Uncut UK June 2022

AROOJ AFTAB SONGS OF DEVOTION AROOJ AFTAB’s stunning Vulture Prince album was one of 2021’s finest releases, a work of refined, minimalist rapture, dedicated to her late brother. But the Brooklyn-based singer and composer is no sensitive artiste. Fresh from winning a Grammy, the self-confessed hedonist tells Sam Richards about the full extent of her ambitions – and why she needs to ride the social whirl in order to make music: “Being in the centre of many energies is inspiring to me…” Photo by BLYTHE THOMAS JUNE 2022 • UNCUT • 51

AROOJ AFTAB Purple reign: collecting a Grammy in Las Vegas for Vulture Prince WE get a brief glance of Arooj Aftab’s home base – a light-JEFF KRAVITZ/FILMMAGIC admits it’s tricky to record at home because of the constant blare of filled room in a shared brownstone in Brooklyn’s Bed- “airplanes and sirens and kids playing in the street”. Still, she Stuy, borrowed double bass propped against the wall – wouldn’t have it any other way. before she politely asks to switch the camera off. It’s still early, and the singer is feeling a little worse for wear “I think calm doesn’t meet calm very well,” she says, considering following a heavy session at a local bar the previous the apparent disparity between her “reckless and rowdy” lifestyle evening. “It was a really warm day after five months of and the serenity of her music. “And also I think it’s about not feeling winter,” she pleads. “So we just lost our minds and went that self-important about your work, like, ‘this is sacred music’. out and drank so much gin for absolutely no reason.” While my music pretends to be minimal, it’s not repetitive As it turns out, this is not an uncommon occurrence for structures – it has a lot of dynamic energy. And that definitely can’t Aftab. “I’m the biggest hedonist,” she admits. “I love being happen if I’m just hanging out by myself, you know?” social, I love talking to people, I love just being out and about. I’m inspired by the sheer energy of people saying “She cares about the social fabric of community and friendships,” crazy shit to each other. I think that solitude, for some explains multi-instrumentalist Shahzad Ismaily, who plays with people, helps them clear their mind and do incredible Aftab on Vulture Prince as well in the improv trio Love In Exile (see things. But for me, I prefer being in the middle of a big moving panel, p56). “It’s as important to her to play a concert as it is to organism. Being in the centre of many energies is inspiring to me.” gather some people around a fire, have some dinner and exchange This confession may come as a surprise to those who have a bit about how our lives have been. She gets to a real and sincere recently found solace in Aftab’s fantastic 2021 album, Vulture place with you right away. There’s no bullshit, she just cuts right Prince. A stunning and largely beatless into the heart of things.” affair that masterfully blends Sufi devotional music with smoky jazz and “Anyone who’s been to hear her perform also knows she’s hilarious,” blues, ambient soundscapes and adds Gyan Riley, son of minimalist godhead Buckley-esque acoustic flourishes, it Terry, who plays guitar on Vulture Prince. “It transmits a sense of deep spiritual provides a lovely counterpart to the intensity yearning and rarified, otherworldly of the music.” And that incredible voice? calm. Reviews praised the album in “Many people are good singers who sing in awed, quasi-religious terms: it was tune,” Ismaily notes, “but to emotionally “mesmerising”, “mystical”, inhabit your voice is a rare skill. When I first “rhapsodic”. Suffice to say it is pretty heard her singing, I was touched by the glory much the exact opposite of the music in her voice, the velvet, the sense of gravity. you might expect to hear bubbling up I think that’s about how much heart she from the hectic streets of Bed-Stuy, carries when she’s performing.” Elvis scene of Do The Right Thing and Biggie Costello even tells Uncut that Aftab’s Smalls’ rap battles, a place where Aftab “exquisite singing” on Vulture Prince helped him through a period of grieving. “The record has only grown in beauty as the light has returned to the room,” he says. 52 • UNCUT • JUNE 2022

EARLIER this month, Arooj Aftab became the first that went viral on the Pakistani woman to win a Grammy award, turning LimeWire filesharing app. up to the Las Vegas ceremony in a dashing purple She was also in a garage frock-coat to collect the Best Global Music band “for five seconds, Performance award for the Vulture Prince song with these three dudes “Mohabbat”. She acknowledges that while Grammy before they went off to nods are not necessarily the most reliable indicator of med school”. artistic worth, the recognition is still a big deal. “It’s By this point, Aftab weird and beautiful,” she says. “Jazz musicians was soaking up every type Gyan Riley, haven’t really felt that we’ve been a part of the of music she could find. “I Badi Assad Recording Academy. And neither have minimalist was listening to Norwegian and Shahzad experimental people and definitely not South Asians, death metal, I was Ismaily so it’s been kind of amazing to feel included in such a listening to John Cage and VULTURE PEEPS way. It feels like they gave me a moment and they Terry Riley, really classical The key players in really understood it.” After years of woodshedding in Hindustani stuff. And so much Billie Holiday, I was Aftab’s inner circle the margins, Aftab is revelling in the sudden attention. learning her scats. I was really in it from the jump.” MAEVE GILCHRIST “I’m kind of like, ‘Where were you all when I was 27 She successfully applied to Berklee to study jazz Originally from and hot?!’ But it feels really composition, taking the voice Edinburgh, the harpist was a vital collaborator good, what can I say?” as her main instrument. Keen on Vulture Prince and also formed part of the core trio who toured the UK To most listeners, Vulture “THE RECORD HAS to cement her future musical with Aftab recently. Prince seemed to appear out ONLYGROWN independence, she also double- Further listening: The Harpweaver of nowhere, a beacon of hope majored in audio engineering. and consolation amid the (SELF-RELEASED, 2020) lockdown blues of early 2021. After graduating, Aftab never considered returning to BADI ASSAD But as Aftab explains, the IN BEAUTY” Lahore. “I fell in love with New Brazilian virtuoso who album has been a lifetime in York,” she says simply. “It just played the beautiful the making, the culmination of ELVIS COSTELLO felt really freeing and diverse, classical guitar part years of musical discovery and very intertwined. I’d go to a on Vulture Prince’s adventure that has taken her show and everybody’s playing “Diya Hai”. Furtherlistening: Verde(EDGEMUSIC,2004) from Riyadh in Saudi Arabia with each other. I’d run into SHAHZAD (where she was born in 1985 to Meshell Ndegeocello or ISMAILY Pakistani parents) via her school years in Lahore, to Esperanza Spalding on the train. There’s nowhere else Respected multi- instrumentalist and Berklee College Of Music in Boston, and finally to New where I can have this type of exposure and access, owner of the Figureight label and studio. Added synth textures York. Along the way, it has been a long process of trial and also this type of humility and inspiration. LA is to Vulture Prince and also plays with Aftab in Love In Exile. and error to capture the sound in her head and very Hollywood and film-composer, but New York Further listening: Visitations assemble the musicians able to realise it. is really grungy and open. They are kind of in a (FIGUREIGHT, 2020) Aftab’s earliest music memory is sitting in her living post-minimalist apocalyptic zone. I immediately felt GYAN RILEY room aged seven, mesmerised by a visiting tabla player. that I have to be here to do what I want to do.” Terry Riley’s son played guitar on the Grammy- “That was my first feeling of wanting to do, instead of Still, she was determined to maintain a connection winning “Mohabbat”. Further listening: just being a listener.” As a teenager, she picked up the with Pakistan through her music. Many of her songs Shelter In Space (AGYANAMUS MUSIC, 2020) guitar and started composing her own music before are based on ghazals, traditional love poems dating PETROS KLAMPANIS friends demanded that she entertain them with covers back as far as the 13th century. She prefers singing in Greek double bassist of U2 and Oasis songs, which is how she learned she Urdu to English because “it is one of those romantic and composer. Also played piano on could sing. After falling in love with Jeff Buckley and languages that is able to say a lot with less verbiage. “Inayaat” and toured with Aftab as part of her trio set-up alongside Leonard Cohen, she recorded a cover of “Hallelujah” It uses a lot of metaphors and it’s so poetic and Maeve Gilchrist. Further listening: Irrationalities With Petros Klampanis GAELLE BERI; ROBIN LITTLE/REDFERNS; ROB VERHORST/REDFERNS; DAVID GORDON OPPENHEIMER/GETTY IMAGES and Maeve Gilchrist at (YELLOWBIRD, 2019) Glasgow’s Mackintosh Church for Celtic BHRIGU SAHNI Connections, 2022 Another Berklee alumnus, the fingerstyle guitarist was Aftab’s primary collaborator on Bird Under Water and played on Vulture Prince’s “Last Night”. Further listening: What Is Now (SELF-RELEASED, 2016) JUNE 2022 • UNCUT • 53

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AROOJ AFTAB beautiful. For somebody like me, who’s Aftab: “I literally using the language as an wanted to instrument to get melodies across, I create don’t really want to be saying too much. I something haven’t spent time yet with English in a new, that way that makes it feel good to me.” was for sure” For Ismaily, Aftab’s decision to sing in Even then, the album was and missing your lover, if it somehow carries this Urdu and reference ancient Sufi poems had “extra resonance”. His parents are almost sunk by two tragic emotional quality for people who want to be quiet from Pakistan but he was born and raised in the States, harbouring what he events: the deaths of Aftab’s and grieve, I feel like that’s a great added resource calls a “certain amount of discomfort with identity and identity politics. I was brother Maher and her close to the very few that we have.” more interested in just being free from any sense of ‘this is where I’m from’. But friend Annie Ali Khan. “It One of the key textures on Vulture Prince is the hearing [Aftab’s music] and playing with her for the first time was very striking. It definitely stopped me for a Gaelic harp of Maeve Gilchrist, a contemporary felt like it opened a road towards reconnecting with ancestors for me.” minute, because nothing from Berklee with both Scottish and Irish roots. When Aftab first graduated in 2010, felt relevant anymore, “She’s a massive asset to my music,” admits Aftab. however, she didn’t exactly know what kind of music she wanted to make herself. absolutely nothing at “The way Maeve plays the harp is really iconic – “I wanted to create something new, all,” says Aftab. “I felt she blends a lot of where she’s originally from, that was for sure. I was very tired of really confused and what she grew up listening to, what she studied, extremely cluttered, overproduced stuff. overwhelmed with the and all the places that she’s lived. Scottish music I was interested in intricately layered sheer magnitude of grief, has these very eclectic harmonies and melodies. It but easy-seeming minimalist music, and it was terrifying to even imagine continuing has a kinship to modal jazz and raga music; it but I wasn’t sure how to get there.” to put out music.” But after taking some time away overlaps in a way that we haven’t really delved First she had to find a way to survive in to “just be silent”, Aftab found herself drawn back into on a musicology level, but it’s there.” New York, in the wake of the financial crisis: to the Vulture Prince songs, albeit with a different “She always jokes that we balance each other “You couldn’t even get a waitressing job, it was set of priorities. “Originally I wanted a lot of out,” says Gilchrist, a cheery and thoughtful really crazy.” Eventually she landed a job in post- drums, I wanted more vocal harmonies, but I presence on a Zoom call from the Hudson Valley. production audio for web video content, but that still stripped those things back because I didn’t “It’s true that there’s darkness to the colours and didn’t leave her much money (or time) to make an have the energy and they moods that Arooj is often album. Despite its sustained aura of tranquillity, Bird didn’t fit any more. It kind interested in and I often Under Water was pieced together gradually, of worked in my favour, “I USE LANGUAGE lean towards the brighter whenever funds and because there’s a AS AN INSTRUMENT side of things. So perhaps circumstance allowed. “It was just putting one foot gentleness there that there’s a nice kind of in front of the other – getting the friends and family wasn’t there before. It’s symbiosis between those rate, playing [in exchange] for studio time and very genuine.” Aftab two musical devices. One stuff like that. It took so long.” Aftab dedicates its eventual appearance in 2014 to “the generosity hopes that the album can TO GET MELODIES of the marvellous things DANIEL HILSINGER of New York”. help people with their ACROSS” about her as a musician is grieving process in the her clarity of vision in Listening back now, Bird Under Water sounds same way that it helped regards to who she like a pretty impressive debut. Aftab has already her. “Although it’s all collaborates with – it’s nailed that deceptively serene East-West fusion, her voice instantly captivating. Perhaps it’s busier songs about being drunk never the instrument than it needs to be in places, but it’s certainly a worthy prequel to Vulture Prince. For Aftab, however, her music was still “a work in progress”. In 2018, she signed to neoclassical label New Amsterdam and released “a noise album” on Bandcamp – actually a beautiful cascade of layered vocals and modular synth bliss called Siren Islands – but it took another three years before she felt like she had “arrived somewhere” with Vulture Prince. JUNE 2022 • UNCUT • 55

AROOJ AFTAB “Kind of a mentor”: Anoushka Shankar as much as the musical voice behind it. She puts a have massive egos. But we try to avoid that. If jumping-off point and potential source of lyrical material: the lot of trust into the musicians that she gathers, you’re an artist and you have an ego, then you’re 18th-century Deccani poet and “warrior princess”, Mah Laqa Bai. and she creates room for their voices to just not a good artist.” “She was a politician, she was a courtesan, she was a warrior, she was amalgamate and blend.” “There is a strong integrity to her approach and a writer – she’s, like, this badass! She’s been drawn in the miniatures, so you This is where Aftab’s outgoing personality therefore a cohesiveness to her music,” notes can see that she definitely exists as a prominent figure, but no-one has ever comes into play. Most of the musicians she works Anoushka Shankar, who plays on “Udhero Na”, a composed her poetry. So I’ve just been thinking about how to modernise that. with are people with whom new recording of an old It can’t be a lifting or a regurgitation, I want to do it with respect and grace. I don’t think she’s already cultivated song that appears on the the entire record will be her poems, but if one or two are hers and then she guides us through the friendships, allowing her “IF YOU’RE AN Deluxe Edition of Vulture rest of it, that would be dope.” to pursue an open-ended, ARTIST WITH AN Prince. “It doesn’t matter Meanwhile, the Grammy recognition has begun impressionistic approach: where what sound comes to open other doors. “I am really ambitious,” she “I’m not a composer who from, as it’s all part of an admits. “It freaks people out! I want to play sits in the room with an authentic whole. Of stadiums, I want to collaborate with Robert Glasper, or HER. I want to be a part of the scene.” BLYTHE THOMAS; ROBERTO RICCIUTI/REDFERNS; instrument, or who brings EGO, YOU’RE NOT course, there is such a Ismaily compares her to Björk, “a star that could charts to the rehearsal and A GOOD ARTIST” strong emotional core at go in any direction, from teaching at a rural school just says, ‘Play this.’ If I sit the centre which is in Kuala Lumpur to performing at the Olympics”. with Maeve on the harp, universally moving too!” Aftab is down for all of those things and more. “I then we talk about colours Again, this was a guess it’s about, how do you not box yourself in? How are you able to show the industry that you and layers and feelings.” collaboration built on are versatile enough to be across all genres: jazz, R&B, Afrobeat, Sufi music, whatever – can you do Ismaily says that Aftab friendship. Aftab and all those things? Will Billie Eilish give you a feature? Do you even want that? But the answer sent him “Saans Lo” – adapted from a poem by Shankar have known each other since 2005 – is definitely, ‘Yeah, let’s just make music’.” Hangover long receded, she is raring to get back Annie Ali Khan that the singer rediscovered after “she’s always been there for me, kind of like a to the clamour of Brooklyn and beyond, to keep summoning calm in the eye of the storm. “This is her death – without any instructions at all about mentor,” says Aftab – so despite having to work our time, right? This is music history. And I want to be part of it.” what he should play, beyond explaining the remotely due to Covid, the song was completed Vulture Prince (Deluxe Edition) is released by “heaviness” of what the song meant to her. “I look quickly and intuitively. Both parties say they Verve on June 24 for people that are emotionally mature,” explains would work together again in a flash. Aftab. “Some musicians, regardless of how good New writing sessions are scheduled with they are, or how professional they are, they still Gilchrist for the autumn and Aftab already has a “IT’SREALLYEFFORTLESS” maybe I joined them as a trio. It all improvising and responding and Arooj Aftab and Shahzad Ismaily on was completely improvised, but trying to leave space for each other. their improv jazz trio, Love In Exile something happened with the It’s really fun. chemistry where it absolutely ISMAILY: The moment the three I SMAILY: Four or clicked. The sonic fingerprint, as of us play, something very rich is five years ago, well as the ability to find each other happening like that [snaps fingers]. [pianist] Vijay through a forest of choices, worked I don’t know how often we’ll play – Iyer was doing a out beautifully. Vijay has a very robust career and special concert AFTAB: I love playing with both Arooj is on the cusp of her own very at The Kitchen in of them. Their experience and robust career – but I would be happy New York. Arooj their musical wisdom and their if we did more. was also on the bill, confidence… they’re just solid, you AFTAB: I’m super-happy to do more and during sound- know? I feel like I’m in the presence Love In Exile shows. It’s nice when check someone of two giants, two musical geniuses. it’s nobody’s band – there’s a sense suggested that I take on a very improv role – I’m of freedom, it’s really effortless. We using words and poetry but it’s went in the studio just before Covid really just in order for me to get my and it’s coming out later this year. It’s voice out as an instrument. We’re beautiful, and I love it.

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THE ROLLING STONES SHINE A LIGHT A band on the run. A decadent mansion in the South of France. One song called “Bent Green Needles” and another about Brian Jones. A double album that, against all odds, became the creators’ most iconic work. Fifty years since the release of Exile On Main St a crack team of Stones heads – including CAT POWER, ADAM GRANDUCIEL, BILLY GIBBONS, MIKE SCOTT, JENNIFER HERREMA, STEVE GUNN, J MASCIS, BOBBY GILLESPIE and KURT VILE – dig deep into THE ROLLING STONES’ very own Basement Tapes. “Exile… has got everything…” DOMINIQUE TARLÉ “E XILEOnMainSt been like to have been there for a weekend,” photos from his book The Americans… it all stands apart from says Kurt Vile. “What the days would have sums up ‘exile’ for the Stones. Like, where do other Stones albums, been like, and the nights, down in that murky we belong? Nowhere, but everywhere.” even other Stones basement, making music, hanging out with albums from that Gram Parsons. It’s pretty amazing.” The Stones were the world’s foremost period,” says The War rock’n’roll attraction when they made Exile. On Drugs’ Adam While the sessions at Nellcôte provided Enjoying a faultless run of albums since 1968’s Granduciel. “It’s not just that it’s a double Exile with its source material and muggy Beggars Banquet, Exile’s predecessor, Sticky album. It’s not just the circumstances in which atmosphere, the album was the result of Fingers, had charted at No 1 across the world a it was recorded. There’s something about it – a several years’ worth of work, beginning at few weeks after they reached France. Exile vibe, a feeling. It has such a sound. The horns, Olympic Studios in London during June 1969 itself arrived on May 12, 1972 – and raced the R&B, the blues. I listen to Exile all the time and finishing with the overdubbing-and- straight to No 1. A generous 18 tracks, and still get blown away by it.” mixing sessions at Sunset Sound, Los Angeles, incorporating rock, country, soul, blues and in March 1972. Despite the dark mythology of gospel, for all the murky atmospherics of Released 50 years ago in May, Exile On their problematic tax situation, the nocturnal Nellcôte, Exile dazzled. Main St (working title: ‘Tropical Disease’) lifestyles, break-ins and drug busts at Nellcôte, brought into focus the Stones’ gifts for music, Exile proved to be a testament to the band’s “For a double album, there’s no there’s no myth-making and self-publicity in one fairly iron will. “It was about proving that it doesn’t filler on it,” says Cat Power. “Every track has explosive package. On the run from the matter what you throw at The Rolling Stones, merit. But it’s so well sequenced. It kicks in taxman, in April 1971 the Stones decamped to we can come up with the goods,” Richards later with ‘Rocks Off’, then into ‘Rip This Joint’, Villa Nellcôte – Keith Richards’ rented told Uncut. ‘Shake Your Hips’ and ‘Casino Boogie’ – wow, waterfront residence at Villefranche-sur-Mer that’s a real strong opening run of songs.” on the Côte D’Azur – where, as a beautiful “Exile is like a punk rock record,” says Royal entourage socialised upstairs, the band Trux’s Jennifer Herrema. “It was a one-take Exile, like Sticky Fingers, topped the album alchemised their masterpiece in the mansion’s situation for most all of the songs. I think that charts. After everything, it was a hopeful time spacious basement. was important. Nothing had to be perfect – for the Stones. New financial management, a even though Exile is perfect! – and then they lucrative deal with Atlantic and an American “You can dive into the mythology of Exile, took it from France to LA to make it sparkle. The tour in the pipeline. As with so many Stones look at photos and imagine what it might have album artwork by Robert Frank features gambles, the brilliance of Exile made you wonder what all the rumpus was about. 58 • UNCUT • JUNE 2022

Glamour twins: Keith and Mick at Nellcôte

1 ROCKS OFF I got the booth: Mick Jagger at Aclassic Keithriff –openG tuning, ofcourse –a Sunset Sound, crispsnare kick fromCharlie,Mick drawls LA, spring 1972 lasciviously,“Oh,yeah…”And we’re off. COPYRIGHT © THE ESTATE OF JAMES J. MARSHALL America, the land of everybody’s looking to get back out on the road STEVE WYNN, THE DREAM their dreams, where all and rip up some joints. SYNDICATE:Like all my favourite the blues and R&B they love so much comes from. 3 SHAKE YOUR HIPS records, Exile creates an image of a Mick is singing about “Mister time and place, where it feels like it Immigration Man, let me in”, and yeah, they did Breathless after that opening salvo, the all happened in one burst of have to do some manoeuvring around the drug Stones tighten up and pay their dues on this inspiration. We all know it convictions to get into the States. He throws in lean blues strut took forever to make, but it makes you that line about getting to DC where Dick Nixon feel like a voyeur, standing on and Pat are holding for them. And there’s a CAT POWER: My introduction to tippy toes, looking in through a reference to the Butter Queen in Dallas, a famous dirty window and seeing groupie who got down with every big rock band the Stones was England’s Newest something go down in a that came through town in the ’70s. It’s one of the Hitmakers and my favourite song weird way that you can’t fastest songs the Stones ever recorded tempo- on it was “I’m A King Bee”, by Slim quite fathom. wise, so it’s got this crazy energy that is exactly Harpo. So it just happens that one I first heard Exile when the feeling of being on tour. The nights are crazy, of my favourite songs on Exile also it came out – I guess I was the party goes until morning, then you get up and happens to be another Slim Harpo song, “Shake about 12 years old. So the go to the next city and leave a bunch of passed- Your Hips”. It’s not the only cover on Exile – “Stop record meant a whole out groupies in the hotel room. Mick can’t even Breaking Down” is a Robert Johnson song. I love different thing to me as think about how to sing, because he’s gonna fall how even this far into their success, they still a kid than it has done as out of the song if he doesn’t spit those words out a honour their early heroes. I’ve got older. I bought it for mile a minute. You almost get a reprieve when the Growing up the way I did, I heard Exile least out maybe two bucks at Wallachs sax solo comes in, but then it’s back to this feeling of all the Stones records. I came to it later from Music City in Hollywood. When of being stuck in a revolver door that’s spinning [Jon Spencer Blues Explosion guitarist] Judah “Rocks Off” came out of the speakers, faster and faster and faster. “Rip This Joint” Bauer. Judah always talked about how Exile is the I thought, ‘What the hell is that?’ It was the couldn’t be more appropriate right now, when least orthodox Stones record. Mick Taylor plays so most exciting thing I’d ever felt, whether I well here – his style reminds me a little of Duane understood what was going on or not. It said, Allman, they’re both such elegant players. When “Get ready, this is our world now. Adjust yourself I play Exile, I love the way it makes me feel. It’s accordingly.” What I love now about Exile and “Rocks Off” is that if you had any curiosity about what it’s like to be in The Rolling Stones, what it’s like to live this life, the lyrics to “Rocks Off” lay it all out. This is how we do it, this is our life. The whole record goes that way. If I’m getting ready to go out, this is what I play. Top volume, needle down, boom. You’re ready for anything. 2 RIP THIS JOINT The fastest song the Stones ever recorded. So fast, it has room for two Bobby Keys solos PAUL MAJOR, ENDLESS BOOGIE: “Rip This Joint” always sounds like a warning to me: the Stones are coming to your town and they’re gonna burn it down. These British boys are coming to 60 • UNCUT • JUNE 2022

Where there’s a villa: “A DIFFERENT Keith Richards and KIND OF Anita Pallenberg at Nellcôte with their CREATIVITY” son Marlon, May 1971 Rolling Stones Records like there’s a grand carpet laid address the “Kissing c*nt in Cannes” boss MARSHALL CHESS out for you, the lighting’s low and line? I think derogatory language on the Stones’ Basement Tapes you can dance. Stones albums can be used purposefully with “WE’D built the are always well sequenced, front powerful effect, but it’s a clear line Rolling Stones Mobile studio in a truck, to back, so by the time we get to and I usually feel like when people because we knew they were going to “Shake Your Hips”, the party’s curse in songs it’s lazy – unless the have to leave the country. Keith had really happening. The song makes crudeness is the point – and this era rented Villa Nellcôte, which was just a gorgeous mansion on the water, you feel groovy – it’s got a scuzzy of rock’n’roll, that was half their with stairways and a speedboat. I went there to see whether we vibe, it’s a little bit dirty round the point a lot of the time, I think. The could record, and went down to the basement, and it was horribly funky edges. It’s the perfect combination technique of pulling phrases from a and dark. So the plan was to go to the South of France – how great of country, blues and rock’n’roll hat leads me to believe that there’s would that be! Everyone was into it. Every evening at 5 or 6 we’d stop that the Stones do so well. not some powerful purpose behind for a meal in this gorgeous, long room overlooking the sea, at a table 4 CASINO BOOGIE those lyrics – but hey, at least they’re getting creative that could seat 15. Keith hardly with the process? I can get behind the practice, at least. ever ate. Mick was eating healthy, Jagger’s experiments with Burroughs’ cut-up 5 TUMBLING DICE delicious, and we’d pass around a technique yield mildly provocative results… big wooden bowl with pot and hash. Then they they’d start the CARSON McHONE: I find myself Exile’s first single: a deceptively laidback boogie that evening’s recording. approaching the Stones in a whole new sashays along behind Charlie’s drumbeat “The sessions were very disjointed. Keith was getting high way when I am really listening, instead of BILLYGIBBONS,ZZTOP:Back around at night, Mick was flying off to Paris. Bill was almost an outsider, their just hearing the songs. Exile is a killer the time our album Rio Grande Mud came relationship had already faded. The Stones’ alchemy happened with record for just that – it’s got a little bit of out, we played with The Rolling Stones at difficulty at Nellcôte, but it caused a different kind of creativity to everything of what they do – and you can the Hawaiian International Center on happen. Bobby Keys in that dark basement, stoned, did hear each of their characters, and when you begin to Oahu. Every band on the planet wanted some brilliant solos. single them out and see the parts that make up that to land that gig. How we managed to do it, “You couldn’t hear the magic in the basement when it happened. whole then you appreciate them all together. There’s the I still don’t know. Every single inhabitant of the islands They were all recording in separate rooms, with headphones. You could back stories too, like the lyrics to “Casino Boogie” being was there, along with people who flew in from the go in the guitar room and hear Keith playing. Sometimes he’d play and written on scraps of paper and drawn from a hat. There’s mainland. Every show was packed. It was early in the it’s not even amplified, he’s hearing the sound in his head. You only got the personality that each person brings in their formation of ZZ Top, and we were still dressed in cowboy the whole ambience in the truck, then you played back a quick mix performance, Keith’s high harmonies – oh yeah! And boots and cowboy hats. So they thought we were a and guided them. Bobby Keys – damn! Nicky Hopkins is all over the record country band! You could hear the groans. But that’s “A lot was done in overdubs at Sunset Sound in LA. The soul and Mick Taylor is still with them then and I can get behind when we bonded with the Stones. We would all sit the spirit of the songs came from Nellcôte. The clothing around it the slide on this song – it’s swampy, but it doesn’t get around at the Hilton Hawaiian Towers bar, and we was added, piece by piece, at Sunset Sound.” NICK HASTED bogged down, it does “boogie”, after all. Do I need to became fast friends with that whole gang. They played “Tumbling Dice” in Hawaii Slide over and again when we saw them in Tucson, COPYRIGHT © THE ESTATE OF JAMES J. MARSHALL; GETTY IMAGES here: Mick Arizona. It’s been on the top of my list Taylor and ever since, because any time I was at a wife Rose Stones concert, I would find my way to backstage their guitar tech’s station. We had in LA, June 1972 JUNE 2022 • UNCUT • 61

THE ROLLING STONES COPYRIGHT © THE ESTATE OF JAMES J. MARSHALL; BETTMAN/GETTY IMAGES 1 SWEET VIRGINIA Stray catsuit filler, but they could almost be considered segues. blues: Jagger “Sweet Black Angel” kinda creeps in. Sure, After the pace of Side 1, we begin a soothing, and Taylor “Sweet Virginia” and “I Just Want To See His four-songrunthat represents the creamof backstage Face” start the same way. It’s down-home, with the Stones’country-rock songwriting at the Forum, these two acoustic guitars and that cool LA, 1972 percussion – there’s a name for whatever GREG DULLI, AFGHAN WHIGS: instrument Charlie is playing, but we none of us 3 SWEET BLACK ANGEL know what it is. I heard “Sweet Black Angel” is When I got to college, I had a about Angela Davis, which makes sense – the roommate who played Exile all the A simple, sneakily political folk-blues song Stones were always on the cusp of everything. time and got me into it. When the inspired by activist Angela Davis Whigs first started, we played a lot 4 LOVING CUP of Rolling Stones. We did “Rip This KURT VILE: I got into Exile early Joint”. It’s a great, great record – sprawling and Daylight broaches the basement. Exile’s incredibly joyful. There’s really not a lot of on in my teens. I read more books ‘acoustic’ side ends with maybe the Stones’ most darkness on it. You put that record on at a party, on the Stones than anybody, purely uplifting number and everybody’s gonna have a good time. Lots culminating in Keith’s book. It’s of rockers, lots of well-written songs, but you’ve too much! At one point, Keith is ADAM GRANDUCIEL, THE WAR also got their continuing flirtation with country everybody’s idol – which is a ON DRUGS: Exile has got music. I love the Stones’ country songs, with that dangerous idol to have! Anyway, I love the Exile hick affectation Jagger tries on. My mother’s tour book – STP by Robert Greenfield. There’s a everything. It has the blues and family were from West Virginia and my Uncle scene where Mick is lying on a bed, in the Playboy the swampy, rootsy stuff that the Bobby listened to country exclusively. So if the Mansion, reading a review of Exile which says Stones came up with – but it’s Rolling Stones did bullshit country, I would the album lags on one side – probably Side 2, also their gateway into a more know. They sell it because they mean it. the acoustic side – and he is pissed. He says contemporary rock’n’roll sound. I’ve heard Keith “Sweet Virginia” is an excellent, fun song. It something like, “We put together a side you acknowledge how important Jimmy Miller was in starts you off with a couple of verses but then you can listen to late at night and people say it’s a this evolutionary process and its never more never hear a verse again. It’s mostly the chorus, snooze?” Which brings me to “Sweet Black apparent than on Exile. over and over. Everybody takes a solo then they Angel”. Exile only has one of two of these bluesy, I love the way the sound of the album echoes the party their way out. It’s a simple arrangement. If groovy acoustic songs. They’re definitely not myths around the making of it. Anyone who’s you learned how to play guitar today, you could been in a basement somewhere in Europe in the play “Sweet Virginia” tonight, in front of people. Active summer will know how hot and sticky and wet The simplicity of it is inclusive. That’s the inspiration: that is. It sounds like it was scrapped together in greatness of the Stones. They want you to feel Angela good and they always help you do it. Davis, 1972 2 TORN AND FRAYED Portraitof adishevelledrake –Richards?Gram Parsons? – with Al Perkins on pedal steel RIPLEY JOHNSON, ROSE CITY BAND: I first heard Exile when I was 15 or 16. When you become obsessive as a young person and then later become a musician, the stuff you listen to as a kid is so important, because it really gets into your bones. I feel so fortunate that this was one of the records I listened to over and over and over again – along with The Basement Tapes, another weird record that goes against the grain of the music business at the time. Back then I got into drugs and stuff – not hard drugs, but psychedelics. The Stones fit perfectly with that, for obvious reasons, and this song just takes you away. Even if you’re not doing drugs, there’s a certain thrust to it. It has this grungy basement quality. It doesn’t sound like anything else. They take all this country and blues stuff and combine all these influences into something new. They could afford to indulge themselves at a time when they were at their peak. That’s part of the blending of Mick and Keith. Keith had this really dirty stuff he was doing in France, then Mick comes in and tries to clean it up a bit. There’s a push-pull in their relationship. Mick’s line says it all: “His coat is torn and frayed, it’s seen much better days”. You can imagine Keith telling him, “Just as long as the guitar plays”. When they find that balance, it doesn’t sound contrived. It doesn’t sound put together. It sounds like a private press record on a big budget. It just sounds the way it should sound. 62 • UNCUT • JUNE 2022

Happy times: Keith Richards at Sunset Sound, LA, spring 1972 the best ways. All of the band came into their own favourites. It was January. It’s this droning delta blues, but COPYRIGHT © THE ESTATE OF JAMES J. MARSHALL here, with their own special identities – Keith him, Bonham, and amped up, like that Fat Possum stuff – RL transforming into ‘Keith Richards’ around this Ian Paice. But I Burnside or Junior Kimbrough. It’s just time. Then they took it to Sunset Sound and switched to one chord that they’re hammering over polished it up and made it a classic. I love the guitar when and over, but they’ve sped it up so fast. duality of that process. we started Then it just builds up like a steam Dinosaur. I engine. The lyrics are really funny, “Loving Cup” is classic Stones song writing. didn’t like any with some great cartoon imagery: “I It’s funny, I’ve been listening to Voodoo Lounge of the guitar grabbed your pants and they came off in recently and I got into “Out Of Tears” – it’s so players around, my hands”. The Stones had so much beautiful and it’s a similar to “Loving Cup”, and I figured I material that Mick was scrounging for another amazing piano ballad transformed into could teach someone a ripping rock’n’roll number. It also features the how to play drums. lyrics and it seems like a clear case of him perfect Stones lineup: Nicky Hopkins on piano, using the William Burroughs cut-up technique. Bobby Keys and Jim Price on horns, Jimmy Miller To this day, I always love There’s a lot of interesting juxtapositions that he in the corner with the maracas. Mick and Keith’s hearing “Happy” whenever it comes on. I love probably wouldn’t have come up with otherwise. playing, their interweaving, is phenomenal. hearing Keith sing, and I think that’s the best And then there’s that great refrain: “Lost a lot of Mick Taylor’s proficiency works so well with the song that he sang. I guess I prefer Keith’s voice to love over you”. It’s what makes Exile so essential band’s raggedness. It really lets them dig in. His Mick’s, especially on that Ron Wood solo album as a double album. It would be an amazing record playing on “Let It Loose” and “Loving Cup” is where Keith and Ron sing together. That was a cut down to a single LP, but which songs do you some of my favourite. good combo. They should do that again. I also cut? Certainly they would have excluded this one, love how Mick is the backup singer on “Happy”. but to me it shows the Stones at their essence. 1 HAPPY When he comes in, it definitely helps fill out Keith’s voice. The whole thing has this joyous 3 VENTILATOR BLUES Keith’ssignatureautobiography; stillafirm bounce to it, too. It really does make me happy. live favourite “When your spine is cracking…” The nastiest- 2 TURD ON THE RUN sounding song on Exile? Let Mick Taylor’s slide J MASCIS, DINOSAUR JR: guide you throughthe murk Horrible title, great song: droning blues-rock I remember my mom gave me 50 punctuated by Mick’s brute howls JENNIFER HERREMA, ROYAL dollars to do the food shopping, TRUX: My dad took me to see the and I siphoned off however much it BILL JANOVITZ, BUFFALO TOM: was – nine dollars or something – Stones on their 1981 tour, with and bought Exile. I was 13 or 14, so The title makes you forget what Bobby Womack supporting. I had no income. I had to steal money from my an awesome song it is and how I was 14. He said, “This is what parents to buy records. My dad probably would emblematic it is of what makes this rock’n’roll is!” I was obsessed. have given me the money, but he was too scary to record so great. As soon as I put it Exile is my favourite Stones album. It seemed like ask. It was easier to steal from my mom, although on, my heart starts racing – in a it was such a natural recording process. It wasn’t I think it bummed her out. I still have that copy. At good way. It has this great forward momentum. a controlled environment, none of it could exist if that time I was just playing drums, so I knew all The harmonica is wailing, Bill Plummer is on it was organised and polished, like some of the the Stones songs on drums. Charlie was one of my there playing upright bass. He was a session Stones albums have been. It’s a moment in time. player who played with Miles Davis and some of With “Ventilator Blues”, I know they’ve rehearsed that Wrecking Crew stuff. He passed away in it ahead of tours, but it never came to them JUNE 2022 • UNCUT • 63

THE ROLLING STONES ROBERT R. MCELROY/GETTY IMAGES; STONES ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES again in that loose, random way, so they rarely a collection of great songs. So it’s quite scientifically recorded and all that. You can smell play it live. It just happened that first time and hard to pick one song. the mildew in the basement, and you feel like they caught it on tape. It’s an incredible snapshot. you’re leaning against the wall smoking a I love Keith, but I love Mick Taylor “Let It Loose” has a beautiful plaintive cigarette in the dark, watching these guys and this is one of the few songs he gets a writing guitar introduction from Mick Taylor, jamming these tunes at four in the morning. You credit on – I think “Criss Cross” is maybe the only which sounds like he’s playing it through can smell and feel that shit on there. other one. I love what Mick Taylor brought to this a Leslie speaker. I know it’s called “Let It period of the Stones. His guitar playing had this Loose”, but it is so fucking loose – the way 2 STOP BREAKING DOWN melancholy darkness to it. the band fall in when the drums come in, with Charlie and Bill and everyone else, it The Stones, sansKeith,cover Robert Johnson; I heard that the basement was super hot and with sounds exhausted. There’s some great Mick on harp and rhythm guitar all the humidity, the instruments kept going out of couplets on Exile, but I’ve always been tune. “Ventilator Blues” was about the fan in the impressed and shocked by the opening MIKE SCOTT, THE WATERBOYS: window that made tons of sound. What are you line on “Let It Loose”: “Who’s that woman going to do about it? There’s nothing you can do, on your arm?/All dressed up to do you The original is very beautiful, but you can’t fight the sound. It’s crazy how unhinged harm” – and a little later, “Some things, it’s in a different rhythm. It’s in a it was, but they turned it to their advantage. well, I can’t refuse/One of them, the blues shuffle rhythm. The Stones bedroom blues”. The lyrics are world- turned it into a hard-driving, 4 I JUST WANT TO SEE HIS FACE weary and jaded and so is Jagger’s straight-ahead 4/4 rocker. It’s such delivery. It sounds great when you listen to a great dirty fucking blues jam! Keith isn’t even Partfield recording,parthipshake gospel, built it as part of the whole album. That’s how Exile on this track. The rhythm guitar is played by round acyclingWurlitzer riff works. Jagger and he’s not bad. He doesn’t quite have Keith’s timing, but he’s got all the attitude and STEVE GUNN: My dad used to 1 ALL DOWN THE LINE aggression. I never thought of him as a guitar player and I didn’t like seeing picture of him on listen to the Stones, but I didn’t get Diesel-drumming, motor-humming, whistle- stage with a guitar. He’s the greatest guitarless into Exile until late high school, blowingchooglewith blasting hornsandMick frontman. But I had new respect for him after I when I started listening more Taylor’s stinging slide learned it was him playing rhythm on that song. seriously to music and playing I love the song’s relentlessness. Normally you music. Exile became my favourite ETHAN MILLER, HOWLIN’ RAIN: would expect, after a couple of verses, they’d Stones album. It has a different power to their take a single instrumental and be done with it. other records. As a fan, many of my favourite This record stands in its own weird But the Stones just keep rolling and rolling and Stones moments come from their live recordings place in my consciousness. I fell in rolling. They even put double instrumentals – their spontaneity and the way the individual love with it when I was first out on together: the first break is Mick’s harmonica players hold together as a group I find very simple my own, 20 years old, living in an break, then he hands it off to Mick Taylor. I love and pure. Exile exemplifies that. apartment and oil painting all day, that there’s that space in the song. They’re in no Some people might consider this song filler. smoking cigarettes, shirt off, drinking wine in the hurry about it. It’s unfolding in its own time. It But that’s certainly not the case. I assume it came afternoon, living the full bohemian life and feels like they’re playing for themselves. They’re out of them hanging out and playing around. listening to this record nonstop. I already loved not trying to make a hit single. They’re not trying I don’t like to use this word too much, but it’s the Stones but didn’t have all their albums and to please anyone at the record label or even kind of a jam. It’s rare for the Stones to not only songs pinpointed in my mind yet. I was put a jam on an album, but to open up such a experiencing them in a visceral way, like big window into their world. They’re not precious weather patterns just hitting me. I didn’t break about the instrumentation. It sounds like the songs apart, either; I didn’t even know what there’s two basses, the Wurlitzer is holding the songs were on there, because you feel that energy whole song down, you can hear some of what ripping through the whole thing. And it doesn’t Mick is singing, but not all of it. It’s more about let up. Exile has one of the best Side 4s ever. “All the mood than the song itself. For me, that Down The Line” could be starting Side 1. The makes it a deeper listen than a lot of the other energy is undiminished. The song starts with that songs on Exile. legendary Keith riff, which is completely banging There are different accounts of what went down out of tune. Then Charlie starts playing this crazy on this song, too. Some people say Mick played beat that’s super stiff but also super swinging at keyboard, but apparently Bobby Whitlock was the same time. Nobody does that the way he did. there to meet Jimmy Miller and he played on this. It’s a big blur of heat and energy. It sounds like it I read that Keith wasn’t there at all. All this was captured rather than being toiled over and mystery offers another way into the song. It’s super cool to gaze into their world. Charlie Watts at Madison 5 LET IT LOOSE Square Garden, July 26, 1972 Theveryfinestgospel blues–fromJagger’s emotionaldelivery totherousinghornsand gospel singers BOBBY GILLESPIE, PRIMAL SCREAM: I get the impression that a numbers of tracks from Exile were first worked up for previous albums. I’ve got a bootleg somewhere with a version of “Loving Cup” from the Let It Bleed sessions. Mick Jagger is a meticulous lyricist. You can tell he takes a lot of time over the lyrics – like “Let It Bleed” or “Sympathy For The Devil”. Apart from “Tumbling Dice” and a couple of others, a lot of it feels quite loose, like they’re written at speed. I think Exile is about the vibe, rather than 64 • UNCUT • JUNE 2022

Letting loose: on the Exile tour at the Forum, LA, 1972 necessarily please the fans. You can hear on some other 4 SOUL SURVIVOR In 1986, NYC noise-punks COPYRIGHT © THE ESTATE OF JAMES J. MARSHALL; GETTY IMAGES songs on Exile that they’ve got an eye on the charts. And Pussy Galore re-recorded why not? Nothing wrong with that. But on this song, We end up, just over an hour later – having escaped none of that counts. They’re just having a dirty time for cutthroatcrews, dodged thegraveyard watch and Exile On Main Street. their own fun. narrowly avoidedthebell bottom blues–with this Here, former frontman unrepentantstrut:“It’s gonna be thedeath of me…” JON SPENCER tells all… 3 SHINE A LIGHT CHRIS FORSYTH: Everybody talks “IT was a brat Jagger’s cutting portrait of Brian Jones: “A smile on move. We did it as your face and tear right in your eye”. about this record sounding swampy and a response to Sonic feral, but thissongis as swampy and feral Youth. They’d been VALERIE JUNE: I was born in ’82, so just asitgets. It’slike a monster climbingout of asked by interviewers the muck, coughing out a big cloud of what they were doing being alive you heard the Stones, but I opium smoke. Keith’s amorphous guitar next and, as a joke, didn’t actually listen to this album until intro startsatone speed, but whenthe drums come in, it they said, ‘Oh, we’re covering the I was in my early twenties. I was living in picks up a few BPMs, like it’s got some oxygen in its lungs. “White Album”…’ I’d never listened to Memphis and took a road trip with a Mick’s vocals just hit you with feeling, the way the guitar the Stones’ Exile before we started. friend of mine who was a musician. He hitsyou.His voice isjustthissyrupy, sweatysound. When Julie [Cafritz] screams, “I put Exile on, and I was just amazed, especially when Structurally, the songissoweird.You can break itdown hate your fucking guts, I’m gonna “Shine A Light” came on. I’d never heard it and one of and say thisisthe verse and thisisthe chorusand thisis make my own fucking music” at the the first things that stood out to me was the way Mick sort of like a bridge maybe, but they all just tumble around. start, she’s leading the charge on sings the word ‘tear’. He breaks that word down. He It’s all very murky, especially to end the album. It’s not a our version of Exile. We were pissed makes it super slow and weird, and it just twisted me big anthemic finish, the album emerges from the swamp, off. We felt that rock’n’roll was dead up. It got me listening to the actual details of the song, and in the end it just goes back into the mud. Without this and spent. But don’t get me wrong, which are very visual. You can see the bloodshot eyes. record, the Stonesare a very different proposition. They’d the early Stones records were Pussy You can see the sad body of this addict. They’re taking never made analbum like Exile before and they never Galore touchstones. you on this journey through the song. I love the made another record like itagain.It’ssucha mess, but I “Werentedapracticeroomin placement of the bass on that song; it’s just rolling like a don’t meanthatina bad way.It’sjustthattheir other midtownManhattanandworked train. I thought, ‘This is gospel. I can’t believe I’ve never records were all super-clean – verywellcrafted inthe throughtherecordonacassette heard this gospel truth before.’ That stood out to me, finest studios. This one is all about the murk. It’s not only four-track.Neil[Hagerty]showed coming from such a religious background, and it their best album, but if you take it away, the whole arc of usthesongandassoonaswe reminds me of that song “This Little Light thebandismuch,much different. couldplayitthroughonce,thatwas Of Mine”, which has always been one of my thetake!Thentherewasaperiod favourite gospel numbers. This is a separate Interviews by Michael Bonner, whenthematerialwasmixedand take on it, though. You’re in the real world Stephen Deusner and Nick Hasted marinated.That’swhensomestuff and dealing with real-world issues, but gotreallypushed.Atonepoint,I you still gotta shine your light. It’s so dark The Rolling Stones 1972: 50th usedthesoundoftheboombox in its depiction of addiction, yet that Anniversary Edition, with photographs playingasonginsidemyapartment’s gospel element makes it sound so by Jim Marshall (Chronicle Books, £30) metaloven.Someofitwasoutof generous and hopeful. is out May 26, 2022 annoyanceatthesourcematerial. SomesongsIrememberreally digging,like‘VentilatorBlues’.But somewerehardtorelateto.They weretaxexiles!Thatwasprettyalien, inourfilthandsqualorinNewYork City.Idon’trecallsingingoverthe originalStonesversions.Butmaybe wedidinthemixing.Ourotherbig touchstonewasindustrialnoise,and thewaygroupslikeCabaretVoltaire wereemployingcut-uptechniques. Also,backinDCwe’dbeenrunning withTomSmith’snoisebandPeach OfImmortalityandTomplayedanold hi-ficassette-deckthroughahuge amp,sometimesmanipulatingold LedZeppelinsongs.Thatinfluenced ourExile,too. SomeoneaskedKeithRichards ifhe’dheardaboutit,andKeith’s responsewas,‘Oh,aretheystill together?’Theinterviewersaid,‘No.’ AndKeithsaid,‘Well,there’sthetrick. TomakeExileOnMainStreet,and staytogether.’”NICKHASTED JUNE 2022 • UNCUT • 65

MICHAEL HEAD Mersey Mercy Me Rejoice! After a five-year absence, the return of MICHAEL HEAD – aka England’s greatest living songwriter – is upon us. Rob Hughes visits the Wirral Peninsula to discover that Head, his demons at bay, has made the perfect comeback with Dear Scott. But what accounts for this renewed sense of purpose? “Just keep fuckin’ going,” he tells us. Photo by JOHN JOHNSON ST George’s Hall’s stylish new eaterie The latest example is “The Ten”, a droll, expertly drawn slice celebrates the Liverpool that everybody of youthful nostalgia that recounts regular trips to Kensington knows. Pencil portraits line the exposed market, where Head’s dad worked. Younger brother John (who brickwork walls: Lennon, McCartney, Cilla joined Head in The Pale Fountains, Shack and The Strands) is and Doddy alongside honorary local Bill along for the ride, as is troublesome mate Badger, eliciting a Shankly, the Scotsman who reversed precious lyric: “Badger threw a peach and it all went pear- Liverpool FC’s fortunes back in the ’60s. shaped”. “He did start throwing fruit!” Head chuckles. “So Michael Head is tucked into a quiet corner from then on, my dad would only let one of us go with him to nook, directly beneath this gallery of fame. But you have to the market.” look deeper to find him in this great city. It’s one of a dozen songs on Dear Scott, Head’s first album in Head has performed at St George’s Hall itself on numerous five years and debut for new label Modern Sky UK. Produced occasions, most recently with the Red Elastic Band. His by Bill Ryder-Jones, formerly of The Coral, Dear Scott carries manor, however, lies a mile or so east, a short hop down all the hallmarks of Head’s greatest moments: unfaltering London Road and up into Kensington. This is where he spent melodies, a beautiful sense of forward motion, lyrics that his formative years during the ’70s. “It’s been an important conjure entire worlds. route through town for centuries,” says Head, nursing a cappuccino and settling into the subject. “For me, personally, It also feels like the product of a man with renewed purpose. it’s a ley line of some kind.” Having set the bar high some time ago, this might even be Head’s finest collection of songs to date. “I have a different His creative life can be measured along this thoroughfare. mindset at the moment, so the album was really done with It’s where he learned to become a singer and musician. As a shy a lot of clarity,” he offers. “Maybe it’s because I’m getting 17-year-old, Head rehearsed with his first band in Kensington’s older or supposedly wiser, but I’m certainly enjoying it more. Prospect Vale. He’s written songs on the No 10 bus – first as I’ve enjoyed being focused. That makes you really want to leader of The Pale Fountains, then journeying through Shack, finish what you’ve started, to give it what it fully needs. The Strands and onward into the Red Elastic Band. Sometimes in the past, admittedly, I haven’t really given 66 • UNCUT • JUNE 2022

Tabling a thought: Michael Head prepares to launch his second album with the Red Elastic Band JUNE 2022 • UNCUT • 67

FIN COSTELLO/REDFERNS MICHAEL HEAD MP and campaigner Bessie Braddock, locked in sculptor Tom Murphy’s eternal Chance Meeting. Head and I are the songs the justice that they’ve deserved.” catching a train over the water, to the Wirral Peninsula, Head’s candour is admirable. Now aged 60, his and Ryder-Jones’ studio. body of work is relatively thin (10 studio albums in The city’s public transport system has been an a little under 40 years). While his quality control has essential part of Head’s artistic life. His first musical rarely dipped, he’s spent extended periods of time stirrings of the late ’70s were accessed by bus. Along the struggling with heroin addiction and alcohol abuse. route described in “The Ten” is “Yorkie’s, where we’d He admits that his previous effort, 2017’s Adiós Señor sing”, citing Dave ‘Yorkie’ Palmer, in whose bands Head Pussycat, “is probably the only album I made sober. started out. Palmer’s basement also served as a practice I’ve made records through different states of space for a couple of other fledgling acts: Echo & The consciousness since I was 20.” Bunnymen and The Teardrop Explodes. Head was directed there after bumping into the Meanwhile, Head’s lack of commercial success – Teardrops’ Paul Simpson at Probe Records in town. Shack’s HMS Fable is his only dalliance with the “I got the 10 down to Yorkie’s and went into the cellar,” Top 30 thus far – has only heightened his reputation he recalls. “It was full of instruments and graffiti, like as a venerated cult figure. “Mick’s due some good Everybody Wants To Shag… The Teardrop Explodes. Will luck and hopefully that’s what he’s got now,” [Sergeant]’s pink Jaguar was there. I’d never seen a suggests Ryder-Jones. “The label absolutely can’t fucking guitar in my life. So I’m keeping it together, but believe that they’ve got Mick Head. I can’t believe thinking that this is awesome. There’s a young girl on I got Mick Head. We see him as one of the greats up keyboards, a lad on guitar, Yorkie on bass. He went, ‘This here. I very nearly said no to making the record, is the new song. Can you write lyrics?’ Just through that just because of the pressure of it.” chance meeting with Simmo in the record shop, I had a shortcut into a world that I might never have fallen into. T HE psychogeography of Liverpool is vital to Again, it was this beautiful, kismetic fluke.” Mick Head. As a child, the daily walk to and from school offered views over the River “The idea was to see if this guy was cool enough to Mersey. Now he’ll often go cycling along its sing for me,” says Palmer, who joined Space in the mid- pathways, past the old docks, for hours at a time. ’90s and, later, produced and co-managed Shack. “We It’s served as a subconscious fix through the decades, just hit it off and decided to start a band. I always used the one constant in a city of endless flux. to accuse him of being a lazy vocalist back then, because you could never get him to write the second “Personally, there’s so much for me here,” he says, verse. But he’s since turned it into a fine art. Mick can addressing how Liverpool continues to feed his now set up a situation, introduce you to the characters creativity. “I’ve chronicled Liverpool within song and their back stories, then tell the tale, and all in over the years. The location is special to begin with. about 10 lines. It’s unbelievable.” And then there’s so much within the personalities of people themselves. But I see so much in my Head sang lead vocals and played synthesiser in Ho imagination too, which goes AWOL sometimes. Being Ho Bacteria (named after toilet wall graffiti discovered a writer, I love that.” by Julian Cope), the first of several bands with Palmer. We’ve crossed over the road to Lime Street station, passing the bronze statues of Ken Dodd and Labour Track record: Head (left) with The Pale Fountains on the Bluebell Railway in Sussex, October 1982 68 • UNCUT • JUNE 2022

MICHAEL HEAD when I opened my eyes he was still sitting there. I thought I was dreaming at one stage. I know people say you should never meet your heroes, but there was none of that with Arthur. He was a beautiful human being. He’s still such an important influence for me.” With younger MICK HEAD’S DOWN a side street in the centre of West Kirby, LAWRENCE WATSON; FRANS SCHELLEKENS/REDFERNS brother John ROAD TO the stone exterior of YAWN Studios resembles (right) once again an old farmhouse. Inside there’s a modest- in Shack; (inset) DEAR SCOTT sized recording space occupied by wires, gear and a Arthur Lee pair of colourful rugs. A large Brazilian flag is draped THE PALE over a piano. The tight, narrow staircase leads up to But it was his FOUNTAINS a mixing room, the plain walls of the landing bandmate’s record betraying the hard yards of Dear Scott. Each song is collection that had FROM listed in black marker, alongside who did what, with the most profound ACROSS THE various ticks and crosses annotating the album’s effect. Cope had KITCHEN progress over time. A big speech bubble, with ‘THE turned Palmer onto TABLE VIRGIN, RED ELASTIC BAND’ in capitals, is a reminder that this artists like Henry Cow, is very much a team effort. Dagmar Krause, Pere 1985 Ubu and Red Krayola. Ryder-Jones sits cross-legged on the rug, supping In turn, Palmer did the Produced by Ian Broudie, the Paleys’ from a bottle of zero-alcohol beer. Guitarist Nathaniel same for Head. second album looks to the West Cummings, who also engineered and helped mix the “Yorkie goes, ‘Here’s Pere Ubu, here’s Red Krayola, Coast for its jangling aesthetic, album, is perched on a chair by the desk. Head says his here’s Love,’” remembers Head. “The Love album was peaking with “Jean’s Not Happening” hellos and goes off for a sprightly walk, leaving us to it. a compilation, Revisited, and it was a game changer. and “These Are The Things”. “From the minute we first got off the train, I could tell I was like, ‘What the fuck is that? Why is he singing Mick just fell in love with the water and the atmosphere about England, with Elizabethan references?’ I think MICHAEL around here,” says Cummings. “That found its way Arthur Lee had an affinity to this place. He once played HEAD & THE into the music. It snowballed and became a beautiful here at Liverpool Stadium, which was like this mythic STRANDS thing. Everyone involved in the making of the record event. It resonated for years.” was already a huge Mick Head fan, which I think was It’s impossible to overstate the impact of Arthur Lee THE MAGICAL different to what he’d had before. It just lent itself to on Head’s songwriting. It coloured the West Coast WORLD OF being a very creative environment.” spangle of The Pale Fountains (originally known, THE STRANDS in a direct homage, as The Love Fountains) and “Mick’s way different in the studio than I thought informed the more mutable psychedelic folk of Shack MEGAPHONE, 1997 he’d be,” adds Ryder-Jones. “He’s very, very clear about and The Strands, with their diverse shades of jazz and what he wants and what he’s not into. He’s way more of baroque pop. Head assimilates various obsessions a producer than I thought. You think someone like An iteration of Shack finally got to tour as Lee’s – Love, The Byrds, Pentangle, Simon Mick is one of those songsmiths, where songs just run backing band in the early ’90s. It was the realisation & Garfunkel – into a pastoral, psych- through him. It sounds really patronising, given that of a long-held ambition for Head. “He couldn’t folk masterclass. “Something Like he’s been in the industry for so long, making great understand why four Scousers knew his music,” Head You” and “Queen Matilda” are damn records, but I just wasn’t expecting that. At the same recalls. “We asked him to do one of his old songs, ‘Your near perfect. time, he put his trust in us and let us do our thing. Nine Mind And We Belong Together’, and he says: ‘Even times out of 10 he’d go, ‘That’s fuckin’ boss!’ and give Love didn’t fucking know that one!’ For me and our SHACK everyone a hug. We’d all be buzzing, because we’d John, it’s our favourite Love song, especially the solo at made Mick happy.” the end. So we did it at the soundcheck. HERE’S TOM “After we’d played in Liverpool, he said, ‘Michael, it’s WITH THE Head and the Red Elastic Band – guitarists good to be home.’ Then he wanted to go for a walk, so I WEATHER Cummings and Danny Murphy, plus bassist Tom took him around town. I’d had a shedload of all kinds Powell and drummer Phil Murphy – began work on the and it was a beautiful gig, so I went back to his room for NORTH COUNTRY, new album here in 2019, when it was provisionally a drink. I lay down on the bed and drifted off, then 2003 called ‘New Brighton Rock’. Shack’s exquisite “I was sober for a few years and happy, in love, just fourth effort pre-echoes the wider writing and being creative,” Head explains. “That was panorama of Dear Scott, set against a big result, because at one time I thought there was no ringing electro-acoustics, strings and way I was ever going to stop drinking. One of the big bursts of brass. things was saying to myself, ‘Mick, it’s taken to when you’re nearly 60 to realise that it’s all or nothing with MICHAEL you.’ Once that penny dropped, it was like getting all HEAD & these links and putting this little chain together. Then THE RED I was offered the possibility of working with Bill.” ELASTIC BAND Six songs were cut initially, though sessions were halted after Head relapsed, followed by an enforced ADIÓS SEÑOR break due to the pandemic. Head continued to write, PUSSYCAT sobered up and reconvened with the band 15 months later. “We all went for a walk on Crosby beach and VIOLETTE, 2017 decided to get the momentum going again,” he recalls. “Then one of the lads mentioned that Dave [Pichilingi] His first album in over a decade finally at Modern Sky was possibly interested. With Bill on nails some live favourites (“Workin’ board as well, it just felt like one of those moments Family” dates back to early Shack), where the stars are aligning. It was like kismet.” alongside newer gems such as confessional piano ballad, “Winter Kismet is a word that comes up a lot in Mick Head’s Turns To Spring”. world, specifically in terms of Dear Scott. It lent its name to one of the first songs they worked up, prior JUNE 2022 • UNCUT • 69

With the Red Elastic Band accepted a screenwriting job with MGM and rented at YAWN Studios, West Kirby, October 2019, a cheap room in the notorious Garden Of Allah hotel. before booze and a virus interrupted recording “A friend of mine gave me The Pat Hobby Stories,” to Ryder-Jones’ involvement. “I remember the night explains Head. “I’d never read F Scott Fitzgerald before when me and Mick first jammed ‘Kismet’,” says Cummings. “We were in his flat in Aigburth and he and it just blew me away. The book says a lot about the was talking about approaching something more conceptually, as a body of music. You could tell his life he was living at the time and the need to earn a mind was working towards something larger. As great as he is, he recognised that he needed help crust. He was newly sober and really thought he was with that. That’s when I suggested putting a few tracks down with Bill at his studio here.” going to crack Hollywood. But being in the Garden Of All chiming guitars and radial warmth, “Kismet” Allah, which was a den of iniquity, was the worst place opens the album with some panache. It carries traces of The Pale Fountains’ ’80s jangle, but feels for him to be. infinitely richer and deeper, as if signalling the return of an old friend whose acute talent has only become “Apparently, when he first checked in, Scott went up rarefied by time. And as Dear Scott moves along, it becomes apparent that Ryder-Jones has brought a filmic to the counter, got a postcard, wrote it to himself and quality to the songs to suit Head’s original vision. The piano and string arrangements are sumptuous without went upstairs. Then he just stuck it on the mantelpiece, which ever feeling intrusive, investing things with a kind of muted, Bacharach-like grandeur. “I knew that Bill was is poignant. It read something like: ‘Dear Scott, How are you? going to bring something special,” marvels Head. “He’s played a blinder, really.” Have been meaning to come and see you…’ It gives you an idea “P RIOR to recording, Mick and I had some phone of his mindset and sense of humour. It resonated with me. calls about his love for Hollywood,” says Ryder-Jones. “He told me quite early on that That was the inspiration, lyrically, for a lot of the album.” I would be doing the strings as well, that it was going to be more cinematic, which is something The luminous “Fluke” revolves around a tour of Hollywood’s maybe we haven’t heard from Mick since Shack’s Here’s Tom With The Weather [2003]. One of the first homes of the stars, with references to Superman, Al Pacino things I worked on was ‘Fluke’, which Nat and I did the arrangement for. Mick called me up after he’d and Ray Liotta, “fightin’ with the neighbours’ kids”. Almost as heard it: ‘Bill, it’s fuckin’ Hollywood-ed up to fuck!’, just loving it so much. That felt so great.” an aside, Head notes the driver’s resemblance to his Auntie The notion of Hollywood has also provided a Faye, prompting a quiet burst of laughter in the second verse. thematic foothold. Having passed through a couple of working titles – ‘Kismet’ and ‘New Brighton Rock’ “I wrote ‘Fluke’ after sitting in a café, listening to two girls – Head settled on Dear Scott after reading about F JOHN JOHNSON; LIBRARY OF CONGRESS/CORBIS/VCG VIA GETTY IMAGES Scott Fitzgerald’s sojourn in Tinseltown in the late who worked in PR. The idea is that one of them gets the chance ’30s. Struggling to make ends meet, the author to go to LA after her boss has pulled out. There’s a certain LA 70 • UNCUT • JUNE 2022 look. It’s something I’ve only ever seen in a few movies, like The Day Of The Locust or The Last Tycoon, where the colour feels a little unreal. It’s pink. In Once Upon A Time In Hollywood there’s a scene where Sharon Tate is walking to the pictures on a quiet afternoon in Hollywood. It all looks so beautiful. That’s what I tried to capture with the feel of the lyrics.” The theme extends into “American Kid”, which brilliantly skewers the pretensions of a Kirkby lad who fancies himself as a Hollywood superstar, complete with monstrous ego and flaky De Niro impression. In fact, any spotlight will do. “Go to work as Eddie/Go to bed as Kathy F Scott Kirby”, sings Head in his soft Liverpool brogue. Fitzgerald: “Gino And Rico” shifts space and time to post-war Soho. a lyrical inspiration It’s a vivid piece of film noir, flitting between casinos,

MICHAEL HEAD The Red Elastic Band: (l-r) is acting with the very best of Nathaniel Cummings, Danny intentions. Mick Head’s art is a Murphy, Mick Head, Phil rare and valuable commodity. Murphy and Tom Powell As is the man himself. “I think we all feel protective of him, Sylvia Syms premieres, shady errands and dead in a way,” says Ryder-Jones. “Mick’s a very strong, resilient, bodies that need to be hidden. “My ma got me “HE’S STILL MORE intelligent man, but there’s an EXCITED THAN innocence to him that makes into all the old black-and-white movies,” Head ANYONE ELSE IN you think of a kid in school. He’s THE STUDIO” got that thing that’s so easy to explains. “She used to go a lot. When I wasn’t in lose when you’re involved in BILL RYDER-JONES music: the joy of the moment. school I was always watching movies. ‘Gino And He’s led quite a rollercoaster of a M ICHAEL Head appears to be in a very life, but doesn’t seem caught up Rico’ is based on the threesome in Les Valseuses, good place at the moment. He looks in the past. While he loves his lean, contented and twinkly-eyed. The old songs, he’d much sooner but set in 1955, when Soho was pretty seedy. Red Elastic Band are clearly a play his new ones. So he’s never good fit too. He credits them as lost that sense of wonder, he’s Through film and books I create these stories, a major inspiration over the still more excited than anyone last few years and, in typically else in the studio.” which then transcend into song. I think it’s an self-deprecating style, hopes the feeling is mutual. “They’re “Mick’s getting back to his best art form, putting stories to music.” half my age, but they advise now,” Cummings adds. “I think me,” he grins. “They flavour that’s because he’s got a team of “I always knew Mick was an incredible writer,” the album in so many different people around him, from his ways and just do what they do. band to his daughter Alice, says Ryder-Jones. “But I think his lyrics on this I can’t ask for anything more. who’s been fantastic, to Bill and And then Bill on top, honest to the guys at the label. We all care about him. We’re record are the best he’s ever done. They’re just so God, was just boss.” What’s all in awe of Mick Head.” also apparent is that everyone For some time now, Head has been writing stunning, so clever. They’re like novellas, like involved in Dear Scott short stories. A publisher took him out to lunch recently, proposing he write an autobiography. Samuel Beckett stories. The Head instead suggested a collection of short fiction, a natural supplement to his songwriting. arrangements lent themselves He’s also keen to collaborate with a local photographer friend in documenting the hidden to all that drama. We were quite corners of Liverpool’s cultural legacy. Much like he’s done in song these past 40 years. lucky, as well, in that we all The memoir will just have to wait, at least for JOHN JOHNSON; STEVE RAPPORT/GETTY IMAGES now. “I told the publisher I’m not really ready subscribe to this kismet idea, for that yet, that I’ve still got loads to offer,” he says. The same applies to Shack, inactive since which meant we had his whole 2006’s On The Corner Of Miles And Gil. Head is accustomed to fielding questions about his old career to kind of reference. band staging a comeback. And while he refuses to discount the possibility, he can’t see it That wasn’t an accident. With happening anytime soon. Momentum, it seems, is everything. Returning most of the things on this to the premise behind Dear Scott’s title, Head concludes: “The other day, someone asked me album, you can hear different what I’d put if I wrote a postcard to myself. I’d just say, ‘Mick, you’re doing well, mate. Just keep parts of Mick’s career. ‘Broken fuckin’ going.’” Beauty’ and ‘Kismet’, for “He’s played a Dear Scott is released by Modern Sky UK instance, sound like Pale blinder”: Head on May 27 Fountains tunes. He’s really with Dear Scott outdone himself.” producer Bill- Ryder Jones YOU’VE BEEN FRAMED The early influence of Aztec Camera’s gifted guitarist ARTHUR Lee may have been they played in Liverpool at Plato’s and augmented. We went into “Voodoo chords”: the predominant influence Ballroom [August 31, 1981] it was the dressing room and got talking Roddy Frame with on the young Michael a big deal for us. Through that we to them. I was still learning my Aztec Camera, Head, but, closer to home, Aztec met Aztec Camera. Just watching craft as a player, but I was in awe London, 1982 Camera were also crucial. Like them do their soundcheck was of them, especially Roddy as Head, Roddy Frame was another amazing. There’s a passage in the a guitarist. He was completely youthful prodigy mastering the art middle of ‘Just Like Gold’ where proficient in rhythm and lead, he of song. “The Pale Fountains were I’d never heard anything like it. I had the lot going on. He was more lucky enough to play on the same remember saying to someone, or less the same age as me. It was bill as Orange Juice,” says Head. ‘Those chords are voodoo!’ They like, ‘What the fuck!’ Roddy was a “We loved Postcard, so when were like jazz chords, suspended big inspiration to the Paleys.” JUNE 2022 • UNCUT • 71

Roxy Cool cat: Musıc Ferry, from the first album photo shoot, 1972 As Roxy reunite to mark their 50th anniversary, Bryan Ferry looks back at the group’s eight fabulous creations FIFTY years ago this month, Roxy Music emerged from an old movie theatre on London’s Piccadilly clutching the master tapes for what would turn out to be an epochal debut. Though conceived by band- leader Bryan Ferry as an “exploration of many styles” created by six wildly diverse musical personalities, the glamour-starved audience instantly recognised it as something fresh, urgent and seductively postmodern. “Making the Roxy Music albums was a life-changing experience for me,” reflects Ferry today – and also for everyone who devoured them at the time. Like a swan gliding across a moonlit lake, Roxy Music often gave the impression of moving with effortless grace. But what Ferry remembers most is the hard work going on beneath the surface, “working intensively with such a unique group of people. It was an amazingly productive time.” Ahead of Roxy’s 50th anniversary tour in the autumn, he recalls intense recording sessions and painstaking photoshoots, chasing something “in the air” from The Strand to The Bahamas. “I have many good memories of the camaraderie we shared, as well as the tensions that are part of the collaboration. I’ll be looking forward to celebrating all of this with our audience later in the year.”SAMRICHARDS ROXY MUSIC to be wide-ranging and high for me. By this point I had a better idea of what the ISLAND, 1972 not follow one particular band could achieve and what each musician could bring to Re-make! Re-model! Roxy strike channel. I was lucky with the record. There was a new gold straight away with an bass player, the guitarist John enthusiastically arch rifle through this band in that we had so Porter, who, like Graham, had pop’s dressing-up box been at university with me, many different sounds to and he brought a certain I started putting funkiness to the record. He the band play with and it was a played an important role, as together in 1970 did Chris Thomas, who we met when I began great opportunity for me to at Air Studios and who ended up working with producing the record. He fitted in Graham write interesting stuff. really well and his enthusiasm Simpson, who brought out the best in me and all had played in my college band, The Consequently, the first UNCUT the others in the band. Highlights Gas Board. Later that year I met album was an exploration CLASSIC included the solos by Eno and Phil Andy Mackay and he joined us with of many styles and so on “Editions Of You”, Andy’s sax on his synthesiser and oboe, and later “The Bogus Man” and Paul’s saxophone. At this point I was diverse that it indicated FOR YOUR PLEASURE powerful drumming throughout. writing the songs on piano and at many different futures the This album contains some of my the same time trying to put together best songs: “Do The Strand”, “In the band to play them. We didn’t band could follow. The first ISLAND, 1973 Every Dream Home A Heartache” have a tape recorder, so Andy and “Editions Of You”. There was suggested his friend Brian Eno Roxy album is an unusual collage And for his next trick, Ferry poses something about the record that felt could come and record us. Eno complete to me. Everyone excelled brought his huge reel-to-reel of musical elements, and the songs asalanguorousinsider,exposing themselves and whereas the first Ferrograph machine, and ended album was us throwing ideas in up staying on and becoming part themselves, if you break them the darkness at the heart of la different directions, this was more of the band, using Andy’s VCS3 focused and darker in mood. It synthesiser to create sounds and down, are just simple experiments dolcevita captured that time pretty well, I treat the instruments we were think. I can’t quite explain what playing. We hit it off, and by the time in different genres. After we toured the first record, was in the air, but we were right on we started recording the album we it. I’m very proud of that album. had the complete band. This was the first album that any I had to quickly come up with a new I liked many kinds of music, so stylistically I was keen for the songs of us had made. We were all hungry batch of songs for the second album. to learn and new to the experience I moved into this flat in London’s of being in a recording studio. It Earl’s Court and started writing was a dream come true to be able there, and my friend Nick de Ville to do this. also lent me his cottage where I EG Management signed us up to worked on the songs before taking Island Records, and they brought in them to the band. It seems we’d Pete Sinfield from King Crimson to learned a lot on the road in the produce us. He seemed to be ideal, intervening months since making very enthusiastic and cheerful. The the first album, and now the band whole process was a delight. The was much stronger and the songs KARL STOECKER record was made in a rather bizarre were more knowing. place called Command Studios on We went into Air Studios and Piccadilly, an old movie theatre. recording in this great place above How appropriate. Oxford Circus was really a career 72 • UNCUT • JUNE 2022

Roxy Music in Manchester, November 1972: (l-r) Brian Eno, Bryan Ferry, John Porter, Andy Mackay, Paul Thompson and Phil Manzanera STRANDED time for the first Roxy album. “We were records, working hard, living and JORGEN ANGEL/REDFERNS The big change in the band of working hard, breathing the music. So the ISLAND, 1973 recording was intense and hands- course was that Brian Eno had left living and on. We all worked late nights. I think Eno out, Eddie in – but any potential and Eddie Jobson had joined. In breathing this album has some outstanding turmoil is obscured by another set between For Your Pleasure and the music” performances by the musicians, of terrific, swaggering songs Stranded, Eddie had worked on and also some of my best lyrics. These Foolish Things (my first solo BRYAN FERRY By now album), and his playing had really SIREN everything was impressed me. Sadly we lost Eno’s interested in what I had to say, and running very amazing talents, but we gained a how I was saying it. In retrospect, it ISLAND, 1975 fast and one prodigious all-round musician, raised my sense of responsibility for album or tour a supremely gifted piano player the work. Jerry Hall graces the cover, while would merge and violinist. He brought a new a memorable bassline drives the into the next. musical dimension to the band. For Country Life, Air Studios band’s biggest hit to date While we were touring, studio time Looking back, it would have been so continued to be our second home. was being booked for us and I was great to have had both of them on We had essentially the same team as We did this under pressure to write more songs. I the same record. we did on Stranded. John Punter, the record once didn’t have much going on in my life chief engineer, produced it with us. again at Air apart from touring, my flat and my COUNTRY LIFE Eddie Jobson crafted some great Studios. The piano. While recording For Your string arrangements, especially on assistant from Pleasure, I’d found this lovely old ISLAND, 1974 “The Thrill Of It All”, and played a Country Life, Steinway grand which has been my memorable solo on “Out Of The Steve Nye, was great friend ever since. I’ve written A more self-conscious Roxy sound Blue”, which I co-wrote with Phil now engineering, and Chris Thomas most of my life’s work on it. and style is cemented Manzanera. Once again we were returned to produce. At this point I remember a couple of different expanding our musical range, and I’d moved from Earl’s Court and I locations when I was writing When we did solidifying the repertoire. This time think I wrote most of the songs in my Stranded. I went to Greece to write the first Roxy period is all a bit of a blur to me basement in Holland Park. Back some of the songs, including Music album, I because we were rushing from one then we would work incredibly late, “Mother Of Pearl”. I wrote the didn’t really thing to another. All we were doing until the sun came up the next day. lyrics for “A Song for Europe” know who was touring and making these One of the unsung stars of Siren, at a friend’s place down in Sussex, would be Country Life and Stranded was the and then “Sunset” in Tenerife, listening. At bass player John Gustafson. He had where I was resting after a tonsil some point as the albums went on, I played in one of the Liverpool bands operation. One of the album began to realise we had an audience in the 1960s and was an incredibly tracks was “Psalm”, which was in who were eagerly anticipating each gifted musician who brought so fact one of the first songs I’d written record, listening hard, and some of much life to the songs on these three in 1971, but hadn’t been finished in them being quite critical. It was an albums. “Mother Of Pearl”, “The audience who seemed to be JUNE 2022 • UNCUT • 73

MICHAEL PUTLAND/GETTY IMAGES Roxy on September “I was anxious do a couple years before on my solo AVALON 26, 1975: (l-r) Phil for each Roxy albums In Your Mind and then again Manzanera, John Music album to on The Bride Stripped Bare, but I EG, 1982 Gustafson, Paul sound different could never get it right. I felt it was Thompson, Andy from the last” too much of a pop song. Then I “Now the party’s over…” An Mackay, Eddie Jobson played it to my friend in New York, exquisitely managed exit from the and Bryan Ferry BRYAN FERRY Earl McGrath, who said you should dukes of decadence give it to Bob Clearmountain to mix. Thrill Of It All”, and “Love Is the musicians. This record meant Bob made it a hit. Avalon Drug” were all transformed by his a lot to me at the time and I was represented inventive playing. disappointed by its reception. FLESH + BLOOD about as far as I So I decided to put Roxy Music could take that The album had a strong cover. I’d back together. EG, 1980 sound. Some seen pictures of a girl in Vogue elements of magazine, Jerry Hall, who I thought This time the band included some The slick pop-rock sheen tilts at Manifesto led to looked like a mermaid, with long of the people I’d been playing with the mainstream, though there are Flesh + Blood and some of Flesh + wavy hair. I showed them to the on The Bride…, plus Phil, Andy, and intriguing covers of “In The Midnight Blood led to Avalon. So those three fashion designer Antony Price, Paul. We went to a studio in the Hour” and “Eight Miles High” albums are linked as a trilogy in a who had worked on all the Roxy English countryside, Ridge Farm, to way, just as Stranded, Country Life, album covers, and he started doing record most of it, and the rest was We had started and Siren had been years before. these drawings of mermaids. We done at Basing Street Studios in working with I wanted our records to reach went down to Wales with the London, and a session or two at Rhett Davies, people’s ears in America, the place photographer Graham Hughes. Atlantic Studios in New York. We who had come where most of my musical heroes My old friend from art school split the album into two halves, in halfway had come from. And at the time they Nick de Ville went there first on a East and West. The West side had through the didn’t really want to hear things like reconnaissance trip, and he said it the songs with a more smooth, Manifesto “The Bogus Man”. I wanted to make was perfect, wild and stormy with mainstream, American-influenced album. He had been an assistant a record that was going to be played huge waves lashing. However, the sound, and the East side was years ago on Another Time, everywhere. It was ambitious. And day we went, it was the hottest day slightly more edgy and European Another Place, my second solo Avalon was that record. We made in the British Isles for 300 years or in feel. record. He soon became my some of it at Phil’s studio, some in something, with eerily still water. It go-to producer, and this fruitful New York, and some in the Bahamas looked great though, very Ancient By this time I was living in Sussex, relationship has lasted for many at Compass Point. I especially loved Greece. Graham put this blue filter and I remember driving home years. We did this album at Basing recording in New York, and staying on the shot, enhanced by Antony through many misty mornings. Street Studios and also at Phil at the hotels Stanhope and Carlyle with blue paint. We went to great Some nights we would stay Manzanera’s Gallery Studio. on the Upper East Side, where I lengths to get things right. It was all overnight at Ridge Farm – being It has the ballad “My Only Love”, developed a taste for dry martinis. done in the shot, and you’d sort of in a residential studio was good for which I wrote in Sussex. I remember Phil and Andy made some great cross your fingers and hope the night music. The track “Manifesto” referencing a beautiful willow tree contributions, Phil with “Take A pictures would turn out OK when is one of my favourites, like a in the sunken garden and that Chance With Me”, and Andy with they were developed. It was all very call-to-arms, and featured some came into the lyric. I was writing a “While My Heart Is Still Beating”. hands-on and ‘cottage industry’ in marvellous soulful and inventive lot of it down there and completing On our last day of recording we had those days. bass playing by Alan Spenner, the songs in the studios in London. one more song to complete and I who together with guitarist Neil The rhythm section on the album remember being in the Carlyle the MANIFESTO Hubbard became an important part were Neil Hubbard, Alan Spenner, night before, writing the lyrics to of my sound. Paul Carrack and Andy Newmark, “Avalon”, thinking I’ve got to sing EG, 1979 great musicians who lived and this tomorrow or we miss the “Dance Away” was the hit, of breathed American R&B. They deadline. I went into The Power Ferry reconfigures the band, just in course, and was a track I’d tried to brought a lot to the record. Station studios the next day, time to grab a slice of disco glamour Our audience was becoming Sunday. It was just me, Rhett and increasingly sophisticated, and Bob Clearmountain, and I was I had been I so much wanted to please them. singing the song. I went out to the concentrating I was also anxious for each Roxy coffee machine and heard this girl’s on my solo Music album to sound different voice coming from the studio next career for a from the last. door. And I thought, what an couple of years, amazing voice, I’ve got to get her to touring and come and sing on this track. She was living abroad, called Yanick Étienne, a girl from mainly in America. In Switzerland I Haiti. I asked her to try some scat made an album called The Bride vocals. It sounded so great – this Stripped Bare, a collection of new lovely voice floating through the songs and covers, with what I felt outro. It was one of those lucky, was an interesting gang of great magical things. Rhett and I had English and American session slaved over this record for months and this felt like the pay-off. Avalon was a sound that people wanted. Like For Your Pleasure, it was another high spot in my career. All eight Roxy Music albums will be reissued as new half-speed vinyl cuts throughout 2022, with the band’s 50th anniversary tour reaching the UK in October; Lyrics by Bryan Ferry is published by Chatto & Windus on May 5; Ferry’s “Love Letters” EP is out digitally now 74 • UNCUT • JUNE 2022



THE BLACK KEYS KEYS TO THE HIGHWAY 76 • UNCUT • JUNE 2022

After the “great reset” of last year’s juke-joint jamboree Delta Kream, THE BLACK KEYS’ Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney sound newly driven on their upcoming 11th album, Dropout Boogie. Sat around the kitchen table in Nashville’s reassuringly hard-to-find Easy Eye Studios, the world’s biggest small band reminisce to Stephen Deusner about their early lives in Akron – detentions, dead-end jobs, lost fingers – and consider how much (or how little) they’ve changed. As one collaborator notes, “They’re like a couple of kids”… Photo by JIM HERRINGTON JUNE 2022 • UNCUT • 77

THE BLACK KEYS Back in Black: at the Pilgrimage Festival in Franklin, Tennessee, September 2021 P ATRICKCarney,drummerforThe discuss their 11th studio album, the eclectic Ain’t Over” sets the stakes over a fierce groove: Black Keys, is telling the story of how he nearly chopped off his Dropout Boogie, but The Black Keys are easily “You live for the thrill/You die for the dream”. finger. Sitting in the kitchen area of Easy Eye Sound Studio, he distracted. The conversation constantly derails And yet they’re using their stomping beats and grows more and more animated as he recalls working at a health into tales of teenage hijinks, Saturdays spent in tantrum riffs to ponder very adult questions food store called the Mustard Seed back in Akron, Ohio, chopping detention, old jobs, lost fingers and first concerts about life and love, creativity and commerce, the vegetables with a crew of older guys. “I was 16, but I was able to (Auerbach – Whitney Houston; Carney – Dinosaur lure of the road and the security of home. “Burn use the knife because I lied about my age. They thought I was older than I really was. This guy Jr). Having recently entered their forties, they’ve This Damn Thing Down” is a song that promises walks up and shows me this little catalogue of people going at it. What the hell? I kept chopping both been doing a lot of reminiscing lately, audiences they’ll do their damnedest on stage, with the knife and cut my fucking pinky off! I didn’t even realise I’d done it.” especially as they’ve been while “Baby, I’m Coming He pauses for dramatic effect as his bandmate Dan Auerbach laughs heartily. “So the guy grabs getting notices about their “I HAD THE MOST Home” is an anthem that some duct tape and tapes my finger back. Of 25th high school reunions. FUN ON DROPOUT balances the freedom of course he does. He’s a punk rock dude. They fix They don’t plan to attend – BOOGIE OVER ANY touring with the joys of a everything with duct tape.” Doctors were able to and not simply because OTHER RECORD” stable family life: “The reattach the finger, but Carney lost some feeling they’ll be touring – but it’s put streets are paved with broken in it and had to stop playing guitar. That’s when them in a reflective mood. dreams and fantasies we’ve he took up the drums. outgrown”. Does this mean Carney holds up his finger to show off the scar. Neither of them anticipated The Black Keys have grown Dressed in a grey and gold shirt, he might have it, but Dropout Boogie up? Have their fingers finally a bit of white in his beard, but he’s still the class embodies that sense of clown – the guy who developed an outgoing sense of humour to fend off bullies. By contrast, nostalgia. It’s a record that’s PATRICK CARNEY healed? On Dropout Boogie Auerbach is the quiet kid who sits in the back defined by their youthful the duo find inspiration in of the classroom, doesn’t say much, maybe doodles band logos in his notebook. He’s most enthusiasm for rock’n’roll that space between arrested expressive when he’s laughing at Carney’s jokes, and Carney is always cracking jokes. It’s and rhythm & blues, that development and adulthood. a comfortable dynamic that has persisted ever JASON KEMPIN/GETTY IMAGES FOR PILGRIMAGE MUSIC & CULTURAL FESTIVAL since they were students back at Firestone tries to buck all the pressure that comes from “I definitely had the most fun making Dropout High, but they’ve honed it through years of taking on the world as The Black Keys. being one of the world’s biggest small rock bands. Boogie over any other record,” says Carney. “It Technically, they’re here at Easy Eye Sound to Opener “Wild Child” kicks up a ruckus and “It was the easiest to make, not because we’re phoning it in at this point but because we’re able to communicate better with each other.” “Their chemistry is so locked in,” says Reigning Sound’s Greg Cartwright, who co-wrote a handful of songs on the new album. “There’s total joy when they go at it, and it’s inspiring to watch because they’re fans first. They’re like a couple of kids.” ASY Eye Sound is the kind of hideout they might have dreamed about as teenagers. It’s their escape from the hassle and traffic of Nashville, although from the outside it barely looks like a building, more like a concrete bunker or the basement of a house that collapsed long ago. There’s no sign, nothing to suggest that this 78 • UNCUT • JUNE 2022

structure is actually in use, save that different members of the swim team BROTHERS for a vaguely occultic insignia on were trying to show me their dicks. These ON THE SIDE the front door. Inside, among the were the handsome, popular kids that sprawling record collection and everybody loved, so I got sent to the The best recent the array of oddball instruments, vice principal’s office a lot.” Meanwhile, albums produced by The Black Keys have amassed a Auerbach also had his fair share of Dan Auerbach or Patrick museum of odd pop-cultural trouble, but he found clever ways to make Carney outside The memorabilia. There’s a gigantic the long hours in Saturday school papier-mâché cowboy hat from somewhat bearable. “I used to sneak my Black Keys Conway Twitty’s short-lived headphones up my sleeve and listen to The theme park called Twitty City. Howard Stern Show. After that ended, it MICHELLE Above a mint-condition was fucking hell the rest of the day.” BRANCH bicentennial banjo that’s older Akron, the rubber capital of America, than both the band members, informed their early records as The Black HOPELESS a portrait of an impossibly Keys, on which they hammered out a ROMANTIC regal Etta James hangs next to a haphazard post-industrial blues – a portrait of an impossibly angelic (VERVE, 2017) image of comedian Chris Farley. Down a variation of the midcentury With future short, dark hallway is the studio itself. electrified blues made in cities husband Patrick like Chicago and Detroit. The raw, Carney co-producing and members “When we started the band, we both lo-fi riffs and hectic pounding of Tennis backing her, Branch replaced dropped out of school,” says Carney, of 2002’s The Big Come Up and the twangy guitars of her early-2000s taking a sip of a mystery soda he found 2003’s Thickfreakness still evoke solo albums with gossamer synths and in the Easy Eye fridge. (“We did make shuttered factories, busted knotty drumbeats. “I’m just trying to it through high school,” Auerbach assembly lines, rusted machinery figure out how I am”, she declared on clarifies, “but we both dropped out of and empty neighbourhoods. Over “Knock Yourself Out”, yet she sounded college.”) “We were mowing lawns,” time they cleaned up their sound, confidently herself in this synth-heavy continues Carney. “I was working tried out new ideas and brought setting. 8/10 at a restaurant, and Dan was more outsiders into the fold, playing in a bar band. We were including producer Danger Mouse and CALVIN trying to figure out what we should fellow Buckeye Jessica Lea Mayfield on JOHNSON be doing.” They’ve come a long 2008’s Attack & Release. Even as they way since playing classic rock became huge in the 2010s, they never A WONDERFUL covers and chopping vegetables. strayed too far from their blues BEAST (K, 2018) After recording a series of lo-fi beginnings, and they never officially albums in their basement, the expanded beyond their two-man lineup. Acting as a one- Akron duo both moved to Nashville “We don’t put restrictions on ourselves,” man backing in 2010, where they settled in, got says Carney, “and we’re not forcing band, Carney married, had kids. Carney, in fact, ourselves to play as a two-piece. This is played most of the instruments on the has a newborn at home. The city agrees with them, just how we naturally want to play.” former Beat Happening frontman’s although they’re still misfits in town. The local ‘hat fourth album, supplying a steady acts’ are the popular kids, and The Black Keys are the “F OR a while, maybe around the time Turn Blue beat and strict production to bolster weirdos skipping class to smoke in the woods. came out in 2014, things were ridiculously his hero’s vocal eccentricities. On stressful,” reveals Carney. “We’d do these “Wherefore Art Thou” they turned Back at Firestone High – all the schools in Akron two-week-long press trips in Europe, where Shakespeare into something like a were named after tyre companies – neither of them we got the sassiest fucking interviewer of all time in dirty joke or a teenager’s nervous would have been voted Most Likely To Succeed. In book report. 8/10 fact, they both got their share of detentions. Carney got Italy. Gradually we started to realise that you don’t in trouble, of course, for “talking when I shouldn’t YOLA have been talking. My older brother was a little actually have to do all that.” The duo weren’t unusual and got picked on a lot, which meant I got WALK picked on a lot. I used to combat that by insinuating overwhelmed by celebrity – they can both still blend THROUGH FIRE into a crowd – but by all the rigmarole that success (EASY EYE SOUND, 2019) entails: the endless press junkets, the promotional The Bristol vocalist had worked with appearances, the countless hours spent Massive Attack and played in a rock band called Phantom Limb before she not making music. emigrated to the States and signed with Easy Eye Sound. Her full-length Says Auerbach, “There were a couple of debut dwells at the intersection of Southern soul, gospel, folk and ’60s occasions when it felt like we were trying pop, with Dan Auerbach’s production reinforcing her mighty vocal range on to grip too tight to something. It felt like songs like the delicate “Shady Grove” and the lush “Love All Night (Work All we were forcing it a bit. Overthinking.” In Day)”. 9/10 an effort to loosen their grip, they each CERAMIC ANIMAL sought other outlets away from The Black SWEET Keys. Carney started another band called UNKNOWN Sad Planets and did production work for (EASY EYE SOUND, 2022) Tobias Jesso Jr, Ruby Amanfu, Beat Auerbach discovered this Doylestown, Happening frontman Calvin Johnson, Pennsylvania quintet through his teenage daughter’s Spotify playlists. and his wife, the singer-songwriter He brought them down to Nashville, set them up with some legendary Michelle Branch. In fact, her new album songwriters, and helped them create an album that straddles the glittery will be out in the autumn. “I need to do glam of T.Rex, the gutter decadence of The Strokes, and the extravagance these things,” he says. “It’s good for me. of ’70s Todd Rundgren. 8/10 JOSHUA BLACK WILKINS “Things were And when I do create something with JUNE 2022 • UNCUT • 79 ridiculously somebody else and then create something stressful”: with Dan, it reminds me just how easy it is Auerbach to work with him versus other people. But and Carney I don’t do nearly as much as Dan. I’m in 2014, circa Turn Blue

WACoNeorYnatWtoraHecaEtirRnrTaEthenetrgheeSrsootaeuudgvnihdienowMuvitainectgwhheaiinnpUegpKoiAfiaLnyLntomdqueuIwrnaetloli.atuynlddc.oliWlkleeec’lttloiotrntaasvlkeolfwtvoiitnhyyoolunr.eecoofrdosuransdpeCcDiaslists Reading’s Longest Established Independent Record Shop Specialists in buying and selling new and second-hand vinyl records and CDs across all genres. 24 Harris Arcade, Reading, i0n1f1o8@9t5h7es5o0u7n5dmac0h7i7n8e6.u0k7.c8om361 Berkshire RG1 1DN thesoundmachine.uk.com

THE BLACK KEYS Studio two: recording Brothers at Muscle Shoals in 2010 flushing most of my time down the The Black Keys may have DROPOUT Boogie started at this very kitchen table at Easy Eye, with Saints Etta and Chris toilet playing golf.” released “Let’s Rock” in 2019, looking down. It’s the hub of activity in the studio, not just a gathering spot but a In addition to touring and after an interval of five years, but makeshift practice space and writer’s workshop, where The Black Keys would gather with friends recording with a great but short- last year’s Delta Kream felt like and even a few heroes to pass the guitar, toss out ideas, work up songs. They worked without a lived band called The Arcs, their real comeback. A collection plan. “We were just making it up as we went along,” says Auerbach, but that’s exactly what Auerbach founded and runs Easy of Junior Kimbrough covers, it made it easy, fun, quick, low pressure. Eye Sound Records, a wildly came about by happenstance, “That’s the cool thing about music,” continues Carney. “It’s designed to be collaborative. It’s fun diverse label that has released when Auerbach invited slide to do stuff on your own occasionally, but it’s easier and more fun to do stuff with other people. albums by Nashville-via- guitarist Kenny Brown and bassist That happens a lot in this town, but some people get precious about it. All it really takes to be a Bristol soul singer Yola, Eric Deaton to Easy Eye to work on good collaborator is the ability to recognise when an idea is good. That’s it. That’s all it takes.” bluesman Robert Finley, an album by Robert Finley. They’re Greg Cartwright found the process just as Denver heavy rock trio The Mississippi hill country royalty, Brown rejuvenating. After contributing to Easy Eye records by Marcus King and Shannon & The Velveteers, even the late having played with Kimbrough and Clams, he was invited to help The Black Keys devise lyrics for several new songs, including the swamp-boogie legend Tony Deaton with RL Burnside. “One day first single “Wild Child” and the angry “For The Love Of Money”. “It was very casual,” he says. Joe White. He produces nearly they just called me up and asked if I “We just sat around and threw ideas out, tried some melodies, and played with some everything on the label, wanted to jam,” says Carney. “We instrumental tracks Pat had been creating. Most people expect the vocalist to be the real lyricist, co-writes frequently, and has ended up knocking that record out in a but Pat was in there offering up lines. He has definite ideas about melodies and chords.” every old-school session couple of days. Then we went Cartwright found the studio’s clubhouse player in Nashville in his down to Benton, Mississippi, atmosphere especially conducive to collaboration. “A big inspiration for Dan and his studio is Muscle Rolodex. It would be a full- and played a show with them Shoals Sound and American Sound Studio in Memphis – those famous studios where you time job for anyone, and Auerbach fights at Jimmy ‘Duck’ Holmes’ juke would have in-house songwriters and in-house musicians. You have everything set up so you can to balance it with The Black Keys, joint, the Blue Front Café.” cut a song at the drop of a hat. As soon as we reluctant to relegate either to side-hustle “It’s such a beautiful spot,” status. “I like being able to do different says Auerbach. “Straight out JOHN PEETS; ALYSSE GAFKJEN; JORDI VIDAL/REDFERNS VIA GETTY IMAGES variations,” he says. “We can play as a of a movie. Benton is a sleepy two-piece. We can play with our Ohio (From top) Early little town with a lot of gang. We can play with our Mississippi James, Sierra history. It’s famous for a real friends. And it’s all us. It keeps things Ferrell and Greg minor-key type of blues, like moving forward all the time.” Cartwright Skip James. Spooky-sounding “Dan is really good at finding stuff. And that’s the oldest- amazing people and bringing them running juke joint in the together to do cool stuff,” says Sierra Ferrell, a country. Jimmy’s parents opened it in the ’50s, bluegrass musician who co-wrote songs with and they left it to him. All of that stuff played into Auerbach for an upcoming Early James record the new record, because our approach to it was and also sings on Dropout Boogie. “He brings very low pressure. We were just trying to have fun them all to Easy Eye, which is just an adorable with it, like we did with Delta Kream. That was place. That place always makes me think he’s kind of a demo for Dropout Boogie.” a spy. It’s so hard to find. It’s like it’s hidden “The Great Reset, we call it,” says Carney. “It’s somewhere in Nashville and only appears at like before the big game, you have to stretch out. certain times.” We got stretched out good on that record.” JUNE 2022 • UNCUT • 81

THE BLACK KEYS JIM HERRINGTON; BLAIN CLAUSEN “Dan tells me, fire it up”: “Whereverthey So I plug in, Dan plugs in, Pat grabs his sticks and takes Billy Gibbons (inset) sellhotdogs, his place at the skins, and off we go. We’re knocking visits The Black Keys’ thoseare around for a bit, then Dan gives me a wink and says, studio, borrows Hound ourpeople” ‘Hey, this sounds pretty good. Let’s keep going.’” After Dog Taylor’s old guitar, Gibbons left, The Black Keys wrangled that 40 minutes and an epic jam ensues The story behind of jamming into a tune called “Didn’t I Love You”, which The Black Keys’ new makes a fitting climax and closer for Dropout Boogie. finished a song, they’d walk down the hall and cut it. They seem to live trash-talk classic WE’RE nearing the end of our chat and for that moment of inspiration.” Auerbach is growing fidgety, restless, as THEBlackKeyshavealwaysbeen though he needs a guitar in his hands. “We They also took advantage of the sportsfans,pepperingsongslike had this idea for a video that references a lot wild array of instruments they’ve “Howlin’ForYou”withsporting of the insane shit from our high school,” he says. “We collected throughout their career, metaphorswhilerootingforthe got to thinking about those early ZZ Top videos, where many of which are stored at Easy Eye. Cleveland Guardians baseball the band isn’t part of the action. They’re in the “It’s All Over”, another Cartwright teamandtheClevelandBrowns background. Those guys were already in their forties, co-write, opens with a toy organ NFLteam.Inadditiontotheirradio so that was the only way they could be in the video. So called an Optigan, which Auerbach hits,they’vealsoscoredafewsongs I thought, ‘I’ll be the janitor and Pat’ll be the lunch says gives the song “a deep groove, man.” They were thathavebecomebetween-inning guy.’ It was fun, so we thought, ‘What if we played both fascinated with the strange instrument, standards,inparticular“LonelyBoy.” those same characters on the album cover?’” especially Carney: “That song started around a little “Wherevertheysellhotdogs,”says loop from that toy organ. Dan had a chorus, and Greg DanAuerbach,“thoseareourpeople. He pulls up the image of Dropout Boogie on his phone, helped with the verses. It was one of first songs we did ”Inthatregard,“YourTeamIsLooking and sure enough, they both grace the cover in full – a hard one to cut – but we had to put it aside when we Good”isasurefirestadiumhit,a custodial regalia. It’s a sly in-joke between them, funny got inspired by some other stuff that we’d started simpletrash-talkchantsolderedto enough to fans who appreciate the duo’s deadpan sense playing around with.” arowdybluesjam.Itwasthelast of humour but especially meaningful to these two old One of those distractions was a visit by one of their songtheyrecordedforDropout friends themselves. They’re still in it for a good time, heroes, Billy Gibbons. Both Auerbach and Carney are Boogie,animpromptuadditionthat but they also realise they’ve reached a point in their huge ZZ Top fans, even citing the band as the featuresbackingvocalsbySierra lives and careers where they can truly appreciate the inspiration for their “Wild Child” video, so when FerrellandEarlyJames. freedom that The Black Keys affords them. Gibbons was in Nashville last year, they invited him to Easy Eye. It turned out he was a long-time fan of theirs, Auerbach explains the Auerbach poses a question to his partner in crime ever since David Lynch turned him on to their early unusual origins of the song. “I got across the kitchen table: what does Carney think albums. “I was enamoured with the success of such an approached by this guy named Dr they’d be doing if The Black Keys had fizzled? Where unpredictable outing – just drums and guitars,” says David Evans, who recorded a bunch would they be right now? The drummer considers the Gibbons. “It’s been done forever, but it hadn’t really of musicians in the late ’60s and into question as he rips open a bag of peanuts. “If the band been done the way they do it. We met a while back, and the ’70s and ’80s. He specialised in hadn’t worked out… maybe we’d be selling NFTs? We we’ve maintained a friendship over the years, based regional recordings from the South, could have been crypto billionaires!” Auerbach on our love of old guitars and classic cars.” and his collection was like his very chuckles at the thought, but jokes aside, the answer own Library of Congress. He asked seems clear: he would be the janitor, Carney would be That visit turned into an me if I was interested in hearing the lunch guy, and they’d definitely be jamming epic jam session after some tapes, and his assistant sent together in the basement. me a couple of recordings, just as Gibbons spotted examples. There were some blues Dropout Boogie is released by Easy Eye Sound/ an especially songs, some hill country songs, some Nonesuch on May 13 significant guitar fife-and-drums songs. Some really among Auerbach’s amazing stuff. And there was this collection of great recording from a high school in instruments. “Dan Senatobia, Mississippi, where these tells me it’s Hound girls were singing this football chant: Dog Taylor’s guitar! I ‘Hey, hey over there/Your team is ask if I can play it and looking good/But not as good as he says, ‘Fire it up.’ ours!’ I was like, ‘Pat! We have to record this!’”

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PartyFears Two by The Associates After a night out drinking, two friends conjure up a magical piano riff. But the time’s not right, so for three years it stays “in our back pocket”… IT remains one of the great Top Of Based on a glistening piano line written KEY PLAYERS “Party Fears Two” was recorded at the The Pops appearances. On February start of the wild sessions for Sulk, The 25, 1982, The Associates made their before The Associates even existed, “Party Alan Rankine: Associates’ third album, produced by Mike first serious assault on the national Co-writer, Hedges, who had worked with the band consciousness, performing the Fears Two” evolved into the first song guitarist, since their 1980 debut, The Affectionate transgressive pop of “Party Fears Two” instrumentalist Punch. Its regal progress was the peak to a teatime audience. The spectacle of recorded for the band’s classic third album, of their brief reign of magnificence. Billy Mackenzie – resplendent in belted Michael Dempsey: Rankine left soon afterwards, frustrated SHEILA ROCK/SHUTTERSTOCK; raincoat and beret as he negotiates Sulk, becoming their sole Top 10 hit and Bass player by Mackenzie’s inability to play the promo DAVID CORIO/REDFERNS the thrilling peaks and plains of the game. “None of the then requirements to determinedly Delphic lyric – still excites signature song. Its blend of pop smarts, Mike Hedges: consolidate success were in any way part four decades later. Producer of Billy’s nature,” says bassist Michael elegantly unexpected hooks, swooping Dempsey. “The idea of him marking his diary with a year of repeated activity spent vocals and disquieting lyrics render it a waking, travelling, sound checking and performing was, to all who knew him, glorious puzzle defying easy explanation. never remotely likely to be realised.” A deceptively unguarded examination Though Rankine and Mackenzie explored the possibility of an Associates of outsiderdom, Mackenzie claimed it reunion not long before Mackenzie took his own life in 1997, “Party Fears Two” was inspired by two girls trying to crash stands as the ultimate testament to their partnership. In a catalogue scattered with a party his younger gems, it’s revered as the brightest diamond. “I’m good with that,” says Rankine. “Very brother was attending happy indeed.” GRAEMETHOMSON “We never by smashing in ALANRANKINE: It was either late 1977 or fitted”: Billy the windows with early ’78. Bill used to come down to my Mackenzie their stilettos. Alan parents’ house in Linlithgow. We’d go out and Alan Rankine, Mackenzie’s on Saturday night and get pissed, then Rankine, 1983 partner in The all-day Sunday we’d sit in the front room. There was a rolltop desk, a sofa and a Associates and the piano. That’s where, out of the blue, that piano riff came out. As soon as we did it, song’s co-writer, we said, “That’s good, but it can’t be for now. It’s too poppy.” We didn’t even attach divines a deeper a song to it until we thought it was getting to be about the right time for the culture meaning. “I think it’s and climate. MICHAELDEMPSEY: “Party Fears Two” more nebulous than was a song they’d written many years before I joined – or at least the piano hook a specific event,” says Rankine. “It might have been based on that, but Bill and I were always just fucking outsiders. We never fitted. We felt like imposters. We felt like we’d got in with forged papers. Even when we did get into parties, we were bored shitless, but we had to prove to ourselves that we could get inside. For me it’s about feeling alienated, like you don’t belong and feeling also that other people seem to be doing it with ease.” 84 • UNCUT • JUNE 2022

and the general structure. It was “Billy was a genius, but Alan forgotten, we all broke tea mugs obvious from the start that Alan Rankine was one of the fastest, whilst recording, in an attempt and Billy had an almost telepathic most complete musicians I ever to capture and treat the sound of level of communication, honed impact on the studio floor. over shared musical tastes and worked with” MIKEHEDGES RANKINE: Early in 1981 we had prejudices. This led to a very quick ‘dead’ studio time, the graveyard way of working. Alan could translate HEDGES: I remember the riff being other words: “I won’t believe in you”. shift, at Morgan Studios in in a moment Billy’s ideas. played and thinking, ‘Wow, that’s It’s hard to tell exactly who that was Willesden, from 9pm on Sunday MIKEHEDGES: They were crazy,  amazing.’ It was a riff with an aimed at, but many of his lyrics were night to 9am Monday morning, both of them! Billy particularly was unresolved track, but it sounded a form of public diary. I can hear him HEDGES: We used to sneak into a law unto himself. He was extreme like a hit even then. It would be deliberately trying to steer the lyrics Morgan. I’d be working on something at all times, not just in the studio or impossible to hear that and go, away from what might have been during the day and then they would on stage. They worked together so ‘Hmm… nah!’ Billy didn’t have the the original sentiment: loss of faith, come in and work all night. It was well. The Associates was equally same lyric at the time, or the same in particular loss of faith in people. quite common to book a studio, do as much Alan as Billy. Billy was an [melody] line. There’s disillusionment, a loss of a song, and then sell the song to a absolute genius, but Alan Rankine RANKINE: Bill had a bit of a problem innocence, a general fragility and record company in order to pay for was one of the fastest, most complete with the words to the chorus. It used uncertainty woven in there which is the studio! We did that several times. and inventive musicians I ever to be called “I Never Will”. You very true to who he was: outwardly RANKINE: One night we demoed worked with. could tell he wasn’t happy “Party Fears Two” and “Club DEMPSEY: I was hugely impressed for it as a basis for a supremely confident, Country”. We knew immediately by both Billy’s singing and what lyric for the chorus. inwardly much less so. that’s what was going to get us they were doing. Deceptively simple DEMPSEY: HEDGES: It’s a signed. WEA picked up on it songs in a complex setting, both Billy was very lonely lyric, immediately and gave us everything familiar and highly original. uncertain definitely. we wanted. RANKINE: We put “Party Fears Two” about the lyric. DEMPSEY: The HEDGES: They spent a lot of their in our back pocket for almost three The original cup smashing advance on a big four-seater years. We moved to a flat on Carlton demo had reference was Mercedes soft top. Advance gone! Hill in St John’s Wood on September the line “I’ll a recording They were driving around in limos. 1, 1980. It was a nice flat, we’d pre- do, what the experiment They certainly lived the lifestyle. paid it for six months, but we had atheists do” – in in which, for RANKINE:Very quickly we were in fuck all money. Absolutely nothing reasons now Playground studios recording Sulk. to eat. We were playing around with HEDGES: With a partner who “Party Fears Two” there. I knew the financed it we built Playground chorus had to go somewhere else. studios and I chose every piece JUNE 2022 • UNCUT • 85

“Could we be a Union recording session pretending studio band?”: to recreate the song, an unfeasibly the touring- early start at Wood Lane and the averse Billy institutional, slightly seedy, worn Mackenzie; world of Television Centre. (right) Sulk RANKINE: It was always a big deal, Top Of The Pops. I was wearing a fencing “There was a sensitivity underwater, but you couldn’t hit it! suit with samurai warrior hair and and fragility to Billy that he RANKINE: They were wild sessions. playing a banjo – and there is nothing When Bill and I were in the studio, you of a banjo on “Party Fears Two”! There kept largely concealed” exhausted yourself until there was was no planning apart from, a few nothing else bearing fruit in your mind. weeks previously, we’d been on that MICHAEL DEMPSEY HEDGES: We had four or five weeks in horrendous BA Robertson show, Friday total to get everything done, so we worked Night, Saturday Morning. We played of equipment in there. The Harrison FACT FILE extremely long hours. There was a little “Party Fears Two” and “Skipping”. Bill console was one that recorded ABBA bit of a battle going on at times between is dressed as a fucking pilot, and he’s and Michael Jackson; one of the best Written by: Billy Billy and Alan, which helped. You’re more chewing gum the whole way through it. consoles every made. We had the latest Mackenzie and determined not to fuck up if it’s slightly That’s the only thing I said to him: “Bill, Studer multi-tracks, a great mic collection, Alan Rankine edgy, which it could be, personality wise. don’t be chewing gum this time.” everything was bespoke and sounded Produced by: I got on fantastically well with Billy, but I DEMPSEY: Billy was sometimes reluctant to amazing. Sulk was one of the first things Mike Hedges was only with him 12 hours a day. To have go on, finding a reason not to. Famously, an done in that studio and you can definitely Released: January Billy 24 hours a day, as Alan did, must ill-advised haircut heralded the arrival of hear the difference. 28, 1982 have been quite tiring at times. the beret. There was at times conflict with RANKINE: “Party Fears Two” would have Recorded at: RANKINE: I played bass on “Party Fears disembodied authority. Along with others, been the first song we did for the album, Playground Two”. I played everything on it! we got a reputation for being “difficult”. and “Club Country” the second one. We Studios, London HEDGES: Michael wasn’t in the studio that RANKINE: We burnt out pretty fast. We knew that both these would be hits. Highest chart often, and Alan was so quick, it was easier fizzed for about six months, and then it HEDGES: The riff we tried on several position: UK 9; US – for him just to do it. He was instinctive. He’d was the whole thing of, right, we’ve got to things. We had Synclaviers, different Personnel: put down the guide bassline and that would make another album and at the same time synths and pianos, but the final sound Billy Mackenzie be it. He was a maestro at pretty much do a world tour. Bill couldn’t stand the was a Yamaha grand. I had a Roland JC-120 (vocals), Alan everything. One or two takes, no messing thought of this, he just couldn’t do it. He Chorus amp, I used a SM58 Shure mic flat Rankine (guitar, about. It was very layered, that record. did ask, “Could we be a studio band?” But out on the amp and we ended up with that keyboards, bass, Some songs we used a drum machine as a no, we had to play live. We weren’t Steely very compressed sound. otherinstruments), basic click track. The live drums were put Dan, for God’s sake. I knew if we didn’t DEMPSEY: Mike had a willingness to John Murphy on last, almost as an afterthought. It was play live, none of this would work. experiment with a solid old-school (drums) back to front. I remember Alan playing HEDGES: Billy would have loved to have engineering background that made the snares himself, often. stayed in the studio. It was his happy DPA PICTURE ALLIANCE/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO experimentation sonically viable. He was RANKINE: At the end of the song Bill starts place. I know Alan wanted to start touring, very responsive to Billy’s urging to keep doing all these vocal ad libs. John Foxx and that was a problem between them. experimenting, to make it sound different. from Ultravox was there, and one of the DEMPSEY: With hindsight, it’s clear Billy HEDGES: They were always wanting to phrases Bill does, the first five notes, John was much more comfortable making push the sounds. That was paradise for said, “That sounds like a Beatles song.” I records than he was singing nightly to me, having an artist saying, “More, can’t remember which song it was! an audience. Beneath the supremely more, more!” rather than, “What the HEDGES: For the wail at the end, we did confident veneer of assured certainty, fuck are you doing?” We put water in the a few tracks to get it right, chose the main there was a sensitivity and fragility to drums. If you have a bell, or anything that one, and then I sent all the others to a tape him that he kept largely concealed and rings, if you drop it into water and put a delay and echo plate. We didn’t have a disguised with a belligerent refusal to do mic inside and outside, the pitch change massive toolbox of sounds, so you had to what was expected. is just amazing. We even tried drums be very inventive with it. HEDGES: “Party Fears Two” is such a great RANKINE: When “Party Fears Two” was song. I’m not sure that the very bright released everything just fell into place. I sound has stood the test of time, but the don’t know if any bribery went on, but I was song would have always lasted, no matter told we were selling 22,000 singles a day. how it was recorded. DEMPSEY: Top Of The Pops was, DEMPSEY: It was and still is a very strange inevitably, a disappointment. That song in many ways air of frenzied glamour you hoped for RANKINE: It outplays and outsells the next was distilled into a tedious Musician’s Associates track, “Club Country”, by a ratio of seven to one. It’s always those two at the top. Very, very fortuitous, that little piano riff! The 40th anniversary Deluxe Edition of Sulk is released by BMG on May 13 TIME LINE 1976: Billy Mackenzie for “Party Fears Two”. released. Michael May14,1982: The third 1993: Rankine and and Alan Rankine meet in June 1979: The Associates Dempsey and John Associates album, Sulk, Mackenzie work on new Edinburgh. They form put out an unauthorised Murphy join the band. released material but it doesn’t Mental Torture in 1978 cover of David Bowie’s 1981: The Associates sign Late1982: Rankine leaves lead to a full Associates before changing to “Boys Keep Swinging” as to WEA the band. Mackenzie reunion The Associates their debut single January28,1982: “Party continues to write and January 22, 1997: Late 1977/early 1978: August1,1980: The Fears Two” released. It record as The Associates Mackenzie commits They write the piano hook Affectionate Punch later peaks at No 9 until 1990 suicide 86 • UNCUT • JUNE 2022

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MILES DAVIS REBIRTH TOHFECOOL During the early ’70s, MILES DAVIS once again pointed the way ahead. Fired up by Hendrix, Sly Stone, James Brown and the righteous spirit of the decade, Miles blew minds and found acclaim among a whole new audience. Fifty years after the pioneering On The Corner, and with eyewitness testimony from his bandmates, Tom Pinnock reveals the raw power of ‘Electric Miles’, as the Dark Magus turned on, tuned in and freaked out. “Man, he had all of the arrows under his belt…” Photo: COURTESY OF SONY MUSIC ARCHIVES. Photographer: BOB CATO D URING1973,theRainbow–apalatialformer including Jimmy Cobb and Paul Chambers – finely turned out in cinema in London’s Finsbury Park – was immaculate Italian suits. But in 1973, Davis was the ringmaster of arguably the home of rock in Britain. In a psychedelic funk troupe – as heavy, amplified and out-there as October, you could take in a Lou Reed the most riotous rock group. The suits were gone, replaced by residency, with the New Yorker resplendent tasselled leather jackets, flares, high-heeled boots, sequinned in his Rock’n’Roll Animal phase. The vests, scarves and huge, insectoid sunglasses. following month, Pink Floyd, fresh from the success of The Dark Side Of The Moon, played “People thought Miles was turning his back to the audience,” a tribute concert for the recently injured Robert Wyatt. A week says Davis’s bassist, Michael Henderson. “But that was so he could later, Roxy Music’s Stranded tour reached the capital, introducing watch his own band – so he could stare through those glasses at dazzled audiences to a post-Eno future. Just a few days after, on us. Being in that band, it was like you were with some bizarre November 19, Miles Davis returned to the Rainbow for the third basketball team. Music can be anything. We didn’t rehearse… we’d and final time that year. Ostensibly a jazz trumpeter, Davis was have some heads [melody lines] we would play, and we’d improvise now as flamboyant as Roxy, as cutting and charismatic as Reed the rest of it. It was a well-oiled machine. Miles enjoyed it.” and as exploratory as the Floyd. In 1972, Davis released On The Corner – the crowning glory of “He travelled the world like a rock star,” says Colin Hodgkinson, what became known as the ‘Electric Miles’ era. As it transpired, whose band Back Door had supported Davis at the Rainbow this was the bravest, most difficult period of his career, where he during an earlier appearance on July 10 that year. “The Rainbow mixed jazz with rock, funk, the avant-garde and world music, was a proper rock venue, a great venue with good sound. He had transcending his roots in acoustic jazz, all the while cultivating the big sunglasses and all that – and a red trumpet, I think. Oh his darkest, most mysterious persona. yeah, that was very unusual.” “With Miles, there was always a little tension in the air,” Davis had been at the forefront of jazz for decades; now nearing explains Liebman. “You know, creative tension. You were free 50, he was once again in the middle of something new. “There was to talk, it’s just no-one did! He was a partial maniac – a double some great, great shit,” recalls Dave Liebman, on saxophone that Gemini, whatever it is – but when it came to music, it was straight night in July. “When he picked up the trumpet to play, the focus ahead. Miles was, if anything, very spontaneous, and he did it was incredible. It was like a laser beam from another planet.” mostly from the trumpet. He was a man of few words, so it could be a challenge to decipher what he wanted from you.” When Davis had first appeared at the Rainbow on October 1, 1960, during his debut British tour, he was basking in the glow of During this electric era, ranging from the late ’60s to his the previous year’s Kind Of Blue, leading a now-legendary band – temporary retirement in 1975, Davis endured shootings, arrests, car accidents, drug issues and health problems, inspired 88 • UNCUT • JUNE 2022

“He was a man of few words”: Miles Davis at home, 1968 JUNE 2022 • UNCUT • 89

MILES DAVIS Recording with Gil Evans at 30th Street Studios, NYC, August 1962 his group in the ’50s and ’60s, on their way to leaving their own distinct mark on music. Stories of his terrible temper aside, by the late ’60s Miles was generally seen as the embodiment of sophistication, restraint and class; it’s an aesthetic that leaves his work still feeling distinctly modern today. When he began experimenting with electric instruments, incorporating the vibrant, messy sounds and imagery of the counterculture and the streets of black New York, alongside the transcendent Sorcerer: Davis sounds of India and Africa, it felt like a bold step – at the Newport Jazz Festival, even by the standards of Miles’ July 2, 1967 unstoppable evolutions. It began sidemen like John McLaughlin, Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea to new heights and paved the In that sense, perhaps ‘Electric “MILES slowly at first – with an electric way for a whole world of alternative music from Miles’ wasn’t such a guitar from guest George Talking Heads and Brian Eno to Public Image departure after all. Limited and Radiohead. While some in rock WAS Benson on 1968’s merely flirted with gloomy, occult imagery, Davis Ever since he’d moved to SEARCHING “Paraphernalia”, then lived up to his nickname: the Prince Of Darkness. New York from Illinois, aged Herbie Hancock and Chick 18, Miles had searched for “Miles was searching for his destiny,” says new sounds, for a way to FOR HIS Corea’s Rhodes and RMI saxophonist Azar Lawrence, who played with push and provoke. Kicking a DESTINY” electric pianos filleted their Davis in 1974. “Think how prolific this individual heroin habit, he left behind his way through some of the was, from where he came from, bebop, and then DAVID REDFERN/REDFERNS/GETTY IMAGES; MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES/GETTY IMAGES many more eras. Not only did he go through AZAR LAWRENCE following year’s Filles De them and live them, he was at the forefront of Kilimanjaro. “I remember the changes.” early bebop work and pioneered hearing a recording of Miles on A RED trumpet. Sunglasses. A new set of clothes. As far as it went, it was a neat cool jazz with 1957’s Birth Of The Cool, French radio, around 1967,” says metaphor for Miles Davis’s career to that point, in which he had explored bold new before Kind Of Blue perfected modal jazz McLaughlin. “I could hear that there were approaches, trying them on for size, then moving to the next. Like Dylan, like Bowie, Miles two years later, its riffs taking the place of two movements going on by this time [in his contained multitudes. The dapper apprentice on Charlie Parker’s bandstand during the 1940s. The complex chord sequences. A landmark in music music] – his band were starting to get this mystical mood sorcerer behind 1959’s Kind Of Blue. The adventurer breaking with a proven history, it is still the best-selling jazz album of all influence from free jazz, where there were no musical path to try and accommodate the ideas – musical, social, spiritual – that were in his head. time. Throughout this period, Miles collaborated more barriers, and you created your own with Gil Evans on orchestral works – notably structure as you go along. Then there was 1960’s rich, cinematic Sketches Of Spain – Miles, who always played the blues, and always performed versions of classical and operatic had the most impeccable swing.” pieces, and then moved into harder, faster and Miles’ drive towards rhythm soon became all- wilder jazz during the mid-’60s. encompassing, as he looked for new ways to push Part of Miles’ genius was his ability to bring his sound forward. As recording ended on Filles…, together the right combination of collaborators he married model, singer and songwriter Betty and recognise potential in younger players: John Mabry, immortalised by the album’s 16-minute Coltrane, Ron Carter, Cannonball Adderley, Bill closer “Mademoiselle Mabry” and on the record’s Evans, Keith Jarrett, Herbie Hancock, John cover. Almost 20 years younger than her husband, McLaughlin and many more all passed through she introduced him to the counterculture, funk, 90 • UNCUT • JUNE 2022

“IWAS HOOKED” Jack Cooper of Modern Nature on the genius of In A Silent Way THIS is the record that’s influenced me most in “Damn!”: Jimi Hendrix recent years. It’s perhaps at Monterey, June 18, 1967; (below) Miles’ my favourite of all time. second wife Betty Davis in 1969 I heard Bitches Brew in February 18, 1969, became a my twenties and found it turning point for the bandleader. This time, he overwhelming, so a friend entered the studio with almost no material, enlisting recommended In A Silent three keyboardists – Corea, rock and psychedelia, and Hancock and Joe Zawinul – Way. I was hooked. The the music of Jimi Hendrix alongside McLaughlin, in particular. whose soloing, on an music that orbited around amplified, distorted Gibson “She was a major Hummingbird acoustic, Davis at this time – the live recordings of his influence on Miles,” opens the record. So ad hoc and free were acknowledges Lenny the sessions, McLaughlin was only told 1969 ‘Lost Quintet’, Chick Corea’s Circle and White, who later played about them the day before and Zawinul drums with Davis. “She on the morning of recording itself. Dave Holland’s involvement in the Spontaneous JAMES SHARP; MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES/GETTY IMAGES; JACK ROBINSON/HULTON ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES had her own thing and “I went through this baptism of fire I think some of that rubbed with In A Silent Way,” recalls Music Ensemble – is all an inspiration, but In A off on Miles. I mean, she McLaughlin. “Miles took me under his was the one that named Bitches Brew.” wing, so I got to know him very well, Silent Way is a record I’m still getting to grips which was one of the greatest things At the same time, Davis began to that ever happened to me, musically with, despite hundreds of listens. collaborate with Yorkshire-born jazz, and personally. He’s definitely the R&B and rock guitarist McLaughlin, godfather of fusion, if anybody is – By the time Miles made In A Silent Way, he had freshly arrived in New York to play with even [1957’s] Miles Ahead mixed in a the trumpeter’s drummer Tony Williams Hispanic influence.” arguably changed the course of jazz three times in a new ensemble. The recordings were ably stitched together by Davis’s producer at already and those innovations would have been “I was in Miles’ house, and he Columbia, Teo Macero, who was asking me about Jimi,” says impossible without his seemingly supernatural McLaughlin. “I said, ‘Yeah, I met created two side-long Jimi. I mean, what a guitar player.’ pieces with repeated talent of bending musicians to his vision: John Miles had never seen him play, he’d opening and closing only heard him on the radio. He had sections. There were few chord McLaughlin, for instance, never sounded better a copy of The Village Voice, I looked changes, while Tony Williams kept in it and one of the arts cinemas time with a steady pulse and little of or played like this again. Tony Williams, maybe downtown was playing the The the swing still expected in jazz. In Monterey Pop movie. So I said, A Silent Way was a revelation, a the musician who Miles loved the most, was ‘Miles, I’m going to take great step forward: most jazz you to the movies, we’re critics were unsure, while rock a mesmerising force of nature, but was his going to see Monterey writers such as Lester Bangs Pop and you’ll see Jimi.’ So we get revelled in its nocturnal, floating drumming ever as profound as the relentless down there, got some popcorn and beauty. “The music on there we’re sitting there – Jimi comes on came out beautiful and hi-hats of “Peaceful”? Joe Zawinul argued that and by the time we get to the end of Jimi's performance, Miles is just the compositions he contributed to …Silent Way saying, ‘Damn! Damn!’ Jimi blew him away.” and Bitches Brew had been oversimplified, but Although Hendrix’s influence you only need to listen to his own versions to wouldn’t manifest itself in Miles’ music just yet, his next album, realise Davis’s genius as an arranger. In A Silent Way, recorded on Part of my fascination with the record is how, though the music is beautiful, engaging, intricate and innovative, not a note detracts from the overall feel. That mood was first apparent on Birth Of The Cool and refined on Kind Of Blue, but here he stripped everything away; a definitive statement that cleared the decks for the maximalist experiments of Bitches Brew. By the time Miles got to Carnegie Hall in 1974 and made the live recordings for Dark Magus, he’d come full circle again. The music was incredibly dense, singular and heavy, but stepping back and seeing the overall picture, it was as if he’d arrived back at the essence of his finest moments. He’d reached the end of the universe, opened the curtains and realised he was back Tony where he began. WIlliams, 1969

Miles men: keys “HE WAS players Herbie ALWAYS Hancock, Joe PUNCHING, Zawinul (top) and ALWAYS Chick Corea ; (far JABBING” right) guitarist John McLaughlin HARVEY BROOKS fresh,” wrote Davis in his 1989 autobiography, L ENNY White vividly and I want you to be salt.’ He Miles. “I wanted to make the sound more like remembers the gave me a directive of what rock. In rehearsals we had played it like Joe build-up to sessions he wanted it to sound like [Zawinul] had written it, but it wasn’t working for for Bitches Brew, Miles’ next rather than what he wanted me because all the chords were cluttering it up… album. It was, after all, his me to play.” When we recorded I just threw out the chord first recording job. “Miles The sound emerging from sheets and told everyone to play just the melody, called my house and spoke to the studio was rooted in funk just to play off that.” my mum with his raspy voice,” and R&B but twisted into new A few months later, in May 1969, Davis entered the drummer says. “My mum says, shapes via dissonant electric Columbia’s 52nd Street studios to record a funk ‘Who is this? Who is this? You better pianos, McLaughlin’s ecstatic lead session for his wife Betty, then starting out on speak up or I’m gonna hang up!’ Finally she guitar and massed percussion. Under the her own solo career. The lineup included Hendrix gave the phone to me, and he asked me to come stewardship of Miles and Macero, the whole thing drummer Mitch Mitchell and sometime Dylan over to his house to do a rehearsal. Miles had me was skilfully glued together into six pieces; the bassist Harvey Brooks. This was Miles’ first just bring a cymbal and a snare drum. Chick opening “Pharaoh’s Dance” including 19 different proper dalliance with heavy funk, and he Corea, Dave Holland, Jack DeJohnette and Wayne edits alone. Davis’s hissed instructions – “Keep it approached the sessions with his usual Shorter were there. All we did was practise the tight!” “John” – can even be heard on the finished bullish attitude. introduction to ‘Bitches Brew’. Then he said, ‘Be record. “Miles said to me, ‘Look, man. I’ve played “It was a great band,” says Brooks. “After the at Columbia tomorrow, 10 o’clock.” all the standards, I’ve played them inside out. I’ve sessions, I said, ‘Hi Miles, nice to meet you.’ And Harvey Brooks remembers a similarly loose got nothing left to say about that,’” says Brooks. he goes, [aggressively] ‘Fat white motherfucker.’ rehearsal at Davis’s house, which was soon “What really made the music great was the I kind of got used to it, it took me a while, but derailed when the bandleader began to screen combination of Miles and Teo. Teo was a brilliant eventually I felt comfortable telling him to go some of his favourite boxing films instead. Fired man and the editing that they did was really what fuck himself. But he was always punching, up with enthusiasm for the pioneering tape-edit made the record work. You had the best players always jabbing.” approach on In A Silent Way and the distortion around, just reacting, but it needed guidance. Teo Perhaps, Miles intuited, and groove-based repetition of rock and Miles would come in and overdub some stuff. there was a way in which and funk, Miles entered Columbia’s They made it happen. It was an earth-shattering he could combine the Studio B on August 19 – the day after concept to the music world at the time.” sophistication of In A Silent Hendrix’s riveting performance at “We’d move and he’d set up the groove and Way and the beats, funk Woodstock – with a large cast of sculpt it, basically by having us play less,” says and attitude of his wife’s musicians ready to improvise. McLaughlin. “That’s Miles – and it was brilliant. work with his own “It was a huge studio divided by a He had a way of getting results by asking us very JACK ROBINSON/HULTON ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES; GETTY IMAGES tempestuous nature. To thick green curtain,” says Brooks. “I oblique requests. The classic one for me was, those who have followed Harvey mean, they must have used a million ‘Play like you don’t know how to play the guitar.’” him, Miles’ work is about Brooks mics. Miles would just point, or A few months later, young drummer Billy maintaining a hunger and Lenny motion us to stop, and that was it. He for creative expression, White Cobham was enlisted for more sessions, which was conducting these produced outtake “Feio”. He vividly recalls wherever it may lead. human instruments. pushing open the heavy door of Studio B, to be That, as Miles put it in his Everything was confronted by a manic scene far from the ‘cool’ autobiography, “music recorded, everything.” of Miles’ image. “As I opened the door, I heard a has no boundaries, no “It was like an on-the- cacophony of sounds. I looked to my right and the limits to where it can grow and go, no spot composition,” adds first person I see on keyboards is Chick Corea, restrictions on its creativity”. White. “He gave the playing Fender Rhodes with a sine-wave “He didn’t really know what he keyboard players tonal generator coming out of the top. It’s wired up with wanted,” muses McLaughlin. “But he centres and that was it. all these devices. Right next to him, Keith Jarrett really knew what he didn’t want – and He said to me, ‘Think of is beating an RMI electric piano with a shoe!” that was what he’d done before.” this as a big pot of stew This was a new type of music, further out even 92 • UNCUT • JUNE 2022

MILES DAVIS than the free jazz pioneered by Ornette playing motherfucker just Davis after and arrested him instead. Coleman, John Coltrane and Albert because he had one or two being beaten “That was just a bunch of Ayler. Rather than freedom, though, sorry-ass records out. So I up by police Miles was searching for restrictions and would come late and he in New York, bullshit they were trying to for rhythm. Everything was tethered would have to go on first, August 1959 hang on me,” he wrote in 1989. with a strict pulse, like an astronaut and then when we got “They just didn’t like it that a floating free on an oxygen line. Miles’ there, we just smoked the black guy was in this quest chimed perfectly with the times: motherfucking place and expensive foreign car with a rock and jazz had never been closer, everybody dug it.” real beautiful woman… I was whether on the Grateful Dead’s the one who called them; if I mercurial improvisations or the Bitches Brew was finally had drugs on me, I would have MC5’s chaotic noise freakouts. Now released in early 1970, to gotten rid of them before they he was moving beyond jazz, into strong reviews and even arrived. I’m not that crazy.” something more universal, far closer stronger sales, its to “Tomorrow Never Knows” than “My confrontational stew Miles was no stranger to Funny Valentine”. of textures striking a somewhat racism, or to rough treatment by the surprising chord with listeners. police – infamously, he’d been “Miles was beyond genre,” says White. This was intellectual, forward- viciously beaten by an officer outside “He never watered down his music, ever.” thinking and uncompromising a club he was performing at a decade music, with a savage previously – and he’d long pushed There was one problem: with Bitches sophistication lacking from Columbia for black models on his Brew on tape but not yet in shops, Davis Davis’s other work. It was album covers. But this incident in was still seen as a jazz artist, not the packaged in psychedelic late 1969 seemed to spark a desire to boundary-pushing hipster he aspired Afro-futurist artwork by Mati address more black issues in his art. to be. The clothes he was wearing Klarwein, who had been might have been cooler – less suit, more recommended by Betty Davis. “He always was aware [of black scarf – and the music he and his group issues],” says Billy Cobham. “He performed always impeccable. But “It was a midlife crisis,” says came from an academically astute appearing at jazz-themed events such Jack DeJohnette. “But one that family, his parents were pretty as the British Jazz Expo in November was played out through the highly respected in the black ’69 – where he failed to sell out the medium of experimental jazz.” community. He was a very clever Hammersmith Odeon – wasn’t exactly man – if you wanna call him a street going to turn on those who were trying F IVE bullets entered the to tune in and drop out. side of the Ferrari 275 urchin, then yeah, he was, GTB/4, yet miraculously but he had to learn the best The answer, suggested Columbia, was only one grazed Miles Davis. way possible, which is also to market Davis as a rock artist. To do He had been parked up in sometimes the most this, they set him up as the support act Brooklyn after playing the painful. He had to take his for other rock artists: he was the ‘special Blue Coronet when the lumps, man. He had to get guest star’ opener for The Band at the shooting occurred. The out, get knocked down and Hollywood Bowl, supported Leon assailants and motive were get up again. But from Russell at the Fillmore West, and Neil unknown, though Miles those experiences rose Young & Crazy Horse and Steve Miller at later claimed he’d been a positive.” the Fillmore East. This didn’t always go caught in the crossfire in a “It was really a great to plan, but as usual Davis made it work disagreement between time,” says Lenny White, through sheer force of personality. promoters. When the NYPD reflecting on the vibrant turned up, however, they street scene in late-’60s New “Steve Miller didn’t have shit going for found marijuana in his car York. “Young kids were him,” Davis wrote later, “so I’m pissed looking at music, looking at because I got to open for this non- how they dressed, how they spoke. I mean, New York is Arrested for the centre of the universe, CHARLES RUPPMANN/NY DAILY NEWS VIA GETTY IMAGES; BETTMANN/GETTY IMAGES marijuana so things started to move possession in around. We all had these October 1969 aspirations to do what was – after calling contemporary, to expand the police when the jazz horizons.” he was shot in From the late ’60s, then, Miles became his Ferrari set on taking his art to black people on the streets, whether they were hustlers or law-abiding citizens. Black youth had so far ignored his recent music, preferring the funk and soul of Sly & The Family Stone and James Brown to Bitches Brew’s kaleidoscopic Afro-rock. As Azar Lawrence saw it, Miles was pushing to be heard by black audiences. “It’s very important that, as a big star, as a person that had so much pull and attention upon him, Miles would use his platform to say that he was black and he was proud of it, like James Brown.” Miles’ follow-up to Bitches Brew united his love of rock music and guitars with his renewed interest in the black JUNE 2022 • UNCUT • 93

MILES DAVIS Roar power: Davis at home in 1969 experience. This was a soundtrack for a film with Cobham and Henderson joining in. While there were quieter moments in these two about one of his heroes: the boxer Jack Johnson, “Miles came out of the control room and said, ‘I long suites – semi-ambient loops from Macero who had shocked polite – and systemically racist told you not to play in between takes,’” says and even a snippet sampled from In A Silent Way – – American society in the early 20th century with Cobham. “But it was so good, John couldn’t let it the overriding impression of Jack Johnson is of a his outspoken views, love of white women, fast go, so he started to play again. Miles came out loose, careening garage group, halfway between cars and fine fashion. It’s not a stretch to suggest again, he was very upset, but on the third time, a good-time boogie-blues bar band and The that Miles, a perpetual outsider, saw some of his we were roaring. Miles came out, put his Stooges. It’s scrappily spontaneous but own experience in Johnson’s story. hand up and said, ‘Red button.’” full of life and thrilling in its Tracked in spring 1970, Jack Johnson shared “He went over to his mic and “MILES untamed energy and slashing played for about 10 minutes,” IS JUST guitar. After the record was Bitches Brew’s use of tape edits and studio says McLaughlin. “It was the SOARING done, Davis saw The Stooges most unbelievable trumpet LIKE AN at New York’s Ungano’s club manipulation, most likely influenced by Hendrix’s I’ve ever heard. Amazing! EAGLE” on August 17, 1970. It must They did some editing, but have made an impression: Electric Ladyland, but introduced a much smaller this became [album opener] JOHN McLAUGHLIN this was the attitude, and ‘Right Off’. There’s a section perhaps the cacophony, he ensemble, tight, heavy and agile. The core was in it that’s just so lovely for was after. me, because I’m playing these A week later, Miles flew to the John McLaughlin on guitar, Billy Cobham on drums and young bassist Michael Henderson. “Betty Davis brought Miles to see me at the Copacabana and at the Apollo Theatre, where I was working with Stevie Wonder,” says Henderson. “Miles was looking for an electric weird chords and Miles is just UK for a performance at the Isle bass, he was looking to get into something else, soaring like an eagle.” Of Wight Festival. In front of PHOTO: DON HUNSTEIN © SONY MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT; FPG/GETTY IMAGES more fusion, more funk. He gave me his phone As the jam continued, Herbie Hancock hundreds of thousands of freaking-out number and asked me to call him – so I – triple-parked in Midtown Manhattan and hippies, Davis and his group – now featuring called him and he sent me a plane ticket to carrying groceries – arrived Chick Corea and Keith Jarrett – wove their usual New York, and I stayed at his house. He at the studio to hand material into a single 35-minute stream of sound told me I had the gig when he came by Miles a copy of his new and rhythm. and told Stevie Wonder, ‘I’m taking record. “Next thing you “There were kids in that crowd, dancing and your fucking bass player.’” know, Herbie’s trying to grooving as we played,” says drummer Jack Davis had long relied on play on a Farfisa which DeJohnette. “They were dancing to that! We in the spontaneity in the studio, but hadn’t been used in band were all used to playing in venues where the the Jack Johnson sessions took years, it had dust all over band outnumbered the audience. Here we were things to a new level. The it,” says Cobham. “So playing in front of half a million people!” musicians rehearsed some when you listen to that Hendrix took to the stage two days later, for what of Davis’s ideas the day before, Jack Johnson, record and you hear the turned out to be his final British gig, stretching out but in the studio, waiting 1878–1946: for recording to begin, America’s keyboard solo, that’s on “Machine Gun” and “Red House”, showcasing McLaughlin tried out a new first world riff he’d been working on, heavyweight Herbie trying to find notes his blossoming hard funk sound on the then- boxing champion that work, so he has both unreleased “Dolly Dagger”. As seemed to have forearms on the keyboard!” been the case for the previous few years, he and 94 • UNCUT • JUNE 2022

In a different way: Miles at the 1969 Newport Jazz Festival, Rhode Island VOODOOCHILD! mesmerising album, it contains music, awash in entrancing ecstatic murmurs, whistled themes, electronic effects. +++++ How to buy the electric Miles Davis. By John Robinson and classic mute trumpet. The subdued groove occasionally DARK MAGUS IN A SILENT WAY BLACK BEAUTY; forms a happy continuum with TOM COPI/MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES/GETTY IMAGES MILES DAVIS AT Inner Mounting Flame by John (1977) (1969) FILLMORE WEST McLaughlin’s Mahavishnu A densely percussive, Hard to believe Orchestra. +++++ hard-charging live now, listening to (1973) set from New York’s this twinkling and Recorded a couple ON THE CORNER Carnegie Hall in 1974, released insistently groovy suite, that it was of months before the Fillmore East while Miles was in seclusion. once thought so controversial show released in 1970, this catches (1972) With a wall of funky noise as their to jazz listeners. A comparable Miles’ band supporting the Grateful Getting on the backdrop, Davis and saxophonist paradigm shift to that made Dead, and between philosophies. mathematical good Dave Liebman create some by Sketches Of Spain, perhaps, Chick Corea and drummer Jack foot, Miles’ last studio surprising interludes of melody. here key players including John DeJohnette have packed their gear album for nearly a decade is an Davis’s melancholic organ drones McLaughlin, Joe Zawinul and Chick and are already en route to 1972, exciting mix of funky discipline are often a key part of the picture Corea begin to map an expansive but sax player Steve Grossman and conceptual fusion. If Miles did here; the dropouts and returns of new space. +++++ responds to the driving pace by his best to disguise his tone, his the rhythm section just stunning. channelling classic Coltrane fire signature – the inspired choices ++++ BITCHES BREW circa 1966. Eccentrically recorded, and textures; the juxtapositions; strange, but definitely worth the direction of moods over long AGHARTA (1975) (1970) hearing. +++ compositions – was written boldly Keep it tight! A fuller all the way through it. A major 1970s Presenting a very continuation of Miles’ JACK JOHNSON record, of any genre. +++++ funky afternoon in new approach. Joined Osaka, a live show by many of his Silent Way band plus (1971) MILES DAVIS IN from February 1, 1975. additional percussionists, the music Inspired by a CONCERT: LIVE AT Ebb and flow is the pattern here as is complex and evolving (producer documentary about PHILHARMONIC the guitar sets the tone, the more Teo Macero provides game- the first African- HALL (1973) restrained rhythmic passages changing edits), but the mood also American World Heavyweight allowing Miles to be heard on chimes with market-dominant, Champion, Jack Johnson came Afros. Tablas. Wah- trumpet, in addition to mysterious carpet-level psychedelic rock. Hear out fighting. Hard riffing from the wah trumpet. From the Corky and skyward keyboard. “Maiysha” also Miles’ essential version of David off, Miles’ new signing Michael McCoy sleeve on down, this delivers is a tender bossa moment scorched Crosby’s “Guinnevere”, released Henderson (taken from Stevie the medicine of Miles’ new direction, by Pete Cosey on guitar, with Miles on the Complete Bitches Brew Wonder’s band) was his new secret bringing the On The Corner method applying lyrical touches straight Sessions. +++++ ingredient, tying together guitar (“Slickaphonics” as it was called on from 1959. ++++ and groove. The kind of statement the sleeve) to the tuxedoed folk of MILES DAVIS AT on black identity and pride that Jimi the Lincoln Center. What you lose PANGAEA (1976) FILLMORE (1970) Hendrix was often being urged to in layers and weird edits, you gain make in 1969 but never felt able in energy. ++++ It is now evening in At the dawn of 1970, to deliver. +++++ Osaka. The night Miles had seen Jimi GET UP WITH IT crowd seem in for Hendrix at the Fillmore LIVE-EVIL (1971) a punchier set, with East – being particularly struck, (1974) “Zimbabwe” revisiting themes apparently, by “Machine Gun”. In Don’t be too alarmed Compiled from unused from Dark Magus. What unfolds June, he played an (admittedly by the title – the session material 1970– is a gradual drift into calm, firmly guitarless) residency at the same reflective Live-Evil is 1974, this introspective piloted by the leader. Get Up With It venue, supporting Laura Nyro and a superbly controlled colossus is a ruminative companion fans will enjoy the drift and restraint keeping things funky while expertly album, blending studio and live to the funkier 1969-74 Miles. The of “Gondwana”, the second long shifting moods into thoughtful elements in a generally warm half-hour elegy for Duke Ellington, movement, which is steered by Miles electronic zones. ++++ and intimate space. An eerie, “He Loved Him Madly”, cues up two on the organ, and flowers eventually hours of roomy and immersive into melancholic trumpet. ++++ JUNE 2022 • UNCUT • 95

MILES DAVIS Getting festival- goers “dancing and grooving” at the Isle Of Wight, August 29, 1970 Extended live jams with new bandmembers, March 1973 Miles had been planning to record together. Yet it also saw Miles finally become a crossover on 1974’s Get Up With It compilation, it was a “I was doing some mixing at Columbia,” says star: instead of supporting rock acts, he was now traditional blues curio featuring a brass headlining three nights at Fillmore West, joined arrangement with R&B session ace Bernard Harvey Brooks. “I smelled reefer coming from one by an entourage that included Hendrix’s former Purdie on drums. It was as if Davis was looking of the studios – it was Jimi doing some mixing, hairdresser James Finney. There were drugs too back, just for a second, before he dismissed the doing his thing. So I went in and we’re talking, – lots of drugs. past fully and prepared for something else. and he was telling me he’s ready to go to England. But he said that when he’d come back to America, As Michael Henderson remembers, the pace Miles now gave himself up completely to the he wanted to do a thing with myself, Miles and was gruelling. “We were on planes left and right, music that had been obsessing him. A few weeks Buddy Miles. That was the trip that he died.” going all over the world, all the time, and then after the “Red China Blues” sessions, he began we’d play in the States and record. ‘You have to developing On The Corner with British cellist Miles attended the guitarist’s funeral in Seattle rest, Miles…’” Paul Buckmaster – then best known for his on October 1. Days later, at the Seattle Jazz orchestration work with David Bowie, the Stones Spectacular, he amplified his trumpet and ran By the end of the year, veteran drummer Jack and Leonard Cohen. Buckmaster, who was also it through a wah-wah pedal for the first time in DeJohnette and keyboardist Keith Jarrett had left. a member of avant-garde eccentrics the Third Ear an attempt to make the instrument sound like From then on, Miles looked to rock and funk for Band, was the foil that Miles needed. Together a guitar. This was also Michael Henderson’s most of his musicians. In March 1972, he and his they studied Bach and Stockhausen – especially second appearance on live bass duties, his band recorded “Red China Blues”. Later to appear the latter’s sample-based, electronic Telemusik – driving, metronomic parts grounding Davis’s and plotted a way to weave that into the street exploration and the massed percussion of Juma funk of Sly Stone and the psychedelic soul of The Santos and Airto Moreira. The stage was set for Temptations. On The Corner, though, was very yet another revolution. much its own thing. “It was a cast of thousands,” says Dave Liebman. “It was a Hollywood production, this was the Cecil B DeMille extravaganza – there DAVID REDFERN/REDFERNS; ABC PHOTO ARCHIVES/DISNEY GENERAL ENTERTAINMENT FREE-flowing, collaborative, progressive, With Devon CONTENT VIA GETTY IMAGES; BOB PETERSON/GETTY IMAGES the music that Miles made during 1971 is the Wilson (left) and sound of someone following their instincts. BettyDavis atthe He followed Jack Johnson with the double album funeral ofJimi Live-Evil, exploring some pieces by Brazilian Hendrix in Seattle, composer Hermeto Pascoal and furthering the October 1, 1970 bold jazz-funk experiments of Bitches Brew. “Miles was the greatest bandleader I ever worked for,” says Gary Bartz, who played at the Isle Of Wight and on Live-Evil. “[At the end of the live Cellar Door sessions] Miles surprised us and John McLaughlin came. So that was special. I guess it was his way of shaking things up, because all of a sudden having a guitar in the band changed the dynamics of everything. But it wasn’t difficult, it was exciting. I guess that’s what Miles was looking for, another sound.” 96 • UNCUT • JUNE 2022

“It’s called good taste”: Miles in Paris, 1973 were at least three Side Highway. According “Because you have technique, you guitarists, plus Herbie to film producer Jim don’t have to use it” Hancock, Chick Corea, Glickenhaus, who was A meeting with Miles, Melody Don Alias, Colin Walcott, first on the scene, the Maker, January 20, 1973 Badal Roy and more. musicians’ broken bones M ILESsatrightupclosetomeand rasped in a voice like a thin file, They were all at had pierced both of his “Whadda ya wanna know? Whadda ya wanna know?” attention. Miles didn’t leather trouser legs and I said, talking about trumpets, he didn’t seem talk much about any two large bags of cocaine to be playing quite as much these days. There was less emphasis on notes and phrases. details of the music, he might have sung a single were in the passenger footwell. Gigs were “That’s a matter of opinion,” he answered line to Michael Henderson. He didn’t say, ‘It’s the cancelled while Miles’ recuperation took place, abruptly. “When I was with Bird [Charlie Parker], Fats Navarro used to say I played too fast all the G7ȸ9 …’ But we all were enamoured by the guitar but perhaps it didn’t matter: Columbia hadn’t time, but I couldn’t swing with Max Roach ’cos he couldn’t swing. I mean, because you have then, because it had so much power, you could promoted the album to his satisfaction anyway, technique you don’t have to use it. You use it when you feel like it. It’s called good taste. I play turn it up to 11.” so On The Corner failed to reach a young black whatever comes into my black head, man.” “He was beautiful to all his musicians,” says audience. Its stuttering rhythms and vast blocks The critics had also claimed he’d been influenced the past couple of years by Sly Stone. McLaughlin. “He was wonderful. There was of sound also alienated existing jazz fans, who He drew his breath in. always this great creative atmosphere in must have felt they had missed a “You ever hear Sly Stone play like On The Corner?” he replied at last. the studio – he’d walk around and meeting. Selling a fraction of what A certain rhythmic… I began to say. say ‘Play’, ‘Don’t play’…” “HE WAS Bitches Brew had two years “We’re both black!” he snorted. “I tell you Its two sides ran like FULLY before, On The Corner was the something, man, it makes me so fucking mad last full studio album Miles when people say: ‘This is influenced by this, this spiralling suites, never- ENGAGED released that decade. is influenced by that.’ How the fuck am I gonna ending currents of robotic WITH THE play like Sly Stone? Sly wants me to produce beats, buzzing sitars and AS uncompromising him! They have a nice group but they don’t have heavily effected shards FUNK” in life as in music, any intelligence, man!” of keys, trumpet and Miles was arrested I asked how he found his musicians. guitars. If it could be AZAR LAWRENCE again in 1973. Intoxicated, he “I pick ’em up just like you pick up a girl. A lot of processed through a wah lost the keys to his huge ’em come to me but I don’t hire ’em. A guy might pedal, it was. Though there are have too much ego and can’t play with a group and be a good player.” future echoes of hip-hop, brownstone house and began But he seemed to have had a good working relationship with John McLaughlin? Portishead and jungle, On The banging on the door in frustration; “Yeah, he played different when he played ALAIN DEJEAN/SYGMA VIA GETTY IMAGES with us. He gets it on. I got John set up, ain’t that Corner retains its otherworldly edge 50 this time, he was charged and convicted a bitch? See, I know these people. When I make a record and it sounds good they say, ‘Well, years on. The only evidence of its vintage is Corky with a gun offence. If this, ongoing problems with that’s Miles.’ Y’know, it’s supposed to sound good. That’s why I’m not gonna give Columbia McCoy’s conspicuously 1972 cover art, which his hip and the commercial failure of On The this latest album. I’m gonna give it nobody.” But he’d release it sometime, surely? Davis insisted on over Columbia’s concerns. Corner had put him in an ever-darkening mood, “I’ll erase it. I told Clive [Davis, head of CBS]. I sent a telegram, I told him he should get a black “Rated X”, recorded a couple of months after and though, they also spurred him on to greater man who thinks black to sell the music to black people, ’cos the white people seem to know eventually released in 1974, sounds remarkably heights musically. about it. But everybody is scared to go into the black neighbourhood. Nobody gets uptown, modern, with its skittering beats, bursts of noise For the rest of his electric period, he and thrilling studio edits. None of Miles’ acolytes concentrated on the transformative, chimeric in fusion were to try anything as daring. jams of his live work rather than more restrictive “He was fully engaged with the funk,” says Azar studio sessions. To do so, he added new members Lawrence, who was struck by the bravery of On to his group, including Liebman and guitarist The Corner. “This is Miles Davis now, come on, Pete Cosey. Cosey had previously played with this is not somebody that’s just jumped in on it. Chess blues musicians, but under Miles’ Man, he had all of the arrows under his belt.” patronage he was free to explode into lysergic Two days before the album came out in October soloing, even running his guitar through an EMS 1972, however, Miles ran his green Lamborghini synthesiser. “Oh, Pete Cosey was incredible,” Miura into a concrete barrier on New York’s West says Azar Lawrence. “He had his guitar lying

“Incredible” guitarist Pete Cosey on stage, March 1973 R. BRIGDEN/EXPRESS/HULTON ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES; ABC PHOTO ARCHIVES/ With James challenging music little concerned. Then he came back DISNEY GENERAL ENTERTAINMENT CONTENT VIA GETTY IMAGES Mtume at – and all the more and we played São Paulo. Before we Heathrow enduring for it – went on, at the side of the stage, he Airport, especially when said, ‘That was a close one…’” London, July compared with 10, 1973 others taking fusion to more accessible areas, While they were in Brazil, Duke like Hancock or Corea. Ellington passed away and Miles flat when he was playing at that time. Yeah, he insisted that the group record a had some interesting sounds.” On March 30, 1974, they played New York’s tribute to him on their return to New Carnegie Hall, and Miles used the occasion to try York. “He Loved Him Madly” was one Songs often exploded out to last 20 minutes or out two new musicians, guitarist Dominique of Davis’s final studio sessions of the more, with Henderson, guitarist Reggie Lucas Gaumont and saxophonist Azar Lawrence. decade. Thirty-two minutes long, it and drummer Al Foster simmering on the captured a quasi-ambient vibe that hyperactive funk grooves, while the others took “Miles did not say what we were gonna play would exert a strong influence on increasingly wild solos as their leader stalked the or do, he just motioned me to come on,” says Brian Eno. It begins as a swirling, stage, blowing into his distorted trumpet. Behind Lawrence, “There was a mic, but they were eerie miasma of echoed sound, them, amps were decked out in the red, black and playing such high-volume, electric music that Liebman’s flute melding with green of the Pan-African flag. just playing into the microphone wasn’t enough. atmospheric percussion and organ I felt somebody tap me on my back, it was Miles. drones, but coalesces into a slow lament that The group’s appearance in Japan in June 1973 He had a saxophone in his arms that had a pickup seems to presage the post-rock of 20 years later. heralded the start of a new era: keyboardist on it and he was offering it to me. There’s an aura “There was just a great vibe in the room that Lonnie Liston Smith had left, so Miles took up the around any individual that has gathered so much day,” says Henderson. “Everybody in the band organ himself onstage, using a Yamaha YC45D experience in terms of their musical journey, and was at peace and comfortable in who they were. that the company had just given him, run through life journey as well. When he looked at you with We had just started this song. We didn’t rehearse a wah pedal. They also gifted him a drum his sunglasses on, wow, it was groovy – same or anything – Miles just gave Reggie [Lucas] some machine, which he passed on to percussionist kind of energy as when I saw Jimi Hendrix.” things to play, some modal things. Then Reggie James ‘Mtume’ Forman. just opened it up and started it, and we all came in The set was recorded, and eventually released together. It was just some music that came from us, “When we’d get off the airplane in Japan, they’d as Dark Magus in Japan in 1977, its side-long and nobody had to count it off. It’s a special piece. roll out the red carpet,” says Henderson. “There’d recordings named after Swahili numbers. Miles loved Duke Ellington, [the track] was dearest be flowers, a lot of press with their cameras. Constantly touring, the group journeyed to to his heart. It was a special honour to be on it.” That’s how we were received over there. It was Brazil for the first time in May and June, while If Miles was bidding farewell to his hero, with like we were the biggest band on the planet. The bootlegs of their Rio De Janeiro and São Paulo “He Loved Him Madly” it was also as if he was people went crazy over the music, but they’d performances are some of the mightiest saying goodbye to this phase of his career. He never heard any of it before that day. When you available. No small achievement, considering recorded just a few more pieces, “Mtume” and get a band like that together, and you say to them, Miles’ health issues and a hospital stay caused by “Maiysha”, in October, and they, along with “He ‘Play what you wanna play’, you’re gonna get vodka, cocaine and Oxycodone abuse. Loved Him Madly”, appeared on the Get Up With something great.” It compilation the following month. By now, “He got ill as he was walking offstage at the end Miles’ music had become so heavy, foreboding The music this lineup performed was heady, of the Rio gig,” says Dave Liebman. “We didn’t and ritualistic that it was difficult to see where he humid and deeply rhythmic, the musicians only see him for the next three days or so. We were a could go without a retreat into the past. Only occasionally drifting down into more ambient, krautrockers like Can could match the scope of atmospheric moods. To the uninitiated, it his work at this time – though even they had can sound unmoored, but closer listens begun to embrace more conventional forms with reveal the collective moving through various 1974’s Soon Over Babaluma. interconnected pieces – “Turnaroundphrase”, “I really thought he didn’t know what he was “Tune In 5”, “Ife”, “Funk”, most commonly – doing sometimes,” laughs Dave Liebman. “There fluently under Miles’ control. This was were no melodies, there was no jazz. But I had to relisten to everything in the ’90s for some liner notes, and it was better than I remembered. 98 • UNCUT • JUNE 2022

MILES DAVIS At the Shaefer “IT’SSOOUT Festival in THERE” Central Park, September 5, Jeremy Erwin of The Heat Warps 1975, his last blog takes us through the finest gig before a six-year hiatus electric Miles bootlegs There was an evolution of his thinking, and his talked to people. In the ’80s, he was like another AT the start of the pandemic I needed an thinking about what he wanted to do. He was person. Maybe he thought he was going to pass all-consuming distraction, like manyofus, and I definitely ahead of his time.” on and he wanted to be more sociable.” became really interested in listening to a lot of live Though he’d reap the success and acceptance Miles, almost to the point of obsession. I had the I F the path was becoming harder to navigate, he’d been searching for, none of the music Miles live albums of the period, Davis was still finding new ways to take the made during the ’80s was as brave, pioneering or and a smattering of initiative and lead his band forward. Twin live mind-expanding as the fruits of his electric bootlegs, but it felt as though there was still an incomplete picture of the evolution from ’69 to albums Agharta and Pangaea captured his group period. The influence of his strangest, wildest and ’75. I started to search out the tapes between the tapes I had, piecing together the evolution. in Tokyo on February 1, 1975. The afternoon show, most hedonistic era still runs deep: without It was interesting for myself, but I imagined, given the difficulty with finding so many of Agharta, was fiery and thrilling, the relentless Bitches Brew, we wouldn’t have OK Computer; these tapes, I was probably not alone. So I started the blog, going chronologically – two landslide of grooves ending in a scree of abstract without On The Corner, no Remain In Light; years later and we’re probably 11 or 12 shows from the end. noise from drum machine and effects units. without In A Silent Way, Talk Talk’s later work It was always Miles’ singular vision, but he still had to convince the band to go with him. I think Pangaea, from the evening performance, was might have been unrecognisable; even the epic that took until 1970 – there’s a great show on February 22 in Ann Arbor with John McLaughlin, wearier, all bad vibes and melancholic melodies drift of Dylan’s “Murder Most Foul” had one foot which seems to be one of the from Miles on trumpet and organ. stretching back to the ambient flow of “He Loved shows where the band finally gets it. Illness, especially hip problems, had become Him Madly”. However you approach it, Miles’ The evolution is so rapid – it’s so out too much by summer 1975. Davis performed at the electric work may still be ahead of its time, even there, I love it. The tapes from the Shaefer Festival in New York’s Central Park on today. “Nobody plays Miles Davis like Miles Fillmore West in April 1970 [some September 5, and then retired. He was Davis,” marvels Billy Cobham, amazed at were captured on 1973’s Black spent from his journey into excess, his ability to absorb so many stylistic Beauty] are phenomenal – I exhausted by the strain of threads. “So many people have love the way Chick Corea is way constant evolution and “SO MANY tried to do it and failed. Whereas out there on the perhaps disheartened that PEOPLE Miles can play rock and funk Echoplex on the his former sidemen – John and everything is still Miles. Rhodes.Theywere McLaughlin and Billy on a double bill with Cobham in Mahavishnu HAVE TRIED If anybody else tried to do the Grateful Dead Orchestra, Chick Corea and TO DO IT that, they would sound and Miles’ band is Lenny White in Return To terribly wrong. Not just just so psychedelic. Forever, Joe Zawinul and The first show with Wayne Shorter in Weather AND FAILED” becauseofthesound,but Pete Cosey, April 5, 1973 in Seattle, there’s like a Report and Herbie Hancock and also the vision they project. If collective, unspoken ‘oh shit’ when he starts to BILLY COBHAM solo. Cosey was a catalyst that sends them off you know the history behind in a different direction for basically the rest of Miles’ ’70s career. jazz, you understand why certain What makes this whole thing so fascinating is that Miles seemed to be so about the night-by- Bernie Maupin in Headhunters – things work and certain things don’t; night evolution. I spoke to Lonnie Liston Smith last summer – he called me out of the blue were now selling more records than him you can see how everything is coming – and one of the things he said was that Miles needed you to do something new and different in the very style he’d pioneered. through, how it’s all fallen through the cracks. and push it forward every night. That’s all he really demanded of the band. That indicates He spent the next six years silent, recuperating That’s what this is all about. That’s what Miles is.” to me that he clearly was focused on the live presentation, and the studio thing was just from hip replacement surgery, getting even “Miles was an artist,” says Lenny White. “Miles an offshoot. Whereas in the earlier days of JACKVARTOOGIAN/GETTY IMAGES; GAB ARCHIVE/REDFERNS Bitches Brew, it seemed as though the studio deeper into drugs and women, letting his once- was unlike anybody else. I want to be clear about was the focus. At some point Miles clearly just did not give opulent designer apartment become increasingly that. But if there was someone you could equate a shit if you got it or not, but he knew that eventually – it could be years or decades – squalid. If he’d taken music to its outer limit over Miles Davis being like, it would be Pablo Picasso. you’d come around to it. the previous six years, now Davis was taking a Whatever he touched, you knew it was touched Check out all the tapes at theheatwarps.com kind of rock afterlife to the extreme. Unlike Jimi by Miles. But he did so many different kinds of JUNE 2022 • UNCUT • 99 Hendrix, Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin, though, musical things that you couldn’t just codify him. Davis was too mean and too tough to succumb to Miles Davis had his own codification.” the darkness completely. In 1980, he reunited with Teo Macero to record a new album, The Man With Thanks to John Lewis, Sam Richards and The Horn, a cleaned-up and very different person. John Robinson. Colin Hodgkinson is touring “He became a star, he crossed over,” says as part of Ten Years After; Harvey Brooks’ Liebman. “He dressed like crazy and walked Elegant Geeza and Azar Lawrence’s around the stage, which he had never done. He New Sky albums are out now

YOLA/ Yola and band ALLISON RUSSELL bring mirrorball Ryman Auditorium, Nashville, March 3 sparkle to a legendary venue Bristolian émigrée becomes Nashville royalty at the home of country music YOLA SETLIST JOSEPH ROSS SMITH; JAMIE MCCARTHY/GETTY IMAGES FOR LOVE ROCKS NYC/GOD’S LOVE WE DELIVER HALFWAYthrough Country Music. To mark the occasion, she 1 Barely Alive her triumphant set, has brought along her own party – not 2 Starlight Yola Carter pauses to just her mighty backing band but also 3 Dancing Away reflect on the massive her old roommate and some new friends, tornado cluster that including the local duo SistaStrings. It’s In Tears rumbled through her a night that emphasises community, 4 Now You’re Here 5 Be My Friend adopted hometown perseverance, and most of all joy, as Yola 6 Hold On 7 Faraway Look of Nashville two years ago to the day, draws songs from her two albums thus 8 Whatever You killing more than 20 people. She tells a far, adding a generous helping of uptempo Want 9 Shady Grove story about huddling under her kitchen covers that turn the Ryman into a disco. 10 Goodbye Yellow table with her roommate, praying for the Russell kicks off the evening with a set Brick Road 11 Diamond storm to pass them by. That roommate of songs from her solo debut, Outside Studded Shoes is tonight’s support act Allison Russell, Child. She introduces them with powerful 12 It Ain’t Easier 13 Break The who then joins Yola to duet on Aretha stories about her troubled upbringing Bough Franklin’s “Day Dreaming”, a song whose in Montreal, the abuse she endured 14 Great Divide 15 You Are gentle reveries are about as far from stormy during her childhood, and the love she Everything as you can get. The duo approach the song eventually found. “We are more than the 16 Day Dreaming 17 Stand For Myself reverently, as one does with anything sum of our scars,” she insists, and that ENCORE 18 Sweet Love Aretha has sung, but they appear to relish determination animates these songs. 19 If I Had To Do It the chance to harmonise Thanks to her band – who All Again 20 Don’t Stop The on those ecstatic vocal infuse the music with the Music runs, almost as though rhythm and buoyancy these two survivors of water lapping at the are pushing each other shore – “Persephone” and onwards and upwards. “4th Day Prayer” sound This is, Yola notes, her more like celebrations than first time headlining lamentations, especially the Mother Church of with Russell dancing excitedly around the stage. After appearances by Nashville rapper Daisha McBride and Russell’s husband JT Nero (on Dream team: the gleefully vulgar Yola and (inset) “Joyful Motherfuckers”), she Allison Russell invites her daughter Ida to close the set with a spirited version of her Grammy- nominated “Nightflyer”. and ambitious mix of sounds and styles, from the ornate Philly soul of “Dancing Both Russell and Yola Away In Tears” to the hard-driving protest rock of “Diamond Studded Shoes” to the understand the magnitude of twangy torch anthem of “Be My Friend”. this event – two black women Yola recently used the term “genre fluid” to describe her approach and even sells headlining one of the most T-shirts emblazoned with that phrase. At the Ryman, she moves through each style legendary venues in the world, with boundless charisma and confidence. Decked out in a royal purple velvet dress, at a time when race in country she casually commands the nearly full house; once she gets them standing, butts music remains a charged rarely touch pews until the lights come up. Her voice sounds powerful yet personable, topic – but neither sound the especially on “Faraway Look”, whose ’60s pop fanfare adds a groovy grandeur least bit overwhelmed by the to its sober story of estranged lovers. She plays with familiar pop tropes, especially room or restrained by its genre associations. Yola announces she has big plans for the night, but just running through songs from 2019’s Walk Through Fire and 2021’s Stand For Myself would have been eventful enough. The latter album in particular is an effervescent 100 • UNCUT • JUNE 2022