO WORKING Martin Gore, its themes were band are recording new music. He new songs Alone and Endsong have inspired by the early pandemic. The also appeared to confirm that been heard at live shows. Robert …PATTI LABELLE (right) is Queens Of The Stone Age preparing new music, death of founder member have made a new LP too Smith has indicated the record telling CBS News about a Andy Fletcher in June, he …A CERTAIN RATIO will be called Songs From new R&B LP that will says, “has really given the release new LP 1982 The Lost World …GINA feature guest spots project an extra level of next March. Says BIRCH (left) of The from Mariah Carey, meaning” …RAMBLIN’ drummer Donald Raincoats releases her ”20 songs, some JACK ELLIOTT, 91, has Johnson, “The title is debut solo LP next collaborations, a lot of 10 tracks in the bag just playful. People can March: co-produced by surprises… you don’t recorded with producer take it whichever way Youth, I Play My Bass wanna become boring to and guitarist Andy they can.” Songs include A Loud will be on Jack people” …DEPECHE Hedges, recorded earlier Trip In Hulme, Ballad Of ACR White’s Third Man MODE’s new LP, Memento Mori, and Afro Dizzy …the wait for the Records. “It’s a bit like a diary will be released next spring. Said this year …EAGLES OF next LP by THE CURE goes on, but DEATH METAL’s Jesse Hughes of my own obsessions and said on Instagram Livestream that the interests,” she says… 14 MOJO
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ROCK’N’ROLL CONFIDENTIAL MARR FIRE ally got me into Angel’s Egg by Gong, those kinds of things, the formative stuff. Really, The Smiths was a thing that happened along the way. Johnny’s too How is it playing the old Smiths good! songs? 1 Alvvays Belinda Says (POLYVINYL RECORD They’re part of a live show and repertoire, and repertoire, it’s got to CO., 2022) come from somewhere. I do see it 2 Lime Garden Clockwork (SO YOUNG, 2022) as the past, but there’s a difference between that and waking up in the 3 Rolling morning thinking about a record I Blackouts C.F. My Echo (SUB POP, 2022) 4 Moonchild did 35 years ago. There’s always a Sanelly Yebo good feeling when we play them Teacher and people are really happy, and (TRANSGRESSIVE, 2021) 5 Don Cherry the fan in me, if I went to see Televi- Degi-Degi (EMI, 1975) sion or Blondie, I’d definitely want to hear some of the classics played really well by a good band. There were no Smiths involved, but that happened when Rick Astley and Blossoms did two gigs of Smiths songs last year… I imagine that that’s right. But the way the other fellers [Blossoms] went about it was duplicitous and I had to respond like a human being. But you know, I’ve not got any problem with Rick Astley. I believe he’s a really nice guy. And hearing it was good, that pleases me. I’d like to think that’s something to do with the joy in the songs. Did people sing The Queen Is Dead at you when the Queen died? Well, I was out of the country, so I didn’t really engage with it very much. In all honesty, I just saw the Queen’s passing as being the passing of a 96-year-old woman. I’ve never been too drawn into debates about the monarchy be- cause, from being a little boy, they were pretty much meaningless to me. I didn’t see any Show of hands: evidence of them in the Northwest. It might be Johnny Marr, still coming from an Irish family. I would certainly doing what he does. never wish any harm on anyone, and I under- stand absolutely that there’s much more to it, historically and culturally, but I don’t feel con- JOHNNY MARR nected to that. I was more personally upset by David Bowie dying. I miss him a lot. As a serial collaborator, who else would you like to play with? Manchester’s greatest living 15 and 25,000 people, in arenas [with Blondie I’d like to do something with Alicia Keys. I’ve guitarist talks momentum, forbid- and The Killers]. That’s a relatively new thing, worked with her a couple of times, and she’s a so I feel like I’m learning. It feels like momen- really impressive person. And I’ve always had den visions and The Queen Is Dead. tum. And this part of my career has thrown up massive admiration for Polly Harvey. I could WHEN MOJO calls, Johnny Marr’s new interests and new kinds of puzzles. When imagine something happening with Polly. on tour with The Killers in Cleve- I got to Fever Dreams, this invisible presence And I’ve just written a new song for Blondie, land. Today, while his bandmates tapped me on the shoulder and said, “What is which I think is pretty good. I’ve got a couple it you’re going to say? And how are you going of songs on the go with Modest Mouse as well went to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, he to say it?” I’m trying to build on that. – I’m doing what I do! sequestered himself to marshal his energies and work on new songs. It’s a single-minded attitude You played Smiths songs with Andy Rourke Tell us something you’ve never told again at Madison Square Garden in October. an interviewer before. that’s sustained a career now in its 40th year, from the still-resounding boom of The Smiths He and I see each other quite a lot, but it’s No one needs to see me sat behind the drum Andy Cotterill on to collaborations in bands (including Elec- a different matter getting up “This kit. It just doesn’t look right. I tronic, The The, Modest Mouse) and as guest at Madison Square Garden. invisible remember doing it once and star (Bryan Ferry, Pet Shop Boys, Oasis and Things like soundchecking, presence whoever was in the room many more). A solo artist these past nine years, being in the same dressing tapped said, “Get off, I never want now the guitar stylist’s latest LP Fever Dreams room, normal band stuff, it me on the to see that again. It looks re- Parts 1-4 is one of MOJO’s picks of the year. “I reminds me of when we shoulder…” ally weird.” Though, actually, kind of wish I’d seen John Lennon’s guitar,” he started out, and that’s very I played drums during an entire reflects of his Rock Hall no-show, “but we have much pre-Smiths. We don’t JOHNNY MARR rehearsal with Beth Orton to make our sacrifices whenever we can…” really talk very much about once, one afternoon. The Smiths – when we do How was 2022 for you? get nostalgic, it’s more about As told to Ian Harrison writing the ‘Om’ sign on our Well, all this year I’ve been playing to between desert boots or the time he re- Fever Dreams Parts 1-4 is out now on BMG. 16 MOJO
LAST NIGHT WHAT GOES ON! A RECORD CHANGED OUT OF THE TRASH, INTO MY LIFE THE MUSEUM – PUNK ROCK CEMENTS ITS ARTEFACT STATUS Black Thought W HEN DEAD Kennedys have record swap meets, talks. We’ve The Roots’ rhyme technician romped through Elvis’s talked about having weddings, di- hails Public Enemy’s It Takes A Viva Las Vegas for vorces, funerals, wakes. Vegas seems Nation Of Millions To Hold Us 1980’s Fresh Fruit For Rotting Veg- etables, they lampooned America’s the perfect place for that attitude.” Back (1988, Def Jam). 1976 diehards’ gripes about turn- I’ve just taken my second class at New York University favourite adult playground. But what GALLERY ing “rebellion into money” aside, on the art of the MC. One of COUNTER the things I spoke about goes around comes around, and The the excessive auction prices fetched was the evolution of the Punk Rock Museum opens there Five more by original punk memorabilia imply African griot. Back in the in January. Its mission statement: rock their only logical destination may 1400s, 1500s, before the transatlantic slave trade, there was the tradition of the to “proudly shove in your face the museums. well be a museum. London auction- bard or griot in African societies, where a young person aged 12 or 13 is honoured history, culture, and absurdity of 1 The Ramones eers Sotheby’s netted £354,567 with the responsibility of being the truth-teller, to speak about what’s going rock’n’roll’s bastard step-child.” Museum, Berlin for 70 Sex Pistols-related lots in on in their village, their culture, their tribe. When they came to the States, Admiring precious rock-related 2 The Stax October, with a Sid Vicious-owned griots on plantations came up with a new objects with historic provenance Museum Of God Save The Queen poster going means of communication that wasn’t American Soul completely understandable to the slave masters – negro spirituals. is no new thing, of course, and the Music, Memphis for £44,100 and John Lydon’s hand- My version of negro spirituals was world’s institutions have long curat- written Holidays In The Sun lyrics Public Enemy. When I was in eighth ed the broad gamut of musical inter- 3 The Beatles selling for £50,400. grade, they spoke to me in the same way. Museum, Alkmaar, It Takes A Nation… was motivational. It Netherlands gave me information about liberation, breaking free mentally, it spoke volumes ests, from Cleveland’s top-drawer 4 Pönksafn Reflecting on what’s fetching the to me as a young writer and as a young serious money, Dan Hampson, the black American trying to navigate the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame museum (The Icelandic world. It was a very sophisticated, very Punk Museum), daring, very brave and audacious take on (where aesthetes can see Lennon’s auction manager of specialist UK the culture. It had a certain level of Reykjavík Bryan Ray Turcotte, Shervin Lainez, Getty, The Stolper-Wilson Collection, Bryan Ray Turcotte photo by Lisa Johnson militance, obviously, but more than that, it was a socio-political commentary Sgt. Pepper’s jacket, Hendrix’s couch 5 Eel Pie Island music sales house Omega Auctions, that gave a voice to the voiceless. and the ZZ Top Eliminator car) down Museum, London notes that, “punk ephemera is com- What I do stylistically began with Public Enemy. It’s the tone, the intona- to the more specialist likes of the ing to the forefront of the market. tion, the delivery, the cadence. And not just Chuck D. It was the entire Def Jam sadly defunct Tokyo Wax Museum, which The demographic who grew up with punk have roster at that time – LL Cool J, Beastie boasted effigies of Ash Ra Tempel, Faust Boys. These were people who essentially disposable income. Sex Pistols top the hierar- yelled to get their point across. Questlove [Roots drummer] came and Zappa, among others. chy and many of the more eye-catching sales from a very musical family, but I was able to put him onto music his parents Unsurprisingly, a collector is integral to results are for their memorabilia. The Clash are wouldn’t allow him to listen to. It Takes A Nation… was the connective tissue that Vegas’s punk museum. Californian Bryan Ray close behind, Buzzcocks are always of interest. allowed us to form The Roots. It played an instrumental role in my evolution. Turcotte was in ’90s grungers Black Mar- Early pioneers such as Sham 69 have their col- As told to Andy Cowan ket Flowers and worked for Slash Records: lectors, as evidenced by the £3,000 paid for an in 1999 he published the punk flyer book Danger Mouse & Black Thought’s Cheat early gig poster. I think we’ll start to see a rise Codes is out now on BMG. Fucked Up + Photocopied. His collection, in prices paid for second wave and US-artist which includes the mould for Devo’s ‘energy memorabilia over the next few years.” dome’ hats, Joe Strummer’s hand-painted Turcotte admits to niggles about his role in Red Brigade T-shirt and Fear’s sax, forms stoking the punk market. “A part of me feels the backbone of what will be displayed. slightly guilty about being a participant in “We want people to enter into punk at the allowing this stuff to become so valued,” he museum, not just visualise it,” says Turcotte. says. “But some of these things would have “The goal is to have a young ended up in the trash.” Or perhaps torched by Mal- kid who’s interested bring “Part of me colm McLaren and Vivienne his mom or grandmother Westwood’s son Joe Corré, who incinerated his father’s and be subverted into it, feels slightly punk-era archives in 2016. and be inspired to fuck the guilty.” establishment. The idea is to Kieron Tyler embody the punk spirit with BRYAN RAY DIY things happening – have TURCOTTE For more info: www.thepunkrock- musicians on tour stop in, museum.com Punk’s not dead: Bryan Ray Turcotte, curator of Las Vegas’s The Punk Rock Museum; (right) Sex Pistols memorabilia auctioned by Sotheby’s.
CULT HEROES “Writing is a way of living life twice”: singer-songwriter Eric Andersen, New York, 1964; (below) Eric today. romance. It received massive airplay and An- dersen rose to the top rank of singer-songwrit- ers with Jackson Browne and James Taylor. He planned to follow the album with Stages, but the tapes disappeared in one of the stranger mysteries of the record racket, and Andersen’s career lost momentum while Columbia endured legal problems which coincided with the dismissal of label president Clive Davis in June 1973. After assiduous detective work located the tapes, Stages: The Lost Album was finally issued to acclaim in 1991. Andersen has remained a workingman’s musician, recording and touring regularly. But he still considers himself foremost a writer. “You take the intuitive routes ANDERSONGS to land upon the truth. When I’m writing, it’s like I’m a Three of Eric’s finest. stenographer taking dicta- ’Bout Changes tion. I watch my hand move & Things and it puts stuff on paper. Things will pass through you (VANGUARD, 1966) never even thought about.” Andersen’s second album Currently combining songs captures his with YouTube videos, his tender tenor forthcoming collaboration vocal, with composer David Amram fingerpicked acoustic guitar is Dangerland, a chilling look and mouth harp as well as three of his mightiest early songs: at American gun violence. Just Thirsty Boots, Violets Of Dawn released is Tribute To A Song- and Close The Door Lightly poet: Songs Of Eric Andersen, When You Go. three CDs of covers by Dylan, Janis Ian, Linda Ronstadt, Blue River (COLUMBIA, 1972) Willie Nile and others. “I was really flattered and touched – His best-seller they’re all writers themselves that graced 1970s American rock radio, including and they know what you the gorgeous Is It Really Love At All, Pearl’s go through.” Goodtime Blues (a tribute to pal Anderson calls his songs Janis Joplin) and the title track with luminous background “interior documentaries”. “Writing is a way of living life vocals by Joni Mitchell. twice. You can go back and INTUITIVE GREENWICH Danko/Fjeld/ revisit and retell. That’s the VILLAGE ALUMNUS ERIC Andersen beauty of memory.” ANDERSEN FORGES ON (RYKODISC, 1991) Michael Simmons Andersen with Tribute To A Songpoet: Songs Of the late Rick Eric Andersen is out now on Y&T Danko of The Music/EA Records. Band and W HEN MANY think of Eric death and cruelly celebrated Norwegian Andersen, the descriptive “folk it, saying, “The Beatles never singer-songwriter Jonas Fjeld, singer” occurs, yet he’s never did anything for folk music.” all blending glorious three-part harmony. Andersen/Danko been comfortable with it. “I got into this to Andersen was stunned: “An- co-write Driftin’ Away is an be a writer, not do folk songs,” he tells MOJO other nail in the coffin for me overlooked classic. from his home in the Netherlands. A revered as a folk singer.” Nonetheless he wrote songs that troubadour of the 1960s Greenwich Village folk explosion and pal of Dylan and Phil Ochs, became folk boom classics, notably Thirsty Boots (whose interpreters include Dylan, by 1967 he was recording with full produc- Judy Collins and John Denver), and he’s tion and hanging with The Beatles during Sgt. got positive memories of that scene. “It Pepper’s sessions while their manager Brian was friendly competition with a sense Epstein represented him. Later that year he of encouragement. What’s new? What are you coming up with?” Thirsty Boots was playing the Philadelphia Folk Festival emerged from a trip to Mississippi to when the promoter announced Epstein’s support civil rights activism, but it takes an “I got into this to introspective, rather than dogmatic, point of view. Andersen’s songs are marked by be a writer, not Paolo Brillo, Getty do folk songs.” this intimacy and empathy. By 1972 he was signed to Colum- bia Records and released Blue River, his ERIC ANDERSEN best-selling album often regarded as his masterpiece. It features Is It Really Love At All, a haunting pondering of the vagaries of 18 MOJO
PRESENTS FEBRUARY 2023 MON 20 MANCHESTER BRIDGEWATER HALL MARCH 2023 SAT 18 GLASGOW O2 ACADEMY # SAT 11 BEXHILL DE LA WARR PAVILION WED 22 YORK BARBICAN SUN 19 MANCHESTER ALBERT HALL# SUN 12 BASINGSTOKE ANVIL THU 23 CAMBRIDGE CORN EXCHANGE APRIL 2023 MON 24 BRIGHTON DOME CONCERT HALL* TUE 14 IPSWICH CORN EXCHANGE SAT 25 BATH FORUM TUE 25 BRISTOL O2 ACADEMY* WED 15 NORTHAMPTON ROYAL & DERNGATE SUN 26 CARDIFF ST DAVID’S HALL WED 26 LONDON EVENTIM APOLLO* THU 16 BUXTON OPERA HOUSE TUE 28 LEICESTER DE MONTFORT HALL MYTICKET.CO.UK SAT 18 GATESHEAD SAGE MARCH 2023 A KILIMANJARO & FRIENDS PRESENTATION BY ARRANGEMENT WITH MOTHER ARTISTS SUN 19 EDINBURGH QUEEN’S HALL THU 02 LONDON ROYAL FESTIVAL HALL MYTICKET.CO.UK | SUZANNEVEGA.COM | SERIOUS.ORG.UK A KILIMANJARO & SERIOUS PRESENTATION BY ARRANGEMENT WITH SOLO In 1979, as the Mod THE FINE ART OF SELF DESTRUCTION Revival exploded on the streets of Britain 20TH ANNIVERSARY TOUR heavily influenced by The Jamand the release FEB/MAR 2023 of Quadrophenia, WITH VERY SPECIAL GUEST Sherry’s opened its doors on Carnaby Street +TOMMY STINSON+ for the first time. (THE REPLACEMENTS) 43 years later, Sherry’s is Soho’s longest FEB 15 – STEREO – GLASGOW, UK FEB 16 – THE PINK ROOM – MANCHESTER, UK serving independent retailer, specializing in FEB 17 – THE GARAGE – LONDON, UK 60’s inspired clothing FEB 18 – LA BOULE NOIRE – PARIS, FRANCE including our own label FEB 19 – DBS – UTRECHT, NETHERLANDS made-in-England suits, FEB 23 – DRUSO – BERGAMO, ITALY parkas, Harrington FEB 24 – BRONSON – RAVENNA, ITALY jackets, knitwear and FEB 25 – CORNER LIVE – MARENO DI PIAVE (TV), ITALY FEB 27 – NOCHTSPEICHER – HAMBURG, GERMANY footwear. FEB 28 – HOTEL CECIL – COPENHAGEN, DENMARK MAR 1 – MEJERIET – LUND, SWEDEN Sherry’s London: MAR 2 – BAR BROOKLYN – STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN Celebrating 40 years of original British style • Online • In-store • Ready-to-wear • Made-to-measure • Bespoke 11 Poland Street, 1st Floor, Soho, London,W1F 8QA T: +44 (0)20 7734 5868 E: [email protected] www.sherryslondon.com LOVE HER MADLY
WHAT GOES ON! No way out: Elastica (from left) Donna Matthews, Justin Welch, Justine Frischmann and Annie Holland, photographed by Pat Pope in 1993.
An audience with the Let him dangle: Pope: David Bowie, Beastie Boy being “a gent” for Mike D, 1995. Pat in 1997. Connection Is Made The 1993-2012 music photography Patti Smith, Nick Cave, The “When and how to set it up,” he goes of Pat Pope, collected. Prodigy, Beastie Boys, Manic it came on, “but often I had very little Street Preachers, Aphex Twin, to David time for the whole thing and “I WAS A musical brat,” photographer P.J. Harvey, Charlie Watts, Bowie I was no control of the situation. At Pat Pope admits today. “I always Blur, Oasis, Buzzcocks, Rod a nervous those times a sort of photo- loved songs. Then one day my sister Stewart, Arctic Monkeys, wreck.” graphic instinct came into play introduced me to David Bowie and that was Lemmy, Elastica and De La and I would just go into over- it, I was smitten.” Soul, plus many more. PAT POPE drive, shooting and trying to get the band to be themselves. Pope, whose first Bowie experience was Another subject was his Some of my best images came the Thin White Duke Tour in 1976 when he idol. When Bowie headlined from these moments, when was 10, was also obsessed with cameras and the Phoenix Festival near I had to rely on catching a photography. So it came to pass that when Stratford-Upon-Avon in July moment out of nothing.” he went to the London College of Printing in 1997, Pope photographed the ’90s (in the same cohort as celeb portrait- him for Amnesty Internation- Sadly, Pope suffered a ist Rankin), work for the student paper led to al. “I had waited a long time stroke in 2018 (having lost picture sessions with P.J. Harvey and Suede. to do that,” Pope remembers. the ability to speak, his When the latter group used his shot of “When it came to it I was a answers to MOJO’s questions singer Brett Anderson on the inside sleeve nervous wreck. Luckily I had come via his brother Ivan). of their breakthrough 1993 debut LP, Pope a great assistant and the man He’s satisfied with his book, states, “it changed my life.” himself was a gent, he put however. “I think we produced me at my ease… then I asked a record of those incredible That changed life involved him work- if I could have a photo with years when we were all a bit ing for the music press, and those years him. A bit of a cheek, but my younger,” he says, “and the are represented in the 300-page book Pat assistant took a snap of me world was our oyster.” Pope Photography. Covering the years 1993 and Mr Bowie. to 2012, it features his photographs of a Ian Harrison rich array of musical talent, including Lou “Sometimes I would Reed, Debbie Harry, Radiohead, The Cure, spend a lot of time working Pat Pope Photography is available out where to take the photo now at igg.me/at/patpope. MOJO 21
MOJO RISING Seeing double: Rich Ruth blends the soothing and the stirring. “I want some of this chaos in my reality.” RICH RUTH FACT SHEET ● For Fans Of: Pharoah Sanders, Brian Eno, Harold Budd ● Ruth lives in Nashville but is not part of the session musician scene there. “The calibre of those people is insane.” ● Ruth signed to Third Man Records thanks to co-owner Ben Swank. “Releasing Calming Signals became his passion project. Ben initially wanted to put it out on his own HOW RICH RUTH SURVIVED little label but had ling Ruth’s angst to stop, as he says, CARJACKINGS, TORNADOS too much going on “my whole world unravelling.” AND GIANT BANDS TO with Third Man. Plus, we’re both from the Then came the pandemic, same shitty bland Trump, the tornados of March part of Ohio so I think 2020. “Our neighbourhood looked Ben took a liking to ACHIEVE SOLO SPIRITUAL this other weirdo kid like a post-apocalyptic war zone,” from Toledo.” says Ruth with a dark laugh. “I just ASCENSION “a shitty little house gig” in Nashville ● Ruth originally found myself listening to harsher in 2017 (“It was mindblowing, these hoped to release music, specifically [John Coltrane’s RICH RUTH is telling MOJO the story of three weirdo guys making this down his records through abrasive, 1966 free exploration] how he moved to Nashville. “I’d played to earth, really powerful music”), Ruth Warp or International Ascension and thinking, like, This in bands in high school in Toledo,” he has been making his own home- Anthem but both music is how I feel. I want some of explains, “then in college I was in a group grown music. 2019’s soothing Low/ labels turned him this chaos in my reality.” called Kansas Bible Company with 12 people Eno-influenced electronic LP Calm- down. “I had a in it. We started to take ourselves seriously ing Signals, was followed this year by different full-length If the chaos of Ascension exists so we moved to Nashville. It was cheap. Jack the euphoric, hypnotic trance-jazz album finished that I in I Survived, It’s Over, so does that White had just moved there. We stuck at it for of I Survived, It’s Over – Number 16 sent to my two dream album’s sense of euphoric release. a solid six years. We made a record in a studio in MOJO’s Best Albums Of 2022 (see labels and they both If reviews (including MOJO’s) have with the producer, we went out on the road page 49) – created with remote passed on it.” drawn comparisons with such for 120 days a year…” contributions from music friends. ‘spiritual jazz’ LPs as Pharoah Sand- KEY TRACKS ers’ Thembi or Herbie Hancock’s At a certain point he starts laughing at “The time I spent in Kansas Bible Mwandishi, Ruth is reluctant to ● Taken Back ● Coming Down ● Older But Not Less Confused what, in 2022, now sounds like the most Company really informed I Survived,” says make the same direct comparisons himself. unsustainable business model for a band. He’s Ruth, “because it taught me how important it But he does admit that there’s a similar blend talking to MOJO from the lobby of a hotel in is to work with people, give them ownership of the soothing and the stirring in I Survived. Langenthal, Switzerland, on a solo tour, a few and creative licence over this music. But at the As to where he’ll take his sound next, “I’m days after Animal Collective cancelled their end of the day, I’m the one who’s in control.” probably 60 to 70 per cent of the way there European and UK tour due, they said, to, “Infla- I Survived is a work of dense, rich collabora- with a new record. I’ve been working with a tion, currency devaluation [and] bloated ship- tabla player, I’ve got a few new musicians in ping and transportation costs.” It’s also funny tion, but it’s also, like Calming Signals, a deeply the mix. I don’t know what the story will be because the Kansas Bible Company model personal work borne of personal trauma. “In yet, but I’ve also been working on playing is so far removed from how Rich Ruth makes 2018 I got carjacked at gunpoint,” he explains. with bigger bands. The solo thing is good for music these days – mostly by himself, “Then we had to move because the kids that the time being, but taking it out live with a in a small home studio. robbed me, their older brothers threatened to big band is the ideal.” shoot up our house. I had to find a new place After having his head turned by seeing to live with my wife, my dogs and everything.” Andrew Male Chicago electronic three-piece Bitchin Bajas at Calming Signals became a means of channel- I Survived, It’s Over is out now on Third Man. 22 MOJO
MOJO RISING MOJO PLAYLIST SCOTT WALKER MEETS DUBSTEP? SUPPORT JOCKSTRAP, MUSIC SCHOOL DISRUPTERS! therapist mother in a band at “this pagan festival”, Golowan, in her native Penzance, L ONDON-BASED duo Jockstrap accept and accompanying her mum to WOMAD. Listen! For the month’s best desert their name is a polarising one. “Some She also cites Elton John and Paul Simon as blues, post-punk and soul jazz. people have said the name’s perfect,” inspirations, along with Scott Walker (the al- 1 ROBERT FORSTER TENDER YEARS offers producer/keyboard-player Taylor Skye. bum’s spectral ballad Lancaster Court has dis- Knowing restraint and shimmer from the ex-Go-Between’s new LP The Candle “Some have said it’s horrendous. It was inspir- tinct echoes of Scott 3) and early Joni Mitchell And The Flame; about time, living out a novel and the love of a life. ing for us because it was quite rebellious to (if she’d been produced by James Blake) on Find it: streaming services begin with.” the atmospheric, six-minute- 2 JAMES BRANDON LEWIS SOMEDAY WE’LL ALL BE FREE That rebellion involved a “My teachers long Concrete Over Water. part-rejection of the academic turned their The duo’s modus oper- The Buffalo jazz sax ace – with electric cello musical values that were noses up and drums – channels Donny Hathaway’s instilled in Skye and singer/ at it.” andi involves Ellery writing song of spiritual survival with grit and violinist Georgia Ellery at the and recording songs, before compassion. New album Eye Of I in early 2023. Guildhall School Of Music And handing them over to Skye to Find it: Bandcamp Drama, where the pair met in augment, and sonically polish or mangle. For instance, the 3 ALTIN GÜN LEYLIM LEY Long, louche, and super-catchy new 2016. The former was studying GEORGIA ELLERY floaty, harp-strewn Angst single from the Netherlands-based Turkish electronic composition, the suddenly snap-edits into the sextet: a deeply percussive, highly groovy blend of sax and synths. latter jazz, and for some of singer’s a cappella vocals er- Find it: streaming services their lecturers the stylistically restless music ratically chopped in the style of the dubstep 4 QUEEN FACE IT ALONE Sparse, cloistered woe they began making as Jockstrap – which remixers (Nero; Flux Pavilion) that Skye loved rescued from the vaults, as the late Freddie reflects on veers wildly between traditional singer-song- as a teenager. “They just made me realise that finality with smouldering intensity and tortured guitar solo. writing approaches and dubstep-inspired you can make completely original, emotional Find it: YouTube cut-ups – seemed like a joke. music in the form of a remix,” he says. 5 TAKEN BY TREES CAROLINE GOODBYE From her new EP of Colin Blunstone “My teachers sort of turned their noses Visually, Jockstrap are equally striking. covers, Victoria Bergsman plays down the original’s chamber pop drama for more up at it,” laughs Ellery, who also plays in Black Their videos (edited by Ellery) range from the vibraphone and yearning. Find it: streaming services Country, New Road. “The idea is that you go strange harlequin antics of Concrete Over 6 HOTEL LUX to music school, and you dedicate all your Water – which looks like a Kate Bush promo NATIONAL TEAM time to the instrument that you’re studying. from the early ’80s – to the walking-and-run- Scribbly English glam clumpa- long obsesses over internation- And that’s not what I was doing. So I think ning scenes of Glasgow, in FACT SHEET al football, fulfilment and fate. that’s where I might have pissed them off.” which Skye appears wear- Find it: YouTube ing cartoon-ish facial hair ● Forfansof:Joni The pair’s debut LP, I Love You Jennifer B and pointy ears. “It’s a nice Mitchell, James 7 MDOU MOCTAR IBITILAN (Number 36 in MOJO’s Best Albums Of 2022, release,” says Ellery. “After Blake, Scott Walker The Tuareg guitar wrecker raw, distorted see page 40) is certainly filled with eccentric working really hard on the ● Georgia Ellery and vorticular, live at a wedding in 2017. humour and purposely crunching gearshifts, song and working very chooses not to From Niger EP Vol. 2. Rumpshaking! but their formal training is at the same time macro, it’s like stretching explain who the Find it: streaming services evident in the meticulous string arrange- the other way. We’re not “Jennifer B” of the ments and classic songwriting tropes. Musical trained in video-making, album’s title is, but 8 HORSEGIRL HISTORY LESSON PART 2 theory, for Ellery, remains “a tool to work out so anything goes.” Much insists she’s real. Young Chicago trio prove their impecca- where you’re going to go next harmonically”. like Jockstrap’s music “I saw her last week ble reference points with a cool, post-punk itself: an intriguing blend for dinner,” she says, take on Minutemen’s 1984 statement of Direct influences on Jockstrap’s sound are of style and mischief. “and she’s pretty intent (“Our band could be your life”). hard to pinpoint, but the fact that, growing happy with how her Find it: streaming services up, Skye was equally in thrall to Stevie Won- Tom Doyle name was sold.” der and Skrillex is one clue. Ellery, meanwhile, ● Althoughbusy 9 THE COOL GREENHOUSE began studying violin at five, and by seven I Love You Jennifer B is out with Jockstrap, Ellery GET UNJADED hasn’t quit her other job, playing violin Pleasing quirk, wit and veracity from cranky Manchester/ was playing alongside her midwife/music now on Rough Trade. and singing with Norwich gang. A hint of Nigel Black Country, New Blackwell in the stream-of-consciousness. Find it: streaming services Road. Having been 10 BURIAL STREETLANDS forced to reconfigure From the EP of the same name, a walk through a haunted urban wasteland the band following with beats hinted at in the mist rather than realised. the departure of Find it: Bandcamp singer/guitarist Isaac MOJO 23 Wood, she says the group are “writing music”, though won’t commit to confirming whether or not a third album is planned. KEY TRACKS ● Concrete Over Water ● Glasgow ● Lancaster Court Support act: Eddie Whelan Jockstrap’s Georgia Ellery and Taylor Skye.
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THE MOJO INTERVIEW Photocopier ink salesman turned art-funk prankster, his natty dreads and Muppet grin have been staples behind the faders for Dylan, the Stones and legends galore. So what has he learned? “You don’t control the lightning,” says Don Was. Interview by BOB MEHR • Portrait by KEVIN SCANLON ON WAS IS A BUSY MAN. IN THE COURSE Raitt – their first two albums together, Nick Of Time and Luck Of The of any given day – including this particular Draw would total 12 million in sales and earn seven Grammys – autumn Friday in Los Angeles – he will juggle he began racking up high-profile credits, helming projects for Bob his duties as a producer, session player, touring Dylan, The Rolling Stones, Brian Wilson, Iggy Pop, Willie Nelson, musician, record executive and radio host. John Mayer, Lucinda Williams and hundreds of others. “In the ’60s, Frank Sinatra would be filming a “There are a number of great producers who are auteurs,” says movie during the day, in the evening he’d go to the studio and cut a Was. “A lot of the R&B guys, Phil Spector, Daniel Lanois certainly song, then jump on his plane and go to Las Vegas and perform with comes to mind. He builds this beautiful place to put the artist in the the Rat Pack at night,” says Was. “They’d ask him, ‘How do you do middle of. That’s not what I do. What I do is help the artist figure out it?’ His answer was, ‘Whatever you’re doing, be a hundred per cent what it is they’re really going for and then realise it on the record.” present.’ That is the secret. Spiritual folks been telling us that for Except production has taken a back seat of late. Much of this 10,000 years: ‘Be here now, man.’” last week has been spent as a bass player, rehearsing Bob Weir & ‘Here’, currently, is the screening room at the Jim Henson Stu- Wolf Bros’ 130-song repertoire, including a wealth of Grateful dios in Hollywood. Formerly the site of A&M Records, it was origi- Dead numbers, ahead of a month-long tour. Then there’s the day nally built by Charlie Chaplin in 1917 and it’s a favourite hideaway job. Since 2011 he’s been president of iconic jazz label Blue Note. for Was. “I don’t think it’s been touched since Chaplin was here,” Bringing new talent to the company and reconnecting with its lega- says Was, trademark black dreads peeking out cy artists, he’s proven the perfect steward for from under a wide-brimmed fedora. “Well, WE’RE NOT WORTHY the label he grew up worshipping. except for the Muppet posters on the walls.” Lucinda Williams “I’ve had music – like this Wayne Shorter In the early ’80s, Detroit’s Don Edward on “beatnik” Don. Blue Note album Speak No Evil – that has been Fagenson and his childhood friend David with me for my whole life,” he says. “If I’m Kevin Scanlon, Danny Clinch Weiss launched art-pop dance project Was “His musical knowledge is having a bad day, all I got to do is play side two (Not Was) and gained enduring new sur- really, really deep. At the same of that record and then I remember who I am, names. Fronted by R&B singers Harry Bow- time, his whole vibe is very what I’m trying to do, what my place is here. understated. When we were ens and Sweet Pea Atkinson, their subversive, in the studio, if he liked That’s a valuable service.” genre-bending LPs garnered cult acclaim, and something he’d start snapping hits, before Was’s focus moved to production. his fingers – like how beatniks What was your formative exposure to music? Starting with breakthrough work for Bonnie would do! He’s very warm and positive and My mom was young enough that she’d watch open. With some producers it’s about control, but Don just wants to uplift the artist.” American Bandstand in the ’50s, so I was hip ➢ MOJO 27
➣ out these anguished cries. And that’s exactly to all the early rock’n’roll. When folk how I felt. I’m sure Joe was dealing with The end of the ’70s: a desperate time? music rolled around in the early ’60s my folks problems that had a little more gravitas than me were down with that: Harry Belafonte, Peter, having to run errands with my mom (laughs) but The economy was fucked up and inflation was Paul & Mary. My dad bought a guitar and took I could relate to the sound of it. And then the terrible, and I could no longer get by playing some lessons but he didn’t dig it so he gave drummer – this guy named Joe Chambers – bars. I was married to my first wife, my son was it to me. And I took right to it. When I was in kicks in and he starts grooving, and then Joe born, and I was facing ruin. I got a job repairing sixth grade we formed a band, The Saturns – Henderson falls in. And the message that came copy machines – I thought I’d bottomed out. we were a folk band. But then in 1964 I saw through, non-verbal, was to groove in the face I didn’t see how I was going to get out of that The Beatles on Ed Sullivan and that changed of adversity. I felt that. When my mom got cycle of debt and ever stop working this shit job. the game. I was 12, which is the perfect age, back in the car, I was a different kid, a nice kid Then the company said, “When we send you out because you’re just dumb enough to look at again. That music transformed me in the space on repair calls, we need you to sell paper and The Beatles – they’re having fun, they’re of 20 seconds. toner.” So they enrolled me in the Dale Carnegie making bread, the girls are screaming – sales course. It was me and five other Willy and think, I’m gonna do that. Coming of age musically in the mid-to-late Lomans going in at night to take this class. First ’60s in Detroit must’ve been incredible. night they said, “We want everyone to write You were in junior high when you met down where you see yourself in one year, five David Weiss… In Detroit, Bob Seger was a local band. Alice years, and 10 years.” I was the first one to stand Cooper was a local band. Iggy & The Stooges up and read: “In one year I want to be out of this I met David sitting waiting for the gym teacher and the MC5 – these were our local bands. The fucking job” – that got a big laugh. “In five years, to discipline us for fucking around on the gym jazz scene was unbelievable – Kenny Burrell and I want a record that I produced to come out. equipment: “I’m so disappointed in you boys…” Donald Byrd. So there was always great music And in 10 years, I want to produce an estab- and we’re just giggling. That’s all you need to and great places to go hear it – and if you lished artist, a great artist.” And I remember know to understand Was (Not Was). Just guys couldn’t get in, you could go listen in the alley. standing there looking at this piece of paper, who liked fucking around, and didn’t want to And, obviously, Motown was hometown music thinking, How hard can this be? (laughs) be told what to do. and a great source of civic pride, but there was also Fortune Records, all kinds of great records Which is the point that you reconnect with David’s parents were both voiceover being made and great producers, Don Davis, David Weiss – who’d moved to LA and artists. Was that your first entrée into a amazing blues stuff happening. become a jazz critic for a newspaper – and recording studio? developed the concept for Was (Not Was). You spent the ’70s in Detroit playing in They’d let us go to their sessions, and they used various bands and learning how to engineer. We were writing the songs long distance, and to do a lot of work at United Sound, which is How did you end up on bass? borrowed money from David’s parents to do the where John Lee Hooker cut Boogie Chillen, first record. We kinda detested genre restric- Aretha recorded there, George Clinton. It was Well, in high school there were three guitar tions and people who felt certain music had to the studio in Detroit. They’d let us just wander players who were better than me, two keyboard be done a certain way. We were trying to do around. Seemed like the coolest place in the players better than me and no bass players. dance music, but mix up a new musical stew world to be. That’s how (laughs). After high school I went and also incorporate a message. Like we’d put to Wayne State University in Detroit then a bebop trumpeter, Marcus Belgrave, and [MC5 What awakened you to jazz? transferred to University Of Michigan, but I only guitarist] Wayne Kramer on a dance groove. We lasted a couple semesters there and dropped had a club hit with Tell Me That I’m Dreaming. I was a teenager, driving around with my mom out and became a full-time musician. My That started out of Paradise Garage [nightclub] as she was running errands and I wanted to be parents were worried, but they were supportive. in New York City and then the radio stations at the mall with my friends. So I was being a They loaned me money for years. I didn’t have picked up on it. We sampled Ronald Reagan grumpy little asshole. She got sick of it and left any success until I was well into my thirties, or saying, “Can we, who man the ship of state, me in the car with the keys and I started playing any hits until I was in my late thirties. That’s a deny it is somewhat out of control?” But we cut with the radio and the local jazz station was long apprenticeship. it up into “out of control… out of control… out playing this Joe Henderson song, Mode For Joe. of control”. So if you wanted to do poppers on I tuned in right at the sax solo and he’s letting AALLIIFFE INN PIICCTUURES 2 3 He Was here: Don through the ages. Getty (7), Shutterstock 1Motor City mover: the Gregg Allman for the All My teenage Don Fagenson. Friends Allman tribute, Atlanta Fox Theatre, January 10, 2014. 2Dream team: Don (right) with David Weiss, 8 Lupine howl: Wolf Bros’ AKA Was (Not Was), 1983. Bob Weir and stand-up bassist Don Was, 2019. 3 When Was met Oz: Don with Ozzy Osbourne, 2013. 9 Don in New York, 1995: “You can learn how to 4 Freaky dancing: Was (Not make a good record. But Was) at the Montreux good is not enough. You Golden Rose Festival, May 11, want something great and 1988 (from left) Don Was, magical to happen.” Harry Bowens, David Was, Sweet Pea Atkinson. 1 5 Stoned alive: (from left) Chris Robinson, Mick Jagger, Goldie Hawn and Don Was, February 3, 2001. 6 In the nick of time: Producer Of The Year Don Was at the 37th Grammy Awards, March 1, 1995, alongside Bonnie Raitt who won the Best Pop Vocal award for her Was co-produced Longing In Their Hearts. 7 Brothers in arms: musical director Don in rehearsal with 28 MOJO 4
the dancefloor and go out of control you could Finally, we connected with David Bates, an been trying to drown she now had to purge do that, or you wanted to read something A&R guy [with Phonogram] in the UK. He was them by expressing them. And she expressed deeper into it, you could do that too. coming off big successes with Tears For Fears, them so eloquently. And she knew that she With your second album, Born To Laugh At Dire Straits and Def Leppard. He wanted to sign should be herself. Before that, if you were a Tornadoes (1983), you made the move to the three most uncommercial artists he could female in rock’n’roll and you were 40, it was the Geffen Records. How did that come about? think of – he signed Was (Not Was), David kiss of death. You still had to pretend or try and Thomas from Pere Ubu, and Tom Verlaine act like you were 18. But no one understood We played a New York gig on the first tour at from Television – and was determined to that the audience from the ’60s had grown up Mudd Club. It was a big night for us. Johnny make hits for us, which he did. as well. When Bonnie sang about running out Rotten came to the show, Nile Rodgers, my You had a massive hit in Walk The Dinosaur of time to have a kid, and watching her parents hero, came to the show. Danny Heaps was the along with the What Up, Dog? (1988) album. age, that’s what people were going through. DJ at the club, and Geffen had hired him to But did pop success doom the band? All she did was speak her truth and people do A&R and he said, “Come to responded. I remember Geffen.” It was nice to be on a playing the mixes for Tim big label and have some bread “In Was (Not Was), the Devine, who was the A&R guy. to work with, and access to He asked me, “You got a tux? some interesting people. We mentality was: Let’s blow ’Cos you’re going to the put Ozzy Osbourne on a song, people’s minds. We had Grammys.” And I wanted to and then Mel Tormé singing punch him. I said, “Man, don’t the next song. It was the same hype us up.” But he was right. mentality: let’s blow people’s We didn’t see that coming. minds – let’s do stuff no one Ozzy rap. He didn’t know At the 1990 Grammys, Nick does. We had Ozzy rap. He what rapping was.” Of Time won four awards, didn’t know what rapping was. including Album Of The Year, He said, “There’s no melody? I and the evening became this don’t even have to hit the great coming-out party for note? I just talk? That’s a piece you and Bonnie. of piss. I can do this.” (laughs) But the relationship with Geffen soured It was the beginning of the end. We lost the It was so emotional, man. First of all, I was soon after? little audience we had that was into who we seated between Bonnie and her dad John Raitt. really were. Instead of building on that, we And when she won the second award… (chokes Geffen considered us to be a marketing alienated them with this little novelty record up). I still can’t tell the story without getting nightmare. They said, “If you and David are and we didn’t build any new loyal fans. People fucked up. Her dad gave her a big hug, and going to do interviews and be the frontmen for were loyal to that song, not to Was (Not Was). they’re both standing over me crying and their this thing you got to be a rock’n’roll band. Or let The reality was we couldn’t take a 12-piece tears got my jacket all wet. the singers do the interviews and you can be an band out on the road without more hits and One of the people who reached out to you R&B band.” We said, “That’s not really how it we couldn’t figure out a way to manufacture afterwards was Bob Dylan. You co-produced works.” Then they said, “Well then, you gotta more hits. his 1990 album, Under The Red Sky. How do get white singers.” “We’re not gonna do that.” you look back on that experience? They finally put us on suspension. I thought it Your production career had not had much was like baseball, where you do your 30 days success when you started making Nick Of My dream was to play bass with Bob Dylan and and come back. It took us three years to figure Time with Bonnie Raitt (1989). Why did that to produce a record for him. It was the ultimate. out they meant go find someone to buy out one take off? But my takeaway is I wasn’t ready to produce your contract and pay us back the money we’ve The thing about Nick Of Time was Bonnie had him. On the first session we did, the assistant spent. But we couldn’t get arrested anywhere. gotten sober and whatever feelings she had engineer recorded everything, including all ➢ 9 5 7 8 6
➣ And Brian announced, “Man, I really fucked that the talking in between songs, on cassette. I one up,” and all the parents came and took their was driving home, and I put this cassette in and kids away (laughs). So we ruined two songs and “Life is nuts. Music helps make the spot where it starts, Bob is sitting at a piano then we played Love And Mercy. And I tell you, sense of it”: Don Was at the telling me something he wanted to do and I’m it was one of the most powerful on-stage Capitol Records Building, Los telling him why it won’t work. And I wanted to moments I’ve ever had. Brian was so soulful and Angeles, September 23, 2022. throw up, man. I had to pull the car over. I so in it and so present. I thought, I wish people thought, You stupid motherfucker! You waited could see him like this. By that point, Landy was You’ve produced their albums for almost your whole life for this moment and here’s Bob out of the picture. I figured, Let’s get the focus 30 years, from 1994’s Voodoo Lounge to Dylan telling you something he wants to do and away from the sordid psychiatrist and back on 2016’s Blue & Lonesome. What have you before trying it you told him it wasn’t going to Brian and why he’s a genius. learned in that time and why do you think work?! I’ve tried not to make that mistake again. you’ve lasted? If you’re not willing to chase something down In 1993, you get the call to produce The Well, they are the most charismatic people I’ve with an artist you shouldn’t be a producer. Rolling Stones. ever met. They’re the ones who helped me to understand that human beings don’t end where Why do you think you said that to him? They’d signed to Virgin Records and the label the skin ends. That you exist outside of that skin wanted them to have a producer. So I went to too. I remember walking into the big studio at Because I had some stupid idea about what New York to meet them. And they were Ocean Way [in LA], it’s just Mick and Keith and Bob Dylan should be doing. That I knew better. auditioning bass players at SIR. I was watching Charlie in this cavernous room, and the room That I wanted him to remake Blonde On Blonde and then Mick and Keith came and sat on either felt completely full. Their personas are like the probably. Meanwhile he was looking forward. side of me. Mick started talking about what they blow-up dolls they had on the Steel Wheels tour, If you listen to Under The Red Sky you will see needed from a producer. And Keith started they’re like five storeys high. And when they the formation of the musical path he followed, talking about why they didn’t need a producer. channel that into something, when they in terms of making records, for the next 20, And they would not yield the floor to the other become The Rolling Stones, there’s nothing 30 years. guy. It went on like this – both of them talking like it in the world. at the same time – for probably two or three You worked with Iggy Pop on Brick By minutes, which is an incredibly long time. The reason I think I’ve lasted that long with Brick (1990) and Avenue B (1999). What I was just going back and forth between them, them is I love The Rolling Stones. And I just was that like? thinking, What the hell is this? Is this a technique want them to be The Rolling Stones, whatever for weeding out the faint of heart? Then they that means. But what that means is they are Iggy was a surprise. I’d been going to see him finally ran out of breath. At which point, Keith all part of the fabric, no one guy is dominating play for at least 25 years before I met him, so I said, “You sure you want to be the meat in this the fabric. It’s when they all join together had a certain idea of what he was. The first time sandwich?” (laughs) that something larger than life happens. we had dinner together he started talking to me about Haitian art. He’s incredibly well-read, IT WAS A GOOD DAY incredibly thoughtful, very smart. And yet, every crazy story you’ve heard about him probably Three personal picks from has some element of truth to it. You can hear it Don’s producer’s portfolio. in his writing. He’ll have a line that will start out, “Nietzsche said…” and then end, “So get off my THE ONE-TAKE WONDER dick motherfucker!” (laughs) Willie Nelson I’m curious about the 1990 Was (Not Was) Across The Borderline song, Elvis’ Rolls Royce, where you brought in Leonard Cohen to sing the lead vocal and (COLUMBIA, 1993) Iggy’s singing backgrounds. You were friends with Cohen, right? “I went to Dublin to record Willie singing Blue Hawaii for We hung out a lot in the ’90s and I just loved the soundtrack to Honeymoon him – and girls loved him. Leonard was a babe In Vegas. We got that in one magnet. I couldn’t believe he was actually take, and Willie said, ‘What else willing to sing this song. And Iggy had done a ya got?’ I’d been listening to background vocal the day before on the chorus. Ry Cooder’s version of Across The Borderline, Leonard said, “I’d really like to meet him – would where Harry Dean Stanton sings the last verse, you bring him over?” So I brought Iggy over to and it really tore me up. I played that for Willie Leonard’s house and he showed us a classified and he said, ‘Let’s cut it.’ Halfway in I’m like, Oh ad from the San Francisco Bay Guardian. It was my God – it’s like he wrote this song himself.” a personal ad that said: “Single, female, 30-ish. Looking for a man with the benign nobility of A SONG AT SUNSET Leonard Cohen and the raw severity of Iggy Pop.” And Leonard wanted him and Iggy to Brian Wilson answer the ad (laughs). He was writing a letter to No Pier Pressure this girl and he wanted Iggy to sign it and my job was to take a picture of the two of them sitting (CAPITOL, 2015) at the kitchen table together. Can you imagine what must’ve been going through that woman’s “Over the years, I’ve produced mind when she opened that package up? Brian and The Beach Boys, but he’s also hired me as a bass In the early ’90s you got close with Brian player on stuff he’s produced. Wilson, directing a documentary and The Last Song is the last song producing I Just Wasn’t Made For These on No Pier Pressure. Brian was Times. How did that connection come about? singing: ‘If there was just another chance for me to sing to you… there’s never enough time I was producing my buddy Doug Fieger and The for the ones that you love.’ And Jim Keltner and Knack, and they gave me a bootleg of the Smile I both started crying, man. We realised we were outtakes and I became obsessed with it. And playing his coda.” then my wife and I went to a paediatric AIDS charity event, and I’m standing in the food line BROTHER TO BROTHER and there’s Brian Wilson and Gene Landy right next to me. So I just started gushing about all Gregg Allman these songs. And they invited me over to the Southern Blood studio. It was when they were making [Wilson’s second unreleased solo album] Sweet Insanity (ROUNDER, 2017) and we became friends. “This was Gregg Allman’s I started playing some gigs with him, just me last album. We did it at FAME and Brian. We played another charity thing, at Studios in Muscle Shoals and someone’s estate, where it was like a carnival for the last thing we cut was a kids. I played bass and Brian played piano. We Jackson Browne song called did kind of mediocre versions of some Beach Song For Adam, which Boys songs – we annihilated California Girls. reminded him of his brother, Duane. There’s a line that goes, ‘Still it seems he stopped his singing in the middle of his song.’ When that line came Gregg got all choked up thinking about Duane – and he never sang it again.” 30 MOJO
“I thought, You stupid motherfucker! Here’s Bob Dylan telling you something he wants to do and you told him it wasn’t going to work?!” And you just listen for those moments. You can’t?” He said, “If it makes you feel any better, rooftop there and I was smoking a lot of weed can hear it when it happens, you can feel it I didn’t write it. I remember holding a pencil when it happens – especially if you’re sitting and my hand moving over the page. But I don’t and was starting to repeat stories. And Jim in the room. know where that came from.” Making a record is the same thing. You can learn how to make the turned to me and said, “Donnie – you got to You’ve been producing artists at the highest room more conducive to having lightning strike, level for more than 30 years now. Do you feel but you don’t control the lightning. lead a more prayerful life.” And he was serious. like you’ve cracked the code on what it takes to make a great record? I recently did one of these interviews He didn’t mean become a Jehovah’s Witness. He with the great Jim Keltner [MOJO 345], No – it’s still mysterious. I mean, you can learn a drummer you’ve worked with a lot. just meant slow down and appreciate the great the craft and make a good record. I’m not going It struck me that people like Jim and you to make a shitty record. But good is not enough. are the tissue that binds great artists and things that are going on around you and You want something great and something records together. magical to happen. But you don’t control that. remember what the mission is. Nobody controls that. If you talk to the great Years ago I was producing a Paul Westerberg songwriters, they don’t know where the best record in New York and Jim was playing drums And in that moment it hit me. Jim is like the songs come from. One time I asked Bob Dylan: on it. I was staying in the penthouse of the “How come you can write Gates Of Eden and I Tribeca Grand hotel. Jim and I were on the leader of something, and it’s all these people who stand behind the artist and help them. We don’t create the artists, but we help them do the job that they have to do. And the job they have is incredibly important. Music really matters to Kevin Scanlon people. It helps us understand things we can’t explain in conversational language. Life is fucking nuts. How do you make any sense out of it? Music helps you do that. M MOJO 31
ACADEMY EVENTS & FRIENDS BY ARRANGEMENT WITH WASSERMAN PRESENTS PLUS PLAYING SPECIAL GUESTS FREE PEACE SWEET APRIL 2023 MAY 2023 IN FULL PLUS GREATEST HITS SET 20 CARLISLE OLD FIRE STATION 04 LONDON O2 ACADEMY ISLINGTON 21 COTTINGHAM CIVIC HALL 05 SHEFFIELD O2 ACADEMY CHRIS HELME 22 NEWCASTLE RIVERSIDE 10 SOUTHAMPTON ENGINE ROOMS 23 GLASGOW THE GARAGE 11 NOTTINGHAM RESCUE ROOMS (The Seahorses) 28 MANCHESTER O2 RITZ 12 LIVERPOOL O2 ACADEMY Star Shaped DJs 29 BIRMINGHAM O2 INSTITUTE LITTLEMANTATEOFFICIAL.CO.UK 2023 Sat 20 May BRISTOL O2 Academy Fri 26 May EDINBURGH O2 Academy Sat 27 May MANCHESTER O2 Ritz Sat 03 June BIRMINGHAM O2 Institute Sat 10 June LONDON O2 Forum Kentish Town An Academy Events & Star Shaped presentation by arrangement with Industry Live Agency By ARRANGEMENT WITH RAN TOURING PRESENTS IN ASSOCIATION WITH THE SOUNDS THAT HISTORY SAVED ARTISTS AGENCY PRESENTS in association with Spider Touring present by arrangement with Spider Touring presents BORN TO BE RIDICULED PRINCE TRIBUTE PLUS GUESTS DECEMBER 2022 PARTY LIKE IT’S 1999 plus special guests The Wedding Present MON 5th SAT 25 FEB 2023 may 2023 OXFORD O2 ACADEMY2 LIVERPOOL O2 ACADEMY2 25 birmingham O2 institute3 24 Songs Tour 26 london O2 academy islington TUE 6th SAT 11 MAR 2023 + Special Guests SHEFFIELD O2 ACADEMY2 SHEFFIELD O2 ACADEMY2 FRI 19TH MAY 2023 WED 7th FRI 14 APR 2023 LONDON O2 SHEPHERD’S BUSH EMPIRE LIVERPOOL O2 ACADEMY2 LONDON O2 ACADEMY2 ISLINGTON SAT 20TH MAY 2023 THU 8th SAT 15 APR 2023 MANCHESTER O2 RITZ BIRMINGHAM O2 ACADEMY2 BIRMINGHAM O2 ACADEMY3 SUN 21ST MAY 2023 FRI 9th BIRMINGHAM O2 INSTITUTE2 In association with Pink Dot BRISTOL O2 ACADEMY SAT 10th LONDON O2 ACADEMY ISLINGTON presents A TRIBUTE TO THE BEAUTIFUL SOUTH THE UK’s No.1 TRIBUTE TO THE ARCTIC MONKEYS & THE HOUSEMARTINS PROGETTO GRAFICO: JACOPO LEONE / AUSSI ETC. - IMPAGINAZIONE: YUKICREATIVE.IT - PHOTO: BARBARA PASQUARIELLO Vinicio PLUS SPECIAL GUESTS CAPOSSELA ‘round one thirty five 1990 – 2020 PERSONAL STANDARDS London 6 December 2022 O2 Shepherd's Bush Empire THU 22nd DECEMBER 2022 NATIONAL TOUR 2022-3 Personnel NEWCASTLE O2 CITY HALL 2022 Enrico Lazzarini: contrabbasso / Antonio Marangolo: sassofono / Giancarlo SAT 4th FEBRUARY 2023 SAT 19 NOV LIVERPOOL O2 ACADEMY Bianchetti: chitarra / Zeno De Rossi: batteria LIVERPOOL O2 ACADEMY2 WED 28 DEC LONDON O2 ACADEMY ISLINGTON THU 10th JUNE 2023 2023 BIRMINGHAM O2 ACADEMY2 SAT 14 JAN NEWCASTLE O2 CITY HALL SAT 9th SEPTEMBER 2023 SAT 21 JAN LEEDS O2 ACADEMY MANCHESTER O2 RITZ SAT 01 JUL MANCHESTER O2 RITZ ANTARCTICMONKEYS.COM
MOJO PRESENTS THE BEST OF It was the year the world FEATURING: Mattia Zoppellaro, Getty, Megan Cullen, Miya Mizuno/FX, Sandra V woke up. There were gigs Nick Cave, Weyes Blood, galore. Some – Macca at Wet Leg, Michael Head, Glasto, the Stones in the Crazy Horse, Paul Weller, Park, Joni at Newport, Oumou Sangaré, Jeff Tweedy, Dylan everywhere – epochal. Brett Anderson, Giles Martin, The Queen passed. Ukraine “Johnny Rotten” and more! resisted. Jazz transcended. In Britain, indie bit back. Over 29 pages, MOJO celebrates the music that meant most in 12 months of turmoil, and the notes of hope that kept us keepin’ on. MOJO 33
THE 75 BEST ALBUMS OF 75 ELIZABETH KING 50 49 48 47 46 I Got A Love (BIBLE & TIRE) MOOR MOTHER MIDLAKE BLACK WORKING CASS McCOMBS 74 KELLY LEE COUNTRY, MEN’S CLUB OWENS Jazz Codes For The Sake Of Bethel NEW ROAD Heartmind Woods Fear Fear LP.8 (SMALLTOWN SUPERSOUND) (ANTI-) Ants From Up There (ANTI-) (BELLA UNION) (HEAVENLY) 73 JEREMIAH A layered and (NINJA TUNE) “I’m against extroverted CHIU & MARTA intellectually curious Nine years after the The first teenage personalities,” asserted SOFIA HONER investigation of black Texans’ last album, and A year of transition stirrings of Working this most stealthy of musical history, Camae 10 since the departure for the many-limbed Men’s Club, and their Californian singer- Recordings From The Åland Islands Ayewa’s eighth solo of original frontman Tim post-rockers, who lost fulcrum Syd Minsky- songwriters, who’d album as Moor Mother Smith, Midlake returned their frontman Isaac Sargeant, suggested a spent two decades (INTERNATIONAL ANTHEM) interrogated ideas of with a gentle assertion Wood and started precocious new Fall in quietly compiling jazz, blues and rap of their core values. The reconfiguring an the making. But this a tremendous 72 KAE TEMPEST without ever coming elaborate patchwork of already complex sound. second album found discography. Much of The Line Is A Curve (FICTION) remotely close to the cosmic and pastoral First, though, there was the Calder Valley McCombs’s tenth solo nostalgic cliché. And couldn’t help but recall Wood’s last act with the prodigy, now a LP highlighted his 71JULIA JACKLIN while the Philadelphian’s 2006 breakthrough band: Ants From Up venerable 20, and breezy, accessible Pre Pleasure (TRANSGRESSIVE) uproarious instincts – The Trials Of Van There, a second album his latest associates songcraft more than his seen so explosively Occupanther. But if that which rapidly followed building something psychedelic tendencies. 70 EIKO ISHIBASHI in her free jazz album summoned their debut (MOJO’s significantly more But like key antecedent For McCoy (BLACK TRUFFLE) group, Irreversible beatific West Coast 14th best album of monumental. Fear Elliott Smith, sunny Entanglements – were canyon vibes, Bethel 2021) and added more Fear leaned hard into melodies harboured 69 THE BLACK KEYS still tangible, her poetics Woods tacked indie-pop nous – Pulp, a kind of imposing knottier subject matter: Dropout Boogie and theorising elided eastwards, to The Divine Comedy, acid-baroque, the classic songtitles into something more Woodstock, and the even early Roxy Music ’80s-tinged synth-pop in Karaoke indicated a (EASY EYE SOUND/NONESUCH) amniotic, drifting closer formative experiences were plausible that picked up where discussion of borrowed to the nu-soul of Erykah of keyboardist Jesse reference points – New Order left off emotional valency 68 LAMBCHOP Badu at her most Chandler’s father at to their Slint-gone- around the time rather than a stab at The Bible (CITY SLANG) abstracted. the 1969 festival. Klezmer foundations. of Low-Life. mainstream immortality. 67 JON SPENCER & Standout track: Standout track: Bethel Standout track: Standout track: Standout track: THE HITMAKERS 45Evening 44Woods 43Basketball Shoes 42Widow 41Belong To Heaven Spencer Gets It Lit (BRONZERAT) Simon Fernandez, Bernard Benant, Avalon, Linda Edelstein, Tom Sheehan, Stephen Booth, Getty Images ANAÏS JOHNNY MARR YARD ACT ALABASTER LEYLA McCALLA 66 ANGEL OLSEN MITCHELL DEPLUME Big Time (JAGJAGUWAR) Fever Dreams Pts 1-4 The Overload Breaking The Thermometer Anaïs Mitchell Gold 65 BRIAN ENO (NEW VOODOO/BMG) (ZEN FC/ISLAND) (ANTI-) FOREVERANDEVERNOMORE (BMG) (INTERNATIONAL ANTHEM) The 40th anniversary of From Leeds, Yard Act’s McCalla’s old Carolina (UMC) Preoccupied for much of The Smiths’ formation much-anticipated debut An unusually strong Chocolate Drops the last decade with the might have prompted managed to be both year for jazz poets, it bandmate Rhiannon 64 WU-LU Broadway success retrenchment in less furious and wry as it transpired, as Mancunian Giddens might have had Loggerhead (WARP) of her Hadestown questing souls, but surveyed the debris Alabaster DePlume the more prominent solo musical, Mitchell’s Johnny Marr’s energies of a post-Brexit Britain, joined Moor Mother in career, but that began to 63 NINA NASTASIA re-engagement remained resolutely where “all that’s left the Top 50. Gold found change with the singer/ Riderless Horse with new music was on his own music: is knobheads morris DePlume mobilising the banjoist/cellist’s uncharacteristically streamlined, precision- dancing to Sham 69”. UK jazz community into intricate fourth. Breaking (TEMPORARY RESIDENCE) profligate: two LPs in the tooled 21st century More rabble-rousing a display of positive The Thermometer dug Bonny Light Horseman electro-rock. Consumed than most latterday energy in the face of into the archives of Radio 62 CHARLOTTE trio; contributions to as four chunky EPs or post-punk bands, more adversity, as the jams Haiti to collage an ADIGÉRY & the Bon Iver/National at once as an epic temperamentally metaphysically visited evocative sequence BOLIS PUPUL supergroup Big Red album, Fever Dreams accessible than Sleaford Ethiopian, Jamaican, of songs exploring the Machine; and this first was all turbo-charged Mods, Yard Act’s mastery interior meditational cultural, political and Topical Dancer (BECAUSE MUSIC) solo set since 2014. LP forward motion, of the Zeitgeist was soundscapes and human connections eight charted Mitchell’s relentlessly focused on confirmed when a new beyond. Sax to hand, between Haiti – the 61LIGHTNING relocation from New the event horizon even version of Streets- motivational warmth a birthplace of her parents SEEDS York to rural Vermont, as it was constructed in like epiphany 100% given, DePlume proved a – and New Orleans. An via exploratory folk and the stasis of lockdown. Endurance emerged compelling spirit guide: enriching history lesson, See You In The Stars (BMG) an appealingly skewed, Whatever happened with an auspicious as he winningly insisted, where Creole folk and Rickie Lee Jones-like to that other guy in co-conspirator on Don’t Forget You’re Crescent City soul 60 SPOON approach to metre. the old band? piano: Elton John. Precious. intertwined. Lucifer On The Sofa Standout track: Standout track: Standout track: 100% Standout track: Standout track: (MATADOR) Endurance Bright Star Tenement Time Fucking Let Them Dodinin 59 BJÖRK Fossora (ONE LITTLE INDEPENDENT) 58 GILLA BAND Most Normal (ROUGH TRADE) 57 OREN AMBARCHI Shebang (DRAG CITY) 56 BIG THIEF Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You (4AD) 55 PROCLAIMERS Dentures Out (COOKING VINYL) 54 JAKE XERXES FUSSELL Good And Green Again (PARADISE OF BACHELORS) 53 XPROPAGANDA The Heart Is Strange (ZTT) 52 EZRA FURMAN All Of Us Flames (BELLA UNION) 51KURT VILE (Watch My Moves) (VERVE) 34 MOJO
MUSIC FILM/TV OF THE YEAR especially Bodies and Anarchy In The UK; they were a turning point in our society.” T HE SERIES, WHICH debuted on the Disney+ channel in May, was notoriously imperilled by the legal challenges of John Lydon, who objected to the Pistols’ music being used, dismissing the project as “disrespectful shit”. The singer complained he had no input into the script, nor had he ever met the actor portraying him. Boyle, however, counters that attempts to involve Lydon were rebuffed. “The other members of the band said, ‘If you contact [Lydon], he’ll stop the series from happening,’” says the director. “But I was desperate to, so a couple of months before we started I tried to get in touch with him but he didn’t respond. It’s such a shame because [Rotten actor] Anson Boon adores him, like I adore him – not what he is now, but what he meant to us all at the time.” Charged with delivering a convincing on-screen Rotten without the Pistol’s blessing, Boon’s task was forbidding. Yet it didn’t faze the Shooting stars: (clockwise charismatic 22-year-old. “I would have loved to from above) Pistol’s Anson Boon as Johnny Rotten, have talked to him, I’m such a fan,” he explains. “I (behind) Jacob Slater as Paul Cook; Boon: “It was my best must stress I went into this project attempt to be as Johnny Rotten as possible”; director not knowing that much about Danny Boyle; Pistol was based on Steve Jones’s memoir. him. I knew the orange spiky hair and Anarchy In The UK, but that was about it. But as I read his books and did lots of research into his journey, I became such an admirer. Lots of people who’ve Never Mind encountered John see a different The Bollocking version, so that was helpful reading all these different lenses into him. But whatever he thinks, I know [my performance] was coming from a place of admiration and respect.” Boon adds that performing the Pistols’ music live on set empowered him to throw himself into the Rotten role. “John is so Colourful if controversial, Danny Boyle’s different from me, our manner- Pistol bio-series won over the sceptics… except one. “John probably felt it should have isms, voice and thought process,” been his story,” the director tells Pat Gilbert. T H E SHORTLIST he explains. “It was always a leap becoming the character. But I 1PISTOL never felt nervous getting up on Dir: Danny Boyle that stage because the Sex Pistols’ FOR DIRECTOR DANNY Boyle, the moment – it succeeded brilliantly in 2 MOONAGE music has that unapologetic, he knew the casting for Pistol was exactly capturing the Pistols’ DAYDREAM powerful wall of sound. [The right occurred at the former LWT studios on transformational energy and on-screen band] trusted each London’s South Bank, where the actors their explosive collision of Dir: Brett Morgen other, and I knew they wouldn’t playing the Sex Pistols were learning to personalities. judge me on my best attempt to perform together as a group. “I walked in and they 3 THIS MUCH I be as Johnny Rotten as possible.” were playing Anarchy In The UK,” he recalls. “I felt It helped, perhaps, that KNOW TO BE TRUE relief, followed a millisecond later by pleasure. Boyle – of Trainspotting and So the big question is: has Rick Smith from Underworld was mentoring Slumdog Millionaire fame – Dir: Andrew Dominik them, and he knew that he couldn’t teach them to was a punk nut himself. be a band – it had to arrive. And it had.” “Punk was a transitionary 4 IN THE COURT OF Lydon seen the show? moment that marked you THE CRIMSON KING “I’ve no idea,” says Danny Boyle’s vision to turn his on-screen Sex Pistols forever, and my love of it has into a real-life group is one of many things that infected everything I’ve Dir: Toby Amies Boyle. “I haven’t heard anything made Pistol, his six-part mini-series based on done,” he enthuses. “The Steve Jones’s 2016 memoir Lonely Boy, such an energy it released in me, 5 ENNIO: THE back from him. But I hope he extraordinary beast. Fizzing with memorable that potential to be whoever MAESTRO catches it. John probably felt it performances by a cast of young actors – includ- you were, its lack of should have been his story, and he ing Toby Wallace (Jones), Anson Boon (Johnny deference was incredible. Dir: Giuseppe Tornatore Rotten), Thomas Brodie-Sangster (Malcolm Fifty years on, I still find the McLaren) and Sydney Chandler (Chrissie Hynde) Pistols’ songs disturbing, 6 ELVIS should have control over it, but Dir: Baz Luhrmann the fact was that Steve Jones wasn’t in control either. As a 7 TRAINWRECK: director, you need to be free to tell WOODSTOCK ’99 the story honestly and brutally, Dir: Jamie Crawford and that may not line up with Miya Mizuno/FX, Getty (2) 8 HALLELUJAH: others’ perceptions of things. LEONARD COHEN, But Steve loves it.” A JOURNEY, A SONG As for Anson Boon, playing Dirs: Daniel Geller, Dayna Goldfine Johnny Rotten has had a profound “WHATEVER [LYDON] THINKS, I KNOW 9 FREAKSCENE: effect on him. “The experience MY PERFORMANCE WAS COMING FROM THE STORY OF really did change me forever,” he DINOSAUR JR says. “I went to the gym today and I A PLACE OF RESPECT.” ANSON BOON thought about wearing my safety- Dir: Philipp Virus pin earring. I wouldn’t have done that three years ago (laughs).” M 10 MY LIFE AS A ROLLING STONE Dirs: Sam Anthony, James Giles, Oliver Murray, Clare Tavernor MOJO 35
MOJO PRESENTS THE BEST OF From the Isle Of Wight to…Mattia Zoppellaro the world? The droll punk of WET LEG’s debut album wowed their homeland in 2022. But winning over the Home Of Jazz? A step too far, too soon for our dynamic duo? “You have to learn to trust your gut,” they assure GRAYSON HAVER CURRIN. Photography by MATTIA ZOPPELLARO HE BARTENDER WITH THE BUSHY BROWN BEARD DOES NOT KNOW WHAT TO make of his club tonight. It is a Thursday evening in early September inside the New Orleans landmark Tipitina’s, an American institution that has served as a hub for the city’s hybridised funk and jazz for nearly 50 years. Gig posters from The Meters, Dickey Betts and The Neville Brothers line knotty wooden rafters, while a massive painting of the club’s patron saint, Professor Longhair, perches above the stage, a sentinel in silent chiaroscuro. This is the sort of place that begets regulars, where that bearded bartender, Zack Thompson, says he often knows 50 customers by name. Tonight, despite the capacity crowd of 800, he recognises maybe four. And then, just as he’s handing a patron a gin and tonic in a dripping plastic cup, the throng screams in unannounced unison – savage and uninterrupted, for 20 cathartic seconds. Thompson steps back, wipes his sweaty brow, and tries to figure out the deal with Wet Leg, the new British band who have not only overrun his old Southern club but also turned the house into a scream therapy session through a throbbing rock song about some daft dweeb called Ur Mum. “This was the fastest sell-out of the year – like, five hours,” Thompson stammers over the din of I Want To Be Abducted (By A UFO), one of Wet Leg’s few songs that didn’t make their self-titled smash, released at the start of April. “What is going on with them?” The crowd – maybe three-quarters women, some of whom drove five hours to get here to stand in a queue for just as long – don’t have time to answer. Instead, they sing along to every love-spun kiss-off, self- deprecating put-down, and lust-charged come-on. “What makes you think you’re good enough to think about me when you’re touching yourself?” They chant those last two words back at Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers, the pair who started Wet Leg on a lark three years ago on the Isle Of Wight. The Wet Leg fever finally reaches the bartender at set’s end, as Teasdale, Chambers, and the three friends who now back them catapult into the first chorus of Chaise Longue – a song as play- fully naughty as most anything New Orleans ever produced. For a year, Wet Leg’s first single has been internationally ubiquitous, a lithe rock anthem for eternally suspended adolescence. But Thompson has not heard it until now, and he beams as he nods in rhythm. “That was great,” ➢ 36 MOJO
Big Easy does it: Wet Leg’s Rhian Teasdale (left) and Hester Chambers take to the streets of New Orleans, September 1, 2022; (below) their Number 1 eponymous debut album.
All day long, on the… sofa: Wet Leg (clockwise from left) Teasdale, Joshua Mobarki, Henry Holmes, Ellis Durand and Chambers relax backstage at Tipitina’s, New Orleans, September 1, 2022; (below) WL promo product and debut single Chaise Longue. “I LOST SIGHT OF MYSELF, ➣ bandmates, like Chambers’ boyfriend of seven years, multi- WHAT I WANTED, instrumentalist Joshua Omead Mobaraki. Mattia Zoppellaro (6), Getty, Vasso Vu, Luke Henery BECAUSE I WAS IN LOVE. “You just never know what you are going to get, because AFTER THAT, I there are so many factors that contribute to you having a good time or a really bad time or just a nice time,” says Chambers, WAS DEFINITELY, squeezing that last adjective until it sounds like a squeak. “It’s FUCK LOVE.” like a complicated recipe – is that a good analogy, Rhian?” Rhian Teasdale Teasdale and Chambers never expected to be here, riding a gleaming black bus with a matching trailer across the United States to he exclaims when Wet Leg exit the headline sold-out shows in iconic venues, open for Florence + The stage, ignoring 10 minutes of insistent Machine at Madison Square Garden, or commandeer marquee spots encore calls. “I get it now.” at major festivals. They never anticipated touring with Harry Styles, as they will in February, or being asked how it felt when he covered Backstage on a little patio, in muggy their song Wet Dream on the BBC’s Live Lounge. (For the record: “It late summer heat wafting from the Mis- just popped into existence on the internet, so surreal,” says Cham- sissippi River a block away, a DJ corners Teasdale and Chambers. He bers, who was in a van with the band when his allegiant take arrived.) asks what lots of people have wondered about Wet Leg during 2022: “How does it feel to be the buzziest band in the world right now?” Repeated music school dropouts who had been in and out of or around bands for years, Chambers and Teasdale were in the second Chambers looks down at her feet, fidgets. “Ummm,” Teasdale half of their twenties when they started penning these puckish songs says, stalling and smiling and glancing around for her friends, hop- about getting too high and having bad sex. Teasdale’s heart had been ing someone interrupts. She slips away, too busy on the roller- so broken she suspected she would write off romantic love for- coaster to talk about how the ride feels. ever, investing instead in friendships. “I lost sight of myself, what I wanted, because I was in love,” she says. “After that, I was definitely EARLIER THAT AFTERNOON, THOUGH, TEASDALE in this headspace of, Fuck love, you know?” and Chambers reclined on the grass of Lafayette Square, a centuries-old park named for the French general who They named themselves Wet Leg after a random combination of fought for American independence. They were ready to reflect on emojis, with no thought to how it might represent them in a world the unexpected adventure of Wet Leg. outside small clubs on the Isle Of Wight. It was only when their manager, Martin Hall (Manic Street Preachers; The Script), tried to During the previous three days, Wet Leg raced through the get them to change it before he shopped their demo to labels that United States’ southernmost cities. Their San Antonio show was they recognised they might be onto something. a drag, beset by problems with their in-ear monitors. They some- times felt like they were alone on-stage, the rest of the band sus- “I remember telling Martin that you should always have faith in pended in some distant vacuum. But the next night, in Austin, they your own bad ideas,” Teasdale says, laughing. “You have to learn to met Courtney Barnett – “she was fucking cool,” Chambers raves, a trust your gut, to trust your own bad taste.” Barnett tote bag slung over her right shoulder – when they played her travelling festival. Days before flying to London for a subse- The decision was vindicated when Wet Leg emerged from Cov- quently postponed Mercury Prize ceremony, they are exhausted, id-19 shutdowns as one of rock’s true recent phenomena – signed their eyes heavy and movements deliberate. to Domino, tapped for Glastonbury, interviewed by David Byrne, extolled by Iggy Pop, and on and on. “I’m re-reading The Lord Of The Rings,” says Teasdale, her long white frock gathered beneath her. “I know I always bring up The “I don’t think it’s very common to have a label interested without Lord Of The Rings, but there’s really smart stuff in there.” Teasdale spins a long parable about Frodo’s futile efforts to cheer up “his squad” against a series of grim perils. Touring with your friends, it turns out, can sometimes feel that way too. She used to worry Wet Leg was a drag for the Isle Of Wight buddies who have become 38 MOJO
Out on a limb: (clockwise from left) Wet Leg on-stage at Tipitina’s; performing on the Park Stage at this year’s Glastonbury; flowered up in New Orleans; the setlist. coming to see you live,” says Chambers. “We LEG UPS So what does this mean for the future of got a record deal when we didn’t even know what we were really doing. We hadn’t put out Four peers Wet Leg, a duo whose meteoric ascent owes a single or EP, but they said, ‘You can write an who inspired the album.’ We were really lucky, like it’s almost nascent Wet Leg. much to their ability to mirror the frustration too good to be true.” JULIA JACKLIN and fatigue of mid-twenties life in magnetic SOON BEFORE MIDNIGHT, AFTER Tipitina’s has emptied, everyone in Want vague scenarios and rock songs that feel like release valves? Hon- Wet Leg parades upstairs to the dress- predictable emotions from ing room, emptying the refrigerator of beer your songwriters? Then estly, they don’t know. Despite some reports and kombucha before security inevitably asks skip Crushing, the 2019 they have finished their second album, they them to leave, too. Chambers and Mobaraki album from Australia’s lean against one another in the corner of a long Julia Jacklin: devastatingly haven’t started it. They didn’t reach this point, leather sectional, quiet and content. The rest specific, vivid and real while, somehow, of the band – Teasdale plus two smiling, shaggy also disarming. Wet Leg found a different after all, by fretting, planning, or even suc- dudes: drummer Henry Holmes and bassist side of that approach. Ellis Durand – slip in beside them, creating a ceeding at very much; in many ways, Wet Leg sweaty dogpile of laughter that booms inside ASHNIKKO the little space. failed up, toward stardom. Think Wet Leg’s Wet Dream Tonight was fun; they haven’t even headed is a savage get-lost memo? “When we recorded our album, we had toward Bourbon Street yet. (They will.) Wet Stupid, the 2019 single Leg are happy. from US singer and rapper never done that before. We were super Ashnikko, trades double That is, Teasdale and Chambers realise, the entendre for explicit scared,” says Teasdale. “But we went from a conundrum of a band in their position: even if derision, including a joke about a dork Wet Leg began as a joke, it is now a successful with his hands down his trousers. Wet duo to being a band, and we’re so much better business, with three friends they consider full Leg recently covered another Ashnikko now. We’ve gained so much confidence.” members and a crew and managers and agents, song for Spotify. the industrial works. And while Wet Leg’s hits And if people hate what comes next, if the emerged from the self-sovereignty that can THE CHATS stem from heartbreak, Teasdale is now giddily Wet Leg phenomenon turns out to be a brief in love, having met a partner at a festival and The Queensland trio’s fallen madly for them. Earlier that afternoon, breakthrough single, Smoko, one? “There’s so much to worry about with she disappeared into a corner with her phone, is a bass-led plea about how booking plane tickets so this unnamed partner everyone in the world is just this band now that there’s no sense in adding could come on tour. She bounded across the looking for a work break. room. “I approve,” Chambers said, giggling, The hilarious and all-too- the pressure of writing music that certain peo- “not that you need it.” real video makes a star of singer Eamon Sandwith, a Mark E Smith-in-waiting ple will love,” says Chambers, her voice sud- who just wants a little customer service. denly suggesting the clarity of someone who IDLES has thought about this. “It’s more wholesome What do you go to rock concerts for? If it’s to be to know that the people who care most about convinced of something, Rhian Teasdale recommends the music we’re making are us. Otherwise, it’s Idles. Joe Talbot leads his crew like they’re the Bad just a big waste of time.” Seeds up for a rumble. Wet Leg’s message is less combative, but Teasdale says Idles’ Wet Leg, after all, has already been more live energy was always a touchstone. fun than they – or the New Orleans bartender with the bushy brown beard, for that matter – ever expected. For Teasdale, that’s enough. “I gave up on trying to do music, like, four years ago – ‘I’m going to get a job that takes up all my time but pays me money,’” Teasdale says. “I’m just really happy that we’ve had the experience we’ve had. I’d love to continue making music with my friends, but only for the right reasons.” M MOJO 39
BLUES THE 75 BEST ALBUMS OF Compiled by TONY RUSSELL 40 39 38 37 36 1SHEMEKIA THE MARS ELVIS TAJ MAHAL & VIEUX FARKA JOCKSTRAP COPELAND VOLTA COSTELLO & RY COODER TOURÉ & THE IMPOSTERS KHRUANGBIN I Love You Jennifer B Done Come Too Far (ALLIGATOR) The Mars Volta Get On Board: The Songs The Boy Named If Of Sonny Terry & Brownie Ali (ROUGH TRADE) 2 SILENT PARTNERS (CLOUDS HILL) McGhee Changing Times (LITTLE VILLAGE) (EMI) (DEAD OCEANS) A second appearance Omar Rodríguez-López (NONESUCH) in this year’s Top 50 3 THE DIG 3 and Cedric Bixler-Zavala Some fine, mitigated Having spent 15 years for one Georgia Ellery, The Dig 3 (SELF-RELEASED) appeared to have shut retrospection from D.P. Some 56 years after their trying to step out of the otherwise engaged down their frantically McManus in 2022, as he first band The Rising giant shadow of his as violinist in Black 4 JOHN NÉMETH extravagant Mars Volta resurrected his first Sons split up, Taj Mahal father Ali, Vieux Farka Country, New Road. For May Be The Last Time project in 2012; band, Rusty, to complete and Ry Cooder Touré made the shrewd Jockstrap’s quirky but subsequent reunions the album they never reconnected to honour tactical move of radically polished debut, I Love (MEMPHIS GREASE/NOLA BLUE) were as a new group, made in 1972. Solo their teenage selves. inhabiting it in 2022. You Jennifer B, Ellery Antemasque, and their album 32, The Boy While TRS were chiming Two albums ensued: a turned singer and 5 DEMETRIA TAYLOR oldest one, At The Named If also drew on LA folk-rockers, for straight Saharan blues teamed up with fellow Doin’ What I’m Supposed To Do Drive-In. The Mars Volta ’70s energies, with The Get On Board the duo guitar set, Les Racines; Guildhall School Of were rebooted, however, Attractions – sorry, The defaulted to the music and this album of Ali Music & Drama grad (DELMARK) for this surprising and Imposters – cranking up they grew up on – covers with Texan Taylor Skye, proceeding excellent seventh album the rowdy garage rock, specifically the Piedmont groovers Khruangbin. to swing artfully from 6 KIRK FLETCHER – one which largely as if This Year’s Model had blues of Terry and The latter provided their discofied electropop Heartache By The Pound replaced the hardcore been recorded last McGhee. An ultra-raw customary dreamy to orchestral Scott prog derangement of week. A great band – and unadorned good ambience, relocating Walkerisms, via (SELF-RELEASED) old with glossier, funkier, Steve Nieve’s overdriven time, courtesy of two the tunes out of the all manner of Latin-tinged FM rock. Vox Continental was on master craftsmen, plus desert and into a plush techno digressions. 7 MEMPHISSIPPI The band’s “Style fire – but hearteningly Cooder’s boy Joachim chill-out zone, while A weird-pop SOUNDS Council moment”, great songs and vocal on drums or bass. not sacrificing any puzzle, that hid not claimed Bixler-Zavala. performances, too. of their potency. inconsiderable charm. Welcome To The Land (LITTLE VILLAGE) Standout track: Standout track: Standout track: Standout track: Standout track: 8 MISSISSIPPI Packing Up Getting MACDONALD Blacklight Shine Farewell, OK Ready To Go Diarabi Glasgow Do Right, Say Right (APM) 35 34 33 32 31 9 SHELTON POWE Shelton Powe (MUSIC MAKER) 10 VARIOUS Jack O’Diamonds (SAYDISC/MATCHBOX) UNDERGROUND Compiled by ANDREW MALE 1OREN AMBARCHI/Credit in here YEAH YEAH KENDRICK JEFF PARKER ROLLING OUMOU JOHAN BERTHLING YEAHS LAMAR BLACKOUTS SANGARÉ /ANDREAS WERLIIN Forfolks C.F. Cool It Down Mr. Morale & The Big Timbuktu Ghosted (DRAG CITY) Steppers (INTERNATIONAL ANTHEM) Endless Rooms (SECRETLY CANADIAN) (WORLD CIRCUIT) 2 BRIAN HARNETTY (TOP DAWG) Chicago jazz imprint (SUB POP) Words And Silences (WINESAP) Another band breaking IA went from strength Lockdowns and a lengthy hiatus (nine An advance track – The to strength in 2022, Three LPs in, the displacement provided 3 BILL ORCUTT years between albums), Heart Part 5 – that rode a nurturing outliers like Australian five-piece an incentive for two fine Music For Four Guitars (PALILALIA) but, unlike The Mars sample of Marvin Gaye’s Alabaster DePlume now seemed less like Malian singers to spread Volta, Karen O and I Want You proved to be and surfacing vintage revivers of jangle-pop, their creative wings 4 THE EPHEMERON the Yeah Yeah Yeahs a deluxe red herring. Charles Stepney tapes more like torchbearers this year. Rokia Koné LOOP doubled down on A week later, Lamar’s while showcasing its of a grand tradition. remotely crafted an their M.O. rather than fifth album contained hometown’s new breed. On Endless Rooms, the electro album with Psychonautic Escapism (HEARTCRIMES) reinventing it. Hence neither that track, nor Room, too, for older cross-stitching between producer Jacknife Lee, party tunes as well as much else resembling heroes like Tortoise’s the three guitarist- while the imperious 5 JULIA REIDY love ballads came classic soul. Instead, the Jeff Parker and his singers became more Sangaré found herself World In World (BLACK TRUFFLE) couched in operatic music was low-key, the subtle, ever-evolving elaborate, though no marooned in Baltimore, levels of intensity: focus remorselessly on music. Forfolks found less punchy, to match a adding dobro and slide 6 EIKO ISHIBASHI even Fleez, a song the words of the most Parker alone, bathing foregrounded political guitar to her Wassoulou For McCoy (BLACK TRUFFLE) very ostentatiously sophisticated and his guitar in FX, imperative. And if blood soul sound. Timbuktu’s declaring its love self-analytical rapper deconstructing jazz ties to The Go-Betweens genius, though, rested in 7 JEREMIAH CHIU of ESG, combined of his generation. standards and Tortoise and The Feelies how the American blues & MARTA SOFIA skyscraping grandeur Complementing the nuggets alike. Also this remained explicit, their shadings melded so HONER with basement sweat. extraordinary flow, a year, a killer live band frazzled virtuosity could seamlessly into Sangaré’s Big synths, big tunes; notable and elusive set, Mondays At The cut deeper too, right into groove: harmonious, Recordings From The Åland Islands big hearts, too. guest – Beth Gibbons, Enfield Tennis Academy. Marquee Moon territory. rather than a Western of Portishead. commercial expediency. (INTERNATIONAL ANTHEM) Standout track: Standout track: Standout track: Standout track: Standout track: 8 BITCHIN BAJAS Burning La Jetée Saw You At The Eastern Bajascillators (DRAG CITY) Mother I Sober Beach Wassulu Don 9 WARRINGTON- RUNCORN NEW TOWN DEVELOPMENT PLAN Interim Report, March 1979 (CASTLES IN SPACE) 10LAURA CANNELL Antiphony Of The Trees (BRAWL)
Still Crazy after all these years: (from left) WORKHORSE Nils Lofgren, Ralph Molina, Billy Talbot and OF THE YEAR Neil Young, 2022; (right) Young on-stage with CSN&Y, Wembley Stadium, September 14, 1974; (below) 1982’s Trans LP. “He Never Stops And on the next instalment of Archives. Do you Just Fades Away” guys have any involvement in that? GettyJust two new albums down the road he would want to record, but then BT: Neil usually runs things by us, but mostly he’s and five meticulously out of the blue he called me up and said, “How in charge. He’s got various departments working curated archive releases about May 1?” That was a sign that he was excited on everything. It would be hard for anyone to do in 12 months from the about this batch of songs. It was an unexpected it all themselves, so he has to designate and keep inexhaustible Neil Young. privilege. Two records in a year requires a great in charge of it so he knows what’s going on. But what next? “We like writer to be hard at work. Consequently, we don’t need to hear it. I like being surprised,” Crazy being surprised by finding out what’s happen- Horse tell Chris Catchpole. What is it that still keeps Neil so prolific? ing. I’ll just stick to playing the bass and singing. R UST NEVER SLEEPS and neither, it would Billy Talbot: He never stops working. Neil’s Is there anything in the vaults that you’d love seem, does Neil Young. Over the past 12 always growing and changing and being alive as to see the light of day? months the 76-year-old has released a a human being. He never stops and just fades steady glut of music, both old and new, at away, which in turn inspires you. I find it NL: Yeah, of course. There were some great a Stakhanovite work rate. In less than a fascinating and inspirational. It makes my world outtakes from ’82 from the Trans album. We went year we’ve had two brand new Crazy Horse more complete to have a friend like Neil. to Hawaii and recorded almost a whole album albums – Barn and the recent, Rick Rubin-pro- there and there were some great tracks from duced World Record – plus a legendary unreleased NL: I think you get born with a gift for music and that. A handful of them made Trans to solve the Crazy Horse set from 2001, Toast (see MOJO’s Best Neil was given an extraordinary gift. He problem of Neil and [label boss] David Geffen Reissues Of 2022 on page 56). In May, Young recognises that gift and has chosen to be a great bumping heads because Trans was too ‘un-Neil dusted off two live LPs recorded in 1971, plus one caretaker of it and to listen to it and nurture it and Young like’, which was ridiculous. There were from 1974, then in August put out Noise & Flowers, keep exploring it with a lot of wonder and some great outtakes that I think will have to a fourth live set, this one recorded in 2019 with gratitude and joy, and to let it keep taking him appear in the next decade’s releases. Promise Of The Real. Not to mention taking on down that path. My first experience with Neil was streaming service Spotify and compiling a when I was 18 when we made After The Gold Rush, Are there plans for Crazy Horse to play live bespoke CD for MOJO readers, it’s been a busy and after 53 years it’s exciting to see someone still together soon? year even by Young’s standards, even if the take his gift seriously. promised third volume of Archives didn’t quite BT: That’s what we want to do. We shall see how it materialise. MOJO spoke to long-serving sidemen, Is his attitude to the work the same now as manifests itself. Nils is going out with Bruce Crazy Horse’s Nils Lofgren and Billy Talbot, about it was when you [Springsteen] for the next year or so and Ralph what drives their boss after all these years… first met? [Molina, CH drummer] and I and Neil want to play, so we’ll see what happens. But we want to do a World Record is the second new Crazy Horse NL: I think that’s a new record before we play live. That’s what I LP in less than a year. Were you surprised fair generalisation. think we should do. when you got the call from Neil to come back The bottom line to into the studio? it all is a joy and a So, we might be getting another Crazy Horse creativity with record in the next 12 months? Nils Lofgren: He’d talked about writing and that people you love and you trust. BT: Maybe within the next six months! There’s no That’s always real plan, it’s just a feeling that I have. M been a constant. “THERE WERE He’s also working SOME GREAT OUTTAKES FROM TRANS...” NILS LOFGREN MOJO 41
MUSIC BOOK OF THE YEAR “It Felt Like I Was Released In Some Way” Faith, Hope And Carnage, Nick Cave’s collection of lockdown interviews with Seán O’Hagan, filled eyes with tears and hearts with hope. But it wasn’t just about grief and loss and God and healing. As Cave tells Danny Eccleston, “Everything circles back to music.” “IT’S NOT YOUR to express himself about them. regular musician’s Maybe that’s why he’s agreed to book.” Seán the following, his first MOJO O’Hagan, co-author interview since 2017… of Faith, Hope And Carnage, may have bagged Hi, Nick. It’s MOJO here. another of 2022’s big gongs – Understatement Of The Year. In Oh my God. I haven’t spoken fact it’s hard to remember – may- to you guys, in… how long? be not since Keith Richards’s Life in 2010 – a music book having so Too long. much impact beyond the usual I’ve missed you. circles of fans and aficionados. It’s a book about destruction – the We missed you too. But we’re “shattering”, as he calls it, of pleased to say that Faith, Hope Cave’s life following the tragic And Carnage is MOJO’s Music death of his son Arthur in 2015 – Book Of The Year. but also creation: the drive that keeps Cave writing and changing how he makes music; the I’m really happy about that. And inspirations and collaborations that have shaped his visions; the building of a liveable life after I’m also really happy that it’s seen as a music catastrophe. Cave’s search for solace – already reflected in Ghosteen, MOJO’s Album Of The Year book. Because mostly, to me, it’s a book about in 2019, and the wisdom, and humour, he imparts on his Red Hand Files website – has already music, seen, I guess, through the proved a solace, in turn, to many. prism of loss and religion, or T H E SHORTLIST “It was really emotional at times, at the spirituality if you prefer, and signings, to witness the connection people feel various different things. But 1FAITH, HOPE they have with Nick,” says O’Hagan. “We’re in the everything circles back to music. AND CARNAGE middle of a Waterstones with 300 people, and a guy’s telling you a story about losing his mum One of the things it offers is a lot Nick Cave & Seán O’Hagan and dad from Covid. It’s incredibly intimate moments like that. It brings home what people of insight into your recent (CANONGATE) have been through.” albums. There’s a chapter 2 LET’S DO IT Throughout the book, Cave’s thoughts and where you talk about Skeleton Bob Stanley (FABER & FABER) feelings about religion – always a theme in his Tree as a prophetic record… songs – reverberate. He describes himself as 3 FINGERS CROSSED finding comfort in the idea of God, or a spiritual Yeah. I talked about that with a lot Miki Berenyi (NINE EIGHT) dimension, rather than ‘believing’ as such. of care and nuance. It’s a bit hard During the editing process, O’Hagan admits to talk about that in an interview 4 THE PHILOSOPHY there were moments when he wondered if the in the same way. But I’ve always OF MODERN route they were taking was almost too esoteric. felt that my songs seemed to SONG “You know, we were talking about The Imaginary know what was going on more Realm, and quoting Marilynne Robinson [the US Bob Dylan (SIMON & SCHUSTER) novelist and essayist is a favourite of former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams], than I did. Some of them have 5 THE BYRDS but then I thought, At least it’s different!” waited patiently for the events 1964-1967 In the process, Cave found himself forging a that would kind of… solidify them Various (BMG BOOKS) path through his recent experiences and a way to occur. And I think Skeleton 6 WAYWARD 42 MOJO Tree… It was shocking to a lot of Vashti Bunyan (WHITE RABBIT) us how much that seemed to say about the events that happened 7 SOME NEW KIND around the loss of my son. And it OF KICK became a very difficult record to Kid Congo Powers (OMNIBUS) make and it took me a long time 8 PAPER CUTS to be able to have any relationship Ted Kessler (WHITE RABBIT) Getty with that record, other than a kind 9 SOUND WITHIN of horror. Now I see it in a different SOUND way. And there are some very ➢ Kate Molleson (FABER & FABER) 10 A LIKELY LAD Pete Doherty & Simon Spence (CONSTABLE)
“I’VE OPENED MYSELF Hands on heart: Nick UP AND ALLOWED Cave tends to his flock MYSELF TO SPEAK at All Points East, OUTWARDLY TO Victoria Park, London, PEOPLE, RATHER August 28, 2022. THAN THE PAINFULLY INTERIOR ARTIST’S LIFE I USED TO LIVE.” NICK CAVE
Blood brothers: Cave with Warren Ellis, in Andrew Dominik’s 2022 film This Much I Know To Be True. ➣ “THERE WAS beautiful songs on that record, which we SOMETHING ABOUT friends on the phone. And I knew I could play live, but it took a long time for me to see always go back and edit stuff out, which that record as anything other than a curse. CERAMICS THAT we did, by the way – the editing process was WAS SHOCKINGLY extreme. But the one conversation that I said You mention very early on in the book how THERAPEUTIC. IT’S I didn’t want to use was where I attempted to little you enjoy interviews. What persuaded describe what the [2021 LP] Carnage songs were you to engage in 40 hours of them? BEEN KIND OF about, trying to explain the lyrics. And that might LIFE-CHANGING.” seem like a relatively benign thing, but it felt like (Laughs) Well, I hadn’t done one for six years or a terrible violation to the songs themselves, and something. I did an interview shortly after my NICK CAVE that I just hadn’t done them justice. They hadn’t son died, and I felt so bad about the interview. had time to ferment and find themselves and I felt that I was unable to articulate the way I wasMegan Cullen, Lynette Garland, Alamy, Courtesy Nick Cave/Prudence Cuming Associates (2) differences. And we started talking about all find what they were actually about. So that one, feeling about things. And so I just felt that the sorts of things. I didn’t allow, but all the rest… I think Seán form itself couldn’t contain what I was going guided me through in a way. through at the time. I mean, I just didn’t have Anyway, he decided that maybe we the words myself, either. should tape these conversations and that What do you hope readers will get out of they might be of some value. And I asked the book? Do you have a sense of that? You What changed? my team – who’ve been reticent about me mention a few times this idea of “service”. doing interviews for a long time – and they And the book seems very much to have an When Covid came around, I started thought it was a good idea. And through the aspect of a… a service to me. talking to Seán. Now, me and Seán course of the interviews, it felt like I was fundamentally disagree on a You were gonna say “a self-help book” (laughs). whole raft of issues. Israel, for released in some way to talk about things. example, and a lot of stuff that The thing I like about the book is that it I wasn’t. Honest! kind of radiates out from that. And so our initial conversa- begins tentatively and ends with the wind I was hoping I’d get the MOJO Self-Help Book tions were fractious, to in my sails a little bit. Something happens Of The Year! say the least, but we kept as the conversations deepen and become talking to each other. And more expansive, and more important to If only we had that category… we were in lockdown, and me. And we ended up talking more about what else do you do, but universal matters. But all of that circles I think, you know, it’s complex. I make music for get on the phone and argue around music, as everything does, really. all sorts of different reasons. And I created the with someone about… Red Hand Files for all sorts of different reasons. Israel! So we had these Was there any point where you But it can’t be denied, especially with the Red conversations that were kind thought, “I’m revealing too much Hand Files, that they are doing some good. I of like pub brawls. But after a about my life, my family’s life?”, know that from the responses I get back. And while, we kind of got tired of when you felt like rowing back a bit? that feels… that’s not a small thing, and it gives that, and started to find that me the energy to carry on with the Red Hand we actually had common Idle hands at In a way, no, Files. Because I’ve opened myself up and allowed ground outside our work: excerpts because Seán and I myself to speak outwardly to people, rather than particular ideological from Cave’s The became very good the painfully interior artist’s life I used to live, this Devil – A Life. extraordinarily selfish, self-absorbed kind of life. 44 MOJO
Notes and queries: Cave the scribe at work; (right) Faith, Hope And Carnage co-author Seán O'Hagan. T H E CAVE W H I S P E R E R Still reeling from the response to their book, Cave’s interlocutor Seán O’Hagan braces for the “über-atheist” backlash. By Danny Eccleston. AT THE BEGINNING of their series of “I THINK conversations for Faith, Hope And NICK’S BROKEN Carnage, says Seán O’Hagan, Nick Cave THE SILENCE ON seemed to have much the clearer idea of where their book was heading. The A LOT OF THIS STUFF. writer was also amazed from the off PEOPLE DON’T TEND by the singer’s candour. TO TALK ABOUT “I had started out very tentatively LOSS AND GRIEF.” talking about music and collabora- tion, and the recording of Ghosteen, SEÁN O’HAGAN and improvisation,” says O’Hagan. “I was sort of building up to getting to Arthur. But Nick talks about Arthur even in the first chapter. Arthur is the abiding presence in the book, rather than God. Maybe God transmitted through Arthur? I don’t know. But, yeah, it became very clear very early on that he wanted somehow to make sense of that, and also articulate his beliefs and feelings more clearly.” With acclaim for the book proving instant and deafening, O’Hagan can certainly pack away what he calls his “quiet moment of doubt”. I don’t think it’s only to do with loss. I think I always talked from the other side of the pond. “I always thought that the book would find it’s to do with… you grow older, and you see the I talked about how it’s OK. Things will be OK. its place, but that it might take some time,” he says. world in a different way. Well, you should, I think, It can be OK. And I rarely talked about what “It hasn’t had any bad reviews yet. I’m sure that and part of that is to contribute to the world and, happened. And I guess the reason I don’t talk there’s one down the line coming from some if you can, improve matters. So there’s one about that is because it feels like a singular über-atheist (laughs).” aspect of the book that I think can benefit experience. It brings it down to myself, and people, but largely it was something that I was I’m just more comfortable talking about things Indeed, if there’s one aspect of the book you doing to find out where I stood on things. And in a general way. And also, I didn’t even really can imagine some readers finding perplexing it’s you find that through conversation. I don’t know remember a lot of it. Because you don’t, you just the broad seam of theology, or spiritual questing, about you, but my mind is just full of bad ideas. that runs throughout. I only find that out when I speak them out loud. “In the book he mentions an interview with a And I think, at the end of the day, that to some degree, the book’s about how we can find remember… excruciating moments. I talked to writer from a music paper, who’d been told by his ourselves through being able to speak freely. And I think that would be the underlying current [Bad Seed] Warren [Ellis] about it, and he was editor, ‘Don’t get him started on God!’” O’Hagan that runs through the book, the idea of freedom: freedom of ideas and of speech and there, he came straight to my house that day. chuckles. “That’s interesting to me because people of religion and freedom from grief and from political extremism and reductiveness. And So he was able to remind me of a lot of things didn’t turn off when John Coltrane or Alice all of that I think has something to do with conversation that I’d kind of forgotten. You know, I think I lost Coltrane or Pharoah Sanders started making their and being free to say things. about a year. And he needed to remind me what spiritual records. But I think in rock music, it’s seen Chapter 14, The God we actually did. So it was an important as a no-no, maybe because there’s not a great In The Cloud, is such chapter for me in a way. It was tradition – I mean, there are some bloody awful an extraordinary important for me to examine in a ‘Christian Rock’ records. But the God stuff never experience. You look worried me because I knew he was gonna go there. at that day [of Arthur’s forensic way that moment and what I just was surprised constantly by his articulation of accident] so unblinkingly. reverberated out from that moment, it. But I guess it’s all linked to the loss of his son.” But there’s a sense at the end of it, the moment of… shattering. Inevitably, Cave’s bereavement will resonate a kind of psychic breakthrough. You mentioned Warren there, and most with the largest number of readers. As the Even as a reader, I get that from it. it’s probably important to note singer is at pains to point out, his experience, Seán felt that when that this book isn’t just about however horrific, could not, in a way, be more I talked about these you. The important people in ordinary. What’s unusual is his hard-won belief in matters, of grief, the value of sharing it. your life are pictured so beautifully. Even Chris “I think he’s broken the silence on a lot of this Martin, who turns up stuff,” says O’Hagan. “People, particularly in and has a real presence. England, don’t tend to talk about loss and grief.” Readers would be really surprised, I think, to The bravery Cave has shown may have further find him here. knock-on effects. The latter stages of the book are marked by an invigorated tone, a refreshment of Yeah. Look, I don’t hang creative energies. “I really think he has gone to places that no rock out with people. I’m not star has gone,” says O’Hagan. “I’m very intrigued part of a scene. I’m not part of by where he goes next. The more narrative song a scene of like-minded people. will make a comeback, I think. He said to me he’s I have my band members, and missing the beats!” I trust them, and I work with ➢ MOJO 45
Portrait of the artist as a consumer: Firstborn Is Dead-era Cave in his West Berlin apartment, August 3, 1985 (spot the Elvis photograph). ➣ “I ENJOYED THE for the business of making art. Just allow them. And Warren, obviously is central to yourself to be swept up by the project. Once that. But most of my friends and people that I see ELVIS MOVIE IN things are happening, I don’t have that sort I bond with on matters beyond what we do of weird reticence some people have. I don’t professionally. And the last thing of interest to PLACES AND DIDN’T procrastinate and I just get on with it. And me is whether that person’s artistic output nothing is dependent on how I feel or whether chimes with mine. There’s a great distance ENJOY IT IN OTHERS. I’m inspired. I just find that I can apply myself between what Chris does and what I do. And we to things. If I have a real talent, that would be it. acknowledge that. But there’s other things that BUT IT SENT ME have always drawn me to Chris and mostly it’s his One more thing, Nick. What’s the best thing extraordinary generosity of spirit. And he’s a very BACK TO CONCERTS you’ve heard all year? funny guy. He has a sense of humour that’s kind of hair-raising (laughs). THAT WERE VERY Well, this is not anything new… I saw the Elvis movie. I really enjoyed it in places and didn’t The other thing I like about Chris is that he’s IMPORTANT TO ME.” enjoy it in other places. But it really sent me back bold, right? He says what he thinks. I mean, he to certain concerts that were very important listened to a song off Carnage, actually, because NICK CAVE to me when I was in my younger days, and one he was in town, and I played him this song called fundamental one was Elvis singing American Albuquerque, which, in the original version of it, Covid. That’s been quite difficult. So I’m very Trilogy in Aloha From Hawaii, the satellite Elvis had this improvised piece of piano, which was a happy to be going back to Australia. And then event. And you can see that on YouTube, and I very beautiful melody. But it was a little slow, I want to make a record. ended up watching that, I don’t know, 30, 40 and we didn’t know what to do with it. So we times around a few months ago, because it’s kind of used that as the introduction to another And how are the ceramics coming along? such an extraordinary thing. song. I played it to Chris and he’s like, “What the Bleddyn Butcher, Courtesy Nick Cave/Prudence Cuming Associates fuck!? You’ve written the melody of the decade, There’s one set of 17 [entitled The Devil – A Life, I felt similarly about the film. If you’re really and then you go and fuck it up like some 2020–2022]. And they’re in a museum in Finland. into Elvis, you want more of an insight into two-bit afterthought?” We’re They sit there and people look at them and think the person. But I’ve spoken to people who like, “Hang on…” what they think, but I’m really quite proud of knew rather less about Elvis, and it has been them. And when I next find some time, maybe I’ll a gateway drug for them. So Chris’s advice is, just play make another set. There was something about that piano melody on repeat and ceramics that was shockingly therapeutic, that I think that’s the good thing about that film. sing over the top of it. Now, these you could sit down with some clay and just work But I was disappointed with the end because it aren’t little comments. These are away and become so absorbed. It’s been kind of seemed to follow a kind of downward trajectory catastrophic ideas. And me and life-changing. I work in the studio of Corin of Elvis’s life, and I don’t see it that way. Person- Warren are very resistant. We ally, I think those final Vegas concerts were some love Chris. But hey, it’s Chris Johnson. He works mostly in marble, of the greatest performances I’ve ever seen. They Martin telling us how a song but kind of teaches me stuff and I… brought something to the table that didn’t exist should sound, right? At I love to do it. I don’t know what in the young Elvis, that has something to do with the same time, through to say. I know it looks like kind suffering. And just going on-stage with all your gritted teeth, we realise of a late-life hobby, but it’s stuff, and laying it on the table in the most he’s right. become more than that. It took extraordinary way. I mean, I don’t know anybody nearly two years to do those who does that, who stood on the stage with such So what’s next for ceramics. I went in to fuck vulnerability as Elvis did in those final concerts. you? What’s the next project? around with a piece of clay. I don’t Where are you off to now? even know why – I just decided that I’m off to do an interview with the Church Times. I’m going on tour with might be a good idea and ended up Warren in November Are you? Really? M to Australia, which I am staying in this studio and working extremely excited about. out how to do it. Yeah! (Laughs) It’s wide-ranging, this book. I haven’t been back to It’s a broad church. Australia since before That seems quite typical of you, in a way. You don’t strike me as a dabbler. You’re pretty much all in. Yeah, I’m all in. That way of approaching things is good 46 MOJO
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75T H EELECTRONICA BEST ALBUMS OF Compiled by STEPHEN WORTHY 30 29 28 27 26 1HUDSON HURRAY FOR FATHER JOHN GWENNO BEYONCÉ JOAN SHELLEY MOHAWKE THE RIFF RAFF MISTY Tresor Renaissance The Spur Cry Sugar (WARP) Life On Earth Chloë And The Next 20th Century (HEAVENLY) (RCA) (NO QUARTER) 2 SAM PREKOP/ (NONESUCH) JOHN MCENTIRE (BELLA UNION) On her third solo If Moor Mother’s Jazz “There’s absolute From making New album, the Welsh/ Codes tackled the beauty, and absolute Sons Of (THRILL JOCKEY) Orleans folk on the “Tillman Schmillman”, Cornish singer Gwenno semiotics of black pain, and I want to be bohemian fringes of read the headline for Saunders confirmed cultural history, in the middle of it all,” 3 THE SOFT PINK Americana, Alynda MOJO’s review of Josh her place in the spectral, Beyoncé’s exhilarating singer-songwriter TRUTH Segarra has travelled a Tillman’s fifth set as kosmische-folk lineage seventh presented the Joan Shelley told long way these past few Father John Misty, of artists such as evolution of dance music MOJO earlier in the Is It Going To Get Any Deeper Than years. After 2017’s The highlighting a love Broadcast and Jane as liberation theology for year, her eighth album This? (THRILL JOCKEY) Navigator reframed of Harry Nilsson that Weaver. But while diverse communities. rooted in the realities their Nuyorican had become more much of Tresor had an Renaissance was a of her rural Kentucky 4 LORAINE JAMES heritage, this seventh pronounced than ever. ethereal, synth-pagan continuous, hedonistic home. The consolations Building Something Beautiful HFTRR album was But even as Tillman air, the translated party; a wrangling of and cruelties of For Me (PHANTOM LIMB) rooted in hyperreal concocted his own substance of Saunders’s disco, electro, house, nature, the impact of eco-activism, where additions to the Great Welsh and Cornish bounce and beyond into births, marriages and 5 AXEL BOMAN dewy synths gave a American Songbook, lyrics located her a seamless whole, and a deaths, a Bill Callahan LUZ/Quest For Fire cosmic aspect to tales and sashayed round an firmly in the real world: showcase for canonical cameo on Amberlit of earthly resilience. old Hollywood orchestra song title NYCAW being influencers (Nile Morning – it all fed (STUDIO BARNHUS) Amidst the New Age in LA’s United Recordings an acronym for “Wales Rodgers, Grace Jones, into The Spur’s textures, though, studios, a pleasing new Is Not For Sale”; the a sampled Donna artisanal folk rock, 6 CARMEN VILLAIN Segarra’s knack for Misty emerged: an actual meaning of Summer). A pop with wisdom dispensed Only Love From Now On memorable songs accomplished pasticheur the album’s opening blockbuster, for by Shelley in a voice endured, along with a now moving beyond words being sure, but a work of that recalled Linda (SMALLTOWN SUPERSOUND) handy new penchant archness towards a “Welcome, sit down/ meticulous dancefloor Thompson’s calm for Lou Reed chuggers. fastidious labour of love. Fancy a cuppa?” auteurship, too. authority. 7 KAITLYN AURELIA SMITH Standout track: Standout track: Standout track: Standout track: Standout track: Let’s Turn It Into Sound Rhododendron Buddy’s Rendezvous Kan Me Summer Renaissance Like The Thunder (GHOSTLY INTERNATIONAL) 25 24 23 22 21 8 LAMIN FOFANA The Open Boat (BLACK STUDIES) 9 AU SUISSE Au Suisse (CITY SLANG) 10 HUERCO S Plonk (INCIENSO) WORLD Compiled by DAVID HUTCHEON 1VIEUX FARKA GABRIELS PANDA BEAR & DRIVE-BY MAVIS STAPLES CATE LE BON TOURÉ & SONIC BOOM TRUCKERS & LEVON HELM KHRUANGBIN Angels & Queens – Part 1 Pompeii Reset Welcome 2 Club XIII Carry Me Home Ali (DEAD OCEANS) (PARLOPHONE) (MEXICAN SUMMER) (DOMINO) (ATO) (ANTI-) 2 GONORA SOUNDS Few 2021 singles caused A producer job on Hard Times Never Kill as much of a fuss as Love Headline news might Recent Truckers Hard to understand why John Grant’s Boy From And Hate In A Different have been Time Skiffs, albums expanded their this barnburner sat on Michigan came before (PHANTOM LIMB) Time, Curtis Mayfield- Animal Collective’s first purview, beyond the the shelf for 11 years, Cate Le Bon’s sixth ish symphonic soul LP in six years, but Panda Dirty South to broader ever since Carry Me album – classic 3 OUMOU SANGARÉ heralding the Los Bear also had significant American iniquities. Home was recorded songwriting impetus, Timbuktu (WORLD CIRCUIT/BMG) Angeles-based trio extra-curricular Their fourteenth at one of Levon Helm’s perhaps, for dialling as major new players. activities in 2022. Reset album, however, was a Midnight Ramble back some of her 4 ROKIA KONÉ & That promise was cemented his friendship rapprochement with shows at his Woodstock handbrake-turn quirks JACKNIFE LEE confirmed by this with the Spacemen 3 their own past and venue. Mavis Staples on Pompeii. The album, debut, or at least the veteran, as the two cued present, Mike Cooley’s and the punchy revue however, retained a Bamanan (REAL WORLD RECORDS) first half of it (Part 2 is up vintage 45 loops – songs in particular at band’s song selections magical, quizzical promised for early Eddie Cochran, Everlys, once rocking and rueful. – Nina, Curtis, Dylan – otherness even as the 5 ADRIAN QUESADA 2023). The seven The Drifters – and built Every Single Storied provided an ongoing synth-pop became Mentiras Con Cariño (ATO) songs came draped brand new retro-futurist Flameout’s homily to a civil rights narrative. relatively conventional: in a churchy opulence, pop confections on straying teenage son, Showstopping Low and Tin Drum 6 VIEUX FARKA blessed with a their foundations. set to brawny R.E.M. poignancy, too, when introspection (plus TOURÉ cinematic grasp of Panda Bear nailed his guitars, stole the show: a frail but unbowed horns), composed gospel drama and a Carl Wilson frequencies, “If I’d been my own Helm took a verse in on bass, deep in the Les Racines (WORLD CIRCUIT) frontman, Compton- Sonic Boom played example,” sang Cooley, the final communal Mojave Desert as if to born, Christian-raised post-millennial unflinchingly honest take on The Band’s ensure the maximum 7 IMARHAN Jacob Lusk, with a Joe Meek. Good as ever, “I’d be worse.” The Weight. degree of pandemic Aboogi (CITY SLANG) mighty evocative vibrations galore. lockdown dislocation. falsetto. Standout track: Every Standout track: 8 LIRAZ Standout track: Edge Single Storied Flameout Standout track: Roya (GLITTERBEAT) Standout track: Of The Edge The Weight Running Away 9 LEYLA MCCALLA Taboo Breaking The Thermometer (ANTI-) 10 CATRIN FINCH & SECKOU KEITA Echo (BENDIGEDIG) 48 MOJO Credit in here Jackie Lee Young, Getty
SOUNDTRACKS Compiled by ANDREW MALE 20 19 18 17 16 BETH ORTON MAKAYA THE COMET IS KEVIN MORBY RICH RUTH 1JONNY McCRAVEN COMING GREENWOOD Weather Alive This Is A Photograph I Survived, It’s Over In These Times Hyper-Dimensional Spencer (MERCURY CLASSICS) (PARTISAN) Expansion Beam (DEAD OCEANS) (THIRD MAN) (XL/INTERNATIONAL 2 RICHARD Beth Orton’s ’90s ANTHEM) (IMPULSE!) Makaya McCraven MOJO’s Best Album Of THOMPSON reputation pivoted cropped up on Kevin 2021, Promises by on an idea of Another of International The inexhaustible Morby’s seventh, Floating Points and the Music From Grizzly Man (NO QUARTER) comedown folk: Anthem’s Chicago stable Shabaka Hutchings signifying a loosening late Pharoah Sanders, singer-songwriter craft of virtuoso insurgents, called time on one of his of the Lubbock made explicit a 3 EIKO ISHIBASHI that provided a beatific drummer and bands, Sons Of Kemet, in maverick’s sound. prevailing conversation Drive My Car (NEWHERE MUSIC) coda to a big night bandleader McCraven summer 2022, leaving His songs still felt between jazz and out. Weather Alive, her was first sighted outside the stage open for a like nonchalant ambient music – one 4 NICK CAVE & eighth album, acted as jazz circles with his 2020 third LP from his trippy incantations inspired, which extended into WARREN ELLIS a mature evolution of album-length remix of sax/synth/drums unit, at a remove, by Cohen, 2022. Among strong that aesthetic, where Gil Scott-Heron. In These The Comet Is Coming. Dylan et al. Now, records by Jeremiah La Panthère Des Neiges (INVADA) the atmospherics Times, though, was Hyper-Dimensional though, Morby factored Chiu/Marta Sofia Honer drifted towards Talk Talk McCraven’s boldest Expansion Beam in jazz musicians, glam, and Revelators Sound 5 DANIEL zones and ghostly jazz statement yet, a captured a band literally and even a little System, this Nashville BLUMBERG while making room for sumptuous chamber and metaphorically Afrobeat to drive his musician’s ravishing reflective middle-aged jazz suite powered by peaking, as the ravey ambulations into newer spiritual jazz took the The World To Come (MUTE) uncertainty. Alabaster his jittery beats and keyboard stabs became zones. A recurring plaudits: healing, DePlume featured well-connected ever more ecstatic. And fascination with Jeff richly-detailed 6 JON NATCHEZ among the discreet community activism. as ever, Hutchings’s Buckley, and a paean meditations – at once Luzzu (PHANTOM LIMB) supporting cast, but One to file alongside ability to move in to amour Katie reminiscent of Alice this was emphatically David Axelrod’s scores disparate environments ‘Waxahatchee’ Coltrane and Jon 7 PHILIP GLASS Orton’s own trip; her or, more recently, Kamasi and always retain Crutchfield, completed Hassell – for a world Candyman (ONE WAY STATIC) first self-produced Washington’s similarly his signature tone perhaps his finest cautiously re-emerging album, too. ambitious epics. was impressive. album yet. from trauma. 8 ALEXIS GRAPSAS & PHILIP KLEIN Standout track: Standout track: Standout track: Standout track: Standout track: Pig (INVADA) Friday Night Lullaby Pyramids Rock Bottom Taken Back 9 NICK CAVE & 15 14 13 12 11 WARREN ELLIS Blonde (INVADA) 10 DISASTERPEACE Bodies Bodies Bodies (A24 MUSIC) FOLK Compiled by COLIN IRWIN Getty (2) WILCO WEYES BLOOD SPIRITUALIZED ALDOUS THE SMILE 1STICK IN HARDING THE WHEEL Cruel Country And In The Darkness, Everything Was Beautiful A Light For Hearts Aglow Warm Chris Attracting Attention Perspectives On Tradition (FROM HERE) (DBPM) (BELLA UNION) (SUB POP) (4AD) (XL) 2 YE VAGABONDS The monolithic Notionally the second Nine Waves (RIVER LEA) presence of a Yankee Natalie Mering half of a double album The actorly range of First signs of Hotel Foxtrot box set, navigated her Weyes that began with 2018’s Aldous Harding’s Radiohead’s Thom 3 OYSTERBAND massively expanding Blood project through And Nothing Hurt, the singing had never been Yorke and Jonny Read The Sky (RUNNING MAN) Wilco’s most fêted various iterations of ninth Spiritualized greater. On her fourth Greenwood’s new album, could have freak folk and album worked just as album, she variously project indicated a 4 BIRD IN THE BELLY overshadowed the new avant-noise before neatly as a sequel to conjured Bowie, post-punk unleashing After The City (GF*M) work of lesser bands, landing, serenely, on their magnum opus, P.J. Harvey, Vashti of pent-up rock but Jeff Tweedy and the uncanny MOR that 1997’s Ladies And Bunyan, Neil Young, tensions. The reality of 5 HANNAH SANDERS co were up to the made 2021’s Titanic Gentlemen We Are Joanna Newsom and The Smile’s debut, & BEN SAVAGE challenge. The twelfth Rising such a sensation. Floating In Space. at least three members however, was more Wilco album, a double, Designed as the second Blues, country, free of The Velvet appealing yet. Guitars Ink Of The Rosy Morning (TOPIC) played with notions part of a trilogy, … jazz, systems music, Underground; all a little took precedence, of country – a term Hearts Aglow stayed garage rock: once Welsh, in spite of her though the skittering 6 BRYONY GRIFFITH Tweedy traditionally in that exalted zone, again, Jason Pierce New Zealand roots. beats of jazz-nurtured & ALICE JONES eschewed – while Mering’s creamy Karen forensically channelled Harding’s gift, though, third wheel Tom Skinner reasserting the sextet’s Carpenter-meets-Joni it all into his patented was to accommodate (ex Sons Of Kemet) were A Year Too Late And A Month Too bona fides as one of vowels and lush maximalist ramalam, her shape-shifting in key, too. And the likes of Soon (SPLID) the most flexible, arrangements striving with a renewed warm, minimalist Pana-Vision and Free quietly radical rock to provide universal drive that ensured settings, where her In The Knowledge 7 ELIZA CARTHY & bands of the 21st solace in a world on fire. Everything Was own idiosyncrasies provided a significant THE RESTITUTION century. “Yes,” she reassured, “we Beautiful was Pierce’s were most prominent. treat: stately and fragile all bleed the same way.” best in 25 years. Enigmatic music, ballads to file alongside Queen Of The Whirl (HEM HEM) Standout track: A but surreptitiously Radiohead’s very best. Lifetime To Find Standout track: It’s Not Standout track: Best catchy, nonetheless. 8 DAMIEN O’KANE Just Me, It’s Everybody Thing You Never Had Standout track: & RON BLOCK (The D Song) Standout track: Fever The Opposite Banjophonics (PURE) 9 ANGELINE MORRISON The Sorrow Songs (TOPIC) 10 NICK HART Sings Ten English Folk Songs (ROEBUCK) MOJO 49
EVENT That was then, this is now: (clockwise OF THE YEAR from left) Joni Mitchell performing at Newport Folk Festival, Rhode Island, 1969; a perfect moment: Mitchell on the same stage 53 years later last July; Joni’s given a helping hand; Brandi Carlile salutes Mitchell; Brandi, Joni and Wynonna Judd enjoy the event of the year. “We Were Watching With Our Minds Blown” When Joni Mitchell of singers, songwriters and session aces as Victorian chair, surrounded by so many who had Getty, Adam Kissick, Nina Westervelt appeared on-stage at the she worked to sing or play guitar with friends stopped in at those Joni Jams – Brandi Carlile, Newport Folk Festival in for the first time since a brain aneurysm in 2015 the facilitator from the start; Wynonna Judd, July, it was the culmination almost killed her. But would ordinary fans ever weeping on-stage less than three months after of years of encouragement, see the like? the loss of her own mother and singing partner, and is set to bear more Naomi; and multi-instrumentalist Blake Mills. extraordinary fruit in 2023. Writer and film director Cameron Crowe But as her bandmates offered up tantalising titbits in a rare interview A revelation, but one that’s due, almost reveal, her comeback with Mitchell for the Los Angeles Times, linked to unbelievably, to be reprised next June 10 in the was in the balance until the 50th birthday of her first masterpiece, Blue. Gorge Amphitheatre at George, the charismatic the very last moment. He described Elton John, sat on a couch with outdoor venue in the middle of Washington state “No one knew if Joni David Furnish, stunned to hear Mitchell’s voice where Mitchell will headline a bill again wrangled would be up to it,” they singing a snippet of Carey, before singing Moon by and featuring Carlile. tell Grayson Haver Currin. River for her in return. But if Mitchell was on a journey towards performance, it was a slow one. “Joni Mitchell is going to play,” Carlile told F EW PEOPLE CAN have thought they would “I’m still playing little clubs,” Mitchell told Crowe The Daily Show’s Trevor Noah of the surprise date ever witness a Joni Jam. Paul McCartney, with a laugh. added to her Echoes Through The Canyon event. Elton John and Chaka Khan were among “No one’s been able to buy a ticket to see Joni the music icons who, off and on since 2018, And then – on the afternoon of Sunday, July Mitchell play in 20 years… So this is enormous… have been summoned to Mitchell’s Bel-Air 24 – suddenly she wasn’t. Beneath a blue beret and she is going to crush it!” living room to join her and a loose confederation and big sunglasses and behind a beatific smile, Mitchell was headlining Newport Folk Festival. T HE SECRECY SURROUNDING Mitchell’s She sang classics of her own, including A Case 2022 Newport appearance stemmed, Of You with Marcus Mumford and Both Sides at least in part, from doubts that it would Now with LA-based indie duo Lucius, and happen at all. Mitchell had last performed a full standards she cherished – Summertime, Why set more than two decades earlier. Her brain Do Fools Fall In Love, even Love Potion Number aneurysm was the third time she’d lost her full Nine – into a gold microphone. mobility, after a childhood case of polio and subsequent post-polio syndrome in the mid-’90s. Here was Mitchell, 78, in a gold-crested 50 MOJO
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